Cabinet okays setting up of panel to promote national products

In brief

BUSINESS | Page 1

GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978THURSDAY Vol. XXXX No. 11227

June 27, 2019Shawwal 24, 1440 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

SPORT | Page 1

Azam ton helps Pakistan keep semis hopes alive

Qatar trade surplus surges 3.5% on faster expansion in exports

HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani met Brazilian Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication Marcos Pontes and the accompanying delegation in Doha yesterday. The meeting reviewed relations between the two countries and ways to develop them, in addition to issues of mutual concern. Page 3

PM meets Brazilian minister

Cabinet okays settingup of panel to promote national products

The Cabinet yesterday approved the draft decision of HE the prime minister to form a com-

mittee to support the competitive-ness of national products and combat harmful practices to them in interna-tional trade.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry prepared the draft within the framework of completing the necessary decisions to activate the provisions of Law No 2 of 2019 on supporting the competitiveness of na-tional products and combating harm-ful practices to them in international trade.

Under the terms of the draft de-cision, the committee shall be con-sisted of three representatives of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, including the president and vice-president, and representatives of the

bodies concerned.The committee shall be responsible

for the implementation of the com-petences provided for by Law No 2 for 2019, including the examination of complaints relating to the violation of the provisions of this law and the nec-essary investigation thereof.

HE the Prime Minister Sheikh Ab-dullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani chaired the Cabinet’s regular meeting at its seat at the Amiri Diwan.

Following the meeting, HE the Min-ister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Aff airs Dr Issa Saad al-Jafali al-Nuaimi said

the Cabinet hailed the results of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani’s visit to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on June 22 and 23.

The Cabinet affi rmed that the Amir’s fruitful discussions with Paki-

stani President Dr Arif Alvi and Prime Minister Imran Khan and the broth-erly atmosphere that characterised the visit as well as the memorandums of understanding which were signed constituted a new platform for a stra-tegic co-operation and for the promo-tion of friendship and mutual trust and understanding for the benefi t of the two brotherly countries and peo-ples and for peace and stability in the region.

The Cabinet also stressed that the Amir’s directives following the visit to allocate $3bn for new investments in Pakistan in the form of depos-its and direct investments will push the economic partnership between the two countries forward and open new horizons for the development of their bilateral cooperation in various fields. Page 2

Results of Amir’s visit to Pakistan lauded

‘Groundbreaking’ sensory room atAl Janoub Stadium proves a success

The Supreme Committee for De-livery & Legacy (SC) said it has further developed its “unique

approach” to ensuring that stadiums cater to all with the instalment of an-other ‘groundbreaking’ sensory room, this time at Al Janoub Stadium in Al Wakrah city.

This comes as part of the SC’s com-mitment to ensuring the 2022 FIFA World Cup is the most accessible edi-tion in tournament history, sc.qa re-ports.

The room – which provides people with autism and other neurobehav-ioural conditions a safe space to retreat to during the game – was designed and delivered in partnership with the Qa-tar Rehabilitation Institute (QRI), and follows the successful inclusion of a similar room at Khalifa International Stadium.

So, for the second time during a Qatar 2022 stadium opening, the SC delivered a ‘groundbreaking’ sensory room as Al Janoub Stadium opened its gates for the 2019 Amir Cup fi nal in May.

On the night, 22 children with au-tism from the Qatar Foundation Disa-

bility Football Programme and the QRI – joined by their parents – watched the game from the comfort of the room. The group from Qatar Foundation were also given the ‘once-in-a-life-time’ opportunity to participate in a special on-pitch Generation Amazing activation, led by Brazil’s FIFA World Cup-winning captain Cafu.

Before, during and after the game, they had access to the sensory room –

which was fi lled with equipment such as bubble tubes, beanbags and a ball pen, and also included relaxing wall and ceiling projections. “Once again, it proved to be a huge success,” the report said.

Commenting on the room and the partnership with the SC, QRI’s chief of Occupational Therapy Sultan al-Ab-dulla said: “The team at QRI is proud to have partnered with the SC to equip the state-of-the-art sensory rooms in the stadium.

“Along with the SC, we are com-mitted to promoting accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities in all aspects of life in Qatar, including working together to reach the vision of a fully accessible World Cup.

“The QRI has provided a range of specialist sensory equipment for the sensory room, which is now available in the stadium for children and adults who have conditions such as atten-tion defi cits, autism and head inju-ries. The room enables users to watch the matches under the supervision of an expert occupational therapist in a nurturing, client-centred sensory supportive environment.” To Page 5

‘Palestinians need jobs and peace’DPAManama

A US-sponsored summit on Pal-estinian economic develop-ment focused on the need for

job-generating investments yesterday and peace in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as governance and account-ability.

The meeting comes days after the White House unveiled the economic portion of its so-called “Deal of the Century,” the long-awaited initiative led by Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, and US special envoy Jason Greenblatt.

Washington said the plan could generate $50bn in investment over 10 years for the Palestinian econo-my.

Some panellists on the second and fi nal day of the conference in Manama, mentioned peace as a condition for the success of the plan, yet without focus-ing on issues relating to politics or the confl ict with Israel.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde said growth is contracting in the Pal-estinian Territories, with a 1.6% drop forecast in 2019.

With an unemployment rate of 30% in the West Bank and 50% in Gaza and a growing population, expected to double from 5 to 10mn in 2050, invest-ments should focus on generating jobs and tackling a lack of skills needed for the market.

Agriculture, tourism, construction and infrastructure are sectors identi-fi ed to “absorb a lot of labour,” Lagarde added.

Besides all of this, a “satisfactory peace” is needed for prosperity, she added.

Other panellists focused on the need for governance, accountability and the rule of law for businesses to be able to work in the Palestinian Ter-ritories.

World Bank President David Mal-pass said electricity, water and waste water treatment are “pressing needs” as well as education and skills required by the private sector. Page 11

A special on-pitch Generation Amazing activation, led by Brazil’s FIFA World Cup-winning captain Cafu.

QATAR | Motoring

‘Accident-Free Summer’drive to start on July 1The General Directorate of Traff ic has announced that it will launch a month-long traff ic awareness campaign on July 1 under the title ‘Accident-Free Summer’ in order to raise public awareness about the rules of traff ic safety and safe driving. The campaign, aimed at curbing traff ic violations and road accidents, will continue until August 1. This was announced at a press conference held by the Traff ic Awareness Department at the General Directorate of Traff ic yesterday. Page 5

AMERICA | Migration

US, Guatemala closeto deal on migrantsThe United States and Guatemala are close to reaching a safe third country agreement as part of an eff ort to curb US-bound migrants, US President Donald Trump said yesterday, off ering no details about when such a deal might be finalised. Trump, who made the remarks at a gathering of religious conservatives in Washington, had said last week that a pact was close, but Guatemala’s interior minister said the Central American nation had made no commitment yet. The US Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ISRAEL | Aviation

GPS disruption in Israeli airspaceIsrael is experiencing unexplained GPS disruptions in its airspace but measures are in place to allow safe landings and takeoff s at its main international airport, the government said yesterday. The announcement by the Israel Airports Authority (IAA) followed a report on Tuesday by the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA) that “many” pilots had lost satellite signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS) around Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.

2 Gulf TimesThursday, June 27, 2019

QATAR

HE the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs, Dr Ahmed bin Hassan al-Hammadi, yesterday held a farewell ceremony in honour of the outgoing ambassadors of China, Australia and Burkina Faso to Qatar, Li Chen, Axel Wabenhorst and Adama Compaore, respectively. The ceremony, which was held at the Diplomatic Club, was attended by a number of heads of diplomatic missions and off ices accredited to Qatar in addition to directors of departments of the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs.

Farewell ceremony for ambassadors

Cabinet approves draft law on setting up court for investmentQNADoha

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

Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, yesterday approved a draft law on establishing a court for investment and trade.

The draft law will establish the requirements for the court. The Cabinet reviewed the let-ter of HE the Chairman of the Supreme Judiciary Council and

President of the Court of Cassa-tion on the results of the work of the task team mandated to study the mechanisms and require-ments for the establishment of a specialised court for investment and trade within the framework of the initiative to develop jus-tice systems and create an at-tractive environment for invest-ment.

Following the meeting, HE the Minister of Justice and Act-ing Minister of State for Cabinet Aff airs Dr Issa Saad al-Jafali al-Nuaimi stated the following:

The Cabinet reviewed topics

on its meeting’s agenda as fol-lowing:

It took the necessary measures to issue the following draft laws, after it has reviewed the rec-ommendations of the Advisory Council thereon:

1- A draft law on fi reworks.2- A draft law on military

medals and decorations.3- A draft law amending some

provisions of Law No 4 for 2008 regarding property leasing.

4- A draft law amending some provisions of Decree Law No 10 for 1974 on the establishment of Qatar Petroleum.

5- A draft law amending some provisions of Law No 15 of 2010 on the prohibition of workers camps within family residential areas.

The Cabinet approved a draft decision by HE the Minister of Culture and Sports to issue a system for honouring Qatari

sports clubs that achieve athletic achievements.

The aim of this system is to honour the Qatari sports clubs by providing fi nancial support for these clubs once they make athletic achievement in the competitions and sports shown in this system and in accord-ance with the procedures, con-trols and standards contained therein.

It also aims at motivating these clubs and sports elites to develop sports performance to the point of excellence and to provide the appropriate envi-

ronment for excellence and rep-resentation that matches Qatar’s ambitions at the regional, conti-nental and international levels.

The Cabinet also approved the entry into force of the provisions of Law No 24 for 2002 regard-ing retirement and pensions of Qatari employees in a number of companies.

After that, it took the neces-sary measures to ratify a proto-col of co-operation in the fi eld of education and training between the governments of Qatar and Turkey.

It also approved a draft agree-

ment in air services between the governments of Qatar and the Macao Special Administrative Region of China.

Finally, the Cabinet reviewed the letter of HE the Chairman of the Administrative Control and Transparency Authority on the comments and views of some bodies on the amendments pro-posed by the Authority to the Pe-nal Code promulgated by Law No 11 of 2004 and the Criminal Pro-cedure Code promulgated by Law No 23 of 2004. The Cabinet com-mented on the letter and took the appropriate decision thereon.

The Cabinet issued a draft law amending some provisions of Law No 15 of 2010 on the prohibition of workers camps within family residential areas

Amir greetspresident ofMadagascar

Qatar condemnsattack in Sinai

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani yesterday sent cables of congratulations to the President of Madagascar Andry Nirina Rajoelina, on the anniversary of his country’s Independence Day. HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani also sent a cable of congratulations to the Prime Minister of Madagascar Christian Louis Ntsay on the occasion.

Qatar expressed its strong condemnation and denunciation of the attack on a security zone south of El-Arish, northern Sinai, which resulted in the death of policemen. In a statement issued yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs reiterated Qatar’s firm stance rejecting violence and terrorism, regardless of their motives and reasons. The statement expressed Qatar’s condolences to the families of the victims and to the Egyptian people.

Secretary-General of the International Organisation of La Francophonie (IOF) Louise Mushikiwabo met the ambassador of Qatar to France HE Sheikh Ali bin Jassim al-Thani. Sheikh Ali bin Jassim al-Thani submitted his credentials as a representative of Qatar to the IOF. During the meeting they reviewed relations and ways to boost co-operation between Qatar and the IOF. For her part, the IOF secretary-general praised the eff ective role Qatar is playing in strengthening the status and role of the IOF.

Qatar’s ambassadorpresents credentials

3Gulf TimesThursday, June 27, 2019

QATAR

HE the Minister of Transport and Communications Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti met with Brazilian Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications Marcos Pontes in Doha yesterday. The two off icials discussed aspects of co-operation in the fields of communications and information technology and means of further enhancing them, in addition to drawing on potential investment opportunities in those fields, the Ministry of Transport and Communications said in a statement. They also discussed a number of topics that concern the two friendly countries. HE the minister also invited the Brazilian off icial to the Qatar IT Conference and Exhibition taking place from October 29 to November 1. The meeting was attended by Brazil’s ambassador to Qatar, Roberto Abdalla.

Al-Sulaiti meets Brazilian minister

RAF, UNHCR discuss mechanisms for implementing joint projects

Representatives from Sheikh Thani Bin Abdullah Al Thani Foundation for Hu-

manitarian Services (RAF) and the Offi ce of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) discussed in a consult-ative meeting held in Doha, the mechanisms of implementing the foundations project to support Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and displaced Yemenis.

RAF had extended UNHCR a grant of $35mn to implement relief programmes for 1mn dis-placed Yemenis and Rohingya refugees focusing on health, shelter and non-food needs.

UNHCR saw the grant re-ceived from RAF, the largest ever received from individual sup-porters, to provide multi-pur-pose cash assistance and shel-ter assistance to approximately 300,000 internally displaced Yemenis or returnees from dis-placement areas and members of the host community in Yemen, as well as the support of approx-imately 670,000 refugees from Rohingya in Bangladesh.

Amin Awad, UNHCR Director for the Middle East and North Africa Bureau and Refugee Co-ordinator expressed apprecia-tion for the eff orts made by RAF

to support the most vulnerable. He said that these eff orts repre-sent a unique model of unlimited human sacrifi ce for the simple segments that have been dam-aged by confl icts and disasters.

He stressed the vital role of the private sector at the interna-tional level in providing support and assistance to international eff orts to eliminate the problems of displacement and asylum, considered RAF as a unique Qa-tari model. He hoped the private sector and individuals around the world will be inspired by this experience to create relief and humanitarian programmes that

serve the aff ected populations and help them to improve their social and health lives again.

He added that the UNHCR is seeking to replicate this unique model in other countries, in or-der to motivate them to provide more tangible and humanitarian support for displaced people and refugees, adding that the sup-

port and training programmes are provided to these groups in their locations, through a spe-cialised UN international team.

Awad said the grant comes within the relief programs launched UNHCR in 2016 to pro-vide an eff ective and reliable way to deliver 100% of the donated funds directly to those who are entitled to it. He added that RAF is actively following up on the im-plementation of the programmes aimed at individuals and families of displaced persons and refugees.

He urged the international community to follow the Qatari example and stimulate the pri-

vate sector to support the UN’s eff orts to help those in need and the most vulnerable groups.

RAF representative Dr Aize bin Dabsan al-Qahtani said sev-eral consultative meetings were held with UNHCR specialists, to follow up on the implementation of the fi rst phase and discuss the mechanism of starting the sec-ond phase of the grant.

He added that RAF’s future objective, if appropriate, is to reach the support of at least 5mn displaced people and refugees around the world and provide the necessary humanitarian support to them. RAF has completed 20%

of this target by implementing a package of programs and projects to provide support to approxi-mately 1mn displaced persons and refugees in Yemen and Rohingya in Bangladesh, he said.

UNHCR Regional Representa-tive to the GCC Countries Khaled Khalifa said the joint eff orts be-tween the public and private sec-tors will have an infl uential role in the vulnerable sectors aff ected by the confl icts. He said that the RAF’s grant is reaching its ben-efi ciaries directly and without hindrance, and is based on medi-cine, shelter, non-food needs and ensuring social life. - QNA

HE the Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi met UK’s ambassador to Qatar Ajay Sharma, in Doha yesterday. During the meeting, they reviewed bilateral relations and ways to develop them. They also reviewed promoting co-operation aspects as well as topics of common interest.

Al-Muraikhi meets UK ambassador

RAF had extended UNHCR a grant of $35mn to implement relief programmes for 1mn displaced Yemenis and Rohingya refugees


QATAR

King Mohamed VI of Morocco met Qatar’s outgoing ambassador Abdullah bin Falah bin Abdullah al-Dosari, in Rabat yesterday. The ambassador conveyed the greetings of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to King Mohamed VI, who reciprocated the Amir’s greetings. King Mohamed VI honoured the ambassador with the Order of Ouissam Alaouite, the highest medal in the Kingdom of Morocco, which is awarded to leaders of states and prominent figures.

Moroccan king honours Qatar’s ambassador Qatar presides over UNRWA

pledging conference in NYQNANew York

Qatar chaired the pledging confer-ence for the United

Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refu-gees in the Near East (UN-RWA).

HE the Permanent Repre-sentative of Qatar to the UN ambassador Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif al-Thani pre-sided over the conference on behalf of the President of the 73rd Session of the UN Gen-eral Assembly Maria Fern-anda Espinosa.

The conference was called for by the Ad Hoc Committee of the Gen-eral Assembly for the An-nouncement of Voluntary Contributions to UNRWA.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UN-RWA Commissioner-Gen-eral Pierre Krahenbuhl at-tended the conference.

Krahenbuhl urged to sup-port UNRWA to provide services to 5.4mn refugees, 8mn medical visits per year and emergency relief to 1.5mn people.

Meanwhile, Qatar has re-iterated that it will remain at the forefront of the countries that can be trusted with the various partners in provid-ing humanitarian assistance to the brotherly Palestinian people.

This came in a statement by Deputy Permanent Rep-resentative of Qatar to the UN, Jassim Sayar al-Maaw-da, at the pledging confer-ence for the UNRWA.

Al-Maawda stressed the fi rm policy of Qatar in sup-porting UNRWA, its com-mitment to burden sharing, its great appreciation for all eff orts to meet the basic needs of the Palestine refu-gees and its central role in stabilising the region, thus Qatar contributed $50mn, during the extraordinary

Ministerial Conference on UNRWA support held on 15 March 2018, Rome, Italy.

He also referred to Qatar’s support for UNRWA’s core resources totalling $6mn for the period 2019-2020, on the sidelines of the Doha Forum in December 2018.

Al-Maawda underlined that this financial contri-bution was in line with the

firm solidarity of Qatar in supporting the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and the importance of ensuring adequate and sustainable funding for the agency.

Qatar commended the vital role of UNRWA in pro-viding protection and sup-port to Palestinian refugees in the face of the challenges.

The statement explained the challenges will con-tinue as long as the plight of the Palestinian refugees remains and until achieving a just, lasting and compre-hensive settlement of the Palestinian issue, including the return of refugees in ac-cordance with international law and relevant UN resolu-tions.

HE the Permanent Representative of Qatar to the UN ambassador Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif al-Thani presiding over the conference on behalf of the President of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly Maria Fernanda Espinosa.

Shafallah to launch summer programme on SundayQNADoha

Shafallah Center for Persons with Disability, member of Qatar Foun-dation for Social Work, is set to

launch the third edition of its summer programme on Sunday through July 17.

The activities of the summer pro-gramme will be held from 08:30am-12:30pm, four days every week. The programme aims to properly invest the members’ free time and meet their needs during the summer vacation.

The programme, which involves the participation of several bodies in the country, aims to enhance the members’ self confidence; to devel-op their abilities and to encourage them to take part in different activi-ties that help integrating them in the community.

The programme features several edu-cational, sports, social and recreational activities which suit the diff erent age groups of the members. It also features diff erent workshops and outdoor trips under the supervision of a qualifi ed team.

Public securitychief meets Serbian envoy

Qatar-UNHCR

ties reviewed

Real estate

transactions

HE the Director of Pub-lic Security Staff Major General Saad bin Jassim

al-Khulaifi met the ambassa-dor of Serbia to Qatar Jasminko Pozderac, in Doha yesterday. During the meeting, they dis-cussed a number of topics of mutual interest to the both countries. – QNA

HE the Permanent Repre-sentative of Qatar to the UN in Geneva, Ali Kha-

lfan al-Mansouri yesterday met the United Nations High Com-missioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

During the meeting they re-viewed promoting co-operation between Qatar and UNHCR, in addition to a number of topics of common interest.

The trading volume of reg-istered real estates be-tween June 16 to June 20

at the Ministry of Justice’s real estate registration department stood at QR 278,565,712.

The department’s weekly report said that the trading in-cluded empty lands, residential units, residential buildings, resi-dential complexes, multipur-pose buildings and multipurpose empty lands. – QNA

UNGA chooses Qatar to facilitate high-level meeting

The United Nations General Assembly chose HE Permanent Representative of Qatar to the UN Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif al-Thani and Permanent Representative of New Zealand ambassador Craig John Hawke, to facilitate and lead consultations with member states that will lead to a high-level meeting on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women.The 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, which adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPFA), is set to coincide with the 75th session of the UN General Assembly in September 2020.Preparations for the high-level meeting

began during two consultation sessions, the first on 13 June, followed by a second meeting on June 25.In a letter addressed to all member states of the United Nations, President of the UN General Assembly for the 73rd session Maria Fernanda Espinosa explained that the celebration of the 25th anniversary would be held through a high-level meeting on the sidelines of the general debate of the 75th session of the General Assembly.She expressed her gratitude and thanks to HE Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif al-Thani for taking this task and expressed her confidence to receive full co-operation and support from member states.

Fire Station launches contest to celebrate Qatari art and heritage

Qatar Museums (QM) and the Fire Station Artist in Residence

have announced a design competition with the ob-jective of transforming functional products, which the general public interacts with, into functional art such as landscape furniture, carpets, rugs, etc designed by local artists, embodying the rich Qatari culture and heritage.

The contest, titled ‘Qa-tar Al Fann’ or ‘Qatar Art’, is being held in association with Coastal Qatar. The contest aims to provide a platform and mediums of expression for local artists to showcase their creativity and talent and at the same time provide exposure to a global audience and rev-enue streams, according to

a press statement.“To maximise the expo-

sure of the Qatari heritage and artists, opportunities needs to be created for fans and visitors to interact with art rather than art being confi ned within the walls of art galleries and museums,” said Fire Station director Khalifa al-Obaidly, noting that Qatar is on the thresh-old of hosting the most prestigious and exciting global sporting event, the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

The event, al-Obaidly added, will provide Qatar with “an unprecedented level of international exposure and the opportunity to showcase its rich Arab cultural and her-itage to the world”.

“Historically, art has thrived only with the sup-port of patrons. We are

extremely happy to note that government bodies like Ashghal, Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment, Lusail Develop-ment, Msheireb and Awqaf, among others, have ex-pressed their eagerness to incorporate the selected designs in their upcoming projects,” he said.

“Qatar could probably be the only country where the government agencies have come forward to promote the functional art designed by the local artists” the director said.

A jury will judge and shortlist designs for incor-poration in a co-branded design library with the de-tails of the artist, and inspi-ration for the design, among others, which could be used by architects and designers for their projects.

“Coastal Qatar as a lo-cal company always strived to embody the essence and pride of Qatari products. We are very proud of our local manufacturing initia-tives like lamp posts, crash barriers, etc and more no-tably the local manufacture of spectator seats for six of the FIFA 2022 stadiums,” Coastal Group CEO Nishad Azeem said.

“We aim to showcase Qa-tari products on the global stage as world class prod-ucts and we are confi dent of delivering these products designed by the local art-ists,” he added.

The products could be utilised in public spaces, hotels, offi ces, parks and mosques, among others, both locally and interna-tionally.

From the launch event.

QATAR5

Gulf Times Thursday, June 27, 2019

Traffi c awareness drive set to begin on July 1The General Directorate of

Traffi c has announced that it will launch a month-

long traffi c awareness campaign on July 1 under the title ‘Acci-dent-Free Summer’ in order to raise public awareness about the rules of traffi c safety and safe driving.

The campaign, aimed at curb-ing traffi c violations and road accidents, will continue until August 1.

This was announced at a press conference held by the Traffi c Awareness Department at the General Directorate of Traffi c yesterday. It was attended by Col Nasser Darman al-Hajri, assist-ant director-general of Traffi c; Col Mohamed Radhi al-Hajri, director of the Traffi c Aware-ness Department; and offi cers from the General Directorate of Traffi c.

Addressing the press meet, Col al-Hajri said the campaign this year will focus on fi eld awareness. Accordingly, aware-ness programmes and inspec-tion campaigns will be carried out in co-operation with the Traffi c Patrols Department and Public Relations Department. The main goal of the campaign is to educate the public on the rules of traffi c safety and safe driving, with a focus on motorists, espe-cially youths, in the city of Doha and external areas, he noted.

The initiative will focus on raising awareness of various types of violations, including driving without a valid licence, passing through the right side, using the mobile phone while driving, parking in slots reserved for people with special needs and obstructing traffi c by stop-ping in the yellow box, etc.

The campaign will involve the distribution of awareness pub-lications, such as brochures and leafl ets, as well as off ering guid-ance to motorists on diff erent roads and commercial streets and in markets. This will be done within Doha and places beyond it, including Dukhan.

The campaign activities will be carried out in co-operation with media outlets and through co-ordination with the Talaa department to detect the viola-tion of stopping in the yellow box. Cameras installed at inter-sections monitor this violation, which hinder traffi c and cannot be reconciled. Any motorist who violate the rules by stopping in the yellow box will be penal-ised with a fi ne of QR500, it was stressed.

Capt Abdul Wahid Ghareeb al-Anzi, Traffi c Awareness offi c-

Colonel Mohamed Radhi al-Hajri speaking at the press conference.

Off icials attending the press conference. PICTURES: Jayan Orma

Drop in some traffi c violations

Intensifi ed traffi c safety measures, including aware-ness and inspection cam-

paigns, during last year’s ‘Acci-dent-Free Summer’ campaign by the General Directorate of Traffi c yielded positive results, it was revealed yesterday.

Addressing the media during the launch of the 2019 campaign yesterday, Traffi c Awareness Department director Col Mo-hamed Radhi al-Hajri explained the impact of the initiative last year through a comparison of the 2017 and 2018 fi gures. The review pointed to a drop in the number of some violations.

He said the violation of passing through the right side saw a sig-nifi cant reduction, with a decline of 68.4%, while driving without a licence saw a drop of 16.1%. Also, the violation of parking in places meant for people with special needs decreased by 22.4%, he said.

Meanwhile, offi cials noted that the use of mobile phones while driving, minor drivers and signal jumping continued to be a cause for concern on Qatar’s roads. According to them, mo-bile phones resulted in most accident cases.

Data available with Minis-try of Interior shows that Qatar records 800 road accidents a day on an average, and 51% of the to-tal accidents are due to mobile usage.The sensory room at Al Janoub Stadium.

‘Groundbreaking’ sensory room at Al Janoub Stadium proves a successFrom Page 1

Although not written into FIFA’s require-ments, the SC and its stakeholders are com-mitted to prioritising accessibility in 2022, with plans in place to cater for people with both physical disabilities and cognitive dis-abilities.

The equipment in the room was provided by Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), and specialist staff from the QRI were on hand throughout to assist children when they needed extra care.

Commenting on the room, the SC’s Com-munity Engagement manager Mead al-Ema-di, said: “We are proud to have been able to deliver another sensory room, this time at the magnifi cent Al Janoub Stadium. We have al-

ways said this World Cup is a World Cup for all. All are welcome and all will be catered for – that includes people with conditions that can sometimes make it challenging to attend large-scale events such as football matches.

“However, with the inclusion of these sen-sory rooms, they and their families can attend the games knowing they have a safe space just a few metres away, should they become over-whelmed at any point.

“It gives us all great pleasure to see these children able to relax and enjoy the events, just like everyone else. I would like to thank our partners at Qatar Foundation, the QRI and HMC for making this wonderful project possible, and we look forward to working together many more times over the coming years – up to and beyond 2022.”

er, briefed on the role of the me-dia in instilling awareness and a traffi c culture, especially among young people. He stressed that

the local media were making every eff ort to carry out their social responsibilities in sup-port of traffi c awareness eff orts

to achieve the state’s vision to reduce accidents and traffi c vio-lations and to provide maximum safety on the road.

QATAR


Hamilton International School completes campus construction at MesaimeerThe Hamilton In-

ternational School (Hamilton), part

of International Schools Partnership (ISP) has an-nounced that construction of the school premises in Mesaimeer is complete.

The state-of-the-art fa-cility is now ready for public viewing, as the manage-ment has laid out a series of open days and school tours for interested parents and guardians who are enroll-ing their children for the upcoming 2019/2020 aca-demic year, the school has said in a press statement.

Open days are scheduled for the next fi ve Saturdays - June 29, July 6, July 13, July 20 and July 27. The tours will be held from 11am-2pm. The school’s trained staff will be available to answer any questions or enquiries.

Hamilton enjoys a vast FIFA-approved sports fi eld suitable for a vari-ety of outdoor activities, two swimming pools and an auditorium with plush carpets, comfortable seat-ing, full lighting and rigs, where Hamilton’s children will gather for assemblies, live music and theatre performances.

Moreover, the Hamilton International School has conducted a rigorous se-lection process to hire its new classroom teachers, specialist teachers for PE, Music, IT, Arabic, Islamic

Studies and Learning Sup-port, as well as support staff , the statement notes.

To date, more than 200 families have signed up their children at Hamilton, establishing the school’s ‘founding families’ group.

Terry Senior, the princi-pal, said: “We are extremely

excited to see the the Ham-ilton International School open its doors for visitors and tours. Our world-class facilities, accompanied by our educational off ering and highly qualifi ed teach-ers, will be a testament to ISP’s high standard of education globally.”

Hamilton is part of the International Schools Part-nership, a UK-based owner and operator of 40 schools globally, which also in-cludes Park House English School, one of Doha’s oldest and most respected schools.

Hamilton off ers the In-ternational Early Years and

International Primary Cur-riculum, which is taught in over 2,000 schools across 98 countries. Students eventually graduate with either an IB Diploma or a High School Diploma ac-credited by NEASC, a US accreditation organisation.

Catering to students aged 3-10 years, during its fi rst year of operation, Hamil-ton will grow and expand to eventually become a pre-KG to Grade 12 school. Along with Senior, the prin-cipal, a “highly experienced and passionate team of in-ternational teachers are on board with a commitment to ensure that every child develops a love of learning and acquires the skills and knowledge they need for the future”, the statement adds.

Hamilton is now taking registrations for students from Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 5 (Year 6) for its fi rst academic year beginning August 2019. The Admis-sions & Enquiry Centre is now open on the school premises from 9am-5pm.

Those interested in en-rolling their child/children at the Hamilton Inter-national School can visit hamiltoninternationals-chool.qa, e-mail [email protected], or contact 5043 8885. They can visit the Admissions Enquiry Centre at Hamilton In-ternational School, Me-saimeer Area, near the Religious Complex.

The football pitch and sports hall at Hamilton International School.

An exterior view of the school.

HE the Chairman of Qatar’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Abdullah bin Nasser Turki al-Subaey yesterday met the director general of the Arab Civil Aviation Organisation (ACAO), Abdennabi Manar. During the meeting, they reviewed the relations between Qatar and the ACAO in the field of civil aviation and ways of developing and enhancing them. A number of issues of mutual interest were also discussed.

CAA chairman meets ACAO chief

Al Khaliji sponsors ‘Majd Qatar’ campaignUnder the umbrella of its initiatives

pertaining to the country’s national ambitions, Al Khaliji bank has spon-

sored the ‘Majd Qatar’ (Qatar Glory) na-tionwide campaign and third book edition.

Under the theme ‘Wise Vision’, the campaign was initiated and launched by Qatar’s Tawasol Centre at the Mu-seum of Islamic Art with the attendance of several dignitaries, offi cials and media representatives.

The campaign’s inauguration event co-incided with the sixth anniversary of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani’s accession to power, the bank said in a statement. The book, ‘Majd Qatar’, highlights and documents the Qatari renaissance achievements and milestones over the past two years of the blockade imposed on the nation.

Omar al-Emadi, acting group chief business offi cer at Al Khaliji, said: “Al Kha-lji is honoured to be extending it support to this nationwide campaign that instils pride in every Qatari citizen.

“It is through this drive that we’ve grown ever more loyal and devoted to our wise leadership, fronted by His Highness

the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who dedicated his energy, time and strategic vision to the rise of Qatar, even more so during the critical post-blockade era for our beloved nation.

“This dedication lives and transpires through the pages of ‘Majd Qatar’, which perfectly highlights the biggest and most important achievements and projects in support of Qatar National Vision 2030.”

During the launch event, Sheikh Saud bin Abdullah bin Mohamed bin Jabor al-Thani, chairman, Tawasol Centre, and government offi cials also took the stage for ceremonial speeches.

A documentary celebrating the accom-plishments of His Highness the Amir was also showcased, followed by an art per-formance piece paying tribute to local her-itage. The ceremony concluded with the recognition of several personalities who have contributed to the national vision through their achievements.

The ‘Majd Qatar’ third edition docu-ments and contains historical references, facts and fi gures sourced from the cam-paign’s sponsoring government partners on Qatar’s vision and milestones.

Dignitaries at the event.

Ambassador launches new website of Indian Cultural CentreIndian ambassador P

Kumaran has inaugu-rated the new web-

site of the Indian Cultural Centre (ICC).

The website now has various additional features benefi cial to the ICC mem-bers and the Indian com-munity at large, the centre has said in a statement.

A new job portal is being included on the website, which will allow commu-nity job seekers in Qatar to upload their resumes on the portal. Potential employers can visit the website and access the da-tabase from the available prospects.

The website also has use-ful links from India and Qa-tar related to tourism, busi-ness etc, which may be of interest to the community.

Along with the above, another important feature added is ‘Online Member-ship to ICC’. Any Indian community member who wishes to take membership

can do it through the web-site, the statement explains.

The managing commit-tee members of the ICC, which functions under the aegis of the Indian embassy in Qatar, updated Kumaran on the current and planned activities of the centre.

The envoy is also the patron of the ICC in Qatar.

The managing com-mittee team led by ICC president Manikandan A P included vice-pres-ident Vinod V Nair, gen-eral secretary Seenu Pil-lai, joint secretary Anjan Ganguly, head of fi nance and sponsorship Rajesh Singh, head of human re-sources, premises and sports Jaff ar Khan, head of cultural activities and education Nayana Wagh, cultural co-ordinator Nir-mala Shanmugapandian, head of in-house activi-ties Ramachandra Shetty, head of counsellor serv-ices and external events Bhumeshwar Padala, and

head of associate organi-sations and membership Parambathkandi Mohsin.

The meeting was attend-ed by ICC co-ordinating offi cer Rajesh Kamble, who is also counsellor (consular and community aff airs) at the Indian embassy.

The ambassador was up-dated on the forthcoming programmes of the ICC, which include major events such as the Indian commu-nity festival - Passage to In-dia, a cultural competition for schools and associate organisations, and tourna-ments for chess, karate and kalari among others.

The ICC president also briefed the envoy on the managing committee’s ef-forts to provide a number of privileges to ICC members, which included a plan for group insurance and ben-efi ts at various outlets and vendors. He also highlight-ed ICC initiatives to sup-port the Qatar-India 2019 Year of Culture.

Indian ambassador P Kumaran, along with ICC off icials, at the launch of portal.

QATAR7Gulf Times

Thursday, June 27, 2019

New Monarch International School to off er ‘child-centric digital curriculum’Monarch International School

(Monarch), a new “international school with an Indian heritage”

set to open in Qatar, is awaiting fi nal ap-proval from the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

In a statement yesterday, the school’s management said they “are also in the process of associating with the Delhi Pub-lic School Society and getting affi liated to the Central Board of Secondary Education, New Delhi”.

“Our vision at Monarch is to be inspiring, supporting and nurturing for our students, for them to be well-educated and empa-thetic global citizens,” the statement notes.

The school will be for children from

around the world, aged three-and-half to 18 years.

In the upcoming academic year, the school will off er Kindergarten (KG1 & KG2) and the Primary Years Programme from Year 1 to Year 5.

Monarch is a sister concern of DPS-MIS, “a well-established school in Doha that has a long and successful record of serving the expatriate community through quality education”.

“Monarch is going to be a next-gen-eration school with a child-centric dig-ital curriculum, assuring success in every child’s overall development.

Monarch promises to provide a sup-portive family environment, which will

enable our students to discover and de-velop their passions and talents, building the confi dence needed to lead happy and meaningful lives,” the statement adds.

The school is headed by Meenal Bakshi, who has attended a strategic leadership programme at IIM Ahmedabad, India.

She was a programme leader for the Cambridge International Certifi cate for teachers and trainers from Cambridge University, the UK.

She has 19 years of experience with eight years of leadership experience work-ing with various international schools of-fering Cambridge, Australian, Singapo-rean, Indian and IB curricula in Singapore, Indonesia, the Maldives and India.Meenal Bakshi

Off icials mark the partnership.

Al Jazeera Media Network signs pact with IDMC

Al Jazeera Media Net-work has signed a new partnership agreement

with the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) to raise the voices of the millions of people displaced within their countries’ borders due to con-fl ict, violence and disasters.

The partnership aims to in-crease journalists’ awareness and coverage of issue of inter-nal displacement in the media, tell the stories of the women, men and children displaced or at risk of becoming displaced in the future and shine a light on the humanitarian and de-velopment challenges of this global phenomenon, the net-work has said in a statement.

Dr Mostefa Souag, acting director-general of Al Jazeera Media Network, said: “We are honoured to be joining forces with IDMC and to bringing more attention to an issue that has not been given enough consideration in the media. It is one way for us to be there with the people.”

Together, Al Jazeera and IDMC will work towards en-hancing the dissemination of data, analysis and stories of

internally displaced persons (IDPs) and organise joint train-ing and events to highlight — to the international community — the causes and impacts of this phenomenon, the state-ment notes.

“This partnership is a huge step in IDMC’s ability to mo-bilise more political support and commitment to this issue,” said Alexandra Bilak, director of IDMC.

“By expanding our media outreach, we hope to keep the situation of IDPs high on the international agenda and en-sure that millions of vulnerable people get access to better pro-tection and assistance in the future.”

The signing ceremony took place on Monday at the Al Jazeera Media Network head-quarters in Doha.

IDMC is the world’s authori-tative source of data and analysis on internal displacement. Since its establishment in 1998 as part of the Norwegian Refugee Council, the centre has off ered “a rigorous, independent and trusted service to the interna-tional community”.

Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) recently participated in a startup event hosted by Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), in collaboration with TechWadi, in the city of San Francisco, US. The event aimed to bridge the gap between Silicon Valley and the Mena region by exposing technology professionals and startups to the burgeoning research, development and innovation ecosystem in Qatar, and encouraging them to take advantage of attractive funding opportunities for technology startups with ties to the region. During the event, QCRI showcased its research outcomes that would be used to develop Qatar-based startups in the future. TechWadi is working with leading regional and international organisations, including QSTP, to empower high-impact entrepreneurs and help build a sustainable infrastructure for innovation and entrepreneurship to thrive and succeed. QCRI, part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University, strives to become a global leader in computing research in areas that will make a positive impact in Qatar.

QCRI participates in TechWadi in the USThe Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI), in co-operation with Abdullah Abdulghani & Bros Co, dealer of Lexus in Qatar, has announced a recall of Lexus GX460 models of 2010-2017, IS Convert models of 2009-2014, IS-F models of 2011-2013, and IS250/350 models of 2006-2013 due to a defective front-passenger airbag inflator.The MoCI has said the recall campaign comes within the framework of its continuous eff orts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs. The ministry will co-ordinate with the dealer to follow up on maintenance and repair works and communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out.The MoCI has urged all customers to report violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department through the call centre: 16001, e-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @MOCIQATAR, Instagram: MOCIQATAR, and the ministry’s mobile app for Android and iOS: MOCIQATAR

Recall of Lexus models


QATAR

The Qatar Amiri Land Forces concluded the ‘Meqlaa 2019’ exercise, in co-operation with the Amiri Naval Forces and all units of the armed forces. The three-day exercise took place in the southeast region (Mesaieed). Captain Abdullah Mubarak al-Mansouri, director of the exercise, said in a statement that the exercise aimed at implementing the coastal defence in addition to unifying the concept of operations to accomplish these types of inter-unit exercises. — QNA

Amiri Land Forces conclude ‘Meqlaa 2019’

AAB-Toyota unveils all-new Corolla in QatarAbdullah Abdulghani & Bros

Co (AAB) unveiled the all-new Toyota Corolla in Qa-

tar at a special event recently. R K Murugan, COO – Automotive Di-vision, AAB, and Yuichiro Takeda, assistant chief engineer, Toyota, highlighted the features and speci-fi cations of the all-new Corolla at the event.

Now available with a hybrid electric powertrain, the 12th-gen-eration Corolla “ushers in a new era of style, safety and driving excite-ment that is set to bring delight to both motorists and passengers in the region”, according to a press statement.

The Corolla hybrid electric model combines two power sourc-es consisting of a petrol engine and two electric motors. The “class-leading model off ers the lowest fuel consumption value in its category” at 27.6km/l, enabling customers to contribute to a greener future while enjoying the increased driving sat-isfaction provided by its advanced technologies. The new model “of-

fers exceptional cabin quietness and smooth acceleration”.

“The Corolla carries a heritage of more than 50 years and has al-ways remained true to its original concept; a passenger car that off ers strong levels of quality, durabil-ity and reliability, together with a smooth driving experience. This foundation was our starting point,” said Yasushi Ueda, chief engineer for the Toyota Corolla. “We want-ed to make a new model that both builds on this legacy and enriches mobility for our customers. The biggest reward we can get is see-ing how people enjoy our car and that they are proud to own a new Corolla.”

“We are excited to launch the all-new Corolla in the region, which further enhances this iconic model to bring a joyful driving experience. The all-new model delivers on the more emotional values that our customers aspire to by combin-ing a distinctive design, interior refi nements and rewarding driv-ing dynamics, especially with the

addition of a powerful yet effi cient hybrid electric powertrain,” added Yugo Miyamoto, chief representa-tive, Middle East and Central Asia Representative Offi ce, Toyota Mo-tor Corporation.

The all-new Corolla is built on the Toyota New Global Architec-ture platform, which guarantees

a more rewarding driving experi-ence. The vehicle meets all the re-quirements of daily commutes and weekend leisure journeys, off ering driving enjoyment in all road con-ditions and comprehensive array of safety features. Available in eight distinctive exterior colours, the all-new Corolla’s striking look is char-

acterised by a frontal treatment with a two-step rendering of the front corners, fl anking a strongly projecting lower grille. The slim upper grille has a pronounced three-dimensional design and connects with the top of the sharp-ly designed headlamp units, wrap-ping around the corners to empha-sise the car’s low and fi rmly planted appearance.

The all-new Corolla has an ex-pansive and comfortable cabin, which displays exceptional qual-ity and fi nishing throughout. The seats feature new cushion mate-rial, while the armrest and ample legroom off er superior comfort for rear-seat passengers. Passengers also benefi t from AC vents for the rear seat, a one-touch moonroof, a 4.2- or 7-inch colour multi-infor-mation display in the cluster gauge, a 7-inch touch-screen multimedia infotainment display, reversing camera, cruise control, six-speaker sound system, a multi-adjustable power driver seat and 60:40 split-folding rear seats.

The all-new Corolla’s striking looks are complemented by an ex-citing drive personality imbued by three powertrain options; these include a newly developed 2.0-li-tre four-cylinder Dynamic Force engine with a new D-4S fuel injec-tion system, which produces 168hp and 20.43kg-m of torque and is mated to a new 10-speed Sequen-tial Shiftmatic transmission; and a 1.6-litre four-cylinder engine that produces 121hp and 15.7kg-m of torque, which is paired with a Multidrive 7S seven-speed auto-matic transmission.

Meanwhile, the new electri-fi ed hybrid powertrain combines two power sources consisting of a petrol engine and two electric motors, producing 97hp and 71hp with a combined power of 121hp, and delivering 14.5kg-m and 16.6kg-m of torque, respectively. It is also mated to an Electrically Controlled Continuously Variable Transmission, which provides an outstanding fuel consumption value of 27.6km/l while improv-

ing the driving experience. Toyota has more than 20 years of technical leadership in electrifi ed vehicles, and has amassed more than 12mn global environment-friendly ve-hicle sales. The all-new Corolla es-tablishes yet another landmark in its development of the technology with the debut of model’s hybrid electric variant.

The vehicle can be driven en-tirely on electrical power with zero-fuel consumption and tail-pipe emissions, or by combining the power generated from both the petrol engine and two electric motors, depending on the vehi-cle’s speed and customer’s driving behaviour. Its hybrid electric bat-teries are continuously charged by either the petrol engine or when decelerating and braking, elimi-nating the need to plug in a power cord.

As with any other Toyota model, safety remains a top priority for the all-new Corolla, which includes a comprehensive array of features to protect its occupants.

Faisal Ahmed, the winner of the 100% cash-back initiative held as part of the Sparkling Summer campaign by Malabar Gold & Diamonds, is seen receiving the prize from Don Antony, branch manager, and other off icials from Malabar Gold & Diamonds.

Malabar Gold fetes winner

Family Food Centre (FFC), culminating its 40th anniversary celebrations, has announced the winners of the ‘Shop and Drive’ car promotion which ran from January 19 until June 19. The Al Kheesa, Al Rayyan, Airport Road and Al Nasr outlets of FFC had one GMC Sierra each for the winners. The winners of the promotion are as follows: Al Nasr – Fatima Musa Madani (coupon No AN 1786496); Al Kheesa – Mohamed Hassan Shaikh (coupon No AK 1169681); Al Rayyan – Mohamed Abdelmotlb Deeb Daloul (coupon No AR 1317760); and Airport Road – Rasel Ahammad (coupon No AP 1780353). “Family Food Centre congratulates the winners and celebrates this win with each of its customers,” it said in a press statement. FFC’s key management staff members were present at the announcement of the final draw winner held at its Al Nasr branch (pictured). PICTURE: Nasar K Moidheen

FFC celebrates ‘Shop & Drive’ winners

Off icials at the launch of all-new Toyota Corolla. PICTURES: Thajudheen

R K Murugan inside the all-new Toyota Corolla.

QATAR

9Gulf Times Thursday, June 27, 2019

Qatar stresses accountability over rights violations against journosQNAGeneva

The State of Qatar stressed the need to ensure that those responsible for hu-

man rights violations against journalists should be held ac-countable.

This came in the speech deliv-ered by the Second Secretary of the Permanent Mission of Qa-tar to the United Nations Offi ce at Geneva Abdullah al-Suwaidi yesterday during the session of “The interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on ex-trajudicial, summary or arbi-trary executions and the Special Rapporteur on the right to edu-cation”, under Item III, within the framework of the work of the 41st session of the Human Rights Council.

Al-Suwaidi said Qatar has taken note of the report of the special rapporteur on extrajudi-cial, summary or arbitrary exe-cutions submitted to the council in document A /HRC/41/36 and

its annex contained in docu-ment A/HRC/41/CRP.1, entitled “Investigation into the unlawful death of Mr Jamal Khashoggi”, adding that in this regard, Qa-tar reiterates its support for the recommendations contained in the documents, and stresses the importance of protecting journalists from all violations of their rights, primarily the right to life, physical integrity and the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

Al-Suwaidi asked the special rapporteur about what steps she intends to follow to implement the recommendations contained in the documents.

With regard to the report of the special rapporteur on the right to education, al-Suwaidi added said that Qatar agrees with the view of the Special Rapporteur concerning the im-portance of working towards the achievement of Goal 4 of sustainable development on ensuring equitable and univer-sal education for all.

Al-Suwaidi underlined the

close link between the objec-tives of sustainable develop-ment and the implementation by states of their human rights obligations.

He stressed that education is at the forefront of Qatar’s priorities, a key part of the na-tional development strategy, a key milestone for human devel-opment, and one of the pillars of Qatar National Vision 2030.

He said the State of Qatar has succeeded in establishing an advanced education system by providing an appropriate edu-cational environment, pointing out that the education sector has seen a significant inter-est in government spending, with increasing allocations in this sector of more than 13% of GDP.

He pointed out that the State of Qatar ranked first among the Arab countries and the fifth globally, according to the lat-est classification of the World Economic Forum for the qual-ity of the educational system for 2017-2018.

The hatching process of the endangered Hawksbill turtles has accelerated over the past week, as more than 400 newly-hatched turtles were released into the sea after the necessary measures were taken by the task force of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME)’s Environmental Protection, Natural Reserves and Wildlife Department. The Hawksbill turtle protection project is being conducted under the supervision of the MME, financed by Qatar Petroleum and implemented by Qatar University in co-operation with the ministry’s Environmental Protection, Natural Reserves and Wildlife Department.

Hawksbill turtle protection project Meeting discusses developing satellite communication systemsQNADoha

The 33rd meeting of the Satellite-Aided Search and Rescue Initiative

(Cospas-Sarsat Programme) concluded recently.

On the occasion, Commander of the Doha Joint Rescue Co-ordination Center Brigadier-General Mohamed Hamad al-Shahwani said the meeting was successful and that it excelled over the previous meeting in terms of preparation and good organisation as well as the top-ics, subjects and scientifi c and technical techniques discussed.

He added that the meeting was praised by the Cospas-Sar-sat General Secretariat and the members who participated in the meeting.

The meeting focused on dis-cussing the technical issues re-lated to the development of sat-ellite communication systems

and the introduction of new technologies to develop and im-prove the communications sys-tem.

This will speed up the process of communication and locating the target for search and rescue, known as the Second Genera-tion, which will be mandatory by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in the fi rst month of 2021.

A new distress device called the relay system was introduced

at the current meeting for the fi rst time.

In addition to the technical papers relating to telecommu-nications, Qatar has submitted, during the meeting, another of-fi cial paper to the Cospas-Sarsat Secretariat related to the estab-lishment of an international training centre specialised in the satellite communication system.

This will be the fi rst interna-tional centre specialised in this fi eld, and will be located in Doha.

The meeting focused on discussing the technical issues related to the development of satellite communication systems and the introduction of new technologies to develop and improve the communications system.

Jazeera Airways off ers 21 weekly fl ights between Doha and Kuwait

Jazeera Airways has said it is operating 21 weekly fl ights between Doha and Kuwait, off ering trav-ellers “convenient timings spread through the

day, ideally scheduled for same-day business trips or to catch a connecting fl ight”.

Jazeera Airways is Kuwait’s leading low-cost air-line operating regionally and internationally.

Flight through Kuwait from Doha enable passen-gers to connect to popular destinations in the Mid-dle East and Indian subcontinent such as Mumbai, Kochi, Lahore, Hyderabad and other cities served by the airline, it has said in a press statement. Tran-sit timings average at two hours.

With three daily fl ights from Hamad Interna-tional Airport, Jazeera Airways’ fl ights arrive at its dedicated Terminal 5 (T5) at Kuwait International Airport. Terminal 5 provides passengers “with the ease and comfort of travelling with 12 check-in counters, eight self-check-in kiosks, dedicated passport and security control procedures, duty-free shops and restaurants, as well as free Wi-Fi Internet service available at the T5 gates”, the state-ment noted.

Jazeera Airways CEO Rohit Ramachandran said, “We are pleased to be fl ying to Doha since 2016, serving passengers from both countries as well as others throughout our network of 28 cities with reliable fl ights and a wide array of services. Jazeera Airways’ on-time performance has exceeded 90% in the month of May and continues to off er easy, frills-free connections through our Terminal 5.”

Jazeera Airways’ Business Class gives passen-gers 50kg in baggage allowance, priority boarding, a complementary in-fl ight meal and access to the Pearl Lounge at Terminal 5. The Economy Class of-fers 30kg in baggage allowance and a wide selection of meals from the Jazeera Cafe menu.

T5 also has a dedicated number at 176 and a Help Team on-ground to respond to passengers’ queries and guide them through the terminal.

Jazeera Airways fl ies to 28 popular destinations across the Middle East, India and Europe com-prising high-demand business, leisure, family and weekend destinations, including Doha, Beirut, Amman, Kochi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Lahore, Istanbul, Bodrum, Baku and Tbilisi.

The airline operates a fl eet of Airbus A320s and an Airbus A320neo.

HMC holds train-the-trainer workshop on treating tobacco dependence

As part of an agreement with the Ministry of Public Health and in col-

laboration with the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean Regional Offi ce, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC)’s Tobacco Control Centre has held a two-day train-the-trainer workshop on treating to-bacco dependence.

The workshop was delivered by internationally recognised ex-perts in tobacco control, includ-ing Dr Ahmad al-Mulla, head of the HMC Tobacco Control Centre; Dr Dongbo Fu, medical offi cer for Tobacco Cessation, Department for Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases, WHO; and Dr Feras Hawari, di-rector, Tobacco Treatment Spe-cialist Training Programme, King Hussein Cancer Centre.

The aim of the workshop was to educate healthcare work-ers about the history of tobacco control in Qatar, the epidemiol-ogy of tobacco use in the country and the important role tobacco

cessation programmes play in reducing the tobacco epidemic among the adult population in the country, HMC said in a state-ment. The training was attended by 45 general practitioners, con-sultants, specialists, residents, psychologists and nurses from HMC, Primary Health Care Corporation, Qatar Petroleum, Qatar Red Crescent Society and Sidra Medicine. There were also participants from tobacco con-trol focal points in Iraq, Oman, Madagascar and Gambia.

As part of the workshop, partic-

ipants learned diff erent strategies to help patients quit smoking and also to coach colleagues in their smoking cessation interventions. The workshop highlighted best practices in clinical care and in-cluded the use of hands-on activi-ties, practice sheets, role-playing and exercises.

Dr al-Mulla said the work-shop was the second in a series hosted by HMC and the WHO as part of Hamad Medical Cor-poration’s role as a WHO Col-laborating Centre. He noted that future workshops are planned in

conjunction with ongoing eff orts to enhance the ability of frontline healthcare providers to deliver the best quality of care to tobac-co-dependent patients.

“The workshop demonstrates the important leadership role that Qatar plays in providing ad-vanced training in the areas of to-bacco control and smoking ces-sation. These training sessions were aimed at increasing the pool of experts in the smoking cessa-tion fi eld, not only here in Qatar, but also regionally and interna-tionally,” said Dr al-Mulla.

Participants in the train-the-trainer workshop.

The Doha Corniche has been specially illuminated to celebrate ‘Summer in Qatar’. PICTURES: Noushad Thekkayil

Summer lights

Wellness Meal Plan

By Ghanim al-Sulaiti

Our world today is continuously

creating, developing and produc-

ing something ‘new’ of everything

— be it furniture, clothes, bags or

technology. While new items ben-

efit us in their modern, up-to-date

standards, there is a real beauty of

something vintage.

Vintage items are often described

as ‘timeless’ and carry experience,

stories and history with them as

they make their way from person

to person, or house to house.

They’re often higher in value than

something created today, purely

due to the story behind the prod-

uct, the materials used, or simply

the limited-edition nature of being

able to own something that no

longer exists today.

‘Thrift shopping’ — which is shop-

ping for second-hand goods has

taken off worldwide, particularly in

the United States. Thrift shopping

can be as basic or as luxurious

as you can imagine, and many

of the world’s rare treasures are

frequently only discovered in the

heart of a thrift store full of second

hand clothes, including designer

brands, and more.

In Europe, many furnish a house

with vintage products for the fact

that the items are often one of a

kind. The second hand market

is a huge industry, and provides

tremendous opportunity for giving

a new lease of life to something.

I’ve always been a fan of second-

hand shopping, and embrace the

nature in which we are able to shop

more sustainably by purchasing

something that’s often a classic,

has a history — and a new purpose.

In our modern world today, we

presume that the life expectancy

of much of what we buy is just a

few years, maximum — but if we

adopted a diff erent mindset we’d

be able to reduce waste while

discovering that a lot of what we

want already exists.

For sustainability it’s a no-brainer,

but in terms of the attractiveness

of the concept of buying second-

hand, we have been too slow at tak-

ing up this kind of shopping here

in the Middle East. For a lot of the

rest of the world, there’s a degree

of prestige in purchasing a vintage

designer bag, for example, that is

no longer available anywhere else

and can only be discovered by luck

and chance during thrift shopping.

Qatar is one of the richest countries

in the world, and it’s true to say that

the majority of our society here

loves to shop (just look at how we

have a huge mall on every corner).

With this in mind, the potential for

a second-hand market, thrift-shop-

ping style experience here would

be huge. Keeping it very simple,

just imagine how the shoes, bags,

sweaters and clothes you haven’t

touched for ten years could enrich

somebody else’s wardrobe, in an

ethical and sustainable way, with

potential for money to be given to

charity too, as is so common with

thrift shopping.

Do you have any second-hand,

vintage store stories? Let me know

on Instagram.

The author is an expert in vegan wellbeing and health.Instagram handle: @Ghanim92

Something is better than nothing

By Reem Abdulrahman Jassim al-Muftah

Lots of people complain that they cannot get fi t and ac-tive and fi nd excuses that

prevent them from doing so. The most common excuse is “I have no time” and in second place is “I am too tired.” Hmmm… Do they really have no time? Do they know that being physically active increases your energy and boosts your mood? To be honest, there are no excuses. If you want to take care of yourself and especially your health, then you have to make the time and you have to take charge.

Walking, the easiest and most simple form of physical activity is your best option to get started. You don’t need equipment, you don’t

need to be a member at a gym and you don’t have to take part in a paid, scheduled class — all you need is a good pair of stable shoes, and you might not even need those if you are walking on clean and comfortable ground such as the beach or your backyard. How is an activity as simple as walking bene-fi cial to your health? Firstly, if done correctly, it can help you maintain a healthy weight, strengthen your heart, improve your immunity, align your posture, strengthen your joints and reduce back pain.

Secondly, it actually increases your overall energy, boosts your mood, helps digestion, improves your bowel movements and helps you think with more clarity. Finally, it can help reduce the risk of various health issues we are prone to with age, including Alzheimer’s and high eye pressure. Not only can walking provide you with all these benefi ts, but it also improves your children’s health. How? Studies have shown that you can cut the eff ect of hereditary obesity in half by just walking on a regular basis.

When it comes to duration, don’t worry about how long you walk for, just start and see how long you can go for. Most of the studies out there advise that peo-ple should be physically active for 150 minutes per week meaning you can split to 30 minutes fi ve times a week, 25 minutes per day or whatever works best for you. If you can’t manage the suggested then walk for as long as you can; something is better than nothing. Once you have started, gradually build your stamina and slowly, but lightly push yourself to continue for a few more minutes each time. Eventually, you will be able to build-up your stamina and reap all the benefi ts.

Don’t have the time? Walking does not have to be scheduled; you can add walking throughout your daily routine by incorporating the following examples:

1- Take your family, friends, partner or children for a walk and make it a social event.

2- Walk more at work by taking the stairs or visiting the colleague you were going to call or e-mail.

3- Set daily walks at work with colleagues to take a mental break.

4- Park your car further away from the entrance.

5- Walk around as you are wait-

ing for an appointment in the waiting room.

6- Go for a quick walk if you are craving something sweet as it re-duces cravings.

7- Walk around your home dur-ing a long phone call.

8- Purposely walk in each isle at the grocery shop.

There are many ways to incor-porate walking into your daily routine, so why not start now with only a few minutes a day?

Reem’s tips:1- Make sure the location is safe

for pedestrians.2- Keep your spine straight,

head up, look forward, relax your shoulders and slightly swing your arms.

3- Flex your core muscles and walk heel-to toe.

4- Use stable and correct shoes.5- Keep hydrated.6- Breath in with your nose and

out with your mouth.7- Gradually increase the dura-

tion and speed.8- Do not forget to stretch after

you fi nish.7- Get it done as early as pos-

sible.

The author is a wellness advocate and infl uencer @keys2balance.

By Shefa Ali

Tuesday was the 10 year death an-

niversary of Michael Jackson, I was

and still am a huge MJ fan. When I

was a child — listening to all those

songs, watching the epic videos,

waiting in line for hours to attend

a concert, I didn’t give the song

lyrics too much of a thought. Now

20 years later, I understand what a

profound impact those lyrics had on

me. Songs like, Heal the World, Man

in the Mirror, The Earth Song and

They Don’t Care About Us inspired

me to care for mother nature and

later, become a humanitarian.

Sadly, for last decade of his life, all I

remember was the negative media,

judgments and accusations. I know

some of you love him, some of you

hate him and some will fall some-

where in between, but I believe there

are always lessons to be learned

from each person’s life. These are

just some of the things I learnt from

Michael Jackson’s life and death,

there are many more, but I would

need a full page for that.

Love people while you have the chanceImagine what would be possible if

you just loved the people you loved

for who they are right here, right

now? It’s worth the time and eff ort

because as we all know (but seem to

forget), our time here on the earth is

extremely short.

Never let go of childlike wonder Unfortunately, we all seem to lose

the ability to tap into the childlike

wonder within us because of the

day-to-day stress of being in adult-

hood. Allow the child within you to

come out to play once in a while,

imagine you are doing the things

you do every-day for the first time.

Keep life fun and light.

Focus on What is Right, Not WrongPeople will always have something

to say, Mother Teresa, Martin

Luther King, even Gandhi have

had many nasty things said about

them after their death, but that

cannot take anything away from

their wonderful contributions to

the world. I’m not saying to sweep

things under the carpet or turn a

blind eye if/when someone does

something wrong or inappropri-

ate, but it doesn’t have to be all

consuming and then become

the lens through which we view

them. Most people, unless they are

psychopaths have divine, beautiful

and wonderful gifts to share with

the world. Let’s shine the light on

that and allow it to expand.

You never know what someone is going throughPeople are so quick to project what

they think onto someone else’s

life. No one, except for a few close

friends, could have ever really

known what this musical genius with

a huge heart was going through.

From what we saw and read, it

seemed a very deeply troubled

and painful inner life. Whether it’s

a celebrity or your colleague at the

off ice, never assume that you can

truly ever know what someone else’s

experience is like. Treat everyone

with kindness and compassion.

Embrace DiversityHe welcomed other people and their

diff erences with his big heart. The

music video Black or White taught

us to celebrate the diversity within

others and ourselves.

Live with CompassionWe all go through turbulent and

diff icult times; it is part of the human

experience. I could literally feel

Michael’s pain in the song Will you

be there, yet he always seemed to

walk with compassion in his heart.

He reached out to those in need; he

empathised with others in pain.

If we could breathe in some of these

lessons, we can live richer lives of

our own right here, right now.

The author is a consultant and coach. Instagram handle: @miss_shefa, Website: missshefa.com

Gone Too Soon

By Sanah Thakur

The other day I was in my kitchen

walking towards the sink, thinking

about the work I had to do. There

were twenty papers to grade

and I just wasn’t in the mood. I

started washing my hands and

the thoughts were rambling on,

corrupting my mind with more

complaints about the marking I had

to do. Until I consciously stopped

myself and thought, “Wow Sanah,

you complain so much! And what

does that even do for the situation?

It doesn’t make it go away, does it?

You still have to finish those papers

either way. Why don’t you stop

wasting your time feeling sorry for

yourself and just get on with the

work?”. Now, obviously when the

voice in your head starts calling

you out on your behaviour, your

instinctual response is to get de-

fensive and deny the truth. For the

first time however, I agreed with

my brain. I mean, have we really

thought about what complaining

does for us?

Complaining is great. Seriously,

life without complaining would

be so boring. Imagine walking up

to a person and saying, “How are

you? What have you been up to?”

and getting a response like, “Hi,

I’ve been great. My life is okay,

I’m happy with my job and I love

everyone!”. Where are the stories,

the drama, the gossip, without the

complaints? When we complain,

we have interesting things to talk

about. Mutual complaints bring

people together and most of

the time, we’re given a reason to

pamper our problems. I mean who

doesn’t like dancing on the dance

floor, splurging on expensive gifts

or going on holidays when life gets

frustrating? This momentarily tricks

us into believing we’ve dealt with

the problem, when in reality we’ve

just coddled our complaints. Forget

these tangible rewards, nowa-

days we can open social media at

any time and share a meme that

validates our every complaint,

because guess what? You’re not the

only one feeling this way! So now

we’re all complaining, sharing these

complaints and competing on

whose complaint is more relatable.

And then what?

There’s no denying how good it

feels to complain, to whine, to

rant. Yet, we’re ignorant of the

vast biological and psychological

impact complaining has on us. A

thought to the brain is a chemical

communication — when you have

a thought, the synapses of each

neuron, fire a chemical to the syn-

apse of another neuron, creating

a bridge for the electrical signal to

pass, carrying the charge relevant

to what you’re thinking about. Now,

every time you trigger this electri-

cal charge, the synapses grow

closer to one another so there’s less

energy involved in the distance to

be covered. If the distance reduces

(the size of the bridge reduces),

the brain is more likely to use this

route. And how does one strength-

en a bridge? By thinking about

it! So every time you complain

about something, you’re creating a

stronger bridge down the negativ-

ity path as compared to a bridge

you could be building based on a

positive perspective. Which means

all the synapses connected to fear,

regret, anger, sadness gets trig-

gered compared to love, happiness,

hope and gratitude.

What’s worse, it’s not just your

own thoughts rewiring your brain,

but even those of the people

you surround yourself with. Our

imagination allows us to access the

past and think about the future,

so we don’t have to experience

everything in reality to use it as a

code to navigate through society.

You only need one instance of

burning your hand to know never

to do it in the future. It’s not just

the harmful eff ects of fire we can

imagine, but even how emotional

experiences feel for others (empa-

thy). When you see someone upset

for example, you can empathise by

‘simulating’ the feeling in your brain

to understand what they’re going

through. The brain gets the signal

and fires the same synapses, so

as to replicate the emotion you’re

observing. This probably also

explains why we cry while watch-

ing films or even while seeing our

own friends and family cry. When

we surround ourselves with people

who complain and add fuel to our

own complaint fires, we’re firing

synapses that mimic this negative

attitude. And almost every situa-

tion we experience that makes us

uncomfortable, is then filtered by

this negative bridge.

As you can see, complaining is as

pleasurable as junk food but just as

bad for our system. To really adapt

and change this habit, a limited

complaint diet is probably the best

start. Here are a few tips to help

you implement this:

1- Limit your ‘complaining’ time —

Notice how long you tend to dwell

on an issue and make a conscious

eff ort to complain for a smaller

period of time. Ideally you could

aim for 5 mins.

2- Replace the behaviour — If you

usually enjoy complaining, replace

it with another activity you might

find pleasurable such as exercise,

music or a positive conversation.

3- Do not reward your complaints

— hear yourself/or your close ones

out but don’t focus on pampering

the complaint. Complain and then

do something about it!

4- Laugh at the situation — honest-

ly, laughing will help your biology

more.

The author can be contacted on Instagram @sincerelysanah

Hi complaints. So what do you do?

Mango and lemon smoothie bowl

Mango is low in calories yet high in nutrients — particularly vitamin

C, which aids immunity, iron absorption and growth and repair.

Vitamin C also gives your skin its elasticity and prevents sagging

and wrinkling.

It is a good source of folate, several B vitamins, as well as vitamins K

and E — all of which help boost immunity.

It also provides vitamin A, which promotes healthy hair. Mango

polyphenols may fight oxidative stress, which is linked to colon,

lung, prostate, breast and bone cancers.

Ingredients: 1 Frozen mango (diced and frozen overnight)

A handful of frozen Pineapple

Juice of 1 or 1/2 a lemon depending on your preference

2-3 tbs of plant milk

1 tbs chia seeds

Top with anything you like! I used maple granola, pumpkin seeds

and of course chia seeds!

Method:

In a high-power blender, add the fruits, lemon juice, and milk. Blend

until you have a silky consistency. Top your smoothie bowl with chia

seeds and whatever you like, you can drizzle some nut butter, add

more fruits, nuts or even chocolate.

Share this recipe with your kids. Enjoy it with your friends and family

on a hot summer day or have it as a breakfast when you’re craving

something sweet with a bit of kick

Enjoy the taste of eating right!

Creating second-hand demand


WellbeingHOL STIC

REGION/ARAB WORLD11Gulf Times


Saudi probe dodges who ordered Khashoggi murder: UN expertReuters Geneva

The UN executions inves-tigator said yesterday that leaders attending the

G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, this weekend should press Saudi Arabia to take “full responsi-bility” for what she called the state murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

An offi cial Saudi Arabian in-vestigation into his killing by Saudi agents has failed to exam-ine who may have ordered the killing and ignored key suspects, said Agnes Callamard, UN in-vestigator on extrajudicial ex-ecutions.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, a key adviser, and

other senior offi cials should be investigated over the premedi-tated murder at its consulate in Istanbul given the evidence against them, Callamard said

Saudi offi cials have long de-nied suspicions in the CIA and some Western countries that the crown prince, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, ordered the killing in October.

Callamard was asked by re-porters what delegations at-tending the G20 should raise in bilateral meetings with the Saudi delegation — headed by the crown prince.

“I have insisted that the kill-ing of Mr Khashoggi is a state killing. It is not a killing by rogue offi cials as the government con-tinued to pretend,” she said.

“It is therefore important that

the countries that will be present in the G20 insist that the state of Sau-di Arabia do take its full responsi-bility for the killing”,” she said.

In her report this month she urged states to widen sanctions to include the crown prince and his assets abroad, unless he can

prove he is not responsible.Callamard undertook her own

inquiry due to what she called “paralysis” of the United Na-tions. She voiced disappoint-ment at a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying that he had no power or authority to launch an international criminal investiga-tion unless initiated by states.

“I certainly call on member states to proceed with that offi -cial demarche so the secretary-general will not be able to just create more fi rewalls between him and his responsibilities to take action against impunity,” she said yesterday.

Her investigation had found “credible evidence warranting further investigation of “high-level Saudi offi cials’ individual

liability, including that of the Crown Prince of Saudi Ara-bia and his key adviser (Saud) Qahtani,” she told the UN Hu-man Rights Council.

“The investigation carried out by the Saudi authorities has failed to address the chain of command,” she said.

Abdulaziz Alwasil, Saudi am-bassador to the UN in Geneva, said Callamard’s report was “based on prejudice and prefab-ricated ideas”.

“This is why we reject any at-tempt to remove this from our national justice system in Saudi Arabia, irrespective of the form that may take,” Alwasil told the council.

Qahtani, seen as the right-hand man to Prince Mohamed, was removed as a royal court

adviser and is the highest-pro-fi le fi gure implicated in the in-cident.

However, he is not among 11 on trial. “The prosecutor in a public statement has recognised that one particular person, Saud al-Qahtani, incited the mission before it departed, calling Mr Khashoggi ‘a national threat’, and yet this particular individ-ual has not been indicted,” Cal-lamard said, noting that a total of 15 Saudis were involved.

Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish writ-er and Khashoggi’s fi ancée, told the Council: “I want to know who gave the order to kill Jamal and who else knew. I want to know where is his body.”

“Those who are behind the murder and cover-up should face punishment,” she said.

Palestinians reject US economic peace plan

Reuters Ramallah/Gaza

Palestinian leaders accused the Trump administra-tion of punishing them

with one hand and off ering to reward them with the other, as protesters turned out in the West Bank and Gaza yesterday to demonstrate against a US economic peace plan.

At a US-led conference in Bahrain US President Don-ald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner urged Palestinian leaders boycotting the event to think outside the “traditional box” and consider the $50bn plan to boost the Palestinian and neighbouring economies.

The event drew fi ery criticism both within the Palestinian ter-ritories, where demonstrations broke out for a second day, and across the wider region, where many Arabs took aim at offi cials for taking part.

Palestinian offi cials said it was Trump who had infl icted further hardship on Palestin-ians, cutting hundreds of mil-lions in aid to humanitarian organisations across the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.

“If the US is so concerned about Palestinian well-being, then why did they carry out these punitive measures against us?,” senior Palestine Libera-tion Organisation offi cial Hanan Ashrawi said in Ramallah.

“Why did they target Pales-tinian infrastructure? Why did they stop scholarships to Pales-tinian students?,” she asked.

In August last year, Washing-ton announced an end to all US funding for the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees.

The US was UNRWA’s biggest donor by far up to that point, giving it $364mn in 2017.

And in February, the US Agency for International De-velopment (USAID) ceased all assistance to the Palestinians, to whom it provided $268mn in 2017.

The US cuts were widely seen

as a way of putting pressure on the Palestinian leadership to re-engage with the White House, which it has boycotted since Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017.

“The same team that cut $350mn of aid to refugee camps...(goes) to Manama to say we have a brilliant plan to bring Palestinians a new chance, a new opportunity,” Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Tuesday in Jericho.

“Why would Palestinians say no to such (a) plan?,” he added, mockingly.

Neither the Israeli nor Pal-estinian governments are at-tending the event at Manama’s luxury Four Seasons hotel, where international bureaucrats enjoyed cocktails and delicate pastries, mingling with Arab businessmen sporting gold Rolex watches.

Some Gulf states, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, voiced qualifi ed sup-

port for Kushner’s plan.Egypt and Jordan, the only

two Arab states with a peace deal with Israel, sent deputy ministers. Many Arabs slammed their governments for taking part, describing the event as a sell-off of Palestinians’ rights without them present.

Bahrain’s main opposition group, the outlawed Al-Wefaq party, said hosting the event had brought shame on their country’s rulers, while Kuwait’s parliament said it would reject anything that comes out of the event. Washington is hoping that wealthy Gulf states will bankroll much of the $50bn plan, another potential sticking point unpopular with some op-posed to the deal.

Former Egyptian football star Mohamed Aboutrika took aim at FIFA head Gianni Infantino, who spoke in Manama about developing a sports sector in the Palestinian territories to drive economic growth.

“Thank you to everyone who

boycotted this auction...the presence of the head of FIFA is a major question mark...our holy sites are not for sale,” Aboutrika wrote on Twitter.

More than 1,500km away in Gaza, where over half of the en-clave’s 2mn people live in pov-erty, Palestinians criticised the Arab businessmen who attend-ed for siding with the United States and Israel.

“Capitalists do not think of the poor,” said Abdel-Rahim Nateel, 62, who spent most of his life in the Beach refugee camp in north-ern Gaza.

“Let them come and give aid to the hungry people, make projects, ask Israel not to attack us...let them give us our state on the 1967 borders and we do not want anything else from them.”

Several thousand Palestinians demonstrated in Gaza yesterday, burning posters of Trump and his close ally, Israeli Prime Min-ister Benjamin Netanyahu. “No to the conference of treason, no to the conference of shame,” read

one banner. In the occupied West Bank, demonstrations against Bahrain were light for a second day.

Some Palestinians voiced a sense of exhaustion about peace eff orts and promises of cash and prosperity. “This conference is just like all others from the past, Arab conferences, American conferences.

All of them have been at the Palestinians’ expense,” said Hamdallah Qasem, 72, who lives in Ramallah.

Their own leadership was not exempt from criticism, however.

Yara Hawari, a policy analyst based in Ramallah, said the low turnout at protests was due to a sense of fatigue at international initiatives from which they saw little chance of changing their situation.

“There are certain topics that mobilise Palestinians more than others — like Jerusalem. This ‘economic peace’ is just more of the same. They see it as empty talk,” Hawari said.

Protesters demonstrate in West Bank, Gaza

Off icials say Trump aid reductions create hardship

Cuts seen as pressure on Palestinians to resume talks

United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard delivers her report of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, yesterday.

Palestinian demonstrators chant slogans behind a defaced poster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a protest against a US-sponsored Middle East economic conference in Bahrain, yesterday in Khan Yunis town in the southern Gaza Strip.

Trump claims ‘unlimited time’ for new Iran dealReuters Washington/Geneva

US President Donald Trump said yesterday that he was “not talk-

ing boots on the ground” should he take military action against Iran and that he had “unlimited time” to try to forge an agree-ment with Tehran.

Iran suggested it was just one day from breaching a threshold in the 2015 international nuclear deal that limited its stockpile of uranium, a move that would pressure European countries aiming to be neutral to pick sides.

The fate of the nuclear deal, under which Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear programme in re-turn for access to international trade, has been at the heart of the dispute which took on a military dimension in recent weeks.

Last week Iran shot down a US drone it said was in its air space, which Washington denied.

Trump ordered retaliatory air strikes but called them off at the last minute, later saying too many people would have died.

Asked on Fox Business Net-work if a war was brewing, Trump replied: “I hope we don’t but we’re in a very strong position if something should happen.” “I’m not talking boots on the ground,” Trump said. “I’m just saying if something would happen, it wouldn’t last very long.”

In an appearance later yester-day at a gathering of religious conservatives, the US presi-dent talked about whether there could be a new agreement with Iran, suggesting that he could live without a new deal.

“If it doesn’t happen, that’s fi ne with me,” Trump told a gathering of religious conserva-tives. “I have unlimited time, as far as I’m concerned.”

Trump has said the accord with Iran, struck under his predecessor President Barack Obama, did not go far enough to restrict Iran’s nuclear and mis-sile programs and other activi-ties in the Middle East.

Washington accuses Iran of

being behind bomb attacks on ships in the Gulf, which it denies.

Trump has tightened sanc-tions in recent weeks.

Iran warned the UN Security Council yesterday that it would no longer be burdened with pre-serving the pact as European states pushed Tehran to stick with the agreement because there was no peaceful alterna-tive.

“Iran alone cannot, shall not and will not take all of the bur-dens any more to preserve the JCPOA,” Iran’s UN ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi told the 15-member Security Council, using the acronym for the deal’s formal name, the Joint Compre-hensive Plan of Action.

US allies warn that an increase in tensions could accidentally lead to war.

Iran and world powers includ-ing the United States who signed the nuclear pact needed to fi nd a way back into talks to defuse tensions, French President Em-manuel Macron said on Wednes-day. “I believe the escalation, sanctions on top of sanctions, provocations, the military build-up, is extremely dangerous be-cause it could ignite the region, it could lead to over-reactions,” Macron told Japanese broad-caster NHK on the eve of a G20 summit in Osaka.

“When confi dence is lost, you need little gestures to reduce tensions.”

Although the United States and Iran both say they do not want war, last week’s aborted US strikes have been followed by menacing rhetoric on both sides.

A spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation said that one of those deadlines would ex-pire today, with Iran potentially exceeding a limit imposed under the deal to keep its stockpile of enriched uranium below 300kg.

The IRIB news agency quoted spokesman Behrouz Kamalvindi as saying that after the deadline Iran would speed up its rate of producing the material.

Another threshold bars Iran from enriching uranium to a pu-rity beyond 3.67% fi ssile mate-rial.

Oman to open fi rst Gulf state embassy in Palestinian territoriesOman said yesterday that it will open an embassy in the Palestinian territories in support of the Palestinian people, in a first for a Gulf state.The announcement coincided with a US-led economic workshop in Bahrain to unveil a Middle East peace plan which is not expected to recog-nise an independent Palestinian state.“In continuation of Oman’s support for the Palestinian people, the Sultanate of Oman has decided to open a diplomatic mission at the level of embassy in the State of Palestine,” the foreign ministry said on Twitter.A delegation from the ministry will travel to Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, to take the necessary measures to open the em-bassy, it said.The announcement was cautiously welcomed by a senior Palestinian off icial.“We think maybe first of all it will help us educate the Omani government as to the real nature of the occupation and also working with Palestine directly,” Hanan Ashrawi told journalists.But she warned Oman against using the new embassy as a step towards establishing formal

relations with Israel. “If this has a political price at-tached then certainly there will be ramifications,” she said. In Muscat, the Palestinian ambassador to Oman said the opening of an embassy in Ramallah was a “historical decision”.“It is an important and indicative step with pro-found implications, especially at this time, as the Palestinian issue passes through a critical stage,” Tayseer Farhat told AFP. “This step represents political and moral support.” A US ally bordering Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Oman has frequently served as a mediator in the Arab world.Elizabeth Dickinson, senior analyst with the Inter-national Crisis Group think tank, believes the step by Oman will enhance its diplomatic role.“The good off ices of Omani diplomacy have averted regional crises in the past and would be welcome in the Israel-Palestine context,” Dickin-son said.“Muscat is one of the few remaining regional powers that can truly talk to all sides — a vitally important role in a moment of such heightened regional tension,” she said.

Sudan’s Mahdi rejects call for mass demos

AFPKhartoum

Sudan’s veteran opposition leader Sadiq al-Mahdi re-jected yesterday a call for

nationwide mass demonstra-tions against the country’s ruling generals on June 30.

The remarks by the head of National Umma Party come as tension between the generals and leaders from the umbrella protest movement, the Alliance for Freedom and Change, re-main high after a deadly crack-down on a protest camp killed

dozens of demonstrators. The June 30 rallies called by the alli-ance coincide with the 30th an-niversary that had brought now ousted leader Omar al-Bashir to power after toppling the then elected government of Mahdi.

“Our opinion is to avoid es-calatory measures from either side,” Mahdi, who is part of the protest movement, said at a press conference at his party headquarters in Omdurman.

Mahdi said any escalation pri-or to receiving the ruling military council’s response to a power transfer plan proposed by Ethio-pia would be “premature”.

Rescue workers among

nine killed in Syria raids

AFP Beirut

Two rescuers were among nine civilians killed in Russian and regime air

strikes yesterday on violence-plagued northwest Syria, a war monitor said, in the latest attack against relief workers in the re-gion.

The two civil defence work-ers, known as the White Hel-mets, were killed after Russian air strikes hit their ambulance in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, the Syrian Ob-

servatory for Human Rights said.The rescue group said a “dou-

ble-tap attack” by Russian war-planes had “targeted” rescue workers repeatedly as they were evacuating injured civilians from the town.

Five other volunteers were also wounded, the group said.

The latest attack came nearly one week after regime air strikes on an ambulance in the town of Maaret al-Numan killed three rescue workers.

“The world continues to fail to protect us and other humanitar-ian workers,” the group said in a statement on social media.

AFRICA


At least 15 people were crushed to death yesterday and dozens injured in Madagascar at a stadium hosting national independence day celebrations in the capital Antananarivo, hospital officials said. “We have recorded 95 emergency department admissions, including 15 deaths,” Oliva Alison Rakoto, director of the HJRA hospital in the city, told AFP. According to local media reports, the accident occurred late in the afternoon outside the Mahamasina stadium, where several thousand people had gathered for a concert following the traditional military parade held to mark the national holiday.

The UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo yesterday pledged to support an arrest warrant against a warlord accused of mass rape and other abuses in the country’s conflict-ridden east. MONUSCO said the warrant against Guidon Shimiray Mwissa, who heads a coalition of armed groups dubbed NDC-R, was a “positive development” for security in North Kivu province. The arrest warrant for Shimiray Mwissa, 39, by the military prosecutor’s off ice on June 7 says Shimiray Mwissa is sought for taking part in an insurrectional movement, recruiting child fighters and committing crimes against humanity by rape.

Malawi’s constitutional court yesterday heard opening arguments in a case over alleged election irregularities as opposition parties battle to have the result of last month’s vote nullified. The court did not allow public access to the preliminary hearing, which comes after the Malawi Congress Party and the United Transformation Movement lodged complaints of alleged fraud in the election. President Peter Mutharika, leader of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, held onto power in the May 21 vote, narrowly defeating Lazarus Chakwera of the MCP. Judges yesterday heard applications about media access, disclosure of financial documents and where ballot papers should be securely stored.

Senegal yesterday seized 238kg of cocaine hidden inside four new cars on a ship travelling from Brazil to Angola, the customs authority said, the latest in a series of large seizures off the West African coast this year. It said the cocaine had been hidden inside the cars that the ship, which anchored at port in the capital Dakar, was transporting. It provided no additional details. The UN Off ice on Drugs and Crime said yesterday that 3.4 tonnes of cocaine were seized in Africa in 2017, back up to 2013 levels after falling to 1.2 tonnes in 2015, although the data likely underestimates the extent of drug traff icking on the continent.

More than 200 miners in South Africa yesterday marked one week underground as they hold a sit-in protest against alleged sexual harassment by a manager as well as a wave of sackings. The striking workers at the Lanxess chrome mine have refused to leave the mine in Rustenburg, North West province, since their shift ended last week, forcing the unit to halt production. The National Union of Mineworkers said the strike action was over accusations of sexual harassment by a senior manager as well as the previous dismissal of 56 employees. Union spokeswoman Phakamile Hlubi-Majola told AFP the underground strikers were short of food but did have water.

15 dead in crush at Madagascar event

UN backs arrest warrant for DR Congo warlord

Malawi opposition lobby court in election fraud case

238kg of cocaine hidden inside four cars on a ship

SA miners underground for a week in sit-in protest

TRAGEDY CRACKDOWNBALLOT BATTLE BUSTED LABOUR ISSUES

Cocoa-growing Ivory Coast draws up new plan to stop child labourBy Nellie PeytonDakar

Ivory Coast has launched a new strategy to end child labour in cocoa farming and other sectors by raising women’s incomes and building schools, the govern-

ment said yesterday.The plan is more wide-reaching than previous ones

and aims to tackle household poverty as the root cause of child labour, said Patricia Sylvie Yao, executive secre-tary of the national committee for the fi ght against child labour and traffi cking.

“Today we have decided to expand our actions,” said Yao.

“What we plan to do is help empower women, because experience shows that when a woman has an income-generating activity, it reinforces the wellbeing of the family,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer, launched its fi rst national action plan against child labour in 2012, but the problem remains widespread in poor farming communities.

An estimated 890,000 children work in the cocoa sector, some for their parents and some traffi cked from abroad, according to a 2018 report by anti-slavery or-ganisation Walk Free Foundation.

Thousands of children also work in mines or as do-mestic servants, said Yao.

The new action plan, the country’s third, will run from 2019-2021 at a cost of 76bn CFA Francs ($132mn).

A cocoa industry representative said it goes further than previous strategies by tackling issues such as supply chain traceability and illegal plantations in protected forests.

“This one I think does a more intensive job of looking across the Ivorian government and taking into account what the whole of government is doing,” said Tim Mc-Coy, vice president for country relations at the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF).

Measures such as empowering women and investing in education may not seem directly linked to child la-bour, but do have an impact, he said.

Ivory Coast has rescued 8,000 victims of child labour since 2012, but more needs to be done to strengthen po-lice capacity, said First Lady Dominique Ouattara at a launch event on Tuesday.

Last year it improved eff orts to eliminate human traf-fi cking but fell short of the minimum standards, particu-larly regarding law enforcement, according to the US State Department’s annual Traffi cking in Persons (TIP) report.

Government offi cials were complicit in traffi cking and police did not have enough resources to investigate cas-es, said the report, released last week. - Thomson Reu-ters Foundation

Kenya court blocks East Africa’s fi rst coal-fi red power plantAFPNairobi

Kenya’s environment court yesterday blocked the construction of a coal-

fi red power station on the coun-try’s idyllic Indian Ocean coast, in a move hailed as a major vic-tory by campaigners fi ghting a years-long battle against the scheme.

The fossil-fuel project — the fi rst of its kind in East Africa — has outraged activists, who say clean renewable sources are be-coming ever cheaper and note that Kenya already derives much of its energy from hydro and thermal.

The government argues the $2bn initiative, a Chinese-fi -nanced venture between a Ken-yan fi rm and Oman’s Gulf Ener-gy, will help secure energy needs, spur growth and create jobs in one of Kenya’s least developed areas.

But the location is the pristine Lamu archipelago, which boasts a Unesco World Heritage Site and vibrant marine life and lives off fi shing and tourism — both

industries that locals say will be devastated.

Kenya’s National Environ-

mental Tribunal ruled in favour of activists who said there had been insuffi cient public partici-

pation in the awarding of a li-cence to build the plant.

Judge Mohamed Balala “set

aside” a previous decision grant-ing a licence to developers Amu Power.

He ordered them to carry out a fresh environmental impact as-sessment if they wished to con-tinue the project.

The company was given 30 days in which to appeal.

Activists cheered and em-braced outside the court.

“Justice is served at last,” said Omar Elmawi, campaign co-or-dinator from the deCOALonize movement.

“We still maintain that there is no place for coal in Kenya and we are adamant that renewable energy is the only way to go, the only way to develop.”

According to research by Greenpeace, emissions from the 981 megawatt plant would in-crease air pollution and cause acid rain, while a cooling system which pumps warmed water back into the ocean could threaten marine life and coral reefs.

Carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fi red plants are also a major contribution to global warming — the driver of danger-ous climate change.

“This is a big victory, this is a

big day for Lamu people, it’s big day for Kenya, it’s a big day for Africa and it’s a big day for the world,” said Mohamed Athman, a member of the Save Lamu activ-ist group.

In a statement reacting to the ruling, Amu Power “took note of concerns...and is committed to work with all stakeholders in-volved to ensure that all matters are addressed in totality.”

The government has repeated-ly defended the project, saying it would use the latest technology, supplied by General Electric.

“The people who are talking about coal should know there is clean coal nowadays, it is like nuclear, technology has really improved and if you see America changing their policy, they are going into coal,” Energy Minister Charles Keter argued before the ruling. “(US President) Donald Trump is now on the coal.”

US Ambassador Kyle McCarter came under fi re from Kenyans for backing the plant on Twitter, and criticising local activists as “highly-paid protesters”.

Experts have raised issues with the project on economic grounds.

A report by the US-based In-

stitute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said this month that Kenya’s energy de-mand growth had been much lower than estimated, due to lower-than-expected growth.

The government’s own 2017-2037 power development plan warns that if moderate growth con-tinues on current trends, the plant will be “grossly underutilised”.

The coal plant is meant to be a part of a mega-project which in-cludes the construction of a port in Lamu, as well as highways and oil pipelines linked to landlocked South Sudan and Ethiopia.

The ambitious project is called Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET), and construction is well underway, with one of the fi rst berths of the port nearly completed.

The project has already had a severe impact on the environ-ment, with dredging covering a key coral reef with silt and devas-tating a popular fi shing spot.

In 2018 a court ordered the government to pay more than 4,500 fi shermen compensation of $18mn over this project, a de-cision now under appeal.

Kenya environmental activists celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Nairobi after the Kenya National Environmental Tribunal blocked the construction of a coal-fired power station.

‘Dozens’ killed in foiled Ethiopia coup attemptBy David Lewis and Dawit Endeshaw, Reuters Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

Dozens of people were killed in fi ghting during a foiled coup by a rogue state militia in Ethiopia’s Amhara region

at the weekend, the regional government spokesman said yesterday, the fi rst offi cial report of signifi cant clashes.

The militia attacked the police headquar-ters, ruling party headquarters and presi-dent’s offi ce — where they executed three top offi cials — in Amhara’s regional capital of Bahir Dar on Saturday, Asemahagh Aseres told Reuters on the sidelines of a state burial for the offi cials who were killed.

The militia was a recently formed unit of the region’s security services.

It had appealed for others to join its take-over were rebuff ed, Asemahagh said.

“They are part of our police. They are not independent,” he told Reuters.

“(But) most of the forces were not with them. They defended (us) very well.”

The fact that the militia were state forces rather than independent raises the stakes for the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has rolled out a package of eco-nomic and political reforms since taking of-fi ce in April last year.

He has lifted a ban on political parties, re-leased journalists, rebels and prisoners, and prosecuted offi cials accused of abuses.

But his shake-up of the military and in-telligence services has earned him powerful enemies. His government is also struggling to contain discontent from Ethiopia’s myriad ethnic groups fi ghting the federal govern-ment and each other for greater infl uence and resources.

Outbreaks of ethnic violence have dis-placed around 2.4mn people, according to the United Nations.

The spokesman said the militia had de-tained him when it took over a guesthouse for government offi cials and also tried and failed to take over the region’s state media.

He said the militia were then chased out of the city.

A journalist confi rmed to Reuters that militia members had approached, but with-drawn without fi ring at the media building’s armed security.

Regional state-run media has reported 13 deaths in the violence so far.

Reuters could not independently verify Asemahagh’s death toll, but two independ-ent witnesses Reuters interviewed in a cof-feehouse the night before confi rmed the mi-litia attacked the three targets he named.

Details of more deaths in a separate but possibly linked attack in a neighbouring state also emerged yesterday.

Men in camoufl age uniforms killed more than 50 people and injured 23 others in the Metakal zone of the Benishangul-Gumuz region early on Monday, the region’s peace and security bureau head Abera Bayeta told Reuters.

“We are still investigating but we have our suspicion that those attackers might be the same people who were involved in the coup in Amhara region,” he said.

Reuters was unable to independently ver-ify his account.

The government has accused Amhara’s former security chief of masterminding the twin attacks that killed the region’s president Ambachew Mekonnen and two other officials in Bahir Dar, and the chief of staff and another general 325km away in the national capital Addis Ababa the same night.

Alleged coup mastermind Asamnew Tsige, who was shot dead by security forces on Monday, was accused of trying to seize con-trol of Amhara, not the whole country.

But that was still a strike at the heart of Ethiopia’s political system — a federation stitched from a patchwork of ethnic groups and traditions.

Thousands lined the streets in Ethio-pia’s two main northern cities yesterday in mourning.

But within the crowds, many said they were not happy with the government.

In Bahir Dar, capital of Amhara, priests from Ethiopia’s Orthodox church gave ser-mons calling for forgiveness as the bodies of offi cials were laid out at the presidential house.

Three fl ower-covered black hearses car-rying the state president, his adviser and the state’s attorney general wound their way through the streets accompanied by tradi-tional fl ute music before being buried with military salutes.

Snipers stood on roofs and federal and regional security services mixed with the crowds in a show of strength.

The prime minister’s wife, deputy and for-eign minister, all of whom are from Amhara, attended the ceremony.

“I call for law and order to be restored,” Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen told the crowd. “We should all reserve our emotions and respect the law.”

The night before the funerals in Bahir Dar, several young men told Reuters they sup-

ported Asamnew, whom they described as a defender of the Amhara people.

They asked not to be named to avoid at-tention from the security forces.

“He (Asamnew) was creating a militia be-cause the region was under attack. It was to protect us. People from Amhara are being killed everywhere,” one said.

In the neighbouring region of Tigray, thousands gathered in the capital Mekelle.

Tigray was the home of the national ar-my’s chief of staff , Seare Mekonnen, who was shot dead in Addis Ababa alongside another general from the region by his bodyguard late on Saturday.

“We will not be divided by ethnicities. We will be united,” said General Asrat Denero, the chief of the Ethiopian military’s western command centre.

But signs of the divisions were apparent away from the main ceremonies.

Many in Tigray, whose citizens dominated the previous administration, have been an-gered by their loss of infl uence.

Some accused the government of being lax on security.

Others in the crowd chanted “Abiy is a traitor” and “Abiy resign”.

Ethiopian army generals carry the flag-draped coffin of Ethiopian Army Chief of Staff Seare Mekonnen during his funeral ceremony yesterday in Mekele, Tigray Region.

“What we plan to do is help empower women, because experience shows that when a woman has an income-generating activity, it reinforces the wellbeing of the family”

AMERICAS13Gulf Times


A US Islamic State recruiter known as ‘Umm Nutella’ who double-crossed federal agents after agreeing to co-operate with them was yesterday sentenced to four years in prison, far less than federal prosecutors had sought. The sentence against New Jersey-born Sinmyah Amera Ceasar, 24, imposed by US District Judge Jack Weinstein, was far less than the 30 to 50 years sought by prosecutors. Ceasar will get credit for the 29 months she has already served, a spokesman for the Brooklyn US Attorney’s Off ice said. The sentence, which also fell below federal guidelines, came on the third day of a hearing in the 2-1/2-year-long case that prosecutors had keep under wraps until Monday.

The White House yesterday announced it will hold a summit on social media next month amid growing criticism from President Donald Trump and some in Congress. The White House did not say who would take part in the July 11 gathering and major social media firms did not immediately confirm they would attend. White House spokesman Judd Deere said the meeting would “bring together digital leaders for a robust conversation on the opportunities and challenges of today’s online environment.” US politicians, led by Trump, have increasingly used social media to try to go around traditional media and woo voters directly via social media platforms.

The US Supreme Court is set to issue rulings today in major cases on the Trump administration’s bid to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census and eff orts by voters to curb the partisan manipulation of electoral district boundaries, a practice known as gerrymandering. The court has five cases left to decide during its current term, which began in October and ends today, with the final decisions on tap. The rulings in legal challenges to the proposed census question and partisan gerrymandering could have enduring eff ects on elections for seats in the US House of Representatives and state legislatures.

Canada and California said yesterday they had signed a memorandum of understanding to advance cleaner vehicles and fuels. The most populous US state and Canada said they will work together “to accelerate the adoption of zero-emission vehicles like electric cars” and share technical information and best practices in regulating cleaner fuels, as California does today though its Low-Carbon Fuel Standard. The announcement comes as the Trump administration has proposed barring California from regulating vehicle emissions or requiring a rising number of zero emission vehicles. Canada is reviewing its vehicle emissions standards.

A masterpiece painted by Pablo Picasso that a German Jewish businessman was allegedly forced to sell to fund his escape from the Nazis can stay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York rather than be returned to the businessman’s heirs, a court ruled yesterday. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that the great-grandniece of Paul Leff mann, who once owned Picasso’s The Actor, waited too long by not demanding the painting’s return until 2010, which was 72 years after it was sold and 58 years after it entered the Met’s collection. “The Met has been prejudiced by the more than six decades that have elapsed since the end of World War II,” Judge Katzmann wrote.

IS recruiter ‘Umm Nutela’ gets 4 years behind bars

White House plans new social media summit

Top court to rule today on census, electoral map

California, Canada concur on cleaner vehicles, fuels

Picasso sold during Nazi flight ‘can stay at the Met’

JUSTICE POLITICSTERM END DECISIONS GREEN DREAM LATE APPEAL

Supreme Court chips away at federal powers

By Andrew Chung, Reuters Washington

The US Supreme Court yesterday con-strained the power of federal agencies, scaling back a legal doctrine that calls

for judges to give agencies deference to in-terpret their own rules but declining to elim-inate it as four conservative justices wanted.

The court, in a ruling written by liberal Justice Elena Kagan, unanimously sided with a Vietnam War veteran who sued the US Department of Veterans Aff airs (VA) after being denied retroactive disability benefi ts.

But the justices split 5-4 in deciding not to entirely throw out the legal doctrine called “Auer deference,” which is rooted in Su-preme Court precedents dating back to 1945.

“So the doctrine emerges maimed and enfeebled — in truth, zombifi ed,” wrote conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had wanted to terminate Auer deference.

Paring back the regulatory authority of federal agencies — which can control rules in important areas such as energy, climate change and the workplace — has been a key goal of many business and conservative groups, which complain about what they call the “administrative state.”

The new limits on Auer deference could constrict administrative agencies from issu-ing or maintaining certain policies and rules.

The Supreme Court threw out a lower court’s ruling denying retired US Marine James Kisor, 75, benefi ts dating back to 1982 arising from battle-related post-traumatic stress disorder.

The justices sent the case back to the low-er court to reconsider Kisor’s claim on the meaning of a regulation that the VA had said was unfavourable to Kisor.

Kagan was joined by the three other liberal justices and conservative Chief Justice John Roberts in deciding that the court should uphold Auer deference because of its long-standing tradition of adhering to prior deci-sions, a principle known as stare decisis.

Gorsuch and fellow conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh said Auer deference should have been formally eliminated since it is already on “life support.”

Kisor’s attorney, Paul Hughes, said the ruling signifi cantly narrows agency author-ity and “delivers a signifi cant victory, not only for our client James Kisor, but also for regulated parties across the spectrum.”

Republican President Donald Trump has pursued extensive deregulation including eff orts to roll back government regulations related to environmental protections, fi nan-cial services and other industries.

Trump’s Justice Department defended the VA in the case and had argued that Auer deference should be narrowed, but not over-ruled.

The doctrine’s critics have said judicial deference has allowed agencies to accumu-late power by enabling them to issue vague or burdensome regulations and then enforce them according to the policy preferences of unelected administrators.

Supporters of judicial deference have said the views of agencies should be accorded greater weight because they often have tech-nical expertise that judges lack.

Some liberals view the attack on the “ad-ministrative state” as an eff ort by conserva-tives to hinder government regulation of a wide range of businesses.

Sam Berger of the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress said it was heartening that the court did not “wipe away decades of precedent to favour the interests of big businesses and the wealthy over eve-ryone else.”

The name of the doctrine arose from a 1997 Supreme Court ruling in the case Auer v Robbins, which extended a 1945 precedent in the case Bowles v Seminole Rock & Sand Co that had accepted an agency’s take unless it was plainly wrong or inconsistent with the regulation.

Kisor, who served during the Vietnam War installing fi eld telephone networks, fought in a 1965 battle in which several of his fellow troops were killed.

The VA granted Kisor disability benefi ts for PTSD in 2006, but refused to pay him retroactively going back to 1982, when he fi rst made a benefi ts claim.

At that time, he had not been diagnosed with PTSD.

The case hinged on the VA’s interpretation of a rule requiring “relevant” military service records to reconsider a denied claim.

The Washington-based US Court of Ap-peals for the Federal Circuit in 2017 applied Auer deference to side with the VA over Kisor. The current VA secretary is Robert Wilkie.

House panel to subpoena Conway on Hatch ActBy Jan Wolfe, Reuters Washington

The US House of Representa-tives Oversight Committee yesterday voted 25-16 to sub-

poena testimony from White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway after she failed to appear at a hear-ing about her alleged violations of the Hatch Act, a law that limits federal employees’ political activity.

The Offi ce of Special Counsel (OSC), a US government watchdog agency, earlier this month recom-mended Conway be fi red for repeat-edly violating the Hatch Act by dis-paraging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her offi -cial capacity during television inter-views and on social media.

Consistent with a pattern of stone-walling numerous congressional investigations of President Donald Trump, his administration and busi-ness interests, the White House has asserted that Conway did not need to testify to the committee.

Henry Kerner, who runs the Offi ce of Special Counsel, said at the com-mittee hearing that Conway left him “no choice” but to recommend her termination because she has com-mitted “at least 10 separate Hatch Act violations, expressed no remorse and continues to express disdain” for the law.

Kerner is a Trump appointee who previously worked for Republican lawmakers in Congress.

His offi ce is an independent agency that enforces the Hatch Act.

It is not connected to the offi ce of former US Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

“Here, we have a clear-cut case of a federal employee violating federal law

over and over and over again...and we have the White House asserting that Congress may not question this em-ployee,” said Elijah Cummings, the Oversight Committee’s chairman.

“This is the opposite of account-ability, and it is contrary to our funda-mental system of laws in this country.”

Representative Jim Jordan, the committee’s top Republican, said Democrats were seeking to limit Con-way’s free speech rights because they disagreed with her views and because she has been an eff ective advocate for the president’s agenda.

Some Democratic lawmakers said at the hearing that their Republican colleagues were letting their loyalty to Trump interfere with upholding the rule of law.

“He’s not a partisan. He’s not some wild-eyed liberal. He’s doing his job,” Representative Gerald Con-nolly, a Democrat from Virginia, said of Kerner.

Kerner testifi ed that his concerns about Conway could also be addressed by her formally becoming an adviser to Trump’s re-election campaign, rather than a White House employee.

Kerner’s report on June 13 criti-cised Conway for a “pattern of partisan attacks” on Democrats running for president, including a media interview where she insinu-ated that Senator Cory Booker was “sexist.”

An earlier OSC report from March 2018 cited Conway for favouring a Republican candidate over a Dem-ocrat in an interview discussing a special Senate election in Alabama in 2017.

The White House said she was only expressing Trump’s preference.

In a June 11 letter, the top White House lawyer said the OSC has adopted an “overbroad and unsup-ported interpretation of the Hatch Act,” that chills the free speech rights of US government employees.

The White House’s letter also ac-cused Kerner’s team of bias against Conway, saying they recommended her termination because they felt disrespected by public comments she made about the OSC.

The OSC can make such recom-mendations, but does not have the authority to enforce them.

Henry Kerner, special counsel in the Off ice of Special Counsel, testifies next to the empty seat of White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway at a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Trump accuses ‘terrible’ Twitter of censoring conservatives

President Donald Trump yesterday ac-

cused Twitter of censoring him, alleging

the social media platform was making it

hard for him to get his message out.

“They are trying to rig the election,”

Trump said in an interview on Fox Busi-

ness News. Accusing the tech company

of bias toward Democrats and “hatred”

of Republicans, he said lawsuits or legis-

lation were needed to check its power.

Twitter and other social media firms

have been facing pressure to curb hate

speech and extremist propaganda,

blocking accounts of many conspiracy

theorists.

But Trump and his allies contend that

the purge has also silenced conserva-

tive voices.

Trump has 61mn Twitter followers

and has used the platform as a powerful

political instrument, but he complained

bitterly that his message was being

blocked.

“What they did to me on Twitter is

incredible,” Trump said. “I have millions

and millions of followers, but I will tell

you they make it very hard for people

to join me on Twitter, and they make

it very hard for me to get out the mes-

sage.”

The president accused Twitter of

being “just terrible what they do” and

said he would get fairer treatment if he

became a Democrat.

“They don’t let you get the word out.

I’ve had so many people come to me,

Sir, I can’t get you on Twitter,” he added.

Asked what should be done about it,

Trump responded: “You may need legis-

lation in order to create competition.”

Canadian businesses have a message: We need foreign workersBy Steve Scherer and Fergal Smith, Reuters Ottawa

Canadian unemployment is at an all-time low and business-es have a message for politi-

cians ahead of October’s national election: We need foreign workers so do not make the campaign about keeping them out.

Concern about immigration is on the rise in Canada, according to a re-cent survey, especially among Con-servative voters whose party leads Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Lib-erals in polls ahead of October elec-tions.

Unlike the United States where immigration is viewed by some as a threat, Canadian businesses broadly support Trudeau’s promise to boost the number of foreign workers al-

lowed into the country every year to about 1% of the population.

“We don’t want immigration to be used as a political weapon here as it has been in the United States,” said Goldy Hyder, head of the Business Council of Canada, whose members employ 1.7mn people.

“We agree with the federal gov-ernment’s targets and we need to meet those targets...The facts clearly demonstrate that Canada is going to need immigrants to help grow the economy.”

With unemployment at 5.4%, the lowest level since comparable data were fi rst published in 1976, Canada needs workers.

A June 25 report showed the coun-try’s farm labour shortage is costing billions and is expected to balloon in the next decade.

Canadian packaged meat producer Maple Leaf Foods Inc.’s pork process-

ing plant in Brandon, Manitoba, is operating at 80% capacity due to both labour and hog shortages, said Susan Yaeger, head of recruiting and hiring.

The hog defi cit is a function of not being able to fi nd skilled workers to operate the company’s commercial farms.

“Because of our low unemploy-ment...there’s of course a dwindling labour pool for us to recruit from and our business is growing,” she said.

Despite this, some politicians are pushing to reduce the number of immigrants and refugees coming to Canada every year.

Two-thirds of Canadians who said they voted for the Conservative Party said there were too many “visible mi-norities” — an academic way of say-ing non-white people — in the coun-try, up from 53% in 2015, according to an April Ekos Politics survey.

Under Trudeau, Canada’s popula-

tion growth accelerated to 1.4% in 2018 from 0.8% in 2015, offi cial data show. That compares with US popu-lation growth of about 0.6% in the same period.

The number of new permanent residents climbed by 12% in 2018 to 321,035, the highest yearly fi gure since 1913, eclipsing the govern-ment’s target of 310,000.

For People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier, who split from the Conserv-atives, that is too much.

He wants to cut immigration levels, and so does the Quebec provincial government.

While the promise to do so helped put Quebec’s right-leaning govern-ment in power last year, Bernier is now polling nationally at about 1%.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, who holds a slight lead over Trudeau, so far has acknowledged that “immigration, done right, is

good for the economy and good for jobs.”

Companies across Canada are fac-ing the same problem as Maple Leaf Foods.

The meat processing industry alone will need 25,000 workers over the next dozen years, according to a study by the Food Processing Skills Canada.

On Tuesday, the Conference Board of Canada, a research group, said that by 2025 all labour force growth in Canada would be driven by new im-migrants.

The Chamber of Commerce in On-tario, Canada’s most populous prov-ince, wants to further increase the number of workers brought into the country.

“We could do with even more (im-migrants),” said Rocco Rossi, head of Ontario’s Chamber. “We have enor-mous needs.”

Attorney General William Barr makes a surprise appearance with his bagpipes before addressing the US Attorneys’ National Conference at the Justice Department in Washington yesterday.

Musical soireeUnder scrutiny, EPA air chief resigns

ReutersWashington

Bill Wehrum, the US Environmental Pro-tection Agency offi cial in charge of revis-ing power plant rules, revamping vehicle

emission standards and biofuels, who was under scrutiny for ethics allegations, is stepping down June 30, the agency said yesterday.

Wehrum, the head for air and radiation at the agency and one of its top offi cials, told staff in an e-mail he was resigning.

He said he was proud of the administration’s eff orts “due in part to the clear direction pro-vided by the president and the dedication of Ad-ministrator (Andrew) Wheeler to accomplishing the Agency’s mission.”

Wheeler said while he knew Wehrum would eventually step down, the departure date “has still come too soon.” But he applauded Wehrum

for fi nalising last week the Aff ordable Clean Ener-gy (ACE) regulation, a replacement for the Obama administration’s signature climate regulation that targeted carbon emissions from power plants.

Ethics allegations have dogged Wehrum, a former lobbyist for energy interests.

Democrats in Congress had asked the EPA’s inspector general to review whether Wehrum and other offi cials helped to reverse the agency’s position in a major enforcement action they say favoured a client of his former law fi rm Hunton Andrews Kurth.

Democratic lawmakers had also launched an investigation about the Utility Air Regulatory Group, an organisation of power companies with coal-fi red plants in their fl eets that sought to loosen emissions rules that Wehrum had previ-ously represented. The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ethics allegations, and Wehrum’s offi ce referred questions to the agency’s press offi ce.

ASIA


Lanka reinstates death penalty for drug crimes

Sri Lanka’s president yes-terday signed death sen-tences for four people

convicted of drug-related of-fences in a decision analysts said is aimed at boosting his chances of re-election later this year.

Maithripala Sirisena was elected as a reformist in January 2015, but has struggled to fulfi l

pledges including addressing human rights abuses, eliminat-ing corruption and ensuring good governance.

He has been under increasing pressure since a political cri-sis last year, and more recently faced criticism for his handling of Easter Sunday bomb attacks that killed more than 250 people.

“I have already signed the death penalty for four (con-victs). It will be implemented soon and we have already de-cided the date as well,” Sirise-na told reporters in Colombo, without giving details.

He said the four could appeal their convictions on charges of trading and traffi cking in drugs.

Many Sri Lankans, includ-

ing several infl uential religious leaders, are in favour of rein-stating the death penalty to curb rising crime, though rights groups have warned that such a measure would be ineff ective.

“The death penalty does not deter crimes any more eff ec-tively than other punishments,” said Kumi Naidoo, secretary general of rights group Amnesty International.

“Executions are never the solution,” he added.

The last execution in Sri Lanka was 43 years ago.

The country’s last hang-man quit in 2014 without hav-ing to execute anyone, but he cited stress after seeing the gallows for the fi rst time. An-

other hangman hired last year never turned up for work.

The president’s hardline policy is in part inspired by the Philippines’ so-called “war on drugs”, where thousands have died in encounters with police.

“He is trying to project him-self like the Philippines presi-dent ... but I doubt whether it is enough. It won’t give him much political mileage now,” political columnist Kusal Perera said.

Sirisena declined to com-ment on whether he will stand as the presidential candidate for his centre-left Sri Lanka Free-dom Party, which has recom-mended him as the candidate for the election expected in the last two months of 2019.

President Maithripala Sirisena approves the execution of four people on death row after being convicted for drug traff icking

ReutersColombo

Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena

Lightning kills six in Nepal

Six people, including three children, were killed by light-ning strikes in southern Nepal

this week as monsoon rains hit the country, police said yesterday.

The three children – two 11-year-olds and a 12-year-old – were killed by lightning strikes late Tuesday while climbing a black plum tree to collect fruits in a village in Dang district, said Pa-bitra Chand, a local police offi cer.

Three men – aged 65, 60 and 25 – were killed on Tuesday while working on their farms in Rupandehi district, according to Dharma Raj Bhandari, the head of the district police.

Lightning strikes in the coun-try are common during the mon-soon season, which runs between June and September.

They are Nepal’s third-biggest killer after landslides and fl oods triggered by monsoon rains.

Every year, more than 100 people are killed by lightning strikes in the country. (DPA)

A Myanmar policeman holds a firefighter hose near a pile of burning drugs during a destruction ceremony to mark UN’s International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Traff icking” in Yangon yesterday.

Burning drugs ICC prosecutor seeks Bangladesh, Myanmar probe

The prosecutor of the In-ternational Criminal Court yesterday moved

closer to opening a full inves-tigation into alleged crimes against the Rohingya people who were driven from Myanmar to Bangladesh.

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement she would ask judges for permission to investi-gate crimes that had “at least one element” in Bangladesh, which is a member of the ICC.

She added that her investi-gation would cover crimes that also took place “within the con-text of two waves of violence in Rakhine State on the territory of” Myanmar.

The war crimes court said in a separate statement it had as-

signed a three-judge panel to hear Bensouda’s request.

If granted, the ICC would become the fi rst internation-al court to look into alleged atrocities against the Rohingya Muslim minority of Myanmar.

Although Myanmar is not a member of the court, the ICC in September determined it has jurisdiction over some crimes in the region when they had a cross-border nature, given that Bangladesh is a member.

“The Court has jurisdiction over the crime against human-ity of deportation allegedly committed against members of the Rohingya people,” it said in a September 2018 ruling. “The reason is that an element of this crime – the crossing of a border – took place on the territory of a State party (Bangladesh).”

The following day, My-anmar’s government said it

rejected the court’s jurisdiction.An independent UN fact-

fi nding mission in August con-cluded that Myanmar’s military carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Muslim Rohingya. Bensouda’s offi ce began a pre-investigation examination in the Bangladesh-Myanmar case last year, and a delegation from the court visited Bangladesh in March.

With 122 members, the UN-backed ICC is a court of last resort, only stepping in when member countries are found to be unwilling or unable to pros-ecute war crimes on their terri-tory – or when a case is referred to it by the UN Security Council.

That occurs only rarely as the United States, Russia and China are not ICC members, and can use their veto powers to prevent a referral, as Russia has done with Syria.

ReutersAmsterdam

Cambodia imprisons translator over ‘fake news’ traffi cking fi lm

A Cambodian court jailed a fi xer and translator for two years yesterday

for his role in making a docu-mentary about sex traffi cking in the Southeast Asian coun-try which the government said contained “fake news”.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has launched a crackdown on gov-ernment critics, including hu-man rights advocates and op-position politicians, and has in recent years used the term “fake news” to discredit dis-senting voices.

Rath Rott Mony, 48, was ar-rested in Thailand and sent back to Cambodia last year as he at-tempted to travel to the Nether-lands with his family after help-ing produce the documentary for the Russia Today channel.

The documentary Mony worked on, titled My Mother Sold Me, included an account of a poor Cambodian girl who was sold into sex work, prompting authorities to question those involved.

Authorities have said the girl and her mother were paid $200 to lie in the documen-tary, which damaged Cambo-dia’s reputation. Russia Today has said that it never pays par-ticipants or interview subjects for a report.

Judge Koy Sao said Mony, who is also the president of the Cambodian Construction Workers Trade Union Federa-tion (CCTUF), was convicted of incitement to cause discrimi-nation, without elaborating.

Sao ordered Mony to pay $17,500 compensation to two of the mothers, Keo Malai and Tep Sreylin, who appeared in the fi lm.

The two said Mony had promised to help solve a land dispute and open a shop for them if they made up the story about their daughters.

“I didn’t sell my daughter and Mony told me to say nega-tive things so that there would be more funding,” Malai said after the verdict.

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch said Cambodia was trying to cover up the very serious poverty that compels ur-ban families to encourage their daughters to engage in sex work.

“The push to imprison Mony is an example of Cambodia playing ‘shoot the messenger’ of a person who told the in-ternational community about an inconvenient reality the government wants to hide,” Robertson said in a statement.

ReutersPhnom Penh

Labour activist Rath Rott Mony arrives to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court for verdict over his role in making a documentary in Phnom Penh yesterday.

Thai photo order for phone users sparks row

An order for mobile phone users in Thailand’s restive south to submit a photo of

themselves for facial recognition purposes is causing uproar from opponents who see it as fur-ther curtailing the rights of the Muslim-majority population.

But an army spokesman yes-terday defended the move, say-ing the facial identifi cation scheme is needed to root out insurgents deploying mobile

phone-detonated home-made bombs.

Thailand’s three southern-most states – Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat – have since 2004 been rife with confl ict between Malay-Muslim rebels and the Buddhist-majority Thai state, which annexed the region around a century ago.

The tit-for-tat violence has claimed around 7,000 lives, mostly civilians of both faiths, and security forces have de-tained individuals suspected of being separatist rebels without warrants in the past.

Now telecoms companies are re-quiring all users of the region’s 1.5mn mobile numbers to submit a photo of themselves for facial recognition purposes following orders from the army – a move that is drawing anger from rights groups as the deadline to register photos nears.

A military spokesman defended the move yesterday, saying it was necessary to identify perpetrators who use mobile phone reception to set off home-made bombs.

“In cases where the attacker uses a SIM card to detonate a bomb, we can trace the perpe-trator,” said Colonel Watchara-

korn Onngon, deputy southern army spokesman.

Registration ends on Octo-ber 31, and anyone who fails to submit their photo in the three southern provinces and four dis-tricts in neighbouring Songkhla province will have their mobile reception cut off , he said.

Junta leader-turned-premier Prayut Chan-O-Cha on Tuesday also said the scheme provides “evidence” about who the real owner of each SIM card is.

“People in the south are not complaining... they know it truly helps reduce violence,” he said.

Using such “fl awed” facial recognition technology usu-ally leads to “racial profi ling and, in turn, wrongful arrests”, according to a statement by rights group Cross Cultural Foundation Tuesday.

“The risks of racial discrimi-nation may erode public trust in policing the region,” it said.

While the rest of Thailand is not subjected to the same re-quirement of submitting photos, Watcharakorn said people with unregistered SIMs travelling to the three provinces will have no cell access.

AFPBangkok

Cambodia construction workers risk lives for ‘riches’

When Sam Sok took a $6-a-day job as a con-struction labourer in

Sihanoukville she knew it could be dangerous, but the deaths of 28 workers in a building collapse – with her nephew among the missing – has laid bare the risks many like her face to earn a living.

She left her eight-year-old son with neighbours more than 100km (62 miles away), one of thousands pushed by poverty seeking to cash in on the once sleepy seaside town’s Chinese-funded construction boom.

The work is mostly unregu-lated, low paid, often dangerous – and sometimes deadly.

“We do this because of money but now... we are afraid that we might meet the same unfortu-nate end,” the 32-year-old said.

“We work in fear now,” she said, from a hospital in Siha-noukville, where she was search-ing for her missing nephew.

Many were buried in their sleep when the Chinese-owned building – which was still under construction – crumbled before dawn on Saturday, and she fears her nephew was among them.

Like most migrant workers, the labourers lived in the struc-ture they were building, having travelled far from home to earn a bit of cash to get by.

Several Chinese nationals face manslaughter charges over the incident.

Like so many others, Sam Sok chased rumours of riches in Si-hanoukville, having heard from villagers in her hometown about the money to be made.

She earned $6 a day ferrying metal and wooden planks at dif-ferent sites in the fast-booming city, where dozens of Chinese-funded casinos and hotels are being built to serve a mush-rooming tourist industry fuelled by visitors from the mainland.

With day wages reaching as high as $10, the money is often better than what workers could make on a farm or even in a factory.

Cambodia’s per capita GDP has climbed in recent years as the economy slowly shifts from agricultural to industrial – with many workers now fi nding work in the garment and serv-ices sector – and opportunities in the construction sector are multiplying quickly.

But the World Bank still clas-sifi es about a third of the country as “near poor”, and the average annual income is around $1,380, lower than many of its Mekong neighbours.

Chinese investment has helped propel the shift away from agriculture, pouring mon-ey into new roads, new ports and new buildings across Cam-

bodia, a strategically important Southeast Asian ally for Beijing.

But that building frenzy has also sparked concerns about sub-standard safety regulations in a country where most of Cambo-dia’s 200,000 construction work-ers have few legal protections.

The majority are day-labourers, don’t belong to unions, and aren’t protected by minimum wage laws, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Building owners often fl out safety measures, taking short-cuts that could lead to accidents, said Kong Athit, secretary gen-eral of the Cambodian Labour Confederation.

“It’s the responsibility of the owners and the government that they must take a serious pre-check before allowing any construction of a building to start,” Athit said.

Construction worker Khmao said he was given almost no safety equipment at the site in Siha-noukville where he carried bricks.

He was sleeping about 100m (330ft) from the site of the collapsed building when

he was shaken awake. “I only have a helmet, no mask,

and I’m concerned about my safe-ty,” 36-year-old Khmao said.

“I want to go home but I don’t have money,” added Khmoa, who travelled more than 300km (185 miles) from eastern Prey Veng province to earn $10 a day on a Chinese-owned site.

Cambodia’s premier Hun Sen has blamed Saturday’s fatal ac-cident on careless oversight, prompting a senior offi cial to be sacked and another to resign. He also handed out cash com-pensation of between $10,000 to $70,000 to families of victims and the survivors.

Seven people, including fi ve Chi-nese nationals, have been charged with manslaughter or as accom-plices in connection to the accident.

For some, Saturday’s accident was enough to turn them off risky construction work for life.

“I will never be a construction worker again,” said Ros Sitha, who survived two days in the rubble be-fore he was miraculously rescued on Monday, weak and bruised.

AFPSihanoukville

Cambodia GDP has climbed in recent years as the economy slowly shift s from agricultural to industrial – with many workers now fi nding work in the garment and services sector – and opportunities in the construction sector are multiplying quickly

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA15Gulf Times


Papua New Guinea volcano erupts sending residents fl eeingAFPKokopo

Papua New Guinea’s vola-tile Ulawun volcano – designated one of the

world’s most hazardous – erupt-ed yesterday, spewing lava high in the air and sending residents fl eeing.

A pilot for Niugini Helicopters fl ying near the crater witnessed a column of lava spurting ver-

tically into the equatorial sky, along with ash that has been belching since early morning.

Ulawun, on the remote Bis-marck Archipelago chain, is listed as one of 16 “Decade Vol-canoes” targeted for research because they pose a signifi cant risk of large, violent eruptions. Witnesses said lava had cut off the main highway in north of the island. “The volcanic activity at Mt Ulawun began at 7am this morning after slight rumbling

and light emission,” Leo Poriku-ra, an offi cial with the West New Britain Disaster Offi ce, told AFP earlier. “The Rabaul Volcano Observatory has declared a stage one alert warning of a possible eruption.”

Witnesses had reported ash spewing out of the 2,334m (7,657ft) summit, sending trails spanning high overhead.

“The sky has turned black,” said Kingsly Quou, manager of the nearby Mavo Estates palm

plantation. Quou said that vil-lagers living at the base of the volcano had already been evacu-ated and he and his colleagues were gathering their belong-ings. Japanese satellite imagery and sources on the ground had shown sulphur dioxide and now volcanic ash drifting from the crater. Australia’s Bureau of Me-teorology said the ash reached more than 13km into the air.

The bureau’s Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre issued a

“red” warning to airlines, indi-cating the eruption was immi-nent, although there is not be-lieved to be an immediate threat for fl ight routes. Thousands of people live in the shadow of Ulawun, despite it being one of the most active volcanoes in the country.

Porikura said people living in the vicinity of the volcano had been instructed to move away to safer areas and a disaster team had been dispatched. “The dis-

aster team will liaise with the lo-cal community, local businesses and local level government au-thorities to prepare for a possi-ble eruption,” he said.

“Three crucial priority areas being addressed include trans-port plan, care centre prepa-rations and getting the com-munities in the high-risk areas to prepare for an evacuation,” Porikura said.

The nearby Rabaul Volcano Observatory said emissions

from the volcano were get-ting darker, indicating a higher ash content — which can cause breathing problems, eye irrita-tion and skin irritation because of the high acid content.

A team of experts had visited earlier this month and reported the volcano was “quiet” adding “there is no indication of any change in its state of unrest.”

The ash emissions had been proceeded by an increase in seis-mic activity, Porikura said.

HK protesters urge G20 to raise extradition issueAFPHong Kong

Hong Kong protesters marched to major con-sulates yesterday as they

called on G20 nations at an up-coming summit in Japan over sliding freedoms in the fi nan-cial hub. The semi-autonomous city has been shaken by huge demonstrations this month with protesters demanding the with-drawal of a bill that would al-low extraditions to the Chinese mainland.

China has said it will not al-low discussion of the protests in Hong Kong at the G20 summit in Osaka later this week — although US President Donald Trump has said he plans to raise the issue during a planned meeting with President Xi Jinping. “China will never agree to the G20 discuss-ing the Hong Kong issue, this is completely China’s internal af-fairs,” foreign ministry spokes-man Geng Shuang told reporters yesterday.

Nonetheless Hong Kong pro-testers have seized on the im-

pending gathering of the world leaders to raise awareness of their movement and pile pressure on both Xi and the city’s pro-Beijing

leader, Carrie Lam. Throughout yesterday, around

1,000 demonstrators — many holding “Please liberate Hong

Kong” placards or chanting “Help Hong Kong” — shuttled between the city’s G20 consu-lates to hand-in petitions and

plead with envoys to lobby their governments back home. Come evening a larger crowd of some 4,000 protesters gathered in a park in the commercial district. One protester, who gave his sur-name as Lau, said the interna-tional community had a right to talk about Hong Kong’s future because of its role as a major glo-bal trading hub.

“We need to keep our unique-ness so that we can serve the international economy,” he told AFP.

Protesters have also launched a crowdfunding campaign to take out adverts in major fi nan-cial newspapers, hoping they may come across G20 leaders’ desks during the summit. Or-ganisers said they were over-whelmed by the response with some 20,000 people donating HK$5.48mn ($700,000) by the time the crowdfunding was halt-

ed on Tuesday. Although Hong Kong was returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997, it is still administered separately under an arrangement known as “one country, two systems”.

The city enjoys freedoms un-seen on the mainland but many residents have been alarmed in recent years by what they feel is a tighter grip by Beijing. Hong Kong’s leaders are not elected and calls for universal suff rage have fallen on deaf ears.

Protesters are planning a se-ries of smaller demonstrations in the run-up to Friday and Sat-urday’s G20 meetings as well as a mass annual democracy rally on July 1 where a large turnout is expected. Lam has postponed the extradition bill because of the huge backlash but has resisted protester demands to shelve it permanently.

She has also refused calls to

drop charges against arrested demonstrators and hold an inde-pendent inquiry into the police’s use of tear gas and rubber bullets earlier in the month. Lam, who is appointed by a pro-Beijing committee, has stayed out of the public eye for more than a week.

A regular poll published by Hong Kong University released on Tuesday showed her approval ratings were now at a record low for any chief executive since the handover to China.

On Tuesday Britain urged Hong Kong to conduct an in-dependent investigation into clashes between police and pro-testers — and suspended export licences for crowd control equip-ment. China’s Geng hit out at that announcement yesterday. “The British side has frequently interfered and made irresponsi-ble remarks about Hong Kong’s aff airs,” he said.

Demonstrators wave their smartphones at a rally ahead of the G20 summit, urging international community to back their demands for the government to withdraw a the extradition bill in Hong Kong.

A demonstrator holds a placard during a rally ahead of the G20 summit.

A young boy gets splashed by water in a water park, in Beijing, yesterday. The city has seen rising mercury levels in the past few days.

Big splash

Australian media join forces to demand press freedom law reformsMore than a dozen Australian media organisations and journalist unions joined forces yesterday to demand press freedom law reforms, following police raids at a public broadcaster’s off ice and a reporter’s house in search of leaked government documents. Australia’s Right to Know Coalition yesterday called on the govern-ment to amend laws to prevent journalists from risking prison for doing their job and to protect the public’s right to know.The Australian Federal Police (AFP) on June 5 raided the Sydney head off ice of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) over stories it produced in 2017 on allegations of unlawful killings committed by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. A day ear-lier, the Canberra home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika

Smethurst, who had written stories about government plans to grant spy agencies greater powers, was raided. Both of the organisations have lodged court challenges over the raid and asked for the warrant to be invalidated, demanding the return of seized files.The coalition said they wanted a right to contest such warrants. They also called for public sector whistle-blowers to be adequately protected and asked for reforms to freedom of information and defamation laws, as well as limits to what constitutes a “secret” as defined by the government.The coalition said it wants journal-ists to be exempted from national security laws passed in the past seven years that “would put them in jail for doing their jobs.” The coalition made up of rival organisa-tions includes public broadcaster

ABC, Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp Australia,British-owned The Guardian, and German-owned Bauer Media Group.Also, yesterday, the heads of Australia’s three biggest media organisations came together to stress the need for strong press freedoms at a national televised address in a rare show of unity. News Corp Australia chairman Michael Miller said the police raids were “intimidation, not investiga-tion.” “These raids put our democracy in danger, they put our right to be informed in danger and they put people who talk to journalists in danger,” Miller said at the National Press Club in Canberra.Hugh Marks, chief executive for Nine, which owns major newspa-pers and a television station, said

among other things, “bad legisla-tion across several fronts and over-zealous off icials in the judiciary, bureaucracy and security services ... have steadily eroded the free-dom within which we the media can operate.” “While it is hearten-ing to know that the government regards a free media as a founda-tion stone of democracy, nowhere is that articulated or entrenched in law,” said ABC’s managing director David Anderson.“Decriminalising journalism is a mandatory first step ... No one de-serves to be punished for pursuing information that is clearly in the public interest.” Australian federal police have defended the media raids, saying that the warrants were related to “national security information” which had the poten-tial to pose a “grave danger to the national interest.”

US, N Korea ‘in talks’ over third summit, says MoonReutersSeoul

The United States is in behind-the-scenes talks with North Korea over a

possible third summit and has proposed working-level nego-tiations that have been stalled since the second such meet-ing in February, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said yesterday.

Moon, in written answers to questions posed by visiting for-eign journalists, said there was no reason to talk of a “stale-mate” just because there had been no offi cial dialogue, aimed at the denuclearisation of North Korea.

US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held their second meeting in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi in February but failed to reach a deal due to diff erences between US calls for denuclearisation and North Korean demands for relief from sanctions. “Both sides have been engaged in dialogue in re-gard to a third summit,” Moon said. “It’s noteworthy that the behind-the-scenes talks have been preceded by the mutual understanding of each other’s

position gained through the Hanoi summit.” The United States had made a proposal for working-level talks, Moon said, urging North Korea to return to the negotiating table “at the earliest date possible”.

North Korea pursued nuclear and missile programmes for years in defi ance of UN Security Council resolutions and UN and US sanctions. Moon has been an ardent champion of eff orts to end the confrontation, vowing to play a mediator role in nudg-ing North Korea into giving up its nuclear weapons in exchange for an end to sanctions and se-curity guarantees.

The Hanoi breakdown was a blow for Moon, who days before the summit off ered to “ease the burden” of the United States by providing concessions to the North through inter-Korean economic initiatives which he seeks to revive. Moon did not specify when and how the US proposal was made. But US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that a recent exchange of letters between Trump and Kim boosted hopes for a restart of talks, calling it a “very real possibility.”

North Korea’s offi cial KCNA news agency said that Trump’s letter had “excellent content”

and Kim would “seriously con-template” it, without elaborat-ing. Stephen Biegun, the US special envoy for North Korea who led working-level talks ahead of the Hanoi summit, is visiting Seoul from today for meetings with South Korean offi cials before joining Trump, who is due in South Korea this weekend.

Trump is considering visiting the Demilitarised Zone separat-ing the two Koreas, where Kim and Moon had their historic fi rst summit last year, a South Korean offi cial said. The two Koreas are technically still at war after their 1950-53 confl ict ended in a truce, not a treaty.

But a US offi cial said on Tues-day that Trump had no plans to meet Kim during his trip and declined to comment on whether Trump would go to the DMZ.

Trump wanted to travel to the DMZ on a 2017 visit to South Korea but heavy fog prevented it. “The resumption of negotia-tions between North Korea and the United States will take it to the next level. I believe every-thing has now fallen into place for that to happen,” Moon said.

The Hanoi summit cast doubt on Kim’s commitment to denu-clearise.

Malaysia busts attempt to smuggle 5,000 terrapinsMalaysian customs off icers ar-rested two Indian men attempting to smuggle over 5,000 terrapins through the country to be sold as pets, off icials said yesterday. The Southeast Asian country, home to rare animals such as orangutans and tigers, has become a hub for wildlife traff icking. The men were detained at Kuala Lumpur’s main airport last Thurs-day after they arrived from China

with 5,255 red-eared terrapins. The creatures -- packed into plas-tic containers inside two suitcases — were worth 52,550 ringgit ($12,700), senior customs off icial Zulkurnain Mohamed Yusuf said. Some died on the journey, al-though a large number survived. “Our initial investigations found that (they) were brought in here for the purpose of being brought back to India,” he told reporters.

Red-eared terrapins — also known as red-eared sliders — are popular pets and can be found in many shops around the world. While they are not an endan-gered species and are commonly traded, permits are required to import them into Malaysia. The suspects did not have the correct documents, and face up to five years in jail and a fine if convicted.

BRITAIN/IRELAND


Tributes have been paid to Ivan Cooper, a founder of Northern Ireland’s civil rights movement, who has died aged 75. The former politician, one of the few Protestant leaders who marched with Catholics on Bloody Sunday, died in hospital yes-terday. Born into a working-class family in Killaloo, near Derry, he was a founding member of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour party in 1970 and served as an MP at Westminster and as a community relations minister during the Sun-ningdale administration in 1974. Colum Eastwood, the SDLP leader, said Cooper embodied Ireland’s contrasting traditions and campaigned for fair-ness for people regardless of their background.

A grandmother who has never strayed onto the wrong side of the law in all her 93 years has fulfilled one of her dearest wishes – to be arrested. Josie Bird was handcuff ed by off icers and taken off to the local police station. Her granddaughter, Pam Smith said in a tweet that Josie hadn’t been in the best health recently and that she “wanted to be arrested for something before it’s too late”. Smith said Josie’s wish to be arrested came from a love of watching police dramas. Two off -duty off icers arrested her and accused her of robbing a shop, she said. They then handcuff ed her and drove her to the local police station, but, instead of putting her in a cell, they gave her tea and cake.

A lawmaker from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) faced calls for a new probe yesterday after the BBC reported that his lavish holiday in the Maldives was funded by a former government minister. Rival Northern Irish political parties urged the British parliament’s standards committee to investigate the latest claim against DUP lawmaker Ian Paisley, who was suspended for 30 days last year for accepting and failing to declare similar trips paid for by the Sri Lankan government. The BBC quoted a resort owner as saying Mohamed Shainee, the Maldives’ former agriculture and fisheries minister, booked and paid for Paisley’s stay in the island nation in 2016.

Scotland Yard has been forced to pay a total of more than £700,000 in compensation to 153 anti-fascist campaigners who were arrested by police during a demonstration and detained for up to 14 hours. The campaigners had been detained while protesting against another demonstration led by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson. The Met has paid the compensation, totalling £729,000, in out-of-court settlements after the campaigners took legal action alleging their detention was un-lawful. The legal claims of another 28 campaign-ers have yet to be resolved. Internal police docu-ments show that two undercover off icers spied on anti-fascist campaigners at the demonstration.

Grandmum gets her ‘dyingwish’ to be arrested

Ian Paisley holiday ‘fundedby Maldives ex-minister’

N Ireland civil rights leaderIvan Cooper dies aged 75

Yard pays out £700,000to detained protesters

OBITUARY OFFBEATCONTROVERSY COMPENSATIONOFFICIAL

Conservative Party leadership candidate Jeremy Hunt returns from his morning run in London yesterday.

People queue as they arrive for the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy farm in Somerset, Britain, yesterday.

Glastonbury Festival

Fox ‘tilting at windmills’ over tariff s, say Tory EuroscepticsGuardian News and MediaLondon

Eurosceptic Conservative MPs have hit back at the Trade Secretary, Liam Fox,

for “ludicrously tilting at wind-mills”, after he rejected Boris John-son’s claim that exporters would be spared tariff s if Britain left the EU without a deal.

The former foreign secretary has promised to take Britain out of the EU on October 31, with or without a deal, “do or die”.

And Johnson has suggested that in the event of a no-deal exit his government could seek to use Article 24 of the general agree-ment on tariff s and trade (GATT) to secure a temporary standstill, while details of a new trade deal are hammered out.

Fox is an enthusiastic Brexiter, but supports Jeremy Hunt against Johnson.

He published a letter he had sent to a constituent on the jobs website LinkedIn on Tuesday, in-sisting it would not automatically be possible to have a tariff -free “standstill” in the event of a no-deal Brexit on October 31.

“It has been claimed that in place of the implementation peri-od we could immediately establish an interim agreement under this provision. However, in this sce-nario, the UK would still require the consent of the EU to the terms of that agreement, with an agreed plan and schedule for implemen-tation,” Fox said.

“A ‘no deal’ scenario, by defi -nition, suggests that there would be no mutual agreement between the UK and the EU on any tempo-rary or permanent arrangement. In those circumstances Article 24 cannot be used.” He added: “The European Union has made it clear on a number of occasions that full tariff s will be applied to the United Kingdom in the event of ‘no-deal’.”

The risks of a no-deal Brexit are at the heart of the clash between the two men vying to become the next prime minister in just over four weeks’ time.

Johnson has been backed by many of the “Spartans” in the Tory party, including the European Re-search Group (ERG) deputy chair Steve Baker, who refused three times to vote for Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, and want to see it junked.

But another vocal group of Conservative MPs, including Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve, have warned they are ready to bring down a future Tory government rather than allow a no-deal Brexit.

Baker hit back against Fox yes-terday, saying: “By stating the obvious, by repeating common ground as if there were any disa-greement, Liam is ludicrously tilt-ing at windmills. He’s done much to promote trade and freedom but I couldn’t be more disappointed in him here.” He highlighted tweets by his ERG colleague Marcus Fysh, who claimed Johnson would “of-fer” the EU a temporary, tariff -free standstill period; and expected that off er to be taken up.

“As the draft withdrawal agree-ment will not pass, the EU will need to decide whether it wants to accept Boris’s off er of zero tar-iff trade to continue for the time being after Brexit on October 31,” Fysh said.

The two sides would then notify the WTO of their intentions, un-der GATT 24.

GATT was the founding treaty of what became the World Trade Organisation (WTO) – but trade experts say GATT 24, as it is known, was only ever intended to operate where an outline trade deal has already been secured.

Johnson conceded that point himself in an LBC interview on Tuesday, saying “there has to be an agreement on both sides”, add-ing that the Bank of England gov-ernor, Mark Carney, was “wrong in thinking it’s not an option”.

Johnson has won the support of the ERG by taking a fi rm stance on Brexit; but has also convinced moderate Tories, including the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, that he will govern from the politi-cal centre ground once Britain has left the EU.

‘Do or die’ Brexit could destroy govt, warns HuntReutersLondon

Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt took aim at rival Boris Johnson’s “do or die”

pledge to take Britain out of the European Union on October 31 no matter what, saying the front-runner to become prime minister could destroy Brexit and the gov-ernment.

The race to replace Prime Minister Theresa May has heated up this week, with Hunt stepping up his criticism of Johnson, who has responded by hardening his promise to deliv-er Brexit at the end of October,

with or without an agreement with the bloc.

More than three years after Britain voted to leave the EU, Brexit is dominating the race to become leader of the Conserva-tive Party leader and the next prime minister.

The winner could face a battle with parliament, which rejected May’s deal three times and is opposed to a so-called no-deal Brexit.

On Tuesday, Johnson said Britain would leave the EU on Halloween “do or die, come what may”, pledging to negotiate a new deal with the bloc to be able to win over parliament.

But Hunt, who also wants

Brexit to happen at the end of October but would extend the deadline if a deal was in sight, criticised the stance, saying it could open the way to opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn winning a new election.

“If we do it in this kind of ‘do or die way’, the risk is that we’ll just trip into a general election because parliament will stop it, as they did in March, and then we’ll have Corbyn in Downing Street, and there will be no Brexit at all,” Hunt told BBC radio.

But he also turned his fi re on the EU, agreeing with a caller that the bloc had treated Britain “like dirt”. “That’s exactly what I feel and I don’t think they have

shown respect for us at all,” he said.

The two contenders are now hoping to win over the governing Conservatives’ around 160,000 members, whose votes will ul-timately decide who becomes prime minister.

However, they will also be keeping an eye on the Northern Irish party which props up the current government.

Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, said she had a good relationship with both Hunt and Johnson but add-ed: “It’s very important that we leave on the October 31.”

Both contenders say they do not want a no-deal Brexit, but

concede that, if needed, they would lead Britain out of the bloc without a deal with diff ering lev-els of enthusiasm — a scenario businesses say could cripple the world’s fi fth largest economy.

Labour, and other opposition parties have said they will not allow a new government to pre-side over a no-deal, with some lawmakers suggesting the new prime minister could face a no-confi dence motion almost im-mediately.

“We’re confi dent that no deal can be prevented in parliament,” said a spokesman for Corbyn. “We will use whatever means necessary to prevent a no-deal outcome.”

Ikea gets green light tobuild aff ordable homesGuardian News and MediaLondon

Homebuyers in a town where properties typi-cally cost almost 12 times

local salaries may soon have a low-cost option from Ikea after a council agreed to work with an aff ordable housing developer co-owned by the retailer.

Worthing council has signed up with BoKlok, a company jointly owned by the Swedish retailer and construction fi rm Skanska which specialises in factory-built housing that can be constructed at a low cost.

The fi rm sets property prices so that buyers have money left to live on after they have paid their housing costs, and its website says “a single parent can aff ord to buy and live in a newly built two-bedroom BoKlok apartment”.

It has built 11,000 homes across Sweden, Finland, Den-mark and Norway, and is keen to break into the UK after a false start more than a decade ago.

Previous plans for a develop-

ment in Tyneside were scaled back when the fi nancial crisis hit, but its latest eff ort is a col-laboration with Worthing coun-cil, which believes it can achieve more aff ordable homes through the deal than if it sells the land to a conventional developer.

Councillors in the coastal town have voted to work on a plan that would see 162 fl ats built on land that it owns.

The latest data from the Offi ce for National Statistics showed that in 2018 average house prices in Worthing were 11.7 times av-erage salaries, compared with a fi gure of 7.8 times across England and Wales.

In a report, the council said that access to homes was chal-lenging for those on the average salary, which was £25,458 in 2015 – with only one-bedroom prop-erties within reach, it noted.

Under the plans the council will license the developer to use the land rather than selling it off , charging it an annual ground rent.

In return it will get 30% of the properties to use as aff ordable

housing to rent to local people, while the remaining proper-ties can be sold by BoKlok based on its “left to live” aff ordability model.

This looks at how much resi-dents can aff ord to pay after tax and monthly living costs have been deducted, and usually as-sumes that people can use about 33% of their take-home pay for a mortgage.

The council, which has more than 1,300 households on its housing waiting list, said its analysis suggested the land could be used for 45 homes with just 13 of them available for aff ordable rent.

The company said it has “scru-tinised our costs and trimmed them to the bone,” but there are no compromises on quality.

Flooring and wall tiles are in-cluded in the price, and homes are fi tted with an Ikea kitchen. Worthing council’s plans show-homes that range from one-bedroom apartments measuring 50 sq metres (538sq ft) to three-bedroom apartments of 74 sq metres (800sq ft).

Population at 66.4mn,rate of growth slowsGuardian News and MediaLondon

The population of the UK has risen slightly to 66.4mn people but the rate of

growth has stalled over the past two years to its slowest increase since 2004, offi cial estimates show.

In the year to mid-2018, there were 2% fewer births and 3% more deaths, but the population increased by 0.6% for the second year running, due to a net increase in international migration.

Despite a widely held belief that the UK’s vote to leave the Euro-pean Union in 2016 would lead to a fall in migration, the fi gures show international migration continues to increase.

The total number of migrants to the UK was 626,000, a 10% in-crease on the previous year, while the number of emigrants leaving the UK was 351,000, a 3% increase.

At 275,000, this net number of migrants was 6,000 higher than the average for the past fi ve years and 45,000 higher than last year. Over the past fi ve years, net inter-national migration has ranged be-

tween 183,000 and 336,000.Neil Park, the head of the ONS

population estimates unit, said the increase in net migration contin-ued to off set the number of deaths outstripping births.

He said: “For the fi fth year in a row, net international migration was a bigger driver of population change than births and deaths.” The four local authorities with the fastest-growing populations were all in central London: City of London, Westminster, Camden and Tower Hamlets. The increase in these areas was partly due to higher migration than other parts of the UK.

The number of births record-ed in the year to mid-2018 was 744,000, the fewest for more than a decade. The number of deaths was 623,000, the highest number since mid-2000.

Robin Maynard, of charity Popu-lation Matters, said that despite the stall in the population growth there was no room for “complacency”.

He said: “Birth rates and migra-tion fl uctuate from year to year but our already unsustainable popula-tion is continuing to rise and that will continue until a positive strat-egy is put in place to address it.”

Prime Minister Theresa May shakes hands with Iraq’s President Barham Salih in London.

EUROPE17Gulf Times


Having made headlines around the world with a claim that a small island wanted to free itself from the tyranny of time, Norway is now setting the record straight: The whole campaign was a PR stunt with metronome precision. The unusual idea piqued the interest of media worldwide, but there was a problem: The entire campaign was a marketing stunt employed to attract more tourists to Norway’s northern regions. Behind the idea for the stunt stood the state-owned Innovation Norway, which apologised yesterday for deceiving the media. “Traditional advertising isn’t as eff ective anymore, and therefore we’re trying new ways to market Norway,” the organisation said in a statement.

Georgia’s parliament yesterday stripped an opposition lawmaker of immunity and ordered him arrested to answer allegations that he helped orchestrate anti-government protests last week that turned violent. The protests broke out after Russian lawmaker Sergei Gavrilov, invited to Georgia by local pro-government deputies, addressed the chamber from the speaker’s chair in Russian. In a vote boycotted by opposition lawmakers, who called it “political farce”, parliament supported a call by the prosecutor general to strip Nika Melia — one of the leaders of the main opposition National Movement — of his immunity.

A suspected gas explosion yesterday tore through a building near Vienna’s city centre, causing several floors to collapse and seriously injuring four people, emergency services said. Footage posted on social media showed a hole three or four floors high in the front of what appears to be a residential building, with the street covered in dust and small debris. “(It’s) as if a bomb flew in and tore a huge hole in the facade,” a spokesman for the fire brigade said. A spokesman for the Vienna ambulance service said there were four serious injuries, several minor ones and no deaths. The fire brigade had similar figures but could not rule out deaths yet.

The wife of a wealthy Norwegian businessman who disappeared nearly eight months ago was probably killed, with the murder made to look like a kidnapping. Anne-Elisabeth Hagen, whose husband Tom Hagen is a real estate and energy magnate, went missing from their home in Lorenskog, near Oslo, on October 31. The Verdens Gang daily reported that the presumed abductors had demanded 9mn euros ($10.3mn) in the cryptocurrency Monero. Online contacts with the presumed kidnappers were unable to confirm that they were holding Hagen, or that she was still alive. “There may have been an attempt to disguise the murder as a kidnapping,” lead investigator Tommy Broske told a news conference.

Pupils of a secondary school in the western German city of Dusseldorf have buried the skeleton they had long used in their lessons, deputy head Sabine Husemeyer told DPA yesterday. “The skeleton was acquired at the start of the 1970s for our natural science collection,” Husemeyer said. The bones of the anonymous donor had been used for years, but were now showing wear, she said. The bones were buried in the cardboard box in which they were returned by the city’s university following the analysis. The pupils added symbols from the world’s religions, given that the identity of the donor remains unknown. Between 30 and 40 pupils took part in the funeral ceremony conducted by the school priest.

An island free from time? Norway sets record straight

Georgia strips opposition MP of immunity over unrest

‘Gas blast’ causes partial building collapse in Vienna

Tycoon’s missing wife likely killed: Norway police

Pupils bury their class skeleton with dignity

TICK-TOCK IN THE DOCKFOUR ‘SERIOUS’ INJURIES INVESTIGATION ANONYMOUS DONOR

Denmark’s Social Democrat leader forms leftist govtBy Camille Bas-Wohlert, AFPCopenhagen

Denmark’s Social Democrat leader yesterday prepared to become the country’s

youngest ever prime minister af-ter weeks of negotiations for a new government she said would focus on climate, welfare and immigration.

At 41, Mette Frederiksen man-aged to defeat the sitting liberal Prime Minister, Lars Lokke Ras-mussen, who held the offi ce be-tween 2009 and 2011, and again since 2015 with backing from the Danish People’s Party (DPP).She duly received the royal assent re-quired by the Constitution of the small parliamentary monarchy.

“Her Majesty the Queen...requested the head of the Social Democrats Mette Frederiksen to lead negotiations on the forma-tion of a new government,” the Royal House announced follow-ing a meeting between the Queen Margrethe II and the politician.

The anti-immigrant and euro-sceptic DPP, which has shaped Denmark’s restrictive immi-gration policies since the early 2000s, eff ectively collapsed in June 5 elections, depriving the centre-right government of its main support in Parliament.

As restrictive immigra-tion policies have been broadly adopted by most other parties, the DPP lost its unique appeal with voters.

In a country where minority governments are the norm, ne-gotiations for a new government centred around confl icting de-mands on climate, economic and immigration policy.

The three-week negotiations were the longest in Denmark since 1988 and resulted in an 18-page agreement between the Social Democrats and three left- and centre-left parties.

Presenting the agreement late on Tuesday, Frederiksen pledged to put defence of the welfare state and action on climate change at the top of her agenda.

“It is a political document, one of the fi rst in the world, that re-ally defi nes green ambitions,” she said, highlighting a key concern for voters and leftist parties.

“We will develop a climate plan, a binding law on climate and reduce greenhouse emis-sions by 70% by 2030,” Frederik-sen continued.

With 25.9% of the vote, her party retreated slightly from 26.3% in 2015, but remained the country’s leading party.

The “left bloc” has a major-

ity with 91 seats out of 179 in the Folketing, the Danish Parlia-ment.

Frederiksen’s government also intends to increase the number of teachers in the country, pro-vide added fi nancial assistance for families and accelerate the integration of foreigners living in Denmark.

The outgoing head of govern-ment commented on Twitter that the negotiations had result-ed in an expensive wish list.

“Did they forget to discuss how to pay the bill?” Rasmussen asked.

According to the governing agreement, targeted tax increases will fi nance some of the expense.

Frederiksen said that while the budget had not been fi nalised, “every krona” needed for the identifi ed priorities would be fi -nanced.

On immigration, the four coalition partners agreed to not make sweeping changes, but to soften some reception conditions in the name of a more “humane” policy.

Specifi cally, Frederiksen, who last year presented a policy proposal which included send-ing “non-Western” migrants to North African camps while their applications are processed, an-

nounced Denmark would again start receiving refugees under the United Nations quota system.

In 2015, Denmark reinstated border controls and suspended its participation in the UN refu-gee resettlement quota pro-gramme in 2016.

The new agreement abandons a policy where “undesirable” mi-grants, rejected asylum seekers with a criminal record awaiting expulsion, and those who can-not be sent back to their country, would be placed on an uninhab-ited island.

Kasper Hansen, Professor of Political Science at the Univer-sity of Copenhagen, told AFP the new government is “not chang-ing the general access to Den-mark for migrants,” and “the law won’t change” on this issue”.

Professor Rune Stubager from Aarhus University said the “fo-cus” seemed to have changed a bit from repatriation of rejected migrants towards integration.

But he added “this may mostly be a matter of semantics”.

Daily newspaper Berlingske saw a “paradigm shift” it said could “increase the risk of Den-mark once again becoming an asylum magnet”.

Frederiksen will likely present her new government today.

(From left) Pia Olsen Dyhr of the The Socialist People’s Party, Pernille Skipper of The Red-Green Alliance, Mette Frederiksen of The Danish Social Democrats and Morten Oestergaard of The Social Liberal Party talk to the press after finalising government negotiations at Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen, Denmark, shortly before midnight on Tuesday.

Migrant rescue boat sails into Italian watersBy Guglielmo Mangiapane, Reuters Lampedusa, Italy

The charity ship Sea-Watch yesterday entered Italian waters with 42 migrants aboard, defying an order from Rome

to stay away and provoking the ire of Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.

The captain of the German-owned boat, which fl ies the Dutch fl ag, had decided to head to the island of Lampedusa because the situa-tion on board was “now more desperate than ever”, the group said in a statement.

It said captain Carola felt that maritime emergency law permitted the ship to enter Italian waters.

In his fi rst reaction, Salvini did not mince his words. “They are not allowed to dock, I am ready to send the police,” Salvini said in a Fa-cebook video.

In a subsequent statement, he called the Sea-Watch “an outlaw ship” and said Rome had asked the Dutch government to assume responsibility for the migrants.

Shortly after the ship entered Italian waters without permission, Italian coastguard boats went out from Lampedusa to fl ank it.

According to a decree approved in June, the Interior Ministry has the power to deny access to territorial waters to vessels that it consid-ers are a risk to security or public order, and to fi ne them.

Salvini, who heads the far-right League, has repeatedly accused charity rescuers of be-ing complicit with people smugglers and has closed Italy’s ports to their boats.

The Sea-Watch picked up 53 migrants from a rubber boat off the coast of Libya and had re-mained in international waters since June 12.

Eleven migrants have already been taken off the ship by the Italian coastguard for health reasons.

Rackete, the ship’s captain, defi ed the Ital-ian government after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Rome had no obliga-tion to allow migrants to disembark from the vessel, although it was obliged to off er assist-ance at sea.

“I have decided to enter the port of Lampedusa. I know what I risk, but the 42 shipwrecked on board are exhausted. I take them to safety,” she said on the ship’s Twitter account.

An Italian magistrate ordered the Sea-Watch seized last month after it rescued doz-ens of migrants, accusing the crew of breach-ing immigration rules.

It was released at the start of June and re-turned to the Libyan coastline.

Migrant arrivals to Italy have plummeted since Salvini took offi ce a year ago, with 2,456 crossing the Mediterranean so far this year, according to offi cial data, down 85% on the same period in 2018 and down 96% on 2017 levels.

Europeans on alert as heatwave intensifi esBy Ryland James, AFPBerlin

Authorities yesterday raised alerts as Europe’s record-breaking early-June heatwave

threatened to intensify with temper-atures heading into the 40s Celsius.

The choking heat has prompted traffi c restrictions, sparked forest fi res and fanned debate over public nudity in Germany as sweltering citi-zens stripped off .

Meteorologists blamed a blast of hot air from northern Africa for the heatwave so early in the European summer.

They said it is likely to send ther-mometers above 40Cin France, Spain and Greece today and tomorrow.

Scientists warn that global warm-ing linked to human fossil fuel use could make such scorchers more fre-quent.

“Global temperatures are increas-ing due to climate change,” said Len Shaff rey, professor of climate science at the University of Reading.

“The global rise in temperatures means the probability that an ex-treme heatwave will occur is also in-creasing.”

In Spain, the Aemet meteorologi-cal agency said yesterday there was a “signifi cant risk” in fi ve northern provinces with temperatures of 42C expected.

“Hell is coming,” one Spanish TV weather presenter tweeted.

The worst is expected tomorrow, when 33 of the 50 Spanish provinces face extreme temperatures, which could reach 44C in Girona.

In France, temperatures “unprec-edented” since 1947 when detailed surveys started were expected to reach 39C over two-thirds of the country, said weather service Meteo-France.

Authorities were taking no chances after a heatwave in August 2003 was blamed for 15,000 deaths in France, with television and radio broadcasts issuing warnings.

The French government yes-terday put another 13 districts on orange heatwave alert — the second-highest level — bringing to 78 out of a total 101 the number

facing extreme temperatures.Some schools are expected to close

today and tomorrow while several cities, including Paris and Lyon, re-stricted traffi c to limit a build-up of air pollution.

Parts of the southeast were swel-tering in 40C heat yesterday, with a peak of up to 44C expected tomor-row in the region.

A spokesman for the far-right Na-tional Rally, Sebastien Chenu, ac-cused the government of “blowing a lot of hot air”.

He said the country had already learned the lessons of the devastat-ing 2003 heatwave.

In Greece, where around 100 lives were lost in last year’s deadly fi res at the coastal resort of Mati, hospitals and offi cials were on red alert with temperatures of around 45C nation-wide.

The 70-year-old record for the highest temperature recorded for June was beaten in Germany as 38.6C was recorded in Branden-burg, the German Weather Service confirmed yesterday.

A blaze 90km southwest of Berlin, which started on Monday and rav-aged around 100 hectares, was fi nally brought under control yesterday.

Police in Brandenburg cautioned

a naked man for driving his moped wearing only his helmet and san-dals.

In Munich security guards ordered a group of women sunbathing top-less on the banks of the river Isar to cover up.

The move backfi red, according to the Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which quoted another sun-bather as saying that she and others took their tops off “out of solidar-ity”.

In Austria’s Innsbruck, the world-famous carriage horses were given time off as the city recorded 36.7C late on Tuesday, breaking the 2012

record for Tyrol state.Scores of people have drowned in

Poland and Lithuania as they tried to cool off in lakes and rivers, authori-ties said.

The Polish weather institute IMGW said the country’s highest ever June temperature was recorded yesterday in the southwest: 38.2C.

The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute also recorded the country’s highest June temperature: 38.9C in the northern town of Doksany.

In Belgium, vastly diff erent tem-peratures were expected with 19C on the north coast and 33C in the south, according to broadcaster RTBF.

People cool off yesterday on the Miroir d’Eau (Mirror of Water), a public art piece on the quay of the Garonne river in Bordeaux.

Modi attacksCongress, thenseeks supportof oppositionIANSNew Delhi

Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi yesterday again launched a blistering at-

tack on the Congress, but at the same time, sought opposition’s support to make India a $5tn economy.

Speaking in the Rajya Sabha on the motion of thanks to Presi-dent Ram Nath Kovind’s address to Parliament, Modi took on the Congress in the wake of the Lok Sabha elections that has left the main opposition party with only 52 seats.

Modi’s address – a day after he spoke in the Lok Sabha – was heard in silence by grim-faced opposition members while NDA (National Democratic Alliance) members repeatedly thumped their desks.

“We know that we don’t have the majority in the Rajya Sabha,” he said. “But the Lok Sabha de-cision should be respected in the Rajya Sabha as the mandate of the people”.

Modi pointed out that in the last fi ve years, some bills lapsed because the government did not have the numbers in the Rajya Sabha. “We need to get rid of this bottleneck,” he said.

He quoted former president Pranab Mukherjee as saying that the majority’s mandate was to rule and the minority’s mandate was to oppose, but nobody had the mandate to obstruct.

The prime minister said India needed to be a $5tn economy. “We need to run the country, and we need your support.”

He took on the Congress, say-ing it was spreading a myth that if it loses an election, then it was a loss for the country.

The Congress, he said, was consumed by pride and preferred to look outward without doing any introspection.

“In 17 states, the Congress could not win even one seat. And

it claimed that the country has lost the election. Such state-ments hurt people who voted in the general election. This is also an insult to the people”.

The premier took a jibe at op-position parties which claimed that farmers were bribed for votes for a mere Rs2,000 worth of government schemes.

“The farmer is a building block of this country. They say that farmers’ votes were bought. This is an insult to 150mn farmer fam-ilies in the country.”

Modi said the lynching of a young man by a mob in Jharkhand had pained him but said it was unfair to blame the entire state for it.

“The lynching has pained me. It has saddened others too. But some people in the Rajya Sabha are calling Jharkhand a hub of lynching. Is this fair? Why are they insulting a state?”

Tabrez Ansari, 22, died in a hospital, after he was thrashed by a mob at Dhatkidih village on June 20 on suspicion of theft.

The prime minister also at-tacked opposition parties for questioning the electronic vot-ing machines (EVMs) for their defeat.

He said those who were against the EVMs were anti-technology. “Some people kept talking about EVMs in this House... There was a time when we had only two MPs in Parlia-ment. People mocked at us but we worked hard and won the trust of the people. We did not make excuses,” he said.

The prime minister said there have been many elections held with EVMs which have given op-portunities to various parties to govern diff erent states.

The prime minister also hit out at the Congress for remembering Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel only during the Gujarat elections and said had he been the fi rst prime minister, the issue of Jammu and Kashmir would have been re-solved.

Pompeo vows better ties astrade, defence issues lingerReutersNew Delhi

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday sought to reduce height-

ened trade tension with India, promising a renewed focus on negotiating better ties, but giv-ing few specifi cs of how they would overcome their disputes over trade and investment.

Pompeo’s India visit comes as the two countries grapple with issues ranging from access to In-dian markets for American fi rms to New Delhi’s demand for for-eign companies to store Indian data in the country, and exports of steel and aluminium to the US.

The two nations are “friends

who can help each other all around the world,” Pompeo told a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Subrahman-yam Jaishankar after they met.

The current diff erences were expressed “in the spirit of friendship”, he added.

However, any progress on trade would probably be an-nounced at an expected meeting of Indian Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi and US President Don-ald Trump at a Group of 20 (G20) summit in Japan this week, economic and political analysts said.

“If there is going to be some kind announcement on trade, it will come at a Trump-Modi meeting,” said Neelam Deo, founder of the Gateway House

think tank in Mumbai.The trade disputes have led to

higher tariff s by the two coun-tries and created unease over the depth of their security alliance.

In particular, the sudden in-troduction of new e-commerce rules for foreign investors in February angered the Americans because it showed New Delhi was prepared to move the goal-posts to hurt two of the largest US companies, discount retailer Walmart, and Amazon.

Walmart last year invested $16bn to buy control of Indian e-commerce fi rm Flipkart.

Just days before Pompeo’s visit, the government slapped higher retaliatory tariff s on 28 US products following Wash-ington’s withdrawal of key trade

privileges for New Delhi.Jaishankar, a former ambassa-

dor to the United States, played down the spat yesterday.

“If you trade with someone and they are your biggest trad-ing partner, it is impossible you don’t have trade issues,” he said.

In a policy speech hosted by the US embassy on Thursday evening, Pompeo said US will ensure India receives adequate supplies of oil as New Delhi stops buying Iranian crude in line with US sanctions.

The US is also lobbying India not to proceed with its purchase of S-400 surface-to-air missile systems from Russia.

Areas of agreement include eff orts to combat increased mili-

tant activity in the region, after deadly suicide bomb blasts in Sri Lanka in April.

Pompeo criticised China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its am-bitious plan to fi nance and build infrastructure across the globe, which some detractors have la-belled a debt trap.

For smaller countries, it came “not with strings attached, but with shackles,” he said.

Earlier, Pompeo met Modi for talks at the prime minister’s res-idence in the capital, New Delhi, and they exchanged handshakes in images broadcast on televi-sion.

Pompeo left India today morning for the summit of G20 leaders in Japan’s western city of Osaka.

Rahul again rejects MPs’call to stay as party chiefIANSNew Delhi

Congress president Rahul Gandhi yesterday again rejected a plea by MPs

to continue as the party chief, a month after he decided to give up the top post after the Lok Sabha election drubbing.

According to party sources, Rahul Gandhi was requested by MPs like Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari to remain the party chief at the Congress Par-liamentary Party (CPP) meeting in Parliament.

“But Rahul remained fi rm on stepping down,” a party source said.

The CPP meeting was chaired by Sonia Gandhi.

The National Students Union of India (NSUI) also staged a rally outside Rahul’s residence here yesterday to persuade him to take back his off er of stepping down from the presidency.

Hundreds of Youth Congress activists carried placards which read: “Nation needs you Rahul

Gandhi” and “Without you we are nothing”.

According to party leaders, NSUI leaders are set to meet Rahul.

Rahul had on May 25 announced his decision to resign as party president after the Congress suf-fered a major blow in the Lok Sab-ha elections.

His decision was rejected unan-imously by the CWC, the party’s top decision making body.

However, Rahul has in the last few days taken organisational de-cisions including the dissolution of the Karnataka Congress unit and all district committees in Ut-tar Pradesh.

The Congress won only 52 seats and Rahul was himself defeated in Amethi in Uttar Pradesh although he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Wayanad in Kerala.

Meanwhile, Rahul has invited 25 leaders from the Congress and the IUML to help him prepare a road-map for the overall development of his constituency Wayanad, a party leader said yesterday.

Those called to meet him in Delhi tomorrow include state Congress president Mullapally

Ramachandran, opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala, district Congress presidents of Wayanad, Kozhikode and Malappuram as well as some Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leaders.

“Rahul has indicated that he wants to bring systematic devel-opment in his constituency keep-ing in mind its environment,” Kozhikode district Congress pres-ident T Sidiq said here.

“His offi ces in the constituency would also be streamlined to see speedy redressal of issues that the people face,” Sidiq added.

Earlier Rahul described the mob lynching of a Muslim youth in Jharkhand as a “blot on hu-manity” and criticised the “si-lence” of powerful voices in the BJP-ruled central and state gov-ernments.

“The brutal lynching of this young man by a mob in Jharkhand is a blot on humanity. The cru-elty of the police who held this dying boy in custody for four days is shocking as is the silence of powerful voices in the BJP-ruled central and state government,” he tweeted.

Company allays fears over Tata saltIANSMumbai

Tata Chemicals, which manufactures the Tata Salt brands, yesterday as-

sured that its salt is “safe and harmless” for consumption.

The company said that India is among countries like US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand that have permitted the use of potas-sium ferrocyanide in salt.

The level permitted by regu-lator Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is lowest at 10mg/kg, and the Co-dex Alimentarius – an authori-tative guideline on food safety – has declared potassium ferro-cyanide as safe for consumption at levels of 14mg/kg, the com-pany said.

The Tata Chemicals reaction came a day after Godhum Grains & Farm Products chairman and consumer activist Shiv Shankar Gupta on Tuesday claimed that the potassium ferrocyanide lev-els are alarmingly high in reputed Indian salt brands, leading to a huge controversy.

Quoting the analysis report

of the American West Analyti-cal Laboratories, Gupta had cited examples of the government-manufactured Sambhar Salt with potassium ferrocyanide at 4.71mg/kg, the privately-manu-factured Tata Salt at 1.85mg/kg and Tata Salt Lite 1.90mg/kg.

However, Tata Chemicals dismissed the allegations as “totally false and misleading” and said that potassium ferro-cyanide content in its brands is “well within permissible limits” and is “safe and harm-less” to the human body when consumed as per approved levels.

It added that iodine is an-other essential micronutrient needed by the human body dai-ly in small quantity, and is part of the government’s efforts to address the issue of Iodine De-ficiency Disorder (IDD).

“Since 1983, Tata Salt has partnered with the govern-ment in this (IDD) initiative and played a pivotal role in the bat-tle against iodine deficiency. As per FSSAI, adequate salt iodi-sation has saved 4bn IQ points in the past 25 years,” the com-pany said.

Anger at lynching

People stage a demonstration against the lynching of Tabrez Ansari, in Bhopal yesterday. Tabrez Ansari (22), died in a hospital, days after he was brutally thrashed by a mob at Dhatkidih village in Seraikela district on suspicion of stealing a bike.


INDIA

Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy yesterday lost his cool with workers of a state-run power project who tried to approach him with their grievances and told them that “you vote for Modi but come to me for solution”. Workers of the Yermarus Thermal Power Station (YTPS) had stopped the vehicle of the chief minister while he was on his way to Karegudda village. They wanted to submit a memorandum to seek Kumaraswamy’s intervention over arrears of their salaries and termination of a few of their colleagues by the YTPS management. The chief minister refused to meet them and was furious when the workers tried to stop his vehicle.

In a significant diplomatic win for India, the country’s candidature for a non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has been unanimously endorsed by the Asia Pacific group, comprising 55 nations. Elections for five non-permanent members of the 15-nation council for the 2021-22 term will be held around June next year. Thanking the nations that endorsed India’s candidature, India’s permanent representative at the UN, Syed Akbaruddin tweeted: “A unanimous step. Asia-Pacific Group @UN unanimously endorses India’s candidature for a non-permanent seat of the Security Council for a two-year term in 2021-22.”

Two days after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Congress legislator from Kerala, A P Abdullakutty, yesterday joined the BJP. He was inducted into the party by its working president J P Nadda. Among those who were present when he arrived at the BJP parliamentary party off ice were Minister of State for External Aff airs V Muraleedharan, and Keralite businessman-turned-BJP Rajya Sabha member Rajiv Chandrasekhar, who was instrumental in roping in the former CPI-M and Congress leader into the party. The two-time MLA was removed from the Congress on June 3 after he said Modi was following the Gandhian model of governance.

Some opposition politicians yesterday slammed the Indian national cricket team’s new orange jerseys, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party of pushing its trademark saff ron hue on the team. “For the past five years, the Modi-led government is trying to saff ronise each and every thing. Be it sports, cultural activities or anything for that matter,” said Congress lawmaker Arif Naseem Khan. But an International Cricket Council (ICC) source said the Board of Control for Cricket in India had simply opted for orange over its classic blue jersey to distinguish itself from England, whom India are due to play in the World Cup on Sunday.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) mouthpiece Deshabhimani yesterday said the Sabarimala issue was one of the major reasons for the Left’s poor show in the Lok Sabha polls in Kerala. The CPI-M, at its national review meeting in Delhi last week, acknowledged that the Sabarimala temple controversy dented its chances in the polls. This is in contrast with Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s assertions that the Sabarimala controversy did not aff ect the election results. Earlier this month, the second biggest LDF ally, the Communist Party of India (CPI) blamed the Left’s poll debacle on Vijayan’s arrogance and the entry of two women activists into the Sabarimala temple.

Kumaraswamy angry withworkers for voting for Modi

55 nations back India fornon-permanent UNSC seat

Kerala legislator oustedby Congress joins BJP

Opposition sees red overnew orange cricket jerseys

Sabarimala row reason forpoor poll results: CPI-M

OFFBEATINTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS POLITICS CONTROVERSYOPINION

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the prime minister’s residence in New Delhi.

LATIN AMERICA19Gulf Times


Ramirez asks court toset aside $1.4bn verdictReutersHouston

Former Venezuelan oil min-ister Rafael Ramirez asked a federal judge in Houston

to set aside a $1.4bn default ver-dict against him in a fraud suit brought by a defunct Houston oil company, according to court documents.

Ramirez, who was Venezuela’s oil minister for 12 years and later served as the country’s foreign minister and UN ambassador, said Harvest Natural Resources and HNR Energia BV had failed to properly serve him notice of the lawsuit.

“Given that Ramirez was not properly served and that he lives in Europe out of the public eye, his default was not wilful, and he has acted as expeditiously as he could to address the default in light of the issues caused by his being abroad,” a court fi ling said.

Dane Ball, a partner with law fi rm Smyser Kaplan & Veselka LLP, which represents Harvest, declined to comment.

US District Judge Lee Rosenthal issued the default

judgment on February 13 after Ramirez did not contest Harvest Natural Resources’ claims, ac-cording to an opinion accompa-nying the ruling.

Harvest’s suit claimed Ven-ezuela had refused to allow the company to sell its assets in the country since 2012, leading it to lose $472mn.

It accused Ramirez and others of seeking a $10mn bribe to ap-prove the transaction.

Ramirez’s attorney Abbe Lowell, of Winston & Strawn, said Ramirez deserves his day in court.

“We are asking the court to reconsider its ruling so am-bassador Ramirez can have the chance to defend himself in court, an option he has so far been denied,” Lowell said in a statement.

Shares in Harvest ceased trad-ing in May 2017 and the com-pany began a three-year process of liquidating assets and wind-ing up remaining issues from the close of the business.

Ramirez was appointed en-ergy minister by late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002, serving in that post until 2014.

Brazil airman arrested inSpain for drugs traffi ckingGuardian News and MediaMadrid

Spanish police have ar-rested a member of the air force travelling with the

Brazilian president’s advance party for the G20 summit in Japan after 39kg of cocaine was discovered in his luggage dur-ing a stopover in Seville.

A spokesman for the Guar-dia Civil said the man was ar-rested on Tuesday after his plane landed at the Andalucían airport.

“The serviceman was trav-elling on a military plane that had flown in from Brazil and stopped over at Seville air-port en route to Tokyo,” he said.

“The serviceman was found to have cocaine in his hand baggage that weighed a total of 39kg. He was arrested on sus-picion of drug traffi cking and is currently in custody at our Seville headquarters waiting to appear before a judge.”

It is understood the plane was carrying a military delega-

tion tasked with protecting the Brazilian President, Jair Bol-sonaro, during the summit in the Japanese capital.

Bolsonaro confi rmed the news in a statement on Tues-day night, saying he had been informed of the airman’s arrest by the defence minister.

“I immediately ordered the defence minister to co-operate with Spanish police to estab-lish the facts and co-operate with every stage of the investi-gation, and to launch an inves-tigation by the military police,” he said.

“There are around 300,000 men and women in the armed forces who are trained to up-hold the highest principles of ethics and morality. If the air-man is found to have commit-ted a crime, he will be tried and convicted according to the law.”

Leaders are due to gather in Osaka tomorrow and Satur-day as Japan hosts its fi rst G20 summit. As well as the main gathering, there will be meet-ings between fi nance ministers, central bank governors and for-eign ministers.

Earlier this month, Bolsonaro enacted drug policy designed to toughen penalties for traffi ck-ers and require users to undergo rehabilitation at private or reli-gious centres.

The new rules raise the minimum prison sentence for traffi ckers who lead crimi-nal organisations from fi ve to eight years. In addition, they reinforce the role of therapeutic communities.

Specialists have argued the legislation moves Brazil in the opposite direction of many countries that try to approach addiction as a health issue.

Drug users in the country previously had to agree to hos-pital admission, but the law now allows involuntary reha-bilitation upon the recommen-dation of a relative or public health offi cial.

“The serviceman was travelling on a military plane that had flown in from Brazil and stopped over at Seville airport en route to Tokyo”

Bodies of drowned migrant, daughter to berepatriated todayDPAMexico City

The Salvadoran embassy in Mexico will today re-patriate the bodies of a

Salvadoran father and his small daughter who drowned when trying to cross the river strad-dling the US-Mexican border, the Mexican newspaper La Jor-nada reported yesterday.

A photo of the bodies of Os-car Alberto Martinez, 26, and 23-month-old Valeria, lying face down in shallow water with her arm draped around his neck, sparked global outrage over the diffi culties migrants face.

Their remains will be taken to Monterrey in Mexico and then fl own to El Salvador, La Jornada said.

Martinez, his wife Tania Ava-los, and Valeria arrived in Mexico more than two months ago and were given humanitarian visas, Mexican and Salvadoran media reported.

However, they were wor-ried that US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on migra-tion would prevent them from crossing the border into the US, the news website ElSalvador.com quoted their relatives as saying.

They arrived on Sunday in Matamoros on the border and intended to apply for asylum, but the offi ce in question was closed and they decided to swim across.

Father and daughter reached the other shore, and he turned back to get Tania, La Jornada re-ported.

But the daughter followed the father into the water, he turned back again to save her and the mother saw a current sweep them both away. She alerted the security forces, who found the bodies 12 hours later.

Oscar Alberto’s mother, Rosa Ramirez, told the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Grafi ca that she had warned him against the dangerous journey.

But the couple wanted to work

in the US to be able to buy their own home in El Salvador, she said.

“They lived with me and wanted to have their own house. That’s what motivated them, he said his salary here was not enough for them, they therefore opted for the American dream,” Ramirez said.

“Mom, I love you,” were Oscar Alberto’s last words to his moth-er from Mexico. “Take care, we are well over here.”

“He was a good son, well-mannered, and I will always re-member him like that, until the end,” the tearful mother told the newspaper.

The picture of the two bod-ies evoked comparisons with the 2015 picture of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on the Turkish shore.

The image shocked the world and became a symbol of the glo-bal migrant crisis.

“Less than four years after (Kurdi’s death), we are once again confronted with powerful visual evidence of people dying during their dangerous journeys across borders,” the head of UN Refugee Agency UNHCR, Filip-po Grandi, said in a statement yesterday.

Pope Francis said he had seen the picture of the two bodies with “immense sadness.”

“The Pope is profoundly sad-dened by their death, and is praying for them and for all mi-grants who have lost their lives while seeking to fl ee war and misery,” the Vatican statement added.

“One day we will manage to build a country where migra-tion will be an option and not an obligation. Meanwhile, we will do what is possible. God help us,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of people leave El Salvador, Hon-duras and Guatemala every year to fl ee crime-related violence and poverty.

A child swims through a street flooded by the rising Rio Solimoes, one of the two main branches of the Amazon River, in Anama, Amazonas state, Brazil.

Flooded street

Supreme Court rejectsrequest to release LulaAFPBrasília

Brazil’s Supreme Court yesterday rejected a re-quest to free leftist icon

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from prison while they consider whether Justice Minister Sergio Moro, who was the convicting judge, was biased.

The court voted 3-2 to post-pone debate on whether Moro had been impartial when he handed Lula his fi rst convic-tion in 2017 — which eff ectively ended his hopes of contesting

the 2018 presidential election — and dismissed a petition to let Lula out of jail until then.

Moro, the powerful judge behind the so-called Car Wash corruption probe before he was appointed to President Jair Bol-sonaro’s Cabinet in January, has been accused of conspiring with prosecutors to keep Lula out of the election race that he was fa-vourite to win.

Moro has denied any wrong-doing and ignored calls to re-sign after The Intercept inves-tigative website co-founded by US journalist Glenn Greenwald published leaked Telegram

messages earlier this month purportedly showing he im-properly advised and guided Car Wash investigators.

Lula’s legal team argued for the 2017 conviction to be quashed, but the court refused.

“We had already presented countless evidence that the ex-president did not have a fair, impartial, independent trial,” lawyer Cristiano Zanin Martins told reporters after the hearing.

“He did not commit a single crime and he has the right to be judged by an impartial judge.”

Lula is serving eight years and 10 months after being found

guilty of accepting a seaside apartment as a bribe for helping the OAS construction company get lucrative deals with state oil fi rm Petrobras.

He is one of scores of high-profi le fi gures in politics and business to be caught up in the sprawling corruption probe that uncovered large-scale looting of Petrobras in a massive kick-back scheme.

A second conviction was handed down in February for which he was sentenced to al-most 13 years and he still faces another half dozen corruption trials.

Lula, who led Brazil through a historic boom from 2003 to 2010, has denied all the corrup-tion charges against him.

He has long argued they were politically motivated to prevent him from competing in the 2018 election that was ultimately won by far-right Bolsonaro.

After losing appeals against his fi rst conviction, Lula could see a change of fortune if the Supreme Court were to fi nd that Moro had been biased in his case.

The court is expected to de-cide later this year.

An immigration police officer guards the entrance of the immigration retention centre in Heredia, Costa Rica, where immigration authorities are holding four men suspected of ties to the Islamic State

IS suspects held

Recycling drive fl ourishes in poor Chilean suburbReutersLa Pintana, Chile

La Pintana, an impoverished Chilean neighbourhood plagued by crime, is an un-

likely place to fi nd a green revolu-tion. But the area on the outskirts of capital city Santiago is blazing a trail in recycling its waste.

Residents like Marina Ortiz listen out for the regular sound of the community recycling truck.

Standing by her door, she rushes out into the street, bringing her food waste to the collectors.

“When I cook I separate out the remains of the vegetables. The paper and cardboard I give to the collectors, and the food to the vegetables truck,” the 58-year-old housewife said.

“The people from the munici-pality taught us and I’ve been doing it for years. They tell me that later all the waste is turned into earth.”

The municipality of La Pin-tana now collects 140 tonnes of plant waste from homes every week, far higher than compara-ble neighbourhoods.

That is despite the area having some of the worst socioeconom-ic indicators in Chile.

There are few medical cen-tres and almost no companies or major employers. The news that comes from the area is almost al-ways related to drug traffi cking, delinquency and violence.

The poverty rate — at around 42% of the 177,000 inhabitants — is far above the national 17% average, a legacy of the area re-ceiving poor families displaced from other richer parts of the capital during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship.

“The people of La Pintana have no services, no health facilities, no education. There are chil-dren in the street, crimes, a lot of inequality,” La Pintana mayor Claudia Pizarro said. “But this is

one of the good things that ex-ist in the community, and we’re a pioneer in this area. We have made eff orts to be recognised as a community that takes care of the environment,” she added.

Chile, already an environ-mental leader in Latin America for its use of renewable energy and creation of national parks, is looking to roll out further ini-tiatives as it gears up to host the major COP25 global conference on climate change in December.

These include reducing con-sumption of single-use plastics, trying to cut emissions and in-creasing the recycling rate.

The environment ministry has recently set targets for the recy-cling of paper, plastics and glass.

La Pintana, however, remains a stand-out case. “There is no one who has done this with the level of penetration and per-fection that La Pintana has,” said Gonzalo Munoz, an envi-ronmental ‘champion’ for the

COP25 in Chile. “It’s surprising that other municipalities have not copied it.”

The process has an economic as well as an environmental benefi t, since it reduces the amount of gar-bage residents send to the landfi ll, which charges to receive it.

“We started in 2005 looking for a way to generate savings to re-duce our spending on waste man-agement,” said Felipe Marchant, head of La Pintana’s environmen-tal management division.

PAKISTAN


Screening of passengers to be tightenedPassengers on their depar-

ture from the country and arrival will have to provide

details of the items they are car-rying and also disclose the pur-pose of their travel as the fed-eral government has prepared a draft of rules to comply with the guidelines of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

Besides, Pakistanis who stay abroad for seven or more days will no longer be able to bring a cell phone with them without paying duty and taxes.

According to a copy of the proposed draft, the FBR is mak-ing amendments in the Baggage Rules 2006 and including Rule 7 A which states that those coming to Pakistan and those leaving it would have to submit a declara-tion of the items being carried at the airport for which a separate Annexure C is being introduced.

According to the annexure, all required information and docu-ments will have to be provided. Passengers will have to submit

their name, sex, date of birth, passport number, nationality and the country from where they are arriving and if they are trav-elling to another country then the name of country they are visiting as well as the names of the countries they toured in the past seven days.

The purpose of foreign tours or coming to Pakistan must also be disclosed. The passengers will have to inform the authorities about the nature of their visit - government, personal, business or tourism.

They will also have to disclose if they are carrying any satellite phones, fi rearms, weapons, nar-cotics or any banned substance. They will also have to disclose if they are travelling with jewel-lery, precious stones and foreign currency and their value.

The Rule 3 of the law is also being removed under which Pa-kistanis who stayed abroad for seven or more days were allowed to bring a mobile phone without paying duty and taxes.

The government has sought the advice of all stakeholders within seven days. Objections

received after that will not be entertained and the rules will be implemented with the issuance of a notifi cation.

FBR offi cials said that the conditions were being im-posed to implement the FATF’s action plan.

Pakistan has until October to improve its counter-terror fi -nancing operations in line with the action plan.

The FATF recently said it was concerned that Pakistan had failed to complete the action plan fi rst by a January dead-line and then again by a May deadline.

The watchdog already has Pa-kistan on its “grey list” of coun-tries with inadequate controls over curbing money laundering and terrorism fi nancing. But India wants Pakistan blacklist-ed, which would likely result in sanctions.

Pakistan has been on the glo-bal body’s grey list since June 2018 for inadequate measures to curb terror fi nancing.

Islamabad has agreed to take a number of steps to curb terror fi nancing under the action plan.

InternewsIslamabad

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II meets High Commissioner of Pakistan Mohamed Nafees Zakaria during a private audience at Buckingham Palace in Central London, Britain.

Envoy meets Queen Elizabeth IIPM: Speed up work on housing

Prime Minister Imran Khan has directed to expedite work on projects being

executed under the umbrella of Pakistan Housing Programme in Islamabad.

He was chairing a meeting of Pakistan Housing Programme in Islamabad yesterday.

The prime minister directed the Capital Development Authority to make the plantation drive more eff ective. He said special emphasis should be given to the protection of green areas and forests.

The meeting reviewed the progress on the projects of Pakistan Housing Programme.

Constable killed in attack on police complex

A police constable was killed and fi ve people in-jured in Pakistan yester-

day, following a gun battle with Taliban militants at a police housing and training complex, security offi cials said.

Three militants wearing sui-cide vests attempted to storm the complex in the restive southwestern province of Bal-

uchistan when confronted by guards at the entrance.

“Police personnel deployed at the gate killed one of the sui-cide bombers,” senior police of-fi cer Abdul Rehman Luni said.

“The other two blew them-selves up inside the police complex,” he said, adding that a senior constable was killed in the attack, and fi ve wounded people were taken to hospital.

The attack was claimed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani

Taliban, in a statement sent to journalists.

Military cordoned off the area after the attack.

The walled complex compris-es police residences and training facilities and is heavily guarded in a province where attacks on security offi cials are common.

Militant groups and separa-tists fi ghting the central gov-ernment are active in mineral-rich Baluchistan, with frequent attacks on gas and transport in-frastructure and security posts.

Baluchistan’s coastal city of Gwadar is a strategic port on the Arabian Sea that is being devel-oped as part of the $60-billion China Pakistan Economic Cor-ridor, part of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project.

In May, gunmen from the Ba-lochistan Liberation Army in-surgent group dressed as mili-tary offi cers stormed a luxury fi ve-star hotel in Gwadar, kill-ing three security guards, an employee, and a naval offi cial in the ensuing gun battle.

ReutersQuetta

InternewsIslamabad

Tax offi cials obtain data of 152,000 Pakistanis abroad

Pakistani tax authorities have obtained data about 152,000 Pakistani na-

tionals from OECD mechanism who live abroad but own bank accounts and properties after earning money in Pakistan and now they can avail themselves of amnesty scheme to whiten un-declared income/assets.

Pakistan has obtained data from the countries of the Organ-isation for Economic Co-oper-ation and Development (OECD) and eff orts are underway to share exchange of data from 10 more countries.

But tax experts pointed out that the FBR possessed data of these accounts from last one year since September/October 2018 but nothing substantial was done in such cases so question arises why they would prefer to

come into tax net now when they knew that the FBR remained un-able to move against them.

When contacted, the top FBR offi cials said that the Benami law was not operationalised at time of last scheme but now rules were in place and the long arm of law would move against those who own benami bank accounts or assets on the name of others.

But one former offi cial who had worked in FBR explained that the tax machinery had is-sued clarifi cation on the occa-sion of last amnesty scheme that the benami accounts and assets were allowed to be declared so there was nothing new.

FBR chairman Shahbar Zaidi said that the FBR would allow opportunity to rectify wrong information if displayed on FBR website through tax profi ling system about any individual.

However, other top offi cial sources said that people were availing this ongoing scheme but

there were some caveats linked to this scheme as the govern-ment made it mandatory to de-posit cash into bank accounts for availing this amnesty scheme.

Earlier, in the last scheme there was no such restriction so people used to exploit the facility and misused to pay their future liabilities.

The government claims that they were aiming to promote documentation instead of rais-ing tax revenues through this ongoing tax amnesty scheme. The FBR and SBP also decided that they would remain open on coming weekend on Saturday and Sunday in order to facili-tate those who would avail this scheme.

In the last tax amnesty scheme introduced during the PML-N-led regime, total 5,929 for-eign declarations had whitened Rs1,040bn and paid tax amount of Rs47bn out of total collected taxes of Rs124bn.

“I think that the people are liable to pay taxes have already availed amnesty last time so less people left so there are no ex-pectations for any matching re-sponse for this ongoing scheme,” said one tax expert who had dealt with the tax issues in last 30 years.

One person in LTU Islama-bad showed intention to deposit Rs700mn into tax by availing tax scheme. The sources said that so far the FBR received Rs2.6bn through ongoing tax amnesty scheme.

Another FBR offi cial said that Pakistanis living abroad would only avail the amnesty scheme if they would fi nd themselves comfortable before tax authori-ties of foreign jurisdictions.

If anything declared here re-sulted into creating diffi culties outside Pakistan the non-resi-dent Pakistanis would not prefer to come into such scheme at any cost.

InternewsIslamabad

Opposition parties in show of unity against govt

Major opposition political parties in Pakistan yesterday

exercised a show of pub-lic power at an All-Parties Conference (APC) against the government of Imran Khan and discussed ways to put mortal pressure on it.

Major leaders attending the conference included Pa-kistan People’s Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto, and Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) vice president Maryam Nawaz and leader of opposition in National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif, who is a former chief minister of Punjab province.

The APC session was summoned on the be-hest of Jamiat Ulema Is-lam (JUI) leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman who while addressing the inaugural session recommended the opposition leaders to give collective resignations from parliament as one of the strategies.

He further asked the lead-ers to observe ‘Black Day’ against what he termed was a ‘fascist’ government on July 25.

A 10-member delega-

tion of PML-N attended the session, led by Shahbaz and Maryam, and comprising former prime minister Sha-hid Khaqan Abbasi, former minister Ahsan Iqbal and heads of the party’s four provincial chapters – Amir Muqam from Khyber Pa-khtunkhwa, Rana Sanaullah from Punjab, Qadir Baloch from Balochistan and Mo-hammad Shah from Sindh.

The PPP delegation also included former prime min-isters Yousaf Raza Gilani and Pervaiz Ashraf, former chairmen of the Senate Raza Rabbani and Nayyar Bokhari and senators Sherry Rehman and Farhatullah Babar.

Others who attended included Hasil Bizenjo of National Party, Mahmood Achakzai of Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, Asfand-yar Wali of Awami National Party, Aftab Sherpao of Qaumi Watan Party, Mut-tahida Majlis Amal leaders Sajid Naqvi, Sajid Mir and Owais Noorani.

Estranged government ally Balochistan National Party leader Akhtar Mengal decided at the last minute against attending after be-ing approached by repre-sentatives of Prime Minister Imran Khan promising to redress his grievances.

InternewsIslamabad

285 buildings in Rawalpindi to be vacatedAdministration of Rawalpindi, a city neighbouring capital Islamabad, has ordered residents of some 285 identified dilapidated buildings to evacuate before the forthcoming monsoon season.In this regard, the district administration has issued red notices. The notices were issued on the directions of Rawalpindi deputy commissioner Ali Randhawa.Old and dilapidated buildings, located in various old neighbourhoods of the city, are mostly inhabited by middle and lower-middle class families.Off icials believe that the poor structural integrity of these buildings poses a serious threat to the lives of residents, especially during the ongoing monsoon season.According to the details, most of the dilapidated buildings in the city are located within a few old neighbourhoods including Raja Bazaar, Kaalan Bazaar, Moti Bazaar, Babra Bazaar, Bagh Sardaran, Dingi Koi, Ratta Amral, Purana Qila, Murree Road and in the cantonment areas.These buildings were constructed more than a century ago and have outlived their expectancy. Residents of these buildings are under constant threat of being trapped if these buildings collapse due to heavy rains, windstorm or earthquake.The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) held a National Monsoon Preparedness Conference-2019 in Islamabad to review preparations for the impending monsoon season and expected flooding. (Internews)

Six-point plan submitted to UN against Islamophobia

Pakistan has submitted a six-point plan to address Islam-ophobia at an anti-terror-

ism event at the United Nations headquarters. Other countries too called for ways to counter the growing phenomenon of faith-based hatred and violence.

“A particularly alarming development is the rise of Is-lamophobia, which represents the recent manifestation of the age-old hatred that spawned anti-Semitism, racism, apart-heid and many other forms of discrimination,” ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, said in her speech

at the sideline event titled “Countering terrorism and other acts of violence based on religion or belief”.

Lodhi elaborated the six points to deal with hate-driven violence and Islamophobia. Firstly, governments need to adopt legislation to address the issue, she said.

Secondly, tech companies must prevent digital technolo-gies and social media platforms from becoming channels for in-fl ammatory content, incitement and negative stereotyping.

Thirdly, she said, Islamo-phobia must be countered through a focused strategy as social tensions engendered by it posed a risk to vulnerable Muslim migrants and refugees in the West, besides potentially

threatening the social cohesion of host communities.

Fourthly, there is a need to boost investment in enhanced research to monitor the trends and analyse the root causes and drivers of violence incited by religious hatred.

Fifthly, engagement with youth and women is imperative to establish tolerant and inclu-sive societies.

And the fi nal point in Lodhi’s plan stated there was a critical need to increase investment in education. “As hatred is born in the mind, education would be the key to promoting peace and tolerance,” she said.

“Populist narratives are be-ing exploited by demagogues as a strategy to achieve political objectives,” she said.

InternewsIslamabad

UN slams murder of journalistA top UN agency yesterday demanded justice for a freelance Pakistani journalist who was murdered earlier this month.Muhammed Bilal Khan, a social media activist, blogger and freelancer with tens of thousands of followers across Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, was stabbed to death in Islamabad on June 16.The motive for the killing is not known, but Bilal cast a wide net with his criticism.Local police said on the day of his death he received a phone call from an unidentified person, who took him to a nearby forest and killed him. “I condemn the killing of Muhammed Bilal Khan,” Unesco chief Audrey Azoulay said in a statement, calling for “authorities investigating this crime to bring its perpetrators to trial”.The statement came after an earlier condemnation by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which asked Pakistani authorities to “swiftly investigate the killing to determine the motive and hold the perpetrators to account”.“Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that must be preserved for everybody, regardless of individuals’ religious or political opinion,” Azoulay said.Censorship is already rife among the country’s once-riotous mainstream media, with the CPJ noting last year of strict limits on reporting. (AFP)

Students carry placards and banners as they march during a rally organised by Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) to mark ‘International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Traff icking’ in Quetta yesterday. June 26 is International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Traff icking, established by the UN General Assembly in 1987, marked by campaigns, rallies and programmes to address drug problems.

Rally against drugs

PHILIPPINES21Gulf Times


Sotto supports Duterte’s call for charter changeBy Javier J IsmaelManila Times

Senate President Vicente Sotto 3rd yesterday wel-comed President Rodrigo

Duterte’s decision to set aside federalism and instead called for a change in the Constitution.

“I’m of the same thinking. The transition period to federal-ism will take too long. It’s better to simply amend the Local Gov-ernment Code to give full auton-omy to LGUs (local government units). Also, we can just amend the economic provisions in the Constitution,” Sotto said in a Viber message.

Duterte on Tuesday said he would accept it if the move to-ward federalism fails during his administration.

He, however, added that the Constitution should be changed.

“If it’s not for me, in my gen-eration, somebody else’s. But you should change the Constitu-tion. If you do not want federal-ism, fi ne. But change the Consti-

tution that would really change this nation. I’m telling you this,” the president said.

Duterte has been pushing for a shift from a parliamentary to a federal form of government, be-lieving this would spur country-side development.

Sotto said with the imple-mentation of the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) in progress, Congress need not make priority

eff orts for the shift to federalism.He added that the BOL was a

good test case to see if a federal type of government would work in the country.

The Senate chief said in the two years of the implementa-tion of the BOL, the people could have a peek whether it was eff ec-tive or not.

“Two years, more or less, we will have a very good idea al-

ready on how a federal region is doing. How their work is being conducted,” he added.

When asked if it would not be harder to push for charter change if the proponents would wait for two years and Duterte’s term is on its last years, Sotto said it would not be hard if the Bangsamoro Autonomous Re-

gion turns out good. He said if the BOL fails or cessation or hostilities would continue, Con-gress could always repeal it.

The legislative branch is yet to decide on charter change proposals despite the admin-istration’s super majority coa-lition in the House of Repre-sentatives. Several lawmakers

earlier conceded that the Phil-ippines was not yet ready for a federal shift, as the electorate are yet to fully grasp the con-cept.

The House of Representa-tives in December approved its version of the draft federal charter on third and final read-ing.

Filipinos have sole right ‘over fi shing in territory’By Jomar CanlasManila Times

Allowing Chinese fi sher-men in Philippine waters is illegal, Supreme Court

Associate Justice Antonio Car-pio said yesterday as he slammed President Rodrigo Duterte’s de-cision to share the country’s ma-rine resources with China.

Carpio said permitting Chi-nese fi shermen to gather re-sources inside the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) violates the Constitution.

“The Philippine government cannot allow Chinese fi shermen to fi sh in the Philippines’ exclu-sive economic zone in the West Philippine (South China) Sea because it will violate the Con-stitution,” he said in a statement.

The magistrate cited Section 2, Article XII of the 1987 Consti-tution, which states: “The State shall protect the nation’s marine wealth in its archipelagic wa-ters, territorial sea, and exclusive economic zone, and reserve its use and enjoyment exclusively

to Filipino citizens.” “The Phil-ippines has exclusive sovereign right to exploit all the fi sh, oil, gas and other mineral resources in its Exclusive Economic Zone. This sovereign right belongs to the Filipino people, and no gov-ernment offi cial can waive this sovereign right of the Filipino people without their consent,” Carpio argued.

He said the country also had exclusive rights and jurisdiction on “other submarine areas.”

Carpio cited the 2016 ruling of the United Nations-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration that declared Recto (Reed) Bank as part of the Philippines’ EEZ.

“The arbitral tribunal at The Hague has ruled with fi nality the Philippine has ‘jurisdiction’ over its Exclusive Economic Zone in the West Philippine Sea, includ-ing the Reed Bank. For purposes of our Constitution, the ‘nation-al territory’ includes our EEZ in the West Philippine Sea, includ-ing the Reed Bank,” he said.

He urged the government to order the military to secure and protect Recto Bank and other

parts of the country’s EEZ from foreign poachers.

“The Armed Forces of the Philippines is specifi cally tasked by the Constitution to be ‘the protector of the people’ and to ‘secure the sovereignty of the

state and the integrity of the national territory.’ The com-mander in chief of the Armed Forces is the President, who has the constitutional duty to direct the Armed Forces to protect the nation’s marine wealth in its

Exclusive Economic Zone,” he pointed out.

The president had said that the government would allow the Chinese to fi sh in Philippine wa-ters because China is a “friend.”

Sen. Francis Pangilinan ech-oed Carpio’s statement, saying Recto Bank is part of the Philip-pines’ EEZ.

“It is ours. Allowing Chi-nese or other foreigners to fi sh there violates our Constitution. This is clear to all, especially to the 22 Filipino fi shermen who asked this of Secretary (Em-manuel) Pinol after they almost drowned because a Chinese ves-sel rammed their fi shing boat,” the senator said.

Pangilinan said the Philip-pine government “has the sa-cred duty to defend our marine wealth in the EEZ and to reserve its use and enjoyment exclusive-ly to Filipino citizens, using the phrase in our Constitution.”

“While the president can en-ter into agreements involving mineral resources under the last paragraph of Article XII, Section 2 of the Constitution, he cannot

do so with respect to marine re-sources,” he added.

Malacanang insisted there was nothing wrong with giving China “some privileges” to fi sh in the country’s territorial wa-ters.

Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said the president viewed China as a friend.

“We have numerous trade re-lations and negotiations with China aimed at developing our nation. We benefi t from them, perhaps the president wants us to give back a little to them,” Panelo said in a radio interview.

He said the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea allowed the Philippines to grant another state privilege to fi sh in its EEZ.

Senate President Vicente Sot-to 3rd and Sen. Panfi lo Lacson believe that allowing the Chinese to fi sh in Philippine territory was not an impeachable off ence.

“I doubt it. But, if some people think so, then they are welcome to fi le a case (against the presi-dent),” Sotto said in a text mes-sage.

Lacson, meanwhile, said, “If such incursions would be in-terpreted as an impeachable of-fence, we may witness a rapid succession to the presidency of this country that the world has never seen before.”

“Moreover, there is no con-crete act on the part of PRRD (President Rodrigo Roa Duterte) that is violative of Art XII, Sec-tion 2, paragraph 2 of the 1987 Constitution, but simply a media statement, which I don’t think is suffi cient to impeach him as his critics are contemplating to do,” he added.

But Lacson on Twitter said the Duterte administration would be violating the Constitution if it would allow “friends,” such as Chinese, to fi sh in the Philip-pines’ EEZ.

“Somebody please help me fi nd the word ‘friends’ below: Art. XII. Sec 2 (para 2) — the State shall protect the nation’s marine wealth in its archipelagic waters, territorial sea and exclu-sive economic zone, and reserve its use and enjoyment exclusive-ly to Filipinos,” Lacson tweeted.

Velasco leads race for speaker’s position

By Glee JaleaManila Times

Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco is leading the race for the top post

in the House of Representatives after getting a good number of signatories from members of the chamber and an endorsement from the administration party.

Yesterday, Sen. Emmanuel Pacquiao, campaign manager of the ruling Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), announced that the party had picked Velasco as its offi cial bet in the incoming 18th Congress.

Velasco’s rivals from the same party are Pampanga Rep. Aurelio Gonzales, PDP-Laban’s interim national executive vice presi-dent; and Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez, PDP-Laban’s secretary general.

The 41-year-old lawmaker will be running head-to-head against Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez and Taguig Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano in the speaker-ship race.

Gonzales said Velasco already had the support of 200 House members ahead of the voting on July 22.

Of this number, 60 are from PDP-Laban, 39 from the Na-tionalist People’s Coalition, 12 from the Liberal Party, 15 from the Nacionalista Party, 15 from the National Unity Party, 45 from the Partylist Coalition Foundation Inc. (PCFI) and 25 from independent members.

In a statement, Velasco vowed to push the agenda of President Rodrigo Duterte once he secures the House post.

“The trust and confi dence of my partymates in my leader-ship to steer the next Congress and commitment to support us will inspire me to work harder in bringing about meaningful changes and the much-needed unity to the bigger chamber,” Velasco said.

“If elected speaker of the 18th Congress as representative of the single most dominant party in Congress and the political party of President Rodrigo Du-terte, I assure them that I will remain a consultative and a lis-tening leader, who welcomes his fellow lawmakers regardless of their political colours and affi li-ations,” he added.

Meanwhile, Romualdez said he was still a “serious and strong” contender, with over 178 lawmakers vouching for him in a pledge of commitment.

“I will be the last one to be presumptuous to say that I have more than the numbers to be-come speaker,” he told reporters at the sidelines of a caucus with 40 House members to strategise the passage of Duterte’s legisla-tive agenda. Despite PDP-La-ban’s endorsement of Velasco, other members of the biggest political bloc in the lower House remain unfazed by supposed “sanctions” if they vouch for someone else.

A doctor (centre) from Turkey demonstrates the technique of needle insertion in the spine during a spine surgery workshop at the anatomy room of the University of the Philippines in Manila, yesterday, as part of the Association of Southeast Nations’ Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery and Techniques (Asean MISST 2019) congress. The congress in collaboration with North American Spine Society, gather 58 mentoring experts from the US, Germany, Turkey, India, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan with a total of 21 countries engaged including the Asean countries.

Spine surgery workshop

Senate President Vicente Sotto 3rd.

Interior department still upbeat on federalism: Malaya

Despite the pronouncement of President Rodrigo Duterte that he is no longer inclined to push for federalism, the Department of the Interior and Lo-cal Government (DILG) yesterday said it was still upbeat about the idea, Manila Times reported.According to Jonathan Malaya, DILG undersecre-tary and spokesman, the remark of the presi-dent was “merely acknowledging the dearth of knowledge and understanding” of Filipinos on the proposed shift to a federal government.“The president was just being realistic. He un-derstands that federalism is a profound change,” Malaya said in a statement.“He merely underscored the need for more infor-mation dissemination so it will gain greater public support. But it does not mean that he’s abandon-

ing the advocacy,” he added. Malaya pointed out that Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano has commit-ted to assist Duterte “realise his dream of a federal Philippines and will work double time to inform the people of the merits of federalism once the new Congress opens its session next month.”In a speech on Tuesday, the president, who prom-ised during the 2016 national elections that he would push for federalism, publicly declared for the first time that he was no longer keen to have federalism but still expressed that he was still interested in amending the 1987 Constitution.Malaya said their studies have shown that more people understand the idea of federalism, adding that the DILG will re-launch its information cam-paign next month.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio.


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CHAIRMANAbdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing EditorK T Chacko

It’s time for US Congress to acton immigration

A new Gallup poll says 23% of Americans believe immigration is the most important problem facing the nation. That number’s been rising and is now at the highest level since Gallup began recording mentions of the issue in 1993.

It’s not hard to analyse the nation’s interest. A record number of people from Central America have been trying to cross the southern border into the United States to seek asylum. Detention centres are jammed. The immigration system is overwhelmed.

Americans are concerned. How about the Congress?The next two weeks bring an opportunity for the House

and Senate to agree on a $4.5bn emergency spending package to better care for people in detention. There were alarming news reports last week about a temporary holding facility in Clint, Texas, where some children slept on fl oors under thin blankets, hadn’t bathed and didn’t have toothbrushes.

The two-week deadline is both a refl ection of the congressional calendar – the July Fourth break approaches – and the nasty state of play involving President Donald Trump and Democrats amid the 2020 election campaign.

As part of Trump’s eff ort to crack down on illegal immigration, he vowed last week to begin the process of deporting “millions of illegal aliens,” a wildly exaggerated threat that would be impossible to execute. Trump’s backup plan, disclosed a few days later,

involved Immigration and Customs Enforcement targeting some 2,000 people whose cases had been heard and who had received deportation orders. Raids had been set to start on Sunday in about 10 cities, including Chicago, but on Saturday Trump said he’d delay for two weeks to give Congress a chance to work out tighter rules for managing the asylum process to stem the fl ow of migrants at the border.

A few words about Trump’s threatened raids: His uncaring tone and seeming lack of regard for the legal process set off panic in many communities. Trump also gave political opponents an opening to pounce on the government’s cruel treatment of children. Mayor Lori Lightfoot opposed the raids, saying Chicago “will always be a welcoming city.” She told Trump to “back off .” Ald. Rossana Rodriguez, 33rd, said: “We believe one immigrant taken from the community is too many.”

Comments like those muddy the waters. Cities cannot be in the business of defying federal immigration law. Legal detentions and deportations are necessary parts of the immigration system. Enforcement is a deterrent. What is in place, appropriately, in Chicago is a so-called sanctuary city policy, in which police stick to fi ghting crime and avoid getting involved in immigration enforcement. The Chicago Police Department does this because helping ICE would make immigrants less likely to report crimes or help as witnesses. That would make the city less safe.

Immigration raids aren’t a newly devised practice. And neither, by the way is aggressive use of deportation. According to Axios, the level of deportations during the early years of President Barack Obama’s administration was higher than it’s been under Trump. The diff erence is Trump used his bully pulpit to announce impending raids, which sowed panic. He should have allowed ICE some quiet space in which to do its job.

Now it’s time for Congress to act. Caring for people in detention costs a lot. Trump wants to tighten asylum rules, and there may be room to manoeuvre on that front: Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin reportedly have discussed reforms. - Tribune News Service

“We believe one immigrant taken from the community is too many”

27 - 06 -2019

By Stephen S RoachNew Haven

Blinded by a surging stock market and a 50-year low in the unemployment rate, few dare to challenge the wisdom of US

economic policy. Instant gratifi cation has compromised the rigour of objective and disciplined analysis. Big mistake. The toxic combination of ill-timed fi scal stimulus, aggressive imposition of tariff s, and unprecedented attacks on the Federal Reserve demands a far more critical assessment of Trumponomics.

Politicians and pundits can always be counted on to spin the policy debate. For US President Donald Trump and his supporters, the art of the spin has been taken to a new level. Apparently, it doesn’t matter that federal defi cits have been enlarged by an estimated $1.5 trillion over the next decade, or that government debt will reach a post-World War II record of 92% of GDP by 2029. The tax cuts driving these worrying trends are rationalized as what it takes to “Make America Great Again.”

Nor are tariff s viewed as taxes on consumers or impediments to global supply-chain effi ciencies; instead, they are portrayed as “weaponised” negotiating levers to force trading partners to change their treatment of the United States. And attacks on the Fed’s independence are seen not as threats to the central bank’s dual mandate to maximise employment and ensure price stability, but rather as the president’s exercise of his prerogative to use the bully pulpit as he – and he alone – sees fi t.

There are three basic fl aws with Trump’s approach to economic policy. First, there is the disconnect between

intent and impact. The political spin maintains that large corporate tax cuts boost US competitiveness. But that doesn’t mean defi cits and debt don’t matter. Notwithstanding the hollow promises of supply-side economics, revenue-neutral fi scal initiatives that shifted the tax burden from one segment of the economy to another would have come much closer to real reform than the reduction of the overall revenue trajectory has. Moreover, the enactment of fi scal stimulus in late 2017, when the unemployment rate was then at a cyclical low of 4.1% (headed toward the current 3.6%), added froth to markets and the economy when it was least needed and foreclosed the option of additional stimulus should growth falter.

Similarly, Trump’s tariff s fl y in the face of one of the 20th century’s greatest policy blunders – the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which sparked a 60% plunge in global trade by 1932. With foreign trade currently accounting for 28% of GDP, versus 11% in 1929, the US, as a debtor country today, is far more vulnerable to trade-related disruptions than it was as a net creditor back then.

Ignoring the cascading stream of direct and retaliatory taxes on consumers and businesses that stem from a tariff war, Trump extols the virtues of tariff s as “a beautiful thing.” That is painfully reminiscent of the 1928 Republican Party platform, which couched tariff s as “a fundamental and essential principle of the economic life of this nation … and essential for the continued prosperity of the country.” Trump ignores the lessons of the 1930s at great peril.

The same can be said of Trump’s recent Fed bashing. The political independence of central banking is widely regarded

as the singular breakthrough needed to achieve price stability following the Great Infl ation of the 1970s. In the US, passage of the so-called Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1978 gave then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker the political cover to squeeze double-digit infl ation out of the system through a wrenching monetary tightening. Had Volcker lacked the freedom to act, he would have been constrained by elected leaders’ political calculus – precisely what Trump is doing in trying to dictate policy to current Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

The second critical fl aw in Trump’s economic-policy package is its failure to appreciate the links between budget defi cits, tariff s, and monetary policy. As the late Martin Feldstein long stressed, to the extent that budget defi cits put downward pressure on already depressed domestic saving, larger trade defi cits become the means to fi ll the void with surplus foreign saving. Denial of these linkages conveniently allows the US to blame China for self-infl icted trade defi cits.

But with tariff s likely to divert trade and supply chains from low-cost Chinese producers to higher-cost alternatives, US consumers will be hit with the functional equivalent of tax hikes, raising the risk of higher infl ation. The latter possibility, though seemingly remote today, could have important consequences for US monetary policy – provided, of course, the Fed has the political independence to act.

Finally, there are always the lags to keep in mind in assessing the impact of policy. While low interest rates temper short-term pressures on debt-service costs as budget defi cits rise, there is no guarantee that such a trend will persist over the longer term, especially with the already-elevated federal debt overhang

projected to increase by about 14 percentage points of GDP over the next ten years. Similarly, the disruptive eff ects of tariff s and shifts in monetary policy take about 12-18 months to be fully evident. So, rather than bask in today’s fi nancial-market euphoria, politicians and investors should be thinking more about the state of the economy in late 2020 – a timeframe that happens to coincide with the upcoming presidential election cycle – in assessing how current policies are likely to play out.

There is nothing remarkable about a US president’s penchant for political spin. What is glaringly diff erent this time is the lack of any pushback from those who know better. The National Economic Council, established in the early 1990s as an “honest broker” in the executive branch to convene and coordinate debate on key policy issues, is now basically dysfunctional. The NEC’s current head, Larry Kudlow, a long-standing advocate of free trade, is squirming to defend Trump’s tariff s and Fed bashing. The Republican Party, long a champion of trade liberalisation, is equally complicit.

Trump’s vindictive bluster has steamrolled economic-policy deliberations – ignoring the lessons of history, rejecting the analytics of modern economics, and undermining the institutional integrity of the policymaking process. Policy blunders of epic proportion have become the rule, not the exception. It won’t be nearly as easy to spin the looming consequences. - Project Syndicate

Stephen S Roach, a faculty member at Yale University and former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, is the author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China.

A critical assessmentof Trumponomics

For US President Donald Trump and his supporters, the art of the spin has been taken to a new level.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Thursday, June 27, 2019 23

How to save the InternetBy Shamel AzmehManchester

In a scene in the US sitcom Silicon Valley, digital startups compete for funding by presenting their ideas. In each presentation,

company founders repeat the Silicon Valley mantra of “making the world a better place.” One founder pledges to make the world a better place through “software-defi ned data centres for cloud computing,” and another via “scalable, fault-tolerant distributed databases with asset transactions.”

Although the idea of the Internet “making the world a better place” is often ridiculed today, it’s easy to forget that this decade began amid optimism that new technologies would connect people, broaden access to information, and generate abundant new economic opportunities.

Coming from Syria, I experienced some of these potential benefi ts. In a country with limited space for debate, the Internet provided citizens with a forum to learn and discuss. And, following the 2011 Arab Spring protests, it played an important role in documenting events and sharing information. As millions of Syrians subsequently fl ed the country, the Internet became the only means of connecting them. A Syrian comedian joked that “Syrian society exists only on Facebook,” illustrating how the Internet became the only tool for people scattered around the world to maintain a sense of solidarity.

Today, however, governments around the world are considering policies that would undermine the Internet’s openness and global reach. And they have many tools at their disposal. The Chinese authorities, for example, use a range of measures often collectively referred to as the “Great Firewall of China.” Other countries,

such as Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, India, Turkey, and Nigeria, have considered – and some have implemented – similar measures in recent years. Russia’s “sovereign Internet law” is just one recent example of this trend.

These policies take diff erent forms. Some states are implementing “data localisation” policies, which require data to be hosted in a particular jurisdiction. Other states are adopting tools and regulations that provide them with greater control over diff erent aspects of the Internet. A recent debate triggered by the European Union’s new copyright directive prompted the establishment of a “Save Your Internet” movement to lobby against some of its more controversial provisions. This growing divergence of policies and regulatory frameworks threatens to create an increasingly balkanised digital world.

While this threat is real, it would be wrong to dismiss every policy that interferes with the Internet as an authoritarian attempt to undermine democracy. The increase in Internet policies is also a response to two other major changes in recent years.

First, the Internet’s economic importance has grown exponentially, driven by a higher number of users and the growing adoption of digital tools. E-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital payments, Internet infrastructure, and the number and range of connected devices have all grown rapidly in recent years. These trends are likely to continue with the expansion of technologies such as artifi cial intelligence (AI) and the emergence of the Internet of Things. This means that a growing share of economic transactions will either take place or be mediated via the Internet, placing the network at the heart of our economies.

Second, the Internet is no longer an open arena where startups compete

to introduce ideas and create new businesses. Companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Alibaba have become huge, market-dominant businesses, and are globalising their activities by expanding – and acquiring fi rms – worldwide.

As Shoshana Zuboff argues in her new book, The Age of Surveillance

Capitalism, these platforms are building a technological and organisational architecture that aims to lock in far-reaching control over the digital economy.

As this economy continues to expand, the global tech giants’ dominance threatens to aggravate existing economic and technological

inequalities. An example is the extraction of value by digital platforms through their intermediary roles, whether in transportation, accommodation, retail, or media. More generally, the technology gap – a key factor driving global inequality – could widen as digital giants in advanced economies move further

into new areas such as AI and seek to occupy an infrastructural position in and across economies. The very low level of tax revenues that digital fi rms often generate in the countries where they operate further exacerbates the problem.

Many governments will therefore come under increasing pressure to protect national economies, including through policies that disrupt the global nature of the Internet. Far from being an exception, China’s success in creating homegrown digital fi rms such as Alibaba and Baidu will be seen by other countries as a model to follow. Authoritarian governments will fi nd it easier to justify measures that allow them greater control over the Internet.

So far, eff orts to fi ght Internet fragmentation have focused on pushing for international trade rules that would limit governments’ ability to intervene in the digital economy. But some emerging and developing countries rightly fear that such measures will entrench the technology gap by making digital giants even more powerful. And even if such rules are enacted, it is not clear how eff ective they will be in limiting the trend of digital fragmentation.

Rather than simply criticising every interventionist Internet policy, therefore, those wishing to save the Internet should focus on countering the underlying trends that are prompting many of these measures (or that could be used as justifi cations for them). Saving the global Internet requires limiting the growing concentration of power in the digital economy and preventing the Internet from becoming another engine of inequality. – Project Syndicate

Shamel Azmeh is Lecturer in Technology, Labour, and Global Production at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester.

Young women smokers at much higher risk of deadly heart attack

Student debt a ‘life sentence’ for millions of Americans

Live issues

By Linda CarrollReuters Health

While smoking boosts the likelihood of heart attack in both men and women of all ages, it

has a much more powerful eff ect in younger women, especially those under 50, a new study suggests.

For women smokers ages 18 to 49, the risk of a deadly type of heart attack was more than 13 times higher than it was for non-smoking counterparts, researchers reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

“This study sheds new light on the risk impact that smoking has in provoking major heart attacks, especially in younger and female smokers,” said coauthor Dr Ever Grech, an interventional cardiologist at the South Yorkshire Cardiothoracic Centre at the Northern General Hospital in Sheffi eld, UK. “I hope (the study) will correct the perception by young smokers that heart attack risks only arise much later in life.”

There was the hint of some good news in the new study. When women quit smoking, their risk of a major heart attack dropped back to that of non-smokers.

“This reversibility was a surprise, which I regard as a ‘silver lining’ within the dark cloud of smoking outcomes,” Grech said in an e-mail. “This will undoubtedly incentivise those smokers who may have genuine concerns regarding their longer term health and realise the massive benefi ts of abstaining.”

Grech and his colleagues studied fi ve years of data on patients who came to their hospital with a so-called ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), which results from a complete blockage of a major coronary artery.

Grech and his colleagues compared the 3,343 STEMI patients with data on the entire population served by the South Yorkshire Cardiothoracic Centre using 3 years of information gathered on residents aged 18 or older by the Integrated Household Survey from the United Kingdom Offi ce for National Statistics.

After analysing all the data, the researchers determined that smoking was associated with a signifi cantly greater increase in the STEMI risk for women than men. Compared to their nonsmoking counterparts, female smokers were 6.62 times more likely to have a major heart attack, while male smokers were 4.40 times more likely to have a major heart attack.

Younger women smokers, those under age 50, saw the highest increase in risk. They were 13.22 times more likely to experience a major heart attack compared to their nonsmoking counterparts. Male smokers in the same age group were 8.6 times more likely to experience a STEMI compared to nonsmoking counterparts.

The researchers also found the risk of a STEMI in women who had quit smoking for at least a month dropped back to that of nonsmokers. The caveat to that fi nding is that 38% of ex-smokers did not have information in their records detailing the date they quit.

Grech suspects the reason for the increased risk of STEMI in younger

women is tied to the impact of smoking on the hormone oestrogen. “What is clear is that the protective eff ects of oestrogen in young female smokers are overridden by the powerful impact of cigarette smoking,” he said.

The researchers focused on STEMIs because this is the type of heart attack most likely to kill you, said Dr Omar Ali, director of the cardiac catheterisation lab at the Detroit Medical Centre’s Heart Hospital.

“This is a very interesting study,” Ali said. “They found that not only was smoking associated with an increased risk of this type of heart attack, but also that the increase in risk was much higher in women. This was not a surprise to me. But it sheds new light on the relationship between women and heart disease.”

“A lot of people are showing interest in specialising in heart disease in women and this study certainly supports that,” Ali said. “We need to learn more about how heart disease aff ects women and how the risk factors increase or decrease.”

AFPLos Angeles

Haley Walters is fi ve years away from earning her law degree.

If everything goes according to plan, she will be under a mountain of $100,000 in student debt by the time she enters the work force.

Like millions of Americans, Walters is paying a steep price for an education that will likely weigh her down fi nancially for much of her adult life.

“I think the student debt crisis is truly a life sentence,” the 19-year-old Californian said.

With 45mn borrowers owing some $1.6tn, the debt burden of American college graduates has exploded in recent years.

It has emerged as a key issue in the 2020 presidential campaign, with candidate Bernie Sanders unveiling an ambitious plan Monday to erase all student loan debt.

“Somebody who graduates from a public university this year is expected to have over $35,000 in student loan debt on average,” said Cody Hounanian, programme director of Student Debt Crisis, a California non-profi t that assists students and fi ghts for reforms.

According to offi cial statistics, 71% of US students are burdened by such debt, with minorities the hardest hit.

“Black women particularly are the most impacted group with the highest student debt total per graduate,” Hounanian said.

Despite scholarships and fi nancial aid available to many, the cost of higher education is such that the majority of students are unable to repay their loans on schedule.

“When borrowers leave school, they’re in a programme that’s supposed to take 10 years but more and more are enrolling in federal programmes that are actually 20 or 25 years in length,” Hounanian said.

In the long term, the loan balance for such people increases, interest accrues, and the debt burden just keeps going upwards, he added.

Hounanian spoke of his own experience as an example.

“I had $30,000 in student loan debt, I pay over $150 a month, and that’s in one of these aff ordable repayment programmes,” he said.”By doing that, my loan balance is actually increasing. I’m not covering even the entire interest that’s accrued.”

“I’m paying every month,” he added, “just to be more in debt.”

Several experts interviewed said it’s not unusual to have two generations in

one family burdened with student debt.That’s the case for Walters, who just

graduated with a two-year degree in political science from Pasadena City College, near Los Angeles.

While she managed to go through that school without accumulating debt, come autumn she will be entering the prestigious — and much more expensive — University of California Berkeley, with a law degree the ultimate goal.

Despite being awarded scholarships, Walters said she will still have to take out loans to pay for nearly $20,000 in annual fees.

“That is basically going to turn into loan after loan after loan each with individual interest rates and individual payments,” Walters sighed.

She said she grew up listening to her mother, 58, bemoan the student debt that still haunts her.

“I would hear my mom talk about how it was basically crippling our fi nances,” she recalled.

“You know, we couldn’t go on vacation, sometimes I didn’t get school supplies for the new school year, sometimes we got fewer birthday presents.”

Walters said she hopes student debt will be a key issue in the 2020 White House race. For some candidates, it is already front and centre.

Sanders’s “revolutionary” bill aims to erase all student loan debt and make public colleges tuition-free — and he wants the fi nancial industry to help pay for it.

“The American people bailed out Wall Street,” Sanders said, referring to lenders deemed “too big to fail” during the late 2000s recession.

“Now it is time for Wall Street to come to the aid of the middle class.”

Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren also has a debt cancellation and free public college plan.

“My dad grew up in an extremely poor family in southern California,” said Walters. “The only reason he went to university was because it was free.”

Tuition, however, is not the only fi nancial burden of students.

In California, for example, housing and living expenses represent more than half of the $35,000 needed annually on average for public university.

Hounanian said it was crucial to address those issues to ensure students don’t end up saddled with heavy debt before starting their professional lives.

“The system isn’t working for students,” he said. “It’s working for profi teers, for big companies and for those who are making money off of students and borrowers.”

Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are expanding.

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To commemorate the sec-ond anniversary of the blockade of Qatar, Qatar

Museums has installed an origi-nal part of the Berlin Wall at Qa-tar National Convention Centre (QNCC) through an ongoing cultural collaboration with Qatar Foundation (QF).

The piece of art – gifted to Qatar in 2017 during the Qatar-Germany Year of Culture cel-ebrations – was unveiled yester-day at QNCC, a QF member, at a ceremony attended by Hans-Udo Muzel, German ambassador to Qatar; Ahmad Musa al-Nam-la, acting CEO at QM; Hisham E Nourin, executive director of Strategy, Administration and Projects at the Community De-velopment president’s offi ce, QF; and Abdulrahman al-Ishaq, head of Public Art at QM.

Once forming part of the wall that divided East and West Ger-many for three decades, this gift is highly symbolic, being made at

a time when a blockade has been illegally and unjustly imposed on Qatar.

“This remarkable object is both an authentic piece of his-tory and a work of art, to show-case the strong relationship be-tween the two nations, the State of Qatar and the Federal Repub-lic of Germany, and the ongoing success of the cultural exchange programme of QM,” al-Namla said.

“In recognition of the power of art to unite people, today we unveil this second segment of the wall, to be added to our Pub-lic Art programme, which brings works of art outside the walls of museums and art galleries, so that QM can encourage dialogue and creativity among everyone,” he added.

Speaking at the ceremony,

Nourin said: “This segment of the Berlin Wall is a perfect com-plement to the 150 works that comprise QF’s unique collection of art, and those that have kindly been loaned to us by QM. All of these are on public view within Education City, refl ecting the central role that art holds in our community development ef-forts.”

“Each of the artworks dis-played across Education City is designed to encourage critical thinking, be a catalyst for dis-covery and spark the imagina-tion and creativity of those who view them,” Nourin noted.

“They are intended to foster cross-cultural understanding and perspective, and they are a platform for social engagement and interaction. These values are intrinsic to the mission and

ethos of QF, which is why we place such importance on hav-ing a public art programme that speaks to all members of Qatar’s community.”

The two panels unveiled at QNCC include an artwork by Thierry Noir, a French artist who is claimed to be the fi rst street artist to have ever painted the Berlin Wall in 1984. West Ber-lin’s side of the wall gradually fi lled with murals detailing the

German experience, a stark con-trast to the East, where citizens were forbidden from nearing the wall. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, graffi ti became a way in which artists from all around the world would express how they felt about the division of citi-zens.

The displayed panels meas-ure just over 2m wide, over 3.5m high, and just over 1m thick each. The concrete is reinforced

with steel bars and covered in spray painted graffi ti that con-veys messages of hope, freedom and change. The Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961 to sepa-rate West Berlin and East Berlin during the Cold War, ultimately creating two separate sides — the democratic West and the communist East. The concrete wall physically and ideologically divided Berlin, standing as a symbol of oppression for almost

three decades. The border was opened on November 9, allow-ing free movement for German citizens from East to West Berlin.

The wall, which was both a physical barrier and an ideologi-cal divide, was fi nally torn down in 1989. It became the symbolic end of the Cold War, uniting Germany for the fi rst time since 1945. The Berlin Wall section is available for public viewing at QNCC, in QF’s Education City.


QATAR

QNCC hosts original piece of Berlin Wall

Initiative to commemorate second anniversary of the blockade of Qatar

(From left) Hisham E Nourin, Hans-Udo Muzel and Ahmad Musa al-Namla at the unveiling of the original part of the Berlin Wall yesterday at QNCC. PICTURE: Shaji Kayamkulam

Qatar takes part in Paris meeting of global coalition to defeat ISISQNAParis

Qatar has taken part in the meeting of Political Directors of the Global

Coalition to Defeat ISIS, which was held at the French Foreign Ministry headquarters in Par-is. The Qatari delegation was chaired by HE Special Envoy of the Minister of Foreign Aff airs for Counterterrorism and Me-

diation in Confl ict Resolution ambassador Dr Mutlaq bin Ma-jed al-Qahtani.

In his speech, ambassador al-Qahtani stressed the importance of confl ict prevention and the need to use means of diplomatic

prevention and good offi ces and mediation in dealing with con-fl icts, which he considers to be one of the most serious and root causes of terrorism and extrem-ism.

He noted the existence of

terror groups in areas of wars, confl icts and political tensions, especially in Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Afghanistan.

Ambassador al-Qahtani stressed that the absence of a peaceful solution to the current

situation in Sudan would lead to the deterioration of the situation which in turn brings in terrorism and extremism to the country.

He referred in this context to the strenuous eff orts exerted by Qatar to establish peace in Su-

dan in general, and the Darfur region in particular. Ambassa-dor al-Qahtani also highlighted the question of legal account-ability for ISIS crimes and the importance of bringing those atrocities to justice.

Cabinet okays setting up of panel to promote national products

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