Widam set to sell subsidised sheep - Gulf Times

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SUNDAY Vol. XXXVII No. 10201

September 4, 2016Dhul-Hijja 2, 1437 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

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Widam set to sellsubsidisedsheepWidam’s slaughterhouses will be open for the public during the first three Eid days from 5am to 5pm

Ahead of the upcoming Eid al-Adha, Widam Food Company is set to sell subsidised Arabic

sheep to Qataris from today until Sep-tember 13.

Each Qatari, 18 years and above, is entitled to one subsidised sheep. Widam, in co-operation with the Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC), will provide 12,200 such sheep to be sold ahead of the upcoming Eid al-Adha. Each Jordanian sheep will be sold for QR1,100.

Widam, in a statement, pointed out that it had adopted a comprehensive plan in co-operation with the govern-ment departments concerned to make this season a success and had made sure that all the necessary services were in place for the convenience of the public.

To claim the allocated subsidised sheep, the buyer should head to one of the designated slaughterhouses of Widam located at Al Mamoura , Al Shammal, Al Khor or Al Mazrouah, and show his Qatari ID at the registration point.

“After verifying the credentials, the employee in charge will issue him a purchase receipt. He can go to the designated livestock barns to select his sheep and receive it without having to slaughter it at the Widam slaughter-house.”

Regarding the sale of Australian sheep, Widam said these would be also sold from today to the general public

through coupons issued at the com-pany’s selling points. The price for a sheep is set at QR350, plus QR10 for the slaughtering, as these animals will be slaughtered at Widam abattoirs and are not meant to be taken away alive.

The company has kept ready around 45,000- 50,000 heads for this season to cater to the expected surge in de-mand. The number includes sheep and some Australian calves. The purchased carcasses will be delivered during the fi rst and second days of Eid al-Adha, as the slaughtering process will start after the Eid prayers until 5pm for the fi rst day and from 5am to 5pm on the second and third days.

Widam stressed that all its slaugh-terhouses would be open for the public during the fi rst three Eid days from 5am to 5pm. Besides, the company has made the public waiting halls comfortable by equipping them with all the necessary means of convenience.

The company has hired an adequate number of butchers and other staff to reduce the waiting time for customers. Further, the company has engaged the services of a company specialised in security to regulate the exit and entry of customers and avoid any potential delays or congestion.

Priority will be given to woman cus-tomers, the elderly and persons with special needs, it said. There will be guides, who will help solve any issue that may arise due to the huge turnout.

Meanwhile, the company has point-ed out that it will always maintain the highest possible standards of quality, health and safety for its products and services.

US, China join climate dealin ‘turning point’ for planetAFPHangzhou, China

The United States and China yes-terday formally joined the Paris climate change agreement, with

President Barack Obama hailing the accord as the “moment we fi nally de-cided to save our planet”.

The move by the world’s two big-gest polluters is a major step forward for the 180-nation deal, which sets ambitious goals for capping global warming and funnelling trillions of dollars to poor countries facing cli-mate catastrophe.

Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping handed ratifi cation docu-ments to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who said he was now optimistic the agree-ment will be in force by the end of this year.

At a ceremony in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, Obama said climate change would “defi ne the contours of this century more dramatically than any other challenge”.

History would show that the Paris deal would “ultimately prove to be a turning point”, he said, “the mo-ment we finally decided to save our planet”.

“There’s an American saying, You need to put your money where your mouth is. That’s what we’re doing.”

The Paris accord aims to limit global temperature increases to two degrees centigrade, and will be triggered after it is ratifi ed by at least 55 countries, ac-counting for 55 % of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The US and China are together re-sponsible for some 40 % of the world’s

emissions, so their participation is crucial.

China’s Communist-controlled parliament ratifi ed the agreement ear-lier yesterday, and President Xi said the Asian giant was “solemnly” com-mitted to the issue.

“Hopefully this will encourage oth-er countries to take similar eff orts,” he said in Hangzhou, where he is to host the G20 summit of the world’s leading developed and emerging economies.

Until yesterday, only 24 of the sig-natories had ratifi ed the accord, in-cluding France and many island states threatened by rising sea levels but who only produce a tiny proportion of the world’s emissions.

Ban said there would be high-level talks in New York later this month to push more countries to sign up, and told the two leaders they had “added powerful momentum” to eff orts to bring the accord into force.

“I am optimistic we can do it before the end of this year.”

Climate is one of the few areas where the world’s two most power-ful countries - who are at loggerheads on issues ranging from trade disputes, cyberspying and the South China Sea - are able to fi nd common cause.

Campaigners welcomed the move, with WWF saying they had sent “a very powerful signal that there will be real global action on climate change”.

But some environmental groups say that the Paris pledges by China, the US and others fall far short of what is needed to meet the goal of less than two degrees of warming.

“This moment should be seen as a starting point, not the finale, of glo-bal action on climate,” said Green-

peace policy adviser Li Shuo.The Paris pact calls for capping glo-

bal warming at well below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and 1.5 C (2.7 F) if possible, compared with pre-industrial levels.

For China, ratifying the agreement fi ts with Beijing’s domestic political agenda of being seen to make eff orts to clean up the environment, after years of breakneck industrial development led to soaring air, water and ground pollution.

The scourge is estimated to have caused hundreds of thousands of early deaths, and is the source of mounting public anger.

Under the Paris accord, China has pledged to cut its carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 60-65 % from 2005 levels by 2030 and increase non-fossil fuel sources in primary energy con-sumption to about 20 %.

Neither of those requirements im-plies a commitment to cut absolute levels of emissions, although China is also obliged to have them peak by “around 2030”.

In its Paris commitment, the US promised to cut its own emissions 26-28 % below 2005 levels by 2025.

During the negotiations over the Paris deal Beijing stressed the concept of “diff erentiated responsibilities” - the idea that developed countries should shoulder the lion’s share of the burden as they have polluted most since the Industrial Revolution.

For its part the White House is look-ing for the Paris accord to come into force during Obama’s tenure, in part to burnish his climate legacy, but also to ensure it is not derailed by the forth-coming US election. Page 14

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama shaking hands as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon looks on during a joint ratification of the Paris climate change agreement ceremony ahead of the G20 summit at the West Lake State Guest House in Hangzhou yesterday. The United States and China formally joined the Paris climate deal, with US President Barack Obama hailing the accord as the “moment we finally decided to save our planet”.

Expressway projects worth over QR38bn under construction

Projects worth more than QR38.98bn are currently under-way across Qatar as part of Ash-

ghal’s plan to develop the country’s Expressways.

A report in Ashghal’s annual report (2015) said that until December 2015, construction projects worth QR49.8bn had been awarded by Ashghal as part of its ambitious Expressway Project.

As per the report, currently 11 Ex-pressway projects are in diff erent stages of construction and 10 more are in the design phase.

The most important ones are those

related to the 200km-long New Or-bital Highway and Truck Route starting from New Hamad Port on the country’s southern side to Ras Laff an Industrial City.

The road bypasses city areas and are mostly through the desert areas. The Contract 1 of the project between Ha-mad Port to Orbital Highway alone is tendered for QR3.2bn. A 41km road is being built as part of the project and it connects Hamad Port and Al Wakrah bypass with other works being con-structed as part of the project.

It includes the construction of a road

linking Mesaieed Road to the East West Corridor. The work began in the fi rst quarter of 2014.

Contract 2 of the project, which started in the second quarter of 2014 is between Salwa Road and North Relief Road. This is approximately 54km and includes eight two-level inter-changes. It is worth QR4.271bn.

The third and fourth contracts, worth QR6.089bn and QR3.481bn re-spectively, also started in the second quarter of 2014. The third contract is for the works between Mesaieed and Salwa and the fourth is between

Dukhan Highway and Al Khor Link Road.

In the third contract, there are three major junctions while the fourth has fi ve.

The road, when completed, is expect-ed to provide an alternative route with faster journey times without touching residential areas while travelling be-tween Al Khor and New Hamad Port.

It is expected to manage up to no less than 1500 heavy goods vehicles per hour in each direction. It can also cater for general traffi c volumes at approxi-mately 8000 vehicles per hour in each direction.

One of the bridges of the New Orbital Highway under construction on the southern side of the country.

HIA tells passengers to arrivethree hours early for fl ights

Due to the Eid al-Adha travel rush, Hamad International Air-port (HIA) has advised depart-

ing passengers to arrive at the airport three hours before the fl ight “to enjoy a comfortable and seamless journey”.

The HIA advisory said the rush is expected to continue until September 14.

“To enjoy a comfortable and seam-less journey, be sure to check in online, arrive three hours prior to your fl ight and use the E-gates to avoid queues,” HIA has said, reminding passengers that check-in would close 60 minutes prior to departure.

People who are dropping off or col-lecting passengers have been advised to use the short-term car park, which off ers complimentary parking for the fi rst 30 minutes and costs QR5 per hour thereafter.

Passengers also have the option of parking their vehicles at the airport’s long-term car park, which provides them with a regular shuttle service to the main terminal every 15-20 min-utes.

For assistance during travel and updates on deals and off ers, one can download the HIAQatar App available for both Android and iPhone.

QATAR | Diplomacy

FM receives phonecall from KerryHE the Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani yesterday received a telephone call from the US Secretary of State John Kerry. During the call, they discussed the latest developments in Syria.

QATAR | Product

Samsung Note 7 recall over battery fl awThe Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC), in co-operation with Samsung Electronics Co, has announced the recall of Galaxy Note 7 devices on account of a potential defect in the battery that may lead to a fire. MEC has advised all those who have bought the product to contact the dealer or the sellers to replace the device or get a full refund.

AMERICA | Tremor

Earthquake hits OklahomaOne of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in Oklahoma rattled the state yesterday morning, the United States Geological Survey said, and tremors were felt throughout the region. The quake had a magnitude of 5.6. Page 10

GERMANY | Policy

Merkel expresses no regrets on refugees Angela Merkel said yesterday that she had no regrets about her welcoming policy toward refugees, even as a new poll showed that fewer than half of Germans surveyed would trust her with a fourth term as chancellor. Page 14

BUSINESS | Exhibition

Waterproof gadgets making a splashFrom smartphones that can survive a dip in the sink to sweat-resistant earphones and floating speakers for your next pool party, waterproof gadgets are making a splash at this year’s IFA electronics fair in Berlin. Business Page 19

ASEAN | Health

Zika virus in Singapore‘from regional strain’Singapore yesterday reported 215 cases of Zika infections as scientists in the city-state said the virus strain comes from within Asia and was not imported from Brazil. Page 11

PHILIPPINES | Blast

President declares ‘state of lawlessness’Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte yesterday declared a “state of lawlessness” in the country after 14 people were killed in a bomb blast at a night market in his home city, Davao. Page 20

2 Gulf TimesSunday, September 4, 2016

QATAR

Black by Splash is bold and beautiful

Qatar expressescondolences on Karimov death

Minister inKyrgyzstan

Haj mission workinground the clock

Splash has launched the Black premium collection, targeting women in the

16-40 age group, at its stores in Al Asmakh Mall and City Center Doha.

The collection is described as the return of the grunge - sharp-er, edgier with a dash of oomph.

The Black collection is fo-cused on straightforward sil-houettes, layered shapes and a lot of detailing.

With around 30 pieces on display which includes apparel and accessories, the collection promises an array of fabrics to experiment with.

There are leather, satin, silk georgette and spandex in key pieces like jackets, skirts, dress-es and shirts.

The line also has a mono-chrome element which will be updated depending on the sea-sonality.

The rebel attitude is high-lighted further with the use of intricate details and embellish-ments like zippers, chains, studs and mirrors.

The focal point for the range will be evening wear and acces-sories.

The niche product is priced between QR200 and QR800.

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and HH the Deputy Emir Sheikh Abullah bin Hamad al-Thani yesterday sent cables of condolences to Acting President Nigmatilla Yuldashev on the death of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani also sent a cable of condolences to Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev on the death of Karimov.

HE the Minister of Culture and Sport Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali and his accompanying delegation arrived in Kyrgyzstan on Friday to attend the opening ceremony of the second World Nomad Games.The minister was received by Kyrgyzstan’s Minister of f Labor and Social Development Kudaibergen Bazarbayev and Qatar’s ambassador Mohamed bin Arar al-Nuaimi. The event is being held in Kyrgyzstan’s Cholpon Ata province on the northern shore of Issky Kul Lake.

The Qatari Haj Mission’s various units are working round-the-clock to provide all services to pilgrims from the country in order to help them perform their rituals properly, the mission’s executive president Dr Abdul Salam Ali al-Qahtani said. He said the mission has making all eff orts to ensure the safety of their place of residence and the quality of service to be provided to them.

Municipality takes action against restaurant in Najma

New model ofcare helpingchild patients

KidzMondo, art centre join hands to ‘create photographic memories’

The Health Control Section at Doha Municipality has taken action against a restaurant in Najma for storing and

preparing food at a nearby workers’ accom-modation.

An expatriate man had earlier reported the issue to the municipality.

Inspectors questioned the workers and manager who admitted storing and prepar-ing the meals at a nearby house and trans-porting it to the restaurant, ready to be served.

During a search, the inspectors found food items stored in in unhygienic condi-tions at the labour accommodation. They found frozen chicken being defrosted at room temperature.

Apart from a lack of overall cleanliness, the workers themselves failed to maintain the necessary standards of hygiene when handling food products.

The outlet was issued a notice of viola-tion of law No 8 for 1990 regarding food control regulations.

The Health Control Section has affi rmed its determination to continue its inspec-tions and said it would handle all com-plaints seriously in order to protect people.

Similarly, the Health Control Section at Al Shamal municipality has conducted a number of searches at several eateries and shops.

Besides, the director of the municipal control section accompanied offi cers to inspect the slaughterhouse of Madinat Al Shammal, the fi sh market and a chicken farm.

The Municipality of Al Khor and Al Za-khira has also launched a cleaning cam-paign at Al Zakhira fi sh market.

A new collaborative model of care introduced into Al Maha Children’s Unit

at Rumailah Hospital is ben-efi ting patients in a big way.

Al Maha 1 is a 26-bed long-term facility providing com-plex care for children aged from three months to 14 years.

Many of them have their breathing supported by a me-chanical ventilator.

The length of stay for each child varies from months to years depending on the pa-tient’s diagnoses, ranging from hereditary disorders and neu-ro-muscular disorders, to res-piratory disorders.

Amira (not her real name) was born prematurely at 33 weeks and was mechanically ventilated, hospitalised and dealing with one medical con-dition after another.

However Amira, now four years’ old, is no longer depend-ent on hospital care and now resides with her family in the community thanks to this new facility.

“At three months of age, Amira, who was the fi rst baby for her family, was admit-ted to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit with respiratory failure because of a viral ill-ness. From then until the age of four, Amira was hospitalised and attached to a mechanical ventilator through a tracheos-tomy, suff ering from multiple

episodes of acute illnesses,” re-called Dr Reem Babiker Abdalla Mohamed, general paediatrics consultant at Al Maha Chil-dren’s Unit.

Al Maha Children’s Unit in-troduced the new collaborative model of care as the population of its patients has continued to rise by about 150% in less than two years after its opening and also because the level of patient complexities became more challenging.

The new multi-disciplinary subspecialties round en-sures continuity of care for its young patients, improves their health outcomes and in-creases satisfaction levels of their families.

Al Maha Children’s Unit was established in October 2010 as a collaboration between Ru-mailah Hospital and Hamad General Hospital and in con-sultation with the Toronto-based Hospital for Sick Chil-dren and Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital.

The aim was to establish a specialised unit to provide the highest standard of care and improve the quality of life for medically complex technolo-gy-dependent children.

The initiative is led by Gen-eral Paediatrics, and Child Re-habilitation with development teams who are role models in taking a collaborative approach to treatment and care.

Dr Mohamed said once eve-ry month, the Al Maha team, which comprises a paediatri-cian, pharmacist, nutritionist, respiratory therapist, physi-otherapist, nurse and occupa-tional therapist, is joined by paediatric pulmonology con-sultants and specialists from other Hamad Medical Corpo-ration’s network of hospitals to conduct their rounds.

“Each subspecialist clini-cian, usually from Hamad General Hospital, has a sched-uled time they visit based on their other duties and each pa-tient’s needs.

Although this is challeng-ing for many of the specialists since it is off site work, the in-centive that keeps them going is the positive patient out-come,” Dr

Mohamed said.She explained that the Al

Maha teams of specialists usu-ally discuss each child’s cur-rent health condition, future care plans and their possible long-term outcome with the child’s family.

On some occasions, other clinicians are invited to join these discussions based on the patient’s needs and the com-plexity of their illness.

Dr Mohamed noted that part of the collaboration also in-cludes the regular paediatric dental services by the Depart-ment of Dentistry.

KidzMondo Doha has signed a partnership agreement with Al-

Rayyan Art Centre, adding to its range of educational estab-lishments and entertaining ac-tivities.

The two entities have joined hands to “create photographic memories,” according to a press statement.

KidzMondo Doha is Qatar’s “one-of-a-kind” miniature edutainment city, while Al-Rayyan Art Centre is a “leading action photography and con-ceptual art” service provider in Qatar.

The signing was attended by Sheikh Ahmed bin Nass-er bin Hassan al-Thani, who founded the art centre

to deliver quality photog-raphy, advertising, event management and other cre-ative products and services, covering both conceptual and technical areas that match clients’ best inter-ests.

The ceremony was also at-tended by Ayman al-Jamil, CEO of Aura Holding, and Nabil R Barakat, general manager of KidzMondo Doha, who said: “Under the new partnership, Al-Rayyan Art Centre’s professionals will be taking photographs of the Kidizens (kid citizens) as they role-play through KidzMondo Doha’s estab-lishments.

“Youngsters can then visit

the Art Centre’s stand on the premises to acquire their photographs, as an everlast-ing memory of their unique experience at the edutain-ment city.

“Al-Rayyan Art Centre’s partnership with KidzMondo Doha is designed to complete the children’s journey at the kid-sized city, with a token of remembrance for the spe-cial time they spend exploring establishments and learning about the adult professional world in a fun and entertaining way.”

KidzMondo Doha will fea-ture an interactive kid-sized city developed for and man-aged solely by children aged two to 14 years.

Off icials at the agreement-signing ceremony.

OFFICIAL

The Black collection is focused on straightforward silhouettes, layered shapes and a lot of detailing.

Food items were found stored in the labour accommodation in unsuitable conditions.

Frozen chicken packets were left to thaw at room temperature in unhygienic conditions.

QATAR3Gulf Times

Sunday, September 4, 2016

QNRF launches fellowship for women researchersThe Qatar National Re-

search Fund (QNRF) has launched a sci-

ence fellowship programme for Qatari and Qatar-born female PhD students and MSc graduates for which applications will be received until September 30.

The Women in Science (WIS) programme aims to complement the vision of fostering a research culture in Qatar with the motto ‘Building a new genera-tion of talented women re-searchers in Qatar’. Off ered in collaboration with CRDF Global, the programme seeks to fi ll the gap between the number of successful women graduating from universities and the number of women eff ectively

present and active in the Qatari research workforce.

The fellowship is availa-ble in research areas such as Ecology of Infectious Dis-eases, Environmental Sci-ence, Cyber-security and Materials Science in Ener-gy. The research fellowship will be for four months in a US university under one of these four topics.

The fellowship will ex-pose WIS fellows to univer-sity research environment under the mentorship of leading female researchers in the US. QNRF and CRDF Global will jointly fund the fellowship, and CRDF Glo-bal will coordinate all nec-essary travel arrangements and accommodation for all selected fellows for the

duration of the fellowship.The programme will help

ensure that fellows contin-ue pursuit of their research at institutions inside Qatar and enable them to share the skills, knowledge and professional connections gained in the US with their colleagues.

The programme also pro-vides working experience with best-in-class scien-tists, one of whom will be the research mentor as well as with state-of-the-art re-search equipment wherever necessary.

WIS aims to contribute socially and scientifi cally to Qatar’s research mis-sion with the potential for worldwide impact and pro-vide networking opportu-

nities and potential support for future employment.

While the primary ben-efi t of this activity is to build human capital, its secondary aim is to support young female researchers to work- upon completion of the fellowship- within Qa-tar-based research groups in areas of national priority as outlined in the Qatar Na-tional Research Strategy.

CRDF Global is a non-profi t organisation that promotes international scientifi c and technical col-laboration through grants, technical resources, and training. CRDF Global’s mission is to promote peace and prosperity through international science collaboration.

Texas A&M at Qatar’s engineering programme off ers 26 short courses Engineering students at

Texas A&M University at Qatar (Tamuq) are build-

ing on their classroom knowl-edge and bringing their imagined projects to life through the Engi-neering Enrichment Programme (EEP).

First off ered in spring 2016, the programme provides 26 short courses to students who want a more hands-on engi-neering experience to drive in-novation and entrepreneurship.

The programme, which just wrapped up its third cycle in mid-August, enhances Texas A&M at Qatar’s commitment to educate exemplary engineers and well-rounded leaders. EEP has three levels: Pros, Mentors and Inventeers. Pros learn the skills of machining, electronics, fabrication and programming. Mentors help their fellow stu-dents learn these valuable skills while solving design problems and Inventeers have the oppor-tunity to bring their ideas to fru-ition — and possibly have their projects sponsored.

EEP manager Yasser al-Ha-midi said he wants the pro-gramme to empower engineering students.

“These short courses are im-portant stepping stones in your career,” al-Hamidi said, adding: “This recognises you as an expert in your course, but the road doesn’t end here. We look forward to seeing you return as mentors and to con-tinue toward certifi cation.”

Dr Eyad Masad, vice dean of Texas A&M at Qatar, told students that he was proud of what they’d accomplished, and their participation showed their “commitment and thirst for learning and gaining skills.” Ma-sad encouraged them to continue in the programme to train the next group of students.

More than 100 students have since participated and some have achieved certifi cation. One stu-dent attained the NI Certifi ed La-bVIEW Associate Developer dis-tinction and fi ve of the 12 Certifi ed SOLIDWORKS Associates in Qa-tar are Aggie engineers. The pro-gramme came full circle last week when one of its certifi ed students literally became the teacher.

For students, the draw is the opportunity to get certifi ed in house. “Personally, the chance to take a SolidWorks course and future opportunities to get certi-fi ed is why I wanted to be here,” said one of the participants, Ma-her Armoush. “It was a really good experience.”

Beyond short courses, one new aspect of the programme will be involving students in in-ternational competitions like the Society of Automotive Engi-neers’ Formula SAE programme where students will be tasked to collectively build a race car from scratch.

Masad also said he hopes these trainings will appear on future students’ transcripts as ancillary coursework. A student working on a project.

Detergent maker backs ‘Made in Qatar’ expoQatar Detergent Com-

pany (QDC) will sup-port the upcoming

‘Made in Qatar’ exhibition as a sector sponsor, Qatar Chamber (QC) has said in a statement.

This is the fi rst time that the event, scheduled from No-vember 6 to 9 in Saudi capital Riyadh, is being held outside Qatar.

Speaking at the agreement signing ceremony, QDC gen-eral manager Hamdy Abu-elkassem said the company’s new factory opened recently in Mesaieed Industrial City and will contribute to increas-ing exports to GCC, Arab and Mena markets. “It will be a push towards global markets,” he noted.

The offi cial stressed his confi dence in the Qatari products to be able to com-pete globally, adding that the event “refl ected the booming economy of Qatar”.

Qatar Chamber director general Saleh Hamad al-Shar-qi said QC appreciated this initiative from the company, which would further help in holding a successful exhibi-tion and enhance its role in developing Qatar’s industry.

He thanked the company for the co-operation, prais-ing its leading role in the fi eld of detergent products and its contribution to the industrial sector in general.

The four-day exhibition

aims to attract investment in the manufacturing sector while promoting and show-casing locally manufactured products in Saudi markets.

The exhibition will include a selection of products from leading Qatari companies, along with small and medium businesses, in order to intro-duce Qatari products to the Saudi business community.

It also aims to promote Qatar’s industry sector and encourage the use of Qatari products, while updating the Saudi business community on the latest developments in participating sectors.

The number of participants at the exhibition, including leading companies and fac-tories, is expected to dou-ble, compared to the previ-ous edition, which attracted more than 220 companies and factories.

Al-Sharqi recently empha-sised that the exhibition was a “big chance” for many lo-cal fi rms and institutions to exchange experiences and se-cure business deals with their Saudi counterparts, as well as strengthen Qatar-Saudi economic partnership.

The exhibition will include a selection of products from Qatari companies in order to introduce them to Saudi business community

Accurate address allows quick access to services: MoIThe Ministry of Interior (MoI) has reminded residents that its “Know your address” electronic service allows them to enquire about their place of residence and area through six options.These are name of the street, electricity number, zone number, name of the neighbourhood, co-ordinates and building number, according to a post on the Ministry’s Facebook page.The facility becomes particularly important when people seek to obtain any of the services provided by the Ministry. These include services off ered by the General Directorate of Nationality, Borders and Expatriates Aff airs, Traff ic Department, the various security departments concerned with combating crime and the National Command Centre regarding emergency services (999). The availability of a detailed and accurate address will guarantee easy and quick access to such services, it is observed.Address plates have been put up on buildings across the country as part of a GIS (Geographical Information System) initiative.

Sasol renews sponsorship for Al Fikra competition

Sasol, the interna-tional integrated chemicals and en-

ergy company, has an-nounced its support for the Al Fikra National Business Competition for the fourth year in a row.

Organised by Qa-tar Development Bank (QDB) and its partners, Al Fikra, now in its fi fth year, is intended to be a catalyst for entrepre-neurship in Qatar.

Sasol previously sup-ported the 2013 and 2014 editions of the Al Fikra competition as technology sponsor and platinum sponsor, re-spectively. In 2015, the company elevated its support to become the main sponsor.

Registration for the competition began last month, with training workshops set to take

place for entrepreneurs through September and October. The fi nal busi-ness plans are due in October, and the fi nal ceremony announcing the winner takes place in December.

Henk Joubert, opera-tions manager or GTL Ventures, Sasol, said: “Sasol is pleased to once again support QDB as the main sponsor of Al Fikra. We admire this competition because it

takes a holistic view to the entrepreneurship ecosystem – providing fi nancial and non-fi nan-cial support and benefi ts to participants.”

The Al Fikra business competition was de-signed by QDB to sup-port innovative business ideas in Qatar and pro-vide investors with a way to contribute to a vibrant economy. In line with Qatar National Vision 2030, Al Fikra supports the diversifi cation of Qa-tar’s economy away from a hydrocarbon-based to a knowledge-based economy.

In a statement, Sasol said its sponsorship to Al Fikra was in line with the company’s community engagement eff orts in Qatar and its long-term entrepreneurship and SME support in its home country, South Africa.

Henk Joubert


QATAR

The Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS), in collaboration with the Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries in Ankara, will organise a training course on living conditions measurement in the community from today until September 8.The course will be attended by staff from the MDPS and Permanent Population Committee in order to unify the methodologies of social phenomena monitoring as a prelude to preparing reports on sustainable development.The initiative comes in preparation for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, according to a press statement.Participants will learn about the concept and determinants of poverty and income inequality, the data sources and calculation methodology of such indicators.They will recognise the experiences of many countries in the measurement of these indicators.

Ministry organises training session on living conditions index

Ooredoo launches next-generation fi rewall and connectivity solution

Ooredoo has announced the launch of its new Managed Router Serv-

ice Extension, which has been designed for small busi-nesses in Qatar that need to be able to network their

branches cost-effectively.In addition to enhanced net-

working capability, the Managed Router Service Extension solu-tion comes with a device that has a built-in full-fl edged fi rewall.

This means that customers

can connect their various sites cost-eff ectively using any ex-isting Internet connection (Mo-bile Broadband, Business Fibre, among others) and can also se-cure their data behind a sentry that uses Unifi ed Threat Man-

agement (UTM) to automatically update its catalogue of known cyber threats.

Talking about the service, Yousuf al-Kubaisi, COO of Ooredoo Qatar, said: “Our new service enables Qatar’s busi-

nesses to offl oad the task of managing their networks and free their IT staff to focus on revenue-generating initiatives.”

“With this service in place, we can ensure their business net-works remain up and running

24/7. We are investing heavily in the latest technology to connect and secure our country’s busi-nesses and this extension service is the latest in 2016, as we push forward to become Qatar’s lead-ing ICT provider.”

Gulf Times Sunday, September 4, 2016

REGION6

Market mine blast kills three soldiersAFPAden

Three Yemeni soldiers were killed yesterday when a mine they had “disman-

tled” and taken away in their ve-hicle blew up as they stopped in a marketplace, a security offi cial said.

Seven other people including three civilians were wounded in the blast in Huta, capital of the southern province of Lahj, a bas-tion of Al Qaeda militants, ac-cording to the offi cial.

The soldiers had “dismantled” the mine planted by suspected jihadists on a road on the edge of Huta and placed it in the back of their vehicle, he said, declin-ing to be named. The device exploded when they stopped

at a market in the city, he added.Forces loyal to President Abd-

Rabbu Mansour Hadi are at war on two fronts, against both mili-tants and Shia Houthi rebels who control swathes of northern and central Yemen.

Kuwait citizens advised to check phones before travelling to USReutersDubai

Kuwait has advised citizens to make sure their phones contain no material that

might be seen as being linked to Islamist militants before travelling to the United States, local media reported yesterday, after three men were denied entry in July.

State news agency Kuna quot-ed a statement by the Kuwaiti embassy in Washington as say-ing that authorities at “some US airports may check the contents of mobile phones or other smart mobile equipment”.

“The embassy of the state of Kuwait in Washington urged citizens to make sure that their phones do not contain any ma-terials or photos of extremist na-

ture, related to areas of confl ict or terrorist organisations or footage of violence of all kinds before en-tering US territories,” Kuna said, citing a statement.

“(This is) so that students and citizens may be spared ques-tioning by authorities in US airports and to avoid any ac-tion against them that could result in cancelling their vi-sas and banning them from

entering US territories,” it added.The Arabic language al-Rai

newspaper reported in July that three businessmen were ques-tioned for 21 hours at Los Angeles airport and had their telephones checked before they were turned back, in the second incident of its kind this year.

The Gulf state is a key US ally and a member of an international alliance led by the United States

which is fi ghting against Islamic State in Syria.

In July, the United Arab Emir-ates, another close Gulf Arab ally of the United States, told its male citizens to avoid wearing traditional white robes and head dress when travelling abroad, af-ter a businessman was wrestled to the ground at an Avon, Ohio hotel and held as an Islamic State suspect.

Yemenis gather around a burnt vehicle at the site where a mine, that Yemeni soldiers were taking away in their vehicle, blew up in a marketplace yesterday in Huta, the capital of the southern province of Lahj, a bastion of Al Qaeda militants. The mine, that the Yemeni soldiers had “dismantled”, exploded when they stopped at the market, killing three soldiers and wounding at least seven civilians.

Yemeni PM to visit Sudan today

Prime Minister of Yemen Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr will start today an off icial visit to Sudan, heading a high-level delegation. Suda-nese radio service said that bin Daghr, during the visit, will hold

talks with Sudanese off icials on bilateral co-operation and issues of common concern in addition to the current Arab situations and the developments in the Yemeni peace process.

A man stands on rubble from destruction at the site of an air strike by Arab coalition in Sanaa,Yemen, yesterday.

7Gulf TimesSunday, September 4, 2016

ARAB WORLD

Turkey sends secondaid shipment to GazaAFPAnkara

Turkish aid for the Gaza Strip has been sent from the coun-try’s southern coast for the

second time since relations were normalised between Israel and An-kara in June, a Turkish official said yesterday.

A humanitarian aid ship bound for southern Israel’s Ashdod port left Mersin on Friday, the offi cial said, “the second major shipment of humanitar-ian aid to Gaza since an agreement was reached”.

The shipment is the fi rst since Turk-ish lawmakers ratifi ed the deal to nor-malise ties between the two countries last month.

Under the deal, Israel will pay Tur-key $20mn in compensation for a botched Israeli commando raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship in 2010 that left 10 Turks dead.

The offi cial, who did not wish to be named, said Ankara had sent 100 wheelchairs, 1,000 bicycles, 100,000 backpacks and stationery kits, 300,000 pieces of clothing and 350,000 nappies.

The shipment also contained 1,288 tons of fl our, 170 tonnes of rice, 64

tonnes of sugar, 95 tonnes of vegetable oil, the offi cial said.

“We expect the items to be distrib-uted to the people of Gaza before the upcoming Islamic holiday,” the offi cial said, referring to the Eid al-Adha holi-day, around September 12.

The fi rst shipment reached Gaza on July 4 just in time for the Eid cel-ebrations marking the end of Ramadan fasting.

Turkey’s ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party has friendly ties with Gaza’s Hamas rulers, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been a vocal supporter of the Pal-estinian cause.

Palestinians wait for travel permits to cross into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing, yesterday in the southern Gaza Strip. Egyptian authorities temporarily reopened it both directions for two days in Gaza Strip. Patients, people with residence permit and passport owners are allowed to cross to border.

ARAB WORLD


Turkey opens a newfront in Syria attack

AFPAnkara

Turkey yesterday sent more tanks into the northern Syr-ian village of al-Rai to fi ght

Islamic State extremists, opening a new front after its intervention last month against the group, state media reported.

The tanks crossed into the village from Elbeyli in the Turkish province of Kilis to provide military support to Syrian opposition fi ghters after rid-ding northern villages of extremists in its “Euphrates Shield” operation launched on August 24, state-run Anadolu news agency said.

At least 20 tanks, fi ve armoured personnel carriers, trucks and other armoured vehicles crossed the bor-der after noon, Dogan news agency said.

Turkish Firtina howitzers fi red on IS targets as the contingent ad-vanced, Dogan said.

Meanwhile, Turkish warplanes destroyed two IS targets in Wuguf in southern al-Rai between 10:00 GMT and 10:24 GMT, the Chief of Staff said, quoted by NTV television.

The statement also said two vil-lages and an airport were captured by rebels yesterday in the al-Rai region.

In the last few months, al-Rai has repeatedly changed hands between rebels and IS.

This is Ankara’s most ambitious operation during the fi ve-and-a-half-year Syria confl ict, backed by the tanks as well as warplanes and special forces providing support to rebels.

The goal is to remove IS from its border and to halt the westward ad-vance of the Kurdish People’s Pro-tection Militia (YPG).

Ahmed Othman, a commander in pro-Turkey rebel group Sultan Mu-rad, said in Beirut that his group was now “working on two fronts in al-Rai, south and east, in order to ad-vance towards the villages recently liberated from IS west of Jarabulus”.

Othman said it was the fi rst phase of their plans.”We want to

clear the border area between al-Rai and Jarabulus from IS, before advancing south towards al-Bab (the last IS bastion in Aleppo) and Manbij (controlled by pro Kurdish forces).”

After the Kurds’ success in Man-bij, they said they wanted to advance and link their other two ‘cantons’ in northern Syria, Kobane and Afrin.

But President Recep Tayyip Er-dogan said on Friday that Turkey would not allow the group to create a “terror corridor”.

Ankara sees the Kurdish Demo-cratic Union Party (PYD) and the YPG as terror groups acting as the Syrian branch of separatist rebels in Turkey’s restive southeast.

Turkish military tanks are seen during clashes between Turkish soldiers and Islamic State group fighters, 20km west of the Turkish-Syrian border town of Karkamis, in the southern region of Gaziantep, yesterday.

Forces loyal to Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) gather around a tank, as they attack the last positions of the Islamic State group’s (IS) militants yesterday in the area known as district three in the west of the coastal city of Sirte.

Libyan govtforces attacklast IS-heldareas in SirteAFPSirte, Libya

Forces loyal to Libya’s Government of Na-tional Accord said

they launched a new attack yesterday on diehards of the Islamic State group in the coastal city of Sirte.

Backed by weeks of US air strikes, the pro-GNA forces have recaptured nearly all of what had been the militants’ main stronghold in North Africa.

The city’s fall would be a huge setback to IS’s eff orts to expand its self-proclaimed “caliphate” beyond Syria and Iraq where the militants have also suff ered losses.

“The fi ghting has begun. We are attacking the last Daesh positions in district three” where the militants are cornered, a GNA fi ghter said, using an Arabic acro-nym for IS.

The GNA forces media centre confi rmed on Face-book that the new push had begun to retake Sirte, located 450km (280 miles) east of the capital Tripoli.

“Our forces are advancing inside the areas where Daesh is, in district three, and so far have taken control of” two banks and a hotel, the media centre said.

It also said they had thwarted an attempted sui-cide bombing.

Seven members of the GNA forces were killed and 30 wounded in clashes with IS yesterday, it added.

Earlier, an AFP journalist saw ambulances leaving Sirte – hometown of dead dicta-tor Moamer Kadhafi – for Misrata to the west where the

wounded are treated.Since the off ensive against

Sirte began on May 12, more than 400 fi ghters loyal to the government have been killed and about 2,500 wounded.

It is not yet known how many IS militants have been killed, but the GNA media centre said the bodies of 10 militants had been found in a school in district one, which was being combed after be-ing retaken on Monday.

The forces loyal to the UN-backed GNA had said last weekend they were prepar-ing to “liberate” the entire city after seizing several IS positions, including its head-quarters.

On Wednesday, GNA head Fayez al-Sarraj visited Sirte for the fi rst time since loyalist forces launched their off en-sive more than three months ago to drive the militants from the city.

Sarraj and some of his ministers toured former front lines as well as the Oua-gadougou conference centre which IS had used as its base.

“We will continue to chase, with the help of God, the Daesh remnants and strike them wherever they may be in our country,” Sarraj said this week.

The capture of Sirte by IS last year sparked fears the militants would use it as a springboard for attacks on Europe. The off ensive on the ground has been backed by US air power.

On Friday, the United States Africa Command said that since the US cam-paign began on August 1, US drones, helicopters and bombers had carried out a total of 108 air strikes against the militants in Sirte.

AFRICA9Gulf Times


Mugabe scoff s at ill-health talkReutersHarare

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe yesterday returned home from abroad in a jovial mood,

poking fun at the latest online media speculation that he was gravely ill and had sought medical help in Dubai.

Mugabe, 92, came back to the grim reality of rising public anger over an economic meltdown widely blamed on his misrule, with violence erupting a week ago when police fi red teargas at opposition leaders and protesters.

Reports that Mugabe’s health is de-clining have become common in recent years, but the veteran politician, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, often refers to himself as “fi t as a fi ddle”.

Mugabe yesterday poured scorn on rumours on some online news websites — partly fed by his early departure from a regional summit — that he had been rushed for medical treatment in Dubai.

Mugabe told journalists at Harare in-ternational airport he had gone to Du-bai on a family matter concerning one of his children.

“Yes, I was dead, it’s true I was dead. I resurrected as I always do. Once I get back to my country I am real,” he quipped.

But Mugabe showed some signs of frailty, walking slowly from the plane and only chatting briefl y with offi cials before being whisked away in a motor-cade.

Mugabe rejects the blame for a cri-sis currently manifesting itself in acute

cash shortages and high unemploy-ment, and last week warned protest-ers there would be no “Arab Spring” in Zimbabwe, referring to the uprisings that toppled several Arab leaders.

He routinely blames Zimbabwe’s economic problems on sabotage by Western opponents of his policies, such as the seizure of white-owned com-mercial farms for black people.

Last week Mugabe accused Western countries, including the United States, of sponsoring recent anti-government protests.

But even some of his once stalwart supporters, including Zimbabwe’s war veterans who invaded white commer-

cial farms in support of Mugabe’s land seizures, have turned their backs on him, saying he has “devoured” the val-ues of the liberation struggle.

Zimbabwe, which has also been hit by drought and weak commodity pric-es, is struggling to pay salaries to sol-diers, police and other public workers, fuelling political tensions, including within the ruling ZANU-PF.

Divisions have emerged inside the party as senior offi cials position them-selves for power after the veteran leader is gone, with one faction supporting Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa while another backs fi rst lady Grace Mugabe.

President Robert Mugabe talks to the media at Harare airport yesterday.

14 oil workers abducted in NigeriaReutersOnitsha, Nigeria

Gunmen in Nigeria’s restive southern Niger Delta region, which has been hit by a series

of militant attacks on energy facilities since the start of the year, have kid-napped 14 local oil workers and their driver, police said yesterday.

Kidnapping for ransom is a com-mon problem in some parts of Nigeria

and the southern Delta energy hub has seen an increase in crime since the start of attacks by militants calling for more oil wealth to go to the impoverished re-gion.

The abduction took place on a road connecting the towns of Omoku and Elele, around 50km from the city of Port Harcourt, Rivers state, in the early hours of Friday as the employees of Ni-gerian energy company Nestoil trav-elled to work, police said.

“We have recovered the vehicle

they were travelling in before the in-cident occurred. Police are currently combing bushes around the area in a bid to find and release the victims,” said Nnamdi Omoni of Rivers state police.

“I do not think there was a foreigner among those kidnapped. Their abduc-tors have not made any contact and nobody has been arrested yet,” added Nnamdi.

A spokesman for Nestoil could not immediately be reached.

People hold placards reading “Bongo, get out”, during a demonstration at the Esplanade du Trocadero in Paris yesterday. Two people died on Friday following overnight clashes, bringing to five the number killed in the violence that erupted after Bongo was declared victor of the disputed election. Bongo was declared victorious by a razor-thin margin of just under 6,000 votes, but his main challenger Ping, a veteran diplomat and former top African Union off icial, insisted the vote was rigged and claimed victory for himself.

Paris protest

Court allows time for Zambia poll challengeAFPLusaka

Zambia’s constitutional court yes-terday gave the country’s main opposition leader two more days

to present a petition challenging last month’s disputed re-election of Presi-dent Edgar Lungu.

The court had on Friday gave Hakai-nde Hichilema, who was defeated in the August 11 vote, only two hours, prompting his lawyers to say they would no longer represent him.

Yesterday, it asked Hichilema, leader of the opposition United Party for Na-tional Development, to seek legal rep-

resentation and the matter would con-tinue tomorrow.

“This matter has to be heard and each party will have two days and the respondents will also have two days,” said constitutional court president Hildah Chibomba.

Lungu won the election by a narrow margin according to offi cial results, gar-nering 50.3% or about 100,000 votes.

Hichilema, a businessman vying for the presidency for a fi fth time, won 47.6% but immediately claimed the poll was rigged.

After the disputed election Lungu moved to assure supporters that a new government would work to improve the welfare of Zambians grappling with

high infl ation and rising food prices.A drop in copper prices of almost

one-third from their peak in February 2011 has resulted in thousands of job losses in the mining industry, where most companies are owned by foreign, notably Chinese, investors.

Zambia previously enjoyed a stellar period of growth, peaking at 10.3% in 2010.

Despite the legal challenge to his re-election, Lungu, head of the Patriotic Front, has vowed to hit the ground run-ning.

“For the next fi ve years, it will be to-tal work, there will be no honeymoon,” Lungu told supporters at a rally shortly after his re-election.

AMERICA


FBI releases Clinton e-mail probe fi lesAFPReuters

The FBI on Friday poured fresh fuel on the fi re sparked by Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server as sec-

retary of state, releasing heavily redacted notes on its probe, which White House rival Donald Trump seized on to attack her fi tness for offi ce.

The 58 pages — 14 of which were entirely blacked out — showed that the FBI found no evidence her e-mail system was compro-mised but decided it could not be ruled out because some of her mobile devices were not recovered.

“The FBI did fi nd that hostile foreign ac-tors successfully gained access to the per-sonal e-mail accounts of individuals with whom Clinton was in regular contact and, in doing so, obtained e-mails sent to or re-ceived by Clinton on her personal account,” the notes said.

Clinton’s use of a private server has been the subject of simmering controversy as she runs for president against Trump, the Re-publican candidate.

The documents’ release follows the FBI’s recommendation in July not to prosecute Clinton for sending unsecured e-mails with classifi ed material through the server, though it found her to have been “extremely careless.”

Clinton’s campaign said it was “pleased” with the report’s release.

“While her use of a single e-mail account was clearly a mistake and she has taken re-sponsibility for it, these materials make clear why the Justice Department believed there was no basis to move forward with this case,” it said in a statement.

But Trump’s campaign pounced, charging that the notes “reinforce her tremendously bad judgement and dis-honesty”.

“Clinton’s secret e-mail server was an end run around government transparency laws that wound up jeopardizing our national security and sensitive diplomatic eff orts,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement.

Trump said Clinton’s answers to the FBI “defy belief”.

“I was absolutely shocked to see that her answers to the FBI stood in direct contra-diction to what she told the American peo-ple. After reading these documents, I really don’t understand how she was able to get away from prosecution,” he said in a state-ment.

Embarrassing revelations include a pas-sage in the report in which the 68-year-old Clinton told investigators she was unaware that confi dential material was marked with a “C.”

“Clinton stated she did not know what the ‘(C)’ meant at the beginning of the paragraphs and speculated it was referencing paragraphs marked in

alphabetical order,” the report said.“When asked of her knowledge regard-

ing TOP SECRET, SECRET, and CONFI-DENTIAL classification levels...Clinton responded that she did not pay attention to the ‘level’ of classification and took all classified information seriously,” it add-ed.

The report also revealed that Colin Powell, who served as secretary of state from 2001 to 2005, warned Clinton to “be very careful” regarding e-mails.

“Powell warned Clinton that if it became ‘public’ that Clinton had a BlackBerry, and she used it to ‘do business,’ her e-mails could become ‘official record(s) and sub-ject to the law’,” the report said, noting Clinton had e-mailed Powell after tak-ing office in 2009 to ask about his use of a BlackBerry.

“Powell further advised Clinton, ‘Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data’.”

The FBI notes said investigators iden-tified 13 mobile devices that “poten-tially were used to send e-mails using Clinton’s Clintone-mail.com e-mail ad-dress.”

It said eight of the devices were BlackBer-ries that she used while secretary of state, and the other fi ve were devices, including BlackBerries, that she used after leaving of-fi ce.

In its summary of the interview with Clin-ton, the agency said she had received no direction on preserving or producing State Department records while transitioning out of her post.

However, Clinton noted that she had suf-fered a concussion in December 2012, less than two months before leaving offi ce, and then had a blood clot.

“Based on her doctor’s advice, she could only work at State for a few hours a day and could not recall every briefi ng she received,” the summary said.

The apparent suggestion that Clinton’s blood clot led to memory loss could be po-tent fodder for the Trump camp — as it seeks to portray the Democrat as lacking the stam-ina for the job.

Clinton’s campaign spokesman Brian Fallon sought to cut short any such notion, tweeting: “Asked about briefi ngs in late ‘12, Clinton said 2 things: (1) she couldn’t recall each briefi ng (2) she missed part of that time due to health.”

Of some 30,000 e-mails Clinton subse-quently turned over to the FBI, the agency’s director James Comey has said 110 contained classifi ed information.

Clinton had said none was classifi ed at the time they were sent.

Meanwhile, the State Department has been ordered to review for possible release nearly 15,000 additional e-mails and docu-ments uncovered during the FBI investiga-tion that had not been disclosed by her law-yers.

WWII veterans participate in the annual V-J Day observance on Friday to commemorate the Allied Forces victory, at the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC. It was 71 years ago when Japan surrendered to allied forces, ending World War II.

V-J Day observance

First photo of Jupiter’s North Pole released

AFPWashington

Nasa published on Friday the fi rst-ever images of Jupiter’s north pole and its southern aurora, taken during the Juno spacecraft’s fi rst orbital fl yby of the

gaseous giant.Juno came within 4,200km of Jupiter on August 27 dur-

ing a six-hour transit from the north pole to the south.“It looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before,”

said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

“The largest planet in our solar system is truly unique. We have 36 more fl ybys to study just how unique it really is.”

A camera dubbed the “JunoCam” took the high-defi ni-tion images.

It is one of the nine instruments onboard the spacecraft.Juno notably sent the fi rst infrared close-ups of the

planet’s north and south poles.“These fi rst infrared views of Jupiter’s north and south

poles are revealing warm and hot spots that have never been seen before,” said Alberto Adriani, of the Istituto di Astrofi sica e Planetologia Spaziali in Rome.

Adriani is one of the researchers who developed the Jo-vian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) that allowed scien-tists to acquire the images.

“While we knew that the fi rst-ever infrared views of Ju-piter’s south pole could reveal the planet’s southern aurora, we were amazed to see it for the fi rst time,” he said.

Auroras are streamers of light in the sky caused by ener-gy from the sun and electrically charged particles trapped in the magnetic fi eld.

Another Juno instrument recorded sounds from Jupiter — “ghostly-sounding transmissions emanating from the planet,” said NASA.

Scientists have known about Jupiter’s radio emissions since the 1950s, but had never analysed them from such a close distance.

“Jupiter is talking to us in a way only gas-giant worlds can,” said Bill Kurth, co-investigator from the University of Iowa.

Moderate earthquake rattles temblor-prone OklahomaReutersTulsa, Oklahoma

One of the strongest earth-quakes ever recorded in Oklahoma rattled a state

where seismic activity has become a growing concern, sending tremors through six neighbouring states, the United States Geological Survey said yesterday.

The quake, which struck 14km northwest of Pawnee in north-central Oklahoma at 7.02am CDT (1302 GMT), had a magnitude of 5.6, matching in strength a temblor that hit the state in 2011, the USGS re-ported on its website.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The earthquake, which had a depth of 6.6km, could off er fresh

ammunition to environmentalists concerned about the side-eff ects of oil and gas production, which has been blamed for a spike in minor to moderate quakes in the region.

“We just had an earthquake that shook our whole house!,” wrote Gretchen Scott of Enid, Oklahoma, 100km west of Pawnee.

“Could actually hear it rum-bling like thunder. Very freaky, and defi nitely not something I’d like to repeat soon!,” she said on her Face-book page.

Pawnee Mayor Brad Sewell said the tremor lasted nearly a minute, far longer than previous ones that lasted only a second or two.

Part of the façade of an early 20th-century bank building had fallen into a downtown street, he said.

“We have had a spate of quakes over the last several years, but noth-

ing like this,” he said. “It was a long, sustained quake.”

The likelihood of casualties and damage from the earthquake, was low, the USGS said.

Most residences in north-central Oklahoma were resistant to earth-quakes, it said on its website.

Oklahoma geologists have docu-mented links between increased seismic activity in the state and the injection into the ground of waste-water from oil and gas production, according to a report from a state agency last year.

Oklahoma is recording 2-1/2 earthquakes daily of a magnitude three or greater, a seismicity rate 600 times greater than before 2008, the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) said.

The spike has put Oklahoma at the centre of a national debate over

whether wastewater disposal from oil and gas production triggers earthquakes.

The state’s economy depends heavily on energy production, ac-counting for one of every four jobs there.

Zachary Reeves, a seismologist with the USGS National Earth-quake Information Center in Gold-en, Colorado, said the agency had received reports of the Oklahoma quake from South Dakota, Wiscon-sin, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas.

“It’s a relatively large quake for the area. The central US doesn’t tend to get a lot of fi ve-plus earthquakes,” he said.

He said it was the third magnitude 5 quake in the state since 2011, and there were a couple of dozen or so 4s or bigger in Oklahoma last year.

Hermine churns north into the Carolinas

Tropical Storm Hermine plowed across North Carolina’s Outer Banks yesterday, threatening

the US East Coast with a mix of high winds and heavy rain after leaving a path of destruction in Florida, Geor-gia and in the Carolinas.

The storm was projected to creep north along the Carolina coast,

then gather strength after moving off shore into the Atlantic, possibly reaching near-hurricane intensity by tonight, the National Hurricane Center said.

Labor Day weekend plans for thousands of vacationers who were headed to popular beach spots along the Atlantic seaboard were damp-

ened after the storm battered Flori-da’s $89bn tourism industry.

“We’ll probably stay inside watching movies or going to the movie theatre,” Joan Whalen told an ABC affi liate in Virginia after can-celling weekend beach plans.

The threat of severe weather caused offi cials in Atlantic City, New

Jersey, to cancel concerts over the weekend, and beaches were closed in several coastal communities.

At 5am EDT, the centre of the fourth named storm of the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season was near the northern Outer Banks of North Carolina, with top winds near 95kph, the hurricane centre said.

ASEAN11Gulf Times


Myanmar peace summit ends with long road aheadAFPNaypyidaw

Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi concluded a land-mark summit with eth-

nic rebels yesterday, calling it the fi rst step on what promises to be a tough road to peace.

The conference in the capital Naypyidaw was Suu Kyi’s fi rst big drive to end insurgencies that have rumbled across My-anmar’s frontier states for nearly seven decades.

The Nobel Laureate, now leading the country after cham-pioning a democracy struggle against the former junta, has devoted her fi rst few months in power to kickstarting fresh ne-gotiations between rebel militias and the army.

No resolution emerged from the four-day summit, which gave representatives from doz-ens of ethnic groups a chance to air grievances and outline their political aspirations.

Suu Kyi’s biggest achieve-ment was bringing new play-ers to the table, including rebel armies that did not sign a shaky ceasefi re brokered by the former military-backed government last year.

However three groups still actively clashing with troops did not attend the talks, and the powerful Wa — a heavily armed militia based near the border with China — stormed out on day two over what the govern-ment said was a misunderstand-ing.

“To achieve peace is very dif-fi cult,” Suu Kyi told the confer-ence hall fi lled with hundreds of delegates yesterday, the fi nal day of the summit after it was decid-ed a fi fth was not needed.

“This is the fi rst meeting. Af-ter this, there will be more meet-ings. And there are many things we have to do during the time in between,” she added.

The veteran democracy ac-tivist, who spent some 15 years under house arrest during junta rule, urged all sides to “look forward” as the peace process

continues. Distrust of the mili-tary still runs deep in Myanmar — especially in the minority ar-eas battered by decades of fi ght-ing and oppression. Many of the confl icts are complicated by tus-sles over drug trades and lucra-tive gem and timber reserves in rebel-held areas.

While Suu Kyi has backed

the minorities’ calls for greater autonomy in their homelands, it will be a challenge to craft a federal arrangement that meets each group’s unique demands.

Any changes to a junta-era charter will also require support from the still-infl uential army, which has the power to veto any proposed amendments.

Although the army has loos-ened its grip on the country since the end of junta rule 2011, soldiers still run key government ministries and a quarter of par-liament seats.

Lian Hmung Sahkong, a lead-er from the Chin National Front who helped organise the peace conference, said the next gath-ering of delegates will be held in six months.

“Our current challenge is to get the signatures of eth-nic groups that did not sign the NCA,” he said, referring to the limited ceasefi re negotiated last year.

A leader from the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) — a powerful rebel fac-tion that did not sign the truce — stressed that no concrete agreements were reached at this week’s talks.

“We were able to present our proposals at this conference, but nothing important happened,” General Gun Maw told reporters, adding that more discussion is needed before his group will sign a deal.

Myanmar’s diverse patchwork of ethnic groups make up around a third of the population, but the government and military have long been dominated by mem-bers of the majority Bamar eth-nicity, to which Suu Kyi belongs.

The peace summit comes al-most 70 years after her inde-pendence hero father signed an agreement promising autonomy to major ethnic groups ahead of Myanmar’s break from colonial ruler Britain.

But the deal collapsed after his assassination and was ignored by the junta that seized power, triggering uprisings that have simmered in the country’s bor-derlands ever since.

Man dies in Malaysia’s fi rst locally transmitted Zika caseAFPKuala Lumpur

Malaysia reported its fi rst locally trans-mitted Zika case

yesterday, a 61-year-old man who has died of heart-related complications, the govern-ment said.

The patient was a resident of the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah, the Ministry of Health said, and already was in fragile health due to heart problems, high blood pressure and other maladies. But the case, coming two days after authorities re-ported the country’s fi rst case of Zika, is likely to add to fears of a full-blown outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus in the tropical nation.

The ministry said local trans-mission was highly likely be-cause the man had no recent history of travelling outside Malaysia.

Ministry Director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah told state news agency Bernama his prior health problems were the cause of death yesterday after-noon, but that the results of a full investigation were pending.

On Thursday, Malaysia re-ported the fi rst Zika case on its soil — a 58-year-old woman

who is believed to have con-tracted it on a visit to neigh-bouring Singapore, where 150 cases have been confi rmed.

Scientists say Singapore Zika is AsianSingapore yesterday reported

215 cases of Zika infections

as scientists in the city-state

said the virus strain comes

from within Asia and was not

imported from Brazil. The

Ministry of Health and National

Environment Agency said in

a joint statement yesterday

evening that of the 26 new

cases reported, 24 were linked

to a cluster in the Aljunied

district where the country’s first

locally-transmitted cases were

reported. The statement did

not say where the other two

cases were from. A week after

Singapore reported its first

case of locally transmitted Zika

infection, local scientists say

they have completed genetic

sequencing of the virus.

“The analysis found that the

virus belongs to the Asian line-

age and likely evolved from the

strain that was already circulat-

ing in Southeast Asia.

Myanmar’s State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi shakes hands with ethnic rebel leader General Gun Maw (right) from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the military wing of the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), at the conclusion of the peace conference in Naypyidaw yesterday.

Children walk under the rain in the northern city of Xieng Khouang, Laos, yesterday.

Rain walk

Railway worker killed as bomb explodes on trainReutersBangkok

One railway worker was killed and three people were wound-ed when a bomb exploded on

a train in Thailand’s southern town of Pattani yesterday, police said, a day after peace talks between the Thai gov-ernment and Muslim rebels.

The bomb was hidden under rail tracks at Khok Pho district of Pattani,

damaging the last carriage, Police Cap-tain Promote Juichouy told Reuters.

The blast destroyed half the carriage and blew a big hole under the track, po-lice said.

The three wounded people included two train workers and a female passen-ger.

The train was heading to Bangkok. Peace talks between Thailand’s govern-ment and separatists ended on Friday with no breakthrough but an agree-ment to meet again.

The insurgents denied responsibility for a string of bombs last month.

A decades-old insurgency in the Muslim-majority southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat has claimed more than 6,500 lives since it escalated in 2004, according to the independent monitoring group Deep South Watch.

As with most such attacks, no one claimed responsibility. The blast oc-curred three weeks after a series of ex-plosions hit three of Thailand’s most popular tourist resorts and a town in the south, killing four people and wounding dozens.

Thai authorities have arrested the first suspect linked to a string of bomb and arson attacks that rocked southern tourist towns last month, a police off icer said yesterday. The co-ordinated blasts erupted across seven provinces on August 11-12, killing four and injuring dozens, including foreign tourists. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing spree but analysts say it bore the hallmarks of ethnic Malay insur-gents behind a 12-year rebellion concentrated further south.The battle for greater autonomy from the Buddhist-majority state has killed than 6,500 people — mainly civilians — since 2004, but the violence rarely spills outside the southern border region.“One suspected arsonist was ar-rested yesterday in his hometown in Pattani,” assistant national police chief Suchart Theerasawat told AFP Saturday, referring to a province that lies in the heart of the insurgency.The man, identified by police as 36-year-old Abdul Kadae Salae, is accused of setting fire to a supermarket in Trang province.

First tourist town blast suspect held in Thailand

INVESTIGATION

Military personnel inspect the site of a bomb attack at Khok Pho district in the troubled southern province of Pattani.

AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA


More than 100,000 peo-ple, mostly civil serv-ants, took to Taipei’s

streets yesterday in protest planned reforms to the island’s struggling pension system, for which they say they are unfairly blamed.

The massive demonstra-tion was the latest challenge to President Tsai Ing-wen’s new government, which has seen its popularity ratings fall rapidly since taking the helm in May.

Taiwan’s pension schemes vary for diff erent occupations and public sector retirees typi-cally receive more generous packages than workers from other sectors which fall under a diff erent labour pension system.

The government has warned that various pension funds are estimated to go bankrupt from as early as 2020 if the system is not overhauled.

Retired civil servants, teach-ers, servicemen and fi refi ghters shouted “oppose stigmatisa-tion” and “demand dignity” as they gathered in a square near the presidential offi ce in down-town Taipei.

Police estimated a turnout of around 117,000 for the rally, the biggest public protest since Tsai took offi ce.

“We are accused of stealing and robbing the country. Our dignity is hurt and we are very angry. Enough is enough,” rally organiser Peng Ju-yu told AFP.

Public sector employees do not oppose reforms but they are angry that they are being unfair-ly blamed for bankrupting the pension system, Peng explained.

In the past the government had to off er generous incentives to public sector employees as the starting salaries were low.

But public sector jobs have become popular in the past dec-ade amid economic slowdowns.

Tsai has said that pension reform is “an unavoidable re-sponsibility of our generation” to protect retirees.

“I support pension reforms but they should be reasonable and transparent. It’s not fair to just blame public sector workers for dragging down the country’s fi nances,” said 35-year-old po-lice offi cer Levi Lee.

The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party warned the gov-ernment against “stirring up hatred and confrontation”.

“We support pension reforms but they should be gradual and with supporting measures. The DPP has caused many problems with its rough methods,” said KMT spokesman Chou Chih-wei.

Tsai has seen her support rat-ings slide to 41% from a high of

70% following a string of con-troversies, including the pen-sion reform plans.

“The government should work harder to improve the economy and prevent big cor-

porations from evading taxes instead of going after people who worked all their lives in public services,” said protester Kao Shu-rong, a 82-year-old retired civil servant.

Taiwan’s public workers protest pension reformsAFPTaipei

Government employees hold placards reading ‘oppose stigmatisation’ and ‘demand dignity’ while marching through the streets during a protest yesterday in Taipei.

The host of this year’s G20 summit has “broken prec-edent” by denying leading

civil society organisations the ability to monitor and comment on events inside the venue’s me-dia centre, activists charge.

China either ignored or re-fused the requests of major in-ternational non-profi t organisa-tions to participate in the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou as observers, representatives of several such groups asserted yes-terday.

They spoke to DPA on condi-tion of anonymity so as not to jeopardise their operations in China.

“I’ve been at the last three G20 summits but not this time. In those three years, we had up to around 40 places in the media centre and were able to provide comment to journalists,” a man-ager of an international advocacy group told DPA.

“Basically, there is no rep-resentation by civil society at this G20 summit,” a senior staff member of another major hu-manitarian group said.

He also noted that when China hosted the meeting of the Civil Society 20 (C20) in Qingdao in July, roughly three-quarters of organisations were affi liated with the Chinese state.

China did not agree to host a C20 event until late April, and at the time did not clarify when or where the gathering would take place.

“Chinese authorities have made their hostility to civil so-ciety painfully clear in recent years, such that no G20 members should be surprised at the re-strictions imposed for the sum-mit itself,” said Sophie Richard-son, China director for Human Rights Watch.

“Past meetings have taken place in locations that generally were more tolerant of civil soci-ety, such that access was easier. But maddeningly, a lot of ‘how’ any G20 is held is really up to the host – it’s not a codifi ed matter of international law,” Richardson told DPA.

International advocacy organ-isations and prominent activists have appealed to G20 leaders to confront Beijing over what they call a dramatically worsening en-vironment for human rights.

In June, authorities sentenced Hangzhou-based democracy activists Lü Gengsong and Chen Shuqing to prison terms of 11 and 10 and a half years respectively for their online essays, in a move seen as an attempt to intimidate other dissidents from speaking up during the G20 summit.

Of the more than 300 human

rights lawyers and activists who have been detained or summoned by Chinese police since last sum-mer, more than a dozen are be-lieved to still be in jail, according to Amnesty International.

Teng Biao, one of China’s best-known human rights lawyers who fl ed to the United States in 2014, said that silence from G20 leaders on China’s human rights would amount to complicity.

“If G20 participants only talk about issues concerning the economy, if they don’t say any-thing about human rights, they are helping the Chinese govern-ment to crack down on the peo-ple and civil society,” Teng told DPA.

Yesterday Chinese President Xi Jinping told a meeting of G20 business leaders in Hangzhou that China is committed to “law-based governance”.

China ‘blocks’ civil society groups from monitoring G20 summitBy Joanna Chiu and Andreas Landwehr, DPAHangzhou, China

‘This is our country!’, Chinese offi cial tells US

When US President Barack Obama arrived in China yesterday for his final

trip to Asia as commander-in-chief, the ceremonial niceties were marred by

an undiplomatic shouting incident on the tarmac.

Chinese authorities have imposed extremely tight security precautions for

the G20 summit, and not even US National Security Adviser Susan Rice and

the White House press corps proved exempt when Air Force One landed in

host city Hangzhou.

As usual when Obama travels, the reporters accompanying him were

brought under the wing of the Boeing 747 to watch him come down the

aircraft stairs, penned off behind a blue rope installed by Chinese security.

But that was not far away enough for the Chinese personnel, one of whom

screamed at White House staff , demanding the US press leave the scene.

A female White House off icial, handbag over her arm, told him that it was

an American plane and the US president.

“This is our country!” the Chinese off icial, in a dark suit, shouted at her in

English. “This is our airport!”

When US National Security Adviser Susan Rice and senior White House

staff er Ben Rhodes tried to get closer to the president, lifting up the blue

rope and walking under it, the off icial turned his ire on Rice, trying to block

her progress.

As they exchanged angry words her Secret Service agent stepped in to

usher her past him.

Moments afterwards the US president’s motorcade was rolling away,

towards a city of 9mn people that has been denuded of around a quarter

of its population for the event. Factories have been closed to ensure blue

skies, potential troublemakers detained, and the wide boulevards of a city

lauded by Venetian traveller Marco Polo are empty.

“They did things that weren’t anticipated,” Rice told reporters later.

The Chinese city of Hangzhou felt like a ghost town yesterday ahead of

the arrival of leaders from the world’s 20 biggest economies, after the government encouraged residents to clear out and cranked up security for the summit.

On the eve of the Group of 20 summit, roads and malls around the main venue in the centre of Hangzhou, usually a bustling city of 9mn, were largely deserted, with just a smattering of cars and people around while shops were shut and locked.

Construction sites also whirred to a stop, uncommon in a country where labourers often work around-the-clock.

More than 200 steel mills in surrounding districts were shut as part of a government bid to limit pollution during the two-day summit which begins today.

“Things are now a little bit inconvenient. But you can un-

derstand why,” said Hangzhou real estate agent Liu Wenchao. “Leaders from the world’s most important 20 countries are com-ing for this big summit, and we all need to guarantee security for foreigners.”

The stakes are high for China to pull off a trouble-free sum-mit, its highest profi le event of the year, as it looks to cement its standing as a global power and avoid acrimony over issues like the South China Sea territorial dispute.

The city, a tourist hot spot, is home to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings and to textile factories as well as steel.

Hangzhou’s residents left in droves after authorities declared a week-long holiday for the sum-mit, shut down the city’s famous West Lake beauty spot and of-fered free travel vouchers worth up to 10bn yuan ($1.5bn) to en-courage people to visit out-of-town attractions.

Some residents, such as chefs from the western Xinjiang re-

gion, were also sent home over the period, restaurants told Reu-ters.

The government has blamed Islamist militants for carrying out attacks in that region.

Over the weekend, police of-fi cers conducted security checks on streets while men identifying themselves as volunteer security guards patrolled.

Two volunteers told Reuters journalists they were not allowed to fi lm in residential areas.

Chinese industry consultant Mysteel said more steel mills in the neighbouring provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong and Zhejiang had been ordered to curb or suspend production be-cause the air quality was deemed not good enough.

Yesterday the air quality in-dex for Hangzhou was 76, a level classed as “good” but far worse than Beijing which had an “ex-cellent” level of 25.

“We need put on our best face, Hangzhou’s most beautiful face, for the entire world,” said real es-tate agent Liu.

Hangzhou turns ghost townBy Joseph Campbell, ReutersHangzhou, China

Police off icers secure an area at West Lake in Hangzhou. Factories have been closed to ensure blue skies, potential troublemakers detained, and a quarter of the residents have left.

Wearing a cloak deco-rated with the goanna lizard, the fi rst Abo-

riginal woman elected to Aus-tralia’s lower house took her seat in parliament this week, saying that as a child she was a “non-citizen”.

Former teacher Linda Bur-ney made history in July when she was voted into the House of Representatives, joining only a handful of other indigenous lawmakers in Australia’s na-tional parliament.

In her maiden speech, she said that her kangaroo skin cloak “tells my story”, as another Wir-adjuri woman sang to her in tra-ditional language from the pub-lic gallery.

“It charts my life, on it is my clan totem the goanna and my personal totem the white cock-atoo,” she told parliament on Wednesday.

Burney said that she would bring the “fi ghting Wiradjuri

spirit” to the capital in Canber-ra, as she described how far she had come from her childhood in New South Wales.

“I was born at a time when the Australian government knew how many sheep there were

but not how many Aboriginal people,” Burney, a former New South Wales state government minister, said.

“I was 10 years old before the ‘67 referendum fi xed that. The fi rst decade of my life was spent

as a non-citizen,” the 59-year-old lawmaker added.

The 1967 referendum changed Australia’s constitution to allow Aboriginal people to be counted in the national census.

But indigenous Australians still suff er disproportionate lev-els of disadvantage and impris-onment and have a much lower life expectancy.

They are also dealing with the legacy of policies under which indigenous children were taken from their mothers to be raised by white families or in institu-tions.

Burney, who is with the op-position Labor Party, joins the ruling conservative Liberal Party’s fi rst Aboriginal MP, Ken Wyatt, who was elected in 2010, and follows in the footsteps of former senator and Olympian Nova Peris, who was the fi rst indigenous woman in the upper house.

“The Aboriginal part of my story is important, it is the core of who I am,” Burney said. “But I will not be stereotyped and I will not be pigeon-holed.”

Aboriginal woman goes from being a ‘non-citizen’ to Australian lawmakerAFPSydney

A handout photo taken on August 31 and obtained on Friday shows Burney holding up her cloak as she gave her first speech in the national parliament in Canberra.

Japan was on alert for typhoon winds and heavy rain yesterday as the death toll from a devastating hurricane that hit the country’s north earlier this week rose to 15.Typhoon Namtheun was heading north towards the southern main island of Kyushu with gusts of up to 198kph (123mph), according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.Namtheun was passing near the small subtropical island of Amami, which lies between Okinawa and Kyushu, yesterday afternoon, the agency said.It issued a warning for strong winds, heavy rain and floods in southern Kyushu, but there was no immediate report of injuries or damage from the typhoon.Meanwhile, the death toll from Typhoon Lionrock in northern Japan rose to 15 after the body of a 57-year-old man was found in Iwaizumi, Iwate prefecture, police and local government off icials said.Public broadcaster NHK said at least nine people were still unaccounted for.Lionrock landed on Japan’s northern Pacific coast on Tuesday evening, dumping torrential rain over a wide area.Overflowing rivers wreaked havoc, stranding many communities in the country’s largely agricultural north.Iwaizumi was the hardest hit as nine people were buried inside a building of an elderly care facility, which was engulfed by a flood from a nearby river.Some 1,000 people were still cut off in isolated communities in Iwate prefecture, the prefectural government off icial said.“We are dispatching helicopters to bring foods and necessary items to the isolated areas,” the off icial said.Lionrock was the third typhoon to strike Japan’s northeast in about 10 days, the previous two causing at least two deaths.In 2013, a powerful typhoon that triggered massive landslides on Oshima island, 120km (75 miles) south of Tokyo, killed 40 people, while 82 died after a typhoon hit Japan in 2011.

Japan braces for Typhoon Namtheun

Son of former Chinese PM promoted to transport ministerChina’s parliament has named the son of former premier Li Peng as transport minister, part of an on-going reshuff le of senior off icials by President Xi Jinping ahead of a once-every-five-years congress in 2017.The legislature approved the appointment of Li Xiaopeng, who replaces Yang Chuantang as minister of transport, the off icial Xinhua news agency said in a brief statement. It gave no other details.His father, Li Peng, was deeply involved in the

military crackdown on student-led demonstrations for democracy around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.His son had been the governor in Shanxi, a coal-rich northern province beset by corruption scandals, before being promoted to his new role.Reuters reported on Monday that Li Xiaopeng would move to Beijing to take over as transport minister.The ministry is responsible for road, air, rail and water transport.

BRITAIN13Gulf Times


By Richard AdamsGuardian News and Media/London

Pressure to get good results means most parents are more worried about the progress their children

are making at school than about bullying or their happiness, according to a sur-vey of families preparing to start the new school year.

With most schools in England and Wales reopening tomorrow after the summer holidays, the poll conducted for education charity TLG found that most parents rated their child’s classroom achievements as one of their top con-cerns.

The survey also found parents worried more about their children not meeting expectations or being stretched suffi -ciently as they got older, peaking among parents with children in the early years of secondary school.

While 52% of parents ranked their child’s progress among their major con-cerns, just under half also picked out bul-

lying and unhappiness at school as key worries, according to the survey of more than 1,000 parents carried out by poll-sters ComRes.

Tim Morfi n, the chief executive of TLG, said while it was natural for parents to want to be assured their children were keeping up with their peers, concerns over progress may be the result of over-emphasis on achievement from schools and policymakers.

“There is an instinct as a parent to want to make a comparison, both in what is expected for a child of that age and as compared to other kids in the class. But there’s so much pressure now, it feels, around educational performance and how best to help our children succeed, and that’s getting harder as exams are getting more diffi cult,” Morfi n said.

“It feels like our kids have got to do re-ally, really well (at school) to make a suc-cess of life. So it’s interesting that’s what surfaces in the minds of parents.”

“We wouldn’t say this is a call for more communication from schools around progress. It’s about asking if we have cre-

ated anxiety in parents by saying that ed-ucation is all about year six Sats or GCSE results.”

Bullying remains a concern among par-ents, with one in fi ve naming fear of their child being bullied as the single thing that most concerned them about returning to

school.Fear of bullying peaked among parents

of children entering primary school, even though offi cial data from schools shows that the most serious exclusions for bul-lying and violence occurs in the early teens.

“There’s a sense that the problems are becoming more visible sooner, and that’s to do with struggling families and maybe a system that is having diffi culty in reach-ing out and supporting families to tackle issues around bullying early,” Morfi n said.

But while the bad behaviour of other children worries parents, they have few concerns about their own child’s behav-iour: just 3% of parents rated it as their top concern.

And despite worries about progress, homework was the lowest concern for the parents surveyed, with just 2% of parents listing it as a top priority.

TLG was founded in Bradford 18 years ago, partnering with churches across de-nominations to aid children and families in education, through support for fami-lies and volunteer coaches helping pupils having diffi culty at school.

“What we have learned over our 18 years of supporting children in schools is that, typically, wherever there is a strug-gling child there is often a struggling fam-ily or a parent who is anxious and con-cerned.

“But without a doubt, many parents of children who aren’t struggling still have anxiety regarding schools. School is a challenge for many parents, and working out how to best support their children is a conundrum,” Morfi n said.

Parents place academic results above child’s happiness: survey

AFP London

A giant replica of 17th-century London will be set ablaze in the city

this weekend to mark the 350th anniversary of the devastating Great Fire of London.

The 1666 inferno destroyed most of the walled inner city dating back to Roman times — a bustling, congested maze of tightly-packed wooden houses.

It forced London to rebuild anew from the ashes.

Now the city is looking back to when it lay in ruins — with a few shuddering sights to re-mind Londoners of the peril faced by their predecessors.

The London’s Burning pro-gramme of events commemo-rating the disaster culminates in Sunday’s torching of a 120m long wooden replica of old London — moored in the Riv-er Thames to prevent the fi re from spreading again.

“It will look spectacular,” said Helen Marriage, director of creative events company Artichoke, which is staging the London’s Burning programme.

The recreation was built by US ‘burn artist’ David Best and can be watched worldwide on a livestream from 8:25pm (1925 GMT) today.

The Great Fire of London broke out in Thomas Farrinor’s bakery on Pudding Lane short-ly after midnight on September 2, 1666 and gradually spread through the city.

The fi re was fi nally extin-guished on September 5, with around 80% of the walled city in ruins.

It consumed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches and Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

Only six deaths were of-fi cially attributed to the fi re, though an estimated 70,000 of the 80,000 residents were forced to fl ee, most to squalid camps outside the city walls.

Various scapegoats were blamed, chiefl y Catholics and foreigners.

Robert Hubert, a French watchmaker, confessed to starting the blaze and was swiftly hanged — though he was actually at sea when the fi re broke out.

The London of today, with its characteristic English Ba-roque architecture in grey Portland stone, was built from the ashes of the wooden city, though the old street layout was retained to respect prop-erty rights.

The Monument column commemorates the fi re near where it started but Pudding Lane itself is now an unre-markable concrete-lined back road.

The new St Paul’s Cathedral, still the centrepiece of the city, was completed 44 years after the Great Fire.

Nick Bodger, head of cul-tural and visitor development for the City of London, said the capital’s resilience — wit-nessed again during the 1940s Blitz — helped it rebuild and survive.

“350 years ago, when embers from a baker’s oven sparked one of the most catastrophic events the capital has ever wit-nessed, London’s economic prowess almost came to a fi ery end,” he told reporters.

“A renewed sense of purpose saw the great city we enjoy to-day rise from those ashes, de-velop and thrive.”

The Museum of London’s “Fire! Fire!” exhibition con-tains scorched possessions only just saved from the fi re, leather buckets used to fi ght it and letters telling of the infer-no written by people who fl ed.

It also has burnt items ex-cavated from a Pudding Lane shop, including charred bricks, melted tile fragments and scorched wooden barrels, still black from the blaze.

“It was hugely devastating.It’s the heart of London

where most of the major cul-tural and commercial buildings were,” curator Meriel Jeater told AFP.

“People lost their homes, belongings and businesses.”

During London’s Burning festival fl ames will be project-ed onto the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral and 23,000 breeze blocks arranged as a domino run will be felled to show how the fi re spread through the city.

In London’s Inner Temple hall, the scale of events is being visually represented by piles of rice — one grain for each per-son.

Guardian News London

Theresa May has said the UK will be a global leader for free trade following the vote to leave the European Un-

ion, as she headed to Hangzhou in eastern China for the G20 summit yesterday.

May also declared it a “golden era” for UK-China relations despite the impend-ing row with Beijing over the delayed deci-sion on the Hinkley Point C power station, suggesting she wants to use her fi rst major global summit to prove the UK remains dependable in the wake of the June refer-endum result.

Speaking at Heathrow before boarding an RAF plane, May said: “The message for the G20 is that Britain is open for business, as a bold, confi dent, outward-looking country we will be playing a key role on the world stage.”

The prime minister will have a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping tomor-row, following the conclusion of the two-day summit.“This is a golden era for UK-China relations and one of the things I will be doing at the G20 is obviously talking to President Xi about how we can develop

the strategic partnership that we have be-tween the UK and China,” May said.

“But I will also be talking to other world leaders about how we can develop free trade around the world, and Britain wants to seize those opportunities.

My ambition is that Britain will be a glo-bal leader in free trade.”

May is due to hold talks with leaders including Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi.

But despite a face-to-face with Xi, she is not expected to make an announcement on the Hinkley Point C project, which is backed by Beijing’s state-owned nuclear fi rm.

Although a decision on whether or not the project in Somerset will go ahead is expected this month, UK offi cials indi-cated it would not be announced tomor-row — fuelling speculation the plan would be scrapped or signifi cantly altered.“We have set out the government’s approach to Hinkley.

We are currently considering all the component parts of that,” a UK source said.

“We have said we will make a decision this month — that remains the plan.

I don’t expect one in the next few days and I don’t expect our Chinese or French partners are expecting one in the next few days.”

The French energy giant, EDF, with support from China General Nuclear,

had expected to build the £18bn plant, but in a surprise move May’s administra-tion delayed a fi nal decision on the project amid reports of security concerns about Beijing’s involvement and the high cost of energy from the power station.

The UK’s former security minister Pauline Neville-Jones said yesterday that reassurances were needed from China be-fore a decision could be made.“The issue, I think, is much more day-to-day security implications of having an investor of that kind who isn’t an ally — not an enemy — but isn’t an ally in the way most invest-

ment hitherto in to this country has been from the west,” she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Any fi nal decision on Hinkley Point is expected to have major diplomatic im-plications for relations between the UK, France and China.

Meanwhile, May’s talks with Obama follow his warning that the UK would be at

“the back of the queue” for a trade deal if it voted to leave the EU.

But amid reports the planned US-EU trade deal has stalled, the UK hopes for talks on a transatlantic agreement of its own with Washington.

During today’s summit May is also re-ported to want to push for action on tack-ling terrorism, including stopping the fl ow of money and foreign fi ghters to extremist groups such as Islamic State.

She will press for action to make sure that Isis fi ghters are not able to fi nd new safe havens in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa once they are forced out of strong-holds.

Her government is still working on its vision for how Britain’s relationship with the EU should look post-Brexit.

Downing Street said after a meeting of ministers this week that it wants immigra-tion controls while retaining strong trad-ing ties.

An anti-EU pro-Brexit marcher takes part in a counter protest against pro-Europe marchers on a March for Europe demonstration against the Brexit vote in Parliament Square in central London yesterday.

Stay out

Golden era for UK,China ties, says PM

British Prime Minister Theresa May.

The premier sounded positive about future ties with China

“There is an instinct as a parent to want to make a comparison, both in what is expected for a child of that age and as compared to other kids in the class”

Replica city will burn tomark theGreat Fire

Former PM ‘urged Clegg to give his mansion to Osborne’Evening Standard London

David Cameron urged Nick Clegg to hand over his grace and favour

country mansion to George Osborne because the former chancellor “had his eye on it”.

Clegg reveals the incident in a memoir of his time in power in which he brands Osborne “smug” for publicly ridiculing his unpopularity as Lib Dem leader.

An extract from the book in The Guardian states: “David Cameron seemed a little on edge.

We were alone in his study in Number 10, very shortly after the formation of the coalition, and he wanted to ask me some-thing that had clearly been preying on his mind.”

It says: “This is terribly awk-ward,” he admitted.“The thing is...George has for so long had his eye on Dorneywood... He’s very close to me... Would you mind if he used Dorneywood instead of you?”

“He then proposed that I share the foreign secretary’s traditional grace-and-favour countryside retreat, Chevening, rather than Dorneywood, which was ordinarily used by the number two in government.”

“I was a bit taken aback. I thought he wanted to ask me something important. It hadn’t really occurred to me that I might get a retreat to use at weekends, still less that there was any great distinction between one or the other.”

“Cameron’s plea suggested that George Osborne had been measuring up the curtains for years.”

The ex-deputy PM said that other senior Lib Dems in the coalition, Sir Vince Cable and Chris Huhne, were “not team players” who left him isolated in the face of public anger.

Clegg says: “I was unable to rely on others to defend in the media what we were doing.

I soon became such a focal point for anger that I felt the impulse to defend myself pub-licly.”

“No wonder Osborne said, somewhat smugly, in an in-terview in 2011 that, having expected to become British politics’ public enemy number one, he ‘hadn’t reckoned on Nick Clegg’.”

Promoting his book, Poli-tics: Between The Extremes, Clegg told The Guardian he had failed to cater for the “brazen ruthlessness” of the Tories when he went into coa-lition with them.

EUROPE


Angela Merkel said yester-day that she has no re-grets about her welcom-

ing policy toward refugees, even as a new poll showed that fewer than half of Germans surveyed would trust her with a fourth term as chancellor.

Only 44% of those questioned said Merkel is the right leader to tackle the range of issues facing the country, the survey released yesterday by TNS Emnid on be-half of the Funke media group found.

Merkel’s leadership both at home and in Europe has been tested by fi nancial crises, the rise of the far-right and Britain’s recent vote to leave the Euro-pean Union.

But she has said the refugee crisis represents her biggest challenge since she was sworn in as the nation’s fi rst female leader in 2005.

When asked in an interview with Bild newspaper published yesterday whether she would handle the mass migrant infl ux the same way today as she did one year ago, Merkel replied: “Yes, I would.”

Merkel’s open-door policy,

which brought around 1.1mn migrants to the country last year, created deep divisions among the electorate.

The right-wing populist Al-ternative for Germany (Afd) has since soared in the polls, as anti-foreigner sentiment grows.

The mood towards the new arrivals further soured after a spate of recent attacks, some of them carried out by migrants.

The AfD is expected to do well in an election today in Merkel’s home state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The chancellor said last week

that she will decide “in due course” whether to seek anoth-er term in next year’s national elections.

Despite the slumping poll numbers, Merkel still comes out ahead of potential challengers for the job.

Thirty-eight per cent of re-spondents said they thought Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, of the centre-left Social Democrats, could handle the range of issues facing Ger-many.

Horst Seehofer, the power-ful conservative premier of the

state of Bavaria who has recent-ly had a testy relationship with Merkel, received 28%.

Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, once considered a strong contender to succeed Merkel, stood at 15%.

In the interview with Bild, Merkel defended a controversial EU-Turkey deal that has helped stem migration fl ows through the Balkans, but which has come under increased scrutiny be-cause of Turkish President Re-cep Tayyip Erdogan’s slide to-wards authoritarianism.

She called the deal “the key to countering migrant-smuggling across the Aegean Sea and sta-bilising the situation in Greece”.

Merkel also rejected the por-trayal of her migrant policy as allowing anybody into the country, saying that she only opened the border at the height of the infl ux in September last year, when tens of thousands walked on foot to Germany from Hungary.

It was never about “opening the border for all, but for those who had travelled far, and who were in great humanitarian need after walking to us from Hun-gary”.

The pollster surveyed 1,006 Germans on August 31 and Sep-tember 1.

Merkel has no regrets on her refugee policyDPABerlin

Merkel speaks at a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party campaign in Bad Doberan, on the eve of state election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Climate activists and small nations at risk of global warming’s direst conse-

quences, welcomed yesterday’s ratifi cation by China and the United States of a global pact to curb planet-harming carbon emissions.

The move by the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters brought the hard-fought agree-ment, concluded in Paris in De-cember, a major step closer to taking legal eff ect, they said.

The previous international ef-fort to curb reliance on planet-harming fossil fuels, the Kyoto Protocol, had excluded China and other developing nations, while the United States refused to sign up.

“It’s remarkable that in a few short years the world’s two lead-ing climate antagonists have become the world’s two lead-ing climate champions,” said Bob Perciasepe, president of the Centre for Climate and En-ergy Solutions, a US-based think tank. “The United States can no longer claim that China’s inac-tion is an excuse to do nothing, and vice versa. With both again committing themselves to a low-carbon future, the two countries are setting an example the rest of the world can hardly ignore.”

Observers urged others to fol-low suit, while stressing that mere ratifi cation was not enough to meet the agreement’s goals.

The Paris pact has so far been signed by 180 countries, but will only take eff ect after 55 nations responsible for 55% of green-house gas emissions have ratifi ed it – making it binding.

Depending on their constitu-tions, for many countries this means passing domestic legisla-tion.

In the United States it can be done by executive presidential order.

China and the United States, jointly responsible for about 38% of global emissions, ratifi ed the Paris agreement on the eve of a meeting of G20 leaders meeting in Hangzhou, China, where all eyes will now be on other major economies to follow suit.

Until Beijing and Washington joined the club, 24 nations emit-ting just over 1% of global gases had offi cially acceded to the deal to cap global warming at 2° Cel-sius (3.6° Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

This must be achieved by re-placing atmosphere-polluting fossil fuels with renewable sources – an ambitious goal to-wards which most UN nations have already pledged emissions curbs.

“Today’s announcement is the strongest signal yet that what we

agreed in Paris, will soon have the force of law,” said Mattlan Zackhras, Minister-in-Assist-ance to the President of the Re-public of the Marshall Islands, which face the threat of climate-change induced sea-level rise. “With the two biggest emitters ready to lead, the transition to a low-emissions, climate-resilient global economy is now irrevers-ible.”

On current country pledges, scientists expect the world to warm by 3° C or more, and more drastic measures are needed to eff ect a large-scale shift towards wind, solar and other sustainable energies.

“Now, other countries must act swiftly to ratify the deal, and to reduce their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals,” said Lo Sze Ping of environmental group WWF-China.

They should also move quickly towards “increasing their current pledges”.

The leadership shown by Washington and Beijing will do much to boost political momen-tum and goodwill, observers agreed.

“The fi ght against climate change remains diffi cult and ur-gent, but having heavy-hitters like China and the US on your side is extremely heartening,” commented the UN Environ-ment Programme’s Erik Solheim.

Experts: US, China climate move signals hopeful eraAFPParis

A golden retriever called Romeo has been pulled from the rubble of Italy’s

earthquake, more than nine days after he was given up for dead.

Touching footage fi lmed by the fi refi ghters who saved him shows the shaggy dog being lifted out from under a pile of masonry that is all that remains of his owners’ house.

Appearing completely relaxed, Romeo slurps his fi rst drops of water in more than 230 hours from a bottle held by one of the fi refi ghters.

As it becomes clear he is un-scathed, the fi refi ghter holding him puts him down.

Romeo then tiptoes gracefully down the pile of rubble to be reu-nited with tearful owners who had given up hope of fi nding him alive.

“He’s in great shape,” says one of the fi refi ghters as others whoop in delight while Romeo trots around what remains of his yard.

As he sniff s out familiar smells with trademark retriever insou-ciance, he looks for all the world as if he has just woken from a short nap.

Romeo’s owners were sleeping on the second fl oor of their house in the tiny village of San Lorenzo a Flaviano when the earthquake struck before dawn on August 24.

They managed to get out, but Romeo, who was sleeping on the fi rst fl oor, was trapped inside.

After searching for him for hours, they were eventually evacuated from the devastated village for their own safety.

All hope of fi nding Romeo alive appeared to have disappeared until Friday evening, when the couple returned to their home in the company of a group of fi re-fi ghters assigned to help them

recover key belongings from the rubble.

Almost as soon as they came into the tiny mediaeval village, Romeo heard their voices and began barking.

“We immediately began mov-ing masonry from where the barking was coming from and in-credibly we got to him and he was in pretty good condition,” one of the fi refi ghters told the Ansa news agency. “Luckily some beams had fallen in a way that they were holding up the weight of everything above them leaving Romeo with a little niche that he was able to survive in.”

No human survivors of the quake have been found since the evening of August 24th, when four-year-old Giorgia was pulled out alive after being located by another canine hero of the disas-ter, Leo.

A labrador who works as a po-lice sniff er dog, Leo was granted an audience with Pope Francis yesterday, two days after he was guest of honour at a summit between Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and German Chan-cellor Angela Merkel.

The toll from the deadliest quake to hit Italy since the 2009 L’Aquila disaster now stands at 294 confi rmed dead following the discovery of another body on Friday evening at Casale, a small village near Amatrice, the tourist

town where three quarters of the deaths occurred.

The fi nal death count may yet top 300 with a handful of peo-ple unaccounted for and some hospitalised victims in a critical condition.

Vasco Errani, the govern-ment’s reconstruction supremo, vowed yesterday that hundreds of people made homeless by the quake would be back in houses “in your own territory” within seven months.

Many are currently housed in tents in a region where freezing overnight temperatures are com-mon from mid-October.

The clear-up operation was given a signifi cant boost yes-terday with the reopening of a key roadbridge on the main road leading to Amatrice.

The centuries-old original “bridge of three eyes” was left structurally unsafe by the quake but army engineers have built a temporary by-pass next to it.

Farmers organisation Col-diretti meanwhile announced that all the surviving cows in the agricultural area hit by the quake were being fed and milked every day.

The milk is being used to make a “caciotta” cheese.

The fi rst samples were sold at a market in Rome yesterday with funds raised going to help farm-ers in the quake-hit area.

Romeo the dog survives Italy quakeAFPRome

Right: This picture released by the Vatican Press Off ice yesterday shows Pope Francis with Leo the Labrador.

A image grab from a handout video taken and released by the Vigili del Fuoco (Italian Firefighters) press off ice yesterday shows a firefighter carrying Romeo after he has been pulled from the rubble.

Acclaimed French director Francois Ozon brought a pacifi st tale of reconcili-

ation to the Venice Film Festival yesterday with his new melo-drama Frantz, a love story for an uneasy post-Brexit Europe.

A take on German-American master Ernst Lubitsch’s 1931 fi lm Broken Lullaby, itself an adaption of a Maurice Rostand novel, Frantz is shot mostly in black and white and set in the aftermath of World War I.

It is not the only fi lm in com-petition to be rooted in this pe-riod: like Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans, the story is one of traumatised people on the move – recalling those up-rooted by wars and heading for Europe’s shores today.

Frantz opens in a small Ger-man town – the fi lm is shot largely in German – where Anna

(played by sweet-faced Paula Beer) mourns daily at the grave of her fi ance Frantz, killed in battle in France.

One day a mysterious young Frenchman, Adrien (Pierre Niney) also visits the grave.

While Anna believes she has found a friend of Frantz’s, he is spat at by the locals, hostile so soon after the German defeat.

Among the scenes of Broken Lullaby replicated by Ozon is the speech by Frantz’s father in which he admonishes his compatriots, reminding them of France’s 2mn dead, each of whom was also someone’s son.

The fi lm, premiering on the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II and as pro-Europe protesters organise anti-Brexit rallies, warns of the dangers of nationalism and closing the door on neighbours or migrants.

Ozon, who shot to fame with 8 femmes (2002) and Swimming Pool (2003), told journalists in Venice that it had been “impor-

tant for me to tell the point of view of the Germans, who had lost the war”.

He chose to shoot largely in black and white because it brought a greater level of realism to the period drama.

“All our references from the period, all our cultural images of it are in black and white. I love colour though, and thought it could be a useful device in scenes where life interrupts the period of mourning,” he said.

The fi lm diff ers sharply from Lubitsch’s off ering, not only because the second half of the work is invented, but because Ozon – known for complex fe-male heroines – shifts the per-spective to tell the story through Anna.

Adrien’s story of how he knew Frantz is pictured in a series of fl ashbacks imagined by Anna – fl ashbacks which, however, reduced the emotional tension rather than increasing it, partic-ularly in the weak violin scenes.

And there is a homoerotic connection between the two men which screams from the screen but is never outwardly acknowledged.

It is Ozon’s love for Germa-ny, the fi rst foreign country he visited as a child, which shines through as he takes the viewer from squares to beer taverns in his exploration of melodrama’s classic themes of guilt and for-giveness.

Wake-up call for Europe in FrantzAFPVenice

Actress Paula Beer at the photocall of the movie Frantz, presented in competition at the 73rd Venice Film Festival.

It’s Jude Law’s fi rst day as pope and after a naughty gesture, he addresses the

crowd in Saint Peter’s Square.Italian master Paolo Sorren-

tino’s fi rst foray into the world of television series has produced The Young Pope, a 10-part won-der set at the heart of the Vati-can state, where the college of cardinals has just elected its fi rst American pope.

Lenny Belardo, aka Pius XIII, is revealed in the fi rst two epi-sodes – premiered at the Venice fi lm festival – as shrewd, ironi-cal, doubting and ruthless, a boy who grew up in an orphanage who revels in his new power.

The Vatican’s secretary of state (Italy’s Silvio Orlando) at fi rst hopes to manipulate him, and is left fl ummoxed by his new cigarette-smoking, cherry-Coke drinking, Machiavellian boss.

Lenny’s “adoptive mother”, Sister Mary (Diane Keaton) ar-rives at the Vatican and is quick-ly appointed personal secretary to her former charge, leaving the cardinals to wonder whether she is puppet master or put upon.

The visuals and music are lush and heavily cinematic and the set replicates down to the smallest detail key locations inside the Holy See, giving the viewer an exceptional look into a secretive world of grandeur.

Asked by reporters at the beach-side festival whether he was worried the Vatican and Pope Francis may take off ence at the clever, funny but biting tale, Sorrentino said it was “the Vati-can’s problem not mine”.

“But if they watch to the end they will see it is a work that tackles with curiosity and hon-esty, not with a desire to pro-voke ... the contradictions and diffi culties, and fascinating lives of clergy, nuns and the pope,” he said.

While Francis insists on the church opening its doors to the people, Pius XIII has but harsh words for his fl ock.

“The pope we have created is diametrically opposed to the real one, because that could happen. It is possible for a liberal pope to be followed by someone very diff erent,” Sorrentino said. “I think it’s illusory to believe that the church has set off on a long journey towards liberalness. The Pope (Francis) is not like ours, but it’s not far-fetched to think

there could be such a one in the future.”

Law said he had been thrilled to work with Sorrentino, the man behind the Oscar-winning The Great Beauty (2013) and Youth (2015).

“Paolo creates such a beauti-ful visual language, to fi nd my-self a colour in his paintbox was a joy. I was attracted to the idea of playing a character so rich in contradictions,” he said about Lenny, who appears to use the role of red-shoed pontiff as a mask and a means to working through his own issues.

“I think more than anything what worried me was the idea of playing a pope, a title, a pub-

lic role, and Paolo (Sorrentino) reminded me constantly that it was really about a man who happened to be a pope.

“It’s a complicated, multi-layered character, and on top of that, it’s a character playing a character,” he said.

There are hints of some-thing mystical to come from Pius XIII – particularly in one scene with a kangaroo – but, for now at least, the audience is kept guessing as to whether the blue-eyed pontiff even believes in God.

“Whether you agree or not with the things he says and the stands he takes, he is an honest man,” Law said.

Jude Law bewitches as the ‘young pope’AFPVenice

Actor Jude Law arrives for the premiere of The Young Pope.

Germany hands prison sentence to ‘Nazi grandma’A notorious 87-year-old Holocaust denier dubbed the “Nazi grandma” by German media was sentenced to eight months in prison on Friday on charges of sedition relating to her claim that Auschwitz was never used for the mass extermination of Jews.Ursula Haverbeck, whose criminal record includes another 10-month jail sentence that she is currently appealing, wrote a letter to the mayor of Detmold in which she claimed it is “clearly recognisable” that Auschwitz was nothing more than a labour camp.In Germany, anyone who publicly endorses, denies or plays down the mass murder of Jews during the Third Reich faces a maximum penalty of five years in jail and a minimum of a fine.

The letter was written during the Detmold trial of Reinhold Hanning, a 94-year-old former Auschwitz concentration camp guard.In her letter, Haverbeck referred to the Holocaust survivors who gave testimony at the trial as “alleged witnesses” brought to Detmold for the sole purpose of proving that Auschwitz was a death camp.The leading judge in the case said on Friday that Haverbeck refused to see reason and that her recent comments also made her liable to prosecution.Various German courts have sentenced the recalcitrant Holocaust denier and her criminal record includes two fines and another suspended sentence for sedition.

EUROPE15Gulf Times


The European Union and Turkey tested the waters for a political rapproche-

ment with a fi rst meeting yes-terday between the bloc’s 28 foreign ministers and a senior Ankara offi cial after a failed coup in Turkey in July strained their uneasy ties.

The EU, which depends on Ankara to keep a lid on the movement of migrants to the bloc, is now seeking to ease ten-sions with Turkey after voicing loud criticism of President Re-cep Tayyip Erdogan’s post-coup crackdown.

“On the political level we need a rapprochement, we need to normalise the situation,” Lux-embourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn told Reuters after the EU ministers’ meeting with Tur-key’s EU Aff airs Minister Omer Celik. “It’s the fi rst time since the coup that we spoke to each other, not about one another. But we cannot forget the rule of law. Everyone around the table said that if they want to stabilise the situation, they must come back to the rule of law as quickly as possible.”

Celik, speaking to reporters via a translator, expressed Tur-key’s strong disappointment

with the EU’s initial reaction to the attempted military coup.

But he also said: “As a result of the meeting, there is very strong consensus about focusing on a positive agenda and further en-hancing co-operation between Turkey and the EU.”

The EU, often critical of Tur-key’s track record on human rights and rule of law, was tak-en further aback when Ankara dismissed 80,000 people from public duty and arrested many of them over alleged sympathies with the plotters.

Turkey was enraged by what it saw as the EU’s half-hearted condemnation of the coup.

It accused Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of mastermind-ing it, which he denied.

With the talks in Bratislava, the bloc is now sending a more conciliatory message, while up-holding demands that Turkey makes a eff ort towards uphold-ing democratic principles.

“I really expect an improve-ment of relationship now,” Slo-vak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak said.

The Netherlands was more cautious, as it also raised with fellow EU states the issue of dealing with Gulen supporters in their own countries.

Austria has gone as far as to propose dropping EU accession talks with Turkey over demo-

cratic defi ciencies but, despite widespread reservations among EU capitals on whether Ankara should or would ever join, Vi-enna seemed to be getting little support on this particular point.

Celik criticised Austria, say-ing such comments “lack vi-sion” and “put in jeopardy the future of Europe”.

He said Ankara would stick to the migration accord but that it was “not rational” to expect the Turkish government to relax its counter-terrorism laws now as it fi ghts Islamic State (IS) in neighbouring Syria and Kurdish militants on its own soil.

He did not rule out, however, that this could happen in the fu-ture once there is “no terrorism threat” in Turkey, saying that Ankara was ready for talks on that with the Council of Europe (CoE), a European rights body of which Turkey is a member.

The EU worries Turkey ap-plies its anti-terror laws too broadly to go after Erdogan crit-ics and has made easing them a precondition for granting Turks visa-free movement.

Ankara previously threatened to walk away from co-operation on migration should it not get more relaxed travel rules in Oc-tober, a prospect Celik down-played yesterday.

But he did say Turkey would not seal any new deals to control

migration to the EU before it gets visa liberalisation.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu would travel to Stras-bourg to discuss the role that the CoE could play in post-coup prosecutions in Turkey.

“We need to underscore that we stand by the side of Turkey, and have enormous respect for the Turkish people who rose up and fought the military coup,” he said.

“Perhaps we must admit self-critically that the empathy and emotionality of our statements of solidarity were not heard and received in Turkey with the needed intensity,” Steinmeier said of the EU’s initial reaction to the botched coup.

EU-Turkey talks will con-tinue when Erdogan meets Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the EU’s executive arm, on the side-lines of the G20 summit in China today and tomorrow.

Russian President Vladimir

Putin met Erdogan in Hangzhou on the eve of the summit and told him that he was glad that political life was being stabilised in Turkey.

“We see that the Turkey is living through diffi cult time, is fi ghting against terrorism and facing serious terrorist crimes,” Putin said. “You and me have several time expressed our po-sition on the fi ght against ter-rorism. I am sure that you have already succeeded in fully nor-malising the situation.”

EU and Turkey ministers look to repair frayed tiesReutersBratislava

Convicted editor says wife has been banned from leaving Turkey

The wife of the former editor-in-chief of Turkey’s top

opposition daily Cumhuriyet was banned yesterday

from flying to Germany and her passport seized, her

husband said on Twitter.

Less than three weeks after Can Dundar stepped

down from the paper, Dilek Dundar was told she could

not fly to Berlin at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, the state-

run news agency Anadolu said.

Her passport had been cancelled last month, Cum-

huriyet added.

The agency said Dundar’s passport was seized and

she left after being told she could not leave the

country.

Dundar was defiant on Twitter, saying he and his wife

would not be intimidated.

“They took my wife hostage. Law of the jungle. But

in vain. Neither I nor a woman who jumped on top

of a gun can be frightened of this,” he said, referring

to an incident in May when his wife grappled with a

gunman who tried to shoot her husband outside an

Istanbul court.

Dundar was sentenced by the court in May to five

years and 10 months in prison for allegedly reveal-

ing state secrets in a story that infuriated Turkey’s

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Cumhuriyet’s report on a shipment of arms inter-

cepted at the Syrian border in January 2014 sparked

a furore when it was published in May 2015, with

Erdogan warning Dundar himself he would “pay a

heavy price”.

Dundar is believed to be in Germany after he was

freed earlier this year pending an appeal following

his trial.

Last month, he said he would not surrender himself

to the Turkish courts because he had lost faith in the

judiciary after the failed July 15 coup and the three-

month state of emergency imposed in the days after.

“To trust such a judiciary would be like putting one’s

head under the guillotine,” he wrote in a Cumhuriyet

column entitled “time to say farewell”.

“Therefore, I’ve decided not to surrender to this judici-

ary at least until the state of emergency is lifted.”

Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan for the past quarter of a century, was

buried in his home city of Sa-markand yesterday, leaving behind a power vacuum in a nation that serves as a bulwark against militant Islam in Cen-tral Asia.

Karimov, who was 78, died from a stroke.

After a funeral rite in Samar-kand’s ancient Registan square attended by hundreds of men – some of whom were in tears – his body was buried at the city’s Shah-i-Zinda cemetery, two attendees told Reuters.

Karimov was derided by Western governments as a dictator who violated human rights, but for many people in Uzbekistan, a mainly Muslim former Soviet state which bor-ders Afghanistan, he is the only head of state they have ever known.

With no obvious successor, Karimov’s death has triggered an outpouring of grief, mixed with uncertainty about the fu-ture.

“I still can’t believe it hap-pened,” said a 39-year-old res-ident of the capital, Tashkent, who was among thousands who lined the main thorough-fare early yesterday to watch the funeral cortege pass by en route to Samarkand.

“I don’t know what happens now, I am lost,” said the man, who declined to be identifi ed.

How the power vacuum is fi lled in Uzbekistan is of urgent concern to Russia, the United States and China, all powers with interests in the volatile Central Asia region, where Uz-bekistan is the most populous state.

Central Asia analysts say a small circle of senior offi cials and Karimov family members will have been meeting behind closed doors to try to agree on anointing a new president.

The funeral rites off ered clues as to who might be in the running.

At the Samarkand ceremony, Prime Minister Shavkat Mirzi-yoyev, 59, and Finance Minister Rustam Azimov, 57, were allo-cated spots in the front row, nearest to Karimov’s coffi n.

If the elite fail to agree among themselves on a tran-sition, the resulting instability

could be exploited by Islam-ist militants who in the past have staged violent attacks in Uzbek cities and want to make Uzbekistan part of an Islamic caliphate.

Karimov jailed, killed or ex-iled most of the Islamist fi ght-ers inside Uzbekistan.

Many have since joined the Taliban in Afghanistan and Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, where they have become battle-hardened.

An upsurge in Islamist vio-lence in Uzbekistan would pose a threat to the United States, which is trying to contain the insurgency in Afghanistan, to Russia – home to millions of Uzbek migrant workers – and to China, which worries about Central Asian Islamists mak-ing common cause with sepa-ratists from its mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.

Many people had antici-pated that Karimov would be succeeded by his older daugh-ter Gulnara, a businesswoman and pop star, but she fell from favour two years ago and there was no sign of her yesterday among the family members in the funeral cortège.

At Tashkent airport, as the coffi n was being loaded onto a plane bound for Samarkand, Karimov’s wife, Tatiana, and his younger daughter, Lola Ka-rimova-Tillyaeva, stood at the foot of the aircraft steps.

His daughter, dressed all in black, was dabbing her eyes with a white handkerchief.

Karimov’s death could un-leash a new round of jockeying between Russia, the US and China, which are all trying to bring Central Asia, with its oil and gas reserves and metal ore, into their sphere of infl uence.

In a statement off ering his condolences, US President Barack Obama said his coun-try stood with Uzbekistan as it “begins a new chapter in its history”.

Alexei Pushkov, the pro-Kremlin head of the foreign aff airs committee in Rus-sia’s parliament, responded on Twitter that Obama was “mistaken if he thinks the new chapter is going to be written in Washington”.

The most prominent for-eign dignitaries at the funeral were Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Tajikistan’s President Imomali Rakhmon and Rus-sian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Uzbekistan’s leader buriedReutersAlmaty

People at the mourning ceremony in Samarkand’s Registan Square.

About 25,000 Kurdish sup-porters demonstrated in Cologne yesterday, demanding the release of jailed Kurdish leader Abdul-lah Ocalan.Many demonstra-tors carried posters portraying Ocalan, the leader of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States, and is banned in Germany.

Ocalan, who has been held in prison by Turkey since 1999, has not been heard from since the failed July 15 coup.

A group of Kurdish politicians and activists in Turkey have said that they will start a hun-ger strike next week to demand the right to visit Ocalan, who has been kept in isolation since peace talks between the PKK and the government collapsed last year.

“We are demonstrating be-cause we have been treated un-fairly for 30 years, but also be-cause Germany is supporting that behaviour through weapons shipments and bans on Kurdish groups in Germany,” said Yavuz Fersoglu, spokesman for Nav-Dem, the Kurdish group that organised the demonstration in Cologne.

German offi cials are concerned about deepening divisions fol-lowing the failed putsch among

the 3mn people with a Turkish background in Germany.

A police spokeswoman said 1,000 police offi cers on site kept the demonstration largely peace-ful, although many banned PKK fl ags and banners were confi s-cated.

Police also had to shut a nearby bridge during the event to inves-tigate a possible backpack bomb, but later determined it was a false alarm.

Police had detained 77 people on Friday in the nearby town of Grevenbroich after Kurdish stu-dents refused to disperse after a sit-in.

Three police offi cers were in-jured, police said.

The Verfassungsschutz do-mestic intelligence agency esti-mates the PKK has about 14,000 members in Germany.

The agency in June said that it could not rule out a return by the PKK to militant forms of action in Europe given escalating vio-lence in Turkey.

Organisers negotiated with police to stage the Cologne demonstration after city of-fi cials cancelled a Kurdish fes-tival that had been scheduled for a stadium with a capacity of 50,000, fearing it could engen-der counter-demonstrations and violence.

The event followed a demon-stration by about 20,000 Erdog-an supporters at the same site on July 31.

Ankara had reacted angrily af-

ter Germany’s top court prevent-ed President Recep Tayyip Er-dogan from addressing the crowd via teleconference.

The Kurdish event was also banned from live-streaming any speakers.

“When our German govern-ment with Angela Merkel sup-ports the Turkish government, we have to at least send a signal to show that she is supporting a dictatorship,” said Selim Cebba, a young Kurdish German at the event, told Reuters.

Thousands of Kurds stage protest in CologneReutersCologne

Right: A six-year-old boy and his four-year-old sister pose during the rally.

The Kurdish Turk rally in Cologne.

Russian intelligence waging information war: Czechs

ReutersPrague

Russian intelligence serv-ices are conducting “an information war” in the

Czech Republic, building a net-work of puppet groups and propaganda agents that could be used to destabilise the coun-try, the BIS counterintelligence service warned on Thursday.

Czech security services have long focused attention on a Rus-sian presence that remains sig-nifi cant a quarter century after the country of 10.6mn broke from Moscow’s orbit and be-came a member of Nato and the European Union.

In its annual report, the BIS said Russian and Chinese intel-ligence remained the most active operating in the Czech Republic, and Russia particularly sought to infl uence Czech media over its role in the Ukrainian and Syrian confl icts.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and Kiev and the West say Moscow is arming and supporting separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.

In Syria, Russia supports President Bashar al-Assad whom Western governments want to see leave power and Russian aircraft have carried out strikes on US-back rebels.

The BIS warned that Russian agents sought to stoke social and political tensions by using pup-pet groups and supporting pop-ulist and extremist groups.

“The infrastructure created for achieving these goals will not disappear with the end of the two confl icts,” BIS said. “It can be used to destabilise or manip-ulate Czech society or political environment at any time, if Rus-sia wishes to do so.”

Fears of Russian interference in countries along the European Union’s eastern fl ank, especially in the Baltics, are growing in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis and Nato has been looking to beef up its defences.

Additionally a pro-Russian lobby in Czech Republic seeks to boost relations with Russia.

Russian intelligence agents, the BIS report said, sought to weaken Czech media through infi ltration and by spreading propaganda and disinformation.

BIS said that “a large number” of Russian intelligence offi c-ers were working undercover as part of the Russian embassy in Prague, which is by far the larg-est foreign mission in the coun-try with around 140 staff , twice as many as the US mission.


INDIA

Vigilance squad raidshomes andoffi ces ofex-minister

IANSKochi

Offi cers of the Kerala Vigi-lance and Anti Corrup-tion Bureau raided the

homes of former excise minister and senior Congress leader K Babu, his two daughters and two of his close aides in Ernakulam district yesterday.

The raids began at 7am at the homes and offi ces Babu and oth-ers. Babu was present when the offi cers arrived at his home here.

He is the second minister from the former Oommen Chandy cabinet to face vigilance inves-tigation. The fi rst was former fi nance minister K M Mani.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vi-jayan, who completed 100 days in offi ce, and Director General of Police (DGP) Jacob Thomas, who also heads the Vigilance and Anti Corruption Bureau, have made their intention clear to weed out corruption from the state.

Babu had come under severe pressure when he was the excise minister in the Chandy cabinet after Biju Ramesh, a bar owner, alleged that he had bribed Babu at his offi ce. The raids were car-ried out simultaneously at the homes of Babu, his two daugh-ters and two of his close friends by a group of vigilance offi cials at 10 diff erent locations.

The raids were based on a First Information Report (FIR) fi led in a vigilance court in Muvat-tupuzha in Ernakulam district alleging Babu had accumulated wealth disproportionate to his known sources of income.

Reiterating his claims, bar own-er Ramesh said: “The truth will come out as everyone knows what has happened. A lot had happened during Babu’s term as minister.”

Both Babu and Mani have been under the spotlight follow-ing the bar scandal that erupted in October 2014. Mani had gone public after vigilance offi cers questioned him last week. He had accused DGP Thomas of carrying out a personal vendetta against him for ordering fi nancial inspection into top cop’s depart-ment when Mani was minister.

Ministry threateningto sack us, say nursesIANSNew Delhi

Thousands of nurses who have launched an indefi -nite strike demanding

higher salaries and allowances, yesterday alleged they were be-ing threatened with dismissal and asked to vacate their gov-ernment quarters within two days if they don’t return to work immediately.

The All India Government Nurses Federation (AIGNF) has said its members have been try-ing to meet senior Health Minis-try offi cials, including Secretary C K Mishra.

“Though we want to meet the senior offi cials and resolve the problem, we have been asked to meet only the nursing adviser repeatedly. The health secretary is not confi rming our request to meet him,” Liladhar Ramchan-dani, AIGNF spokesperson, said.

Over 20,000 nurses in govern-ment hospitals in Delhi on Friday went on an indefi nite strike, even as the government invoked the

Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) against them.

Ramchandani said a delega-tion of 17 nurses from various government hospitals of Delhi were invited for talks by the Health Ministry but none of the offi cials met the delegation.

The striker has aff ected hospi-tal services badly.

According to federation, the core demands include that the entry pay grade for staff nurses be enhanced to Rs5,400 from Rs4,600 and nursing allowance be raised to Rs7,800.

They are also demanding risk and night duty allowances for all nurses.

On Friday, over 80 nurses of Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital were detained by Delhi police for going ahead with the strike.

The agitation has badly hit over 40 central and state gov-ernment hospitals in Delhi, at a time when dengue and chikun-gunya cases are soaring.

Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung invoked the ESMA against the striking nurses, terming the pro-test completely illegal.

All-party delegation to visit Kashmir todayIANSNew Delhi

Politicians set to visit Kash-mir as part of an all-party delegation met here yester-

day to discuss the situation in the restive state and the possibility of holding talks with people from various sections of society there.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh chaired the meeting and also discussed the itinerary of the Kashmir visit that begins today.

The home minister-led all-party delegation is expected to meet political groups, trade un-ion leaders, civil society members and individuals to discuss ways to restore peace in the valley caught in an unending cycle of violence triggered by the July 8 killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant commander Burhan Wani.

The delegation comprises 28 MPs and some senior govern-ment offi cials. They include Finance Minister Arun Jaitley,

Food and Public Distribution Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mallikarjun Kharge, and MP Asaduddin Owaisi.

Normal life has remained disrupted in the Kashmir Val-ley for nearly two months amid recurring pro-freedom stone-throwing protests and counter-violence by security forces. At least 73 people, including two policemen, have been killed in the weeks of violence.

Yesterday authorities imposed a curfew as a separatist protest shutdown continued for the 57th day.

Police said curfew has been imposed in Baramulla, Sopore and Badgam towns in addition to areas falling under Nowhatta and M.R.Gunj in Srinagar city.

Heavy deployments of secu-rity forces and restrictions were in place in the rest of the valley.

Senior separatist leaderSyed Ali Geelani has asked civilians and trade and business organi-

sations not to meet the all-party delegation. Geelani has said the delegation was coming on “an offi cially conducted tour of the blood-littered valley.”

Trade organisations, includ-ing the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and Kashmir Economic Alliance (KEA), have said they won’t meet the delegation unless the mem-bers meet the separatists fi rst.

Mainstream politicians, in a delegation led by former chief minister Omar Abdullah, had met national party leaders in New Delhi last month.

Expecting that solutions would be found by meetings of the del-egation members with leaders of state’s mainstream parties would be naive, observers say.

The problem lies on the other side of the political divide in Jammu and Kashmir although representatives from every re-gion, including those from Jam-mu, Ladakh and the valley, have stakes in restoring peace.

Teresa legacyunder cloudahead of hercanonisationAFPKolkata

As the Vatican prepares to declare Mother Teresa a saint today, in the eastern

Indian city of Kolkata where she rose to fame, claims of medical negligence and fi nancial mis-management at her care homes threaten to cloud her legacy.

Pope Francis approved the canonisation of the widely be-loved Roman Catholic nun last December, nearly two decades after she died in Kolkata, in whose teeming slums she de-voted her life to helping the des-titute and the sick.

Yet criticisms of the soon-to-be Saint Teresa of Kolkata abound, with doctors and former volun-teers recounting grim tales of poor sanitation, medical neglect and forced conversions of the dying.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents in what is now Macedonia, her Mission-aries of Charity homes for the dying earned her a Nobel Peace Prize and the sobriquet Saint of the Gutters.

“We feel that Mother Teresa’s elevation to sainthood would be a renewed thrust to (her) chari-table works,” Thomas D’Souza, the Archbishop of Kolkata, said.

Like millions of Catholics worldwide, Gautam Lewis is excited to celebrate the canoni-sation of the woman he calls his “second mother,” who rescued the orphan after he was struck with polio aged two.

“Mother Teresa used to carry me to church every Sunday and she personally supervised my treatment when I underwent surgeries and rehabilitation to

get rid of polio,” Lewis, now a pi-lot in London, said.

“I remember feeling very safe and secure in her presence,” said the 39-year-old, in Kolkata for celebrations of the nun.

Already considered a living saint by many, the humanitar-ian’s path to canonisation was sealed after the Vatican last year recognised the second of the two required miracles, following her death.

A critically ill Bengali tribal woman and a Brazilian man suf-fering from multiple brain tu-mours both credited prayers to the deceased nun with saving their lives.

But Aroup Chatterjee, a British doctor born in the city formerly known as Calcutta, said that “her whole emphasis was propagation of her faith at any cost.”

“To convert a dying, uncon-scious person is very, very low behaviour, very disgusting,” the 58-year-old author of a contro-versial 2003 book on the nun said.

“Mother Teresa did that on an industrial basis.”

One of Mother Teresa’s most vocal critics, the late British-born author Christopher Hitch-ens, accused her of exacerbating the plight of the poor with her staunch opposition to contra-ception and abortion.

The famous atheist, who made a provocative fi lm about the nun called Hell’s Angel in 1994, said she denied basic care to patients out of a belief that suff ering brought them closer to God.

“I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ,” Hitchens quoted her as saying in 1981, in his book The Missionary Position.

Some former volunteers say her order glorifi es pain and poverty and accuse it of delivering bare-bones care, despite receiving mil-lions of dollars in donations.

Hemley Gonzalez, who started his own NGO in Kolkata as a re-sponse to the alleged defi ciencies he witnessed when volunteering at Missionaries of Charity eight years ago, calls it “a modern-day cult.”

Nuns washed needles with tap water before reusing them, he said, and scolded him for giving terminal patients hair-cuts because they were going to die anyway. “Right under the eyes of everyone they’re getting away with medical negligence,” Gonzalez said.

S Bedford, a journalist who spent two months volunteering at the home in Kolkata, recalled grim sanitary conditions.

“The squat-style toilets were in a narrow room slick with wa-ter, urine and faeces...(many had) to crawl through the mess,” she wrote in a 2014 article.

Missionaries of Charity has vastly expanded since Mother Teresa’s death, and now has 758 centres in 139 countries staff ed by more than 5,000 nuns.

Yet the order remains opaque, declining to publish its funding sources or accounts, a stance which has elicited suspicion over its management of allegedly vast sums.

In her lifetime Mother Ter-esa was criticised for accepting funds from corrupt fi nanciers including former Haitian dicta-tor Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and a California banker jailed for swindling investors.

The order, however, roundly rejects its detractors.

Sister Marcelli M C interacts with a young inmate at ‘Shanti Nilaya’, a home for the dying and destitute run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Ahmedabad. Known as the “Angel of Mercy” for serving the poor in India, Mother Teresa will be declared a saint today, amid great fanfare. But as the Vatican prepares her canonisation, allegations of fraud and medical negligence cloud her legacy.

A Goa court yesterday ordered that a case by registered against Panaji Mayor Surendra Furtado for allegedly endangering lives by overcrowding a de-weeding boat that capsized in June this year. The order by the Judicial Magistrate First Class Panaji Pooja Kavlekar followed a petition by a lawyer who said Furtado had endangered lives by overcrowding the boat, which capsized in the Campal creek in Panaji. No one was injured in the incident. The boat was carrying the mayor, officials and journalists. “The court has directed the police to register an FIR under Sections 280 and 287 of the Indian Penal Code,” lawyer Aires Rodrigues said.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has suspended former Delhi minister Sandeep Kumar, who was sacked after a sex tape emerged, a party leader said yesterday. “In a high-level meeting held on Saturday morning, the party suspended the primary membership of Sandeep Kumar,” AAP’s Delhi convener Dilip Pandey said. A decision on expelling him from the party will be taken later, he added. The AAP on Wednesday night sacked Sandeep Kumar as social welfare and women and child development minister after a video emerged showing him in an “objectionable position” with a woman. On Thursday, Sandeep Kumar defended himself, saying he had resigned on his own and that he had been targeted because he was a Dalit.

The ongoing squabble between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriyaswayam Sevak Sangh in Goa is only an ego clash between Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Subhash Velingkar, the Congress has alleged, adding that the differences would be patched up soon. “According to us this is all a farce. The clash is actually between Parrikar and Subhash Velingkar (who heads a breakaway RSS faction in Goa),” Congress spokesman Trajano D’Mello said in Panaji yesterday. “They had both worked out a strategy to win the 2012 elections but Parrikar got away with all the credit,” D’Mello added. Velingkar was sacked as the RSS chief for the Goa.

At least four soldiers of the Assam Rifles were injured after a group of heavily armed militants ambushed a convoy of the security forces in remote Zunheboto district of Nagaland, off icials said yesterday. An Assam Rifles spokesman said heavily armed cadres of National Socialist Council of Nagaland (K) fired indiscriminately at a convoy of four vehicles at Zunheboto on Friday evening, injuring four of them. “The convoy led by a Junior Commissioned Off icer (JCO) was returning to the base from a routine patrolling when the incident took place,” the spokesman said, adding that the injured soldiers have been shifted to the nearest army hospital for treatment.

Thousands of people facing eviction from their houses staged a protest outside the Raj Bhavan in Ranchi yesterday. In August the district administration had served notices to people who had bought land from tribal owners asking them to prove that the deals were not fraudulent or illegal. Failure to prove would result in the eviction of all non-tribals. If these notices are executed more than 100,000 people will be rendered homeless. “This fight is for the poor – tribal or not, doesn’t matter. We purchased our land by spending our entire life’s savings and now we are being made homeless,” said Malti Devi, a resident of Ganganagar who participated in the protest.

Case to be filed against Panaji mayor

AAP suspends sackedminister from party

Goa RSS-BJP rift a farce: Congress

Four soldiers injured in Nagaland ambush

Thousands protest over eviction threat

JUDICIARY SCANDALCONTROVERSY MILITANCY DEMONSTRATION

Striking nurses stage a demonstration to press for their demands at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi yesterday.

17Gulf TimesSunday, September 4, 2016

INDIA

Amitabh picks up broom for a clean cause

India, Vietnam to boostdefence co-operation

Govt shelves plan to expand Scorpene orderafter data leak

IANSMumbai

Maharashtra Chief Min-ister Devendra Fadnavis and Bollywood icon Am-

itabh Bachchan yesterday picked up brooms to clean the sprawling Sir J J Hospital complex as part of the NDTV-Dettol ‘MahaCleanathon’ campaign.

“We have not come here to make speeches… We want to set an exam-ple and hope this movement con-tinues and we can keep our cities clean,” Fadnavis said as he dug his hands into dirt at the event.

Bachchan, the campaign’s brand ambassador, swished around with a broom along with Fadnavis, and then picked up the accumulated garbage with his bare hands to

dump it in a cane basket.“If each one cleans up 10 yards

around their homes, the entire city will sparkle. When you see some-body littering, tell them if you keep doing this, it will have an impact,” Bachchan said.

Later, he tweeted: “At Ma-haCleanathon to acknowledge the Swachch Bharat campaign in Ma-harashtra and to work so many oth-ers follow.”

The campaign, launched in Janu-ary 2016, aims to complete 5mn manhours to the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan and has already clocked in over 3.3mn manhours, with the rest scheduled to be completed by the year-end, an offi cial said.

Fadnavis said that by October 2 this year – marking Mahatma Gandhi’s 147th birth anniversary – 50 cities in Maharashtra will be

‘swachch’ or clean, and around 7,000 villages have already become open defecation-free.

Several other celebrities like Pri-

yanka Chopra, Dia Mirza, Sonakshi Sinha, Arjun Kapoor, ministers, government offi cials and common-ers joined the initiative yesterday.

Modi announces $500mn credit during a visit to Hanoi

AFPHanoi

India said yesterday it is giving Vietnam half a billion dollars in credit to boost defence

ties, the latest security deal be-tween the two nations seeking to counter Beijing’s muscle-fl exing in the South China Sea.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the announcement during a visit to Hanoi, which has gone on a spending spree in recent years to expand and mod-ernise its military arsenal amid territorial disputes with Beijing in the strategically vital water-way.

“I am also happy to announce a new defence credit for Viet-

nam of $500mn for facilitating deeper defence co-operation,” Modi told reporters after signing the deal.

He did not specify details of the arrangement, but tradition-ally such lines of credit would oblige Vietnam to sign contracts with Indian companies.

About 50% of India’s trade passes through the South China Sea, where Beijing has built up islands and outcrops capable of supporting military activities to the chagrin of Vietnam and oth-er claimants.

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc praised its close friendship with India yes-terday during the visit – the fi rst by an Indian premier in 15 years and part of New Delhi’s “Act East Policy” to strengthen economic and security ties with east Asian neighbours.

“(We) discussed matters con-cerning the East Sea,” the Vi-etnamese prime minister told reporters.

“All sides must peacefully solve East Sea disputes based on international laws,” he added of the contested waterway, where the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia also have claims.

The latest defence deal fol-lows a similar announcement in 2014 when India agreed to give Vietnam a $100mn line of credit to buy naval patrol boats, a move that likely rankled China.

Beijing has previously criti-cised India’s co-operation with Vietnam in the defence sector, and India has its own frosty his-tory with China following a brief but bloody border war in 1962.

Vietnam was the eighth larg-est importer of arms between 2011 and 2015, according to the

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, up from a rank of 43 in the previous fi ve-year period.

The communist country is increasingly looking to new partners to replace or update So-viet-era military equipment, in-cluding the United States which lifted a Cold War-era arms em-bargo in May.

Vietnam expert Carl Thayer said Modi’s trip was Vietnam’s way of showing it has other friends in the region.

“Vietnam is playing that game: ‘Come on, China, get close to us, co-operate, but if you don’t we can move to India or we’ll go talk to you after the Prime Minister of India has just been through,’” he said.

India and Vietnam signed a dozen agreements in all, includ-ing a $5mn deal to build a tech-

nology park in the coastal resort city of Nha Trang.

Vietnam is pushing to become a key player in Southeast Asia’s tech scene as it looks to diversify exports beyond manufacturing and agriculture.

Modi also visited the tomb of Vietnam’s independence leader and communist crusader Ho Chi Minh, posting a photo on Twit-ter of the monument where the embalmed national hero is on display, saying: “Paid tributes to one of Asia’s tallest leaders, the great Ho Chi Minh.”

Modi later fl ew out to attend the G20 summit in Hangzhou China along with other world leaders.

He will then head to Laos for a summit of the Associa-tion of Southeast Asian Na-tions (Asean), and will attend an Asean-India Summit on Sep-tember 8.

ReutersNew Delhi

India is unlikely to give French naval contractor DCNS a proposed order

for three new submarines, in addition to the six it is already building in the country, fol-lowing the leak of secret data about its capabilities, Indian defence offi cials said.

Details of the Scorpene submarine were published in The Australian newspaper last month, triggering concerns that it had become vulnerable even before it was ready to en-ter service.

DCNS had off ered to build three more submarines to help India replace its ageing Sovi-et-era fl eet, and had held talks over the past year, two Indian sources said.

That off er will not now be taken up, according to the of-fi cials.

“We had an agreement for six, and six it will remain,” a defence ministry offi cial briefed on the navy’s plans told Reuters, speaking on con-dition of anonymity.

A spokesman of the Indian Navy confi rmed that the or-ders would not be placed for three more submarines.

“Indian has ordered only six Scorpene submarines and orders have not been placed for three more as reported by some media. Therefore the question of cancellation does not arise,” the spokesman said

A navy offi cer said there had been a serious breach of data and the navy’s eff orts were focused on determining the damage done to the existing submarines.

“No order will be signed, nothing is going to happen now,” the offi cer, who has also been briefed on the submarine data leak, said when asked if the government planned to enlarge the order.

India’s defence ministry has written to DCNS asking for details about the extent of the leak and how data relating to the Scorpene’s intelligence gathering frequencies, diving depth, endurance and weap-ons specifi cations had ended up in the public domain, both offi cials said.

A naval group headed by a three-star admiral is look-ing at altering some features of the submarine, the fi rst of which began sea trials in May for induction later this year, to minimise any damage.

The remaining fi ve are in various stages of production at state-run Mazgaon Docks shipyard in Mumbai and they were all due to enter service by 2020.

An offi cial at Mazgaon Docks said the fi rm was fo-cused on completing the orig-inal order of six Scorpenes and that he was not aware of any plan to build more.

A DCNS spokesman said the fi rm was in close touch with “our key customers like India to keep them informed of the development of our in-vestigation, respond to their questions and mitigate their

legitimate worries.”“The investigation is still

ongoing and one of its objec-tives is to determine the po-tential prejudice and minimise its potential consequences,” the spokesman said.

DCNS is preparing to build a new fl eet of subma-rines in Australia for A$50bn ($38.13bn). Australian defence offi cials have warned the fi rm to beef up security in the wake of the leak.

DCNS has said that the leak, which covered details of the Scorpene-class model and not the vessel currently being de-signed for the Australian fl eet, bore the hallmarks of “eco-nomic warfare” carried out by frustrated competitors.

Indian offi cials have pointed to a “non-disclosure of infor-mation” clause that was writ-ten into the 2005 contract at French insistence, the fi rst de-fence ministry offi cial briefed on the communication with the DCNS, said.

But the offi cial said the gov-ernment could only invoke that clause if it was estab-lished that the data was leaked and not stolen.

A French government source has said the fi rm had apparently been robbed, and it was not a leak, adding it was unlikely classifi ed data was stolen.

Indian submarine experts say that, while the breach in information security was se-rious, it does not make the Scorpenes immediately vul-nerable to detection.

The most vital data about a submarine is its unique “sig-nature” of noise, heat and electromagnetic emissions, and it is the combination of such signatures that deter-mines the ability to detect them.

“If that is gone, then you might as well say goodbye to the submarine. You are ex-posed,” said former vice admi-ral and submariner A K Singh.

Such signatures are assem-bled in the course of the sea trials of a submarine, and in the case of the Scorpenes that has yet to happen, he said.

India’s submarine arm is down to 13 vessels, only half of which are operational at any time, and is falling rapidly be-hind China, which is expand-ing its maritime presence in the Indian Ocean.

Even Pakistan, which oper-ates Agosta submarines also built by DCNS and is in talks with China for a new set of submarines, is drawing close to the operational strength of the Indian Navy.

The Indian government has approved the acquisition of the next generation of subma-rines beyond the Scorpene, in a project estimated at $8bn.

DCNS has expressed an in-terest in that project, as has Russia and Germany’s Thys-senKrupp Marine Systems.

The fi rst defence offi cial said he did not expect any movement on that project un-til the investigation into the Scorpene leak was completed and new security measures put in place.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi walks with Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam (front row, right) and Buddhist monk Thich Thanh Nhieu as he visits Quan Su Buddhism pagoda in Hanoi yesterday.

Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan sweeps a road in front of the J J Hospital complex in Mumbai yesterday.

Trinamool gets national party statusThe Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee has been granted the status of a national party by the Election Commission, and the elated party leaders termed it a major boost to the party’s image.“Landed in Rome & got great news. Trinamool gets national party status. We started in Bengal 18 years ago and now being blessed by you across India,” West Bengal Chief Minister and party supremo Banerjee tweeted from Rome, where she has gone for Mother Teresa’s canonisation programme.“The national status has been granted to our party by the Election Commission as Trinamool satisfies pre-requisite conditions mentioned

in the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 to be recognised as a national party,” a party leader said.The Trinamool now becomes the seventh recognised national party in the country after the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Nationalist Congress Party.However, the NCP, BSP and CPI could face some technical issues in keeping the national status, sources said.The Trinamool will be also maintaining the “recognised state party” status in West Bengal, Manipur, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh.

LATIN AMERICA


Caracas says foiled a coupReutersCaracas

Venezuela’s socialist government said on Friday it thwarted a coup plot this week as opponents planned to build on their big-

gest protest in more than a decade with further street action demanding a referendum to remove the president.

Buoyed by rallies in Caracas on Thursday that drew hundreds of thousands, the opposition coa-lition is planning more marches on September 7 to demand a plebiscite against President Nicolas Maduro this year.

But with the election board dragging out the process and Maduro vowing there will be no such vote in 2016, it is hard to see how the opposition can force it.

“It was the day they wanted: massive, peace-ful and inspirational. But that success leaves a key question in the air: ‘What next?’” wrote pollster Luis Vicente Leon in the aftermath of Thursday’s opposition-dubbed ‘Takeover of Caracas’.

As the Democratic Unity coalition detailed its timetable for future actions, the government convened foreign diplomats on Friday to show how the arrest of several activists and capture of weapons evidenced plans to topple Maduro by force.

“We have frustrated the intended coup d’etat,” Interior Minister Nestor Reverol told the diplo-matic corps.

Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez added: “Yes-terday, we stopped a massacre.”

Like his predecessor Hugo Chavez, Maduro frequently denounces coup and assassination plans, bringing ridicule from foes who say he is inventing them to justify repression and distract Venezuelans from their economic crisis.

Reverol said this week’s detention of opposi-tion activists Carlos Melo and Yon Goicoechea had led to the capture of arms and explosives in a makeshift camp a few kilometres from the presi-dential palace.

They included a sniper’s rifl e, Reverol said, showing photos of the arms.

He added that fi ve policemen were injured in skirmishes with stone-throwing youths after Thursday’s opposition rallies.

The opposition said the troublemakers, who clashed briefl y with police and National Guard troops in several parts of Caracas, were infi ltrators.

Thursday’s main events passed off peacefully, with the opposition saying more than a million protesters fl ooded Caracas, wearing white and chanting “This government will fall.”

They want to activate a referendum on Maduro as allowed by the constitution half-way through his term.

But if it drags into 2017, and Maduro loses, it would be a Pyrrhic victory for the opposition as Maduro’s handpicked vice president would take over for the ruling party.

Opposition leader Henry Ramos said calling the push for a recall referendum part of a coup plot was “crazy, a psychiatric problem.”

“This is a government in its death throes, try-ing to avoid a popular vote because it knows it’s fi nished.” Anti-Macri protest comes

to Argentinian capitalReutersBuenos Aires

Thousands of workers and members of leftist social movements descended on

Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo on Friday to protest the economic measures of centre-right Presi-dent Mauricio Macri.

Many of the protesters, who had arrived from other cities in recent days, cut off access to bridges and main streets in the Argentine capital before gather-ing in the plaza to demand an end to austerity and more support for workers.

“Enough of poverty and infl a-tion” read one sign. “No to higher tariff s” read another, a reference to Macri’s eff orts to end gas and electricity subsidies.

Since taking power in Decem-ber, Macri has implemented a slew of policies aimed at attract-ing investors to Latin America’s third-largest economy.

He eliminated currency con-trols and devalued the peso, which spurred infl ation and decreased workers’ purchasing power.

The government says the measures were necessary to at-tract investment and restore growth after 12 years of high-spending leftist rule.

It expects infl ation to fall from around 40% currently to 17% next year, when the economy is forecast to grow 3.5%.

Macri’s approval rating fell from 72% in January to 50% in July, according to pollster Ipsos.

Chile-based Latinobarometro released a report on Friday that said only 40% of Argentines ap-proved of their government.

Unions hardened their stance against Macri last month and agreed to unify their eff orts un-der the General Confederation of Labour, a trade union federation.

“There is nothing more demo-cratic than the workers fi ght-ing for their rights,” said Daniel

Catalano, secretary general of the ATE Capital union.

Catalano, one of several union leaders who gave lengthy speech-es in the plaza, also expressed sol-idarity with Brazil’s ousted leader, Dilma Rousseff , and lamented the recent tilt to the political right seen in several South American countries. Macri’s eff orts to curb spending have also been chal-lenged in court.

The Supreme Court ruled the government must hold public hearings before reducing home heating gas subsidies and is ex-pected to make a similar ruling regarding electricity subsidies next week.

Trade unionists from around Argentina take part in a protest in Buenos Aires on Friday.

Sacked Dilma Rousseff pledges to fi ght onAFPBrasilia

Brazil’s sacked ex-president Dilma Rousseff said on Fri-day she will abandon the

presidential residence next week and continue the fi ght against her successor Michel Temer from her adopted hometown, Porto Alegre.

The 68-year-old leftist leader must leave the Alvorada offi cial residence in Brasilia within a month after senators voted Wednesday to fi re her over charges she illegally manipulated the national budget.

In her fi rst media briefi ng since then, she repeated her claim that Brazil’s new President Temer had led a “coup” in having her im-peached.

Rousseff ’s lawyers have al-ready lodged an appeal in the high court against the impeach-ment, which she says was a plot by Temer, her former vice-pres-ident turned enemy.

“I will not stay in Brasilia. I will go to Porto Alegre...early next week,” Rousseff told a briefi ng of foreign reporters.

“Democracy was on trial alongside me. Unfortunately, we

lost,” she said of the impeach-ment process. “I hope that we can rebuild it and make sure that this never happens again.”

Rousseff was born in the southern central city of Belo Horizonte but built her politi-cal career further south in Porto Alegre. Her daughter and grand-children still live there and she keeps an apartment in the city.

Brazilian newspaper Folha said Rousseff started moving books and clothes to Porto Ale-gre weeks ago and will leave the Alvorada accompanied by her pet dachshund, Fafa.Supporters of former president Dilma Rousseff demonstrate in Sao Paulo on Friday night.

Mexico lawmaker pushes new law to counter TrumpBy Dave Graham, ReutersMexico City

A Mexican senator is proposing legislation to empower the government to retaliate if a US administration led by Donald Trump

infl icts expropriations or economic losses on his country to make it pay for a border wall.

Republican presidential nominee Trump has vowed to have Mexico fund the planned wall to keep out illegal immigrants if he is elected, and threatened to fund it by blocking remittances sent home by Mexicans living in the United States.

Armando Rios Piter, an opposition senator for the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolu-tion (PRD), will next week present the initiative he hopes will protect Mexicans, and highlight the risks of targeting them economically.

The plan off ers a taste of the kind of tit-for-tat measures that could gain traction between the two heavily-integrated economies if Trump wins the presidency in the November 8 election.

In a preliminary summary of the proposal, which also foresees giving the Senate the power to disavow international treaties when the inter-ests of Mexico or its companies are threatened by other signatories, it states:

“In cases where the property/assets of (our) fellow citizens or companies are aff ected by a foreign government, as Donald Trump has threatened, the Mexican government should proportionally expropriate assets and properties

of foreigners from that country on our territory.”Total remittances to Mexico from abroad —

most of which come from the United States — were worth nearly $25bn last year, according to the central bank.

Bilateral trade between the two nations is worth about half a trillion dollars a year.

Trump has also threatened to tear up a trade deal with Mexico if it is not recast in the United States’ favour.

He met President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City this week, sparking fi erce criticism in Mexico of the government for hosting him.

Afterwards, Trump repeated his pledge to make Mexico foot the bill for the wall.

Mexico says it will not pay.It is yet to be established how such expropria-

tions could work, nor is it clear what chance the bill could have of passing.

The PRD and other leftist parties hold less than a quarter of the 128 seats in Mexico’s Senate.

Rios Piter said his aim was to counter threats by Trump to target Mexicans in the United States and to stress that the economic welfare of both nations is at stake.

“At a time like this, it’s vital for us to under-stand why this relationship benefi ts both. We’re neighbours, we’re friends, we’re partners,” he said. “He’s putting (that) at risk.”

The initiative also seeks to protect Mexico against unilateral changes to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump has threatened to ditch.

Colombian peace deal signing set for Sept 26AFPBogota

Colombia’s peace deal with Farc rebels will be formal-ly signed on September

26, in a new milestone towards ending the half-century confl ict, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Friday.

“Peace will be signed on Sep-tember 26 in Cartagena,” an-nounced Santos, ahead of an October referendum on fi nal ratifi cation of the historic accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

The emotional president called it “perhaps the most important announcement” of his life.

Minutes later, Farc leader Timoleon “Timochenko” Jimen-

ez tweeted the date and location of the signing, calling it “the foundation for building #peace.”

Various Latin American lead-ers, as well as Spanish Prime Min-ister Mariano Rajoy, are expected to attend the ceremony in the port city on the Caribbean coast.

Once the deal is formally signed, the Farc will have 180 days to demobilise, disarm and relaunch itself as a political party.

The UN has agreed to monitor the process.

The government and Farc be-gan a landmark ceasefi re Mon-day, the fi rst time both sides have put down their weapons since the Marxist guerilla group was launched in 1964.

The confl ict, which has drawn in various left and right-wing armed groups and gangs, has left 260,000

dead, 45,000 missing and 6.9mn uprooted from their homes.

On October 2, Colombians will vote on this question: “Do you support the fi nal accord to end the confl ict and build a stable and lasting peace?”

A new poll out Friday said 59.5% would vote “yes” in sup-port of the agreement, according to the survey conducted for El Tiempo newspaper and W Radio.

That was nearly double the number of those opposed to the deal, at 33.2%, while 4.7% said they were undecided and 2.6% had no opinion.

To be ratifi ed, the August 24 peace deal needs “yes” votes from 4.4mn voters — 13% of the electorate.

On the rebel side, the agree-ment must be ratifi ed at Farc’s

10th national conference, which will take place from September 17-23.

It would be the group’s “last meeting with weapons...ratify the peace agreement and trans-form Farc into a legal political movement,” the group said in a statement.

Guests and journalists were invited to attend the meeting in the former rebel stronghold of San Vicente del Caguan because “the historic importance of the event means that the people of Colombia and the world must be directly informed of the progress and conclusions,” Farc said.

The conference had originally been scheduled for September 13-19 but the group said Friday it had to be changed for “logistical reasons.”

In Cuba the tax man cometh, slowly

Some 1.5mn more Cuban state

workers will contribute to social

security next month, with some

paying income tax for the first

time since the 1959 revolution as

a law passed as part of eff orts to

modernize the economy gradu-

ally goes into eff ect.

The workers, mainly in industry,

will pay a 5% social security tax

on income over 500 pesos per

month and income tax of 3% to 5%

on earnings over 2,500 pesos per

month, Cuban state media said on

Friday. Deputy Finance Minister

Meisi Bolanos Weis said the tax

would be deducted from workers’

pay checks by their employers, the

Communist Party daily, Granma,

reported.

With an eye to the increas-

ing inequality that was sure to

come after President Raul Castro

began implementing cautious

market-oriented reforms and re-

ducing the role of the state in the

economy, the Communist-run

island passed its first compre-

hensive tax code in 2012.

The government envisions

replacing subsidies for all with

targeted welfare, meaning that

the largely tax-free life under a

paternalistic government is on

its way out But the code is being

implemented gradually, as “condi-

tions permit,” the law states, with

such novelties as a property tax

and inheritance tax still on hold.

PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN19Gulf Times


LNG import to more than double by 2017: MinisterThe monthly import of liq-

uefi ed natural gas (LNG) by Pakistan will be more

than doubled in the coming months in the wake of growing energy demand in the country, a minister said yesterday.

Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the country will import four LNG cargoes of 13mn metric British thermal unit (MMBtu) a month from September to December.

Abbasi added that six cargoes of 17MMBtu a month would be arriving in the country. As LNG-based power plants start coming

online, the LNG import volumes will further be doubled from July next year.

“There has been a tremendous demand for this effi cient fuel from industrial, power, fertiliser and CNG (compressed natural gas) sectors,” said the minister. Before the start of LNG imports around one and a half year back, there was a demand and supply gap of natural gas of more than 3bn cubic feet per day during the winter season.

After chronic shortages of natural gas supplies that crip-pled the economy, the fi rst LNG import was made possible through the establishment of the country’s fi rst Engro Elengy Terminal Private Limited, which was commissioned to transfer

400mn metric standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) of regasi-fi ed LNG into the system. The terminal has a capacity to handle up to 600 mmscfd.

The terminal alone is helping the country save up to $600mn through the oil import substitu-tion and generating fuel for up to 2,000 megawatts of electric-ity. Previously, several thermal power plants, industrial units and CNG fi lling stations became

nonoperational due to the gas shortage.

The government even had to pay capacity charge to the power plants, which increases the electricity tariff s. Unavail-ability of gas to fertiliser plants also resulted in the urea imports to meet the local demand, which caused an outfl ow of valuable foreign exchange.

Over the past 10 years, diff er-ent governments made several attempts to import LNG, but all in vain.

When the Supreme Court scrapped the government ‘Mashal LNG Project 2007’ in 2011, the head of Dutch company 4Gas, which was allowed to set up a LNG terminal, said Pakistan lost $3.6bn because of the de-

lays in LNG import as there was a price diff erence between LNG and furnace oil.

Currently, liquefi ed petro-leum gas (LPG) price stands at $15.13/MMBtu, high sulfur fur-nace oil ($8.05/MMBtu) and high speed diesel ($17.7/MMB-tu), while RLNG price comes at about $6.74/MMBtu.

LNG-run power plants have a much lower operational and management costs, thereby turn-ing up lower electricity tariff s.

It is more effi cient in power generation (60% effi ciency on RLNG versus 45% on alternate fuels). It is also a cleaner fuel substitute to the expensive die-sel, furnace oil, LPG and kero-sene, which are also unsafe for the domestic use.

InternewsLahore

“There has been a tremendous demand for this effi cient fuel from industrial, power, fertiliser and CNG (compressed natural gas) sectors”

Govt to avoid project penalty by Iran by 2018

The federal government of Pakistan has so far managed to avoid the

$605mn penalty to be im-posed by Iran as per the GSPA (gas sale purchase agreement) under the IP gas pipeline and will avert $1.183bn by March 2018 which is close to the price of 700kms Gwadar-Nawab-shah pipeline that stands at $1.353bn, a top offi cial of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources said.

“Under an agreement with Iran, Pakistan was to pay $1mn a day to Iran from January 1, 2015 as penalty for failure in laying down the pipeline of 781kms in its territory.”

As per GSPA signed with Tehran, he said the IP gas pipe-line was to come on stream by December 31, 2014 and under the penalty clause in case Pa-kistan fails by December 31, 2014 to lay down the pipeline from Pakistan-Iran border to Nawabshah, then the penalty clause would invoke automati-cally and Pakistan will have to pay $1mn a day to Iran.

The government success-fully pitched the alternative project of Gwadar-Nawabshah pipeline which will be renamed as IP gas line once the sanctions imposed on Iran are lifted.

The Gwadar-Nawabshah pipeline will be completed by March 2018. However, its fi rst target of completion is De-cember 2017.

Mobine Saulat, manag-ing director, Inter-State Gas System, also confi rmed say-ing that so far the government had avoided $605mn penalty which was due from Decem-ber 31, 2014 and will avert $1.183bn penalty by March 2018 when the LNG pipeline from Gwadar to Nawabshah gets operational.

In the current scenario, the top offi cial said the petroleum ministry wants to extend the GSPA with penalty clause up to December 2018 and to this ef-fect Iran is open to an amend-ment to the GSPA.

The ministry has written a letter to the foreign offi ce seeking permission to rene-

gotiate GSPA with Iran and is waiting for its nod.

Iran is also ready even to renegotiate the price of gas as there is a clause in case the buyer country manages the import of piped gas at lower price from any other country, than Iran will match it.

The price of gas to be im-ported from Turkmenistan through TAPI gas line has been fi nalised lower than the gas price of Iran.

Pakistan failed to arrange the required fi nances for 781kms pipeline on account of sanctions imposed on Tehran by the UN, the US and the EU countries for Iranian’s ambi-tious nuclear programme.

The Nawaz government then came up with the inno-vative idea of constructing the 700kms Gwadar-Nawabshah pipeline with the same speci-fi cations of IP gas pipeline agreed with Iran to avert the imposition of penalty.

The government success-fully prepared its force majore case which was pitched before the top authorities of Iran tell-ing them that Pakistan had carved out a plan to lay down the 700kms pipeline from Gwadar to Nawabshah with the same specifi cations of IP gas line project agreed to with Iran.

And when the sanctions get waived off , then the pipeline will be extended backward from Gwadar to Iran by 81 kil-ometers that is to be connected to the pipeline in the territory of Iran.

The top mandarins also found that the pipeline Iranian authorities have constructed in their territory under um-brella of IP gas line is still away by 300 kilometres from the Pak-Iran border meaning that Iran had not so far done its own job.

“The IP gas pipeline line un-der the agreement was to be built under a segmented ap-proach,” the offi cial explained.

During the PPP regime, the inaugural ceremony herald-ing the initiation of the IP gas line project was held in Iran, but economic sanctions made Pakistan unable to arrange the fi nances required for laying down the pipeline its own ju-risdiction.

InternewsIslamabad

Residents salvage their belongings from their damaged house in a Christian Colony on the outskirts of Peshawar yesterday, a day after security forces killed four suicide bombers. Four suicide bombers who were trying to attack a Christian colony in Pakistan were killed early Friday, during a gunfight with security forces outside the northwestern city of Peshawar, the army said.

Salvaging belongingsFather and ex-husband charged with UK woman’s murder

Police in Pakistan charged the ex-husband and fa-ther of a British woman

believed to have been the victim of an “honour killing” with her murder yesterday.

Samia Shahid, a dual na-tional, died in July during a visit to her family village in Punjab province. Her second husband, Mukhtar Kazam, claims she was murdered for bringing “dishonour” on her family.

Kazam has said his wife had angered her parents by convert-ing to Shia Islam, his sect, before their wedding.

“We have completed our in-vestigation and concluded that her ex-husband Muhammad Shakeel and father Muhammad Shahid were involved in her kill-ing,” said Abubakar Buksh, dep-uty inspector general of police in the region.

“Her ex-husband has also been charged with raping her,” he said.

“The abetment of Samia’s mother and sister in the crime has also been proved but they have fl ed to the UK. We have also arrested the chief of the local police station for helping them escape.”

Kazam and Shahid, both dual British-Pakistani citizens, had been married for two years and were living in Dubai.

Shahid’s father has denied the charges, claiming his daughter died of natural causes.

AFPIslamabad

Chopper deployed in search for missing US climbers

Pakistan stepped up its search for two Americans climbers yesterday, de-

ploying army helicopters to fi nd the pair who went missing six days ago while trying to summit a mountain in the country’s far north.

Kyle Dempster and Scott Ad-amson began their ascent of the 7,285m (23,900ft) Ogre-II peak off the Choktoi Glacier in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Paki-stan on Sunday August 21, but

went missing the next day and have not been seen since.

“Two helicopters belonging to military aviation fl ew over the mountains yesterday morn-ing but there was no sign of the climbers,” Karrar Haidri, a spokesman for the Alpine Club of Pakistan, said.

“The search goes on,” he added.The helicopter search has

been delayed for days because of the adverse weather conditions.

Authorities said that a team of local high-altitude rescuers has been searching for the miss-ing climbers for almost a week but bad weather has prevented

them from ascending the peak.Pakistan has long been a draw

for foreign climbers lured by some of the most spectacular mountains on Earth, including the savage K2, the world’s sec-ond highest peak.

Money raised for missing climbers: The global mountain-eering community has raised $100,000 to fi nd two American climbers, Internews reports.

“Climbers from around the world raised $100,000 in 15 hours to fund a search and rescue for the climbers,” said Haidri.

In the absence of proper res-cue facilities in Pakistan, the

ACP charters army helicopters for search and rescue operations which cost thousands of dollars by the hour.

While the summer climbing season in the Karakoram range is over, a handful of climbers were still attempting their sum-mits and Dempster and Adam-son were trying to be the fi rst to summit the Ogre II.

According to the ACP, the two climbers set out on the north face of the mountain on August 21 and planned to reach the top and descend within fi ve days. They were last seen on August 22 by their Pakistani cook.

“[The cook] saw them half-way up the mountain Monday evening. On Tuesday, a storm rolled in and diminished the visibility in the area. There has been no sign of the two climbers since,” Haidri said.

He added that on August 28, a week after the two American climbers started their ascent, their families and friends start-ed co-ordinating a search and rescue operation with help from local authorities and another climbing team in the area.

Their fundraising page reads: “Please help these boys. We have also been required to

transfer money for the helicop-ter rescue and porters on foot in search of Kyle Dempster and Scott Adamson. With the unre-liable weather we are in [need] of more money every day.”

“Dempster’s accomplish-ments in mountaineering are well known, including his his-toric accent of Ogre I in 2012 for which another climber and him earned the prestigious Piolets d’Or award for speed climbing in 2013,” Haidri said, adding that Dempster had also won the Golden Ice Axe in a competition for the fastest and strongest climber.

AFPIslamabad

Number of Pakistanis seeking asylum abroad on the rise

The number of Pakistanis applying for asylum in the three Western countries

have spiked in the past year.Data released by Germany,

England and the US recently showed that more than 10,000 Pakistanis had sought refuge in these three countries over the past year.

Of the three, Germany saw the most number of Pakistanis apply for asylum. Data from the Ger-man interior ministry showed that 9,185 Pakistanis applied for asylum from January to July 2016 (including 156 with repeat appli-cations), the eighth largest group of asylum applicants.

This was a nearly threefold in-crease from the same period in 2015 when 2,546 Pakistanis ap-plied for asylum.

Germany, which saw over half a million migrants arrive from June 2015-June 2016, has been turning away and deporting an increasing number of migrants in recent months.

According to a report leaked by the German government, Berlin turned away some 13,000 people at its land borders from January to July 2016 for having invalid documents, including 529 Pakistanis.

Separately, at least 117 Pakista-nis were deported though only 34 were sent back to Pakistan.

In the United Kingdom, 2,992 Pakistanis applied for asylum from June 2015 to June 2016 with

only 16% of the applications ap-proved.

Data released by the British Home Offi ce this week showed that this was up from the 2,313 Pakistanis who applied for asy-lum from June 2014-2015.

Despite the increase, Pakistan slipped from two to three for the countries whose citizens were applying for asylum owing to a jump in the number of appli-cants from Iran and Iraq.

Pakistanis make up around 3% of the 283,078 migrant arrivals in Europe this year.

Pakistani refugees arriving in the US also saw a marked in-crease in 2016. Data from the US Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees and Mi-gration showed that as many as 376 Pakistanis applied for ref-

uge in the US so far in 2016. This was up from 205 in 2015 and the highest at any point since 2011.

The data, which classifi ed the refugees by religion, showed that most of those who sought refuge were Ahmadis, with around 247 applying for refuge in the current year, up from 61 in 2015.

At least 78 Christians (up from 76 in 2015) also sought refuge in the country in addition to 33 Shias (up from 15 in 2015).

Data from the past fi ve years showed that Ahmadis were the single largest group of Pakista-nis seeking refuge in the US with 746, accounting for over half of all Pakistani asylum applicants. Another 240 Christians and 66 Shias sought refuge. However, their reason for seeking asylum was not immediately clear.

InternewsKarachi

An Afghani refugee holds her newborn daughter at the hotel run by Doctors Without Borders where they live on the island of Samos yesterday. They live at island’s hotspot but are allowed, as the majority of 900 migrants who stay there, to leave during the day and return at night. Staying in Greece is not their first option, but as “European borders are closed, this is the only solution for now to stay in Europe,” stresses Reem.

Newborn’s day out at refugee camp

Militants blamed for deadly Davao night market blastAFPDavao

Philippine authorities yes-terday blamed a notori-ous group of militants for

the bombing of a night market in President Rodrigo Duterte’s home town that killed at least 14 people.

An improvised explosive de-vice tore through the bustling market in the heart of Davao city and close to one of its top hotels just before 11:00pm (1500 GMT) on Friday.

Authorities said the Abu Sayyaf, a small band of militants that has declared allegiance to the Islamic State group, most likely carried out the attack in response to a military off ensive launched against it last week.

The president’s spokesman, Martin Andanar, said Duterte believed the militants were be-hind the blast.

“The offi ce of the president texted and confi rmed that was an Abu Sayyaf retaliation. For the city government side, we are working on that it is an Abu Sayyaf retaliation,” Davao mayor Sara Duterte, who is also the president’s daughter, told CNN Philippines.

National Defence Secretary

Delfin Lorenzana said the Abu Sayyaf had struck back after suffering heavy casualties on its stronghold of Jolo island about 900 kilometres from Davao.

“We have predicted this and warned our troops accordingly but the enemy is also adept at using the democratic space granted by our constitution to move around freely and unim-peded to sow terror,” Lorenzana said in a statement.

Duterte, who was in Davao at the time of the attack but not near the market, told report-ers before dawn Saturday that it was an act of terrorism, as he announced extra powers for the military.

At least 14 people were killed and another 67 were wounded in the explosion, police said.

Sixteen of the injured were in critical condition, a local hospi-tal director told reporters.

Durian vendor Maribel Tabal-

won, 34, said chaos broke out af-ter the blast.

She helped rescue three vic-tims but one of them, a woman seven months pregnant, eventu-ally died.

“The blast was so loud the ground shook. She was crawling but she was lucky enough no one trampled her during the stam-pede.

She was shaking and bleed-ing.”

Davao is the biggest city in the

southern region of Mindanao, with a population of about 2mn people.

It is about 1,500 kilometres from the capital of Manila.

The city is part of the south-ern region of Mindanao, where militants have waged a decades-long separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 120,000 lives.

Duterte had been mayor of Davao for most of the past two decades, before winning presi-

dential elections in a landslide in May and being sworn in on June 30.

Duterte became well known for bringing relative peace and order to Davao with hardline security policies, while also bro-kering deals with local Muslim and communist rebels.

Duterte has in recent weeks pursued peace talks with the two main Muslim rebel groups, which each has thousands of armed followers.

Their leaders have said they want to broker a lasting peace.

However the Abu Sayyaf, a much smaller and hardline group infamous for kidnapping foreigners to extract ransoms, has rejected Duterte’s peace overtures.

In response, Duterte deployed thousands of troops onto the small and remote island of Jolo to “destroy” the group.

The military reported 15 sol-diers died in clashes on Monday, but also claimed killing dozens of Abu Sayyaf gunmen.

Yesterday, Duterte declared a national “state of lawlessness”, which his security adviser said gave the military extra powers to conduct law enforcement opera-tions normally done only by the police.

While Davao has been re-garded as relatively safer than the rest of Mindanao, the Abu Sayyaf and other militant groups have carried out deadly attacks there in the past.

In 2003, two bomb attacks blamed on rebels at Davao’s air-port and the city’s port within a month of each other killed about 40 people.

Duterte initially raised the pos-sibility of drug lords carrying out Friday’s attack as a way of fi ght-ing back against his crime war.

More than 2,000 people have died in his unprecedented anti-crime crackdown, draw-ing widespread international condemnation over an apparent wave of extrajudicial killings.

Duterte declares national “state of lawlessness”; Police have said at least 14 people were killed and another 67 wounded

Police investigators gather evidence at the site of the explosion. Mourners off er flowers and candles during a memorial service for victims of the blast at a market in Davao city.

President Rodrigo Duterte visits a wounded victim of an explosion during his visit of a hospital in Davao city. Right: People hold placards condemning the bombing at a market in Davao city during a candlelight protest in front of the Catholic church in Quiapo city, Metro Manila yesterday.

Security beefed up at premier airportBy Benjie VergaraManila Times

Security at the coun-try’s premier airport was beefed up yesterday

in reaction to Friday’s deadly bombing in Davao City.

The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), the operator of Ninoy Aquino In-ternational Airport, however, advised airport users not to be alarmed as there was increased police visibility in terminal buildings as well as in all areas of the NAIA complex.

“This is not to alarm the public. We have raised our alert status as a proactive measure to ensure safety and security of airport users,” MIAA general manager Ed Monreal said.

He added that they “have directed baggage screeners to remain vigilant and discern-

ing and to conduct thorough inspection only when the need calls for it. We do not want to cause inconvenience in the process, by creating long lines at the baggage screening checkpoints.”

The MIAA chief warned that security at checkpoints during full-alert status will conduct rigid inspection of all motor

vehicles and the people are advised to oblige for their own protection.

He said issue of access passes for meeting or sending off pas-sengers has been limited.

“Depending on intelligence reports, we may completely suspend issuance of visitor’s passes for everyone’s safety,” Monreal added.

Authorities step up eff orts against ZikaManila TimesManila

Health, airport and quarantine authori-ties urged travellers and pregnant women to take extra precaution to prevent the

spread of the Zika virus, as they stepped up ef-forts to block the mosquito-borne disease that has reached Singapore and Malaysia.

The Department of Health (DOH) assured the public on Friday there had been no new local transmission of the Zika virus in the country.

In a news conference, Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell-Ubial said her department and the Bureau of Quarantine would continuously moni-tor passengers arriving from overseas.

Part of the anti-Zika initiatives is testing among patients displaying Zika symptoms, but there will be no random tests yet, she said.

Using the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, the DOH has not yet detected local trans-mission, Ubial told reporters.

Under the PCR test, blood samples are tested among patients displaying symptoms that are fl u-like—fever of 38 degrees and up, muscle or joint pains, vomiting, eye redness and skin rash-es. At least fi ve Zika cases have been documented

in the country before, but the transmission hap-pened outside the country, Ubial said.

Among the fi ve cases, one was a Filipino (in Cebu in 2012) while the rest, or four cases, in-volved foreign nationals, and were documented early this year.

All were cleared in confi rmatory tests done af-ter their conditions or symptoms were managed by the DOH referral hospital, the Research Insti-tute for Tropical Medicine in Alabang, Muntin-lupa.

Airport authorities on Friday doubled their alert status to ward off the possible entry of the Zika virus, said Manila International Airport Au-thority (MIAA) General Manager Ed Monreal.

The MIAA is co-ordinating with the DOH, which gave a directive to intensify monitoring of arriving travellers, he said.

At the DOH news conference, quarantine di-rector Ferchito Avelino said arriving passengers were being required to fi ll up a yellow form or health declaration checklist honestly.

Thermal scanners have been installed at the airport to detect the temperature of arriving trav-ellers as part of strict monitoring, he said.

Travellers were also advised to immediately seek any DOH referral hospital in case symptoms appear, or contact the DOH hotline.

Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) personnel patrol the streets of Manila yesterday as Davao city and central Manila is placed on high alert following an earlier bomb blast.

Police arrest 70-year-old drug pusher

By Jaime G AquinoManila Times/Calasiao

A 70-year-old woman, listed as top priority drug pusher in the province,

is among the oldest and high-value suspects to be arrested in the continuing anti-illegal drug drive in this town.

Senior Supt. Ronald Oliver-Lee, police provincial director, identifi ed the arrested pusher as Zenaida Medrano-Ortiz, a wid-ow in Barangay San Miguel here. Ortiz reportedly refused to sur-render under “Oplan Tokhang.”

She is also listed as Top 4 in the municipal level in San Miguel. Re-covered from her possession were four sachets of shabu, a plastic box containing shabu, a caliber 38 revolver and drug parapherna-lia. Ortiz told Manila Times that she started deals in marijuana and shabu as a source of income for her family after her husband died in 2006.


PHILIPPINES

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL21Gulf Times


Bangladesh hangs Jamaat leader for war crimes in 1971Bangladesh hanged a

wealthy tycoon and top fi nancial backer of its larg-

est Islamist party late yesterday for war crimes, dealing a massive blow to the group’s ambitions in the Muslim-majority nation.

Mir Quasem Ali, a key leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was executed after being con-victed by a controversial war crimes tribunal for off ences committed during the 1971 inde-pendence confl ict with Pakistan.

The 63-year-old was hanged at the Kashimpur high security jail in Gazipur, some 40kms (25 miles) north of Dhaka, amid stepped-up security outside the prison and in the capital.

“The execution took place at 10:35pm (1635 GMT),” the country’s Law and Justice Min-ister Anisul Huq said.

Six opposition leaders have now been executed for war crimes after the secular gov-ernment led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina set up a domestic war crimes tribunal in 2010.

With Ali’s death, all fi ve top leaders of the Jamaat party have been hanged, a massive setback for the Islamists in the world’s third largest Muslim nation.

After the Supreme Court re-jected his fi nal appeal against the penalty on Tuesday, Ali declined to seek a presidential pardon, which would require an admission of guilt, paving the way for his execution.

Prosecutors said Ali was a key commander of the noto-rious pro-Pakistan militia in the southern port city of Chit-tagong during the war, and later became a shipping, banking and real estate tycoon.

The war crimes trials have divided the country, with sup-porters of Jamaat and the main opposition Bangladesh Nation-alist Party (BNP) branding them a sham aimed at eliminating their leaders.

The executions and convic-tions of Jamaat offi cials plunged Bangladesh into one of its worst crises in 2013 when tens of thousands of Islamist activists clashed with police in protests that left some 500 people dead.

Family members met Ali for the last time in the prison just hours before he went to the gal-lows.

“All along he said he was in-nocent. He said he is being killed unjustifi ably,” said Tahera Tasnim, one of Ali’s daughters after 23 members of his family met him.

“He said this repressive gov-ernment is killing them (Islam-ist leaders) to stop Islam being established in the society and the country,” Tasnim said.

Ali had helped revive Jamaat and made it a potent force in Bangladesh politics by setting up charities, businesses and trusts linked to it after it was allowed to operate in the late 1970s.

Before he was arrested in 2012, Ali headed the Diganta Media Corporation, which owns a pro-Jamaat daily and a television sta-

AFPDhaka

Security personnel stand alert at the entrance to Kashimpur Central Jail on the outskirts of Dhaka yesterday, as relatives of jailed Bangladeshi leader of Jamaat-e-Islam Mir Quasem Ali arrive to visit him.

tion that was shut down in 2013 for stoking religious tensions.

He was convicted in Novem-ber 2014 of a series of war crimes including the abduction and murder of a young independ-ence fi ghter.

Defence lawyers have said the charges against him were base-less.

His son Mir Ahmed Bin Quasem, who was part of his le-gal defence team, was allegedly

abducted by security forces ear-lier in August, which critics say was an attempt to sow fear and prevent protests against the im-minent execution.

Jamaat, which is banned from contesting elections, has labelled the charges against Ali “false” and accuses the government of exacting “political vengeance”.

Russel Sheikh, a senior po-lice offi cial, said that offi cials had taken the “highest security

measures” ahead of the execu-tion for fear of violence by his Islamist supporters.

More than 1,000 police were deployed in Gazipur and hun-dreds of paramilitary border guards were outside the prison and in Dhaka, security offi cials said.

Rights groups have criticised the war crimes trials, saying they were fl awed and lack any foreign oversight.

A group of United Nations human rights experts last week urged Bangladesh to annul Ali’s death sentence and to retry him in compliance with international standards.

But Hasina’s government has defended the trials, saying they are needed to heal the wounds of the confl ict, which it says left 3mn people dead.

Independent researchers put the war toll much lower.

Lanka made progress in justice, rights: Ban

Sri Lanka has made progress in reconciliation, human rights and justice but more

needs to be done, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said.

Addressing a gathering in Co-lombo during his two-day visit on Friday, Ban said Sri Lanka is still in the early stages of regain-ing its rightful position in the re-gion and the international com-munity, Xinhua news agency reported.

“There is still much work to be done in order to redress the wrongs of the past and to restore the legitimacy and ac-countability of key institutions, particularly the judiciary and the security services,” the UN chief said.

The island nation suff ered 30 years of civil confl ict between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May 2009 with the defeat of the rebels.

Ban also urged Sri Lanka to speed up the return of land so that the remaining communities of displaced people can return home.

Thousands of victims were displaced by the confl ict and the government is now in the process of setting up a domestic process to probe allegations of war crimes during and after the end of the war.

Ban arrived in the country on Wednesday, and travelled to the northern town of Jaff na on Fri-day to visit a resettlement site.

IANSColombo

22 traffi cking victims from Nepal rescued

Police rescued 22 Nepali women from a hotel in New Delhi who were al-

legedly being traffi cked from the impoverished Himalayan nation to the Middle East, and are searching for two suspects, offi cers said yesterday.

Offi cers from the force’s serious crimes branch raided a hotel near the capital’s in-ternational airport on Thurs-day morning after receiving a tip-off from the Nepali em-bassy.

One of the traffi cked women had earlier escaped from the hotel and reached the embas-sy, leading to the police raid.

“Twenty-two women were rescued in the raid. We have identifi ed two accused who are evading arrest,” Ravindra Yadav, joint commissioner of police (crime) in New Delhi, said.

“The women will give their testimonies before a court to-day. The visas indicate most of them were fl ying to Middle Eastern countries,” he said.

The traffi cked women were desperately looking for work

in the aftermath of a devastat-ing earthquake in April 2015 and were lured with the prom-ise of jobs in the Middle East, another offi cer said.

Their traffi ckers took away their passports and docu-ments after they arrived in Delhi a week ago.

Nepal has seen an upswing in the number of cases of trafficking since last year’s earthquake killed nearly 9,000 and left thousands homeless.

Many of them are traffi cked to India and Gulf countries and forced into slavery and prostitution.

Campaigners have warned that gangs are targeting vul-nerable women and children and traffi c through the porous border with India.

A 2013 report by Nepal’s human rights commission re-corded 29,000 incidences of traffi cking or attempted traf-fi cking in the country.

AFPNew Delhi

Aide of cafe attack mastermind killed

A close aide of slain Dhaka cafe terror attack mas-termind Tamim Ahmed

Chowdhury was killed during a raid in a house in the Bangladesh capital, media reports said.

Tamim’s second-in-com-mand, identifi ed as Murad, or called ‘Major Murad’ by the members of the “Neo Jamaat-ul Mujahideen” (Neo-JMB) terror-ist outfi t, was killed during a raid in Dhaka’s Mirpur city on Friday evening.

Murad gave arms training to the terrorists who attacked the Holey Artisan Bakery on July 1-2, killing 22 people, includ-

ing mostly foreign hostages. He had also trained the attackers of the Eid congregation on July 7 at Sholakia, in which four people were killed.

Detective Branch joint com-missioner Abdul Baten said po-lice raided the house in Rupnagar residential area around 9.30pm on Friday.

Two police offi cials were also injured in the attack.

Murad was using aliases ‘Ja-hangir’ and ‘Omar’, said police.

He was found carrying a knife and a pistol during the raid. “He used both of them,” police said.

Police found out about Murad during investigations after the death of Tamim, the suspected mastermind of Gulshan cafe ter-ror attack, in a raid on a house

in Narayanganj on August 27.Police raided the house in

Rupnagar also on Thursday but found it locked, bdnews24 reported.

Police lay in wait of Murad on Friday. “He (Murad) stabbed po-lice offi cers when they entered the house. He died after being hit by a bullet during a scuffl e that ensued when he tried to fl ee,” a police offi cer added.

The injured police offi cials were taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Aged between 40 and 45, Mu-rad had retired from the army, the police offi cial said.

According to the Daily Star, investigators also said that Mu-rad was known as an arrogant man and capable of carrying

out attacks causing massive destruction.

Murad was not popular in the militant group, a JMB off -shoot called by law enforcers “Neo JMB”. He was ill-tempered and used to order his trainees to do push-ups 20 to 25 times for minor mistakes, said an investigator.

During a routine search in July, police had come under attack from militants holed up in an apartment at Dhaka’s Kalyan-pur. A SWAT team later stormed the apartment and gunned down nine suspected militants.

Flags similar to those of the Islamic State terrorist group, which purportedly claimed the Gulshan attack, were found in Kalyanpur.

Reports, citing several Is-lamic State publications, have described Tamim as the co-ordinator of Middle East-based group’s Bangladesh operations.

The Bangladesh authorities said that Tamim, a Canadian-Bangladeshi, led the “Neo-JMB”, which emerged after the JMB split on the issue of backing the Islamic State terrorist group.

The “Neo JMB” was formed by leaders and operatives of mainstream JMB who did not accept the leadership of Saidur Rahman.

The police said they have identifi ed the second man and third-in-command in Neo-JMB after Tamim.

“We are trying to arrest them,” the police offi cial said.

IANSDhaka

Protesting students are dispersed by water cannon in Colombo recently. The Sri Lankan police on Wednesday fired teargas and water cannon to disperse a group of protesting students while they were heading towards the prime minister’s off ice to protest against the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) in Malabe, a private medical college whose graduates were allowed to register with normal university’s students.

Protest by studentsAmnesty calls for release of studentAmnesty International yesterday demanded the release of a Bangladeshi student activist who was detained for allegedly making “derogatory remarks” about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the ruling Awami League on Facebook.Dilip Roy, 22, a student activist at Rajshahi University in western Bangladesh, was booked on August 28 after a student body linked to the government filed a case against him under Section 57 of the country’s Information and Communications Technology Act (ICT) for his alleged off ence of writing two Facebook posts critical of the prime minister’s support for a controversial coal power plant. “Bangladesh’s authorities should immediately drop this case. By

invoking draconian laws to hound critics for Facebook posts, they are not just cracking down on peaceful dissent but courting embarrassment,” said Champa Patel, Amnesty International director for South Asia.Amnesty International has called on the Bangladesh authorities to repeal section 57 of the ICT Act and pointed out that section 57 of the ICT Act is “vaguely formulated” and “used by the authorities to target and imprison critics”. This stands in violation of Bangladesh’s obligations under international human rights law. The ICT Act – first passed in 2006 and amended in 2013 – has for years been used by the authorities in Bangladesh to choke freedom of expression.

Income of the family determines mode of birth deliveries in Nepal

Family income and age play a key role in determin-ing whether women living

in rural Nepal could have home births or hospital deliveries, a new study has found.

For the study, the researchers interviewed 98 women in Nepal shortly after birth to understand

why they delivered their babies at home or in a hospital.

The majority of women ac-knowledged that giving birth in a hospital was safer than giving birth at home. In fact, 93% of women who gave birth in an in-stitution were satisfi ed with their experience, while only 32% were satisfi ed with their home birth.

Researchers also found that lack of transportation resources, gender equity or power to in-

dependently decide, and poor quality saervices at facilities also posed barriers to a hospital or in-stitutional birth.

Despite these statistics, only 30% of women in the study had their babies in a hospital or health post (an “institutional birth”), mentioned the study published in the journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.

“We found that age, income and land ownership were sig-

nifi cant factors in predicting whether a woman would have an institutional birth. Nearly all women in our study stated they would prefer an institutional birth,” said Sheela Maru, re-searcher at the Boston University School of Medicine.

Family, partner and societal support were important factors in a woman leaving her home in la-bour and reaching an institution, the study mentioned.

IANSNew York

“The women will give their testimonies before a court today. The visas indicate most of them were fl ying to Middle Eastern countries”

World leaders attending the G20 summit in China are likely to renew their promises to use tax and spending policies to invigorate the sluggish world economy, but the chances of a meaningful new pro-growth push look slim.

As concerns grow about over-reliance on central banks to deal with the hangover of the fi nancial crisis, there are some tentative signs of a more relaxed approach to public spending.

The European Union has taken a softer stance with some member states over its budget rules. And Britain, which until recently wanted to turn its big defi cit into a surplus by 2020, is considering fi scal stimulus to off set the shock Brexit vote.

The United States, frustrated that the slow global economy is holding it back, hopes its calls for governments to do more to spur growth will gain new urgency when G20 presidents and prime ministers meet in Hangzhou in China today and tomorrow.

In 2015, the G20 leaders said they would use fi scal policies to help growth but also stressed the importance of cutting debt.

Japan, which has been trying to revive its economy for about 20 years, announced last month a 13.5tn-yen spending plan which includes infrastructure payouts to low-income households.

But with public fi nances still weak in many countries, there has been little major action to spur growth.

Nearly 10 years after the fi nancial crisis began, many central bankers sound exasperated that their bold

stimulus attempts have not been followed up by governments.

The frustration of central bankers is even more palpable in Europe where growth is weaker than in the United States, despite the European Central Bank cutting rates below zero.

Many eurozone governments are still struggling with the

legacy of debt and defi cits left by the fi nancial crisis.Extra spending this year to cover the cost of the

eurozone’s refugee crisis will evaporate in 2017 given the unwillingness of the bloc’s big countries to reform or spend more.

In Britain, where new fi nance minister Philip Hammond has talked about a possible fi scal policy “re-set” later this year after the Brexit vote shock, the size of any stimulus will depend on the scale of the post-referendum slowdown. So far, data suggests the economy has been more resilient than forecast.

It’s not just central bankers who are urging governments to take advantage of their record-low borrowing costs to act.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that a sustained increase in economic growth of 1 percentage point could bring debt ratios in advanced economies to their pre-crisis levels within a decade. It called last week for G20 leaders to take much stronger action.

And big long-term investors such as pension funds and insurers see promise in a deeper market for higher-yielding infrastructure-linked assets.

Yet the longer it takes for governments to develop new ways to support their economies, the more some investors are worried about the dangers of continued low growth, high debt, weaker banks and growing asset price bubbles.

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Many eurozone governments are still struggling with the legacy of debt and defi cits left by the fi nancial crisis

The Brexit negotiations will be long, complex and acrimonious, and the divorce will have far-reaching geopolitical eff ects

By Jean Pisani-FerryParis

No one yet knows when the United Kingdom will present an agenda for negotiating its withdrawal

from the European Union. But it is already clear that Brexit will reshape the map of Europe.

And, especially given Britain’s stunning unpreparedness for the consequences of its own decision – its strategy, priorities and even its timetable remain uncertain – that means that the EU must start fi guring out how to make the best of it. Here’s how.

Let’s start with the only certainties: the Brexit negotiations will be long, complex and acrimonious, and the divorce will have far-reaching geopolitical eff ects. The immediate impact is a halt to 60 years of integration momentum.

Europe will suff er in the short and medium term as well, as considerable political energy is likely to be devoted to Brexit for the next fi ve years, at a time when the EU needs the strength to confront internal and external dangers. Over the longer term, Brexit is likely to accelerate Europe’s exit from the top table of global decision-making.

Britain will not escape these consequences. Whereas it can leave the EU, it cannot relocate away from Europe.

That is why, though Britain’s European partners did not choose Brexit, they must manage its consequences successfully, which requires balancing two priorities. Their tactical goal must be to reach a deal with the UK that maintains the integrity of the EU. The strategic goal

is to preserve Europe’s prosperity and infl uence.

It is with these ideas in mind that I, together with several European colleagues – all of us acting in an individual capacity – recently co-authored a paper proposing a concept for Europe in 10-20 years: a continental partnership that would create a new basis for continued economic, foreign policy and security cooperation with the UK.

The basic economic idea is a template for a relationship that is considerably less deep than EU membership, but rather closer than a free-trade agreement. If adopted, Britain and the EU could not only preserve their economic ties, but also provide a new model for the future relationship between the EU and neighbours that will not join it anytime soon: Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and eventually southern Mediterranean countries.

Any proposal regarding the future of the EU-UK relationship must start from an interpretation of the Brexit referendum’s meaning. Ours assumes that UK voters rejected both the legal impossibility of limiting infl ows of workers from the EU and the principle of pooled sovereignty.

These two political constraints should be taken as a given. The fi rst implies that a lasting arrangement between Britain and the EU cannot include free movement of labour. The second rules out participation in a common polity, and thus implies that any co-operation must be based on intergovernmental agreements.

The fi rst constraint is a serious stumbling block, because the EU is based on the free movement of goods, services, capital, and workers. The UK’s European partners adamantly

claim that these four freedoms are indivisible, and that if Britain wants to maintain free access to the continental market for its data processing and fi nancial services, it must accept unlimited access to its labour market for Polish or Irish workers.

Freedom of movement of workers is undoubtedly integral to the EU. Indeed, the fundamental right to settle and earn one’s living in another country without asking for permission does not exist anywhere else in the world. For millions, this right most fully embodies what the EU stands for.

But Britain has made its choice, and the right question to ask now is whether strong economic links can be preserved without free movement of labour. From an economic standpoint, the answer is yes: a deeply integrated market for goods, services, and capital does not require full labour mobility. What is needed is only enough temporary mobility to accompany the integration of services markets.

In other words, freedom of movement of workers is politically essential within the EU, but economically dispensable when dealing with third countries. An economic agreement with Britain does not need to include it.

The second constraint is of a diff erent nature. Unlike a market for nails or screws, a market for fi nancial or information services must be based on detailed legislation that ensures fair competition and protects customers. A large part of the EU’s task is to prepare this legislation. So the question here is how British producers can retain access to the EU market (and vice versa) if they are no longer party to the legislation.

Solving this conundrum would be one of the main purposes of the continental partnership. Through it, Britain would participate in a multilateral process of consultation on draft EU legislation and would have the right to raise concerns and propose amendments, so that the outcome of the process would remain as far as possible consensual.

Both sides would be politically

committed to listening to the other. The EU, however, would have the fi nal say, so that its laws would apply and be enforced.

To enjoy full access to the EU market, Britain would need to agree on a package of policies essential to the proper functioning of an integrated market: competition rules, consumer protection, and fundamental social rights, for example, and perhaps also minimum tax rules to avoid distortions of the type recently exemplifi ed by Apple’s practices.

Britain would also need to contribute to the EU budget, from which development funds (the counterpart to single-market access) are delivered.

Some object that the deal would be too harsh for Britain to accept. But would the UK be better off losing access to the market of its main trading partner?

Others worry that the EU would surrender its decision-making powers were it to consult with outsiders. But how would the few without a vote – Britain and others – dominate the many with a vote?

Still others claim that such an arrangement would concede too much to Britain, compelling other countries to aim at a similar status and causing the EU to unravel. But why would an EU member be better off abiding by rules and paying into the EU budget without having a vote on the design of policies? And, far from undermining European integration, a continental partnership could support the consolidation of the EU’s core.

True, there would be a price to pay for everyone. But it would be far lower than the price, in terms of lost prosperity and diminished global infl uence, of failing to create a continental partnership. - Project Syndicate

Jean Pisani-Ferry is a professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and currently serves as commissioner-general of France Strategie, a policy advisory institution in Paris.

A strategy to manage Brexitconsequences successfully

Italy’s 100 club to reveal its secretsBy Ella Ide Acciaroli, Italy

Some of the secrets of an Italian village that has long fascinated scientists because of its high number of active centenarians

are set to be revealed today. Scientists have spent the last six

months looking into why residents of Acciaroli and nearby tiny communities enjoy such extraordinary longevity - while also seeming to be largely immune from dementia, heart disease and other chronic conditions associated with ageing in other parts of the world.

Scientists from Rome’s Sapienza University and the San Diego School of Medicine will unveil their fi ndings at a conference in the village today.

Acciaroli is part of the Cilento coast, a largely industry-free area of outstanding natural beauty that now has national park protected status.

It was in the Cilento that the late US nutritionist Ancel Keys fi rst

established convincing evidence of the health benefi ts of a Mediterranean diet based on olive oil and rich in fresh fruit, vegetables and fi sh.

Sixty years later, it is not hard to fi nd supporting evidence for Keys’ core thesis in Acciaroli itself.

More than one in 10 - 81 at the mayor’s last count - of the village’s population of 700 has passed the century mark.

Among them is Antonio Vassalo, 100. “We only eat healthy stuff,” he confirmed to AFP on a visit this week.

Antonio’s wife Amina Fedollo, a sprightly 93-year-old, develops the point. “We eat a lot of fi sh, fresh produce from the countryside that we grow ourselves.

“We have our own rabbits, our chickens. Only local products. And olive oil: we consume what we produce.”

Alan S Maisel, the San Diego cardiologist heading up the project, says the explanation for the longevity and sprightliness could lie

in any number of factors - from the villagers’ high consumption of the pungent herb rosemary to the active lifestyles imposed by their home’s steep streets, which means everyone has to do a little bit of tough walking every day.

“Is there something in their genes that may, along with something that they do make them live longer and healthy?” he said.

“They eat rosemary almost every day, and they grow it - maybe this does something that helps. We know that rosemary improves brain function.”

“They are also all physically active. Whether it is fi shing, walking or gardening, everyone does something every day.”

One fi nd that surprised the scientists on the project concerned the subjects’ capillary blood vessels, which tend to degenerate in older people. But the Cilento seniors had decidedly youthful capillaries of the sort found in much younger people, even those in their 20s.

The study focused on 80 elderly people including 25 centenarians.

Sapienza University’s Salvatore Di Somma said the goal was to identify what Acciaroli has to off er the rest of the world.

“What we would like to create is a sort of clinical scoresheet, a tool that says that someone who wants to live well for a long time should have a certain type of diet, a certain level of physical activity, a certain type of social life and a certain way of thinking.”

Maisel said Acciaroli was unusual in that the numbers of very old people were split evenly between men and women.

“Usually a signifi cantly higher number of women live longer than men,” he said, adding that some important lifestyle factors could be every bit as important as the anti-infl ammatory properties of rosemary.

“It may have something to do with the fact the older men do nothing but sit around all day outside cafes and are less stressed,” he said.

As G20 seeks to spurglobal growth, fi scalpush is still elusive

Whereas Britain can leave the EU, it cannot relocate away from Europe

Antonio Vassallo, 100, and his wife Amina Fedollo, 93, posing for a photo at their house in Acciaroli, southern Italy.

COMMENT

Roddenberry forged the original Star Trek in the mid-1960s, the era of the Great Society and the heights of the postwar economic boom

By Jake BlumgartThe Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

As Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek boldly passes the 50-year mark, the series is in impressive shape.

The latest movie – Star Trek Beyond – made about $250mn at the domestic box offi ce and received an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is far better than most of this summer’s hideously awful blockbusters.

A new series, Discovery – No 7 in the franchise – makes its debut on CBS at the beginning of 2017, seemingly in a serialised fashion where the characters and plotlines change every season, much like American Horror Story.

Most impressive, though: It’s impossible to name another series from the early days of television that has enjoyed as lasting an infl uence.

From Star Trek’s own decade, only The Twilight Zone (1959-64) comes close. Nothing from the 1970s or even the 1980s matches its longevity in the public imagination.

Star Trek’s long reign is fraught with complications. Star Wars (1977) both overshadowed it and, arguably, led to the series’ rebirth by proving that science-fi ction franchises have huge box-offi ce potential.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture – the fi rst of 13 franchise fi lms – appeared in 1979.

In more recent years, newer science-fi ction shows have signalled

their disillusionment with Trek’s paradigms.

Joss Whedon’s short-lived science-fi ction western Firefl y (2002-03) pitched itself as the anti-Star Trek. The show featured a gritty band of heroic outlaws who were often pitted against the depredations of a star-systems-spanning alliance of planets – an anti-utopian version of Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets, without the aliens.

The argument against Star Trek is, usually, that it is simply too clean, ordered and harmonious. In the universe that Roddenberry created, humanity not only overcomes disharmony among races and nations, but with a multitude of alien species.

There are warlike empires out there, but within the Federation’s purview there is peace and plenty. Capitalism as we know it no longer exists because technological advances have allowed people to survive without working, money has pretty much been done away with and hunger is no longer a threat.

There’s a 1930 essay by John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, in which the famous economist frets over what humanity will do with its free time after progress and technology have eliminated “pressing economic cares”. Star Trek posits that this supposed conundrum won’t be much of a problem. We’ll be free to pursue our hobbies and interests, which may include touring the galaxy, engaging in scientifi c discovery and forging enriching alliances with varied alien species.

These days, the Internet is full of fascinating dissections of Star Trek’s political economy, from Vox editor Matt Yglesias’ review of the entire series in Slate to Jacobin’s Peter Frase, who has a new book titled Four Futures that examines possible outcomes for a postcapitalist world.

Some of the options are pretty scary, but the one that is explicated using Roddenberry’s world is by far the most appealing.

In the original essay, Frase writes that “many people are already familiar with the utopia of a post-scarcity communism, because it has been represented in one of our most familiar works of popular culture: Star Trek.

Needless to say, such a society has never existed on this earth. Star Trek bashers disdain it for this very vision of a semi-utopic future where

humanity has moved beyond the tribal confl icts and narrow self-interest that have defi ned much of our history.

Too unrealistic, critics say, and lacking even the faux grit of a Han Solo, much less the jaundiced view of institutions (not to mention humanity writ large) on display in Firefl y or the rebooted Battlestar Galactica (2004-09).

But that hopeful vision is one of the most appealing aspects of Star Trek. Science fi ction is meant to be speculative. We have plenty of images

of what a totalitarian or primitivist or postapocalyptic future would look like.

Writers are great at dreaming up ways that everything could get worse. Degradation and woe – and zombies – are the norm when we dream of the future.

In the context of the rote grinding pessimism of our prognostications for the future, sci-fi and otherwise, what could be more interesting to imagine than how humanity would function in the post-economics world that

intellectuals from Marx to Keynes to the average stoned undergraduate have fantasized about?

Roddenberry forged the original Star Trek in the mid-1960s, the era of the Great Society and the heights of the postwar economic boom. It was an entirely diff erent world, where few could imagine the depredations the 1970s would bring.

Humanity was reaching the moon, the economies of developed nations seemed to be on an ever-expanding trajectory, and real progress was being made in advancing the welfare state and in addressing the quintessential American problem of racial segregation and oppression.

In that context, it perhaps didn’t seem so far-fetched that the Enterprise could be helmed by a black woman, an Asian man, a Russian (testament to an imagined amiable end to the Cold War) and an alien with pointed ears.

Today the outlook is much diff erent. The future political economy Keynes dreamed of hasn’t arrived. We aren’t working less, wages have stagnated for decades, the American middle class is shrinking, the social safety net is fraying and racial segregation is very much still with us.

All that would seem to indicate that the naysayers are onto something. Humanity will never live up to Star Trek. Perhaps that is right. But perhaps we can also have both, and perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to disregard utopianism.

It’s far better to have, or at least imagine, a better option rather than just surrender to the cynicism and despair that have so dramatically narrowed our vision of what is possible.

Jake Blumgart is a reporter with Philadelphia radio station WHYY. Readers may send him e-mail at [email protected]

50 years on, Star Trek endures

Live issues

My unexpected love aff air with a robot

Letters

By Barton GoldsmithTribune News Service

It all started quite innocently enough. We met online, Groupon, to be exact. I didn’t go there to meet anyone. I

was just casually distributing my disposable income. But truth be told, I had always wanted her or any of her sisters. Those curves were irresistible, and the fact that she lived to clean made my heart all atwitter. Flonase only goes so far.

Love aff airs begin in the strangest of ways. I can’t say I trusted that it was right at fi rst, so I let her linger on the Internet for quite a while. It could have just faded away with time, or a restart, but along came this e-mail making me a very seductive off er. The Spirits were speaking to me and saying this was meant to be. This frugal clean freak was now contemplating bringing another one into the home.

As I pushed the purchase button, things did not go smoothly. Was this a sign that things would not go well in this new relationship? Many questions

passed through my mind, but I saw no red fl ags. I was ready to commit. Just as soon as I was able to get the computer to accept my off er (and discount), I excitedly entered the 21st century.

She arrived at my door casually attired in a single cardboard box. I gently escorted her into the kitchen,

where I knew she would be spending most of her time. I’ve never thought the mail order bride thing was even possible, but she is actually doing as advertised. I can now say that I am the grateful new owner of Rosie, a Roomba vacuum-cleaning robot, and I am in love.

I grew up in a house that was cleaned daily. To me that was normal, and I didn’t realise that my mom was a little OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). In fact, it wasn’t until I went to college and lived in a frat house that I realised two things: one, most young guys have absolutely no sense of cleanliness, and two, I am allergic to everything.

My sneezing is epic. I have scared small children. I was in a restaurant restroom once, washing up, and blew my nose into a paper towel. There were two little boys in there too (about eight and fi ve). The younger one was in the stall, and when his brother asked, “Are you coming out?” the boy responded, “I don’t know. Is there a monster out there?” The eight-year-old just looked at me like Yoda saying, “Fixed, get that now.”

I usually have one sneezing attack daily, but since Rosie the Roomba entered my life, I’m doing better. I can’t believe the amount of hair and dirt that she vacuums up each time she runs. This robot has improved my life, and I am already saving for another one in the future. Nothing can work that hard and last forever.

The truth is that I took a gamble and gave myself a gift, even though I wasn’t sure it would perform. Much to my surprise, this thing has become a part of the family. The dogs play with her, the cat rides on her, and our house is just a little bit nicer. Who would have thought that something so weird would become a valued member of the household?

Dr Barton Goldsmith, a psychotherapist in Westlake Village, California, is the author of The Happy Couple: How to Make Happiness a Habit One Little Loving Thing at a Time. Follow his daily insights on Twitter at @BartonGoldsmith, or e-mail him at [email protected]

Qatar-India tiesgaining strengthDear Sir,

Each and every Indian living in Qatar is immensely proud of the recent progress made in the relations between Qatar and India. There have especially been three exciting developments, reported in the last few weeks. First, it has been announced that QNB, Qatar’s largest bank, is starting operations in India. This has been followed by the news that India’s Taj Hotel Group is seriously considering plans to make its imprint in Qatar’s lucrative market. And the third report has officials saying that plans are afoot to issue visas to Indians on arrival in Doha.

These three developments highlight the rapid progress achieved by India and Qatar in their relations. History reveals the strong ties between these two nations on various fronts; now new areas are being identifi ed to strengthen their bonds further for generating mutual benefi ts.

Issuance of visas to Indians on arrival is an innovative and creative

idea that will go a long way in improving Qatar’s tourism sector. This step will take economic relations between the two countries to new heights. Here again, Qatar is a front-runner among the GCC nations.

As a reciprocal gesture, the Indian government too must consider issuance of visas to Qataris on arrival in India and welcome them with open hands and hearts for greater business, cultural and social interactions.

V [email protected]

Oil pricestability

Dear Sir,

The oil prices underwent some drastic changes over the last two years. Prices have dropped by more than half. The market is fl ooded with more oil than the actual demand. Technically we call this phenomenon a glut. On account of this, some major economies are facing tough times. They have reduced their

capital expenditure, widened the current account defi cit and started rationalising the number of jobs in the government sector.

At the same time, this has helped some consumer countries to accumulate their foreign exchange reserves, narrow current account

defi cit and increase the capital expenditure.

The fi erce competition among oil producers for market share is likely to ensure price stability at the current level.

Girish R Edathitta(e-mail address supplied)

Actors Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner and James Doohan from the original Star Trek series. The show premiered 50 years ago as one of the new fall shows on NBC’s 1966-1967 schedule.

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Gulf Times Sunday, September 4, 2016 23

The iRobot Roomba 650 vacuum cleaning robot.

Three-day forecast

TODAY

TUESDAY

High: 41 C

Low : 33 C

High: 42 C

Low: 33 C

Weather report

Around the region

Abu DhabiBaghdadDubaiKuwait CityManamaMuscatRiyadhTehran

Weather todaySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnyM SunnySunny

Around the world

Athens BeirutBangkok BerlinCairoCape Town ColomboDhakaHong KongIstanbulJakartaKarachiLondonManilaMoscowNew DelhiNew York ParisSao PauloSeoulSingaporeSydney Tokyo Cloudy

Max/min31/2028/2433/2622/1334/2424/1329/2531/2730/2728/1931/2431/2722/1431/2619/1234/2626/1924/1626/1631/2132/2519/0729/25

Weather todaySunnyM SunnyS T StormsT StormsSunnySunnyT StormsS T StormsT StormsM SunnyS T StormsP CloudyM CloudyS T StormsRainM SunnyCloudyCloudyS ShowersP CloudyS T StormsSunny

Fishermen’s forecast

OFFSHORE DOHAWind: SE-NE 03-13/16 KTWaves: 1-3/4 Feet

INSHORE DOHAWind: NE 05-15/18 KTWaves: 1-2 Feet

High: 42 C

Low: 34 C

MONDAY

Hazy to misty at places at first becomes hot daytime with some clouds, and relatively humid by night.

Sunny

Cloudy

Max/min46/3244/2644/3248/3342/3234/2845/2835/24

Weather tomorrowSunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunny

Max/min44/3141/2442/3246/3142/3534/2844/28

Max/min33/2228/2433/2621/1234/2416/1129/2531/2730/2729/1831/2431/2723/1631/2618/0934/2625/2224/1624/1731/1932/2520/0830/24

Weather tomorrowSunnyM SunnyS T StormsS ShowersSunnyRainT StormsT StormsT StormsSunnyP CloudyCloudyShowersS T StormsRainM SunnyCloudyS ShowersP CloudyP CloudyT StormsSunnyCloudy

37/23

QATAR

Gulf TimesSunday, September 4, 201624

Qatar ‘most preferred GCC job destination for Nepali workers’By Usha Wagle GautamKathmandu

Qatar is like a second home for Nepalese workers and their most preferred job

destination among GCC coun-tries, an offi cial of an umbrella organisation of manpower agen-cies in Nepal has said.

Rohan Gurung, general secre-tary of the Nepalese Association of Foreign Employment Agen-cies (Nafea), disclosed this while speaking to Gulf Times on Nepa-lese men seeking jobs in the GCC states and steps taken by the au-thorities in his country to ensure the security and welfare of such workers.

Asked about the demand for workers in the Gulf countries, he said: “There is still a large de-mand for manual labourers from the Gulf countries. Qatar and the UAE are the two most preferred destinations.”

The hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and imple-mentation of ambitious projects as part of Qatar National Vision 2030 are also attracting Nepa-lese workers to the country, he observed.

There are some 756 registered manpower agencies in Nepal whose task is to assist people who aspire to go to the Gulf or East Asia for employment. Be-sides being a senior offi ce-bear-er of Nafea, Gurung also owns

Top Jobs Overseas, a manpower agency. He earlier worked in Ja-pan for almost a decade before opening his agency in the capital Kathmandu in 2005.

He advised young Nepalese looking for jobs in Qatar and other Gulf countries to learn more about the laws, rules and regulations, religion and culture of the destination country. “I would like them to be mentally prepared. I request all to ap-proach a registered manpower agency and not to deal with mid-dlemen.”

Gurung said the biggest prob-lem faced by rural job-seekers in Nepal was the exploitation by middlemen, who charge hun-dreds of thousands of rupees

for taking them to a registered agency in the capital.

“They trust the agents or mid-dlemen from their locality and, in turn, pay them large sums (as fee for facilitating the recruit-ment). Registered manpower agencies do not charge heavy sums from aspiring workers for recruitment,” he explained.

The offi cial further clarifi ed that manpower agencies in Ne-pal collect only service fees from candidates and that too when such fee is not paid by the em-ployer in the destination coun-try.

He also pointed out that most of the Qatari employers provide free visas and tickets to workers, but “it is being heard that the HR

managers of some companies ask for bribes” from agencies in Nepal.

Highlighting the steps taken by the Nepal authorities to en-sure the security and welfare of workers employed abroad, Gu-rung said the government has a compensation scheme which pays up to 1.4mn rupees to the families of workers who lose their lives, disappear or are disa-bled while working in any for-eign company.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that the number of Nepalese who have left the country to take up jobs in Gulf countries has dropped to around 800-900 this August as compared to 1,300 during the same period last year. Rohan Gurung: middlemen ‘exploiting job-seekers’

Grand Hypermarket opens at Ezdan Mall in Al WukairEzdan Holding Group has

announced the opening of Grand Hypermarket at

Ezdan Mall Al Wukair. The opening of the hyper-

market follows the signing of an agreement between Ezdan and Regency Group.

The inauguration was at-tended by Group COO Dr Mousa al-Awwad, Regency Group representatives and Malik Awan, general manager of Ezdan Mall, the subsidi-ary that manages Ezdan Hold-ing Group’s malls and shop-

ping centres. Al-Awwad said: “Ezdan Holding Group spares no effort in finding the right channels that would con-tribute to the promotion and growth of the Qatari economy. The group’s direction towards investment diversification is guided by Qatar’s 2030 vision of comprehensive develop-ment, which considers diver-sity the cornerstone of a strong and successful economy. The group’s efforts are focused on promoting important and dynamic sectors that would

strengthen economic activity in the state.”

He said the mall is the fi rst-of-its-kind and a vital addition to the vibrant and increasingly populous regions of Al Wakrah and Al Wukair, Mesaieed and Barwa.

“It will be an important out-let to serve the 25 Ezdan Villages that host over 70,000 people. The mall will provide a large number of diverse shops across two fl oors, off ering diff erent services and high-quality goods from global brands, in addition

to entertainment facilities, espe-cially during national holidays to highlight the authenticity of the rich Qatari culture.”

The new Grand Hypermarket branch provides fresh produce, food products, healthcare and beauty goods, and home im-provement supplies.

The hypermarket houses ma-jor brands of consumer prod-ucts, clothing, accessories, bags, shoes, leather goods and lug-gage, furniture, electrical and electronic appliances, household appliances and sport products.

Ezdan Holding Group and Regency Group officials, as well as other dignitaries during the event.

Tour guides hone skills ahead of cruise season

As the beginning of the cruise season draws closer, tour guides from

across the country are prepar-ing to welcome passengers and deliver enjoyable, smooth and memorable excursions.

At a training course organ-ised by Qatar Tourism Au-thority (QTA), tour guides sharpened their communica-tion and commentary skills, their knowledge of Qatar’s tourist sites, and practiced on ways to build relationships with their tour groups to en-sure a wholesome and unique experience.

“A tour guide plays a cru-cial role in shaping a tourist’s experience of a destination, and by equipping them with the right tools we are ensur-ing the success of Qatar’s big-gest cruise season yet,” com-

mented Najd al-Marri, head of Tourism Product Support Section at QTA.

“This training course is de-signed specifi cally for tour guides that will work with cruise passengers, addressing the unique needs of guiding shore excursions, which are often condensed in a day and include large groups.”

Al -Marri added that the training course targeted par-ticipants from diff erent back-grounds to cater to the multiple

nationalities that will be arriv-ing on Qatar’s shores.

The guides were tested at the end of the course through a prac-tical evaluation that involves guiding a group on a moving bus and giving a tour of Msheireb Museums.

Those who pass the test will receive certifi cates and a license from QTA to become cruise ship tour guides.

During the upcoming cruise season, which begins in Octo-ber and continues until April 2017, 32 cruise ships are con-fi rmed to call at Qatar’s ports with an expected 50,000 pas-sengers on board.

This marks a three-fold in-crease in the number of ships, and an increase of over 1000% in the expected number of passengers, from the 2015-16 season.

Guides are trained to welcome passengers and to deliver enjoyable, memorable excursions.

“A tour guide plays a crucial role in shaping a tourist’s experience of a destination, and by equipping them with the right tools we are ensuring the success of Qatar’s biggest cruise season yet”

Retailers optimistic of steady increase in salesAfter getting a fi llip from

the month-long Qatar Summer Festival (QSF),

many retailers and boutiques at diff erent malls in Qatar expect their sales to further improve before and after the Eid al-Adha holidays.

The annual QSF, organised by Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA), featured a number of off erings such as the shopping promo-tions aimed at energising the hospitality and retail sectors, driving domestic tourism and attracting regional visitors year-round.

“We received an increasing number of shoppers at the start of this month and we hope to at-tract more before they leave for the Eid holidays with our pro-mos,” said an employee of a fe-male apparel boutique at a mall in Doha.

She noted that QTA’s weekly raffl e draws during the festi-val had signifi cantly helped in enticing more people to spend at least a minimum of QR200. This amount gives them one raf-fl e coupon with a chance to win cash or a Jaguar car.

The employee believes the launch of the shopping promo-tions was timely since many re-

tailers get only a few customers after the Eid al-Fitr holidays, considered an off -peak period.

Many retailers, shops and boutiques normally launch their promotions dur-

ing the summer, coinciding with such festivals as part of their strategy to encourage

people to buy, she explained.She added that the infl ux of

visitors from Saudi Arabia from

August 1 onwards is also giving a boost to their sales.

“Many people from Saudi

shop here in Doha and they spend in bulk whether we have promotions, reduced prices or none at all,” she said.

However, she disclosed that their shop recorded an estimated 45% drop in sales this summer compared with last year’s fi gure for the same period.

This was also echoed by a boutique employee at another mall citing a substantial drop in sales of both men’s and women’s clothes.

“We are trying to woo cus-tomers with our promotions, special off ers and reduced pric-es for us to hit our targets this month,” he said.

He expressed optimism that business will improve with the opening of schools and the re-turn of vacationing residents af-ter the Eid al-Adha holidays.

The employee also expects their sales to increase once the winter season sets in and with the arrival of more tourists from cruise ships.

QTA earlier announced that they expect more than 50,000 tourists aboard 32 cruise ships to arrive in the country for the 2016-2017 cruise season, which starts in October and ends in April next year.

Apparel boutiques in Doha expect to receive more shoppers in the coming days.

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