In brief

BUSINESS | Page 1

GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978TUESDAY Vol. XXXX No. 11239

July 9, 2019Dhul Qa’dah 6, 1440 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

SPORT | Page 1

Federer, Djokovic, Nadal ease into Wimbledon quarter-fi nals

QCB foreign exchange reserves rise to $52.7bn in May

QATAR | Offi cial

Pakistan off ers Qataris‘immediate free visas’An off icial source at the Consular Aff airs Department at the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs said that “the Pakistani authorities have decided to grant all Qatari passport holders immediate entry visas (tourist/visit) for one or several trips and for a period of 30 days which is extendable for an additional 30 days.” The requirements are: a valid passport for at least six months, a round trip ticket and a cash equivalent of $1,500 or a valid credit card.

QATAR | Diplomacy

Afghan peace talksto continueAfghan delegates attending the Intra-Afghan Conference for Peace decided that the “dialogue should continue” as the two-day talks concluded in Doha yesterday, according to a joint Qatar-Germany statement tweeted by Markus Potzel, German envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. “They agreed on a joint statement and decided that this dialogue should be continued. This can only be a first step to find an understanding between the conflicting parties,” the statement noted. The talks were co-hosted by Qatar and Germany.

REGION | Diplomacy

Iran passes uraniumenrichment capIran yesterday breached a uranium enrichment cap set by a troubled 2015 nuclear deal and warned Europe against taking retaliatory measures, as France decided to send an envoy to Tehran to try to calm tensions. The move came more than a year after Washington pulled out of the landmark accord between world powers and Tehran. Page 8

QATAR | Partnership

Initiatives for globalyouth empowermentSilatech CEO Sabah al-Haidoos met with the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in Geneva recently and agreed to co-operate in a partnership to develop initiatives and programmes for global youth empowerment in alignment with international human rights treaties and agreements. Page 3

US lauds Qatar’s help in defusing tension in region

Amir holds talks with acting US Defence Secretary Mark Esper

PM reviews progress of digital transformation in judiciaryQNADoha

HE the Prime Minister and Inte-rior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani

reviewed yesterday the achievements made by the Supreme Judiciary Coun-cil and its most important accomplish-ments implemented in the framework of the digital transformation plan adopted by the council.

HE Sheikh Abdullah also reviewed the eff orts exerted to adopt modern technology in judicial work in order to meet the vision of the state in the fi eld of digital transformation, within the e-Government Strategy.

This came during the visit HE the Prime Minister paid to the headquar-ters of the Supreme Judiciary Council in Lusail City. He was accompanied by HE the Minister of Transport and Communications and Chairman of the e-Government Steering Commit-

tee Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti. The visit came in the framework of the government’s keenness on supporting all plans and directions aimed at the digital transformation in all sectors, including ministries, authorities, insti-tutions, and legislative, executive and judicial councils.

During the visit, HE the President of the Supreme Judiciary Council and President of the Court of Cassation Dr Hassan Lahdan Saqr al-Muhannadi gave a presentation on the most im-portant features of the digital transfor-mation plan of the Supreme Judiciary Council, which includes the entire ju-dicial system including electronic serv-ices, the management of meetings and the training of national cadres to meet the goals of the digital transformation, all within the vision of the wise leader-ship of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.

HE the president of the Supreme Ju-diciary Council reviewed all the elec-tronic services that were developed

within the framework of the digital transformation plan, which will con-tribute to the speedy completion of the issues and achieve justice.

During the presentation, HE the Prime Minister was briefed on the dig-ital transformation plan in the Supreme Judiciary Council and all courts and de-partments affi liated to it.

The digital transformation plan in-cludes the provision of electronic serv-ices related to the public and lawyers and litigation procedures through the development of electronic systems to manage sessions, the establishment of session rooms equipped with advanced technical means, in addition to the pro-vision of electronic payment services, and the services of notices and judicial notices and electronic integration with the relevant government agencies.

The digital transformation also in-cludes the cessation of paper transac-tions related to the implementation of judgments in accordance with devel-oped procedures aimed at preserving

the interests of litigants and ensure the privacy of data and providing multiple alternatives to implement the rulings.

HE the Prime Minister was also briefed on one of the initiatives of digital trans-formation, which is the establishment of an operation room for government liaison, in the framework of the develop-mental work to speed up the implemen-tation of judicial decisions and improve the quality of the implementation of sentences and the development of their procedures, thus contributing to pro-tecting the rights of litigants and achiev-ing justice in the implementation of the judgment.

HE the Prime Minister directed the bodies concerned in the State to sup-port the Supreme Judiciary Council’s plans in digital transformation and urged joint eff orts of the executive and judicial authorities to achieve the de-sired justice to serve the interests of all members of the society and meet the aspirations and objectives of Qatar Na-tional Vision 2030.

HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani is being briefed yesterday on the progress in digital transformation in the Supreme Judiciary Council.

QNA/AgenciesWashington/Doha

The United States has appreciated Qatar’s eff orts to de-escalate tension in the Middle East and

stressed on the need to keep the rela-tionship between the two countries re-silient to counter the ongoing threats in the region.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and acting US Defence Secretary Mark Esper held a session of offi cial talks at the Penta-gon yesterday.

Welcoming the Amir, the acting De-fence Secretary said the US is grateful for Qatar’s eff orts to help de-escalate the current tension. “The US is asking like-minded nations to join together to preserve freedom of navigation and deter provocative acts. We appreciate Qatar’s willingness to support our ini-tiative,” he said.

His Highness the Amir said Qatar would work with the US to defuse ten-sion in the region.

Referring to the visit, Qatar’s am-bassador to the US Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad al-Thani in a tweet said the Amir will this week meet President

Donald Trump, cabinet members, members of Congress, and heads of industry to discuss current partner-ships and explore areas of further co-operation.

His Highness the Amir arrived in Washington, DC yesterday on an of-ficial visit to the United States of America.

The Amir was welcomed upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base by senior US offi cials, Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad al-Thani, and members of the Qatari em-bassy and Qatar’s Defence Attache Of-fi ce in Washington.

The Amir is accompanied by an of-

ficial delegation. The Amir’s visit marks a new mile-

stone in the strategic ties between the two friendly countries.

The Amir will meet President Trump in the White House today to discuss enhancing strategic co-op-eration between the two countries in different fields, and to exchange views on the latest regional and inter-national developments, Qatar News Agency reported.

The visit will also see the sign-ing of a number of memorandums of understanding and agreements in the fields of defence, energy, invest-

ment, and aerial transport.The White House said the visit will

contribute to enhancing economic and security ties, in addition to discussing the latest regional developments, secu-rity co-operation, and counter-terror-ism issues.

“The visit is a new milestone in the strategic ties the two countries enjoy, and will contribute to establishing sta-bility and security regionally as well as on a global level. It also coincides with many regional and international devel-opments that require further consul-tation and co-ordination between the two sides,” QNA said. To Page 20

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and acting US Defence Secretary Mark Esper holding a session of off icial talks at the Pentagon yesterday.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani is being welcomed by acting US Defence Secretary Mark Esper.

Amir arrives in Washington on off icial visit to the US Amir’s visit a new milestone in strategic ties Agreements in the fields of defence, energy, investment and aerial transport to be signed

2 Gulf TimesTuesday, July 9, 2019

QATAR

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education announced yesterday that parents of students from grade 1-12 can get their children’s certificates as well as their copies from government service centres.The ministry said that the service is meant to facilitate the process of obtaining the certificates. A total of 10 centres will provide this service. They are in Al Khor, Al Daayen, Al Onaiza, The Pearl, Al Shahaniya, Umm Salal, Al Wakrah, Al Hilal, Mesaimeer, and Al Rayyan. Secondary school students, as well as those seeking certificate equivalency service, can obtain their certificates from the main building of the department of Certificate Attestation and Equivalency, located on C-Ring Road.

The first regional conference on the Digital Map of Arab Libraries and Information Centres was held yesterday at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of Arab League in Cairo.Qatar participated in a co-ordination meeting held yesterday at the headquarters of the Arab League, with the delegation headed by HE Qatar’s Permanent Representative to the Arab League ambassador Ibrahim bin Abdulaziz al-Sahlawi.The Digital Map of Arab Libraries and Information Centres is the first non-profit Arab project to enhance the geographical information awareness of Arab libraries and information centres of all types and categories.

Certificates of grade 1-12 students available at govt service centres

Qatar attendsmeet on digital map of Arab libraries

Advisory Council Speaker thanks Amir for his supportQNADoha

The Advisory Council held its regular weekly meeting yesterday un-

der the chairmanship of HE the Council’s Speaker Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud.

At the outset of the meeting, HE the Secretary-General of the Advisory Council Fahad bin Mu-barak al-Khayareen read out the Amiri Decree No 27 for 2019 ex-tending the Advisory Council’s term for two years, beginning on July 1, 2019 and ending on June 30, 2021.

The Council continued its meeting, during which HE the Speaker briefed the members on the results of his offi cial visit to Portugal at the head of a delega-tion from the Council from June 24 to 28 at the invitation of Pres-ident of the Assembly of Portu-gal Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues.

During the visit, a memoran-dum of understanding (MoU) was signed between the Advi-sory Council and the Portuguese Assembly, under which the two sides agreed to promote rela-tions, establish two parliamen-tary groups of friendship and work on unifying positions of common interest.

HE al-Mahmoud also met the Chairman of Twelve Plus Group Duarte Pacheco. The group includes the parliaments of the European countries,

Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The meeting reviewed the existing parliamentary re-lations between Qatar and the Twelve Plus Group, and ways of supporting and strengthen-ing them.

The Speaker also met dur-ing the visit with the Minister of Foreign Aff airs of Portugal, Augusto Santos Silva, and dis-cussed with him bilateral rela-

tions and ways of boosting them, in addition to a number of issues of common concern.

He also briefed the Council on his visit to Geneva where he at-tended the celebrations of the 130th anniversary of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). HE al-Mahmoud also held several meetings during the visit with IPU president, IPU secretary-general and the chairman of the

Federation Council of the Fed-eral Assembly of the Russian Federation.

HE the secretary-general of the Council also read Decree No 34 for 2019 adjourning the 47th regular session of the Advisory Council as of 6th of Dhul-Qa’da, 1440, corresponding to today, July 9, 2019.

At the end of the meeting, the Speaker delivered a speech on

the occasion of the adjournment of the current session of the Council, in which he expressed, on his own behalf and on behalf of the Council’s members, sin-cere thanks and appreciation to His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani for his support to the Council, as well as the Amir’s keenness for the Council to play its full role in accordance with its functions

and responsibilities.He praised the government’s

eff orts and sincere and con-structive co-operation with the Council in the legislative fi eld, and for its prompt response to the Council’s proposals and rec-ommendations in the general discussion requests held by the Council on many issues of con-cern to the nation and citizens such as health, education, land and sea environment, food secu-rity, infrastructure projects and traffi c accidents and their causes and how to reduce them.

HE al-Mahmoud expressed satisfaction with the Council’s achievements, referring to the numerous draft laws, the general discussions held by the Council and the resulting proposals and recommendations.

The Speaker also addressed the external activities carried out by the Council and that achieved fruitful results in supporting and developing the relations of Qatar with sisterly and friendly countries, praising in particular the role of the par-liamentary friendship groups established by the Council with various countries in the world, which proved to be effective al-though being new.

The Speaker thanked the members for their eff orts, both in the Council’s regular meet-ings and through its specialised committees.

He also thanked the Gen-eral Secretariat of the Advisory Council and all its staff .

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

Qatar, Dominican Republic hold political talks

The Ministries of Foreign Aff airs of Qatar and the Dominican Republic held

a round of political consulta-tions in Doha.

The Qatari side was chaired

by HE Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Af-fairs Dr Ahmed bin Hassan al-Hammadi, while the Do-minican side was headed by Dr Carlos Gabriel Garcia,

vice-minister for Economic Affairs and Relations with the Dominican Community Abroad.

During the round of political consultations, bilateral rela-

tions between the two friendly countries and ways of support-ing and developing them, in addition to a number of issues of common concern were dis-cussed. - QNA

Off icials of the ministries of foreign aff airs of Qatar and the Dominican Republic holding talks in Doha yesterday.

Event raises awareness about protecting endangered speciesQNADoha

The Environment and Wildlife Protection De-partment at the Ministry

of Municipality and Environ-ment has organised an event to raise awareness about the im-portance of the Convention on International Trade in Endan-gered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

At the event, the objectives and contribution of CITES to-wards the protection of endan-gered species was explained.

Director of Protection and Wildlife Department Omar Sa-lem al-Nuaimi said the event is part of the ministry’s eff orts to implement its commitment to CITES, by ensuring that its em-ployees and the ports concerned with the control and entry into the country of endangered spe-cies are provided with the nec-essary information to combat illicit trade and focus on the im-plementation of CITES.

He added that during the event they reviewed the mecha-nism and method of work of the national plan of Qatar to combat illegal trade in ivory and explain its implementation with the au-

thorities concerned.During the event, a presenta-

tion was made on some ancient extinct wild species, as well as the current extinct animals which are included in the con-

vention. Specimens of endan-gered wildlife species, types and forms of ivory were put on dis-play and Qatar’s National Plan related to protection of endan-gered species were discussed.

The presentation also includ-ed the convention’s benefi ts and contribution to protecting the endangered species from extinc-tion.

CITES is a multilateral treaty

to protect endangered plants and animals. It was drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of members of the In-ternational Union for Conserva-tion of Nature. The convention

was opened for signature in 1973 and CITES entered into force on July 1 of 1975. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in speci-mens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.

Off icials at the event. Specimens of endangered species and ivory products.

Qatar stresses continued support to Palestinians

QNAGeneva

Qatar stressed yesterday its fi rm support to the Palestinian people and

their right to establish an inde-pendent state based on the bor-ders of 1967, with East Al Quds as its capital.

This came during the state-ment of Qatar in the general debate held under item 7 of the 41st session of the Hu-man Rights Council, which addresses human rights situ-ation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories. The statement was delivered by HE the Permanent Representative of Qatar to the United Nations and other international organi-sations in Geneva, ambassador Ali Khalfan al-Mansouri.

He stressed the importance of maintaining item 7 as a main component of the work of the council, due to the role it plays in highlighting the crimes and human rights violations made by the world’s last occupying country.

He said that the Palestinian

cause has been suff ering over the past decades, which saw wars, peace agreements, and nego-tiations that did not lead to a comprehensive resolution. He warned that further failure in that regard would have danger-ous repercussions on the Middle East and the entire world.

The ambassador expressed re-gret regarding the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in Gaza as a result of the siege and the barbaric Israeli military op-erations. He highlighted in par-ticular the tragic conditions that children and women live under in Gaza, calling on the interna-tional community to take all the necessary measures to end the siege and support reconstruc-tion eff orts.

Ambassador al-Mansouri concluded the statement by stressing that comprehensive peace in the Middle East has to be the strategic choice. He added that the only way to achieve that would be by ending Israeli oc-cupation of Palestinian and Arab land, as well as supporting the rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to self deter-mination.

EU-US delegationvisits Islamic cultural centre

An EU-US Young Leaders delegation visited yester-day Sheikh Abdullah bin

Zaid Al Mahmoud Islamic Cul-tural Centre.

During the visit, the delega-tion was briefed on the centre’s eff orts and work in spreading the Islamic culture, introducing the message of Islam, promo-tion peace and peaceful coex-istence and teaching the Arabic language.

Director of the centre, Dr Saleh bin Ali Marri, explained to the delegation that Sheikh Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud Islamic Cultural Centre pro-vides a clear and correct picture about Islam and its culture and civilisation, noting that Qatar, including the Ministry of En-dowments and Islamic Aff airs, believes in the necessity and importance of openness to the other.

The visit is aimed at deepen-ing the mutual understanding between the European countries and the United States and the Arab and Islamic countries, and promoting peaceful coexistence and co-operation among peo-ples. - QNA

QATAR3

Gulf Times Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Forum underlines role of youth in sustainable developmentDiscussions, deliberations

and brainstorming con-tinued on the second day

of the Doha Islamic Youth Forum at the Qatar National Conven-tion Centre in Doha yesterday.

The second day focused on the youth’s role in sustainable development, with sessions and workshops revolving around this theme and the participants dis-cussing topics such as the role of youth initiatives in achieving sustainable development, em-powering youth in the fi eld of education and training, and sus-tainable development and youth challenges.

The forum is being attended by youth delegates from 56 Is-lamic countries, including 20 young representatives from Qa-tar. The forum, which comes within the framework of the ‘Doha OIC Capital 2019’ ini-tiative, is being held through co-operation between the Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Islamic Co-operation Youth Fo-rum, under the supervision and organisation of the Qatar Centre for Cultural and Heritage Events.

Marking the formal start to the day’s proceedings, an introductory session on the theme of ‘Youth and wagering on sustainable development’ saw the participants present papers on topics such as youth and sustainable development, strengthening youth develop-ment capacities in Qatar, and youth being the true wealth of the nation.

The participants underlined the need for helping the youth get trained and educated and called for affi rmative steps to mobilise them towards the ob-jectives of sustainable growth and development in the Islamic world.

Addressing the session, Dr Mohamed Saif al-Kuwari, di-

By Shafeeq AlingalStaff Reporter

Participants at a discussion session yesterday. PICTURES: Noushad Thekkayil Delegates taking part in a discussion during the second day of Doha Islamic Youth Forum.

A workshop in progress. (Supplied picture)

rector, Environmental and Mu-nicipal Studies Institute at the Ministry of Municipality and En-vironment, highlighted the role of youth in achieving sustainable development as a global demand, noting that the United Nations has identifi ed 17 goals for devel-opment that cover all aspects of life and that these goals address the global challenges, includ-ing those related to poverty, in-equality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, peace and justice, decent work and economic growth.

Al-Kuwari stressed that these goals would only be achieved through the role played by prom-ising young people and the com-mitment of countries to work towards achieving these goals according to programmes and well-studied plans by 2030.

Further, he underlined the importance of the forum and such events in taking advantage of various experiences, contrib-uting to the shaping of future policies with a youth vision.

Abdul Hadi al-Shawi, direc-tor, Technical Offi ce of the Per-manent Population Committee in Qatar, presented a paper titled ‘Strengthening the develop-ment capacities of youth in Qa-

tar’, in which he underlined that Qatar works to motivate young people to participate actively in sustainable development as a process that enhances the ca-pacities of young people, expand their choices and enable them to obtain more opportunities in a global system that is based on knowledge-based globalisation.

He noted that the state’s at-tention to young people has emerged through the integra-tion of the youth dimension into the fi rst National Develop-ment Strategy (2011-2016) and the second (2018-2022) in many development sectors, and in the Population Policy (2017-2022), stressing that the Population Policy of Qatar aims to expand participation opportunities of the youth of both s genders in the society and in public life.

Qatar is also keen on em-powering the youth in the sec-tors of education, employment, health and other areas of life by harnessing the country’s mod-ern and diverse infrastructure, adopting programmes and pro-viding multiple resources to em-power young people in various vital fi elds.

On future trends to expand Qatari youth participation in

development, al-Shawi said a number of achievements have been made in the fi eld of youth empowerment, but the changes in the reality of youth require the formulation of a number of interventions, including the es-tablishment of a central body especially for youth to take over the coordination process of pre-paring and implementing a na-tional youth development policy. This policy shall include cross-sectoral youth development pro-grammes and the development of a comprehensive and integrated policy framework that ensures roles for the youth in all aspects of social life.

On his part, Arif Abdedjalil, commissioner for Peace and Se-curity at the African Youth Union Commission, presented a paper ti-tled “Youth is the real wealth of the nation’, which dealt with the role of young people in various activities and in all fi elds, especially in areas related to the fi ght against extrem-ism and violence and maintaining world peace and security.

Three workshops were also held on the second day of Doha Islamic Youth Forum, based on the day’s theme. The partici-pants contemplated the scope and possibilities of youngsters’

involvement in ensuring sus-tainable development. The workshops discussed various is-sues and challenges being faced by the Islamic world in making youth part of the development process as well as the measures to be taken to tap the potential of

young generations in helping the Muslim world reach new heights in education and other sectors.

The forum will address the theme of youth and social me-dia on the third day. Workshops will be held on the impact of social media on youth cultural

practices, the contribution of social media to social respon-sibility and youth and the safe use of social media. Amna Mo-hamed, Khawla Mortadawi and Shiraz Ahmed will present pa-pers in the introductory session. (With inputs from QNA)

Delegates participating in the Doha Islamic Youth Forum during a visit to Qatar National Library (QNL).

Doha Islamic Youth Forum delegates visit Qatar National Library

Silatech, UN rights body to develop initiatives for youth empowermentSilatech CEO Sabah al-

Haidoos met with the United Nations (UN)

High Commissioner for Hu-man Rights Michelle Bachelet in Geneva, Switzerland, recently and agreed to co-operate in a partnership to develop initia-tives and programmes for global youth empowerment in align-ment with international human rights treaties and agreements.

In a press statement yesterday, Silatech said “this partnership is a milestone and the outcome of the strategic meeting that took place between Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Founder and Chairperson of Silatech’s Board of Trustees, and the High Commis-sioner for Human Rights on the margins of Silatech’s High-Level Forum in Geneva on March 4”.

The partnership between Si-latech and UN High Commission for Human Rights will promote the rights of young people and focus on their right to decent work and a decent life in align-ment with international human rights treaties and agreements, the statement explains.

The proposed areas of part-nership between the two sides are mainly youth empowerment programmes and initiatives to advocate for global youth issues.

Commenting on this partner-ship, Silatech CEO al-Haidoos said: “We are very pleased to have this strategic and valuable partnership with the United Na-tions High Commission for Hu-man Rights, represented by the High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet. In this partnership, we

have agreed to take immediate action to make sure that its de-liverables are executed promptly and on a timely basis.

“Firstly, we have introduced an integrated framework and project for the partnership that illustrates the theme, ‘Youth empowerment in the light of global human rights system’. This framework will highlight the relationship between youth and human rights and promote advocacy programmes and ini-tiatives on broader issues aff ect-ing young people.”

“Silatech has suggested we have a joint initiative to promote youth rights in areas of armed confl ict and in fragile states. It will help protect those who suff er from discrimination and grave human rights violations.

The initiative aims at reform-ing national laws, strategies and plans that are related to youth,” added al-Haidoos.

Silatech has recently been ac-tively involved in establishing strategic partnerships as part of its ongoing pursuit to eco-nomically and socially empower youth, and to achieve some of the UN Sustainable Develop-ment Goals, as well as several of the UN’s Youth Strategy 2030 priorities, the statement adds.

Such partnerships include but are not limited to organisa-tions such as the World Health Organisation, International La-bour Organisation, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, among others. Sabah al-Haidoos and Michelle Bachelet shake hands..

QATAR

Gulf Times Tuesday, July 9, 20194

Diwan Al-Adam launched to enrich Qatari poetic cultureUnder the patronage

of HE the Minis-ter of Culture and

Sports Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali, the or-ganising committee of the Qatar National Day (QND) celebrations has inaugu-rated the Diwan Al-Adam event to become a new plat-form for National Day 2019 activities.

The activities of the Di-wan Al-Adam, organised in co-operation with the QND organising committee and the Ministry of Culture and Sports, represented by the Qatar Poetry Center “Diwan Al-Arab”, aim to highlight and enrich the Arabic po-etic scene with authentic Qatari poetry and to attract the distinguished poets, to achieve the vision of Na-tional Day, to promote loy-

alty, solidarity, unity and pride in the national iden-tity of Qatar, as embodied in the celebrations of the National Day on December 18 each year.

Diwan Al-Adam is a spe-cial event for Nabatian po-etry based on a poetry com-petition among the poets poetry and its citizens and residents in Qatar in four stages to prepare a group of poets to the fi nal.

The event will allow the audience to interact with poets and with their poems, by being in a private theatre, through traditional means of communication or social networking platforms.

The competition will in-clude various themes for po-ems, including specifi c ones by the organising commit-tee, and free ones that will

be made available for the creation of poets to highlight their poetic talents.

The event aims to en-courage poets to innovate in poetic writing, to make a creative and competitive environment among poets, to develop the poetic scene, and to enhance the general poetic taste of poetry lovers and society in general as well as exploring and nurturing of young poetic talents, giv-ing them the opportunity to interact and compete with those with experience and expertise, and the promo-tion of human values in po-etic content.

The event adopts general criteria for participation, including the applicant being Qatari or resident in Qatar, and fi lling out the participation form

manually or electronically.The poet presents three

authentic poems for the acceptance stage.

It is also necessary that poems highlight the vision of National Day, which is to strengthen loyalty and solidarity and unity and pride in national identity of Qatar, and deepen the affi liation among poets.

The event is available for poets from the age of 18 years and above.

The winners of the com-petition will receive prizes that refl ect the keenness of the organising com-mittee to support poetry experiences and to en-courage poets to give their best, to serve the nation, support national identity and promote loyalty and belonging, according to the National Day vision.

The minister of culture and sports in a speech af-fi rmed that the Qatari po-etry is distinguished from the others.

The fi rst Nabatian po-etry book was published in the Gulf region in 1907 by the late Sheikh Jassim bin Mohamed bin Thani, which indicates the value of poet-ry among the Qataris, not-ing that the Qatari poetry is characterised by its nation-al, social and moral content over the generations.

HE the Minister of Culture and Sports Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali along with senior off icials at the inauguration of the Diwan Al-Adam event.

The minister added that the Qatari poets con-tinue today the message of their ancestors in provid-ing meaningful poetry and committed to the original conscience, thanks to their attachment to the challeng-es of their present, stress-ing that Qatar will remain creator of poetry, which in-cludes thought and sincere feelings and expresses the hopes and aspirations of the

Qataris and inspiring for the entire community.

He said: “We promise you, that this event will be exemplary and pioneer-ing because of its vision of the role of poetry in society and in the human building. The important prizes for the winners of the Diwan Al-Adam are only a means of supporting poets to be the most important event in the fi eld of poetry not

only in Qatar, but in the Arab world.”

For his part, Hamad Mo-hamed al-Zakeiba, director, culture and arts depart-ment at the Ministry of Cul-ture and Sports, praised the launching of the event by the organising committee of the QND celebrations.

He expressed his hope that it would be a cornerstone of the literary scene and a mile-stone in the creative march

in Qatar in order to promote loyalty, solidarity, unity and pride in the national identity of Qatar, thus contributing to the deepening of belonging among poets.

HE Faleh Al Ajlan al-Hajri, adviser to the minister of cul-ture and sports, also spoke at the event about the impor-tance of the event in raising the creative level of poets and Qatar’s interest in poetry throughout its history. (QNA)

QNRF names winners of Undergraduate Research Experience ProgrammeQatar National

Research Fund (QNRF), a member

of Qatar Foundation (QF), has announced the winners of its 24th Undergraduate Research Experience Pro-gramme (UREP) cycle.

UREP, fl agship pro-gramme of QNRF, is co-funded by Qatar Shell and designed to develop re-search infrastructure in Qatar by establishing the basis of scientifi c research at undergraduate level.

In the 24th cycle, UREP grants were awarded to 54 proposals from student teams across several univer-sities within Qatar, out of the 136 peer reviewed proposals. Of the 54 awards, 37 went to Qatar University, while 15 were awarded to teams at QF partner universities – seven to Texas A&M University at Qatar, three to Weill Cor-nell Medicine-Qatar, three to Georgetown University in Qatar, and two to Northwest-ern University in Qatar. The remaining two were awarded to the College of the North Atlantic-Qatar and the Uni-versity of Calgary in Qatar.

The winning proposals address the various pil-lars of the Qatar National Research Strategy, with 20 awards in Energy and Envi-ronment; 18 in Biomedical and Health; nine in Social Sciences, Arts and Human-ities; and seven in Compu-ter Sciences and ICT.

Dr Abdul Sattar al-Taie, executive director, QNRF, said: “We’re delighted to partner with Qatar Shell as sponsor of UREP, follow-ing an agreement signed between QF and Qatar Shell last year with the aim of fa-cilitating access to Qatar Shell’s expert knowledge and mentorship as a valuable re-

source for the undergraduate community in Qatar.

“UREP aims to build re-search capacity locally in the country and to foster a self-sustainable, innovative ecosystem, are well-aligned with that of Qatar Shell. I am confi dent that our partner-ship and collective eff orts will advance those goals and deliver exceptional outcomes to benefi t our most promising undergraduate students.”

Launched in 2006, UREP is QNRF’s longest running programme and is designed to develop the research hu-man capital and research infrastructure in Qatar by establishing the basis of sci-entifi c research at the un-dergraduate level. To date, more than 3,800 under-graduate students have ben-efi ted from the UREP grants and produced insightful re-search while working under the mentorship and guid-ance of their professors.

Hussain al-Hijji, vice-president, Qatar Shell Re-search and Technology Cen-tre, said: “We are proud to support UREP this year. It is an exemplary programme that has been executed effi ciently by QNRF for more than a dec-ade. I am very happy that our partnership with QNRF has further increased interest in the programme as evident by the number of applications received. We look forward to providing our technical ex-pertise where applicable and sharing our R&D facilities.”

Applications for the 25th UREP cycle will be open from July 2 to September 9, 2019. Those interested may visit; https://www.qnrf.org/en-us/Funding/C a p a c i ty- B u i l d i n g - a n d -Deve l o p m e n t - P rog ra m s /Undergraduate-Research-Experience-Program-UREP

Dr Abdul Sattar al-Taie and Hussain al-Hijji with previous recipients of the Undergraduate Research Experience Programme grant.

QATAR5Gulf Times

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Aster Hospital Doha, a division of Aster DM Healthcare (Aster DMH),

is likely to open a neurosurgery outpatient department (OPD) “soon”.

Neurosurgeon Dr Dilip Pan-ikar, a senior consultant and head of the department of neu-rosurgery at Aster Medicity, Ko-chi, would be a visiting consult-ant here when the new facility is operational.

“We are planning to set up an OPD in neurosurgery at the hospital after obtaining the necessary permission from the authorities in a few months,” Dr Sameer Moopan, chief executive offi cer of Aster DMH Qatar, said at a press conference yesterday. “There is a good number of pa-tients who are seeking treatment in neurosurgery, and at present we have a neurologist in one of our clinics.”

“Once we get all the neces-

sary permissions, we will start providing new services and neurosurgery experts such as Dr Panikar will be able to render their services for the population here,” Dr Moopan said.

Dr Panikar, with over 26 years of experience, is an expert in neurosurgery, neuro-oncology and skull base surgery, recon-structive surgery for craniofacial deformities, functional neuro-surgery, and neurovascular sur-gery.

A postgraduate teacher in neurosurgery and examiner to many universities across India, he has published more than 25 research articles in prominent Indian and international medi-cal journals.

Addressing the media, Dr Panikar said discussions are on-going for further involvement of Aster Medicity Kochi with Aster Hospital Doha.

“We are discussing how we can off er more advanced treat-ment for various illnesses to pa-tients here. It will not be imme-diately possible to set up some

of the procedures here at Aster Hospital,” he said.

“Some other practices are feasible here, subject to licens-ing and regulatory approvals and infrastructural upgrades.

“What we can also do is to provide seamless connectivity and transition for the patients to our hospital in Kochi, where all the procedures can be done.

“So the entire process of di-

agnosis, evaluation, therapy and follow-up becomes a seamless experience for the patients,” he explained.

Dr Nazar Moopan, medical di-rector and chief of medical staff

at Aster DMH Qatar, and Dr Ka-pil Chib, chief operating offi cer of Aster Hospital Doha, were also present at the press confer-ence.

“Our commitment to patient safety and off ering world-class services has made a signifi cant impact in achieving good treat-ment results and patient satis-faction. We are also planning to add more facilities in the coming months,” said Dr Chib.

Dr Panikar specialises in the management of brain tumour, neurovascular surgery, a branch of the surgery related to the dis-eases of blood vessels as well as head surgeries.

“We try to improve the func-tion of the nervous system by various ways. We have also many advanced techniques. Many such patients need the involvement of the services of several people and departments and every facet of neurosurgery is always multidisciplinary. We work across various disciplines to off er the best for the patients,” he added.

Aster Hospital setting up neurosurgery OPD ‘soon’By Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

Off icials at the press conference yesterday.

Ooredoo to sponsor live family shows this summer

Ooredoo has announced that it will be sponsor-ing three “exciting live

shows” coming to Doha this summer.

Ooredoo will be the Offi cial Telecommunications Sponsor for The Smurfs, Hello Kitty, and Blue Man Group shows, which are being brought to the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC) stage this month and in August by entertainment management agency Alchemy Project.

The Smurfs will run from July 18- 20, while Hello Kitty will be from July 25-27, and the Blue Man Group from August 14-17.

Ooredoo will be running a Twitter contest, giving away tickets to the shows.

Ooredoo customers simply need to watch out for the Twit-ter post related to the shows, retweet, and mention three friends, to get a chance to win free tickets.

Manar Khalifa al-Muraikhi, the director of public relations and corporate communications at Ooredoo, said: “We’re very happy to be supporting a host of great summer events happening in Qatar this season.”

“We’re also delighted to be working with Alchemy Project to bring such popular shows to Doha, and look forward to enjoy-ing some family-friendly fun on stage this summer,” al-Muraikhi said.

Full details and tickets are available at tixbox.qa

Doha Bank has announced an exclusive cashback off er on personal loans, “highlighting

its commitment to providing best-in-market personal fi nance solutions for its customers”.

Under this off er, customers will be eligible to receive up to QR5,000 cash-back on loans with a minimum net value of QR100,000 when they sign up for the MetLife Future Protect policy.

Doha Bank’s personal loans off er “highly competitive” interest rates starting from 4.50% (reducing rate) for “NTB” and buyout loans, the bank has said in a statement.

Customers choosing an insurance policy with a premium of $165 and

above can avail QR2,500 cashback, while those selecting $225 or more are in line to receive QR5,000 cashback.

Chief retail banking offi cer Braik al-Marri said: “We are pleased to in-troduce our new cashback promotion, which makes Doha Bank’s already outstanding personal fi nance options more attractive than ever.

“By providing aff ordable fi nancial assistance to our customers for a va-riety of needs, we are helping to put people’s dreams and ambitions within reach. We will continue to seek out fresh ways to create added value for our loyal customers by bringing them an innovative, world-class banking experience.”

Customers will receive their cash-back within 60 days after their MetLife Future Protect policy has been issued, and they also have the opportunity to take advantage of a three-month payment holiday on their loan instal-ments.

The promotion is available to cus-tomers transferring a minimum monthly salary of QR7,500 and who purchase Metlife Future Protect policy within 30 days after their loan is dis-bursed.

To fi nd out more or apply for a loan from Doha Bank, customers can go to their nearest branch, call 44456000 or visit dohabank.qa/personal/loans/personal-loan

Doha Bank announces QR5,000 cashbackon loans

Ahlibank has conducted a blood donation campaign at its head offi ce in Al Sadd,

in partnership with Hamad Medi-cal Corporation (HMC).

The campaign’s objective is to contribute and support the Blood Bank in Qatar and to raise aware-

ness of the importance of donating blood, the bank has said in a state-ment.

Ahlibank’s deputy chief execu-tive (Business Support Services) Mohamed al-Namla said: “The campaign was very successful, and employees were enthusiastic to

participate and donate blood.“We are extremely proud of the

great response from our staff . This humanitarian awareness campaign is part of the bank’s commitment within the community and in line with the bank’s Corporate Social Responsibility.”

“I would like to thank Hamad Medical Corporation for their continued support to this cam-paign, which aims to support the blood bank reserve in Qatar hospi-tals, and for promoting employee awareness on the importance of blood donation,” al-Namla added.

Ahlibank holds blood donation campaign

The campaign’s objective is to contribute and support the Blood Bank in Qatar.

Mutlu, Turkey’s “bestselling battery brand”, together with its authorised distributor in

Qatar, Arabian Supply Centre (ASC), held a customers’ meet-and-greet event in Doha.

The event was attended by Mutlu offi cials Deniz Seker (research & de-velopment and production director), export manager Eser Berber, and trade marketing executive Nazlı Kose.

From ASC, operations director Praveen Hubli, battery sales manager Nidal Elayan, and the respective team members were present.

Customers and business partners from both retail and commercial seg-ments were invited, and loyal custom-ers were recognised and awarded dur-ing the event.

Meet-and-greet event for customers

The meet-and-greet event was organised by Arabian Supply Centre and Mutlu.

QatarDebate holds workshop for US Arabic Debating ChampionshipQatarDebate Centre (QD), a member of Qatar Foundation (QF), held a workshop for coaches and team leaders in the US to prepare for the upcoming first-ever Arabic Debating Championship for universities in America.The championship will be organised by QatarDebate and hosted by Harvard University in October.The workshop, titled US Debate Capacity Building Programme, was hosted by University of Chicago from June 28-30. It featured 20 participants from 13 US universities and

focused on adjudication skills and training according to QD standards and the trainees’ test to determine their level and developing them in preparation for the championship.Head of the outreach programme at QD, Abdulrahman al-Subaie, said: “The workshop brings together coaches and team leaders from more than 15 universities across the US, to prepare for the upcoming first-ever Arabic Debating Championship for universities, which will be organised by QatarDebate and hosted by Harvard University in October in the US.” – QNA

QATAR

Gulf TimesTuesday, July 9, 20196

QIC Insured highlights necessity for travel, home insuranceQIC Insured, the retail arm of Qa-

tar Insurance, has highlighted the importance of purchasing

travel and home contents insurance in preparation for the holiday season.

TravelCare from QIC Insured off ers various travel insurance plans, namely Regional, Fly Europe, Worldwide ex-cluding the US, and Canada. It covers expenses for travel-related inconven-iences and unexpected travel incidents such as missed fl ights and fl ight cancel-

lations, among others, ensuring hassle-free travel, the company has said in a statement.

In addition to travel insurance, secur-

ing a Home Contents Insurance “en-sures complete peace of mind, espe-cially when holiday-goers are away for a long period of time”.

The Home Contents Insurance cov-ers for damage to personal belongings caused by accidental fi re outbreak, sud-den leakage of water from pipes or air-conditioner ducts, among others, the statement explained.

Highlighting the signifi cance of travel and home insurance, especially with

respect to the travel season, Ahmed al-Jarboey, senior vice-president (Mena Retail & Motor) at QIC Insured, said: “With a customer-focused approach, we at QIC Insured are constantly work-ing on off ering the most suited products to match our customers’ requirements.

“Inconveniences, whether big or small, can spoil a well-planned vaca-tion. Purchasing travel and home con-tents insurance gives the confi dence and preparedness to handle unforeseen

inconveniences in a smart way. “As this is a very busy time for most

holiday-goers, we want to highlight the necessity for securing both travel and home content insurance products so that travellers can ensure their travels remain extra special and memorable.”

Customers can visit qic-insured.com to purchase travel and home contents insurance online, visit any QIC Insured branch or call 8000742 for further as-sistance.Ahmed al-Jarboey

“Inconveniences, whether big or small, can spoil a well-planned vacation. Purchasing travel and home contents insurance gives the confi dence and preparedness to handle unforeseen inconveniences in a smart way...”

QATAR7Gulf Times

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Ferrari models recalled over safety concernsThe Ministry of Commerce and Industry

(MoCI), in co-operation with Alfardan

Sports Motors, dealer of Ferrari in Qatar,

has announced a recall of Ferrari 488 GTB,

488 Spider, 488 Pista and 812 Superfast

models of 2015-2019 as a possible defect

in the fuel vapour separator may cause the

fuel to evaporate or leak.

The recall campaign comes within the

framework of the MoCI’s continuous ef-

forts to protect consumers and ensure that

car dealers follow up on vehicle defects

and repairs.

The ministry will co-ordinate with the

dealer to follow up on the maintenance

and repair works and communicate with

customers to ensure that the necessary

repairs are carried out.

The MoCI has urged all customers to re-

port violations to its Consumer Protection

and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department,

which processes complaints, inquiries

and suggestions through the call centre:

16001, e-mail: info@moci.gov.qa, Twitter: @

MOCIQATAR, Instagram: MOCIQATAR, and

the ministry’s mobile app for Android and

iOS: MOCIQATAR

MoCI reports special licences issued in June

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) has released its monthly re-

port on special licences issued in June this year.

The report said 475 licences were issued for discounted pric-es, including 176 for discounts and 299 for festivals, according to a press statement issued by the MoCI yesterday.

The report indicated that a to-tal of 299 licences for off ers were issued in June, including promo-tional off ers, special off ers, prize draws and Swipe and Win.

Forty-nine promotional off er licences were granted for com-panies selling goods in malls and retail shops, while 234 licences were granted for special off ers, including new prices; buy one, get one for free; and buy one, get the second one for half the price, the statement explained.

Fifteen licences for prize draws were also awarded in June, while one licence for Swipe and Win was issued.

PHCC marks three years of mobile breast cancer screening unit

The Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) has successfully completed

three years of the launch of its mo-bile screening unit for breast cancer.

Since its launch in June 2016, the mobile unit has screened over 2,000 women in Qatar and the number is increasing every year.

The mobile unit is manned by highly-skilled healthcare profes-sionals trained to effi ciently oper-ate the facility’s state-of-the-art equipment. Screening is conduct-ed in the utmost privacy by a fe-male mammogram technician and trained nurses who provide vital information and responses to all questions from participants about the screening process.

Through this programme, PHCC off ers a deeper under-standing to the people on the im-portance of early screening, which can lead to detection and timely treatment. The unit also acts as a vehicle to create awareness in public places and strengthen ‘Screen for Life’ marketing eff orts at events and other initiatives.

For the past three years, the mobile unit visited over 50 loca-

tions in many cities/districts in Qatar, including Doha, Al Khor, Al Shamal, Al Sheehaniya, Al Rayy-an, Mesaieed, Al Wakrah, Dukhan and Daayen. During those visits, the unit provided breast cancer screening onboard for ladies while they were in their workplaces or at their areas of residence. This was very convenient and saved ladies the time and eff ort of travelling to health centres and fi nding time within their busy schedule to get an appointment.

Dr Maryam al-Mass, head, screening programmes, design and implementation at PHCC, said: “It has been the most en-riching and satisfying journey with a view to spread awareness among people on the impor-tance of early cancer screening. Thanks to its wide spread reach, our state-of-the-art screening centres have received an over-whelming response with advance bookings for cancer screening.”

‘Screen for Life’, over the years, has grown from just a programme to a great movement to change people’s lives. As part of its key strategic goal, ‘Screen for Life’

has been taking measures to en-sure that it can create awareness among fellow citizens on the im-

portance of timely screening of breast and bowel cancer. Various initiatives in the form of hosting

guest lectures, events, mobile unit for mammogram screening activation and corporate tie-ups

have shown signifi cant results in driving people towards timely screening of cancer.

The Mobile Unit is manned by skilled healthcare professionals trained to eff iciently operate the facility’s state-of-the-art equipment.

HBKU student honoured for stem cell researchA student at the Col-

lege of Health and Life Sciences (CHLS)

at Hamad Bin Khalifa Uni-versity (HBKU) has received recognition from the Inter-national Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) for her outstanding research on dia-betes.

Bushra Memon, currently pursuing her PhD in Biologi-cal and Biomedical Sciences, was honoured with the ISSCR Abstract Merit Award during the 2019 ISSCR Conference in Los Angeles, United States.

Her research examines how human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived pancreatic

beta cell progenitors present a promising alternative to traditional means of treat-ment for diabetes.

The research was con-ducted under the guidance of Dr Essam M Abdelalim, an assistant professor at CHLS and a scientist at the Diabetes Research Centre at Qatar Bi-omedical Research Institute, part of HBKU.

Through her research, the HBKU student discov-ered that these novel hPSC-derived beta cell precursors can be used as a promising alternative source of insulin-secreting cells for cell therapy for diabetes and studying hu-

man pancreatic beta cell de-velopment.

Memon said, “I am grate-ful to Dr Abdelalim whose guidance and support as my adviser not only gave me confi dence in my research endeavour, but also ensured I had access to a state-of-the-art laboratory and was able to tap into his expertise.”

CHLS delivers graduate programmes in biomedical and biological sciences, and in genomics and precision medicine, enriching its stu-dents with knowledge and hands-on experience in ba-sic, clinical and translational research approaches.

Dr Abdelalim noted, “Dia-betes is a prevalent illness in the region and a key medical challenge for Qatar.

Through our research, we are committed to promoting a deeper understanding of the illness so that we may be better equipped to formulate advanced means of diagnosis and treatment. It is a proud moment for all of us, to have the work of one of our stu-dents recognised and hon-oured on a global stage.”

Dr Edward Stuenkel, founding dean of CHLS, added: “CHLS is dedicated to off ering its students an integrated learning expe-

rience where theoretical course work is complement-ed by hands-on research. Our strong emphasis on research ensures that our students graduate with the right tools to address the most pressing challenges in Qatar and fur-ther afi eld.”

CHLS off ers fi ve gradu-ate programmes: Master of Science in Biological and Biomedical Sciences; Master of Science in Genomics and Precision Medicine; Master of Science in Exercise Sci-ence; PhD in Biological and Biomedical Sciences; and PhD in Genomics and Preci-sion Medicine.

Bushra Memon was honoured with the ISSCR Abstract Merit Award dur-ing the 2019 ISSCR Conference in Los Angeles.

REGION/ARAB WORLD

Gulf TimesTuesday, July 9, 20198

Minister vows response over detained tankerAFPTehran

Iran’s defence minister vowed yesterday to respond to Brit-ain’s detention of an Iranian

oil tanker off the coast of Gibral-tar.

The tanker’s seizure “will not be tolerated by us and will not go without a response”, said Amir Hatami, quoted by Iran’s ISNA and Tasnim news agencies.

“This move is against inter-national regulations and a kind of maritime piracy,” he said dur-ing a ceremony at Bandar Abbas port in southern Iran.

The 330-metre Grace 1, capa-ble of carrying 2mn barrels of oil, was halted Thursday by police and customs agencies in Gibral-tar, a British overseas territory on Spain’s southern tip.

Authorities in Gibraltar said they suspected the tanker was

carrying crude to Syria in viola-tion of EU sanctions.

Tehran denies this and claims the vessel was intercepted in in-ternational waters.

The tanker’s detention “sets a dangerous precedent and must end now”, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif tweeted yesterday.

He questioned the seizure’s legality, saying “Iran is neither a member of the EU nor subject to any European oil embargo”.

Europe is supposed to be “against extraterritoriality” unlike the United States, he wrote. “UK’s unlawful seizure of a tanker with Iranian oil on behalf of #B_Team is piracy, pure and simple,” Zarif said.

He regularly uses the term “B Team” to refer to US Na-tional Security Adviser John Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Saudi and Abu Dhabi crown

princes, Mohamed bin Salman and Mohamed bin Zayed, who are all pushing a hard line on Tehran.

Gibraltar’s Supreme Court ruled Friday that the tanker can be held for 14 more days, the territory’s attorney general said.

The government of Gibraltar said in a statement yesterday that the tanker was “well in-side” British Gibraltar Territo-rial Waters when it was board-ed, having “previously exited the international waters of the Straits of Gibraltar”.

It released a screenshot along with the statement of a maritime map that showed the tanker’s location. The vessel’s detention comes at a sensitive time in Iran-EU ties as the bloc mulls how to respond to Tehran breaching the uranium enrich-ment limit it agreed to in the troubled 2015 nuclear deal.

Yemeni youths play the guitar at the “Yemeni House of Music and Arts” in the capital Sanaa, yesterday. The centre, which has hundreds of students, is a non-profit private institute that has two goals, according to its director Fouad Shorbaji: preserving Yemen music, and spreading the culture of music and other arts through a series of courses. He says the institute provides children with music and drawing lessons to “ease the physiological impact of war on them”.

Hope amid conflict

Iran passes uranium enrichment capAFPTehran

Iran yesterday breached a uranium enrichment cap set by a troubled 2015 nuclear

deal and warned Europe against taking retaliatory measures.

The move came more than a year after Washington pulled out of the landmark accord between world powers and Tehran, which says it has lost patience with perceived inac-tion by the remaining European partners.

Iran surpassing the cap and reaching 4.5% enrichment was announced yesterday by the country’s atomic energy or-ganisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi.

“This level of purity com-pletely satisfi es the power plant fuel requirements of the country,” he said, quoted by the semi-offi cial ISNA news agency.

Kamalvandi hinted that the Islamic republic might stick to this level of enrichment for the time being, which is well below the more than 90% level required for a nuclear warhead.

The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic En-ergy Agency (IAEA), confi rmed that Iran had enriched uranium to a level above the deal’s cap.

IAEA inspectors “on July 8 verifi ed that Iran is enriching uranium above 3.67% U-235,” a statement said.

Kamalvandi said that IAEA

inspectors “are supposed to take samples.”

EU CONCERNThe European Union said it

was “extremely concerned” by the development and called on Iran to “reverse all activities” inconsistent with its deal com-mitments.

France, Germany and Britain — the European partners of the international deal — on Sunday urged Tehran to halt its advance towards breaching the cap.

Iran’s foreign ministry warned against any escalatory response.

If the Europeans “do certain strange acts then we would skip all the next steps (in the plan to scale back commitments) and implement the last one,” minis-try spokesman Abbas Mousavi said.

He did not specify what the fi nal step would be but Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani had warned previously that Iran could leave the nuclear accord.

Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif reiterated that Iran’s

actions could be reversed if Eu-ropean partners deliver on their part, insisting there was no better pact than the 2015 nu-clear deal, of which he was a key architect.

“As it becomes increasingly clear that there won’t be a bet-ter deal, they’re bizarrely urging Iran’s full compliance. There’s a way out,” he tweeted.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted Sunday that Iran would face “further isola-tion and sanctions”.

China and Russia, the other deal partners, both blamed the United States for the latest step by Iran.Beijing accused Wash-ington of “unilateral bullying”, while Moscow said passing the enrichment cap was one of the “consequences” of the White House abandoning the deal.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Min-ister Abbas Araghchi on Sun-day singled out declining oil sales and the eff ect of fi nancial sanctions as the main issues that needed to be solved, or Tehran would further step back

from its nuclear commitments.“We hope we can reach a so-

lution, otherwise after 60 days we will take the third step as well,” he said, adding that Te-hran would give further details of that at an “opportune mo-ment”.

Iran says that it is not violat-ing the deal, citing terms of the agreement allowing one side to temporarily abandon some of commitments if it deems the other side is not respecting its part of the accord.

According to Middle East analyst Sanam Vakil, Europe would need to engage Iran and the US simultaneously to pre-vent the situation escalating even further.

“A ‘freeze for freeze’ is the most immediate goal; keep-ing Iran within the JCPOA and then sanctions relief from the Trump administration,” Vakil, a senior research fellow at the Chatham House think-tank in London, told AFP referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal.

An Iranian man checks the headlines of local newspapers in Tehran, yesterday.

Houthis claim attack on Saudi airport, power stationReuters Cairo

Yemen’s Houthi move-ment said yesterday that it carried out drone at-

tacks on Saudi Arabia’s Abha airport and Tihama power sta-tion, the group’s Al-Masirah TV reported.

There was no Saudi confi r-mation of the attacks.

Earlier, naval forces from the Saudi-led coalition fi ghting in Yemen foiled an attempted at-tack on an unidentifi ed com-mercial ship in the southern Red Sea yesterday by the Houthis, which the group denied. Spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki said the Western-backed military alliance had destroyed an unmanned boat laden with explosives which the militants had used for the attack, Saudi

state news agency SPA reported without providing more details.

A Houthi military spokesman denied targeting commercial shipping in the area, the group’s Al Masirah TV reported, calling the claims “pure slander and completely baseless”.

Last year, Saudi Arabia paused oil shipments through Bab al-Mandeb for more than a week after the Houthis attacked two ships in the waterway.

Sudan deal fi rst step to transition but challenges lie aheadAFP Khartoum

After months of political uncertainty, Sudan has taken its fi rst step to-

wards a democratic transition, but getting the ruling generals to deliver on a power-sharing accord with protesters remains a challenge.

“The only path forward is a negotiated deal between the two sides,” said Alan Boswell, senior analyst at the International Cri-sis Group think tank.

Sudan’s ruling military coun-cil and protest leaders reached the tentative deal in the early hours of Friday, agreeing to form a joint civilian-military governing body.

That body is to oversee the formation of a transitional ci-vilian administration that will govern for three years — the main demand of demonstrators.

The two agreed the rul-ing body would have a rotat-ing presidency, a breakthrough following months of political impasse after the army in April ousted longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir on the back of a popular uprising.

Tensions climaxed on June 3 when armed men in military fatigues stormed a longstand-ing protest camp in Khartoum, shooting and beating crowds of demonstrators in a pre-dawn raid.

Dozens were killed, triggering international outrage, although the generals insisted they did

not order the violent dispersal of protesters.

The power-sharing deal comes after intense mediation by Ethiopia and African Union diplomats.

“Any agreement is a positive step.The challenge will be actu-ally getting the military council to do as it promised,” Boswell said.

On Saturday, the head of that council General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan vowed to “imple-ment” the deal and to work “in close co-operation” with the protest leaders.

The governing body will have a total of six civilians and fi ve military representatives.

The six civilians will include fi ve from the umbrella protest movement, the Alliance for

Freedom and Change. A general will head the ruling body dur-ing the fi rst 21 months of the transition, followed by a civilian for the remaining 18 months, according to the framework agreement.

Against the backdrop of the June 3 raid, experts doubt whether the military will keep its part of the deal.

“The key question is whether the military or the security sec-tor more widely will co-operate fully with civilian members of the board or is cooperation mere window dressing,” said Andreas Krieg, assistant professor at King’s College London.

“It is the security sector’s in-tent to accept civilian control that will determine whether Sudan can move to a fully civil-

ian rule in the future.” Bashir, who came to power in 1989, ruled Sudan thanks to the se-curity apparatus, especially the feared National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS).

Experts say the power-shar-ing accord is far from a long-term solution to the country’s overall political crisis.

One potential dispute is over the eventual formation of a transitional parliament.

Friday’s agreement post-poned the creation of a 300-seat transitional legislature — 67% of which would be law-makers from the protest move-ment — that had already been agreed in previous talks.

“Failing to agree yet on the legislative body is a giant red fl ag.

This risks becoming the new impasse,” said Boswell.

“Even in a best case scenario, Sudan will be navigating a very challenging transition for years to come.”

Boswell said the protest movement “will almost cer-tainly need to continue mobilis-ing its street power to pressure the military council to uphold its commitments”.Prominent protest leader Babikir Faisal said that while the deal may not be a cure-all, an agreement with the generals was needed.

“Given the overall tension, agreeing on a sovereign council and a government is a step for-ward,” he said.

“The other choice would have been to take the path of con-frontation.”

Germany says no to US request for ground troops in SyriaAFPBerlin

Berlin said yesterday it had no plans to send ground troops to Syria, refusing a US request for Germany to ramp up its military involve-

ment in the fi ght against IS militants.“When I say that the government intends to

continue with its ongoing measures in the frame-work of the anti-IS coalition, then that means no ground troops,” said German government spokes-man Steff en Seibert. US special representative on Syria James Jeff rey told German media including the Die Welt newspaper Sunday that Washington

wants Berlin to put boots on the ground in north-ern Syria. Jeff rey, who was visiting Berlin for Syria talks, added that he expects an answer this month.

The mandate for Germany’s participation in Syr-ia runs out on October 31, meaning that parliament would be called on to decide what to do beyond that date. Seibert noted that Germany has “for years been making a signifi cant and internationally ac-knowledged contribution” to fi ghting the Islamic State militants.

Berlin is now in talks with the US on “how the en-gagement should develop further”, he added. Wash-ington has two goals in northeastern Syria: to support the US-backed Kurdish forces and to prevent a poten-tial IS resurgence in the war-torn country.

Dozens hurt as 5.7 quake hits IranAgenciesTehran

A 5.7-magnitude earthquake struck south-west Iran near the border with Iraq yes-terday, causing one death due to a heart

attack and dozens of injuries, the country’s relief and rescue organisation said.

The quake, whose epicentre was in the Masjed Soleiman area of Khuzestan province, hit at 11:30 am (0700 GMT) at a depth of 17 kilometres, the national seismological centre reported.

Meanwhile, the National Seismic Network, affi liated with Kuwait Institute for Scientifi c Research (KISR), said yesterday that tremor felt earlier in the country was caused by the earth-quake occurring in western Iran, QNA reported.

Trump ‘has discussed N-standoff with Macron’

US President Donald Trump dis-

cussed the standoff over Iran’s nu-

clear programme with his French

counterpart Emmanuel Macron

yesterday, the White House said.

The two leaders “discussed ongo-

ing eff orts to ensure that Iran does

not obtain a nuclear weapon and

to end Iran’s destabilising behav-

iour in the Middle East,” the White

House said in a statement. Iran

yesterday breached a uranium en-

richment cap set by a 2015 nuclear

deal that the Trump administration

abandoned last year.

Troops detain 27 Palestinians

Israeli occupation forces detained

yesterday 27 Palestinians from

various parts of the West Bank,

said the Palestinian Prisoner’s

Society (PPS) and sources, QNA

reported.

Israeli forces conducted large-

scale raids across the northern

West Bank district of Jenin, result-

ing in the detention of 13 former

prisoners, said PPS. Two of the

former prisoners were identified

as residents of Burqin town, west

of Jenin, four others as residents

of Jenin refugee camp, another

four from Jenin city, and three

from Zububa and Kafr Dan vil-

lages, northwest of Jenin.

During the raid into Jenin

refugee camp, Israeli troops shot

teargas canisters at youngsters

who attempted to block their

passage, causing a number of

them to suff ocate.

AFRICA9Gulf Times

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

French Defence Minister Florence Parly answers journalists’ questions during her visit yesterday to the European Union military training mission in Bangui, Central African Republic.

Five people, including three civilians, were killed yesterday in a gun battle in Somalia after Shebaab militants opened fire on a checkpoint in the capital Mogadishu, off icials said. “Two Shebaab gunmen attacked the security checkpoint and exchanged fire with the security forces,” said Mohamed Adan, a security off icial in Mogadishu. “The two gunmen had been killed, but two of the security forces and three civilians also died during the fighting.” Suleyman Moalim, a witness who was near the checkpoint in the Hodan district, said the attackers were in Somali military uniform when they approached. “They started opening fire and the police at the checkpoint returned heavy fire,” he said.

Gunmen raided three villages in northern Nigeria’s Katsina state, killing six people, a police spokesman said yesterday. The black-clad group, riding on motorcycles, attacked Makers, Dan Sabau and Pawwa villages in Kankara district late Sunday, firing guns and rocket-propelled grenades, Gambo Isah told AFP. “Six people from the attacked villages were killed but we killed many of the bandits in a shootout that lasted for more than an hour,” Isah added. He said police were combing the bushes for the bodies of the assailants. Cattle rustling and kidnapping gangs have long operated in this volatile region, but recently there has been concern that religious extremists have infiltrated them.

Ghana yesterday dropped treason charges against nine alleged separatist leaders accused of seeking an independent state for the people of the eastern Volta region. The nine members of the Homeland Study Group Foundation (HGSF) were arrested in a police crackdown in May and charged with plotting to create a new nation to be named “Western Togoland”. “The state is no longer interested in the case,” government prosecutor Winifred Sarpong told a trial hearing in Accra, prompting the court to drop the charges. The separatists began campaigning in 1972 as the “National Liberation Movement of Togoland”, dominated by the Ewe tribal group.

Nineteen people were killed when four vehicles collided on a busy road in northern Nigeria’s Kano state, a road safety off icial said yesterday. The accident occurred late on Sunday at Dinyar Madiga village, 85km from Kano, the state capital, said Zubairu Mato of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC). “A total of 19 people died in the accident involving four vehicles, including two buses and two cars,” Mato said, adding that seven others were seriously injured. “The speeding vehicles collided while trying to dodge potholes,” he said. Accidents are common on Nigeria’s poorly-maintained roads, caused by reckless driving, speeding and disregard for traff ic rules.

5 killed in Somalia checkpoint battle

6 villagers shot dead in Nigeria’s north

Treason charges against Ghana separatists dropped

19 die in Nigeria road accident: off icial

DEFENCE CIVIL STRIFEBANDIT RAID COURT CASE COLLISION

Congolese army marches into forest stronghold of killersBy John Wessels and Samir Tounsi, AFPDjugu, DR Congo

Ituri Storm: That is the name of an op-eration that DR Congo’s armed forces have launched in a northeastern eastern

province against a militia blamed for killing scores of civilians and forcing thousands from their homes.

An AFP photographer embedded with troops in Djugu district found that some 70% of villages that he passed through on a stretch of road several dozen kilometres long had been abandoned and many houses had been torched.

Ituri Storm — ‘Zaruba ya Ituri’ — aims to carry the fi ght into the forest stronghold of a military-religious sect named the Coop-erative for the Development of the Congo, or Codeco, recruited among the Lendu, an ethnic farming community.

According to offi cial fi gures that are im-possible to verify, the armed group has killed more than 160 people in Ituri province in June alone and forced about 300,000 civil-ians to fl ee.

President Felix Tshisekedi has condemned the killings as “attempted genocide” and “a plot”.

But he insists the violence is not a re-surgence of the intra-community confl ict between the Lendu and Hema pastoralists, whose quarrels fl ared bloodily in Ituri in 1999-2003.

“The first step was to annihilate them or in any case to lessen their harmful effects. That has been done,” said Tshisekedi, who gave a press conference in Bunia, Ituri province, on July 2. “The defence forces

will be kept here until they are wiped out.”Thousands of displaced people, estimated

at anything between 7,000 and 15,000, have taken shelter around a church in Drodro.

Many more families have fl ed, sometimes to Bunia, dozens of kilometres away, where some told tales of great suff ering.

“I was in a house with three children and my wife. The enemies came in the night. We were sleeping. When I took two children, the other one stayed in the house. The enemies killed that child,” Charite, a teacher, told AFP.

From Drodro, the military operation pushed on into the heart of the Wago forest, offi cially presented as the base camp of the “assassins, murderers and criminals”.

High ground gives breathtaking views of Lake Albert, a broad stretch of water some 60km long that marks part of the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.

Closer to hand, scattered cartridges and mortar shells showed that the militia were heavily armed.

Soldiers were silent about the number of militia fi ghters killed or captured, but they were worried that the enemy had moved along the shore of Lake Albert to prepare new raids.

After the visit to the combat zone, AFP re-turned to Bunia and its two camps housing several thousand displaced people.

Vaccination campaigns against Ebola and measles are set to start today.

A humanitarian response, meanwhile, is building up.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) plans to triple its aid to displaced people in the province.

Heads of states and government pose for a photo session at the end of the closing ceremony yesterday of the two-day African Union summit at the Palais des Congres in the capital of Niger, Niamey.

AU summit

‘Terminator’ warlord guilty of DR Congo war crimesBy Danny Kemp, AFPThe Hague

International Criminal Court judges yesterday convicted a Congolese rebel chief nicknamed ‘Terminator’

of war crimes including horrifi c mas-sacres of civilians, sexual enslavement and recruitment of child soldiers.

Former warlord Bosco Ntaganda be-comes the fi rst person to be convicted of sexual slavery by the tribunal in The Hague, in a badly-needed boost for prosecutors after a string of high-pro-fi le failures.

Ntaganda stood expressionless as judges passed sentence on a man they called a “key leader” in atrocities in eastern DR Congo’s Ituri province in 2002-3, issuing “direct orders to target and kill civilians”.

In one of their most gruesome at-tacks, his men disembowelled babies and children or crushed their skulls.

“Mr Ntaganda rallied the troops prior to battle, he gave direct orders to the troops during operations, and he de-briefed them afterwards,” head judge Robert Fremr declared.

Ntaganda was found guilty of 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, directing attacks against civilians, displacing ci-vilians, rape, sexual slavery and enlist-ing children under the age of 15.

Ntaganda, 45, who was born in Rwanda, will be sentenced after the court hears submissions from victims.

Judges can give a life sentence.He is only the fourth person to be

convicted of war crimes by the ICC.The tribunal was set up in 2002 to try

the world’s worst crimes but has been criticised for a series of prosecution failures and for focusing especially on African suspects.

Rights groups said Ntaganda’s con-viction would send a signal to other war crimes suspects.

“The long-awaited judgment pro-vides an important measure of justice for Bosco Ntaganda’s victims and puts others responsible for grave crimes on notice,” said Maria Elena Vignoli of Hu-man Rights Watch (HRW).

“But renewed violence in eastern Congo highlights the need to address the impunity for other abusive leaders.”

Ntaganda — known for his pen-cil moustache and a penchant for fi ne dining — proclaimed his innocence throughout the trial, insisting that he was a “soldier not a criminal” and that the ‘Terminator’ nickname did not ap-ply to him.

Prosecutors portrayed him as the ruthless leader of ethnic Tutsi revolts amid the civil wars that wracked the DRC after the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in neighbouring Rwanda.

Judges said Ntaganda “fulfi lled a very

important military function” as a lead-er of the Union of Congolese Patriots rebels and its military wing, the Patri-otic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC).

The FPLC killed at least 800 peo-ple as it fought rival militias in Ituri for control of valuable minerals.

More than 60,000 people have been killed since violence erupted there in 1999. In one attack directed by Nta-ganda, judges said that soldiers killed at least 49 captives in a banana fi eld be-hind a village, using “sticks and batons as well as knives and machetes.”

“Men, women and children and ba-bies were found in the fi eld. Some bod-ies were found naked, some had hands tied up, some had their heads crushed. Several bodies were disembowelled or otherwise mutilated,” Fremr said.

In other attacks, women were “killed either while resisting rape or after being raped” while people were forced to dig mass graves that they were later killed and thrown into.

Ntaganda was found guilty of person-ally shooting dead a Catholic priest and as an “indirect perpetrator” for the other crimes by orders to target civilians.

These included recruiting child sol-diers who “wore uniforms that were of-ten too large for them” but nevertheless were “punished and suff ered physical violence” in the same way as adult sol-diers, the judgment said.

Formerly a Congolese army gener-al, Ntaganda then became a founding member of the M23 rebel group, which was eventually defeated by Congolese government forces in 2013.

Later that year he became the fi rst-ever suspect to voluntarily surrender to the ICC, when he walked into the US embassy in the Rwandan capital Kigali.

Ntaganda’s former FPLC command-er, Thomas Lubanga, was sentenced to 14 years in jail in 2012.

In all, fi ve Congolese warlords have been brought before the ICC.

But the court’s prestige has suff ered a string of setbacks over recent years with some of its most high-profi le suspects walking free, including Ivorian former leader Laurent Gbagbo earlier this year.

The International Federation of Hu-man Rights hailed the court, saying the Ntaganda judgment was “an important victory against impunity” and a “day of joy for Ituri victims.”

Former Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda speaks at his trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Ghana halts $200mn parliament plan after public outcryAFPAccra

Ghana yesterday shelved plans to spend $200mn on a new parlia-ment building following a public

outcry over the cost.An online campaign by cultural fi g-

ures and civil society under the banner #DropThatChamber drew widespread support that the West African nation had more pressing needs.

Parliament said it had halted the project due to the backlash ahead of a planned street protest on Saturday.

“We are a listening institution and after gauging the views of the people, we decided to shelve the idea,” Kate Addo, the acting direc-tor of public affairs of parliament, told AFP.

“People should rest assured that we are listening to their concerns. We’ve realised that people think there is no need for a new chamber now, but it isn’t

as if we don’t need a new chamber,” she added. “Going forward we’ll engage people more.”

Offi cials said the project was re-quired to expand on the capacity of the current 275-seat facility and would be funded by a loan from the Indian gov-ernment.

Those planning the protest said they would still hold it unless parliament released an offi cial resolution dropping the project.

“We’re writing to them for a full

disclosure about the project and it is only right that they write back to us and inform the public about what informed their decision rather than just shelving the idea,” said Bilkis Nuhu, a member of the organisers told AFP.

“The march is to let our leaders know we cant be taken for granted any longer in this country,” she added.

Ghana was one of Africa’s fastest growing economies in 2018, fuelled by a surge in oil and gas production.

The former British colony is also a major producer of gold and cocoa.

The World Bank says GDP per capita last year stood at just over $2,200 and that the country had slashed those liv-ing under the poverty rate of $1.9 per day to some 13% by 2016.

Ghana — one of the most stable de-mocracies on the continent — will hold presidential elections late next year that look set to see former leader John Ma-hama take on incumbent Nana Akufo-Addo.

Evicted illegal Congo miners demonstrateReutersDakar

Congolese soldiers fi red in the air yesterday as illegal miners protested outside

a metallurgical plant on a cop-per and cobalt concession run by Glencore, a witness said.

The protest near the Luilu plant follows the eviction last week of thousands of illegal miners from Glencore’s Kamoto Copper Company (KCC) con-cession in southern Democratic Republic of Congo after 43 peo-ple died in a landslide.

The witness, a member of a local civil society organisa-tion, said at least 50 protesters had gathered outside the plant to demand access to the nearby Mayi ya Mbata open cast mine, owned by the state company Ge-camines.

In response, seven vehicles carrying soldiers arrived on the scene and attempted to disperse the crowd, he said.

Glencore said in a statement that about 80 people had pro-tested on the national road in the town of Luilu.

It said the army had dispersed the crowd and that no injuries had been reported.

Army and government offi -cials did not respond to requests for comment.

The decision last week by the government to use the army to evict miners illegally digging on the KCC concession, which is majority-owned by a Glencore subsidiary, sparked angry pro-tests outside the local governor’s offi ce and looting of shops last Thursday.

The government of Lualaba province, where KCC is located, has promised to provide other concessions where the evicted miners can dig, but they are sceptical that these will be suf-fi cient to absorb them all.

Activists say the deployment of the army to tackle the issue of illegal artisanal mining could lead to violence and human rights abuses, and have urged authorities to do more to address chronic poverty and unemploy-ment.

AMERICAS

Gulf Times Tuesday, July 9, 201910

In losing legal battles over census, Trump may win political warBy Tom Hals, Reuters Washington

The Trump administration has few realistic options to get a citizenship ques-

tion onto next year’s census, but by keeping the issue in the public eye it could still trigger an under-count of residents in Democrat-ic-leaning areas, legal and politi-cal experts told Reuters.

Constant media coverage link-ing citizenship and census forms could scare undocumented im-migrants away from responding and rally US President Donald Trump’s base to participate, they said.

That, in turn, would help re-draw voting districts across the country in favour of his Republi-can party, encouraging the presi-dent to pursue a legal battle that he has little chance of winning.

The latest parlay came on Sunday evening, when the US Department of Justice installed a new team of lawyers to handle the last iterations of litigation

that has been going on for more than a year.

“Even if the question is (taken) off , if people are tweeting as if it may be a real possibility, it con-tinues to raise fears and depress the count,” said Thomas Wolf, a lawyer who focuses on census issues at the Brennan Center for Justice.

The US Constitution requires the government to count all resi-dents — whatever their legal sta-tus — every 10 years.

The information collected be-comes the basis for voting maps and distributing some $800bn in federal funds each year.

It is illegal for the Census Bu-reau to share information about individuals with law enforce-ment or immigration authorities.

But the idea of asking resi-dents about citizenship status has nonetheless stoked fears that the survey would become a tool for the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies.

The president and his allies have said it is important to know about citizenship status, and

characterised the question as something that should not draw controversy.

“So important for our Coun-try that the very simple and basic ‘Are you a Citizen of the United States?’ question be allowed to be asked in the 2020 Census,” the president tweeted on July 4.

A Reuters poll earlier this year also showed 66% of Americans support its inclusion.

But demographers, advocacy groups, corporations and even the Census Bureau’s own staff have said the citizenship ques-tion threatens to undermine the survey.

Communities with high im-migrant and Latino populations could have low response rates.

Researchers have estimated that more than 4mn people out of a total US population of some 330mn may not participate.

That would benefi t non-Hispanic whites, a core part of Trump’s support, and help Re-publicans gain seats in Congress and state legislatures, critics have said.

The question seemed dead in June, when the Supreme Court blocked it, saying the adminis-tration had given a “contrived” rationale for its inclusion.

However, the high court left open the possibility that the ad-ministration could off er a plausi-ble rationale.

Department of Justice lawyers said last week that they were ex-ploring other explanations.

Trump also said he may try to force it into the survey through an executive order.

Legal experts immediately slapped down the ideas.

It will be hard to convince jus-tices that a new explanation is not also contrived, and an execu-tive order would not override the Supreme Court decision or undo other court orders blocking the citizenship question, they said.

“There is nothing talismanic about an executive order,” said a statement from Thomas Saenz, the president and general counsel of MALDEF, a Latino rights group pursuing one of the cases against the administration. “Our govern-

ment is not a dictatorship.”Trump also said on Friday that

although census forms are al-ready being printed, the govern-

ment could later produce “an ad-dendum.”

It is not clear how that might work, but census experts said it

would be an unprecedented dis-ruption to a process that has been in motion for years.

“Any suggestion that on a mo-ment’s notice the Census Bureau could add an extra piece of paper with an additional question to a census that it has been planning literally for a decade demon-strates a breathtaking ignorance of what it takes to pull off a cen-sus,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a census consultant.

An addendum would also likely be challenged in courts for running afoul of various admin-istrative laws.

On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union fi led a motion to prevent the citizenship question from being added.

In the meantime, attention surrounding the legal debacle may already be hurting the cen-sus and helping Trump achieve his goals, said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

“The longer he has this con-versation, the worse it is for an accurate census count,” she said.

DoJ shakes up team handling census cases

A new team of Civil Division law-

yers at the Department of Justice

will take over handling 2020

census-related cases, a spokes-

woman for the agency said on

Sunday, a shake-up that came as

President Donald Trump pushes

to include a contentious citizen-

ship question in the decennial

population survey.

Spokeswoman Kerri Kupec

did not give a reason for the

change, but an official at the

DOJ said the new team would be

a mix of career and political ap-

pointees, including lawyers who

work in the consumer protec-

tion branch.

The department has been

looking at ways to add the ques-

tion after Trump said he wanted

it included, despite the Supreme

Court on June 27 blocking his first

eff ort to add the question, fault-

ing the administration’s stated

reason.

On Friday, the DOJ told

Maryland-based US District Judge

George Hazel it had not made a

final determination on whether to

add the question.

Ken Cuccinelli, acting director

of US Citizenship and Immigra-

tion Services (CIS), speaking to

Fox News Sunday, expressed

confidence in Trump’s likelihood

of succeeding in getting the

question on the census, saying: “I

think the president has expressed

determination. He has noted

that the Supreme Court didn’t

say this can’t be asked. They said

that they didn’t appreciate the

process by which it came forward

the first time, so the president is

determined to fix that.”

Gannets nest on a rock ledge in Cape St Mary, Newfoundland, Canada. The bird rock is one of Newfoundland seabird colonies and yearly around over 20,000 gannets are nesting and breeding there.

Lofty perch!UN rights chief ‘shocked’ by conditions at migrant detention centres in USAFPGeneva

The UN human rights chief said yesterday that she was “deeply

shocked” by conditions under which migrants and refugees are held at US de-tention centres, following reports of severe overcrowd-ing and disease-ridden cells.

“As a paediatrician, but also as a mother and a former head of State, I am deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on the fl oor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or food, and with poor sanitation conditions,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said in a statement.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) watchdog report released last week warned of “dan-gerous overcrowding” in multiple detention facilities holding thousands of mi-grants seeking to remain in the United States.

Most of them are fl eeing violence and poverty in Cen-tral America.

On Saturday, the New York Times and The El Paso Times published an article de-scribing a Border Patrol sta-tion in Clint, Texas as fi lled with hundreds of children wearing fi lthy clothing and packed into disease-ridden cells.

President Donald Trump called the story a “hoax” and said he would take the media to visit the centres.

Democratic lawmakers who recently visited deten-tion facilities reported mas-sive crowding in cells with no running water, where children and adults lacked access to medicines and were

deprived of showers for up to two weeks.

Responding to the DHS report, Bachelet said that even detaining children “for short periods under good conditions can have a seri-ous impact on their health and development.

“Consider the damage be-ing done every day by allow-ing this alarming situation to continue,” added Bache-let, the former president of Chile.

Trump has previously ex-pressed little sympathy for migrants in the facilities.

On Twitter, he wrote: “If Illegal Immigrants are un-happy with the conditions in the quickly built or refi tted detentions centres, just tell them not to come. All prob-lems solved!”

Bachelet called for com-passion, stressing that those who fi nd themselves in these facilities “have embarked on perilous journeys with their children in search of protec-tion and dignity and away from violence and hunger.”

“When they fi nally believe they have arrived in safety, they may fi nd themselves separated from their loved ones and locked in undigni-fi ed conditions. This should never happen anywhere.”

She noted that states have the right to determine the circumstances surrounding the entry of foreign nationals and acknowledged the com-plex challenges surrounding migration management, in-cluding in Central America.

“But clearly, border man-agement measures must comply with the State’s human rights obligations and should not be based on narrow policies aimed only at detecting, detaining and expeditiously deport-ing irregular migrants,” she added.

14 new cases of measles as outbreak slows

ReutersNew York

The United States recorded 14 new measles cases between June 27 and July 3, federal

health offi cials said yesterday, sig-nalling a slowdown in the spread of the disease that has infected 1,109 people this year in the worst US outbreak since 1992.

The US Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention (CDC) said it had seen a 1.3% increase in cases since the previous week and that it has recorded cases of the highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease in 28 states.

In recent weeks, the CDC has reported smaller increases in the number of measles cases, compared to a surge of more than a hundred cases reported in a single week ear-lier this year.

It reported 18 new cases last week.

Disease outbreaks have not been reported in any new states since June 10.

The running tally of cases this year includes both active cases and those that have since resolved.

No fatalities have been reported.Health experts say the virus has

spread mostly among school-age children whose parents declined to give them the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, which confers im-munity to the disease.

A vocal fringe of US parents cite concerns that the vaccine may cause autism, despite scientifi c studies that have debunked such claims.

Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, mean-ing there was no continuous trans-mission of the disease for a year.

Still, cases of the virus occur and spread via travellers coming from countries where measles is com-mon.

CDC offi cials have warned that the country risks losing its measles elimination status if the ongoing outbreak, which began in October 2018 in New York, continues until October 2019.

New York governor clears way for release of President Trump’s state tax returnsReuters New York

New York state yester-day cleared the way for US congressional

Democrats investigating Presi-dent Donald Trump’s fi nances to obtain his state tax returns, opening a new fi ght in Trump’s squabbles with Democrats.

Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an amendment to a tax law that will require the com-missioner of the Department of Taxation and Finance to share state income tax returns and re-ports when certain congression-al committees request them.

“This bill gives Congress the ability to fulfi l its constitutional responsibilities, strengthen our democratic system and ensure

that no one is above the law,” said Cuomo, a Democrat.

The law, eff ective immedi-ately, opens a new avenue for the Democratic majority in Congress to investigate Trump’s business aff airs.

Trump’s tax returns have been the object of scrutiny by Democrats in Congress since he took offi ce.

In May, Treasury Secretary Ste-

ven Mnuchin denied the House Ways and Means committee’s request that the Internal Revenue Service turn over six years’ of Trump’s federal tax returns, cit-ing his belief that the committee did not have a legitimate legisla-tive reason for the request.

The Committee sued Mnuch-in and the Treasury Department last week to appeal Mnuchin’s decision.

Shakeup in US Navy leadership adds to Pentagon churningBy Phil Stewart, Reuters Washington

A surprise shakeup in the US Navy’s leadership this week added to some of

the biggest churn in memory at top levels of the Pentagon, where positions ranging from the sec-retary of defence to the heads of military branches have seen jolt-ing turnover.

Admiral Bill Moran, who was expected to take over as the Na-vy’s top offi cer next month, an-nounced late on Sunday he would instead retire after what Navy Secretary Richard Spencer called

poor judgment regarding a pro-fessional relationship.

The decision throws the lead-ership of the Navy into question just weeks after the US Army re-shuffl ed its most senior jobs after its top civilian, Mark Esper, was named acting US defence secre-tary on June 18.

Esper has become the third person to sit at the defence sec-retary’s desk since December.

He succeeded another act-ing defence secretary, Patrick Shanahan, who suddenly re-signed last month.

Shanahan aimed to perma-nently replace Jim Mattis, who resigned as defence secretary

in December over policy diff er-ences with President Donald Trump.

The amount of turnover has caught Pentagon-watchers by surprise.

“It is unprecedented,” said Mark Cancian, a defence expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington.

US Congress members have voiced concern that the failure to have a confi rmed defence sec-retary would project American weakness to adversaries at a time of rising tensions with Iran.

But Cancian said military op-erational positions were far more

steady, including at places like US Central Command — which oversees US troops in the Mid-dle East and would respond to an Iran contingency.

“There isn’t a military vulner-ability as a result of the turno-ver,” Cancian said, adding the biggest impact could be on civil-ian-led Pentagon policy reform eff orts.

The churn is far more wide-spread than just the US defence secretary or the Army and Navy leadership.

Heather Wilson, who had been considered a contender to re-place Mattis, resigned at the end of May as US Air Force secretary.

Her job is being fi lled in an act-ing capacity by Matthew Dono-van.

David Norquist, who had been the Pentagon’s comptrol-ler, has been “performing the duties” of the deputy defence secretary since Shanahan re-placed Mattis.

Norquist has been nominated to take that job permanently.

Then there are the normal job rotations that happen periodi-cally in the US military.

For example, Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , is scheduled to retire in the fall.

He will be replaced by Army

General Mark Milley, now the Army’s chief of staff .

The vice chairman jobs are also turning over.

Later this week, Marine Gen-eral David Berger is scheduled to take over as the next com-mandant of the Marine Corps, succeeding General Robert Nel-ler.

In the case of Moran, the Navy is trying to smooth over the turbulence by keeping Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson in place until the US Senate confirms a re-placement.

Such a move may need to in-volve Congress, however.

Not all of the details on Mo-ran’s case have been released.

In his statement, Moran said his decision to step aside was “based on an open investiga-tion into the nature of some of my personal email correspond-ence over the past couple of years and for continuing to maintain a professional relationship with a former staff offi cer.”

Sources said the relationship in question was with a former Navy spokesman and public af-fairs advisor, who had been in-vestigated over accusations of making sexual advances at a 2016 Christmas party while dressed like Santa Claus.

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA11

Gulf Times Tuesday, July 9, 2019

There were no reports yesterday of major damage in Indonesia from a weekend earthquake of magnitude 6.9 off the northeastern coast of the island of Sulawesi, and authorities lifted a tsunami warning. The quake, late on Sunday, struck out at sea at a depth of 36km (22 miles) with several smaller aftershocks, geophysics agency BMKG said. Tremors shook buildings, alarming residents of some cities, and authorities urged people to move to higher ground. “The quake was felt quite strongly and with an intensity that lasted quite long,” said Yusuf Latif, a spokesman for the search and rescue agency. Some hospitals in Ternate, about 130km (80 miles) from the epicentre, suff ered minor damage and had to evacuate patients.

An endangered rhino was found dead after being swept away by a swollen river in a national park in south-central Nepal, the park’s chief warden said yesterday. Wildlife off icials on Sunday found the rare one-horned rhino, thought to be a 3-year-old male, on the riverbank in Chitwan National Park, said Bed Prasad Dhakal, the chief warden. Dhakal said another male rhino might have attacked the animal before falling into the river. The park is home to more than 600 rhinos, out of a total of 645 in the country’s protected areas. At least 40 rare one-horned rhinos have died in the last year. The growing number of dead rhinos has caused concern about the fate of the endangered animal.

More than 60 people were found stranded near a boat in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, an off icial said yesterday, as a traff icking route for persecuted Rohingya Muslims appears open for business despite a crackdown. Sixty-three people were found early Sunday and taken to a nearby police outpost, district administrator Soe Aung told AFP from northern Rakhine’s Maungdaw township. “We found four men on the boat and the rest nearby. In total there were 63 people,” he said by phone, adding it was not yet clear if they were Bangladeshi or Rohingya. Authorities tried to close down the multi-million dollar people smuggling route in 2015 after the discovery of mass graves in southern Thailand. But many still spend their life savings to embark on the risky sea voyages.

A gamer who inadvertently broadcast audio of himself striking his pregnant partner while playing the online video game Fortnite pleaded guilty to assault in a Sydney court yesterday. Luke Munday, 26, admitted to hitting his partner after she repeatedly told him to stop playing the popular video game last December, public broadcaster ABC reported. Munday had been livestreaming his session on the video platform Twitch, allowing audio of the assault to broadcast to viewers around the world and go viral on social media. According to police, another user watching the feed called off icers, who arrested Munday at his home. Two of the couple’s young children were in the house during the assault, police said.

An unprecedented 17-day strike at Taiwan’s largest private airline that saw more than 1,200 flights cancelled and 300,000 passenger journeys disrupted has ended after management reached a collective agreement with cabin crew. The strike at EVA Airways was the longest in Taiwan’s aviation history. More than 2,300 cabin crew demanding better benefits and working conditions walked out last month after failed negotiations, forcing three weeks of flight cancellations ahead of the busy summer holiday period. Hundreds of striking workers burst into tears when news of the collective agreement was announced Saturday evening. “I want to tell EVA that you have messed with the wrong people,” a union representative Liao Yi-ching told a cheering crowd of cabin crew.

Indonesia lifts tsunami warning after earthquake

Rare one-horned rhino found dead in Nepal

Dozens of boat people found stranded in Myanmar

Gamer who livestreamed attack pleads guilty

Taiwan airline cabin crew end unprecedented strike

DECISION WILDLIFECRACKDOWN CRIME AVIATION

World cannot shut China out, says vice presidentChina and the rest of the

world must co-exist, Vice President Wang

Qishan said yesterday, in an in-direct jab at the United States, with which Beijing is trying to resolve a bitter trade war.

Top representatives of the world’s two biggest economies are trying to resume talks this week to try and resolve their year-long trade dispute, which has seen the two countries place increasingly harsh tariff s on each other’s imports.

The Trump administration has accused China of engaging in unfair trade practices that discriminate against US fi rms, forced technology transfers and intellectual property rights theft. Beijing has denied all the charges.

“China’s development can’t shut out the rest of the world. The world’s development can’t shut out China,” Wang told the World Peace Forum at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University.

He also warned against “pro-tectionism in the name of national

security”, but without mention-ing the United States, and urged major powers to make greater contributions to world peace.

China has also been angered by US sanctions against tech gi-ant Huawei Technologies over national security concerns and US visa curbs on its students and academics.

In his speech, Wang, who is extremely close to Chinese President Xi Jinping and rarely speaks in public, reiterated Chi-na’s commitment to opening up.

“Large countries must as-sume their responsibilities and set an example, make more con-tributions to global peace and stability, and broaden the path of joint development,” he added.

“Development is the key to resolving all issues,” Wang, who became vice president last year, after having led Xi’s fi ght to root out corruption, told an audience that included Western diplo-mats based in Beijing and former European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.

The United States should not blame China for the problems it is facing, Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng told the forum later.

“Viewing China as the ene-

my is not a rational action,” the foreign ministry quoted him as saying, adding that China would not put up “high walls” or “decouple itself from any country”.

China has been nervous that the United States is seeking to sever, or at least severely curb, economic links, in what has been called a “decoupling”.

Tariff , trade, fi nance and sci-ence and technology wars are “turning back the clock on his-tory,” Le said. “The consequenc-es will be extremely dangerous.”

The two sides have commu-nicated by telephone since last month’s summit of leaders of Group of 20 major nations in Japan, at which US President Donald Trump and Xi agreed to relaunch stalled talks.

Talks broke down in May, af-ter USoffi cials accused China of pulling back from commitments previously made in the text of an agreement negotiators said was nearly fi nished.

The countries have also been at loggerheads over issues rang-ing from human rights to the disputed South China Sea and US support of self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own.

ReutersBeijing

Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan delivers a speech at the opening of World Peace Forum at Tsinghua University, in Beijing yesterday.

No matter how the interna-tional situation or China devel-oped, Vice President Wang said, the country would follow the path of peace, and not seek spheres of

infl uence or expansion.“If there is no peaceful, sta-

ble international environment, there will be no development to talk of.”

S Korea urges Japan to remove export curbs

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in has urged Japan to withdraw ex-

port controls on high-tech materials bound for South Korea as a row over forced wartime labour threatened to disrupt global supplies of South Korean memory chips and smartphones.

In his fi rst public remarks on Japan’s restriction on ex-ports to South Korea, Moon said yesterday a “vicious cy-cle” of action by the uneasy neighbours, both important US allies, was something both of them should avoid.

South Korea’s tech giant Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix - the world’s top mem-ory chipmakers, and suppliers to Apple and China’s Huawei Technologies - could face de-lays if the Japanese measures, which took eff ect on Thurs-day, drag on.

Japan tightened restrictions on the export of the high-tech materials to South Korea in connection with a dispute over compensation for forced wartime labour.

The row between the US al-lies fl ared last October when South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled that Japan’s Nippon Steel must compensate South Koreans for forced labour

during World War Two.Japan maintains that the is-

sue of forced labour was fully settled in 1965 when the two countries restored diplomatic ties, and has denounced the South Korean court ruling as “unthinkable”.

Moon said South Korea could not rule out counter-measures if the Japanese ac-tion infl icted damage on South Korean companies, although he said he did not want see that.

“The vicious cycle of ac-tions and counteractions is not desirable at all for both countries,” Moon told a meet-ing with his senior aides.

South Korea is planning to fi le a complaint with the World Trade Organisation over Japan’s restrictions.

Moon said he would pri-oritise development of home-grown high-tech equipment and materials and South Korea would improve the trade defi -cit with Japan in the long term.

South Korea has been run-ning chronic trade defi cits with Japan as South Korean industries rely on Japan for key inputs and equipment.

The dispute over compen-sation for forced labour is the latest surge of animosity in a relationship long over-shad-owed by South Korean resent-ment of Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.

ReutersSeoul

Australia tracks Chinese warship

Australian defence offi cials said yesterday they were tracking a Chinese sur-

veillance ship that is expected to position itself just outside of its territorial waters to monitor mil-itary exercises between Australia and the United States.

Around 25,000 Australian and US military personnel on board battleships equipped with strike jets will over the next month par-ticipate in bi-annual Talisman Sabre war games.

Lieutenant General Greg Bil-ton, chief of joint operations at the Australian Defence Force, said the Chinese surveillance vessel was probably headed to Australia’s northeast coast to get a fi rst-hand look at the military exercises.

“We’re tracking it. We don’t know yet its destination but we are assuming that it will come down to the east coast of Queensland and we will take ap-propriate measures,” Bilton told reporters in Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland.

Relations between the United States and China have soured in recent months amid a trade war and perceived Chinese assert-iveness in the Pacifi c, encapsu-lated by Beijing’s artifi cial island building in the disputed South China Sea.

China claims most of the re-source-rich South China Sea, through which about $5trn in ship-borne trade passes eve-ry year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Tai-wan also have claims on the waterway.

Australia and China are also competing for infl uence in the South Pacifi c, a sparsely popu-lated region that control vast swathes of resource rich oceans.

ReutersSydney

Woman jailed for reporting harassment to seek amnesty

An Indonesian woman sentenced to prison for reporting her employer

for sexual harassment said yes-terday she will ask President Joko Widodo for an amnesty.

The Supreme Court last week jailed Baiq Nuril Maknun, a former teacher from the island of Lombok, for six months for breaking a communications law, after she recorded lewd phone calls from the principal of the school she worked at and reported them to a colleague.

Maknun, who is due to start serving her prison sentence next week, told reporters she would fi le for an amnesty as soon as possible and she hoped the president would grant it.

“As a child, who should I go to but a father,” said a softly spo-ken Maknun, 41, as she strug-gled to hold back tears.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country and is predominantly conservative.

While some women have re-

counted experiences of sexual harassment as part of a #MeToo movement, in general, women are less likely to speak out about abuse compared with women in some other countries.

Maknun had complained of getting lewd phone calls from the principal of the school where she worked from 2012, court documents showed.

She secretly recorded some of the calls and gave a recording to a colleague, allegedly passing it on via an electronic device. But that opened her up to an accusa-tion of spreading pornography under a communications law.

Last week, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s decision to acquit her, imposed the jail term and also ordered her to pay a 500mn ru-piah ($35,474) fi ne.

Widodo, who was recently re-elected for a second term, has in-dicated he would pardon Maknun if she applied for amnesty, but he has also asked the public to hon-our the Supreme Court’s decision.

Minister of Law and Hu-man Rights Yasonna Laoly said women would not speak up if

Maknun was not freed.“If she is not given an amnes-

ty, there are tens of thousands of women, victims of sexual as-sault or harassment who won’t be brave enough to report it,” Laoly told reporters after meet-ing Maknun in Jakarta.

The Supreme Court defend-ed its verdict saying it was not asked to rule on sexual harass-ment allegations, but rather on whether or not Maknun had electronically disseminated pornographic content and vio-lated the communications law.

ReutersJakarta

Baiq Nuril Maknun reacts to journalists as she arrives at the Law and Human Rights ministry off ice in Jakarta yesterday.

HK police arrest 5 after new clashes

Five people were ar-rested during overnight clashes in Hong Kong

between riot offi cers and anti-government protesters, police said yesterday, as the political violence rocking the interna-tional hub shows no sign of abating.

The city has been plunged into its worst crisis in recent history following a month of huge marches as well as sepa-rate violent confrontations with police involving a minor-ity of hardcore protesters.

The rallies were sparked by a now-suspended law that would have allowed extradi-tions to mainland China, but have since morphed into a wider movement calling for democratic reforms and a halt to sliding freedoms in the semi-autonomous territory.

Sunday night saw fresh po-litical violence break out in the district of Mongkok as police baton-charged small groups of masked, largely young protesters who were walk-ing along roads and refused to disperse following another massive, peaceful rally earlier in the day.

In a statement issued early yesterday morning, police said the group were taking part in an “unlawful assembly” and had been warned that offi cers would take action.

“Some protesters resisted and police arrested fi ve per-sons for assaulting a police of-fi cer and obstructing a police offi cer in the execution of du-ties,” the statement said.

Activists hit out at the po-lice tactics, saying the protest-ers in Mongkok had remained peaceful as they made their way home and that violence was started by a shield wall of riot offi cers that had blocked the crowd’s path.

“HKers joined rally peace-

fully... against extradition bill result in being beaten and assaulted by HK Police,” de-mocracy activist Joshua Wong wrote in a tweet accompany-ing pictures of at least two protesters with bleeding head wounds.

“Just another example of excessive force used by the police,” he added in another tweet.

Public anger has soared against the city’s pro-Beijing leaders and its police force af-ter offi cers used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse pro-testers outside parliament last month.

Since then the chaos has only escalated. Last Monday, anger peaked as hundreds of youth-led demonstrators suc-cessfully stormed and trashed the city’s parliament.

Those unprecedented scenes - and renewed huge marches - have failed to per-suade the government, whose sole concession so far has been to suspend the loathed extra-dition bill.

Protesters are demanding the bill be scrapped entirely, an independent inquiry into police use of tear gas and rub-ber bullets, amnesty for those arrested, and for the city’s un-elected leader Carrie Lam to step down.

They have also demanded authorities stop characteris-ing protesters as “rioters”, a defi nition that carries much steeper jail terms.

Beijing has thrown its full support behind the embat-tled Lam, calling on Hong Kong police to pursue anyone involved in the parliament storming and other clashes.

Despite repeated requests, police have not released a breakdown of how many peo-ple have been detained in the last month of protests.

A tally kept by AFP shows at least 72 people have been ar-rested but it is not clear how many have been charged.

AFPHong Kong

S Korean follows parents in rare defection to NorthA South Korean man has defected to North Korea, following in the footsteps of his parents who also made a high-profile switch of allegiance in the 1980s, according to Pyongyang’s state media.Years of repression and poverty in the reclusive North have led around 30,000 people to flee to its neighbour in the decades since the Korean War, but defections in the other direction are extremely rare.Choe In-guk - the son of former South Korean foreign

minister Choe Dok-shin, who died in 1989, three years after moving to North Korea with his wife - landed in Pyongyang on Saturday, reported state-run outlet Uriminzokkiri.In video footage filmed at an airport and posted by the website on Sunday, the 72-year-old Choe said he had arrived in the North Korean capital “for residency”.“I can’t find words to describe my gratitude to the Republic that has embraced me,” he said in the clip.Choe added that he had decided

to live in the North to “fulfil the wishes” of his parents.Seoul’s unification ministry said yesterday it was not aware of Choe’s defection until the report was published, noting it does not track individuals because it “respects freedom of movement”.A small number of South Koreans in economic diff iculty have defected to the North in the past, but Pyongyang has repatriated many people.It returned two South Koreans last year, said ministry spokesman Lee Sang-min,

without elaborating.The government doesn’t keep a record of the number of South Korean defectors to the North, he added.Pyongyang, which is under heavy economic sanctions because of its multiple nuclear tests and long-range missile launches, denounces defectors to South Korea as “human scum”.Those who do find their way to the South are an important source for accounts of the regime’s brutal treatment of its citizens. (AFP)

BRITAIN/IRELAND

Gulf Times Tuesday, July 9, 201912

The Brexit-backing Labour MP Kate Hoey has announced she will stand down at the next elec-tion in her ultra-Remain constituency of Vauxhall. Hoey, who has consistently voted with the government to stop eff orts for a soft Brexit or to oppose no-deal, was subject to a no-confidence vote last summer in her inner-city London con-stituency, where 77.6% of voters backed Remain in the 2016 referendum. At the time, Hoey, who has represented Vauxhall since 1989, said she would not let it change the way she acted in parliament. She campaigned in 2016 with Nigel Farage’s Grassroots Out, including posing with the then Ukip leader on a boat on the Thames.

Police investigating the stabbings of a woman and her children in north London on Saturday have charged a 44-year-old man with four counts of attempted murder. Liban Malhamoub, who lives in Enfield, will also face a count of threaten-ing with a blade or sharply pointed article in a public place. He was charged early yesterday. Police had been called on Saturday to Livingstone Road, a residential street just off North Circular Road in Bounds Green. A woman in her 30s and three children aged under 12 were found with stab injuries. One of the children, a girl aged 11, was initially in a critical condition, police said, but all were now in non-life-threatening conditions.

The Metropolitan police will become the first British force to deploy a drone to monitor road users later this month. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will focus on road users engaged in dangerous driving, such as racing, that could potentially put others at risk, rather than targeting all speeding motorists, according to the Met. Once a suspect has been spotted, information will be relayed from the drone to off icers further along the road so they can pull them over. Police are keen to point out that the drone’s remit will be as much about deterrence as catching lawbreak-ers. The Met would not say whether more UAVs would be brought into service.

A man staged a terrorist attack in Parliament Square, turning a car into a weapon aiming to kill as many civilians and police as possible in a “pre-meditated and deliberate attack”, a jury has heard. Salih Khater, 30, was charged with attempted murder and attempted grievous bodily harm of civilians and police off icers after the incident in central London on August 14 2018. The jury at the Old Bailey saw CCTV footage of the silver Ford Fiesta that Khater is alleged to have used, hitting cyclists before moving on to a slip road and head-ing towards police off icers. The jury was told that Khater off ered no explanation for what he had done when arrested.

About 1,800 tyres have been removed from a Belfast bonfire and materials will be removed from two others. Contractors acting on behalf of Belfast City Council removed tyres from the site on Lismore Street, off London Road. The tyres were removed under police guard and taken from the bonfire and the surrounding site. A decision was taken yesterday to “remove materials” from two more bonfires in east Belfast. One is close to Avoniel leisure centre, the other in Ashdale Street, near Connswater shopping centre. It is not clear when the next removals will take place. Belfast City Council said it had “decided to act in the public interest” after a number of complaints.

Man charged over stabbingof woman and children

Met to deploy drone tomonitor road users

Pro-Brexit Labour MP Hoeyto quit at next election

Suspect deliberately droveat civilians, jury told

1,800 tyres removedfrom Belfast bonfire site

DECISION CRIMEMOTORING TRIAL CRACKDOWN

No-deal wouldbe a step intounknown, says ex-Brexit chiefGuardian News and MediaLondon

The public should be worried about a no-deal Brexit, the former top civil servant at

the department for exiting the Eu-ropean Union has said.

In his fi rst interview since re-tiring three months ago, Philip Rycroft, the former permanent secretary at DExEU, said: “I think everybody should be worried about what happens in a no-deal situation. We would be taking a step into the unknown.”

He told the BBC’s Panorama programme that while Brexit plan-ning in the civil service was in good shape, leaving with no deal, which is one of the options favoured by the Tory leadership contender Boris Johnson, would be “fraught with diffi culty”.

Panorama, which aired yester-day night, also revealed accusa-tions that the Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling, tried to silence the Road Haulage Association (RHA) over Brexit plans, and concerns in the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) that Brexit could be an opportunity for recruitment by paramilitary groups.

There were about 16,000 civil servants working on Brexit when Rycroft left his job before the fi rst scheduled day of departure from the EU on March 29.

But he said: “That (number) doesn’t mean … there won’t be an impact from Brexit, and particu-larly a no-deal Brexit, because that is a very major change and it would be a very abrupt change to our ma-jor trading relationship.

“It’s not in the UK’s interest to have no deal. It’s not in the EU’s interest to have a no-deal.”

Rycroft’s warning came as Ire-land’s deputy prime minister, Si-mon Coveney, said it would be a “serious error” to assume no-deal would not happen.

One of the biggest dangers Ire-land faces, he said, was “the boy who cried wolf eff ect, whereby people and business assume that because a disorderly Brexit was averted in March and April the

same will happen in October”. He added that Northern Ireland’s economy would be seriously af-fected.

The PSNI’s Brexit chief told Panorama that Brexit could pro-vide a recruitment opportunity for the New IRA and other dissident paramilitary groups.

“We know that the New IRA and other groups continue to re-cruit people and we believe that Brexit provides an opportunity for them to encourage people to re-cruit,” said Tim Mairs, an assistant chief constable of the PSNI.

The New IRA said it was re-sponsible for the killing of the journalist Lyra McKee earlier this year. It also claimed responsibil-ity for a car bomb outside Derry’s courthouse in January and letter bombs sent to Britain in March. Its members murdered two prison guards, David Black in 2012 and Adrian Ismay in 2016.

Mairs said he was concerned Westminister did not take the threat of smuggling seriously enough.

Potential price diff erences be-tween Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland created by tar-iff s could create “new opportuni-ties” for organised crime groups to exploit.

Smuggling and counterfeit pro-duction of alcohol and cigarettes in Ireland has attracted criminal gangs from around the world.

“We would see, traditionally, connections between some of those groups and more violent groups,” Mairs said. Panorama also heard about a voicemail left by Grayling on the phone of Richard Burnett, the head of the RHA.

Grayling told him: “I’ve got to say how very disappointed I am. I had intended to involve you closely in the planning over the next few months, but issuing a press release straight after meeting like that makes it much more diffi cult for me to do that.” Burnett said he felt Grayling was “trying to silence an industry that’s trying to help gov-ernment, guide them”.

He added: “My sense of that message was – either shut up or you don’t engage.”

Mills gets apology, payout in phone-hacking caseGuardian News and MediaLondon

Heather Mills has received an apology at the high court after settling her

phone-hacking case against the News of the World in return for a substantial fi nancial pay-out as part of an agreement un-der which she dropped similar claims against the Sun.

The former wife of the Beatles singer Sir Paul McCartney said a “criminal, targeted smear cam-paign” over the course of a decade by the news outlet had destroyed her reputation and left her unable to carry on her charity work.

Mills was one of about 90 in-dividuals, including Sir Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, who recently settled their cases for

invasion of privacy against News Group Newspapers, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled publisher that owns the News of the World and the Sun.

At a pre-trial hearing the high court heard claims from Mills’ lawyer that phone hacking was widespread at both newspapers, citing 141 articles published across the two titles that they believed were based on unlawful information gathering.

However, in common with oth-er phone-hacking settlements, the settlement was reached on the basis that wrongdoing was con-fi ned to journalists at the defunct News of the World. The company made no admission of liability in relation to their allegations of voicemail interception or other unlawful information gathering at the Sun.

The cost of phone hacking has weighed heavily on the fi nan-cial performance of the Sun’s publisher for the past decade, with the company setting aside £14.7mn in its 2018 accounts to deal with costs relating to ongo-ing cases.

The enormous number of in-dividuals involved means cases are still ongoing, with another tranche of claims being made, as lawyers continue to work their way through the backlog. The cost is signifi cant at a time of col-lapsing newspaper sales, which have prompted the Sun to make substantial cuts to its editorial budgets.

The phone-hacking scandal has been ongoing since 2006, when the News of the World’s roy-al editor pleaded guilty to phone hacking. Five years later Murdoch

ordered the closure of the news-paper after it was hit with a wave of hacking claims, amid a scandal that forced out Downing Street’s director of communications and led to the Leveson inquiry into press regulation.

Many of the phone-hacking cases that are currently being settled relate to articles about celebrities and other public fi g-ures that were published in the mid-2000s.

Mills said media intrusion af-ter her separation from McCart-ney had made her life unbearable, with photographers camped out-side her house. The former mod-el, who settled the case alongside her sister, said she would have preferred “that these proceed-ings had culminated in a crimi-nal prosecution”, adding that the stories based on phone hacking

had damaged her relationships with friends and family.

Outside court Mills claimed she had been awarded “the highest media libel settlement in British legal history”, although the case related to phone hacking rather than libel and she failed to give any details on the sum involved.

“Every time a copy of a News Group publication is purchased, we are lining the pockets of the perpetuators of these lies. I would urge everyone, when you pick up your daily paper today to consider the integrity and motive of the publisher before believing what you read,” she said.

Mills recently announced plans to turn to turn a former crisp factory in County Durham into a vegan food plant creating meat substitutes from seaweed and pears.

Bradford hospitals’ staff strike in ‘privatisation’ rowGuardian News and MediaLondon

More than 300 hospital staff in Bradford are on strike in a dispute over

what union leaders have de-scribed as the “back door priva-tisation” of the NHS.

Porters, cleaners and secu-rity staff voted to take industrial action over plans by Bradford teaching hospitals NHS trust to set up a new company to run the facilities.

The union, Unison, said the move was part of the creep-ing privatisation of the NHS and would strip as many as 600 workers of the protections they have as health service employees.

The seven-day strike, which began yesterday morning, comes amid mounting calls for the Conservative government to scrap legislation that has led to the widespread privatisation of healthcare.

The Bradford proposals centre

on its estates, facilities and clini-cal engineering services and do not include the privatisation of patient care. The trust has de-nied it is privatising services, in-sisting the new company will be “entirely owned and operated for and by the NHS”.

The trust’s hospitals include Bradford Royal infi rmary and St Luke’s hospital. Unison balloted its 313 aff ected members when the plans were unveiled in May and 97% voted for strike action.

Natalie Ratcliff e, a regional organiser for Unison, said mem-bers were angry at the proposals because they meant they would no longer be employed within the NHS.

The trust said it would guar-antee that aff ected staff kept their existing pay and conditions for 25 years – a promise Unison said its members believed could be “easily broken”.

Ratcliffe said: “We have urged the trust to scrap the plans, or at least shelve them, as there is likely to be a general

election this year or next and the policy of establishing whol-ly owned subsidiaries is likely to be dropped.

“Other trusts in the UK have dropped or shelved their plans, but the Bradford trust seems hell-bent on imposing this com-pany on our members and they are suffi ciently angry and wor-ried about it to have decided to go on strike.” The trust said ar-rangements had been made to “ensure that patient safety and levels of care” were not compro-mised by the industrial action and that essential services, such as emergency and urgent surgery, would continue as normal.

It advised patients to attend appointments as normal and added: “There will be picket lines outside the entrances to the trust’s hospitals and we expect that pickets will behave in a re-sponsible way; they will not be allowed to obstruct or intimidate patients and visitors and you will be able to gain admission to all our hospitals as normal.”

Prime Minister Theresa May meets military service personnel and their families at headquarters of Joint Forces Command in Northwood, London, yesterday.

May meets military personnel

School’s early Friday closure sparks protestGuardian News and MediaLondon

Dozens of families have protested outside a school in Greater Manchester

that is planning to close early on Fridays because it cannot aff ord to educate its pupils.

The fi nal straw came for parents after Vale View primary school in Reddish, Stockport, announced last week that nine staff mem-bers, including some of the most experienced teachers, were be-ing made redundant and that the headteacher was leaving.

Parents and schoolchildren held banners and wore badges reading “Save our teachers” outside the school gates to take a stand against budget cuts. Some parents travelled to Lon-don on Friday to protest against the national crisis in education funding, alongside families from other schools in Birmingham, Brighton, Hove, Hitchin, Wilt-shire, Stockport, Hastings and Leicester, and the MP for Bir-mingham Yardley, Jess Phillips.

The Guardian reported last week that at least 200 schools in England were cutting short the school week, or were actively consulting on it, because of in-suffi cient funding, according to campaigners. From September, classes at Vale View will fi nish at 12.45pm each Friday. Parents who cannot pick up their chil-dren early will have to pay £3.50 per child for an after school club.

Karen Duignan, a parent at the school, said fi ve of the teachers losing their jobs, two of whom are deputy headteachers, had served for more than 19 years and some had taught parents who now had children at Vale View. “It’s dis-heartening and has angered a lot more parents,” she said.

“We all knew cuts were com-ing and tough decisions had to be made but it’s the way it was gone about that hurts the most. It feels like the heart has been ripped out of the school.” Duignan’s daugh-ter, Millie, seven, wrote a letter to the school saying: “I don’t like seeing teachers upset and I feel angry and upset that teachers are losing there [sic] jobs.”

Pippa Middleton yesterday made her first appearance at Wimbledon this year. She was joined in the royal box by her younger brother James Middleton.

Wimbledon outing

EUROPE13Gulf Times

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Greece’s new Prime Min-ister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was sworn in yesterday

after a sweeping election victory put him in charge of the EU’s most indebted member with promises to end a decade of eco-nomic crisis.

“The Greek people gave us a strong mandate to change Greece. We will honour it to the full,” the 51-year-old Harvard graduate and former McKinsey consultant said after taking his oath of offi ce in a televised cer-emony, his wife and three chil-dren close by. “Hard work begins today. I am completely confi dent that we will prove equal to the challenge.”

Mitsotakis later named a cab-inet with many technocrats in junior posts and only a handful of women.

It will be sworn in today and meet tomorrow, he said.

The new fi nance minister is Christos Staikouras, a 45-year-old former junior fi nance min-ister who holds a banking PhD from London’s City University.

The foreign ministry goes

to Nikos Dendias, 59, who was public order minister when a historic probe began into the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party following the 2013 murder of an anti-fascist rapper.

Among notable choices is the appointment of two former far-right party allies to head devel-opment and agriculture.

The US-educated conserva-tive faces a hefty challenge as he takes over from Alexis Tsipras, who imposed austerity measures required under a bailout to keep Greece in the eurozone.

The country’s public debt last year stood at €335bn ($376bn), or 180% of GDP.

The debt load is forecast to fall to 168% of GDP this year, but only through belt-tighten-ing brought in under Tsipras’s Syriza party, policies which Mit-sotakis’s New Democracy party says is stifl ing growth.

The tricky job of keeping Greece’s international creditors onside while easing the hardship on Greeks – by lowering taxes and renegotiating fi scal targets – could result in a short honey-moon phase for Mitsotakis.

An upcoming meeting of eu-rozone fi nance ministers will discuss the state of Greece’s

economy after tax cuts rolled out by Tsipras in a last-ditch at-tempt to win over voters.

Former banker Mitsotakis has pledged to create jobs and “steamroll” obstacles to busi-ness.

Those pledges wooed Greek voters, who handed him nearly 40% of the vote in Sunday’s election, well ahead of the 31.5% given to Tsipras.

“It’s a strong message for change in Greece,” Mitsotakis told reporters on Sunday.

Last week he told AFP that his mission is “to make sure we restart the economy” with “am-bitious growth driven by private investments, exports and inno-vation”.

He predicted that he could persuade Greece’s creditors to accept the easing of tight fi scal targets with “a comprehensive reforms package”.

Tsipras, for his part, warned that Mitsotakis would do away with the social spending he brought in to help Greece’s vul-nerable groups.

He portrayed the Mitsotakis family – one of Greece’s leading political dynasties – as part of a failed system that bankrupted the country in 2010.

Mitsotakis is the son of former premier Constantine Mitsotakis, one of the country’s longest-serving parliamentarians.

His sister Dora Bakoyannis is a former minister and Athens’s fi rst female mayor.

And in a fi rst even for a coun-try accustomed to family links in politics, the recently-elected mayor of Athens is the incoming prime minister’s nephew.

Mitsotakis took charge of New Democracy three years ago.

Following the election, his party will have a majority of 158 seats in the 300-member parlia-ment.

New Democracy was last in power in 2014, in coalition with the Greek socialists.

Syriza’s parliamentary pres-ence will shrink from 144 seats to 86.

Tsipras has promised to re-main an “active” voice in op-position in defence of labour rights.

Sunday’s election was Greece’s third in as many months.

In May this year, New Democ-racy beat Syriza by nearly 9.5 points in European parliament elections.

A week later, it completed a near-sweep of Greek regions in local elections.

After that, Tsipras was forced to call an early general vote.

Entering parliament for the fi rst time are Greek Solution, a nationalist party formed by TV salesman Kyriakos Velopoulos, and MeRA25, an anti-auster-ity party founded by maverick economist and Tsipras’ former fi nance minister Yanis Varou-fakis.

Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn was shut out of parliament for the fi rst time since 2012.

Golden Dawn, until recently Greece’s third-ranking party, is in steep decline amid an ongo-ing trial for the 2013 murder of an anti-fascist rapper, allegedly carried out with the knowledge of senior Golden Dawn mem-bers.

New Greece PM pledges to end economic crisisAFPAthens

Mitsotakis watches his predecessor Tsipras leaving the Maximos Mansion after their meeting.

Selfie moment

A heifer jumps over revellers in the bullring yesterday after the second bull run of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona.

Ukraine’s President Volo-dymyr Zelenskiy has of-fered to meet his Russian

counterpart Vladimir Putin for their fi rst talks, calling for West-ern leaders to mediate.

“Now I want to address the Russian President Vladimir Pu-tin. We need to talk? We do. Let’s do it,” Zelenskiy said in a video address.

The former comic actor who was elected with a landslide in April’s presidential polls called for a meeting with the Russian strongman that would involve US President Donald Trump and other Western leaders.

He proposed discussing Rus-sian-annexed Crimea and the confl ict in eastern Ukraine where Ukrainian forces are battling Russian-backed separatists.

Zelenskiy said on his inaugu-ration in May that ending the war in the east and returning the an-nexed territory to Ukraine are his priority.

So far he has not met Putin and the Russian leader has com-mented that Zelenskiy’s acting talent does not make up for lack of political experience.

“Let’s discuss who Crimea belongs to and who isn’t in the Donbass region,” Zelenskiy said, referring to the eastern confl ict zone.

Some 13,000 people have been killed in the confl ict in eastern Ukraine that erupted in 2014 after a popular uprising ousted pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych and Russia respond-ed by annexing Crimea.

Kyiv and its Western back-

ers accuse Russia of funnelling troops and arms across the bor-der to fan the fl ames of the con-fl ict.

Moscow denies any military involvement.

The Minsk peace process in-volving talks between Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine has stalled.

In June, French President Em-manuel Macron said new talks could be possible.

Zelenskiy suggested in his comments addressed to Putin that fresh talks also include the United States and Britain, which are strong backers of Kyiv.

“I suggest the following line-up for talks: me, you, US Presi-dent Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Mer-kel (and) French President Em-manuel Macron,” Zelenskiy said.

The British prime minister is to

step down later this month.“We are not changing or drop-

ping any diplomatic formats,” Zelenskiy added.

Moscow said it was not ready to comment immediately on the possibility of such talks, calling Zelenskiy’s proposal an “abso-lutely new format”.

“First there’s a need to un-derstand whether such a meet-ing has any prospects,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday. “This is a new initiative. Of course it will be considered, but so far I can’t express any reaction.”

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council on a visit to Ukraine with outgoing Euro-pean Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, urged Kyiv and Moscow to fulfi l the peace pacts they have already signed up to.

“It is clear that the Minsk agreements need more than ever before to be implemented by all sides,” Tusk said referring to the peace accords inked in 2014 and 2015 that could have ended the bloodshed but have never been implemented in full.

“Russia has a particular re-sponsibility in this regard,” Tusk told reporters at a joint press conference with Juncker and Zel-enskiy in Kyiv.

Ukraine’s Zelenskiy off ers to meet Putin for talksAFPKyiv

Tusk, Zelenskiy and Juncker at their joint press conference in Kyiv.

Vatican lifts immunity of envoy in France

ReutersParis

The Vatican has lifted the diplomatic immunity of its envoy in France, the

French foreign ministry said yesterday, opening the way for Archbishop Luigi Ventura to be questioned by prosecutors over accusations of molestation.

French authorities opened an investigation into Ventura, 74, in January after a junior offi cial at Paris City Hall accused him of molestation.

Because of his diplomatic im-munity – the position of papal nuncio is equivalent to ambassa-dor – prosecutors have been un-able to question Ventura about the allegations.

“The ministry for European aff airs ... has received confi r-mation from the Holy See of its renunciation of immunity in relation to the proceedings,” a spokeswoman for the French foreign ministry said in a state-ment.

Ventura has not commented on the allegations.

His offi ce in Paris has declined to comment.

The Catholic Church world-wide, including senior church fi gures, is reeling from crises in-volving sexual abuse which have deeply damaged confi dence in the Church in the United States, Chile, Australia, Ireland and elsewhere.

In a statement following the announcement in Paris, Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti called the action “an extraordi-nary gesture that confi rms the nuncio’s willingness, expressed from the outset, to co-operate fully and spontaneously with French judicial authorities”.

Gisotti added that the Vati-can had waited for the end of the preliminary phase of the investi-gation and informed the French government last week of its de-cision to lift the immunity.

France’s former minister of European aff airs, Nathalie Loi-seau, called in March for Ventu-ra’s immunity to be lifted, saying that justice could otherwise not be done.

“At this point, (Archbishop Ventura) benefi ts from diplo-matic immunity, but the Holy See is clearly aware of the seri-ous accusations that have been brought against the apostolic nuncio and I don’t doubt for a second that the Holy See will do the right thing,” Loiseau told CNews at the time.

“This inquiry needs to be al-lowed to reach its conclusion, what matters is that the truth be known,” she said, adding that Ventura enjoyed the presump-tion of innocence.

The Vatican has previously said that it is aware of the in-vestigation into Ventura and is awaiting the outcome of the in-quiry.

A fi re aboard a top-secret Russian nuclear subma-rine could have led to a

“catastrophe of global propor-tions” if not for the selfl ess ac-tions of the crew, a senior navy offi cial was cited by a Russian media outlet as saying.

Fourteen submariners were killed on July 1 during a fi re in a deep-water research submers-ible that was surveying the sea fl oor near the Arctic, according to Russia’s defence ministry.

Russian offi cials have faced accusations of trying to cover up the full details of the inci-dent on the top secret subma-rine.

President Vladimir Putin only acknowledged publicly there had been a nuclear reac-tor on board three days after it happened.

The sailors were buried on Saturday in Saint Petersburg at a funeral ceremony that was closed to the public.

“They all shared one and the same fate – to save the lives of their comrades, to save their vessel and to prevent a catas-

trophe of global proportions at the cost of their own lives,” Sergei Pavlov, an aide to the Russian navy’s commander, was quoted as saying at the funeral by Saint Petersburg media outlet Fontanka on Sat-urday.

In the comments from Pav-lov quoted in Russian media, there was no explanation of how the fi re could have result-ed in a global catastrophe.

Russian offi cials have said the crew contained the fi re and isolated the submarine’s nu-clear reaction.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on a conference call that he was un-aware of the comments made by offi cials at the funeral and was therefore unable to com-ment.

Putin last week bestowed Russia’s highest state award – the title of Hero of Russia – on four of the men and granted another top state award – the Order of Courage – to the 10 others.

Putin has said that the sub-marine was manned by an elite and senior crew, two of whom already held the Hero of Russia title before their fi nal mission.

Russia nuke sub fi re could have caused catastrophe: reportReutersMoscow

€3mn on-site restoration project of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch begins

Rembrandt’s 17th century masterpiece The Night Watch began restoration work yesterday in Amsterdam, where visitors will be able to watch every step of the Rijksmuseum’s biggest ever project.The €3mn ($3.4mn) eff ort is expected to take about a year, museum director Taco Dibbits said.That is due not only to the fame of the painting, which dates from 1642, but also to its size, as the canvas measures 3.63m by 4.37m (11.9’ x 14.3’) and weighs 337kg.The painting will remain in its usual spot at the end of the Gallery of Honour in the Rijksmuseum and visitors will be able to watch from behind a glass wall as experts restore it.Painted over several years, The Night Watch was commissioned as a group portrait of an Amsterdam city militia and broke new ground by showing its subjects in action rather than as a static portrait.The painting was most recently restored after a man attacked it with a knife in 1975.

Sea-Watch captain’s hearing delayedThe latest court hearing for the captain of migrant rescue ship Sea-Watch, Carola Rackete, on charges of people smuggling and resisting the authorities has been postponed until July 18 because of a strike by Italian defence lawyers.Rackete was due to appear in court today after she sailed the German charity-operated vessel past a blockade and into port in Lampedusa last month with dozens of rescued migrants on board, prompting her arrest.Her lawyers have decided to join a nationwide strike by criminal defence lawyers in protest at justice reforms, one of her lawyers told AFP.German national Rackete, 31, was arrested after defying the blockade imposed by far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini but a judge subsequently ordered her freed, saying that she had been acting to save lives, a decision which sparked Salvini’s ire.

29 killedas busplunges off highwaynear Agra

AFPAgra

At least 29 people were killed and 18 others in-jured when a bus careered

off a notorious highway after the driver apparently fell asleep at the wheel, offi cials said yester-day.

The bus was carrying more than 50 people along the Ya-muna expressway — known as the “highway to hell” because of the number of fatal accidents — when it crashed through a con-crete barrier and plunged more than 40 feet into a drainage canal.

“It appears that the driver was drowsy,” said Agra district magistrate N G Ravi Kumar, who provided the number of dead and injured.

The bus was travelling from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi when the accident hap-pened just before dawn, some 20km near Agra.

More than 150,000 people a year are killed on India’s roads, which are notorious for design fl aws and speeding drivers.

The 165km Yamuna express-way was India’s longest and most modern six-lane highway when it opened in 2012, but about 900 people have been killed on the road since, according to authori-ties.

The media have dubbed it the “highway to hell”.

Local residents said they were woken by the crash and found the mangled bus submerged in blackish-grey water.

Police said the bus landed on its roof in a drain, where running water complicated rescue eff orts.

“We rushed out of our homes and saw people screaming for help,” one witness told reporters.

“We got into the drain and tried to save some of them. Soon po-lice arrived and quickly brought cranes.”

Offi cials believe most of the passengers were asleep when the driver lost control of the vehicle.

Karnatakagovernment on the vergeof collapseIANSBengaluru

The JD-S-Congress gov-ernment in Karnataka was on the verge of a collapse

yesterday, with a lone legisla-tor from a regional party and an Independent MLA withdraw-ing their support to the ruling coalition, which has already been hit by the resignations by over a dozen MLAs of the two parties.

R Shankar, leader of regional outfi t KPJP, resigned as Karna-taka municipal administration minister and H Nagesh, an Inde-pendent MLA, quit as minister for small scale industries.

Both of them also withdrew their crucial support to the ruling coalition headed by JD-S leader H D Kumaraswamy, even as it made desperate attempts to save their 13-month-old government.

As part of the eff ort, the JD-S and the Congress asked all their ministers to resign to pave the way for reconstitution of the Cabinet to accommodate the disgruntled and rebel MLAs. Ac-cordingly, all the 22 Congress ministers and nine JD-S minis-ters submitted their resignations.

The developments followed resignation by 10 MLAs of the Congress and three of the JD-S from the Assembly two days back, expressing lack of confi -dence in the government.

Most of the Congress MLAs, after submitting their resigna-

tions on Saturday last, left Kar-nataka and parked themselves in a hotel in Mumbai. They planned to return to Bengaluru today to meet the Speaker and press for their resignations, sources said.

Before the resignations, the ruling coalition had 118 MLAs, fi ve more than the required majority mark of 113 in the 225-member Assembly.

They included 78 MLAs of the Congress (excluding the Speak-er), 37 of the JD-S, one each from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and regional outfi t Karna-taka Pragnyavantha Janata Party (KPJP) and an Independent.

“I have this day, tendered my resignation from the council of ministers, headed by (Chief Min-ister) H D Kumaraswamy,” said Nagesh, an Independent MLA from the Mulbagal (SC) Assembly constituency, in a letter to gover-nor Vajubhai Vala earlier in the day.

Nagesh, who handed over the letter to Vala at the Raj Bha-van, also mentioned that he was withdrawing his support to the government.

“I would by this letter, inform your good self that I withdraw my support to the government, headed by Kumaraswamy,” he wrote.

In the evening, Shankar also resigned and said he would ex-tend support to the BJP, which has 105 MLA in the Assembly, eight short of the majority.

“Minister for municipal ad-ministration R Shankar met

governor Vajubhai Vala after submitting his resignation letter to Chief Minister H D Kumaras-wamy,” said a communique from Raj Bhavan here.

“He (Shankar) also extends support to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),” the communique added. Shankar, the legislator from Ranebennur, fl oated the KPJP and contested the May 2018 assembly elections after leaving the Congress for being denied a party ticket.

Kumaraswamy had inducted Shankar and Nagesh into the Cabinet on June 14 to ensure their support to his shaky gov-ernment facing revolt from a dozen Congress rebel legislators since December.

Both had withdrawn support to the coalition government on January 15, after Shankar was dropped from the ministry on December 22 in a minor Cabinet reshuffl e-cum-expansion to en-sure the government’s stability.

The developments came just ahead of the monsoon session of the state Assembly from July 12.

The Congress and the JD-S, which were making desperate at-tempts to save the government, blamed the opposition BJP for the unrest in the ruling coalition.

“BJP’s national leaders are behind this political crisis in the state. They do not want any gov-ernment or any opposition party to rule in any state. They are de-stroying democracy,” Congress MLA D K Suresh told reporters.

Elderly parents savedfrom ‘greedy’ son, wifeIANSGhaziabad

After an elderly couple went online with a heart-felt appeal to save them

from daily harassment by their son and daughter-in-law, the district administration in Ghaz-iabad, Uttar Pradesh, came to the rescue of the couple.

The victims (both aged 68) had recently shared a video on social media where they narrated how their son and daughter-in-law were forcing them to move out of their own house.

The 68-year-old man was identifi ed as Indrajit Grover, who alleged that he was already dealing with heart problems, while his wife had got her knee replaced and was also a patient of arthritis, but despite their suf-ferings the couple was being har-assed by their son and daughter-in-law.

“Our son is unconcerned where we will go, whether we live or die,” Grover said in the video.

“We are living in a house that we bought with our own hard-earned money. We have only one

son and our daughter is married. Our son and daughter-in-law are harassing us,” he added in the video.

Grover said that his son had been forcing the couple to move out of the house so that he can stay there with his wife.

Grover sought help from the district magistrate (DM) and has lodged a complaint too.

“I have requested the au-thorities to rescue me from the clutches of these greedy people and help me live in the house that we have bought from our own money,” he said.

Reacting to the video, the dis-trict magistrate’s offi ce inter-vened.

Tweeting about the situa-tion, the district magistrate said the matter was examined and has been resolved now. The DM said it was basically a fam-ily dispute. “The son and his wife have been asked to vacate their parents’ house within 10 days and live elsewhere,” the Ghaziabad DM said in a tweet. The authorities also made the son sign a written agreement saying he would vacate the house.

CWC under Manmohan‘must pick Congress chief’IANSNew Delhi

Expressing disappointment over the current drift in the Congress after the resig-

nation of Rahul Gandhi as party chief, veteran leader Karan Singh yesterday sought an immediate meeting of the working com-mittee under chairmanship of former prime minister Manmo-han Singh to take decisions, in-cluding fi nding the new interim president.

Karan Singh said that the CWC - the party’s top decision-mak-ing body - should decide on the interim president until the next party elections and suggested appointing four working presi-dents and vice presidents repre-senting each zone - north, south, east and west.

“This would enable the intro-duction of younger people into positions of authority,” he said in a statement.

“As someone who joined the Congress in 1967 over half a cen-tury ago, I am aghast to see the

confusion and disorientation into which the Congress has fall-en since Rahul resigned on May 25,” he said adding that instead of honouring his bold decision, a month was wasted in pleading with him to take back his resig-nation, which as a man of honour and integrity, he should not have been pressurised to do.

His statement came after sev-eral Congress leaders have given up their posts after Rahul’s res-ignation.

Singh said that he was dis-mayed to see the situation “as six weeks have passed since Ra-hul resigned on May 25 during the CWC meeting and the party seems to be in disarray”.

“Instead of moving ahead we wasted six weeks in pleading ‘please, don’t resign’.

“Of course, he (Rahul) has re-signed, he is an intelligent man, he a man of honour and princi-ples, if he wants to resign, then let him resign and then move on.

“We wasted that time and nothing happened. So I was im-pelled to write and I suggested that the Congress Working Com-

mittee meet under the chair-manship of Manmohan Singh, he is the seniormost leader of the party. He was prime minister for 10 years and he should take a decision on one interim chief of the party until the elections take place in Congress.”

Asked if he has given any names, Karan Singh denied mak-ing any suggestions.

On the suggestion of many party leaders wanting Rahul to continue as party chief, the Con-gress leader said: “You need to honour his decision. You cannot bulldoze him.”

Agreeing that the party was fac-ing a very turbulent time, he said: “We are in a diffi cult situation. And I think that Congress should revive not only for the party itself but for the democracy.

“In a democracy, we need a strong opposition... if Congress is in a depleted condition then who is going to provide strong opposition. We only have re-gional parties and at national level, there is no other party. It is important for the Congress to get its act together and to move on.”

Binoy Kodiyeri, son of Kerala CPI-M leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, yesterday appeared before the Mumbai police and agreed to undergo a DNA test in the rape case filed against him. Binoy was last week granted bail by the Dindoshi court in Mumbai. On June 13, a 33-year-old Mumbai-based woman lodged a complaint at the city’s Oshiwara police station alleging that Binoy had sexually exploited her for several years on the promise of marriage and they also had an eight-year-old child. Sources said Binoy agreed to undergo the DNA test during his appearance before the police. “He will do the needful during his second appearance before the police next Monday,” they added.

Rahul Gandhi will visit Amethi tomorrow for the first time since he was defeated in his traditional Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh. Party leaders said Rahul will be on a day’s visit to Amethi. His sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is likely to accompany him. A party leader said that during his visit to Amethi’s Gauriganj (district headquarter) Rahul will meet with party workers and discuss the reasons for his loss in the recent election. He said after holding meeting with the party workers, Rahul will also interact with the public. Rahul lost from his pocket borough in the Lok Sabha election to Union minister and BJP leader Smriti Irani by 55,000 votes.

Demanding a crackdown on illegal auto-rickshaws, aggregator services like Ola-Uber, and a steep fare hike, around a million auto-rickshaws all over Maharashtra have begun an indefinite strike from midnight, a union leader said in Mumbai yesterday. Auto-Rickshaw Chalak Malak Sanghatana Joint Action Committee chief Shashank Rao said a majority of the 1.2mn auto-rickshaws and over 2mn auto-rickshaw owner-or-drivers aff iliated to around 300 big and small unions across the state have joined the agitation. The worst-hit shall be Mumbai with around 200,000 auto-rickshaws and nearly 300,000 drivers where millions depend on these three-wheelers daily.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackrey yesterday met senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi. According to Congress leaders, Thackrey met Sonia at her residence and their meeting lasted for over 30 minutes. Party leaders described the meeting as a courtesy call. The meeting assumes significance as Assembly elections in Maharashtra are scheduled later this year. Earlier Thackeray demanded that the state assembly elections must be held with ballot papers and not Electronic Voting Machines. He has made the demand to the chief election commissioner Sunil Arora and other top EC off icials whom he met in New Delhi, a party aide said in Mumbai.

Even before the Madhya Pradesh government could put into eff ect plans to rein in cow vigilantes, another incident has taken place near Khandwa. Over 100 villagers on Sunday tied 25 people with a rope and paraded them through a 2km stretch to a police station for allegedly transporting cows to Maharashtra, the police said. However, no one was injured in the “operation” carried out by the cow vigilantes. A video of the purported incident showed several villagers carrying sticks and forcing the alleged cattle-transporters to do sit-ups holding their ears. The incident took place in Sanwlikheda village in Khalwas area, about 60km from the district headquarters, a police off icer said.

Binoy Kodiyeri agrees toDNA test in rape case

Rahul to visitAmethi tomorrow

Auto-rickshaw driversstrike in Maharashtra

Raj Thackeray meetsSonia in Delhi

Cow vigilantes tie up25 in Madhya Pradesh

CONTROVERSYPEOPLE ANGER POLITICSCRIME

Mumbai rain alert

A volunteer stands guard next to a railing to prevent commuters from crossing a water-logged street after heavy rains in Mumbai yesterday. Flight operations were severely hit due to the rains and poor visibility at the Mumbai airport yesterday, while the city and the coastal Konkan region were put on ‘red alert’.

14 Gulf TimesTuesday, July 9, 2019

INDIA

Onlookers and police gather around the crumpled remains of the bus that crashed on the Delhi-Agra expressway, near Agra, yesterday.

LATIN AMERICA15Gulf Times

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Gang menace will endin four years: BukeleAFPSan Salvador

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said that security measures im-

plemented by his government would do away with the coun-try’s long-running gang prob-lem in four years.

“I believe that the blow we are going to give to this structure is a mortal blow. I do not believe that gangs as we know them now will exist in three or four years,” Bukele said at a press confer-ence to evaluate the progress of the fi rst phase of a security plan launched last month.

As part of the plan, Sal-vadoran security forces have been targeting extortion rack-ets run by gangs to fi nance their operations.

Authorities have also de-clared a state of emergency in 20 prisons in the country, tightening the conditions of confi nement and order-ing mobile phone operators to block internet and cellphone reception in prison to keep gang members from ordering

killings and extortion while behind bars.

Earlier this month, the gov-ernment announced the second phase of the security plan that seeks the “territorial control” of dozens of gang-riven com-munities while disrupting the recruitment of young people through social programmes.

El Salvador is thought to have some 70,000 gang mem-bers, of whom around 17,000 are imprisoned. Most belong to either Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) or its rival Barrio 18.

Bukele, who took offi ce on June 1, called for the public to collaborate with the govern-ment to stop gang violence.

“We cannot overcome this scourge alone... This is a unique opportunity we have to beat the gangs,” he said, adding the security plan will include unspecifi ed measures to be rolled out in the coming years.

El Salvador has one of the highest rates of violent crime of any country not at war, with an average of 51 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018, most of which are attributed to gangs.

Mexico’s migrant labourplan fails to enthuse fi rmsReutersMexico City/Ciudad Juarez

Mexican President An-dres Manuel Lopez Obrador has promised

thousands of jobs to migrants waiting on the northern border for US asylum, but some em-ployers are refusing to hire them unless the government screens for potential criminals.

Lopez Obrador said last week he would make up to 40,000 jobs available along the border to mi-grants while they wait in Mexico for the results of their US asy-lum claims under an agreement forged with US

President Donald Trump.Many asylum claimants are

Central American nationals fl ee-ing violence and poverty in their respective countries of origin, often at the hands of criminal groups like Mara Salvatrucha, known as MS-13.

Employers in Mexico are urg-ing the government to conduct background checks and regular-ise their immigration status to

make sure gang members are not among the job seekers.

But Luis Hernandez, presi-dent of manufacturing industry chamber INDEX in the border city of Tijuana, said compa-nies run the risk of falling out of compliance with existing in-ternational agreements unless background checks are run on prospective employees.

Many Mexican fi rms are certi-fi ed by the Customs Trade Part-nership Against Terrorism with US Customs and Border Pro-tection, which requires compa-nies to only employ individuals whose backgrounds have been verifi ed, said Hernandez.

“We don’t want to take the risk that the federal government comes to audit us, the state gov-ernment audits us and because we hired someone, we’re not fol-lowing the rules,” he said.

Lopez Obrador’s measure, which will rely on an agreement with the manufacturing indus-try’s maquiladoras — or assem-bly plants — aims to ease pres-sure on overcrowded shelters on the border and comes as public

support for the migrants is wan-ing.

The factories, which import raw materials from the US and ship assembled products back across the border duty free, ex-ported billions worth of goods last year.

Migration experts say con-cerns about gang members trav-elling north in migrant caravans bring to mind Trump’s rhetoric about violent Central Americans seeking refuge in the US.

Oscar Misael Hernandez, a migration specialist at Mexico’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte, said he thinks the chances of criminals entering Lopez Ob-rador’s programme are slim to none.

“It’s so illogical to think that people asking for asylum have criminal records, since they know they’ll face double scru-tiny” in the US and Mexico, he said.

According to INDEX, more than 60,000 jobs need fi lling in the manufacturing and export-ing industries in Mexico’s north-ern border states.

Malaria makesa comebackin VenezuelaAFPEl Tucuco, Venezuela

The sweltering heat of the Venezuelan forest makes no diff erence to Jose Gre-

gorio, who trembles with a cold chill. “I have pain everywhere, fever,” he stammers.

Gregorio has the classic symptoms of malaria, a disease eradicated years ago among his Yukpa indigenous people, but it’s back with a vengeance all across Venezuela.

“He had sore joints and then started vomiting, and it’s been four or fi ve days since he’s eaten anything,” says his worried wife Marisol. Their four-month-old baby babbles beside his father on the bed.

“The baby and I also had ma-laria,” says Marisol. “Before, that was not the case here, there was only chikungunya and dengue, malaria came back here last year.”

She doesn’t bat an eyelid at the mention of either of the oth-er mosquito-borne viruses.

“Here” is El Tucuco, a small village at the foot of the moun-tains that form the border with Colombia, a three-hour drive from Maracaibo in Venezuela’s western Zulia state.

With 3,700 people, El Tucu-co is the Yukpas’ “capital” and malaria is rapidly making its presence felt here as in the rest of Venezuela — a country that could once boast of being the fi rst to have eradicated the dis-ease in 1961.

There are no offi cial statistics on malaria’s reach into El Tucu-co, nor on the number of deaths it causes. But from his consult-ing room at the Catholic Mis-sion, Dr Carlos Polanco is seeing a developing crisis.

“Out of 10 people who are tested for malaria in the village laboratory, four to fi ve come out with a positive test. This is an alarming fi gure.”

Brother Nelson Sandoval, a Capuchin friar who presides over the mission, adds: “Before enter-ing the order, I already knew this community and I had never seen

a case of malaria. Today we are in the middle of a pandemic.”

El Tucuco is aff ected by Plas-modium vivax, the most geo-graphically widespread malarial species.

The more lethal Plasmodium falciparum strain is prevalent in the Amazonian regions of southeastern Venezuela.

According to Sandoval and Polanco, the reason for malaria’s sudden virulence in El Tucuco is simple: once-regular fumigation missions by the Venezuelan gov-ernment stopped.

“And as the population of mosquitoes increased, cases ex-ploded,” said Polanco.

Added to this is the malnutri-tion that weakens resistance to the disease, a new phenomenon since the economic crisis took hold at the end of 2015.

“Before, it was possible to vary one’s diet, but with infl ation the Yukpa cannot aff ord it,” instead making do with what they can grow, like cassava and plantain, according to Polanco.

Rosa, 67, knows all about mal-nutrition.

Lying on the fl oor of her house, she is battling malaria for the third time. “The doctor weighed me yesterday — 37kgs. I was 83 kilos before.”

A report published in British medical journal The Lancet in February warned of an epidemic of malaria and dengue fever.

Between 2016 and 2017 alone, the number of malaria cases in the nation jumped 70%.

“The situation is catastroph-ic,” said Dr Huniades Urbina, secretary of the national Acad-emy of Medicine. In 2018, “there were 600,000 cases of malaria and we, the scientifi c organisa-tions, estimate that in 2019 we could reach a million cases” — one in every 30 people.

But these fi gures are only es-timates.

Brother Nelson does what he can, with help from the Catho-lic charity Caritas and the Pan American Health Organisation. His mission distributes the anti-malarial drugs chloroquine and primaquine to sick Yukpa people.

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro walks next to his wife Cilia Flores, Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez and military commanders during a military graduation ceremony in Caracas, Venezuela.

Venezuelan leaders tohold talks in BarbadosAFPCaracas

Dialogue between Ven-ezuela’s opposition and President Nicolas Ma-

duro’s government will resume in Barbados, self-declared in-terim president Juan Guaido said, after previous negotia-tions in Norway petered out.

“In response to the media-tion of the Kingdom of Norway (the opposition) will attend a meeting with representatives of the Maduro government in Bar-bados,” Guaido said in a state-ment, without giving a date for talks to resume.

Maduro’s government sug-gested talks would resume this week.

Delegations representing the Venezuelan rivals met face-to-face in Oslo for the fi rst time in late May, in a process begun two

weeks earlier under Norwegian auspices to fi nd a solution to the South American country’s eco-nomic and political crises.

Oil-rich Venezuela has been ravaged by fi ve years of reces-sion marked by shortages of food, medicine and other basic necessities. It plunged deeper into political turmoil in Janu-ary when National Assembly speaker Guaido declared him-self acting president in a direct challenge to Maduro’s authority.

Guaido also announced that he would push for Caracas to rejoin the Inter-American De-fence Treaty, which Venezuela left in 2012.

“We have the legitimate right to build the international ca-pacities and alliances neces-sary to protect and defend our people and our sovereignty,” Guaido said on Twitter.

Last Tuesday Guaido had said there were no plans to re-open

talks with the Maduro govern-ment following the death of an offi cer in custody.

In a tweet, Maduro’s Com-munications Minister Jorge Ro-driguez implicitly corroborated Guaido’s announcement by re-producing a Norwegian foreign ministry statement.

“The two parties will meet this week in Barbados to move forward in the search for a ne-gotiated and constitutional so-lution,” the statement said.

The Barbados talks will be the third round since May.

Guaido wants them to lead to-wards Maduro’s departure from the presidency he has held since 2013, to a transitional govern-ment, and then “free elections with international observers.”

Political scientist Jesus Cas-tillo-Molleda said “the opposi-tion cannot defeat the govern-ment, neither alone nor with the help of the US government.”

This means it has to look for other ways to reach agreements in favour of elections, the ana-lyst said. Maduro has repeatedly said that the dialogue “will con-tinue” with the opposition, “for peace in Venezuela.”

During a parade last Friday celebrating the country’s inde-pendence, Maduro said there would be “good news” this week about the negotiations.

Meanwhile Maduro an-nounced he will maintain De-fence Minister Vladimir Padri-no in his post, following months of rumours that top military brass would be replaced after a failed uprising in April.

The Trump administration identifi ed Padrino among the top offi cials involved in nego-tiations with opposition leader Guaido to create a transition government on April 30, in re-sponse to the country’s eco-nomic meltdown.

Since then, Padrino has pub-licly professed loyalty to Madu-ro along with the majority of the armed forces.

“I’ve decided to ratify...Vladimir Padrino as minister so that he can continue to shine with his disposition, his intel-ligence, with his military lead-ership,” Maduro said during a military ceremony broadcast on state television.

The US treasury department in 2018 sanctioned Padrino for helping Maduro maintain power through control of the military.

Padrino’s fi ve-year tenure as defence minister has been unu-sually long, since most previous ministers over the last decade have not remained in offi ce more than one year.

Military experts say he is past his retirement date, but add that he is seen as one of the few offi cials who can maintain co-hesion among the ranks.

Musicians perform during the wake of Brazilian singer Joao Gilberto in Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Theatre, Brazil, yesterday.

Singer tribute

Brazil’s government is set to slash its 2019 economic growth forecast, a senior economy ministry off icial said yesterday, warning that weak growth is putting pressure on government revenues and could force another budget freeze. Waldery Rodrigues, special secretary to the economy ministry, said the new growth forecast, to be announced later this week, will likely be around 0.8%-1.2%, in line with market expectations but sharply down from the government’s current 1.6% projection. Earlier, the central bank’s latest weekly “FOCUS” survey of economists showed growth expectations were lowered for the 19th week in a row.

Brazilian police yesterday arrested two Italian men suspected of belonging to the South American arm of Italian mafia ‘Ndrangheta, off icials said. Nicola Assisi and his son were detained in a luxury seaside apartment in Sao Paulo state and are being held in an undisclosed location awaiting extradition to Italy, federal police said in a statement. The arrest comes weeks after top ‘Ndrangheta figure Rocco Morabito escaped from a prison in Uruguay, angering Rome which had been awaiting his extradition. Italy’s much-feared ‘Ndrangheta mafia is thought to run much of Europe’s cocaine trade from Calabria. It is also involved in arms traff icking, prostitution and extortion.

Brazil’s state-owned oil giant Petrobras has started the process of selling off the so-called Tucano Sul Polo block of four onshore natural gas fields and treatment facilities, the company said in a filing yesterday. Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as the energy firm is formally known, intends to sell all of its 100% stakes in the four fields of Conceicao, Fazenda Matinha, Fazenda Santa Rosa and Querera in the northeastern state of Bahia, according to the company’s statement. The transaction is in line with the company’s strategy of “optimising” its portfolio, Petrobras pointed out in the statement.

Argentine President Mauricio Macri and his rivals in the October election have launched their campaign ads on local TV, targeting undecided voters who will be key to choosing whether his policies remain in place another four years. Macri’s campaign, which has been hit hard by the country’s economic crisis, highlighted the public works and infrastructure projects started in his administration. “It’s going from abandonment to building a new reality every day,” Macri said in the campaign ad. Macri’s chief rival, Alberto Fernandez, who is running on a ticket with former leftist president Cristina Fernandez, describes himself as a “conciliatory” politician and “a normal guy.”

Ecuador has mobilised hundreds of soldiers and police to a mountainous area to confront illegal mining and organised crime that have fuelled violence in the north of the country, the interior minister said. The South American nation is hoping to fuel its sluggish economy by expanding its mining sector. It has drawn the interest of firms including Australia’s SolGold Plc, which is developing a copper, gold and silver mine in northern Ecuador. Some 10,000 people now work in illegal mining in Buenos Aires, which Romo says has a population of around 2,000. Armed gangs are increasingly involved in human traff icking and prostitution.

Brazil govt to cut 2019GDP growth forecast

Two suspected Italianmob members arrested

Petrobras kicks off bid tosell natural gas fields stake

Macri, rivals launch adsfor presidential election

Ecuador cracks downon illegal miners

ECONOMY CRACKDOWNDECISION POLITICS LAW AND ORDER

PAKISTAN

Gulf Times Tuesday, July 9, 201916

Offi cials in Islamabad are believed to have in-formed the Pakistan

embassy that Prime Minister Imran Khan wishes to stay at the ambassador’s offi cial residence instead of an expensive hotel during his three-day visit to Washington, starting on July 21.

While staying at the ambas-sador’s residence can consider-ably reduce the cost of the visit, inquiries have revealed that nei-ther the US secret service nor the city administration appears “very receptive” to the idea.

The United States secret service takes over the security of a visiting dignitary as soon as he or she lands in the US, while the city administration has to ensure that the visit does not

disrupt Washington’s traffi c.The US capital receives hun-

dreds of presidents and prime ministers every year, and the US federal government works jointly with the city administra-tion to ensure that those visits do not disturb the city’s normal life.

The ambassador’s residence is in the heart of Washington’s diplomatic enclave, just off one of the city’s main arteries, the Mass (Massachusetts Avenue).

There are at least a dozen em-bassies in and around that area, including those of India, Tur-key, and Japan, while another dozen embassies such as those of Brazil, Britain, and South Af-rica are not far away.

A visiting head of government also typically holds a number of meetings with US government offi cials, lawmakers, media, and think-tank representatives dur-

ing his stay in Washington.Since the residence is not

large enough for all these meet-ings, the prime minister will have to meet his guests at the Pakistan embassy, commut-ing through Washington’s busy traffi c during rush hour.

To do so, his entourage will have to drive by most of these embassies as well as the US vice-president’s offi cial resi-dence.

Some immediate family members of US President Don-ald Trump also live between the two locations.

Any closure of the street on which the ambassador’s resi-dence is situated will prevent other residents, including sev-eral ambassadors, from travel-ling to and from their workplac-es during Prime Minister Khan’s three-day stay.

In addition, nobody will

suggest closing the Mass as it will block traffi c all the way to downtown, which houses hun-dreds of offi ce buildings, in-cluding the White House.

These logistics and security issues force visiting heads of states and governments to stay at one of half a dozen hotels that have special arrangement for such VVIPs.

The most popular among them is Willard InterConti-nental, which is hardly a few hundred yards from the White House.

Other hotels also used for this purpose are Four Seasons, Georgetown and Ritz-Carlton, Washington DC.

Those wanting to cut down expenses also stay at Wardman Park Marriott, which is close to the Pakistan embassy.

Some embassies prefer this hotel because it is huge and can

be used for hosting community events as well.

Each of these hotels has a VVIP section, with separate ele-vators and exit and entry points.

This makes it easy for the US secret service to ensure secu-rity.

However, if Prime Minister Khan still wants to avoid a hotel, he can stay with one of the rich Pakistani-Americans in the DC suburbs.

Most of these houses have tall boundary walls and can be eas-ily secured.

Staying in a suburb, however, means travelling to Washing-ton every morning and holding all the meetings at the Pakistan embassy.

This will be another headache for the US secret service.

The Pakistani embassy bor-ders the Israeli embassy, and is thus another top security zone.

PM wants to avoid pricey hotels during visit to US

InternewsIslamabad

Prime Minister Khan: wishes to stay at the ambassador’s off icial residence instead of an expensive hotel during his three-day visit to Washington, sources say.

Imran cites Russian American novelist Ayn Rand to describe ‘elitist’ economy

Prime Minister Imran Khan has

shared the words of a renowned

writer Ayn Rand, eerily presci-

ent of Pakistan’s economy, ruled

by corrupt and elitist mindset

as inherited by the current

government.

In her 1957 novel Atlas

Shrugged, the Russian-Ameri-

can writer and philosopher had

said: “When you see that trading

is done, not by consent, but by

compulsion – when you see that

in order to produce, you need

to obtain permission from men

who produce nothing – when

you see that money is flowing

to those who deal, not in goods,

but in favours.”

She went on saying in her wide-

ly-read novel: “When you see

that men get richer by graft and

by pull than by work, and your

laws don’t protect you against

them, but protect them against

you – when you see corruption

being rewarded and honesty

becoming a self-sacrifice –you

may know that your society is

doomed.”

The prime minister, whose

government inherited Pakistan

with a record deficit and foreign

loans worth Rs30tn, the quote

on his Twitter handle says:

“This is so apt for the Pakistan

inherited by the PTI (Pakistan

Tehreek-e-Insaf) govt.”

As an exclusive digital plat-form of the prime minis-ter’s start-up programme,

the IdeaGist is set to establish 590 incubators and accelerators at national educational institu-tions.

The programme is aimed at shifting job-centric academic orientation towards society-led innovative exploration and de-veloping vibrant entrepreneur-ship ecosystem.

IdeaGist would facilitate set-ting up of these incubators at universities, seminaries and technical colleges under a pub-lic-private partnership.

“This initiative will boost en-trepreneurial activities in the country by promoting a conven-

tional start-up culture,” IdeaG-ist chief executive Hassan Sayed said.

He said that IdeaGist has pledged Rs8bn for the Prime Minister’s Startup Pakistan Pro-gramme to develop incubators and accelerators in 190 universi-ties, 300 technical colleges and 100 top seminaries

(madrasas).Sayed said his organisation

had recently signed an accord with the Business Incubation Centre (BICON) of the National University of Modern Languages (NUML) to materialise this plan.

Under this partnership with the NUML, he said, both the in-stitutions would foster collabo-ration by ensuring a sustainable start-up ecosystem in the coun-try through connectivity, aware-ness and capacity building.

IdeaGist would help connect

incubatees, mentors, trainers and venture capitalists from across the globe with the BICON under a virtual incubation partnership, he added.

In this collaboration, IdeaGist would off er incubation manage-ment training to the staff of iden-tifi ed educational institutions, who would eventually transfer that knowledge to students plan-ning to launch their start-up.

Sayed said that the NUML would also off er incubation manager and management train-ing, during which the required knowledge would be shared with potential and new incubators.

He said that IdeaGist and the NUML would also jointly make eff orts to seek local and interna-tional grants, projects, assign-ments and business development opportunities.

To achieve Prime Minister

Imran Khan’s vision of entre-preneurship, the whole start-up programme is structured on fi ve initiatives, Sayed explained.

The National Investment Por-tal (NIP), the National Startup Showcase (NSS), the Association of Pakistan Innovation Clubs (APIC), the Association of Incu-bators (AOI), and the Association of Entrepreneurs (AOE) make up that programme, he added.

He said that the NIP would provide a platform to entrepre-neurs, communities and compa-nies to work together towards an improved future, while the NSS would help entrepreneurs to get required investment for their business ventures.

The APIC would promote in-novative thinking and entre-preneurial spirit among univer-sity students to create a cultural change and make entrepreneur-

ship as a fi rst career choice, he said.

He further added that the AOI would comprise of incubation platform managers, corporate joint venture partners, and ven-ture capital investors, while the AOE would be providing a plat-form for entrepreneurs to con-nect, network, collaborate, men-tor and support each other.

Sayed said his organisation is focusing on the promotion and application of emerging tech-nologies.

He said emerging technologies include 3D printing, artifi cial in-telligence, intelligent vehicles, smart robots, block chain “In-ternet of Things”, and augmented reality.

Sayed said IdeaGist would launch a fast-track programme on those emerging technologies soon.

590 incubation centres on cards under PM’s programmeInternewsIslamabad

Family affair

A man takes a bath with his children in a river during hot and humid weather in Charsadda, on the outskirts of Peshawar.

Transporters associa-tions in Karachi have increased fare of buses,

coaches and minibuses by up to 100%, citing a manifold in-crease in prices of fuel, trigger-ing anxiety in the city residents already feeling the eff ects of infl ation.

Amid heavy increases in compressed natural gas (CNG) prices for the last 10 months, the transporters said, the Sindh government had not in-creased fares for the last eight years, though during this peri-od the Punjab government had increased fares fi ve times.

Thus it was not possible for them to run public transport under such circumstances, the transporters said.

A leader of the main trans-porters body of the city said that certain other associa-tions had themselves increased fares, adding that the trans-porters would observe strike on July 10 in the city to pres-sure the provincial govern-ment to increase fares.

According to passengers, the bus of route number 11-C has increased the fare from Safoora Chowk to Saddar from Rs20 to Rs40, a 100% increase.

The passengers said that when they asked the bus con-ductors to show a notifi cation of the fare hike by the provin-cial authorities, they did not have any such notifi cation.

Instead, the conductors showed a letter/notifi cation purportedly issued by the Bus Owners Association of Kara-chi.

The conductors asked the passengers to get off if they did not want to pay the increased fare.

An exchange of hot words was witnessed among the bus conductors and the passen-gers, who were also seen curs-ing the transporters and the government offi cials for not taking any action regarding the increase in fare.

Minibuses and coaches have also increased the fare on their own.

Mohamed Salman, an Edhi volunteer, said that the mini-bus of route W-11 had in-creased fare from Liaquatabad to Tower from Rs20 to Rs30.

The passengers also com-plained that the public trans-port owners had recently stopped plying their vehicles on full route to earn more mon-ey, putting an extra fi nancial burden on the passengers.

Mohamed Azam, who trav-els from Gulshan-e-Hadeed to Saddar on a daily basis, said that Muslim coach’s fare was Rs30 for travel between the two places, but it had recently stopped plying the full route.

Instead, the coach drivers stop the vehicle at Quaidabad from where another coach charges Rs20 for onward jour-ney to Gulshan-e-Hadeed.

Karachi Transporter It-tehad (KTI) president Irshad Bukhari said that they had not increased fare but instead they had issued a strike call for July 10.

However, he admitted that certain transporters’ associa-tions had themselves increased fares as it is increasingly diffi -cult for them to run the busi-ness amid rising fuel prices.

Public transport fares in Karachi raised by up to 100%InternewsKarachi

One of the top constitu-tional offi ce-holders, now retired, and an

equally important person still holding an esteemed position in a state institution, are named in “Part-II” of the scandal-ous video, whose “Part-I” was made public by Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) leader Maryam Nawaz on Saturday.

Informed sources said that

the material in “Part-II” is more shocking than “Part-I”.

“Part-II” contains the remain-ing portion of the alleged fi lmed talk of accountability court Judge Arshad Malik, who was allegedly giving a detailed account of how he was pressured to hand down a verdict against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Sources said “Part-II” of the video showed the judge talking about what he had experienced in the offi ce of important person still holding an esteemed posi-tion.

The video also reveals how the case against Nawaz Sharif was allegedly minutely supervised, dictated, and concluded.

On Saturday, Maryam played an explosive video before the media, purportedly showing Judge Malik telling a man that he was blackmailed and coerced into convicting her father Nawaz despite there being no evidence against him.

The judge was shown telling a man, Nasir Butt, that “they have in possession secret material against everybody. They called

me and showed me a video. After watching it, I had no choice but to act upon what they said.”

Maryam claimed that the judge sent his car for Butt to bring him to his house, and told him that “there is no proof against Nawaz Sharif in the money-laundering and the assets-beyond-means cases, and those about kickbacks or Hussain Nawaz’s alleged mon-ey transfer from Saudi Arabia”.

Judge Malik has since issued a statement, in which he did not disown the video completely, but said the video shown by Maryam

was contrary to facts and an out-of-context amalgamation of dif-ferent talks taking place on dif-ferent occasions.

He admitted that he knows Butt, who was seen in the video sitting next to him.

The judge said the video was an attempt to malign him, his family, and the judiciary.

He said that during the trial of Nawaz and other members of the Sharif family, he was off ered a bribe a number of times, and threatened with consequences if he refused to co-operate.

‘Part-II’ of video about judge even more shocking: sourcesInternewsIslamabad

More than 2,000 revenue off icers transferred in major reshuff le

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) of Pakistan announced the transfers of more than 2,000 off icers in a major reshuff le.According to a notification, the FBR in a grand scale shake-up has decided to transfer off icers in 16 off ices ranging from grades 9 to 16.Those regions where changes have taken place include Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Islamabad.Other regions where transfers have taken place are Peshawar, Gujranwala, Multan, Faisalabad, Hyderabad, Quetta, Abbottabad, Sukkur, Sialkot, Sahiwal, Bhawalpur, and Sargodha.The notification further stated that 726 off icers and off icials from grade 9 to 16 have been transferred, while 656 off icers from Lahore and 357 off icers from Rawalpindi and Islamabad have been transferred.Last week local media had reported that the government had decided to bring major changes in the overall structure of the FBR in the name of reform.Under this, the FBR’s headquarters were expected to be trimmed and the number of members reduced.

Three journalists no more on TwitterPakistan’s largest media house has forced three journalists to deactivate their social media accounts.The Jang media group, which runs English- and Urdu-language newspapers and the popular Geo television channel, asked two reporters and an anchor to deactivate their accounts.The Twitter accounts of reporters Umer Cheema and Azaz Syed, and anchor Wajih Sani were no longer active yesterday.Cheema has more than 1mn followers on Twitter. – DPA

Actor opens up on social media about cyber-bullying and mental health

Actor Iqra Aziz has opened up about cyber-bullying and mental health in her latest post on Instagram.The 21-year-old who rose to fame through the hit drama Suno Chanda penned a lengthy note on Instagram regarding mental health and about being cyber-bullied.“It takes a few words to humiliate someone to the core, few words to fat shame someone, few words to thrust down their throat that they aren’t good enough for the world, few words to spread negativity and insecurities,” Aziz wrote on Instagram.She added: “It take a few words to bring a smile on someone’s face, it would take a few words to save someone’s life, it would take a few words to make someone feel beautiful, it would take a few words to spread all the positivity you have.”Aziz further said: “These are some of my thoughts after reading all the criticism/negative comments on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.“These are the most used apps, this is social media, it has so much POWER of its own and that means you have the power to make someone’s day or make them forcefully admit by bullying them that it wouldn’t make a diff erence if they weren’t around,”She added: “300mn people around the world have depression, according to World Health Organisation – March 21’ 2019.”“Why Make Them Feel Bad, When We Have The Power To Make Them Feel Good?” Aziz wrote.

Key crossing to be open 24 hoursPakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to keep one of their border crossings open for 24 hours starting next month to ease travel and enhance trade, a foreign ministry off icial said.Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had taken up the issue during a recent visit to Islamabad.Arrangements are under way for round-the-clock operations at the Torkham border crossing in northwestern Pakistan from August, Pakistani Foreign Off ice spokesman Mohamed Faisal said.Hundreds of citizens and trade convoys cross the Torkham border daily. The crossing currently operates 12-hours a day.

PHILIPPINES17Gulf Times

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Valenzuela residents blame recycling plants for pungent smellsBy Carmela Fonbuena Guardian News & Media

As noon approaches in Valenzuela City and resi-dents prepare to have

their lunch, a pungent smell of melted plastic swirls through the air, killing everyone’s appetite.

“It gets suff ocating in the evening. We have to close our windows despite the heat and bury our noses under our blan-kets when we sleep,” says Rosalie Esplana, 40.

The area on the outskirts of the Philippine capital of Manila, has been dubbed Plastic City.

Its ramshackle streets are home to tiny houses sandwiched next to large factories belching out fumes.

Residents have been been plagued by foul odours, which they claim come from a neigh-bouring recycling plant, STC Enterprises. Locals allege emis-sions from the plant have caused several residents to develop a lingering cough, a claim the plant owners deny.

Valenzuela City is a micro-cosm of some of the problems facing communities in south-east Asia, which have become the dumping grounds for the world’s plastic waste.

In May, the Philippines shipped 1,500 tonnes of waste back to Canada, after it dis-covered the country was send-

ing containers of garbage that included non-recyclable items such as adult nappies.

The nation has similar prob-lems with supposedly recyclable waste from other countries, in-cluding South Korea, Australia and Hong Kong, and the govern-ment is now eyeing a total ban on waste imports.

In Valenzuela’s Canumay West village, the problem of foreign waste is personal. The Guardian joined city environmental offi c-ers touring the village. They say inspections prompted by resi-dents’ complaints over the smell of burning plastic are common-place.

“We check if they’re following environmental laws and make sure that their air pollution con-trol devices are working,” says city environment and natural resources offi ce chief Rommel Pondevida.

A signifi cant proportion of the plastic waste recycled in the plants in the city comes from other countries, a fact that lo-cal offi cials including the mayor, Rex Gatchalian, only found out recently.

“I think we have enough waste in the country to process, reuse, and recycle. We don’t need waste from abroad,” Gatchalian says.

Customs data from 2018 shows more than 3mn kilograms of plastic recyclable waste were imported to the Philippines from the US alone — declared in cus-

toms documents as waste, par-ings and scraps of plastic.

The waste found in industrial areas such as Valenzuela City is usually mixed with locally sourced raw materials.

While the locals complain about air quality, the local plas-tic industry says the row over imported waste, and particu-larly t he diplomatic spat with Canada, threatens to make busi-ness diffi cult even for legitimate recyclers.

“We are doing something good for the environment, right? We understand there are issues. But nobody is checking the posi-tive impact that we are contrib-

uting to the society,” says Sher-win Koa, manager of Citipoly Industries.

Koa is worried that proposals for an outright ban of all kinds of recyclable plastic materials will force many recyclers to close shop.

“If we’re not able to sustain operations, then we cannot process the local materials also,” said Koa.

Gatchalian is proud of the city’s role in recycling a large proportion of the country’s plastic waste and says the prob-lem is unscrupulous recycling operations, whom he fears could give recycling a bad name.

“Isn’t this the practice that we desire when it comes to plastic? Recycle, reuse and repurpose, rather than throw it directly to the sewer and let it go out in open sea? Regulation is key.

If problems persist, the com-panies can be shut down. I just shut down one last week,” Gatchalian says.

Two months after environ-mental offi cers visited Cunumay West, residents are still suff ering from the pungent smell.

“The odour is repulsive,” says Benjamin Lopez, 50. “It woke us up at 2am one time. I had to spray perfume in the room. Oth-ers had taken to spreading Vicks

VapoRub under their noses.”Residents believe the smell

is responsible for fi ve-year-old girl Shantal Marcaida contract-ing pneumonia, which led to her hospitalisation.

On July 1, village chief Mario San Andres gave the owner of STC Enterprises, Wilson Uy, two weeks to clean up or risk losing his business permit.

In a public meeting with resi-dents and city environmental offi cers, Uy said STC wasn’t en-tirely responsible for the smell and that residents had continued to report complaints even after he temporarily stopped operations.

Speaking to the Guardian he

denies fumes from the plant are making people sick and says STC only recycles local plastic.

“We also live here. We value our lives, too. If there is a prob-lem, we wouldn’t want to live here,” Uy says.

There is no escaping the smell in Plastic City. Even outside the village hall, a soft hint of melted plastic permeates the air. Gatch-alian knows the long-term solu-tion is to move the factories away from the residential areas, but San Andres wants action now.

“We have to address these concerns. I also want the village residents to enjoy a long life,” he says.

Amnesty urges UN probe of ‘systematic’ drug war killingsAFP Manila

Philippine President Ro-drigo Duterte’s narcotics crackdown has become a

“systematic” campaign of kill-ing, Amnesty International alleged yesterday, urging the United Nations to launch a probe into thousands of deaths.

The drug war is Duterte’s signature initiative and is heav-ily supported by many Filipi-nos, but the nightly slaying of suspects by police and masked gunmen has provoked interna-tional condemnation.

In a speech just hours after Amnesty issued its report at-tacking the crackdown, Du-terte said “extrajudicial killing is okay, but not corruption”, though he did not elaborate fur-ther.

In its report, Amnesty said there is a well-worn pattern of deadly police operations, plant-ed evidence and abductions that start with so-called “watch lists”.

Those names are supplied by local offi cials who are “un-der immense pressure” from authorities to provide a steady stream of suspects, the Lon-don-based monitor said.

“Worse still, individuals on watch lists appear to be placed on them indefi nitely, with no means of getting delisted, even after they have gone through drug treatment or stopped us-ing drugs,” said the report.

Amnesty said it was impos-sible to determine how many people have been killed in the campaign, accusing Manila of

“deliberate obfuscation and misinformation” that has left victims’ kin feeling helpless.

The government’s offi-cial toll is just over 5,300, but watchdogs say the true number is quadruple that.

“What we believe is most important, in assessing the current situation, is the sys-tematic nature of the viola-tions,” Amnesty’s East Asia di-rector Nicholas Bequelin said.

Amnesty said the press has

lost interest in the killings while the government fails to investigate or provide ad-equate treatment programmes for drug users.

“It has had the effect of cre-ating a climate of total impu-nity in the country, in which police and others are free to kill without consequence,” it said.

“There is sufficient evidence to conclude that crimes com-mitted may constitute crimes

against humanity,” the group added. Amnesty said it inves-tigated the deaths of 27 people over the past year in Bulacan, a province near Manila that has become “the country’s bloodi-est killing field”.

Police broke down doors before shooting drug suspects inside and abducted others to be killed elsewhere, it alleged.

Police also tampered with crime scenes and fabricated their reports, planted evi-

dence and stole from victims, it added. Amnesty called on the UN Human Rights Coun-cil to open an inquiry to “put an end to these crimes, and to provide justice and repara-tions for countless families and victims”.

“We ask that the council vote on the resolution and let it pass this week so that an in-dependent investigation can commence led by the UN,” Amnesty section director in

the Philippines Butch Olano told reporters. He was refer-ring to a draft resolution, pro-posed by Iceland and backed mainly by Western nations, which calls for a probe into the drug war and that is expected to go up for a vote before the council sessions end on Friday.

Duterte’s spokesman Salva-dor Panelo criticised as “in-corrigible” Amnesty’s call for a probe, adding police only killed suspects in self-defence.

Butch Olano, Amnesty International section representative holds their report during a press conference in Manila, yesterday. Right: This photo taken on July 7, 2019, shows Lilia Jacobe, the grandmother of Bryan Conje, crying at his wake, after going missing on July 2, but found dead on July 5 under a bridge where he lived.

Canumay West village in Valenzuela City has numerous recycling plants that deal with plastic waste produced domestically and imported from other countries. Five-year-old Shantal has been diagnosed with pneumonia three times.

Most Filipinos ‘satisfi ed with Duterte’By Ralph Villanueva Manila Times

The net satisfaction rat-ing of President Rodrigo Duterte rose to a personal

high for the second quarter of 2019, with four out of fi ve Filipi-nos voicing satisfaction with his performance, according to the Social Weather Stations (SWS).

The survey, conducted from June 22 to 26, 2019, found that 80% of Filipinos were satisfi ed with the performance of Du-terte, while 12% were dissatis-fi ed.

The remaining 9% were unde-cided.

This resulted in a +68 net sat-isfaction rating, which was clas-sifi ed by the polling fi rm as “very good.”

This surpassed the previous record of +66 in the prior quar-ter and in June 2017.

Duterte’s higher net satisfac-tion rating was attributed to a nine-point hike in Balance Lu-zon, recorded at +65, from +56 in March.

This was a record-high in the area, surpassing the +60 in De-cember 2016. The president’s rating declined by seven points in Mindanao — +81 from the record-high +88 in March.

It remained virtually identi-cal in the Visayas (+66, from the +69 in March) and Metro Manila (+59, from +61 in March.)

The net satisfaction rating of Duterte in urban areas also went up by 5 points — +67 from +62 in March. It remained un-changed in rural areas — +68 from March’s +69. It also had a new record-high in class E, net-ting a “very good” +68 for June, from the +58 in March.

“This surpassed the previous record of very good +67 in June 2017,” SWS said.

The president maintained a record-high +68 among those in class D, or the “masa.” There were fewer people who were sat-isfi ed with Duterte’s perform-ance in classes A, B and C at +58, down by 11 points from the record-high +69 in March.

His net satisfaction rating stayed very good among women at a record-high +69, from +65 in March. It also stayed very good among men at +67 in June, down by a point from +68 in March.

The survey was conducted among 1,200 Filipinos aged 18 years old and above. It had sam-pling error margins of + or – 3% for national percentages, and + or -6% each for Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.

Manila may seek legal action over boat incidentBy Catherine S ValenteManila Times

The Philippine govern-ment would hale to court the captain and

crew of the Chinese ship that rammed a Filipino fi shing boat near Recto (Reed) Bank, if the Chinese government failed to impose sanctions against them, Malacanang said yes-terday.

“If (China) cannot do that (impose sanctions), then we will sue them in our jurisdic-tion. They endangered lives. We can fi le a case of reckless imprudence resulting in seri-ous damage of property and endangering the lives of our

countrymen,” Palace spokes-man Salvador Panelo said.

“There is only one way by which they can justify the abandonment of our fi sher-folk, and that is by so doing, their lives would have been endangered,” he added.

Panelo, however, expressed confi dence that China would penalise the Chinese captain and his crew if its investigation showed that they committed violations.

“They said they will not al-low it. If they were at fault, they will impose sanction for their irresponsible behaviour,” the Palace offi cial said.

“So if they were held ac-countable and compensation was provided, or if they were

prosecuted or slapped what-ever sanctions, that’s also jus-tice. But if they cannot do that, then we will sue them in our jurisdiction,” he added.

The Palace offi cial reiter-ated that President Rodrigo Duterte did not downplay the sinking of a Filipino fi shing boat in Recto Bank, which the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) and the Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) described as a “very serious” incident.

Panelo said the Coast Guard report did contradict the pres-ident’s statement that the boat ramming was a little maritime accident.

He explained that when Du-terte made the statement, he meant that the incident was

not serious enough to trigger an international crisis.

“It’s serious in the sense that when you leave our coun-trymen there after that in-cident, then that’s a serious matter. We will not allow that. You have to be accountable for that. But you cannot blow that and make it into an interna-tional crisis. You know why? Because that was a Chinese vessel. That’s not China Re-public,” Panelo said.

The report of the PCG and Marina said the Chinese failed to implement measures to prevent the ramming the fi sh-ing boat. It also mentioned the failure of the Chinese vessel to assist the 22 Filipino fi shers, who were abandoned at sea.

Revilla fi les bill to lower retirement ageBy Bernadette E TamayoManila Times

Senator Ramon Revilla Jr has fi led a bill calling for the lowering of the retirement

age of government employees from 65 to 60.

Revilla fi led Senate Bill 72 seek-ing to amend Republic Act 8291, or the Expanded Government Service Insurance System Act of 1997 that sets the mandatory and optional retirement age for gov-ernment employees at 65.

He noted that the government is the biggest employer in the Philippines with approximately

1.4mn employees. Revilla ex-plained that because only a few take early retirement, manpower turnover is slow. “Most govern-ment employees opt to retire at the age of 65 thereby creating a stand-off in terms of position movement and the entry of new employees,” he said.

Revilla added, “This scenario aff ects government effi ciency since people with advance age tend to suff er from a decline of cognitive and physical ability.”

He added that this will ad-dress unemployment since those retiring will make room for fresh graduates who will improve effi -ciency of the government.

Gulf Times Tuesday, July 9, 2019

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Dominant USA rule women’s football yet again

The United States underlined their status as the dominant force in international women’s football by winning a fourth World Cup in eight editions on Sunday, but the tournament has also highlighted the growing threat to them coming from Europe.

In their third consecutive fi nal, the USA were too strong for the Netherlands as they won 2-0 in Lyon to retain their title with Megan Rapinoe and Rose Lavelle scoring.

It means a European nation has not won since Germany in 2007, while the USA’s four World Cups stand alongside their record four Olympic golds.

Their triumph came after they topped their group ahead of Sweden and then beat Spain, hosts France and England en route to the fi nal, where they defeated the European champions.

While the USA started their campaign with a World Cup record 13-0 win over Thailand, their encounters with European opposition were closer aff airs.

“I think the level around the world is growing exponentially every year, so four years on, this was incredibly diffi cult because the opponent is better and the teams we had to come through were some of the best in the world,” said USA coach Jill Ellis

when asked to compare this World Cup win with 2015.

The USA were the only nation from outside Europe to reach the quarter-fi nals in France.

Ellis — who was born and brought up in England but only got a chance to play the game after moving to the USA as a teenager — acknowledges that things are fundamentally changing in Europe as leading clubs invest more heavily in women’s teams.

Real Madrid are the latest to get involved, and standards are rapidly rising in domestic leagues.

While Germany and the Scandinavian countries remain prominent, and England and France keep aspiring to major tournament success, Spain and Italy have made huge strides, aided by the development of their own leagues.

It has been a diff erent story in the Netherlands — all of their starting line-up in Sunday’s fi nal are based elsewhere in Europe.

“The competition outside is better than in the Netherlands, that’s why everyone is fi tter and they are playing better, and I think if we do that more, then in four years we can do this again,” commented defender Desiree van Lunteren.

For now, however, none of them have been able to stop this USA generation, who are worthy successors to the great team who won the title as hosts in 1999, eight years after the country lifted the inaugural World Cup.

The USA were the only nation from outside Europe to reach the quarter-fi nals in France

09- 07 -2019

By Ngaire WoodsOxford

The strategic rivalry between the United States and China poses a sharp challenge to international organisations,

which are now at risk of becoming mere pawns of either power. Whether multilateral institutions can retain a role in facilitating desperately needed international co-operation remains to be seen.

The Sino-American conflict is already replacing globally agreed rules with the exercise of raw power, as each side wrestles for access to resources and markets. The US is eschewing long-standing trade agreements in favour of unilaterally imposed measures. China is carving out its own economic and geostrategic sphere through bilateral partnerships and aid, trade, and investment packages under its transnational Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The two rivals are also competing for control of new technologies and the data that enable them. Among the top 20 technology companies in the world, nine are Chinese and 11 are American.

On the Chinese side, the tech giants enjoy access to a wealth of data, because they are backed by a government that is bent on collecting it for the purpose of surveillance and establishing a social-credit system. Equally, Chinese companies are expanding their reach and access to data, such as China’s CloudWalk deal to build facial-recognition software in Zimbabwe. On the US side, the tech giants are being supported through provisions in trade agreements like the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which requires cross-border data flows without restriction.

The strategic rivalry is a battle not just for control over resources, access to markets, and technological domination, but also, more broadly, for control over the rules of the game. In 2015, when China created the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as a new multilateral institution, the US refused to join and pressured others not to do so, either. Earlier this year, when China and the US disagreed over who would represent Venezuela at the IDB meeting (the US pressed China to accept a representative of the opposition to the government, and China refused), the institution’s Board in Washington, DC, cancelled the meeting in Chengdu just one week before it was due to take place.

This is not the first time that a great-power rivalry has threatened to marginalise international institutions. After its founding in 1944, the World Bank was soon sidelined in the reconstruction of Europe. With the Cold War came heightened strategic competition in Europe, leading the US to pursue more direct means of engagement through the Marshall Plan. In the event, the World Bank was relegated to a different job: lending to poorer countries.

Some commentators describe the BRI as “China’s Marshall Plan.” Yet the new strategic rivalry differs from the Cold War in many ways, starting with the fact that the US and China are economically interdependent to a degree that the US and the Soviet Union never were. Still, the principle of “mutually assured destruction” created its own kind of interdependence, leading to co-operation on nuclear-arms control despite the intense rivalry.

One lesson of the Cold War may be particularly relevant today: attempts to establish broad rules, such as US President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s Basic Principles Agreement in 1972, proved less effective than narrower arrangements such as the 1955 Austrian State Treaty conferring neutrality on Austria, or the 1962 agreement establishing Laotian neutrality. By the same token, formal multilateral treaties and organizations worked best when they addressed specific dangers, as in the case of the 1971 Berlin Quadripartite Agreement, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), and the 1972 Incidents at Sea Agreement. All of these agreements were highly contested, but each played a role in managing the rivalry.

In the case of the Sino-American conflict, the challenge is to contain the trade war, which could have devastating consequences on other countries. Unfortunately, the current system of rules is already being eroded. The World Trade Organisation’s dispute-settlement mechanism is being paralysed by

the Trump administration’s refusal to allow any appointments to its Appellate Body.

Breaking the impasse will require creative thinking and perhaps a series of narrower agreements to breathe life back into the system. For example, countries with trade disputes could make better use of the WTO’s 60-day bilateral consultations requirement to reach a settlement on their own. WTO leaders could be far bolder and more creative in finding ways to support rule-based trade. They should recall the way leaders in the United Nations initiated “peacekeeping” (which is not mentioned in the UN Charter) and expanded the use of the office of the secretary-general to advance peace at the height of the Cold War.

Other multilateral organisations will also need to rethink their strategies. Regardless of whether larger powers are locking horns, the world desperately needs mechanisms to facilitate co-operation on issues such as climate change, biodiversity, cross-border infrastructure, and the regulation of new technologies. International organisations can provide a forum for debating such matters, sharing information, and arriving at common solutions. They can also play a crucial role as neutral monitors of previously agreed rules, reducing the temptation for any one country to cheat or pursue zero-sum, unilateral action.

China, the US, and the rest of the world have shared interests across a wide range of issues. But to facilitate co-operation toward common objectives, international organisations will need to be renovated.

The World Bank, for example, could create new instruments to address regional and global challenges, instead of remaining locked into single-country loans, and it could shed the ideological baggage preventing some countries from embracing its Country Policy and Institutional Assessment approach.

Rather than lending to poor countries in ways that amplify the biases of the world’s largest bilateral donors, the Bank should identify neglected areas and ensure balance in global development financing. It will also need to overhaul its governance structure to give both China and the US a sense of ownership and influence.

It is imperative that the Sino-American rivalry stops short of war. We know from history what can happen when national leaders define rivals as enemies and exploit national grievances for personal political gain. Right now, this tendency is on display in both China and the US.

To contain the new strategic competition, the rival powers, along with the rest of the world, should emulate the Cold War-era focus on narrowly defined, specific agreements rather than attempting to craft new broad-based rules. Multilateral organisations such as the WTO and the World Bank could play an important role in brokering such accords, but only if their respective leaderships are bold and creative, and if their stakeholder governments allow it. - Project Syndicate

Ngaire Woods is Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.

Can multilateralism survive the Sino-American rivalry?

US President Donald Trump meets with China’s President Xi Jinping at the start of their bilateral meeting at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, recently. The Sino-American trade war could have devastating consequences on other countries.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Tuesday, July 9, 2019 19

Deutsche Bank careers end in an envelopeReutersHong Kong/London/New York

Summoned by HR to be handed a Deutsche Bank envelope, many of its staff across the world then left their desks

for the last time yesterday, shown the door by their German employer within hours of a restructuring announce-ment.

Deutsche Bank confi rmed on Sunday that it was closing huge parts of its trading businesses, with staff in its equities division in Sydney and Hong Kong among the fi rst to be told their roles would go.

“If you have a job for me, please let me know,” said a banker leaving the Hong Kong offi ce yesterday.

Staff leaving in Hong Kong were holding envelopes with the bank’s logo.

Three employees took a picture of themselves beside a Deutsche Bank sign outside, hugged and then hailed a taxi.

“They give you this packet and you are out of the building,” said one equities trader.

“The equities market is not that great so I may not fi nd a similar job, but I have to deal with it,” said another.

At the bank’s Wall Street offi ce, staff impacted by the cuts were summoned to the cafeteria to learn of their fate.

A notice inside the building’s lobby told staff the cafeteria would be closed until 11.30am EST.

Hundreds of staff were informed during the meetings that their positions were being cut, sources within the bank told Reuters.

They also received details of their redundancy packages.

One source said staff could be seen saying their goodbyes to colleagues upon leaving the cafeteria.

Speaking outside the bank’s offi ce, one employee told Reuters the cuts had been anticipated for weeks.

“People have been planning their

next moves but it’s a tough market,” the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Deutsche Bank plans to close all of its equity trading business and cut some parts of its fi xed income

operations, in an overhaul expected to lead to 18,000 job cuts.

Some of those roles will be cut immediately, while some staff will be kept on for longer while they help wind down operations.

A few hours after the Hong Kong staff left, workers were seen leaving Deutsche Bank’s offi ce in the City of London, which along with New York is expected to bear the brunt of the cuts, carrying similar envelopes.

“I was terminated this morning, there was a very quick meeting and that was it,” said one IT worker, who left while Deutsche Bank chief executive Christian Sewing was inside the building doing a call with the media.

Few staff wanted to speak outside the bank’s London offi ce, but trade was picking up at the nearby Balls Brothers pub around lunchtime.

“I got laid off , where else would I go,” said a man who had just lost his job in equity sales.

The layoff s were going beyond the major fi nancial centres.

A Deutsche Bank employee in Bengaluru told Reuters that he and several colleagues were told fi rst thing that their jobs were going.

“We were informed that our jobs have become redundant and handed over our letters and given approximately a month’s salary,” he said.

“The mood is pretty hopeless right now, especially (among) people who are single-earners or have big fi nancial burdens such as loans to pay,” he added.

Deutsche spokespeople in Hong Kong and London declined to comment on specifi c details about the number of departures, but said they would try to support people being made redundant.

For those losing their jobs in equities, fi nding a new one could prove diffi cult, with the industry still grappling with higher costs from new European regulations on share trading.

“The job market in equities is going to be very tough,” said George Kuznetsov head of research and analytics at Coalition, which analyses the investment banking industry.

“Our expectations if for equities sales and trading revenues falling 7-8% this year and that of course is going to put a lot of halts into the hiring across most of the brokers”.

For Deutsche Bank staff whose jobs are safe for now, there was some relief, but also big doubts about the future.

“The biggest question for us is where do we go from here if we don’t off er the whole suite of products? Will clients stick with us or is the game over?” said a Singapore banker who remains in his job.

Most older adults with ‘prediabetes’ don’t develop diabetes

Deutsche Bank is clutching at straws

Live issues

By Lisa RapaportReuters Health

Researchers followed 2,575 men and women aged 60 and older without diabetes for up to 12 years. At the start of the

study, 918 people, or 36% of the group, did have higher-than-normal blood sugar levels that were still below the threshold for diabetes.

Only 119 people, 13% of those who started out with elevated blood sugar, went on to develop diabetes. Another 204, or 22%, had blood sugar levels drop enough to no longer be considered prediabetic.

“Progressing to diabetes is not the only destination,” said lead study author Ying Shang of the Aging Research Centre at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

“In fact, the chance to stay prediabetic or even revert back to (normal blood sugar) is actually

pretty high (64%), without taking medication,” Shang said by e-mail. “Lifestyle changes such as weight management or blood pressure control may help stop prediabetes from progressing.”

Average blood sugar levels over the course of about three months can be estimated by measuring a form of haemoglobin that binds to glucose in blood, known as A1c. Haemoglobin A1c levels of 6.5% or above signal diabetes.

Levels between 5.7% and 6.4% are considered elevated, though not yet diabetic, while 5.7% or less is considered normal.

Worldwide, about 352mn adults have elevated blood sugar that’s not high enough to warrant a diabetes diagnosis, the study team notes in the Journal of Internal Medicine. By 2045, that’s projected to rise to 587mn, or 8.3% of adults worldwide.

People in the study with prediabetes were more likely to return to healthy

blood sugar levels if they lost weight, were free of heart disease and had low blood pressure.

Obese adults with prediabetes were more likely to progress to full-blown diabetes.

The study wasn’t designed to determine why people with prediabetes might progress to full-blown disease or return to healthy blood sugar levels.

One limitation of the study is that it had too few people with prediabetes to draw broad conclusions about how the condition might progress for millions of people worldwide. Researchers also lacked data on what lifestyle changes, such as shifts in eating or exercise habits, people might have used to try to reverse prediabetes.

“Larger studies will be needed to confi rm these fi ndings, and more treatment and lifestyle information would be needed to better understand why less people became diabetic than anticipated,” said Dr R Brandon Stacey

of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“By having more lifestyle and treatment information, it may be possible to better identify patterns that enabled patients to successfully lose weight or lower their blood pressure to potentially reduce the risk of diabetes,” Stacey, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by e-mail.

Even so, the results suggest that a diagnosis of prediabetes should motivate patients to make lifestyle changes, said Dr Ron Ruby, co-director of the cardiometabolic centre at Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Centre in Torrance, California.

“Optimise the things you can control; weight loss, diet, exercise, and sleep,” Ruby, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by e-mail. “This approach, though challenging to maintain for the long term, may be suffi cient to prevent the progression to diabetes.”

By Nils PratleyLondon

Little more than a decade ago, Deutsche Bank seemed to have achieved the remarkable feat of beating the big Wall Street

banks at their own game. Germany’s biggest fi nancial institution, fuelled by an acquisition spree, a long bull market and willingness to pay fat bonuses, owned one of the world’s top fi ve investment banks.

Its rise looked natural and inevitable. Why wouldn’t the biggest bank in the eurozone’s biggest economy be able to compete with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs and outmuscle Barclays, the UK’s would-be investment banking champion? In the summer of 2007, just before the arrival of the global fi nancial crisis, Deutsche’s share price reached €110.

The bank is now a national embarrassment. With shares below €7, Deutsche is worth just €15bn (£13.5bn), about a quarter of the supposed value of its assets. Even in eurozone banking terms, it’s become an also-ran: Santander in Spain is worth €68bn. The plan to chop 18,000 jobs is the only option that remains to ensure a 149-year-old institution survives its misadventures in high-risk investment banking. Every other self-help strategy has failed.

Paul Achleitner, the chairman of supervisory board, called the plan “the right response to the major changes and challenges in the fi nancial industry”, as if Deutsche had been caught up in a new and sudden storm that is battering everyone. He’s clutching at straws. It is correct that nobody is making decent money in trading equities, the part of Deutsche’s operation where the axe will fall most heavily, but the reality is that the storm happened a decade ago. The German bank was simply too slow to react to the global fi nancial crisis.

Deutsche is only now setting up an internal “bad bank” to sell €74bn of unwanted fi nancial assets. Royal Bank of Scotland performed the “bad bank” manoeuvre – on a bigger scale – after the crash and completed the bulk of the process in 2017. Deutsche, unlike RBS, avoided a state-backed bailout, but seems to have wasted an entire decade avoiding serious restructuring.

Its chief executive, Christian Sewing, was nearer the mark when he said Deutsche now had to “say where we are strong and where we are not”. Full-scale investment banking is

clearly in the “not” category. Deutsche was present in most of the big banking scandals that came to light after 2008 – such as rigging the foreign exchange and fi xed-income markets – and paid a $7.2bn fi ne in the US for fl ogging mortgage-backed junk. It even added a few unique off ences, such as failure to prevent dirty Russian money being sent to off shore accounts via London.

Sewing’s lower-risk formula for Deutsche’s future sounds more sensible. The bank will concentrate on German retail and business markets while trying to grow in fund management; and the investment banking unit will be a slimmer operation that looks after big eurozone companies’ currency and bond needs.

The open question, though, is whether Deutsche has seen the light too late. “What Deutsche Bank plans to do in the next two to three years is no more than what US and European banks have been doing in cascades ever since the end of the global fi nancial crisis more than 10 years ago,” said the rating agency Scope.

Quite: at a moment when the big banking beasts, even RBS and Barclays in the UK, have declared their years of restructuring to be over, Deutsche is only now talking the language of radicalism. Job cuts are the easy part. The lesson from elsewhere is that it takes about a decade to repair a bank as broken as Deutsche. – Guardian News & Media

Men carry bags and suit carriers as they leave the off ices of Deutsche Bank AG in London, UK, yesterday.

People walk past a Deutsche Bank off ice in London.

WARNINGInshore : Expected strong wind

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Offshore : Dusty to slight dust with some clouds

WINDInshore : Northwesterly 10-20/25

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