Motorists are urged to park in designated spaces only

In brief

GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978

MONDAY Vol. XXXIX No. 10909

August 13, 2018Dhul-Hijja 2, 1439 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

S Korea sees furtherboost in Qatar ties

BUSINESS | Page 1 SPORT | Page 1

Seven-star Bounedjah routs sorry Al Arabi

QATAR | Statistics

90% rise in buildingpermits issued in JulyMunicipalities in Qatar issued a total of 729 building permits in July 2018, a rise of 90% over June, figures published by the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics showed. The monthly statistics showed 402 building completion certificates were registered in the same month, a general rise of 55% over the previous month. Al Wakrah came at the top of the municipalities where 202 permits for new buildings were issued followed by Rayyan municipality with 172 permits, Doha municipality (121) and Al Da’ayen (107). Analysis of the data showed that villas topped the list with 191 permits.

AMERICA | Space

Nasa launches probe inmission to ‘touch Sun’Nasa yesterday blasted off its first-ever spaceship to explore the Sun, the $1.5bn Parker Solar Probe, on a strategic mission to protect the Earth by unveiling the mysteries of dangerous solar storms. The unmanned spacecraft’s mission is to get closer than any human-made object ever to the centre of our solar system, plunging into the Sun’s atmosphere. Page 8

BRITAIN | Obituary

Nobel-winning writerNaipaul dies aged 85British author V S Naipaul, a famously outspoken Nobel laureate who wrote on the traumas of post-colonial change, has died at the age of 85. Naipaul, who was born in Trinidad and the son of an Indian civil servant, was best known for works including A House for Mr Biswas and his Man Booker Prize-winning In A Free State. Page 12

SPORT | Asian Games

Qatari teams startarriving in IndonesiaQatari teams start arriving in Indonesia to take part in the 18th Asian Games, which will take place from August 17 to September 2. Qatar participates this year with a large delegation of 478 participants from administrators, technicians, off icial delegation, media and 222 athletes. The athletes will take part in 30 events.

Sport Pages 1, 2

Tweet in Arabic believed to be behind Canada-Saudi rowReutersOttawa/Riyadh/Dubai

For years, Canadian pressure on human rights in Saudi Arabia had elicited no more

than a standard rejection. But all that changed last week, when a Canadian complaint was trans-lated into Arabic and set off a diplomatic row.

When Riyadh responded to a call from Canadian Foreign Min-ister Chrystia Freeland to release civil society activists with an abrupt severing of diplomatic and trade ties, Canadian offi cials were left scrambling to under-stand what had happened.

What Ottawa did not antici-pate was that in the eyes of the Saudis they had crossed a red line.

On August 2, Freeland tweeted https://twitter.com/cafreeland/status/1025030172624515072 in English and French, calling for the release of two jailed Saudi hu-man rights activists. The follow-ing day, Canada’s foreign aff airs department sent another tweet https://twitter.com/CanadaFP/status/1025383326960549889, urging Saudi Arabia to “imme-diately release” those and other activists.

That was translated https://twitter.com/CanEmbSA/sta-tus/1026049114088333313 into

Arabic by its embassy in Riyadh and sent out on August 5 to its approximately 12,000 followers.

The reaction from Saudi Ara-bia was swift. Hours after the Ar-abic tweet, the Saudi government recalled its ambassador, barred Canada’s envoy from returning and placed a ban on new trade.

Two Gulf sources said it was the tweet from the embassy that upset Saudi offi cials the most.

“Matters were being handled through usual channels but the tweet was a break with diplo-matic norms and protocol,” said one of the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The sources did not clarify ex-

actly how the tweet broke with diplomacy, but regional experts said it was the step of sending it to a domestic audience that would have angered Saudi offi -cials.

“The Saudi retaliation took some time to allow for political talks in closed doors,” Salman al-Ansari, founder of the Wash-ington-based saudi American Public Relation Affairs Com-mittee, said.

“They thought the Canadians would take steps to back off , but all of a sudden they tweeted it in Arabic. This was a very provoca-tive action by the Canadians to try to embarrass the Saudis in front of their people. The Saudis

did not take this lightly at all.”Saudi Foreign Minister Adel

al-Jubeir raised the issue of the Arabic tweet in a call with Free-land on Tuesday, and complained about interference, a person fa-miliar with the matter who de-clined to be named, said.

Canadian offi cials say there was nothing remarkable about the Arabic tweet, which merely repeated Ottawa’s stated position in a common practice for delega-tions abroad.

Canada has raised the issue of civil society activist deten-tions before. As recently as May, Canada’s Riyadh embassy tweeted in English its concern about activist arrests and said

it was “crucial that the rule of law” be respected, with no pub-lic Saudi response.

The outsized reaction to the tweet underscores how the country is taking a much harsher stance against what it perceives as Western interference in its internal aff airs on issues like hu-man rights, perhaps emboldened by Washington’s willingness un-der Donald Trump to de-empha-sise rights issues when it comes to its allies.

Riyadh and Washington have been enjoying an exceptionally close relationship - tense dur-ing the administration of former US President Barack Obama - as both Saudi Crown Prince Mo-

hamed bin Salman and Trump share similar concerns about Iran. By contrast, Trump and Trudeau locked horns during the G7 summit in June in an unusu-ally public manner.

The US State Department this week urged the two sides to use diplomacy to resolve the dis-pute.

“Canada is collateral damage,” said Thomas Juneau, an assistant professor and Middle East ex-pert at the University of Ottawa. “This fundamentally is not about Canada. This is about Saudi Ara-bia wanting to send a broader message to its neighbours, to other democracies.”

To Page20

Motorists areurged to parkin designatedspaces onlyThere should be no excuse for

parking a vehicle in an undes-ignated area as the country now

has a number of underground and multi-storey parking facilities, a sen-ior offi cial of the General Directorate of Traffi c has said.

This was highlighted yesterday dur-ing a press conference at the Traffi c De-partment headquarters to discuss the issues of obstructing traffi c, unauthor-ised parking and wrong overtaking, which will be the main focus areas for this week as part of the ongoing aware-ness campaign, ‘Accident-free Sum-mer’. The campaign has now entered its sixth week.

Colonel Mohamed Radhi al-Hajri, director of the Awareness and Infor-mation Department at the General Directorate of Traffi c, said such park-ing violations could not be justifi ed on the pretext of a shortage of parking lots. This is because the need for park-ing lots has already been addressed in most areas with high traffi c density, he noted.

However, he said, the problem is that some motorists would not like to walk even for a short distance between their destination and the nearest available parking lot. He explained that it is a matter of personal attitude and incon-siderate conduct, which shows to what degree the person concerned respected himself and others.

The offi cial stressed that driving is an art and a matter of considerate con-duct, and the motorist - regardless of violations and penalties - should ask himself whether his conduct on the road is appropriate or not.

Besides, the Traffi c Department reiterated that the issuance of traffi c violations against motorists who break the traffi c law was not aimed at mak-ing material gains or just penalising people. It is mainly aimed at ensuring

public safety through curbing traffi c violations.

Captain Ali Ahmed al-Aswad, head of the Madinat Khalifa Traffi c Investi-gation Department, spoke about wrong overtaking and noted that Article 64 of Traffi c Law No 19 for 2007 dealt with this off ence.

He reiterated that it is not allowed to overtake vehicles except from the left. Also, the law stipulates that vehicles be-longing to the police, Internal Security Force, Civil Defence, ambulances and rescue vehicles should not be overtaken when such vehicles are travelling on an emergency mission and using alarm and hazard lights. Further, motorists should not overtake when visibility is poor.

It was also pointed out that motor-ists should not drive a vehicle too slow-ly at a speed inconsistent with condi-tions of the road, vehicle and its load, and weather, in such a way as to impede the normal movement of other vehi-cles, unless there is a reasonable justi-fi cation. This stipulation is laid down in Article 52 of the law.

Meanwhile, Article 81 stipulates that “no person responsible for keeping a vehicle may keep such a vehicle parked on any road in a way that is likely to cause obstruction of traffi c or expose road users to risk”. If such a person does not remove the vehicle within a rea-sonable period of time, the licensing authority may remove the vehicle, with the owner undertaking to pay the cost of removal.

Vehicles should be removed from the site in the event of minor accidents, in order to prevent the obstruction of traffi c and endangering the safety of other road users, it was observed at the briefi ng.

Captain al-Aswad said the fi ne for wrong overtaking is QR1,000, while overtaking on a road with a continuous white line entails a fi ne of QR500.

Qatar’s non-oil exports hitQR11.5bn in H1 of 2018

Qatar’s non-oil exports have reached QR11.5bn in the fi rst half of 2018, a 33.7% year-on-

year growth over QR8.6bn recorded in 2017, according to fi gures from Qatar Chamber’s latest report.

The following is the breakdown of non-oil exports in the fi rst six months of the year: January (QR2.11bn), Feb-ruary (QR2.16bn), March (QR1.35bn), April (QR2.27bn), May (QR1.90bn), and June (QR1.65bn).

Non-oil exports in June 2018 reached QR1.65bn, a 108% increase compared to the QR794mn reported in June 2017, said the report, which was based on 2,599 certifi cates of origin is-sued in June this year by Qatar Cham-ber’s Research & Studies Department and Member Aff airs Department.

According to the report, Oman was Qatar’s top non-oil exports destina-tion in June, accounting for QR581.2mn or 35.1% of the total exports for the month. Trailing behind Oman is Hol-land with QR236.6mn or 14.3%, fol-lowed by Turkey (QR155.8mn or 9.4%), Germany (QR99.3mn, 6%), and Hong Kong (QR88mn, 5.3%). Other succeed-ing countries include Singapore, the US, China, India, and Indonesia.

The statistics for June showed that

Qatar’s exports reached 56 destina-tions, including 10 Arab and GCC countries; 12 European countries, in-cluding Turkey; 14 Asian countries, excluding Arab countries; 18 African countries, excluding Arab countries; and two countries in North and South America.

The report said about 35.5% of non-oil exports worth QR587.3mn went to the GCC. European countries, includ-ing Turkey imported QR500mn worth of goods or 30.2% of the total non-oil exports.

Asian countries imported QR406.5mn worth of goods or 24.6% of the total value, while Arab countries, excluding GCC countries received QR75mn or 4.5%. Other importers in-cluded North America, African coun-tries, excluding Arab countries, and South America.

Qatar Chamber director general Saleh bin Hamad al-Sharqi said after one year of the unjust siege imposed on Qatar, the country’s monthly data and statistics on exports indicated growth, confi rming that Qatar’s exports were not aff ected by the blockade.

Al-Sharqi said the growing list of markets for Qatar’s non-oil exports in terms of the number and volume of imports “is another proof of the qual-ity of the products that constitute the strength of these exports.”

He thanked all of Qatar’s trading partners and the Qatari private sector companies, which, he said, “are the main driver in achieving this success and development in the value, size, and quality of these exports.”

Al-Sharqi said the growth of Qatar’s non-oil exports in H1 2018 confi rms that the Qatari private sector “has achieved growth in exports during the siege com-pared to the pre-siege period.”

Protesters march against the far-right’s Unite the Right rally yesterday in Washington, DC on the one-year anniversary of deadly violence at a similar protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. Last year’s protests in Charlottesville left one person dead and dozens injured. Page 8

US protest against racism

‘Wrong overtaking’ violations drop

The number of violations pertaining to wrong overtaking by vehicles dropped from 35,411 cases in the second half of 2017 to 17,931 in the first six months of this year, the General Directorate of Traff ic said yesterday.However, violations for impeding traff ic flow increased in the same

period – from 5,374 in the July-December 2017 period to 6,850 in the first half of 2018.The directorate also informed that between August 4 and 10, 679 violations were registered for not wearing seatbelts, 344 for mobile phone use while driving and 172 for jumping signals.

Qatar Chamber director general Saleh bin Hamad al-Sharqi.

QATAR

Gulf Times Monday, August 13, 20182

Mitsubishi models recalled

Ministry recalls Volvo truck tractor head

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC), in collaboration with Qatar

Automobiles Company, has an-nounced the recall of Mitsubi-shi ASX, Outlander and Lancer models of 2015-2016 over a po-tential defect in an electrical power control relay.

The MEC said the recall cam-paign comes within the frame-work of its ongoing eff orts to protect consumers and ensure that automobile dealers follow up on vehicles’ defects and re-pair them.

The MEC has urged all cus-tomers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud De-partment through the following channels: Call centre: 16001, e-mail: [email protected], Twit-ter: @MEC_Qatar, Instagram: MEC_Qatar, MEC mobile app for Android and IOS: MEC_Qatar

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC), in collaboration with Do-

masco (Doha Marketing Serv-ices Company), has announced the recall of Volvo Truck FH 4X2 tractor head 2018 model because the fl ange nuts are not correctly installed in the body.

The MEC said the recall cam-paign comes within the frame-work of its ongoing eff orts to protect consumers and ensure that automobile dealers follow up on vehicles’ defects and re-pair them.

The MEC said that it will co-ordinate with the dealer to fol-low up on the maintenance and repair works and will commu-nicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out.

The MEC has urged all cus-tomers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud De-partment through the following channels: Call centre: 16001, e-mail: [email protected], Twit-ter: @MEC_Qatar, Instagram: MEC_Qatar, MEC mobile app for Android and IOS: MEC_Qatar

Al Jazeera continues to call for immediate release of Mahmoud Hussein

Al Jazeera Media Network has reiterated its call for the immediate release

of Al Jazeera journalist Mah-moud Hussein, who has now undergone 600 days in deten-tion without trial or any offi cial charge in Egypt despite his com-pletion of the statutory maxi-mum period of detention per-mitted in a pre-trial arrest.

In a statement yesterday, the

network said the detention has been condemned across the globe by rights groups and inter-national institutions, including the United Nations, who contin-ue to call for Mahmoud’s release.

Mahmoud’s detention has been continuously renewed by the Egyptian authorities since his arrest in December 2016 upon ar-rival in Cairo on a holiday with his family, the statement notes.

Reiterating its condemnation of Mahmoud’s arrest, the net-work said: “Al Jazeera is grateful to all international rights groups and media freedom organisations that continue in their eff orts for the release of Mahmoud.

The network calls on all those concerned with media freedom to take an active part in de-nouncing Mahmoud’s continu-ous detention on social media

(#freemahmoudhussein) and to put pressure on the Egyptian authorities to release Mahmoud Hussein and end his ordeal.”

The statement further notes that Al Jazeera’s international campaign, ‘Demand Press Free-dom’ (#demandpressfreedom), highlighting media freedom for news institutions and for jour-nalists such as Mahmoud, has had high engagement from so-

cial media across the world.Al Jazeera’s journalists and

correspondents have been a tar-get of the Egyptian authorities since 2013.

Many of them have faced trumped up charges, imprison-ment, ill treatment and denial of the benefi t of fair trial, besides being sentenced in absentia to im-prisonment and the death penalty.

“Al Jazeera reaffi rms contin-

ued support for all its journalists and employees and its commit-ment to its mission and adher-ence to its Code of Ethics to re-port news and developments in Egypt and elsewhere objectively and professionally.

Al Jazeera also condemns the intimidation and arrest of any journalist as a result of carrying out their professional work,” the network added.

Shop penalisedfor selling fakesports clothingThe Ministry of Economy

and Commerce (MEC) has penalised a shop in

Al Rayyan Al Jadeed over the display and sale of counterfeit sports clothing bearing interna-tional trademarks.

This constituted a violation of Article 6 of Law No 8 of 2008 on consumer protection and anti-commercial fraud, the MEC said in a press statement yesterday.

Article 6 prohibits the sale, display, promotion or advertis-ing of any spoiled or fraudulent goods. An item is considered spoiled or fraudulent if it does not conform to the prescribed standards, is unusable or has ex-pired.

The violation was detected af-ter the ministry launched a sur-prise inspection campaign tar-geting a number of retails outlets on Al Shafi Street, Al Rayyan Al Jadeed, in a bid to monitor the compliance of suppliers with their obligations under Law No 8 of 2008 on consumer protection.

The inspection campaign comes within the framework of the MEC’s eff orts to monitor markets and commercial activi-ties across Qatar to uncover vio-lations, counterfeit and fraudu-lent products, and goods that do not conform to standards, the statement notes.

Violations of Law No 8 of 2008 on consumer protection could result in administrative closure and fi nancial penalties ranging from QR3,000 to QR1mn.

The ministry has stressed that it will not tolerate any violations of the consumer protection law

and its regulation, and will inten-sify its inspection campaigns to crack down on such practices. It will refer those who violate laws and ministerial decrees to the competent authorities, who will, in turn, take appropriate action against the perpetrators in order to protect consumer rights.

In this regard, the MEC has

urged all consumers to report violations or submit complaints and suggestions through the call centre: 16001, e-mail: [email protected], Twitter: MEC_QA-TAR, Instagram MEC_QATAR and the applications of the min-istry on smartphones available on iPhone and Android devices: MEC_QATAR

An MEC inspector at work.

Ooredoo is offi cially ‘Qatar’s Fastest Mobile Network’ for H1 2018: Ookla

Ooredoo has been named ‘Qatar’s Fastest Mobile Network’ for having the

country’s fastest mobile Inter-net speeds for the fi rst half of 2018, according to the Ookla Speedtest Global Index.

The Ookla Speedtest Global Index collects data from hun-dreds of millions of monthly tests taken around the world. In Qatar, more than 68,000 in-country tests were made dur-ing Q1-Q2 2018, confi rming the fastest mobile network.

Ooredoo CEO Waleed al-Sayed said, “Ooredoo’s lead-ing ranking in mobile Internet

speed is a testament to our sup-port for Qatar’s far-reaching government-led visions and our investment in the hyper-connectivity that our custom-ers need for the digital econo-my.”

The top ranking comes on the back of Ooredoo’s strong push to further enhance its coun-try-leading Ooredoo Super-net. Ooredoo recently became the world’s fi rst communica-tions company to launch a 5G network, providing about 100 times faster speeds than 4G networks. Ooredoo has already installed 75 network towers that

support the 5G network.“Ultra-fast mobile Internet

speeds and 5G network rollout

are helping our customers to better keep in touch, make their lives easier, and for organisa-tions to do business. Ooredoo is committed to continuing to enhance our network coverage and innovations to further en-able Qatar as one of the world’s leading digital economies,” al-Sayed added.

Ooredoo customers can en-joy 3G, 4G, or 4.5G connectivity for all mobile devices in Qatar. For more details on Ooredoo’s Supernet network and services, go to https://www.ooredoo.qa/portal/OoredooQatar/super-net.

Ooredoo CEO Waleed al-Sayed.

Indian embassyholiday

The Indian embassy will re-main closed on Wednes-day on the occasion of

India’s Independence Day, it was announced yesterday in a state-ment.

Milipol Qatar to focus on role of civil defence in ensuring public safety

HBKU faculty member awarded Cambridge University fellowship

Milipol Qatar 2018 will emphasise the vi-tal role civil defence

plays in protecting populations and ensuring public safety, the organisers have said.

The event will be held from October 29 to 31 at Doha Ex-hibition and Convention Cen-tre under the patronage of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.

The 12th edition of the lead-ing homeland security and civil defence exhibition in the Middle East has incorporated the Civil Defence Exhibition and Conference “in line with its constant evolution to pro-vide unmatched experiences for exhibitors, visitors, buyers and industry professionals and provide the link between de-fence specialists and key deci-sion makers”, a press statement notes.

The collaboration of the two shows has “cemented the exhi-bition’s position as the region’s leading event of its kind” and will bring together key global players for a series of focused conference sessions and agen-da-setting panel discussions on the latest and emerging civil defence trends and best prac-tices, the statement notes.

In the constantly evolving modern world, civil defence continues to play an increas-ingly important role in protect-ing citizens of a state in emer-gencies, disasters and everyday life and covers the full gamut of related issues, including crisis management, emergency man-agement, emergency prepar-edness, contingency planning, civil contingency, civil aid and civil protection.

Milipol Qatar 2018, organ-ised by the Ministry of Inte-rior (MoI) in Qatar and France-based Comexposium Security, will off er exhibitors, buyers and visitors “a tailored platform to network and close deals for a

better, safer future for all”. The exhibition presents increasing opportunities for organisations across the full spectrum of sec-tors to demonstrate how they can contribute towards safety and security for the world’s population.

“Qatar’s Ministry of Inte-rior has made great strides in ensuring that Qatar has world-class civil defence systems in place and continues to raise awareness of public safety through industry-leading conferences and exhibitions, lectures and outreach pro-grammes and training,” said Brigadier Nasser bin Fahad al-Thani, president of Milipol Qa-tar Committee. “Milipol Qatar 2018 brings together the lead-ing international fi gures in civil

defence to demonstrate the latest smart solutions to assist with civil defence and discuss latest trends and best practice.

“We are looking forward to an interesting three days. This event will further cement Qa-tar’s position as a premier des-tination for hosting world-class agenda-setting conferences.”

To date, exhibitors special-ising in civil defence that have confi rmed their participation in Milipol Qatar 2018 include Qatar Factory for Firefi ghting Equipment & Safety Systems (Naff co), Consolidated Engi-neering Systems Co (Cesco) and International Gulf Trad-ing Company - Chubb Fire from Qatar, China Pioneer from China, Haix Schuhe and Uniform Brands GmbH from Germany, and Turbosan from Turkey.

Milipol Qatar 2018 is a trade-only event, open exclusively to defence and security industry specialists and professionals. The exhibition will be open from 9.30am to 5pm on Octo-ber 29 and 30, and from 9.30am to 4pm on October 31.

For more information on how to register as an exhibitor or visitor, one can visit https://event.milipolqatar.com/2018/

Hamad Bin Khalifa Univer-sity’s (HBKU) academic faculty, associate profes-

sor of Law at College of Law and Public Policy (CLPP), Dr Dami-lola S Olawuyi, was awarded the Herbert Smith Freehills Visitor Scheme at the Cambridge Faculty of Law in the UK.

Dr Olawuyi who has practised and taught law across Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East and whose most recent publications include The Human Rights-Based Approach to Carbon Finance, is thereby honoured as a notable scholar in the legal fi eld.

As part of CLPP, he is part of

a dynamic legal training pro-gramme that focuses on inter-disciplinary discourse and systematic learning within an innovative educational environ-ment that produces consistent research outputs among both faculty and student researchers.

During his visit, set to com-mence in May 2019, Dr Olawuyi will join the ranks of distin-guished academics from around the world, who are provided with fi nancial support by the interna-tional law fi rm, Herbert Smith Freehills, during their residency at the Cambridge Faculty of Law.

The schedule thus aims to fa-cilitate high-quality interaction

between legal academics and practitioners through collabo-rative academic research. Visit-ing scholars are often invited to speak at the law fi rm’s London headquarters.

Dr Olawuyi will undertake comparative and collabora-tive evaluation of law, govern-ance and contractual aspects of structuring, fi nancing, design-ing and operating public-private energy infrastructure projects

in the Gulf region, with the aim to draw lessons from the United Kingdom’s public private part-nerships framework.

This research is timely, rel-evant, addresses an area of na-tional and international priority, and fi ts within HBKU’s global research goals of providing a hub for cutting edge energy and sus-tainability research.

HBKU’s CLPP is today emerg-ing as the Gulf’s pre-eminent le-gal training programme provider owing to both its Juris Doctor programme, which is a fi rst for the region, as well as its world-renowned quality of faculty members.

MEC issues circular cancelling CR dept stamp on signboards

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC) yesterday issued a circular

cancelling the Commercial Reg-istration and Licenses Depart-ment’s stamp on the design of commercial signboards.

The ministry has said in a press statement that the circu-lar is in line with its eff orts to “streamline work procedures, provide investor services in line with the best standards and re-duce the number of commercial licensing procedures”.

Based on the circular, the stamp of the Commercial Reg-

istration and Licenses Depart-ment is no longer required on the design of signboards of com-mercial and industrial establish-ments as well as similar stores before the sign is manufactured.

When designing the sign-board, companies shall be re-sponsible for matching the data on the signboard with the data in the commercial register, the statement notes.

The circular highlights the need to write the data on the signboard in Arabic based on the commercial register’s data while adding a translation in English

and the number of the commer-cial register.

In case the company wishes to add an advertisement or trade-mark to the signboard, a legal proof shall be submitted.

All companies must adhere to and implement the circular from the date it goes into eff ect, the MEC has said.

The ministry had earlier launched a number of initiatives to reduce licensing procedures and provide investor services in line with the best standards in a bid to streamline procedures and transactions.

File picture of a previous edition of Milipol Qatar.

“Qatar’s Ministry of Interior has made great strides in ensuring that Qatar has world-class civil defence systems in place and continues to raise awareness of public safety through industry-leading conferences and exhibitions, lectures and outreach programmes and training”

This research is timely, relevant, addresses an area of national and international priority

Damilola S Olawuyi

QATAR3


Sidra Medicine adds more children’s emergency services

Sidra Medicine, following the successful opening of its Children’s Emergency

Department (CED) and Urgent Care Clinic (UCC) in July, has shared plans for continuous testing and training of its fa-cilities and operations to ensure the department is always at the leading edge of world-class pa-tient care.

“We are working together with Qatar’s Ambulance Serv-ices to provide an immediate response for children’s emer-gency cases.

“Just recently, Sidra Medi-cine’s CED team took part in a practice run to airlift children to Sidra Medicine as part of an ongoing series of simulation

exercises to ensure a culture of safety permeates through every-thing we do,” said Dr Khalid al-Ansari, chair of the Department

of Emergency at Sidra Medicine.Operating according to in-

ternational best practices with an understanding of local needs, the Sidra Medicine CED has put in place stringent pa-tient safety processes, includ-ing medication allocation, staff rotations and access to patient

experience teams to ensure pa-tient comfort and safety.

The CED treats serious emer-gencies for children up to the age of 18 free of charge, including loss of consciousness, severe trouble breathing, major bone fractures, seizures and convulsions.

Although the CED is designed to treat true emergency cases, the co-located UCC can off er care for non-emergency cases, including upper respiratory is-sues like sore throats and coughs, rashes, or low-grade fevers.

Parents with children requir-ing non-emergency care who choose to come to Sidra Medi-cine for treatment, will be seen in order of medical urgency and require a charge. Sidra team that underwent a simulation exercise

Qatar-Korea cultural ties set to expand further

Qatar-Korea cultural ex-change is set to get a further boost with the

upcoming Korean musical and dance performances in Doha in early November, South Korea’s new ambassador to Qatar, Kim Chang-mo has said.

Performers of two Korean tra-ditional musical instruments – piri (the Korean pipes) and gay-ageum (the Korean harp) – and three contemporary – guitar, electronic guitar and keyboard – will be coming to Doha to pro-vide residents with unique and entertaining show.

“We are planning to invite more Korean performance teams to Qatar this autumn to show Korean traditional art and dance

to Qataris,” said Kim, a career diplomat who has served in the UK, Afghanistan, United Na-tions in New York, Austria and Pakistan before coming to Qatar this year.

He noted that internationally-renowned Korean B-boy team’s (Jinjo Crew) visit to Qatar last year received enthusiastic re-sponse from Qatari youngsters.

The performance forms part of ‘The Rhythm of Korea’ cultur-al show, held at the Katara – the Cultural Village, to mark the Ko-rean National Day 2017 in Doha. The celebration in 2016 also wit-nessed countertenor David Dong Qyu Lee, pianist Sonya Park and Korean musicians of Qatar Phil-harmonic Orchestra performing at Katara.

“Qatari traditional dance like Ardha (desert art) and A’ashori (civilian art), if introduced to

Korea, could attract lots of cu-riosity and enthusiasm from Korean people,” Kim said. “We

will do our best to promote these kinds of cultural exchanges be-tween our two countries.”

The embassy has been actively promoting Korean culture in Qa-tar, known to have a deep-rooted history and unique heritage.

Four popular Korean fi lms, which depict family values, humanism and perseverance, were also screened at Hamad bin Khalifa University in March 2017, giving students, faculty members and other residents a better understanding of Korean culture.

Besides culture, Kim said bi-lateral relations between Qatar and the Republic of Korea in oth-er fi elds also remain strong and have huge potentials to expand, especially in agriculture (smart farming), fi sheries, education, public healthcare, and informa-tion and communications tech-

nology, among other areas.The envoy noted that Qa-

tar, its government and people, achieved a lot in its self-suffi -ciency and food security eff orts in the face of a blockade, turning risks into big opportunities.

“Korea has achieved self-suf-fi ciency of its basic foods even though it has very limited arable land – less than 30% of terri-tory – like Qatar,” he pointed out, adding that Korea is ready to share its experience and kno-whow with Qatar.

The envoy said smart farming and aquaculture can be potential areas for bilateral co-operation between Qatar and Korea.

“Details of co-operation are being mulled over between the two sides through various chan-nels, including the High Level Strategic Co-operation Com-mittee,” Kim added.

By Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

South Korean ambassador Kim Chang-mo.

“We are working together with Qatar’s Ambulance Services to provide an immediate response for children’s emergency cases”

HMC gives tips to

prevent injury risk

among children

A paediatric emergency medicine specialist at Hamad Medical Cor-

poration (HMC) has reminded parents and caregivers about the importance of supervising young children, as children are at high risk of having an ac-cident, including accidental poisoning.

“Teaching children about safety and what is dangerous and not, is an important strat-egy for preventing accidents and reducing a child’s risk of injuring themselves. In most cases, a child is exposed to poison without knowing that it may be harmful. Parents and caregivers must take respon-sibility for making their home safe for children,” Dr Khalid al-Yafei, senior consultant, Paediatric Emergency Medi-cine, at HMC.

Noting that the number of accidents involving children increases during the sum-mer months, holidays, and during weekends, Dr al-Yafei stressed that by identifying and understanding the po-tential risks and taking some basic safety measures, it is possible for parents and car-egivers to keep their children safe.

Dr al-Yafei says parents should be particularly aware of the risk of food and chemi-cal poisonings, as well as un-intentional injuries caused by falls, burns and scalds, electric shocks, glass, and drowning.

“It can sometimes be dif-fi cult for parents to keep up with their child’s capabilities. For example, parents often underestimate the ability of their child to get into seem-ingly inaccessible places, so it is important to be aware of the common types of injuries that happen to babies and young children and to learn how they

can prevent them,” noted Dr al-Yafei.

According to Dr al-Ya-fei during the hot summer months, it is important for parents to be particularly aware of the risks of heat ex-haustion, heat stroke, and sunburn. He added that in-cidents of food poisoning in-crease during the summer, largely due to the hot and hu-mid weather.

He noted that while most cases of food poisoning do not require medical attention, it is important to see a doctor if the aff ected child experiences vomiting that lasts more than 12 hours, has diarrhoea with a fever higher than 101 F, has severe belly pain, or a racing or pounding heart.

“Cases of food poisoning and travel illness aff ecting children while on holidays abroad are unfortunately not uncommon. It is important for parents to protect their chil-dren from unnecessary expo-sure to contaminated foods and drink during their travel. Both children and adults can easily fall sick if they consume food that is improperly proc-essed or stored,” added Dr al-Yafei.

Dr Khalid al-Yafei

Volvo XC40 gets top safety ratingThe new Volvo XC40 added

another accolade to its growing list of achieve-

ments as it received fi ve stars and top rating in its 2018 Euro NCAP assessment, Doha Marketing Services Company (Domasco), the exclusive distributor of Volvo Cars in Qatar, said in a statement yesterday.

“The XC40 now joins its larger siblings in the 60 and 90 series as one of the safest cars on the roads. The new XC40 received the highest safety score among all cars tested under the new 2018 Euro NCAP tests which is considered the most challenging ever,” it has been explained.

Faisal Sharif, managing direc-

tor of Domasco, said, “Since its introduction in the market, the XC40 has helped redefi ne the small SUV segment and has had positive reviews from custom-ers. This year’s assessment was the toughest ever with new and more demanding challenges on safety technology, including cy-clist-detection with auto-brake and emergency lane keeping systems and we are extremely pleased that the XC40 now joins its larger siblings as one of the safest cars on the road.”

“The XC40 comes stand-ard with the largest off ering of safety technology of any small SUVs, helping drivers detect and avoid collisions, remain safely in

their lane and reduce the impact of accidentally running off the road.

“All tested Volvo cars on sale today have received fi ve stars in their respective Euro NCAP as-sessments. Last year, the XC60 was crowned the overall best-performing large off -roader and the best overall performer in the prestigious Euro NCAP 2017 Best in Class safety awards. The XC90 received the same acco-lade in 2015.

“In March, the XC40 was named 2018 European Car of the Year, the fi rst Volvo to win the prestigious award, and it has since been one of Volvo’s top sellers.”

Customers can test drive a new XC40 by visiting the Volvo showroom on Khalifa Street near the National Mosque and TV Roundabout.

The new Volvo XC40 received five stars and top rating in its 2018 Euro NCAP assessment.

QRCS marks International Youth Day

Qatar Red Crescent Socie-ty (QRCS) has celebrated the International Youth

Day, which is observed every year on 12 August.

Under the theme of ‘Safe Beaches’, QRCS’s Volunteers Section and Al-Khor Branch held a diverse sports and fun programme, ending with an event to clean the Eraida beach.

Attended by many volunteers of diff erent ages, the event was supported by Soul Soul Jeep-ers, who staged a parade to raise awareness about the cause of en-vironment protection.

The group was accompanied by a police car, and the munici-pality cleaning team was present to help the volunteers with gar-bage collection.

In his remarks, head of QRCS

Volunteers Section Ahmed Ali al-Khulaifi said, “As usual every year, QRCS shares local and in-ternational organisations in cel-ebrating the International Youth Day, a UN observance marked since 2000. This year’s celebra-tions involve events around the world to emphasise the right of young people to have their own space to attain their poten-tial and practice their cultural, sports, fun, and community activities”. In conformity with the approach of Qatar towards a stronger role of youth in society, al-Khulaifi pointed out, QRCS gives top priority to this impor-tant segment of society.

“We have numerous educative, qualifi cation, training, and volun-teering courses/programmes for young women and men.

We help them gain knowledge and skills in various areas, adopt a culture of charity and volun-teerism, develop themselves, and serve their society,” he noted.

Under the global theme of “Safe Spaces for Youth”, Antonio Guterres, UN secretary-general, issued a message: “The hopes of the world rest on young peo-ple. Peace, economic dynamism, social justice, tolerance all this and more, today and tomorrow, depends on tapping into the power of youth. Yet more than 400mn young women and men live amidst armed confl ict or or-ganised violence. Millions face deprivation, harassment, bully-ing and other infringements of their rights. Young women and girls are particularly vulnerable”.

Page 20

QRCS volunteers pose for a group photograph at the Eraida beach on the occasion of International Youth Day.

Al-Shura Intersection to be closed for 12 hours

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced that it will implement a temporary

closure of Al-Shura Intersection, also known as White Palace Intersection, on the main lanes of the four sides of the intersection.

Carried out in co-ordination with the General Directorate of Traffi c, the closure will last for a total of 12 hours, Ashghal has said in a statement.

First, the intersection will be closed for six hours from this evening until early tomorrow, and it will again be closed for six hours from tomorrow evening until early on Wednesday.

During this period, traffi c heading to Al-Shura Intersection from its four sides can turn right only and use the next intersection, as shown on the at-tached map.

The temporary closure is being im-plemented with the aim of completing the installation of new traffi c lights at Al-Shura Intersection, Ashghal has said.

This comes as part of the develop-ment works carried out at intersec-tions and roundabouts in various parts of Greater Doha, which aim to enhance the fl ow of traffi c and reduce conges-tion in vital areas, the statement adds.

The authority will install road signs advising motorists of the closure. It has also requested all road users to abide by the speed limit and follow the road signs to ensure their safety.

4 Gulf TimesMonday, August 13, 2018

REGION

Kuwaiti Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Hamad al-Sabah yesterday met with Director General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) William Swing, who is currently visiting Kuwait.During the meeting they reviewed IOM’s activities and projects aiming at helping migrants who are affected by conflicts and crises in the Middle East.The Kuwaiti foreign minister stressed his country’s keenness to strengthen co-operation with IOM in order to achieve its noble humanitarian goals.For his part, the IOM chief expressed his gratitude for the great role played by Kuwait.

Kuwait ministermeets IOM chief

67 arrested in Iran over fi nancial crimesAgenciesTehran

Iranian authorities have arrested 67 people in a drive against fi -nancial crime, the judiciary

said yesterday, as the country faces renewed US sanctions and a public outcry against profi teering and cor-ruption.

Special courts were being set up to try suspects quickly after Su-preme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khame-nei called on Saturday for “swift and just” legal action to confront an “economic war” by foreign en-

emies, state television quoted a ju-diciary spokesman as saying.

The rial currency has lost about half of its value since April over worries about the sanctions, with heavy demand for dollars among ordinary Iranians trying to protect their savings.

The cost of living has also soared, sparking sporadic demonstrations against profi teering and corrup-tion, with many protesters chanting anti-government slogans.

“Sixty seven suspects have been arrested, some of whom were re-leased on bail, and more than 100 people including government em-

ployees and offi cials, as well as private employees and others have been given travel bans,” judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohse-ni Ejei said in remarks carried by state television.

The central bank and the judici-ary have blamed “enemies” for the fall of the currency and a rapid rise in the price of gold coins.

Those arrested included a former central bank deputy, and some faced charges carrying the death penalty, the judiciary said.

The judiciary has suggested that the United States and Israel, as well as Saudi Arabia and government

opponents living in exile, are fo-menting the unrest and waging an economic war to destabilise Iran.

In May the United States pulled out of a 2015 deal between world powers and Tehran under which in-ternational sanctions on Iran were lifted in return for curbs on its nu-clear programme.

Washington this week reimposed sanctions on Iran’s purchase of US dollars, its trade in gold and pre-cious metals and its dealings with metals, coal and industrial-related software, and it is planning to im-pose heavier sanctions in November aimed at Iran’s oil sector.

Yemeni children raise protest signs and chant slogans during a demonstration in the capital Sanaa yesterday, against an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition which hit a bus killing dozens of children in the northern Houthi stronghold of Saada. The UN Security Council called for a “credible” investigation after at least 29 children were killed in the air strike. The raid hit a bus at Dahyan market in Saada, injuring at least 48 others, including 30 children, according to the International Committee for the Red Cross.

Children protest against air strike

ARAB WORLD5Gulf Times

Monday, August 13, 2018

7 killed in Jordan raidon militant hideoutAFPAmman

Four members of the Jor-danian security forces and three “terrorists” have

been killed during a raid on a militant hideout after an of-fi cer died in a bomb blast near the capital, the government said yesterday.

Five suspects were also ar-rested during Saturday’s raid in connection with the home-made bomb that exploded under a patrol car at a music festival.

A joint unit of special forces, police and army troops raided a house in the town of Salt north-west of Amman in search of a suspected “terrorist cell”, gov-ernment spokeswoman Jumana Ghneimat said.

She said the militants were sought in connection with Fri-day night’s bombing that killed a police sergeant and wounded six others in the town of Al-Fuhais west of Amman.

“The suspects refused to sur-render and opened heavy fi re towards a joint security force,” Ghneimat said.

They also “blew up the build-ing in which they were hiding, and which they had booby-trapped earlier”, she added.

Three members of the se-curity forces were killed in the shootout with the gunmen who were holed up in an apartment in the four-storey residential block in Salt, she said in a state-ment.

A fourth who was critically wounded died of his injuries yesterday, she added.

The bodies of three “terror-ists” as well as automatic weap-

ons were found under the rubble of the building, and a total of fi ve militants were arrested during the operation, Ghneimat said.

Bomb blasts targeting secu-rity forces are rare in Jordan, al-though the kingdom bordering Syria and Iraq has had to strug-gle with a rise Muslim funda-mentalism in recent years.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Fri-day’s bomb blast in Al-Fuhais, a mostly Christian town, and the identities of the suspects were not known.

“A clean-up operation is still under way,” Ghneimat said, adding that units of the civil de-fence were at the scene to assess the damage at the building and sift through the rubble.

Ghneimat urged civilians to

stay away, warning that “it could totally collapse at any minute”.

An excavator was later seen demolishing the structure.

Medical sources said that 11 people were wounded during the raid, including members of the security forces and civilians who were residents of the build-ing where the militants were hiding.

Women and children were among those hurt, they said, without giving further details.

Ambulances, bulldozers and police cars were deployed around the building in the Naqab al-Dabour residential neighbourhood in Salt, televi-sion footage showed.

A security offi cial, who asked not to be named, said that “all the terrorists who were killed

or arrested were Jordanians and residents of Salt.”

King Abdullah II said the coun-try would “strike mercilessly and forcefully” against those who sought to harm the country.

“This cowardly terrorist act, and any act that targets the se-curity of Jordan, will only add to our unity, strength and deter-mination to wipe out terrorism and its criminal gangs,” he told a meeting of top security offi cials.

The government set up a cri-sis cell to follow the develop-ments, the state-run Petra news agency reported.

Prime Minister Omar al-Raz-zaz, who chaired the meeting, vowed on Saturday that Jordan would “not be complacent in the hunt for terrorists”.

Jordan has played a key role in

the US-led coalition fi ghting the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, using its air force against the militants and allowing coa-lition forces to use its bases.

The kingdom was hit by a string of attacks in 2016, includ-ing a shooting rampage claimed by IS that killed 10 people in-cluding a Canadian tourist in Karak, known.

The United States “strongly condemned” the attacks against Jordanian security forces in Al-Fuhais and in Salt, in a state-ment released yesterday by its Amman embassy.

“The United States stands in solidarity with Jordan in the face of these terrorist actions and emphasises our shared resolve to counter the plague of terror-ism,” it said.

Egypt courtjails MuslimBrotherhoodchief for lifeAgenciesCairo

The head of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and other leaders of the banned

group were sentenced to life in prison yesterday, judicial sources said, on charges of incitement to murder and violence during pro-tests fi ve years ago.

The sentence is the latest among several trials and re-tri-als against Mohamed Badie and other senior leaders of the party that ruled Egypt before the mili-tary ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi following mass protests.

The sources said that Giza Criminal Court sentenced sev-eral top leaders including Badie, group spokesman Essam al-Eri-an, and senior member Moham-ed El-Beltagy to life terms.

State news agency Mena said another defendant was jailed for 15 years and three others for 10 years.

Badie and the other defend-ants were convicted of incite-ment to violence on July 15, 2013, including the killing of five demonstrators and wound-ing of 100 during protests in an area in Giza known as al-Bahr al-Azim.

The court had previously sen-tenced 15 people to life imprison-ment in the al-Bahr al-Azim case in September 2014 but an ap-peals hearing had subsequently struck down the ruling and or-dered a retrial.

Since President Abdel Fat-tah al-Sisi came to power in 2014, authorities have justi-fi ed a crackdown on dissent and freedoms as being directed at terrorists and saboteurs trying to undermine the state.

Last month, a court referred the fi les of Badie and other Brotherhood leaders in a sepa-rate case to Egypt’s most senior Muslim religious authority, the Mufti, for his opinion on wheth-er they should be sentenced to death.

This case related to a 2013 sit-in that ended in the deaths of hundreds of Brotherhood sup-porters and dozens of police when security forces broke it up violently.

Egyptian law requires any capital sentence to be referred to Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam for an opinion before executions can take place.

His opinion has yet to be an-nounced.

Death sentences have been handed down to hundreds of his political opponents on charges such as belonging to an illegal organisation or planning to carry out an attack.

Mursi, who was ousted in 2013 after a year in offi ce, is serving a life-sentence in jail.

Meanwhile, security forces have killed 12 suspected mili-tants in raids on their hideouts in north Sinai, Mena reported yesterday, the latest in a cam-paign to uproot armed militants behind a wave of violence in the area.

Netanyahu demands ‘total’ Gaza ceasefi re

Lebanese singer reveals breast cancer battle in music videoReutersBeirut

Lebanese pop singer Elissa sur-prised fans this week by revealing in a new music video that she had

overcome breast cancer, raising aware-ness of a disease campaigners say can be a taboo topic of discussion in Leba-non.

“Early detection of breast cancer can save your life. Don’t ignore it, face it,” 46-year-old Elissa wrote at the end of her video To all who love me, released on Tuesday.

Elissar Khoury, who performs un-der the name Elissa, is one of the best known and highest-selling female art-ists in the Arabic-speaking world, with 13.3mn followers on Twitter.

Elissa revealed in her video that she

was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer in December.

Interspersed with glittering dance scenes, the video shows her going un-der a medical scanner and lying in hos-pital beds.

It also includes footage of her col-

lapsing on stage in February while per-forming in Dubai.

“I think there isn’t enough awareness in our Arab region about this. Elissa found out because she was educated enough and she does her yearly check ups,” said video director Angy Jammal.

Lebanese gynaecologist and member of the National Breast Cancer Cam-paign, Faysal el-Kak, welcomed Elissa putting breast cancer in the spotlight.

“This is a very bold and progressive move,” he said, hoping increased aware-ness will help more people detect the ear-ly signs of cancer and seek out treatment.

“Women associate breasts with their identity as female and they think that breast cancer diagnosis would aff ect that. (We should) break this taboo and change this perception: early detection saves lives and saves their femininity,” el-Kak said.

AgenciesJerusalem

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday demanded a “total” ceasefi re from Gaza’s Hamas

rulers in his fi rst public comments on another deadly fl are-up between the two sides.

There have been eff orts by UN of-fi cials and Egypt to secure a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, though Israeli offi cials have not com-mented on them.

Since July, there have been three ma-jor fl are-ups of violence.

“We are in the midst of a campaign against terror in Gaza,” Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.

“It will not end with one blow. Our demand is clear: a total ceasefi re. We shall not be satisfi ed with less than that,” he added.

“Until now we have destroyed hun-dreds of Hamas military targets and with every round of attacks the Israel Defence Forces exact another heavy price from Hamas.”

Netanyahu has come under political

pressure to act more strongly against Hamas, though both sides are reluc-tant to start a fourth war between them since 2008.

Israel has also sought an end to kites and balloons carrying fi rebombs over the Gaza border fence to burn Israeli farmland.

An informal truce reached on Thursday night has largely held de-spite the deaths of three Palestin-ians since then from Israeli army fire

during border protests and clashes.Thursday saw extensive Israeli air

strikes in retaliation for the launching of more than 180 rockets and mortar rounds by Hamas and its allies begin-ning on Wednesday night.

Three Palestinians were killed in the Israeli strikes, including a mother and her 18-month-old daughter, while sev-en Israelis were wounded by Palestin-ian rocket fi re as hundreds took refuge in bomb shelters.

Palestinians steer their boat as they protest against the more than a decade-long Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, in Beit Lahya on the border with Israel in the northern Gaza Strip.

Elissa: raising awareness

Jordanian security forces and relatives of Sergeant Hisham Aqarbeh, a member of the anti-terrorist unit who was killed in an attack, attend his funeral in the town Birayn, north of the capital Amman, yesterday.

AFPSarmada, Syria

An explosion at a weapons de-pot that toppled buildings in a rebel-held town of northwest

Syria killed at least 39 civilians in-cluding a dozen children yesterday, a monitor said.

An AFP correspondent at the site in Sarmada in Idlib province near the Turkish border said the explosion of unknown origin caused the collapse of two buildings.

Rescue workers used bulldozers to remove rubble and extract trapped people from the fl attened buildings, the correspondent said.

A civil defence source said that res-cue workers had pulled out “fi ve peo-ple who were still alive”.

But the death toll rose as more bod-ies were retrieved from the rubble, ac-cording to Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Three Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) members were also killed, apart from the 39 civilians, he said.

“The explosion occurred in a weap-ons depot in a residential building in Sarmada,” said the head of the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a net-work of sources inside Syria.

But the cause of the blast was “not yet clear”, Abdel Rahman added.

He said most of those killed were family members of fi ghters from HTS, an alliance led by militants from Syr-ia’s former Al Qaeda affi liate, who had been displaced to the area from the central province of Homs.

A rescue worker carried the mo-tionless body of a small child from the wreckage to an ambulance, the AFP correspondent said.

White Helmet rescue workers at-tempted to lift part of a fl oor of one of the buildings with a tall crane, as three young boys watched on in silence, perched on a rock.

Behind mounds of rubble, the fa-cade of a building was scorched black, due to a fi re after the blast.

Most of Idlib is controlled by rebels and HTS, but the Islamic State group also has sleeper cells in the area.

The regime holds a small slither of southeastern Idlib.

In recent months, a series of ex-plosions and assassinations – mainly targeting rebel offi cials and fi ghters – have rocked the province.

While some attacks have been claimed by IS, most are the result of infi ghting since last year between oth-er groups.

Regime forces have since last week ramped up their deadly bombardment of southern Idlib and sent reinforce-ments to nearby areas they control.

On Friday, 12 civilians, three of them children, were killed in regime bom-bardment of the towns of Khan Sheik-hun and Al-Tah.

President Bashar al-Assad has

warned that government forces intend to retake Idlib, after his Russia-backed regime regained control of swathes of rebel-held territory in other parts of Syria.

On Thursday, government heli-copters dropped leafl ets over towns in Idlib’s eastern countryside urging people to surrender. The United Na-tions appealed the same day for talks to avert “a civilian bloodbath” in the province.

Jan Egeland, head of the UN’s hu-manitarian taskforce for Syria, said: “The war cannot be allowed to go to Idlib.”

Around 2.5mn people live in the province, half of them displaced by fi ghting in other regions of the coun-try.

More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria’s civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.


ARAB WORLD

Buildings destroyed in an explosion at an arms depot are seen in Sarmada yesterday.

Children among 39 killed in Syria blast

AFRICA7Gulf Times


Mali votes in runoff as heavy security counters militantsReutersBamako

Malians yesterday lined up to vote in a run-off presidential election under the watchful

eyes of thousands of soldiers following a fi rst round last month that was marred by militant attacks and opposition alle-gations of fraud.

Incumbent Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, 73, is expected to win even though he has been unable to stem a surge in ethnic and mili-tant violence during his fi rst term in offi ce.

Challenger Soumalia Cisse, 68, the main opposition leader and a former fi nance minister, said however he was confi dent of victory but he also accused the government camp of trying to stuff ballot boxes.

Militants, some linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State, have regrouped in the vast West African country since French troops pushed them back in 2013 from areas they had seized in the north.

They are now expanding their infl u-ence again across the desert north and into the fertile centre, keeping the coun-try high on the list of Western powers’ security concerns.

Former colonial ruler France and the United States have deployed thousands of troops across the region.

Elections observers giving initial as-sessments as voting got underway said no serious incidents had been reported and most polling stations were func-tioning well.

However, it could be sometime before reports trickle in from confl ict-ridden areas in the north and centre.

Armed soldiers ran body checks on voters in the capital Bamako as they waited in line under rainy skies to cast their ballots.

“I voted without problem. I came to fulfi l my duty as a citizen,” said Dra-mane Camara, 31, at a polling station in a school in Bamako.

“I expect the new president to solve the problem of the north, which is peace. Because the return of peace means the re-turn of NGOs, investors, so creating jobs.”

The fi rst round on July 29 was marred by armed attacks and other security in-cidents at about a fi fth of polling places, as well as opposition charges of fraud.

Keita called for a peaceful day and urged people not to respond to any prov-ocation as he voted in Bamako yesterday morning.

“I pledge that all the diffi culties we faced are now behind us,” he told cheer-ing supporters.

The government has stepped up secu-rity for the run-off , deploying an extra 6,000 troops on top of the 30,000 al-ready on duty.

The Mopti region in central Mali, where most of the attacks in the first round took place, is a particular con-cern.

The head of the European Union ob-server mission, Italian politician Cecile Kyenge, told reporters there had been no major incidents at 40 polling stations it had monitored.

The mission had deployed 90 ob-servers across the country “but unfor-

tunately not to Timbuktu, Mopti and Kidal” — areas where violence has been rife.

The independent Mali Citizen Ob-servation Pool also reported minor in-cidents and some delays, but generally gave a positive assessment of the voting so far.

Keita — known as IBK — took 41% of the vote in last month’s fi rst round against nearly 18% for Cisse.

Results from the fi rst round took fi ve days to emerge and authorities have not said when they expect the fi nal result to be announced.

Cisse, who lost against Keita in a peaceful 2013 run-off , said he was con-fi dent of victory when he voted in his hometown Niafunke.

“We travelled across the whole coun-try and we found an extremely strong desire for change everywhere. Malians want to change, Malians want a diff erent future, a diff erent hope,” he said.

Cisse also accused the other side of cheating, saying in Bamako they had found people before the vote who al-ready had ballot papers.

“But we will win because we are on the path of truth. Malians don’t need a president who cheats to win,” he said.

Cisse, who blames Keita for the wors-ening violence and accuses his govern-ment of rampant corruption, also al-leged fraud in the fi rst round but the constitutional court upheld the result.

On Saturday evening, about 100 op-position supporters demonstrated in Bamako’s Liberty Square to complain about the result of the fi rst round.

Chanting “No to electoral fraud” and calling for transparency in the second round, they said there had been many instances of cheating in the fi rst vote.

Armed troops watched over the pro-test but did not intervene.

Civil society website Malilink record-ed 932 militant attacks in the fi rst half of 2018, almost double that for all of 2017.

Militants are also stoking inter-com-munal confl ict, mostly between herders and traditional hunters.

Killings along ethnic lines have claimed hundreds of civilian lives this year, including at least 11 last week in the Mopti region.

The 2013 elections followed a military coup a year earlier.

Fatoumata Cisse, a 38-year-old teacher, said: “I voted, no problem. I voted IBK. He has a positive balance es-pecially for us teachers, our living con-ditions have improved. I hope that it will continue to improve the conditions of workers.”

A woman with her child casts her vote at a polling station in Bamako yesterday.

Congolese off icials and the World Health Organisation off icials wear protective suits as they participate in a training against the Ebola virus near the town of Beni in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ebola battle

Tourist dies in hippo attack on Kenya lake

ReutersNairobi

A Chinese tourist has died in Kenya after be-ing attacked by a hippo

on the shores of Lake Naiva-sha, the East African nation’s wildlife service said yesterday.

The man, who had been taking photographs, was pro-nounced dead on arrival at the Naivasha District Hos-pital, while another tourist survived the attack on Satur-day evening, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service.

“We are tracking the hip-po,” it said on Twitter.

The agency named the dead man as Chang Ming Chuang, 66, and the survivor as Wu Peng Te, 62.

The Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to a call for comment.

Kenyan newspaper The Star yesterday quoted the head of a boat owners’ asso-ciation in Navaisha as saying that higher than normal wa-ter levels were causing hippos to wander from the lake on to nearby farms and hotel prop-erties searching for pasture.

Naivasha is a city on the lake 90km northwest of the capital, Nairobi.

After a severe drought last year, Kenya had several months of heavy rains earlier this year that caused serious fl ooding, including around Lake Naivasha.

Tourism is one of the coun-try’s main sources of foreign exchange and nearly 1.5mn tourists visited Kenya last year, according to the tourism ministry.

Ethiopian rebels declare ceasefi reReutersAddis Ababa

An Ethiopian rebel group yester-day declared a unilateral cease-fi re, the latest dissident move-

ment to aim for an end to hostilities in the wake of reforms.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) launched its bid for secession of the Somali Region, also known as Ogaden, in eastern Ethiopia in 1984.

In 2007, Ethiopian forces waged a large-scale off ensive against them af-ter the group attacked a Chinese-run oil facility, killing 74 people.

But the ONLF was among two other groups that were removed by parlia-ment from a list of banned movements — part of a reform drive being led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has extended an olive branch to dissidents.

In a statement, the ONLF said it had “taken into account the positive steps taken by the Ethiopian government to lay the groundwork for talks and peaceful negotiations”.

The group “will cease all military and security operations to fi nd a avail-able and lasting solution to the Ogaden confl ict”, it added.

The region the ONLF operates in contains four tn cubic feet of gas and

oil deposits, the government says.China’s GCL-Poly Petroleum In-

vestments has been developing two gas fi elds since 2013.

Abiy, who took offi ce in April, is pre-siding over a bold push to shake the African nation of 100mn people from decades of security-obsessed rule.

He has also acknowledged and con-demned widespread abuses by security forces, likening it to state terrorism, as well as forging peace with Eritrea, with which Addis Ababa has been locked in a lengthy military standoff that followed a 1998-2000 border war in which 80,000 people are thought to have died.

AMERICA


Ivanka: No room for ‘neo-nazism’ in US

Ivanka Trump, President

Donald Trump’s daughter and a

White House adviser, explicitly

condemned “white supremacy,

racism and neo-nazism” late

Saturday in a manner her father

seems reluctant to do.

The tweets came on the an-

niversary of deadly unrest trig-

gered by a white supremacist

rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“One year ago in Charlottes-

ville, we witnessed an ugly dis-

play of hatred, racism, bigotry &

violence,” Ivanka Trump tweeted.

“While Americans are blessed

to live in a nation that protects

liberty, freedom of speech and

diversity of opinion, there is no

place for white supremacy, rac-

ism and neo-nazism in our great

country,” she said.

“Rather than tearing each

other down with hatred, racism

& violence, we can lift one

another up, strengthen our

communities and strive to help

every American achieve his or

her full potential!”

The tweets are notable

because her father drew

scorn after the Charlottesville

bloodshed for initially avoiding

any condemnation of the torch-

bearing white supremacists

who took part in that rally.

On Saturday the president

issued a generic condemnation

of racism in one of seven tweets

of the day.

Hundreds take to Charlottesville streets a year after far-right rallyBy Joseph Ax, ReutersCharlottesville

Hundreds of students and left-wing activists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, on Sat-

urday, as a rally to mark the anniversary of last year’s white nationalist gathering turned largely into an anti-police protest.

With chants like, “Cops and Klan go hand in hand,” the protesters’ criticisms of both police and the University of Vir-ginia underscored the resentment that still exists a year after torch-bearing neo-Nazis marched through campus, shouting anti-Semitic messages and beating counter-protesters.

Several students said they were angry that the police response was far larger this year compared with last year, when people carrying tiki torches the white nationalist rally went mostly unchecked.

At one point on Saturday, dozens of offi cers in riot gear formed a line near where the rally was taking place, prompting many protesters to rush over yelling, “Why are you in riot gear? We don’t see no riot here.”

The standoff ended without any clash-

es as organisers urged the crowd to move away and begin marching off campus.

Police, who appeared to be avoiding a confrontation, rode bicycles ahead of the march to stop traffi c.

The newly installed president of the University of Virginia, James Ryan, apol-ogized for the school’s inaction last year while speaking at an event to memorial-ise the anniversary.

Saturday’s march capped a day of hope, grief, anger and remembrance in Charlottesville, one year after the “Unite the Right” rally brought racially charged street violence to the scenic college town.

The organiser of last year’s rally, local blogger Jason Kessler, has planned a se-quel in Washington after being denied a permit in Charlottesville.

With hundreds of police maintain-ing a tight security perimeter around a 15-block downtown area, Charlottes-ville’s normally bustling business dis-trict was relatively quiet on Saturday.

The buzz of a police helicopter over-head was a constant throughout the day.

The massive police response was not welcomed by everyone, including some residents and business owners who complained that the restrictions were an overreaction.

The result, however, was a day largely devoid of confl ict. Authorities arrested three men for minor off ences, including a 64-year-old disabled man who ap-peared to deliberately challenge the pro-hibition on certain items in the secured area.

The man, John Miska, who was wear-ing a handgun in a shoulder holster, visited a drugstore and purchased razor blades, which qualifi ed as contraband under the city’s emergency declaration.

The gun, however, was not banned, based on state law. When he refused an offi cer’s request to take the razors to his car, he was arrested for disorderly con-duct.

“This is the loss of our constitutional

rights here in Charlottesville,” he shout-ed, as offi cers led him away in plastic hand ties.

A group of anti-fascist protesters, sometimes known as “Antifa,” marched in the afternoon, carrying signs with messages like “Good Night White Pride.”

They stopped to pay their respects at the corner where a local woman, Heath-er Heyer, was killed when an Ohio man drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters following last year’s rally.

While some businesses closed for the weekend, many merchants remained open in a show of solidarity.

“It’s my town, and I’m not afraid,” said Karen Walker, whose fl oral shop Hedge was open on Saturday even though she did not expect much business.

Outside her front door, a bucket of freshly cut fl owers was available for pas-sersby to take for free.

Many local residents also made a point of coming downtown to mark the anni-versary.

Kathe Falzer, 67, changed a fl ight to California so she could spend Saturday in town. “I felt the need to be here and support the businesses,” Falzer said as she ate lunch at a diner on Main Street.

Protesters march at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on Saturday evening.

Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe heads to ‘touch Sun’By Kerry Sheridan, AFPTampa

Nasa yesterday blasted off its fi rst-ev-er spaceship to explore the Sun, the $1.5bn Parker Solar Probe, on a stra-

tegic mission to protect the Earth by unveil-ing the mysteries of dangerous solar storms.

The launch of the car-sized probe aboard a massive Delta IV-Heavy rocket lit the night sky at Cape Canaveral, Florida at 3.31am.

The unmanned spacecraft’s mission is to get closer than any human-made object ever to the centre of our solar system, plunging into the Sun’s atmosphere, known as the co-rona, during a seven-year mission.

The probe is guarded by an ultra-powerful heat shield that can endure unprecedented levels of heat, and radiation 500 times that experienced on Earth.

When it nears the Sun, the probe will trav-el at some 692,000kph.

That will make it the fastest ever human-made object, speedy enough to travel from New York to Tokyo in one minute.

“This mission truly marks humanity’s fi rst visit to a star,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate.

“We’ve accomplished something that decades ago, lived solely in the realm of sci-ence fi ction,” he added, describing the probe as one of Nasa’s “strategically important” missions.

Nasa has billed the mission as the fi rst spacecraft to “touch the Sun.”

In reality, it should come within 6.16mn km of the Sun’s surface, close enough to

study the curious phenomenon of the solar wind and the Sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona, which is 300 times hotter than its surface.

Scientists hope this close encounter will give them a better understanding of so-lar wind and geomagnetic storms that risk wreaking chaos on Earth by knocking out the power grid.

These poorly understood solar outbursts could potentially wipe out power to millions of people.

A worst-case scenario would cost up to

two trillion dollars in the first year alone and take a decade for full recovery, experts say.

“The Parker Solar Probe will help us do a much better job of predicting when a distur-bance in the solar wind could hit Earth,” said Justin Kasper, a project scientist and profes-sor at the University of Michigan.

Knowing more about the solar wind and space storms will also help protect future deep space explorers as they journey toward the Moon or Mars.

A highly advanced heat shield just 11.43cm

thick was devised to keep the probe from melting.

The sunlight is expected to heat the shield to just around 1,371 degrees Celsius.

Yet the inside of the spacecraft will stay at just 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

The probe is set to make 24 passes through the corona, collecting data.

“The sun is full of mysteries,” said Nicky Fox, project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.

“We are ready. We have the perfect pay-load. We know the questions we want to an-swer.”

The spacecraft is the only Nasa probe in history to be named after a living person — 91-year-old solar physicist Eugene Parker, who fi rst described the solar wind in 1958.

Parker watched the launch at Cape Ca-naveral, and said it was his fi rst time seeing a rocket blast off in person.

“All I have to say is wow, here we go. We are in for some learning over the next several years,” Parker told Nasa television.

Scientists have wanted to build a space-craft like this for more than 60 years, but only recently did the heat shield technology capable of protecting sensitive instruments become available.

Tools on board will measure high-energy particles associated with fl ares and coronal mass ejections, as well as the changing mag-netic fi eld around the Sun.

The fi rst launch attempt on Saturday was postponed at the last minute due to techni-cal problem related to a helium gas sensor on the rocket. But yesterday’s bid “went off like clockwork,” said Nasa launch manager Omar Baez.

A Nasa handout photo of the United Launch Alliance Delta IV-Heavy rocket with the Parker Solar Probe onboard shortly after the Mobile Service Tower was rolled back on Launch Complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Seattle airport worker who commandeered and crashed plane remembered as quiet and friendlyBy Jason Redmond, AFPSeattle

Co-workers said the 29-year-old airport worker nick-named “Beebo” who com-

mandeered an empty passenger plane from Seattle’s main airport, then crashed it into an island in Puget Sound, was “quiet” and “very friendly.”

The local sheriff described Ho-rizon Air employee Richard Russell as “suicidal” when he fl ew off in an empty passenger plane from Seat-tle’s main airport late Friday.

Russell’s family, however, used words as “warm” and “compassion-ate” to describe the married man who once owned a bakery.

Two F-15 fi ghter jets chased the twin-engine turboprop plane that Russell had hijacked for more than an hour.

He fl ew the Bombardier Q400 plane in a loop — an improbable stunt caught on video by a surprised bystander — then slammed it into a sparsely populated island in Puget Sound.

Authorities ruled out any link to terror.

“It may seem diffi cult for those watching at home to believe, but Beebo was a warm, compassionate man,” read a letter from Russell’s family released to the US media.

We are “stunned and heartbro-ken” by the incident, read the letter, which the family said would be the only statement they would make.

“He was a faithful husband, a lov-

ing son, and a good friend...This is a complete shock to us.”

Russell’s personal blog, last up-dated in December 2017, said he was born in Florida and moved to Alaska at age 7 — information that local au-thorities corroborated, The Seattle Times reported.

Russell wrote that he met his wife in Oregon state in 2010, married one year later, and opened a bakery that they jointly ran for three years.

The couple then moved to neigh-bouring Washington state in 2015 to be closer to their families, according to the blog.

Russell’s role at Horizon, where he had worked since 2015, involved towing aircraft, loading and unload-ing cargo and luggage, and cleaning the aircraft, offi cials said.

Initial reports said he was an air-line mechanic.

Based on the blog Russell seemed

to enjoy his job, and used airline travel benefi ts to visit places like Ire-land and France.

Russell was also a leader in Young Life, a local Christian youth minis-try. “He was very, very friendly — automatically willing to bring eve-ryone in,” Hannah Holmes, who was also involved in Young Life, told The Seattle Times.

Rick Christenson, an operational supervisor with Horizon Air who recently retired, told the newspa-per that Russell was “a quiet guy. It seemed like he was well liked by the other workers.”

Security personnel were shocked by how easily Russell was able to fl y off with the 76-seat turboprop plane.

“Everybody’s stunned...that something like this would happen,” said Christenson. “How could it? Everybody’s been through back-ground checks.”

Russell “had access legitimately” to the plane, said Mike Ehl, director of aviation operations at the airport, adding that “no security violations were committed.”

“To our knowledge, he didn’t have a pilot’s license,” Gary Beck, CEO of Alaska Airlines affi liate Horizon, told reporters.

“Commercial aircraft are complex machines...No idea how he achieved that experience.”

FBI agent Jay Tabb, who is helping investigate the crash, said offi cials believe Russell was alone aboard the plane.

“But of course, we haven’t con-fi rmed that at the crash site,” he said.

This undated selfie available on social media of Richard B Russell, a ground service agent at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, who stole a plane and flew it for about an hour on Friday before crashing on an island south of Seattle.

ASIA9Gulf Times


A model presents creations by Malaysian designer Yadotsa during the 2018 Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week yesterday.

Designs of the times

Philippine bride defi es fl ooding to tie the knotAFPManila

A beaming bride defi antly marching up a fl ooded church aisle in the Phil-

ippines has won hearts as the country suff ers a fresh bout of monsoonal rains.

Jobel Delos Angeles, 24, married the father of her two children on Saturday as Tropi-cal Storm Yagi and the south-west monsoon brought heavy fl ooding to the capital Manila and nearby areas, including their home province of Bula-can.

In a Facebook video shared over a thousand times, De-los Angeles is all smiles as she walks through brown fl oodwa-ters in a white gown and veil before her suited groom clad in fl ip-fl ops takes her to the altar.

“Even if it fl oods or it rains, nothing can stop me. You only

get married once, will you postpone it? I was marrying the man I love,” Delos Angeles told AFP by phone.

“My gown got wet and heavy but I told myself it was as if I was walking on a red carpet.”

The Philippines endures an average of 20 typhoons and storms each year. The latest storm brought misery to many, with 20,000 residents fl eeing the riverside district of Mariki-na in the national capital re-gion where fl oods swept away cars, authorities said.

But for Delos Angeles, the weekend was cause for cel-ebration. She said she and her partner of seven years did not expect bad weather but never considered calling off their wedding even after fl oodwaters entered the church in Hagonoy town.

It was a double ceremony, with their fi ve-month-old daughter baptised in the same

event, she added. Guests were photographed barefoot, in-cluding children who were afraid to slip.

“We didn’t want a new schedule as we were already stressed out. Our hometown is really fl ood-prone,” Delos An-geles added.

“No car wanted to bring us to the church so I just rode a boat. We didn’t expect so many peo-ple would still turn up, even the entourage.”

The bride’s aunt, Teresa Bautista, posted the video of her niece which has drawn comments from social media users hailing the event as the “wedding of year”.

“I felt bad for them but at the same time I am happy they got it through,” Bautista told AFP. Delos Angeles said she had no regrets.

“It is truly memorable. I am so happy. It shows the lesson that there are no what ifs.”

Bride Jobel Delos Angeles, 24, and her groom during their wedding amidst a flooded church in Hagonoy town, Bulacan town, north of Manila, yesterday.

Vietnam war hero Bui Tin dies at 90AFPParis

A Vietnamese former colo-nel and revolutionary war hero who became disillu-

sioned with the communist re-gime and defected, becoming one of its most vocal and infl uential critics, died in France at age 90. Bui Tin passed away of kidney failure in hospital in a Paris sub-urb early Saturday, his friend and a relative confi rmed, after several weeks of declining health.

“The hospital told me that Tin passed away after falling into a coma,” close acquaintance Tuong An told AFP on Sunday. A relative in Hanoi also confi rmed his death.

Tin, a former army journalist, had lived in exile in France since 1990 when he defected during a trip for a meeting organised by l’Humanite communist newspa-per in Paris.

It was an unlikely twist of fate for a man who spent much of his life fi ghting for Vietnam’s inde-pendence — fi rst from French co-lonial rulers and later from US-backed anti-communist fi ghters in the south.

He was just a teenager when, full of fervour, he joined the army aligned with Ho Chi Minh’s revo-lutionary movement that would eventually expel the French in the epic battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Several other milestones would follow during his storied military career.

On April 30, 1975, he was among the fi rst soldiers that entered the Presidential Palace in the former southern capital Saigon — later renamed Ho Chi Minh City — capping a long and bloody war that left some 3mn Vietnamese dead.

Tin worked as an army re-porter during much of the war, and later said he met US navy pilot John McCain in the prison nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton” where the American POW spent fi ve and half years after his jet was shot down in the city. The two men would meet again in 1991, when Tin testifi ed to a US senate committee on POW and MIA aff airs, at the end of which he famously hugged the man he once considered a foe.

“When I reached for his hand he responded by embracing me, which I didn’t mind, as cam-

eras recorded the moment for the next day’s papers, which ran the picture with variations on the caption FORMER ENEMIES EMBRACE,” McCain wrote in his 2002 book Worth the Fight-ing For.

As an army reporter, who later held top jobs at state newspa-pers, Tin spent much of his ca-reer brushing up with war heroes like General Vo Nguyen Giap but — like Giap — later became disil-lusioned with the cause he dedi-cated so much of his life to.

He believed the Communist Party had drifted from the ideals

of the revolution’s founding fa-ther— calling its leaders arrogant and corrupt— and once said the party “hides its misdeeds in the shadow of Ho Chi Minh”.

He spent much of his time in France writing about politics and current aff airs in his birth coun-try and friends say he was a jour-nalist, and activist, up to the day he died.

Days before he fell ill last month, his Internet went down so he wrote an article by hand calling for multi-party democ-racy in Vietnam that he asked a friend to post.

“When I visited him in the hospital, he was very weak, but the fi rst question he asked me was whether his article had been published or not,” An told AFP. “He was a real journalist until the end of his life.”

He came under fi re from fel-low activists for his former ties to the communists, but An said he remained kind and tolerant even of his harshest critics, having dedicated his life to his political ideals. “He lived for democracy in Vietnam,” she said.

One of his relatives said the family did not pay much atten-tion to his controversial political leanings — which leaders in the one-party state are notoriously intolerant of — and instead re-spected him as an elder and a leader.

“The family didn’t take (his activism) too seriously, every-one has their own ideology,” the relative said, requesting ano-nymity.

Born in 1927 near Hanoi, Tin was one of 10 siblings and leaves behind two children — a daugh-ter in Hanoi and a son in Canada.

Friends said a funeral service will be organised in France.

Former North Vietnam colonel Bui Tin in Paris in a file photo.

Myanmar asks Bangladesh to stop aid to stranded RohingyaAFPDhaka

Myanmar has asked Bangladesh to stop providing aid to

6,000 Rohingya stranded on the border between the two countries since a mili-tary crackdown prompted a mass exodus of the Muslim minority last year, the for-eign ministry in Dhaka said.

The group refused to enter Bangladesh in the months during and after Myanmar’s military cam-paign, which drove 700,000 other Rohingya across the frontier in an act the United Nations, United States and other western countries have condemned as ethnic cleansing.

They are now stuck in a narrow “no mans land” re-lying on international aid

sent by Bangladesh. My-anmar called for the aid to be halted in talks between Bangladeshi Foreign Min-ister A H Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s top diplomatic envoy, Kyaw Tint Swe, in Myanmar’s capital Napyi-daw on Friday, the foreign ministry said late Saturday.

“Myanmar particularly requested Bangladesh to stop providing humani-tarian assistance to those people... and proposed to arrange supply of humani-tarian assistance from My-anmar side,” the ministry said.

Bangladesh made no commitment but “respond-ed positively” to Myanmar’s proposal to conduct a sur-vey of the no mans land area, the ministry said.

A Myanmar minister on a visit to the strip of land earlier this year warned the

Rohingya refugees that they will face “consequences” if they do not take up a Myan-mar off er to return.

Dil Mohammad, a Ro-hingya community leader among the group on the border, told AFP the lat-est pressure from Myan-mar to vacate the no mans land area would add to their hardship.

“There will be uncer-tainty whether Myanmar will regularly provide us with food and humanitarian assistance. If Bangladesh stops helping us from their side, we will have a huge problem,” he said.

Kyaw Tint Swe, a min-ister in the offi ce of Myan-mar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, also made a new pledge to speed up implementation of a repa-triation deal agreed with Bangladesh in November. Myanmar committed to taking the Rohingya back in that deal, but none have returned.

Rohingya refugee boy Mohamed Ismail, two-months-old, has been smeared with thanaka face powder to protect himself from the sun at the Kutupalong camp in Ukhia, near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

US set to return war booty church bells to PhilippinesAFPManila

The United States will re-turn to the Philippines church bells seized by

American forces in a bloody campaign more than a century ago, its embassy said yesterday, following a demand by President Rodrigo Duterte.

American forces took three bells from the Catholic church of Balangiga town on the eastern island of Samar in 1901 as war booty in what historians said was a particularly brutal military op-eration in the new US colony.

Duterte and previous Phil-ippine governments had urged Washington to return the bells, with the president often raising the issue in his anti-American ti-rades as he builds closer ties with China and Russia. The US had initially given a non-committal

response to Duterte’s demands but on Sunday said it would re-turn the bells. “The Secretary of Defense has notifi ed Congress that the Department (of Defense) intends to return the Bells of Ba-langiga to the Philippines,” said Molly Koscina, spokeswoman for the US embassy in Manila.

“We’ve received assurances that the Bells will be returned to the Catholic Church and treated with the respect and honour they deserve,” she added, saying there was no date scheduled for the move.

Duterte’s spokesman wel-comed the announcement. Two of the bells are installed at a memorial for US war dead in the state of Wyoming, while the third is with US forces in South Korea. Some US politicians op-pose the dismantling of the me-morial, and the issue had sparked an emotional response from the descendants of American sol-

diers who served in the Philip-pine campaign.

The Philippines, a Spanish colony for centuries, was ceded to the United States in 1898 at the end of the Spanish-American War. The country gained inde-pendence from the US in 1946. The brutal Samar campaign was launched about a month after Filipino rebels killed 34 US troops in Balangiga on September 28, 1901, according to a US Army War College research paper.

Seven other American soldiers perished during the escape from Balangiga, and US reinforce-ments razed the town the day after, it added. Then-Philip-pine president Fidel Ramos fi rst sought but failed to recover the bells during a 1998 Washington trip.

Duterte, who took offi ce in mid-2016, demanded the return of the bells during his State of the Nation address last year.


ASIA/AUSTRALASIA

Lombok quake rattles tourismAFPSenggigi, Indonesia

The powerful earthquakes that struck the Indonesian island of Lombok in recent

weeks killing some 400 people have sent holidaymakers fl ee-ing, raising questions about how its lucrative tourism sector will bounce back. Two deadly tremors a week apart — accompanied by dozens of aftershocks — wrought widespread damage on homes and livelihoods, striking during the crucial tourism season, when ho-tels, local businesses and seasonal workers earn the bulk of their an-nual revenue.

In the Gili Islands, a popular backpacker and diving destination just off Lombok’s northern coast, thousands of terrifi ed tourists jos-tled on powder-white beaches for departing boats. Lombok’s airport was briefl y crammed with holi-daymakers rushing to get fl ights out, while the main tourist drag of Senggigi has been left deserted. Alfan Hasandi depended on peak season tourists to see his family through the rest of the year. He and his brothers ran a now shuttered business on one of the islands, Gili Air, off ering boat tickets, snorkel-ling, trekking and vehicle rentals, usually earning fi ve million rupiah ($350) a day during peak season.

“We hope we can rebuild ... but it’s impossible because people are still traumatised,” the 25-year-old told AFP. “Our homes have been completely destroyed... We don’t have money to rebuild, we need help.”

Located in the one of the most tectonically active areas in the world, Indonesians are used to natural disasters and its tourism industry has bounced back from catastrophes in the past. But for Lombok, the quakes struck at an especially cruel time, when the island’s tourism industry was on

the way up. Dubbed “The Island of a Thousand Mosques”, Mus-lim-majority Lombok was always a path less travelled destination than its bigger neighbour Bali, the Hindu-majority island that forms the backbone of Indonesia’s $19.4bn tourist sector.

But it had been earmarked as one of Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s “10 new Balis” with the regional government hoping to develop it into a major destina-tion, especially in the booming halal tourism sector. Its residents now have to repair and rebuild, hoping that spooked tourists re-turn.

Senggigi would normally be bustling with visitors this time of year. Now boats lie idle along its main beach, restaurants and hotels have been shuttered on its main drag and the usual stream of touts off ering services has dried up. “We don’t know whether we can operate again in September,” Susi Hayati, manager of the As-mara restaurant, told AFP.

Ketut Jaya, manager of the nearby Holiday Resort Lombok, said it might be a month before

they could start taking guest bookings again. Just 19 of the re-sort’s 189 rooms were occupied by hardy tourists who decided not to leave after the quake. Au-thorities estimate the damage unleashed by the two quakes on buildings and infrastructure on Lombok will exceed two trillion rupiah ($138mn).

But while the post-quake im-ages of destruction and departing tourists were dramatic, analysts predict tourism in the region will recover after short-term pain. In-donesia’s tourism sector has been robust in the face of major crises before, including natural disasters like the 2004 tsunami and ter-ror attacks such as the 2002 Bali bombings. “The impact is not as big as a tsunami and the (Lom-bok) airport is still open,” Tedjo Iskandar, a Jakarta-based travel analyst with TTC Travel Mart, told AFP.

Asnawi Bahar, chairman of In-donesia’s tour and travel agency association, described the earth-quake as a “temporary shock” for the sector.

The number of visitors to

Bali plummeted following the 2002 bombings, which targeted a nightclub and bar frequented by Western tourists. The attacks killed more than 200 people and shocked the world. But the island soon regained its status as one of the world’s most popular holiday destinations. That is little comfort for people like Vina Kartika, who used to work on Gili Trawangan, where one of her friends was killed in the quake, and has currently lost her seasonal tourism job.

“I will now have to stay at home, doing nothing,” she said.

On Gili Air island, some hotels were fl attened but others sur-vived. A diving school was bar-ricaded with wood panels and furniture to keep intruders out. A supermarket in the middle of the island was completely empty, its windows broken. Hasandi said he is trying to remain upbeat, and he said lessons can be learned from the Bali’s recovery.

“People were scared back then but then came back,” he said. “This is a natural disaster, so it should be OK — God willing.”

A general view of the Holiday Resort Lombok at Senggigi in West Nusa Tenggara province. A photo is seen next to a damaged house after an earthquake hit the

area of Gangga.

Death toll rises to 392The death toll from a powerful

earthquake that hit Lombok

island in central Indonesia one

week ago has risen to 392,

officials said yesterday. The

number was likely to rise further

still as teams continue to search

for victims beneath the rubble

and ruins of buildings, national

disaster management agency

spokesman Sutopo Nugroho

said. Search efforts have been

complicated by a string of

aftershocks, including a 6.2 mag-

nitude quake on Thursday. At

least 1,353 people were injured,

most of them in hard-hit North

Lombok district, which was near

the epicentre of the 6.9-magni-

tude quake that hit last Sunday.

Nearly 390,000 people are

displaced and living in camps,

Nugroho said. Aid and volun-

teers continue to arrive on the

island to help the displaced, but

efforts have been stymied by the

limited number of vehicles avail-

able for transport duties, he said.

‘No one can ‘obliterate’ Taiwan’s existence’ReutersTaipei

Vowing that “no one can ob-literate Taiwan’s existence”, President Tsai Ing-wen left

yesterday for the United States and two of its remaining diplomatic al-lies, amid pressure from China to try to stamp out references to the island internationally.

China, which claims self-ruled and democratic Taiwan as its own, has stepped up a campaign against the island as it tries to assert Chi-nese sovereignty. Beijing has ordered foreign companies to label Taiwan as part of China on their websites and is excluding Taiwan from as many international forums as it can. Also, China has also been whittling down the number of countries that rec-ognise Taiwan — now just 18 — with Burkina Faso and the Dominican Re-public switching relations to Beijing this year.

Speaking before her fl ight to Los Angeles, where she will spend one night prior to visiting Belize and Paraguay, Tsai struck a defi ant tone.

“In going abroad, the whole world can see Taiwan; they can see our country as well as our support for democracy and freedom,” Tsai said. “We only need to be fi rm so that no one can obliterate Taiwan’s exist-ence.”

China, which believes Tsai wants to push for Taiwan’s formal inde-pendence, has already complained to Washington about her US stopo-vers, which include Houston on her way back. The trip starts one day after Taiwan’s state-run refi ner CPC

Corp announced a deal valued at $25bn to purchase liquefi ed natural gas from the United States over the next 25 years.

The deal was aimed at boost-ing trade relations with the United States by reducing its trade surplus and was also a sign of goodwill ahead of Tsai’s visit, a person familiar with the government’s thinking told Reu-ters. Tsai, who says she wants to maintain the status quo with Chi-na, will also be looking to reaffi rm Washington-Taipei ties and to shore up support ahead of local elections in Taiwan in November amid the es-calating pressure from China.

During her US stops, Tsai intends to meet Ed Royce, chairman of the US House of Representatives Foreign Aff airs Committee, according to two people with knowledge of the plans. She will also meet with business representatives to discuss how Tai-wan could drum up investment and procurement with the US, they said. Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan but is the island’s strongest ally and sole foreign arms supplier.

Tsai’s US stopovers come as China and the United States are engaged in a trade war, adding to Beijing’s irri-tation with Washington.

President Tsai Ing-wen

A 12-year-old boy is the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed eight people in mountainous eastern Indonesia, authorities said yesterday. The Swiss-made Pilatus aircraft lost contact with air traff ic control Saturday during what was supposed to be a flight of around 40 minutes in remote Papua province. The wreckage of the plane was found in a heavily forested area on a mountain side in the Oksibil subdistrict yesterday morning. “Eight passengers were found dead

and one was found alive,” Papua military spokesman Lieutenant colonel Dax Sianturi said. “At the moment the cause of the crash has not been confirmed,” he told AFP, adding an investigation would be carried out by the national transportation safety committee. The plane, which was owned by private charter company Dimonim Air, was carrying seven passengers and two crew. Before the accident, villagers in nearby Okatem reported hearing a loud roar followed by an explosion.

Eight bodies found in Indonesian plane crash

Report on Chinese rights lawyers earns deportation for German studentDPA Beijing

A German journalism stu-dent studying in China was fl ying back home

yesterday after his visa was cancelled for his work on a project about human rights in China. David Missal, who had been pursuing a master’s de-gree in journalism at Tsinghua University, confi rmed to DPA that his right to stay in China had been revoked. He was ex-pected to arrive at Dusseldorf’s airport later yesterday.

He had been given 10 days to pack up and leave after authori-ties curtailed his existing resi-dency permit and refused him a new visa for the next semester.

Missal had been involved in work on a fi lm about human rights lawyers in China. Chinese authorities said they cancelled his visa because his activities were not approved under the

terms of his residency per-mit. When asked for clarifi ca-tion, authorities allegedly told him “You know yourself what that means.” China has cracked down heavily on human rights lawyers in the last three years, putting many of them on pro-bation and even sending some to jail. Missal’s project had in-volved fi lming and interviewing some of these people.

One of those interviewed was Li Wenzu, who began a 100-km march in April to protest the detention of her husband, Wang Quanzhang. She was eventually stopped and put un-der de facto house arrest. Mis-sal said he was briefl y detained at times during his work. After travelling to Wuhan to speak with activist Qin Yongmin, he said he was taken to a police station and ordered to return to Beijing. Foreigners are not al-lowed to work as journalists in China without the proper cre-dentials, which Missal lacked.

However, he had been given permission by a professor to pursue his project.

The university could not be reached for comment. Missal has a degree in China Studies from Germany and said that pursuing the degree in jour-nalism in China was “also an experiment,” given the lack of press freedoms there. “It’s still another thing when you expe-rience it personally,” he said. “You hope that there are at least more freedoms at the universi-ties. But that’s not the case.”

China ranks in 176th place in terms of press freedoms accord-ing to a ranking by Reporters Without Borders. Reporters are given instructions on which top-ics may be covered and frequently told to rely exclusively on Xinhua for reports. The Internet is heavily censored. Surveys of foreign jour-nalists also show worsening con-ditions in the country. The last re-porter to be deported was Ursula Gauthier, of France, in 2015.

China, Australia jostling to be biggest Pacific aid donorAustralia may currently be the biggest donor to developing nations in the southern Pacific, but China will soon overtake, an aid report said yesterday amid concern over Beijing’s growing influence in the region. Australia remains the largest donor to the region in terms of money spent — A$6.5bn (US $4.8bn) — in aid between 2011 and June 2017, according to the Sydney-based Lowy Institute think tank.China, meanwhile, spent $1.26bn in aid between 2011 and February 2018 and is in

second place, followed by New Zealand, the United States and Japan. However, China’s last year committed $4bn for infrastructure projects in the region, meaning Australia will likely be booted from first place next year. Australia committed just $390mn in 2017. The report is based on data collected from about 13,000 projects since 2011 in 14 Pacific countries, supplied by 62 donors. Most of China’s commitment last year will go to Papua New Guinea, Australia’s closest neighbour, for a national

road project worth $3.5bn. About half of Australia’s aid has gone to Papua New Guinea — almost $3bn — while the Solomon Islands has received $1.1bn. Beijing has committed billions of dollars and has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars bankrolling Pacific projects including roads, hospitals, ports and loans to small island nations. Many, including some Australian government ministers, have expressed fears that some countries could be saddled with unsustainable levels of debt.

Hundreds stranded after train derails in MongoliaThere were no fatalities as over 300 people were left stranded when a train derailed in south-eastern Mongolia early Sunday, Chinese state media reported. The incident happened about 7:30am amid heavy rainfall, according to Xinhua news agency. The train had been travelling from Mongolia’s capital Ulan Bator to Zamiin-Uud soum in the country’s south-eastern province of Dornogovi. There were many injuries in the derailment, Xinhua reported, with emergency services rushing to off er assistance.

BRITAIN11Gulf Times


Former British foreign min-ister Boris Johnson re-turned from his summer

holiday to face both criticism and support over his remarks about burqas, amid deepening divi-sions in Britain’s ruling Conserv-ative Party yesterday.

Johnson, seen as the biggest threat to Prime Minister Theresa May’s struggling leadership, has become a lightning rod for dis-content within the party after a newspaper column in which he said Muslim women who wear burqas look like letter boxes or bank robbers.

The comments came in a piece arguing against a ban on the Is-lamic full-face veil, but have been criticised as Islamophobic.

Others saw the remarks as colourful rhetoric that strikes a chord with many Britons.

May has scolded Johnson, stir-ring anger amongst those of his supporters who see him as the focal point for resistance to her proposed “business-friendly” Brexit plan.

The party has also launched an investigation into his remarks.

Under the headline “Boris sparks cabinet war” the Sunday Times said that four unnamed senior ministers were dismayed at May’s handling of the situa-tion.

“They have managed to engi-neer a total disaster,” one minis-ter was quoted as saying. “Trying to silence Boris is stupid, espe-cially when the majority of peo-ple agree with him.”

Johnson spent the day at his

residence in the small town of Thame, around 50 miles north-west of London, emerging only to bring cups of tea to reporters.

Asked whether he regretted his comments, he declined to com-ment.

Johnson resigned from the cabinet last month in protest at May’s Brexit plan, setting him-self up as a talisman for the many

Conservatives who want a more radical departure from the Euro-pean Union.

Meanwhile, May has strug-gled to hold her cabinet together on Brexit and faces a testing few months in which she hopes to se-cure a deal on leaving the EU, face the party’s unhappy grassroots, and win a crucial vote in parlia-ment.

A Conservative member of the upper house of parliament and former government polling adviser, Andrew Cooper, has ac-cused Johnson of “moral empti-ness” and populism over the re-marks.

“The rottenness of Boris Johnson goes deeper even than his casual racism & his equally casual courting of fascism. He will advocate literally anything to play to the crowd of the mo-ment,” Cooper said on Twitter.

Johnson, who has made clear that he does not intend to apolo-gise, returned to Britain on Sat-urday.

He is expected to break his si-lence in his regular column, due to be published by the Telegraph newspaper.

Johnson’s burqa remarks were defended by, amongst others, Donald Trump’s former political strategist Steve Bannon, who told the Sunday Times that his overall message had been lost because of a “throwaway line”.

Bannon has previously called on Johnson to challenge May’s

leadership.Bannon said that Johnson was

a victim of the “hysterical main-stream media”.

“His entire argument revolves around not wanting to ban the burqa, but arguing that he agrees that it’s an oppressive garment and that there is no scriptural ba-sis for it,” Bannon told the news-paper. “The hysterical main-stream media can never separate the ‘signal from the noise’ – for-tunately, the populists can.”

Bannon was asked about claims that Johnson aimed to be-come “Britain’s Trump”.

“I’m not sure Boris is using the Trump playbook so much as giv-ing the people what they want – authenticity,” replied Bannon, who also praised British far-right fi gurehead Tommy Robinson.

Bannon – a controversial fi g-ure who until early this year was an executive at the right-wing website Breitbart News – helped lead Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, earning him a position in the White House.

He left the job last year.

Tory splits deepen over burqa remarksReuters/DPAThame, England

Bannon: The hysterical mainstream media can never separate the ‘signal from the noise’ – fortunately, the populists can.

Johnson off ering tea to journalists outside his home near Thame in Oxfordshire.

Hundreds of Sikh separatists rally in LondonAFPLondon

Hundreds of Sikh separa-tists and their support-ers gathered in London’s

Trafalgar Square yesterday to demand a referendum on an independent homeland to be carved out of India.

They brandished banners reading “Free Punjab, End Indi-an occupation”, “Punjab Refer-endum 2020 for Khalistan”, and “We will re-establish Punjab as an independent country”.

The protest was organised by the US and Canada-based group Sikhs for Justice, and drew peo-ple from all over the world, many of them chanting “Khalistan”.

The Indian government has expressed concern to London over the activity of expatriate Sikh separatists, who want to create a homeland of Khalistan in India’s northern Punjab state.

The Foreign Offi ce confi rmed that it discussed the rally with the Indian High Commission, but a spokeswoman told AFP: “Peaceful protest is a vital part of a democratic society.”

Gurpatwant S Pannun, legal adviser to Sikhs for Justice, said: “This is a peaceful, democratic campaign to give Sikhs the right to determine their own future.”

There was a small counter-demonstration of about a dozen people singing and holding up signs saying: “We stand for one united India.”

Members of the Sikh community gather in London’s Trafalgar Square to call on the Sikh global community to support the demand for a referendum on establishing India’s Punjab state as an independent country.

Christine Hamilton has been sacked as a charity ambassador after com-

paring the burqa to the outfi ts worn by the Ku Klux Klan.

“If the burqa [sic] is accept-able then presumably this is too?” she tweeted, posting a picture showing individuals wearing Ku Klux Klan (KKK)-style clothing.

Following the criticism she received, Hamilton insisted that her tweet had been misun-derstood: “For heaven’s sake – no, I am not comparing Muslim women to KKK members and yes, thank you, I do know the diff erence.

“I was graphically illustrat-ing how full facial cover can be sinister, which is how many people view the burqa.”

However, members of the public had already contacted many of the charities she rep-resented, prompting them to cut ties with her.

Muscular Dystrophy UK said that it no longer felt able to maintain their relationship with Hamilton and added that “all links between her and the charity have been severed”.

Balls to Cancer, which helps raise awareness of male cancer, said that it was cutting ties af-ter the “inappropriate tweet”, and added: “This tweet was on her personal account and in no way the opinions of Balls to Cancer.

“We would wholeheartedly

like to thank her for her sup-port and her work helping our charity into the public eye and helping save more lives.”

Hamilton fi rst came to public attention during the 1990s af-ter the Guardian revealed that her husband, the former Tory MP Neil Hamilton, had been paid by Mohamed al-Fayed, the owner of the department store Harrods, to ask questions in parliament.

The pair then transferred their infamy into successful media careers with a sideline in regular Christmas pantomime appearances.

“Clearly I have off ended people,” Hamilton said. “To avoid any embarrassment to the charities I named on my profi le I have removed all refer-ence to them.”

Calls to the phone number she shared with her husband were not answered yesterday.

Neil Hamilton recently reap-peared as a UK Independence Party member of the Welsh assembly, despite living in an English mansion.

He spent two years as the party’s leader in the Senedd (the Wales National Assem-bly), before being ousted in May amid complaints he had resisted suspending a member over an alleged racial slur made against the Labour MP Chuka Umunna.

The comments came as the argument over Boris Johnson’s criticism of the burqa entered a second week, aided by a col-umn in the Sunday Telegraph from his father, Stanley John-son, urging him to go further.

Yesterday afternoon Leo Johnson, another member of the family, urged his brother and father to stop talking about burqas.

Charities drop representativefollowing tweetTweet by wife of former Tory MP Neil Hamilton comes during escalating row over Boris Johnson’s burqa remarks

By Jim WatersonGuardian News & Media

At least 10 people have been hospitalised after “pellet-type” shots were

fi red in the English city of Man-chester early yesterday follow-ing an annual Caribbean carni-val.

Greater Manchester Police said that they were called to the inner-city area of Moss Side about 2.30am (0130 GMT) to fi nd several people injured.

Nine people, including two children, were treated for “pel-

let-type wounds that are not believed to be serious”, police said.

It said that another man “re-mains in a stable but serious condition in hospital with inju-ries to his legs”.

Chief Superintendent Wasim Chaudhry said it was possible there were more injured people “who didn’t seek treatment last night, and I would urge these people to get immediate medical attention if that is the case”.

“This was a reckless act that could have had devastating consequences with families and friends losing loved ones,” the

offi cer said in a statement.In a message to the local com-

munity, Chaudhry added: “Guns have no place on our streets and we want to assure you we are do-ing everything we can to fi nd the person or people responsible.”

Detective Superintendent Debbie Dooley said earlier that offi cers were “trying to establish exactly where this incident took place and who is responsible for such a dangerous attack”.

“The Caribbean Carnival had been taking place earlier ... but had fi nished several hours prior to this incident occurring, which is why there were still a

lot of people in the area,” Dooley said.

“Those living or visiting the area will understandably be concerned by this incident and we will have extra offi cers pa-trolling the area throughout the morning and into the coming days,” she added.

BBC Radio Manchester tweeted that a doctor believed the shots came from one person fi ring a pellet gun.

The local Manchester Evening News reported that the shooting was believed to have taken place during a post-carnival street party.

10 injured in ‘shooting’ in ManchesterDPA/AFPLondon

The scene of a shooting at Claremont Road, in the Moss Side neighbourhood of Manchester, is cordoned off by police.

Scotland is more familiar with weather extremes of the icy or wet variety, but

this summer’s conditions have resulted in a traditional High-land games being cancelled.

The Invercharron High-land games, which were due to be held on September 15 near Bonnar Bridge in Sutherland, have been cancelled because the farmer who owns the fi eld where they are held has not been able to harvest his crops, which are unusually slow-growing due to a lack of rain.

The Scottish Highland Games Association says that it is the fi rst time in living mem-ory a games has been cancelled due to the heat.

In an online statement, or-ganisers of the games, which attract thousands of visitors, explained: “The farmer, whose fi eld we use, grows his winter feed hay crop in the fi eld and because of the exceptionally dry weather we have had, the crops are growing too slow-ly and as a result he will not be able to harvest before the games and the feed is urgently needed.”

Expressing their “severe re-gret”, they added there was not enough time to complete the li-

cence applications and risk as-sessments required by the local council even if an alternative site could be found.

The Invercharron gathering takes places towards the end of Scotland’s packed Highland games season, and is particu-larly important because it al-lows competitors in events ranging from tug of war to ca-ber tossing to gain vital extra points to secure the coveted top places in the Scottish Highland Games Association league.

The association’s presi-dent, Charlie Murray, told the Guardian: “Invercharron usu-ally sees the top heavyweights competing, and over the years it’s always had good quality athletics as well as top pipers.

“It’s a long road up there, but its the end of the season so people will travel there to get more points and secure the second, third and fourth places in the league.”

Murray said that the heat-wave had also contributed to the success of this year’s games season: “Organisers have been reporting record crowds be-cause of the dry spell.”

He added that he had never known a Highland games be cancelled because of good weather. “It’s the fi rst time I’ve known a cancellation for the reason of dry weather. It’s usu-ally the other way about!”

No Highland games because of heatwaveBy Libby BrooksGuardian News & Media

BRITAIN


The publisher of a Pales-tinian author denied a visa to appear at the Ed-

inburgh book festival this year says that the Home Offi ce has eff ectively stopped her from speaking, despite reversing its decision.

Nayrouz Qarmout, who is also a TV journalist, was one of a dozen Middle Eastern and African writers and illustrators who had their applications for visitor visas refused, some-times multiple times, ahead of this year’s festival, which be-gan on Saturday.

With all but three having received their visas, yesterday Qarmout was granted hers in a last-minute reprieve after ap-plying three times since April.

A Home Offi ce spokesperson said: “We have decided to issue a visa to Mrs Qarmout on the basis of new information that has been provided.

“We are working with her to ensure she receives her visa and travel documents as quickly as possible.”

However, it is unlikely Qar-mout will make it in time for her scheduled appearance on Wednesday, when she was due to speak at a sold-out event about her book, The Sea Clock and Other Stories.

As a Gaza resident, she also requires approval from Jordan to fl y from Amman to the UK, as well as an exit permit from Israel to pass through the Erez Crossing on the border.

She has been advised that it will take four to fi ve days for her passport to arrive in Gaza.

The festival’s director, Nick Barley, said that a new event would be planned for 23 Au-gust in her honour.

“If she can attend, it will be a celebration of freedom of speech,” he said. “If not, we’ll bring attention to her case.”

Ra Page, the founder of Comma Press, Qarmout’s UK publisher, said: “Despite this last-minute reversal, the Home Offi ce has eff ectively stopped Nayrouz from coming over, by not giving her the visa the last two times she applied, when there was still time.

“There’s no way she’ll be here on Wednesday, and it is not a guarantee that she’ll be here on the 23rd. Everything remains unknown and uncer-tain.”

Page said that he believed refusals were on the rise and that “internal directions have been issued to British consu-lates to reject more”.

“It feels like we’re all sleep-walking into a new age of na-tivism,” he said. “We’re not just talking about classic, diffi cult-to-prove institutional racism.

“We’re talking about quiet, eff ective cultural censorship.

“The Home Offi ce is say-ing, in eff ect: British read-

ers shouldn’t be hearing from other perspectives at our book festivals; their voices are of less worth; British voices fi rst.”

Speaking before the deci-sion, Qarmout said she had found the visa application process “intrusive” and that the reasons provided for her refusal – one Home Offi ce let-ter listed her single status as a reason – were “humiliating”.

She attributed irregular pay-ments in her bank statements to bureaucratic problems be-tween the competing authori-ties in Ramallah and Gaza.

“I am supposed to explain myself in the context of the plight of all the Palestinians in order to apply for a visa? Even though I am travelling as a cul-tural ambassador of my people, it makes me uncomfortable ... I am not a terrorist and I am not a threat,” she said.

Two Iranian illustrators, Ehsan Abdollahi and Marjan Vafaeian, are still awaiting up-dates for their visas a month after applying.

Both have been informed by the Home Offi ce that their ap-plications had complications.

Both have been denied visas to attend the festival before, with Abdollahi – who was sup-posed to be the festival’s annu-al illustrator in residence this year – eventually having his 2017 refusal overturned after a high-profi le campaign.

Delaram Ghanimifard, the co-founder of independent picture book publisher Tiny Owl, which publishes both Ab-dollahi and Vafaeian, said that she felt embarrassed about the increasing refusals.

“I know many Iranians ap-plying to visit, some who are parents of British citizens, who are refused now. It is very dif-fi cult and it becomes more dif-fi cult each year.

“But when you have a pub-lisher paying for everything, guaranteeing you will only stay a week and you’ve even done it before and returned home, yet you are still denied – this just shows how diffi cult the process is in general.”

Ghanimifard said she be-lieved many foreign authors had already given up on at-tending UK festivals because of the hurdles.

“When you’re always under this stress applying for visas for your artists, you do start to feel there is no point,” she said. “I hope we can fi ght against it. But I can see what is happening ... I hope the overall situation changes, because this is em-barrassing and it is nonsense.”

Home Offi ce‘blocked’author from UK festival’Visa refusals mean Palestinian Nayrouz Qarmout unlikely to get to Edinburgh book festival

By Sian CainGuardian News & Media

Qamrout: had been due to speak at a sold-out event on Wednesday.

VS Naipaul, the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature, has died at 85,

his family said.Naipaul, whose many works

revolved around the themes of colonialism and exile, died peacefully at his home in Lon-don, his wife, Nadira Naipaul, said.

“He was a giant in all that he achieved and he died surrounded by those he loved having lived a life which was full of wonderful creativity and endeavour,” she said in a statement quoted by British media.

Born to Brahmin Hindu immi-grants in Trinidad in 1932, Vidi-adhar Surajprasad Naipaul also won the Booker Prize in 1971 for his novel In a Free State and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.

Novelist Salman Rushdie tweeted that he and Naipaul “disagreed all our lives, about politics, about literature, and I feel as sad as if I just lost a be-loved older brother”.

Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, called Nai-paul’s death “a major loss”.

“Sir VS Naipaul will be re-membered for his extensive

works, which covered diverse subjects ranging from history, culture, colonialism, politics, and more. His passing away is a major loss to the world of litera-ture,” he wrote on Twitter.

Naipaul’s best-known works include the novels A House for Mr Biswas (1961) and A Bend in the River (1979).

Hailed as a masterpiece, A House for Mr Biswas told the tragicomic story of the search for

independence and identity of a Brahmin Indian living in Trini-dad.

Much of it was inspired by the experiences of the author’s fa-ther.

Naipaul’s writing stemmed from what he called a lack of roots – his unhappiness with the cultural and spiritual poverty of Trinidad, his alienation from In-dia, and his inability in England to relate to “the traditional val-

ues of what was once a colonial power”.

The damaging eff ects of co-lonialism were a major concern of his work but in his acclaimed semi-autobiographical novel The Enigma of Arrival (1987) Naipaul told of a writer of Caribbean ori-gin, who fi nds joys of homecom-ing in England after wandering years – it is only then that the world stops being a colony for him.

He also authored several non-fi ction works including Among the Believers, published in 1981 and based on his own travels, which warned of the resentment embodied in and the threat posed by radical religious fundamen-talism.

Naipaul won a scholarship to Oxford University and on gradu-ation embarked on a career as a freelance writer.

In the mid-1950s Naipaul was a broadcaster for the BBC’s Car-ibbean Voices and a regular fi c-tion reviewer for the New States-man.

Letters Between a Father and His Son, published in 1999, re-vealed a life of poverty and lone-liness – an unremarkable fate at the elite university, where many have made similar complaints.

Naipaul married Patricia Hale in 1955.

He described their 41-year

marriage as “incomplete” and later confessed that he had re-sorted to prostitutes.

He had a more passionate re-lationship from the 1970s and married for a second time in 1996.

His second wife Nadira Khan-num Alvi denied his reputation of irascibility.

Naipaul received a grant from the Trinidad government to trav-el in the Caribbean and travelled widely in the 1960s and early 1970s in India, South America, Africa, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and the United States.

Towards the end of his life he adopted the role of English man of letters and used his sharp tongue to berate what he saw as a decline in standards in his adopt-ed homeland.

He was also known for his on-going feud with fellow-author Paul Theroux, a former disciple.

Controversies aside, Naipaul was one of the leading literary voices of the Caribbean.

His best work revolved around the ambivalence of exile, and he was compared to Joseph Conrad as a chronicler of how imperial-ism changes people.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001 for work “that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histo-ries”.

Nobel Prize-winning writer Naipaul deadDPALondon

This picture taken on December 10, 2001 shows Naipaul waiting to receive his Nobel prize for literature from Sweden’s King Carl Gustaf at Stockholm’s Konserthuset.

Idris Elba appears to have mocked continued rumours that he is in line to take over

as the star of the James Bond franchise, following the latest round of media speculation link-ing him to the role.

“My name’s Elba, Idris Elba,” the British actor tweeted yes-terday, after his name was once again linked to the role of 007.

Five hours later, he post-ed an image of Public Enemy, then tweeted “don’t believe the HYPE”, also the name of one of the rap group’s biggest hits.

Elba’s name has been linked to the Bond franchise for almost a decade, during which time Dan-iel Craig has starred in three fi lms in the series.

The latest round of specula-tion appears to have begun with a report in the Daily Star last week.

It quoted the director Antoine Fuqua recalling a chat with the longtime Bond producer Barbara Broccoli, who allegedly said that “it is time” for an minority eth-nic actor to star as 007 and that “it will happen eventually”.

The story went on to quote Fu-qua as saying that Elba could be a candidate to take over.

The story was swiftly fol-lowed up by news outlets around the world, despite Fuqua’s agent insisting that the conversation with Broccoli about the future of the Bond franchise never took place and is all “made-up stuff ”.

The online version of the Daily Star’s story includes multiple promotions for Fuqua’s new business, selling headphones that can be worn in the cinema in order to provide a surround-sound experience.

Craig, 50, took over from Pierce Brosnan in 2005.

He is signed on to play the

character in the 25th Bond fi lm, which is due out in late 2019 and will be directed by Danny Boyle.

Elba, 45, has previously dis-missed rumours and said he had not had any discussions with the studio about taking over the role.

In 2016, he told Good Morn-ing America: “I think I’m too old

for that. I keep saying if it were to happen it would be the will of a nation because there haven’t been any talks between me and the studio about any of that.

He said: “Running around in cars and ladies and martinis, who wants to do that? Sounds terri-ble.”

Idris Elba appears to dismiss Bond rumours on TwitterActor tweets ‘don’t believe the hype’ as another slew of stories links him to the film franchise

By Jim WatersonGuardian News & Media

Elba: Running around in cars and ladies and martinis, who wants to do that? Sounds terrible.

Michael Gove, the envi-ronment secretary, has been accused of letting

the owners of large grouse moors who are alleged to be damaging the environment off the hook.

The accusation from cam-paigners concerns the owners’ practice of repeatedly burning heather on their moorland es-tates to help boost the numbers of grouse for shooting.

The owners face the threat of a compulsory ban on the practice after the European commission launched an investigation.

However, Whitehall papers show that Gove suggested they should end the practice volun-tarily to head off the threat of a ban.

The papers record a private meeting between Gove and a small group of owners, two of whom have made donations to the Conservative party.

According to the minutes, Gove advised them to “sign up to a voluntary commitment to suspend the practice” as it would “help the government demon-strate its intent” to end it.

His department confi rmed, according to the minutes, that the voluntary commitment would not be legally binding.

Guy Shrubsole, of the cam-paign group Who Owns England, which obtained the papers under freedom of information legis-lation, said: “The government faces legal action by the Europe-an commission for allowing this practice to continue, yet is letting

wealthy grouse moor owners off the hook by pleading with them to take voluntary action.”

The Department for Environ-ment, Food and Rural Aff airs (Defra) said that it had made rapid progress in recent months as more than 150 landowners had committed themselves to ending the practice voluntarily.

About two-thirds of them or-ganise grouse shooting.

The Moorland Association, which represents landowners, denied that they were being given an easy ride by the government.

As the “Glorious Twelfth” – the start of the annual grouse-shooting season – began yes-terday, Who Owns England is publishing a map of the owners of about 100 grouse moor estates in England.

It estimates that the estates together cover half a million acres – an area the size of Greater London.

A mixture of aristocrats, City fi nanciers and businesses based in off shore tax havens own the estates, charging clients sig-nifi cant sums of money to bag grouse, according to its analysis.

Environmental campaigners argue that the management of the estates harms the environ-ment and wildlife.

They say that it leads to the il-legal killing of birds of prey such as hen harriers, which prey on grouse, and the legal killing of foxes, stoats and mountain hares.

One criticism concerns the practice of burning the bog to encourage new heather shoots – a food source for grouse.

They say that burning heather leaves bare peat exposed to the

air, harming wildlife that lives in the peatland.

“Burning blanket bog to sup-port the elite sport of grouse shooting wreaks ecological havoc – exacerbating wildfi res and fl oods, and releasing huge amounts of soil carbon,” said Shrubsole.

However, the accusations are rejected by the owners, who say their management of the moors protects the environment.

They say that about two-thirds of England’s upland sites of special scientifi c interest are managed grouse moors which helps to conserve the landscape, while other areas have been lost

to aff orestation, windfarms or overgrazing.

The documents record how Gove invited the landowners to a meeting in London in February.

According to the minutes, Gove told them that he was pur-suing a new policy, with the agreement of the European com-mission, and was looking to the landowners “to sign up to a vol-untary commitment to suspend the practice of rotational burning with immediate eff ect”.

“He advised that protecting soils was high on the govern-ment’s agenda and introducing an immediate ban on rotational burning on blanket bog could

have signifi cant consequence on land management practices cur-rently underway,” say the min-utes.

The Defra confi rmed “the voluntary commitment is not a legally binding document and would show intent from both the government and land managers to achieve long-term outcomes for restoring blanket bog”.

It added that unless “a signifi -cant number” of voluntary com-mitments were in place by next year, it would “need to introduce legislation to cease rotational burning”.

Among those at the meeting was the Duke of Northumber-land, who has donated £11,100 to the Conservative party.

A Defra spokesperson said: “Protecting blanket bogs is a priority. We have made rapid progress over the last six months – 157 landowners have commit-ted to cease rotational burning, up from three a year ago, repre-senting the vast majority of blan-ket bog in England.

“However the environment secretary has made clear that we will take steps to introduce legis-lation if our constructive, volun-tary approach does not deliver.”

It added that its advisory body, Natural England, was working closely with these landowners to put management plans in place as soon as possible.

Amanda Anderson, director of the Moorland Association, said: “The portrayal of the partnership agreement between Natural Eng-land and grouse moor managers as being ‘cosy and letting land-owners off ’ is completely inac-curate.”

Gove accused of letting grouse moor owners off the hookBy Rob EvansGuardian News & Media

A gamekeeper observes a grouse shoot on Egton High Moor in Yorkshire, on ‘the Glorious Twelfth’ – the annual start of the grouse shooting season in the UK.

Crowd-funded headstone marks lost grave of poet William Blake

The lost resting place of British poet and artist William Blake was finally marked yesterday with a gravestone, almost 200 years after he died.Despite his influence today, Blake died in obscurity in 1827 and was buried in an unmarked common grave in Bunhill Fields, a London cemetery.Only a plain memorial stone recorded that he was buried nearby, much to the dismay of two devotees who visited, and who decided to find his exact resting place.Luis and Carol Garrido had as their guide the original co-ordinates of his burial, which were based on a grid of graves but became confused when parts of the cemetery were converted into gardens.After two years of research and some painstaking work with a tape measure, they found it, and the Blake Society – of which they were members – began fundraising for a new memorial to mark the spot.The society raised £30,000 (€33,500, $38,300) through donations from around the world, as well as a benefit gala.The engraved slab of Portland Stone unveiled on Sunday reads: “Here lies William Blake, 1757-1827, Poet Artist Prophet”, followed by two lines of his verse.“It matters that we recognise those who have contributed to our cultural heritage, and no creative genius has influenced people to the extraordinary extent as William Blake,” Nick Duncan, a trustee of the Blake Society, said in a press release.

EUROPE13Gulf Times


Iran and four ex-Soviet na-tions, including Russia, agreed in principle yester-

day how to divide up the poten-tially huge oil and gas resources of the Caspian Sea, paving way for more energy exploration and pipeline projects.

However, the delimitation of the seabed – which has caused most disputes – will require ad-ditional agreements between lit-toral nations, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said.

For almost three decades, the fi ve littoral states – Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan – have argued over how to divide the world’s biggest enclosed body of water.

And while some countries have pressed ahead with large off shore projects such as the Kashagan oil fi eld off Kaza-khstan’s coast, disagreement over the sea’s legal status has prevented some other ideas from being implemented.

One of those is a pipeline across the Caspian which could ship natural gas from Turk-menistan to Azerbaijan and then further to Europe, allowing it to compete with Russia in the Western markets.

Some littoral states have also disputed the ownership of sev-eral oil and gas fi elds, which de-

layed their development.“We have established 15-mile-

wide territorial waters whose borders become state borders,” Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev told a briefi ng after signing the Caspian convention, adding: “Adjacent to the territo-rial waters are 10 miles of fi shing water where each state has ex-clusive fi shing rights.”

Nazarbayev also said the con-vention explicitly barred any armed presence on the Caspian Sea other than that of the littoral states.

The dispute began with the fall of the Soviet Union which had had a clearly defi ned Cas-pian border with Iran.

In negotiations with post-So-viet nations, Tehran has insisted on either splitting the sea into fi ve equal parts or jointly devel-oping all of its resources.

None of its neighbours have agreed to those proposals and three of them – Russia, Kaza-khstan, and Azerbaijan – eff ec-tively split the northern Caspian between each other using me-dian lines.

Azerbaijan, however, has yet to agree on how to divide several oil and gas fi elds with Iran and Turkmenistan, including the Kapaz/Serdar fi eld which has reserves of some 620mn barrels of oil.

The three countries have tried to develop the disputed fi elds while at times using warships

to scare off contractors hired by other sides.

As a result, none of the dis-puted projects has made much progress.

Speaking after the signing yesterday, all fi ve leaders praised it as a historic event, but provid-ed little detail about provisions on splitting the seabed.

However, making it clear that

the document is no fi nal solu-tion, Rouhani said border de-limitation would require further work and separate agreements, although the convention would serve as a basis for that.

Moscow has no outstand-ing territorial disputes but has objected, citing environmental concerns, to the construction of a natural gas pipeline between

Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan which would allow Turkmen gas to bypass Russia on its way to Europe.

It remained unclear whether the convention adopted yester-day would defi nitely clear a way for the pipeline.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said that the docu-ment allowed pipelines to be laid

as long as certain environmental standards were met.

Ashley Sherman, principal Caspian analyst at energy con-sultancy Wood Mackenzie, said that although the signing itself was “an unprecedented mile-stone” for the region, the imme-diate implications for the energy sector would be limited.

“We consider a Trans-Cas-pian Gas Pipeline (TCGP) un-likely, even in the longer term”, he said in an e-mail. “Clarity on the legal status will shine more light on the commercial and strategic obstacles to a TCGP, from infrastructure constraints to supply competition, not least from Azerbaijan itself.”

In the upstream sector, the in-creasing intent for joint projects in the south Caspian is very promising, Sherman said.

“Stranded fi elds and frozen exploration projects may well come back on the agenda,” he said.

However, with off shore Cas-pian oil and gas production al-ready almost at 2mn barrels of oil equivalent per day, the impact from new fi elds – if and when disputes about their ownership are settled – might be limited.

“The scale of the projects in disputed waters is not com-parable to the existing super-giant fi elds, from Azeri Chirag Guneshli and Shah Deniz in Az-erbaijan to Kashagan in Kaza-khstan,” Sherman said.

Ex-Soviet nations, Iran agree on Caspian statusReutersAktau, Kazakhstan

Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev, Iran’s President Rouhani, Kazakhtan’s President Nazarbayev, Russia’s President Putin, and Turkmenistan’s President Berdymukhamedov attend a baby sturgeons release ceremony at the 5th Caspian Summit in Aktau.

A meteor shower lit up the skies above eastern Bos-nia on Saturday night,

giving star gazers a rare oppor-tunity to see a display of shoot-ing stars with the naked eye.

“I think that everybody should see this,” said Miralem Mehic, a Bosnian from an in-ternational group of star gazers who watched the light show at the Sand Pyramids – an area of naturally occurring sand col-umns – near the town of Foca.

The so-called Perseids me-teor shower returns to the skies

every August, and are best viewed in the northern hemi-sphere in isolated areas where there is little light pollution.

They arise when the Earth passes through the debris of Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which was discovered in 1862.

Meteors are parts of rock and dust that hit the Earth’s atmos-

phere, heat up and glow.Most vaporise as they de-

scend, but some explode.“This year the moon is young

and will not obstruct the vision, so we will be able to see 100 ‘shooting stars’ an hour,” Mu-hamed Muminovic, a member of the Sarajevo Orion astrologi-cal society, told Reuters.

Meteor shower lights up skies over BosniaReutersFoca, Bosnia

A meteor streaks across the skies over the Sand Pyramids during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower in the village of Miljevina, near Foca.

A large fi re broke out yester-day on the Greek island of Evia near Athens, the gov-

ernment said, with two villages evacuated, less than a month af-ter more than 90 people died in Greece’s worst-ever wildfi re.

“The prime minister is in close contact with the interior min-ister over the large fi re in Evia,” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ offi ce said.

Agriculture minister Vangelis Apostolou, who is on the scene, told state agency ANA that fi re-

fi ghting forces were bracing for an all-night struggle. “Forces from the entire region have been transferred here.”

Some 500 people at the lo-cal villages of Kontodespoti and Stavros had earlier been evacu-ated as a precaution.

Some 250 fi refi ghters with 62 fi re engines supported by troops are operating in the area, 92km north of Athens, offi cials said.

Greece is still mourning 94 dead from a wildfi re that struck the coastal resort of Mati near Athens on July 23.

More than 30 people are still in hospital, several in critical con-dition.

Fire forces evacuations on Greek island of Evia

AFPAthens

Firefighters are seen near a burning tree near the village of Psahna, in Evia, Greece.

An Afghan asylum-seeker who was wrongfully de-ported from Germany

was back in the country yes-terday.

The 20-year-old landed at Berlin’s Tegel airport at 2.16pm (1216 GMT) yesterday, a spokeswoman for the federal police told DPA.

After passing immigration control he was picked up by a colleague of his lawyer.

He is expected to regis-ter with the authorities in the northeastern state of Mecklen-burg-Vorpommern today.

Nasibullah S, as the man was named under German privacy rules, was one of 69 people deported to Afghanistan on a charter fl ight from the south-ern city on Munich at the start of July.

Because of an ongoing legal process at the administrative court in the city of Greifswald, he should not have been de-ported.

He has launched a legal chal-

lenge to the rejection of his claim to asylum in Germany and has yet to have his day in court.

Interior Minister Horst See-hofer had welcomed the de-portation when it happened, writing: “On my 69th birthday of all days, 69 people were de-ported back to Afghanistan. That is well beyond what has been usual so far.”

One of the deported Afghans hanged himself in Kabul, earn-ing Seehofer criticism for his seemingly heartless remark.

He rejected the criticism.Nasibullah S’s case came to

light two weeks after his de-portation.

The Federal Offi ce for Migra-tion and Refugees (BAMF) ad-mitted a “procedural error”.

Seehofer said the BAMF had misidentifi ed the man.

The German foreign minis-try had provided the man with safe accommodation near Ka-bul.

Last Wednesday, he was taken to the Pakistani capital Islamabad where he received a visa for his onward journey to Germany via Istanbul.

Wrongfully deported asylum-seeker returns to GermanyDPABerlin

Two migrants found dead in CroatiaTwo migrants thought to have sneaked into EU member Croatia from neighbouring Bosnia were found dead yesterday in a forest some 90km (55 miles) from the border, Croatian police said.“Twelve people were found of whom two were dead,” police spokeswoman Senka Staroveski told reporters, adding that they were found early Sunday in a wood near the town of Dreznica.She did not provide further details such as the migrants’ age, nationality or the cause of death, saying only that an investigation was under way.Bosnian authorities estimate that some 4,000 migrants and refugees are currently in Bosnia, mainly in the towns of Bihac and Velika Kladusa, both near the Croatian border, hoping to enter the EU along the so-called “Balkans Route”.Many have been camping out in parks or abandoned buildings, while the Red Cross and local volunteers have been providing meals and other basic services.

Fewer attacks on refugee sheltersThe number of violent attacks on refugees and asylum shelters in Germany has fallen sharply in the first half of this year, data from the interior ministry seen by Reuters showed yesterday.Police registered 704 such cases from January to June, down more than a third from the 1,127 reported in the first six months of 2017, according to the figures.There were 77 attacks on asylum shelters and 627 attacks on refugees, with 120 people being injured in the first half of this year, the data showed.The criminal off ences committed included dangerous bodily harm, arson, property damage and incitement.The influx of more than 1mn migrants and refugees, many fleeing from war zones in the Middle East, in 2015 and 2016 has led to a an increase in attacks on asylum shelters in Germany.But the number of new arrivals has gone down since last year.

German city fi ghts to savefi sh in lake

DPAMuenster

An infl ux of oxygenated water might be the last hope for the remaining

fi sh in a western German lake after an algae loss left them with no way to breathe, offi cials in the city of Muenster say.

The death of green algae in the lake caused oxygen levels to drop rapidly during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, the city of Muenster reported last week.

Twenty tonnes of dead fi sh had been collected, believed to be the majority of Lake Aasee’s fi sh stock.

The problem was exacerbat-ed by both high temperatures, which make it harder for water to retain oxygen, and the sudden rise in fi sh carcasses, which take up oxygen as they decay.

Yesterday fi re crews were busy using high pressure pumps to get more water and oxygen into the lake and to save whatever ani-mals were left.

The operation was expected to last until today.

City spokesman Joachim Schiek confi rmed on Saturday that most fi sh are dead.

“Lake Aasee has had a kind of heart attack as an ecosystem. We’re now doing everything we can to help it recover,” he said.

As recently last Tuesday, measurements at the lake had shown no reason for concern, said Karl-Heinz Wortmann of the local Fruehauf fi sherman’s association.

Wildlife has struggled amid a weeks-long German heatwave, with reports of various species dying off across the country due to the high temperatures.

Two die in French Alps glider crashTwo people died yesterday when their glider crashed to the ground in the Champsaur valley in the southern French Alps.The accident happened at a place called Roche Rousse, 2,515m above sea level, a local off icial told AFP.“The alert was sounded by witnesses who saw the glider fall,” the off icial said, adding that the weather conditions had been “good”.Two rescuers and a doctor were sent to the scene, but the exact circumstances of the accident were not yet known.The valley, near Grenoble, is famed its unspoilt farmland crisscrossed by hedgerows and rural population who still make their living from making cheese and other regional delicacies.

Mosque’s front doors hit by carFrench police searched yesterday for a driver who rammed his car through the doors of a mosque in a suburb of Lille in northern France, a police source said.No one was injured in the incident at midnight.France is on alert after a wave of religious extremist attacks in past years that have killed more than 240 people.“The car broke through the front doors of the Al Wifaq mosque,” the police source told Reuters.

Space science channel to belaunched soon,says ISRO chief

Punjab’s new medical college to start classes next year

Kerala fl ood situation veryserious, says Rajnath Singh

IANSBengaluru

India will soon launch a dedi-cated space and science tel-evision channel, a top offi cial

said yesterday.“Within the next three to four

months, there will be a television channel launched to reach even the rural parts of India on how space programme can benefi t the common man,” Indian Space Re-search Organisation (ISRO) chair-man K Sivan told reporters here.

Sivan was speaking at the space agency’s headquarters in Bengaluru on the sidelines of an event where a statue of the fa-ther of India’s space programme, Vikram Sarabhai, was unveiled on his 99th birth anniversary.

To be named “ISRO TV”, the channel will air science pro-grammes and highlight the ben-efi ts of the space agency’s mis-sions in regional languages as well as English, so that it reaches people across the country.

“The information on India’s space missions and their ap-plications are not reaching the people fully. Our eff ort through the channel is to make people aware of the benefi ts of the space programme,” Sivan said.

The space agency also aims to develop scientifi c rigour among India’s children and youth through this channel.

ISRO will also set up a module for students from classes 8 to 10 to be trained at the space agency for a month, Sivan added.

In order to inculcate scientifi c temper among students, ISRO offi cials will mentor them for 25-30 days and allow them to visit the agency’s labs and launch fa-cilities.

“The students will be al-lowed to make their own small

satellites at the end of the pro-gramme. This project, which will be launched soon, has received appreciation from Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi (who over-sees the Department of Space),” Sivan said.

As part of its plan to reach out to the people of the country in a large way, ISRO will also open up its spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh to public.

Indian public will soon be able to pay visits to the launch facil-ity at Sriharikota on the lines of American space agency Nasa, the space agency chief said.

However, Sivan did not men-tion a date when the spaceport will be thrown open to the pub-lic.

“We are also in the process of setting up space galleries and museums across the country,” Sivan said.

The Bengaluru event was also attended by space agency’s former chairmen K Kasturiran-gan and A S Kiran Kumar.

Sarabhai was born on August 12, 1919, in Ahmedabad. He died on December 30, 1971, at the age of 52 in Thiruvananthapuram.

As the founding father of the Indian space programme, Sarab-hai set up the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad in

1947 as a precursor to the ISRO.“Sarabhai chose space technol-

ogy to reduce inequality. Under his guidance and leadership, India has been able to achieve what he had envisioned,” Sivan said.

The space agency will mark Sarabhai’s birth centenary in 2019 and celebrate the event throughout the year with space-related activities.

“To mark the centenary, knowledge centres will be set up across the country and scholar-ships, fellowships and the Sara-bhai international award for in-novation in space technology will be presented,” said Sivan.

“A chair each at Sarabhai’s alma maters Cambridge Uni-versity and Gujarat University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology will also be set up Sivan said.

Sivan said 100 lectures by sci-ence luminaries would be held across the country and in asso-ciation with global space net-working body, the International Astronautical Federation.

The unveiling of Sarabhai’s statue is a curtain raiser to his birth centenary.

A proposal to name Chan-drayaan-2 lander as “Vikram” was approved by the Depart-ment of Space.

IANSChennai

There is more political support for TVS Motor Company chairman Venu

Srinivasan against whom a case has been lodged over a temple idol theft.

Federal Minister of State for Finance and Shipping Pon Rad-hakrishnan said the general pub-lic perception was that Srinivas-an has spent his own money for the betterment of temples and to improve the lives of the poor.

Radhakrishan said many dev-otees were wondering whether charging a person like Srinivasan was meant to divert the investi-gation or help the real culprits.

The case relates to the alleged theft of idols from Kapaleeswarar Temple in Mylapore, Chennai.

Communist Party of India leader R Mutharasan said it was aston-ishing that Srinivasan was being charged in a temple idol theft case.

He sought a probe to know how

Srinivasan’s name had been includ-ed in the fi rst information report.

Earlier, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam founder Vaiko had demanded dropping Srinivasan’s name from the FIR.

Meanwhile, a police team in-vestigating the theft of the idol on August 10 told the Chennai High Court that Srinivasan would not be arrested for six weeks till the court hears the industrialist’s an-ticipatory bail application.

Srinivasan said he was ap-pointed chairman of the Board of Trustees of the famed Srirangam Temple and that he had spent Rs250mn from his own pocket for the renovation of the entire temple complex.

He said he had also spent Rs7mn on painting works at the Kapaleeswarar temple in the heart of Chennai.

The industrialist also said that a private trust funded by him and his company had undertaken renovation of over 100 temples in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

TVS chief gets morebacking in idol case

AgenciesNew Delhi

In what will be a major relief to medical college aspirants seeking aff ordable educa-

tion, Punjab has launched the process to start classes at the newly announced Government Medical College in Mohali from next year.

This will be the fourth gov-ernment medical college in Punjab.

According to a Punjab health department proposal, which is likely to be sent to the Medical Council of India (MCI) by the end of this month, the govern-ment is seeking permission for 100 seats in the MBBS (bach-elor of medicine and surgery) course for the fi rst year in the 2019-20 session.

As the college is to come up at the Mohali civil hospital, the health department claims it already has full-fl edged infra-structure in place.

Of 1,125 MBBS seats in vari-ous colleges of Punjab, a mere 500 are in the government sec-tor: the Government Medical College, Patiala (200); Govern-ment Medical College, Am-ritsar (200); and Guru Gobind Singh Government Medical College, Faridkot (100).

The announcement on the opening of the new medi-cal college was made by Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s government in its fi rst annual budget last year.

The Punjab government would share 40% of the total cost of the project and the rest by the central government.

“We already have various labs and in the coming months, we are planning to upgrade the infrastructure in a few techni-cal areas that are mandatory to run MBBS classes,” said Health Minister Brahm Mohindra, vowing his department would start the classes from the next session.

“According to infrastructure

requirements for the fi rst year, we don’t need a hospital. By the time the batch gets promoted to the second year, we would have upgraded the hospital to 200 beds. We plan to increase the capacity to 300 beds by the time the fi rst batch reaches the fi nal year,” said Mohindra.

As the hospital requires at least 30 acres of land, Jujhar Nagar village next to the civil hospital has agreed to give 10 acres for the medical college. The land has been transferred to the health department.

The department is also plan-ning to shift the Punjab Health Systems Corporation (PHSC) building and a training school located in the area to Sector 34, Chandigarh.

“If that happens, we will have full-fl edged infrastruc-ture to start the college from day one,” Mohindra said.

The government has also announced plans to set up another medical college in Pathankot.

IANSKochi/Idukki

Federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh yesterday described the situation

in the fl ood-aff ected areas of Kerala as “very serious” and assured the state of all possible help from the central govern-ment.

Singh made the statement after an aerial survey of Idukki and Ernakulam districts. He was accompanied by federal Tourism Minister K J Alphons and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vi-jayan.

“The situation is very seri-ous in Kerala. The Centre will extend all necessary support to the state in all respects,” Singh told inmates of a relief camp near Kochi.

Vijayan said the aff ected peo-ple need not worry as the state government would do every-thing to ensure them relief.

“Every loss that has been suff ered will be addressed, in-cluding loss of houses, other properties and crops. Once you

return to your homes, you will face a lot of problems. Neces-sary steps will be taken to clean up your homes,” Vijayan said.

Offi cials in Ernakulam and Thrissur said the fl ood situation was under control though parts of both districts remained sub-merged. The Periyar river water level had come down enabling some of the aff ected people to return home, they said.

Idukki district, which re-corded 90mm rainfall over 24 hours till Saturday morn-ing, witnessed lesser rainfall at 40mm yesterday morning, weather offi cials said.

Water level in Idukki dam had decreased by 3ft in the past 48 hours to stand at 2,398.66ft yesterday even though rain was recorded at a few places in and around the dam area.

The situation in the hilly dis-trict of Wayanad – which saw destruction to crops and prop-erties – looked grim yesterday as intermittent heavy rains pounded the area, forcing the authorities to ask those lodged in relief camps to stay back due to the threat of landslides.

Idukki district authorities said a decision on whether to close all fi ve dam fl oodgates, opened after a downpour, will be taken on the basis of rainfall in the coming days.

State Power Minister M M Mani said the decision will be taken after detailed discussions with offi cials concerned.

The army’s ‘Operation Sa-hyog’ continued in Kerala, with two army columns undertaking relief and rescue operations in rain-battered areas of Aluva in Ernakulam district, and one column in Adimali in Idukki district.

A team of approximately 80 personnel of the Chennai Regiment from Pangode Mili-tary Station in the state capital completed a makeshift bridge in the Virinjapara-Mankulam area in Idukki district, after a concrete bridge there had been washed away in the fl oods.

The temporary bridge re-stored road connectivity to around 800 families living in the area.

Meanwhile, the hills of Himachal Pradesh in north

India yesterday experienced heavy rains.

Naina Devi in Bilaspur dis-trict recorded the highest rain-fall in the state at 130mm, with more showers in store till Au-gust 16, the Met offi ce said.

“Monsoon was active in the state during the last 24 hours. Precipitation occurred at most places with very heavy rainfall in Bilaspur and Hamirpur dis-tricts,” an offi cial of the mete-orological offi ce said.

He said heavy to very heavy rainfall conditions are likely to continue in the state till today.

Nadaun town in Hamirpur district got 96mm, while Kan-gra town received 72.2mm and Una town 64.6mm.

State capital Shimla received just 66mm rain, while Manali got 5.4mm. These towns saw the minimum temperature at 16.7 and 13.6 degrees Celsius, respectively.

A government spokesman said the Satluj, Beas and Ya-muna rivers and their tributar-ies were in spate in Kinnaur, Shimla, Kullu, Mandi, Bilaspur and Sirmaur districts.

Federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh interacts with flood victims at a relief camp in Ernakulam, Kerala yesterday. Accompanying him are Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and federal Minister of State for Culture and Tourism Alphons Kannanthanam.


INDIA

Expert calls for more safe corridors to protect elephantsIANSNew Delhi

Expressing concern over the increasing number of elephant deaths in India,

an international organisation has stressed the urgent need for a comprehensive policy change in the country to arrest the rapid fall in elephant population.

Speaking to IANS, Azze-dine Downes, president and CEO of International Fund

For Animal Welfare (IFAW), highlighted the threats these natural nomads currently face from highways and railways among others and suggested the creation of more safe cor-ridors in the country.

It was vital that public, pol-icy and industry work together to provide the space these el-ephants need to thrive, for the well-being of humans and eco-systems, Downes said.

“The elephants face threats from linear infrastructure, such

as railways, irrigation, highways and power lines. Thus, there is an immediate need for a much bigger, stronger and compre-hensive policy change to prevent this sharp decline in the elephant population,” he said.

India has a little over 27,000 wild Asian elephants; about 55% of the estimated global popula-tion. Yet these animals face an increasingly uncertain future in the country.

“We are optimistic about the future of India’s elephants.

IFAW, along with our partner Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), are working together to create real-world solutions that will make an immediate and lasting impact – for animals, people, and the place we call home,” Downes said.

The resource requirements of India’s growing human popu-lation have led to the destruc-tion and fragmentation of wild habitats across the country, de-pleting the area available for el-ephants to roam. The traditional

migratory paths of the wild el-ephants have been adversely im-pacted.

Asked why despite the gov-ernment’s various steps the el-ephants were being regularly killed, he said: “The elephant is an integral part of the ecology and cultural fabric of India. We are greatly concerned with the fragmentation of habitat these gentle giants are facing in India, and the confl ict that arises from the increased interface between elephants and people.

“To secure a future for wild elephants, it is essential that we ensure their uninterrupted movement between key habitats. To do this, designated corridors must be legally secured and pro-tected.”

He was asked about human-elephant confl ict in states like Odisha, where elephants were on the rampage killing humans and destroying properties.

Downes said: “Our vision is a world where animals and people are thriving together, and it’s the

genesis of what IFAW and WTI have been prioritising through the Right of Passage project over the last decade-and-a-half.

“Our aim, in partnership with the government of In-dia’s Project Elephant, the forest departments of ele-phant range states, and vari-ous NGOs, has been to protect and secure elephant corridors, while simultaneously improv-ing the livelihood of people affected by conflict in corri-dor areas.”

Second lunar mission on Jan 3

India will launch its second lunar mission on January 3 next year to land on the moon with a lander and rover, a top space off icial said yesterday. “We are aiming to launch the mission on January 3 next year, but the window to land on the lunar surface is open till March 2019,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K Sivan said. The 3,890kg

Chandrayaan-2 will orbit around the moon and study its lunar conditions to collect data on its topography, mineralogy and exosphere. A lander with rover which will separate from the spacecraft will orbit the moon, and then gradually descend on the lunar surface at a designated spot. The rover’s instruments will observe and study the lunar surface.

Moldova’s Foreign Aff airs and European Integration Minister Tudor Ulianovschi and his wife pose in front of the Taj Mahal in Agra yesterday.

Moldova minister at Taj

NDA victory will be bigger in next year’selections: Modi

Two women inmates ofBihar shelter home die

AgenciesNew Delhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he would be re-elected with an even bigger

majority in parliament in 2019, dismissing opposition attempts to rouse opinion against his gov-ernment for failing to deliver on promises of swift economic development and more jobs for young people.

Modi told the Times of India in an interview published yes-terday that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government is committed to improving the lives of all citizens regardless of faith.

Concerns have grown that his administration has been unable to rein in right-wing fringe groups that are trying to undermine India’s secular constitution by targeting the nation’s large Muslim minor-ity.

“We will definitely get more seats than we got the last time and I am confident that we will break all records of the seats won by NDA (National Democratic Alli-ance) in the past and achieve greater glory.

“The people are with us and we have nothing to fear,” Modi told the newspaper in an e-mail interview.

Opinion polls show he re-mains the front runner to win another fi ve-year term, but the party has suff ered reverses in some local elections in the past few months that have energised the opposition.

The BJP failed to win power in Karnataka in May, the fi rst big state to elect a new assembly this year in a contest widely seen as a test of its popularity after four years in offi ce.

It also lost a few races in the big heartland state of Uttar Pradesh in the north.

But Modi said voters wanted a strong and decisive central gov-ernment to deliver on India’s promise as a big economy and

one of the potential drivers of global growth.

“My platform will be devel-opment, fast development and development for all...We have worked very hard in the last four years and we will go to the people with our track record of devel-opment,” Modi said.

The opposition, led by the Congress Party, is trying to pull together a grand alliance of re-gional parties and even com-munist groups to mount a joint campaign against Modi.

But the prime minister de-bunked the grand alliance as “political adventurism” and a “failed idea.”

Modi is seen as a divisive fi g-ure pushing a partisan, Hindu-fi rst agenda.

Attacks on Muslims who are engaged in the cattle trade by Hindu vigilante groups who are opposed to the slaughter of cows have fuelled fears that the government is either un-able or unwilling to restrain them.

The BJP denies any bias against Muslims and he told the Times of India that his govern-ment believes in equality in the rule of law for all citizens.

Asked what the government can do to reassure minorities and backward classes amid re-peated incidents of lynching in the name of cow protection, the prime minister said even a single

incident made him “very sad” and needed to be condemned in the “strongest voice”.

“I want to make it clear that mob lynching is a crime, no mat-ter the motive. No person can, under any circumstances, take the law into his or her own hands and commit violence.”

Modi said allegations of a scam in Rafale jet deal was an attempt by the Congress to exor-cise its Bofors ghost.

“It is an honest and transpar-ent deal.”

On Pakistan and relations with the new government led by Imran Khan that is set to take charge in Islamabad, Modi said: “We hope Pakistan would work for a safe, secure, stable and prosperous region, free from ter-ror and violence.”

About Assam’s National Regis-ter of Citizens, the prime minister said preventing illegal migrants was a commitment in the Indira-Mujib Accord of 1972 and the Rajiv Gandhi-AASU Accord of 1985.

“Though the Congress ac-cepted it, vote bank politics – that the party is adept at – prevented it from actually im-plementing the process. The Congress lacked political will and courage. It is guilty of crimi-nal negligence.”

On the chances of bring-ing fugitive industrialists like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi back to India, Modi again blamed policies of the previous government that made it easy for people to bor-row and scoot.

“I would like to reaffi rm (our) stand. Anyone who fraudulently takes public money and ab-sconds will not be spared.”

The BJP won 282 seats in the 2014 general election, giving it a simple majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parlia-ment.

The BJP-led NDA won 336 seats out of 543.

The opposition last month moved a no-confi dence vote against the government but Modi easily survived thanks to his parliamentary majority.

IANSPatna

Two offi cials of a Patna shelter home were de-tained yesterday for ques-

tioning after two women inmates died in hospital, police said.

Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj said a Special Investigation Team has been set up to probe the death of the two ‘Aasra’ inmates, aged 40 and 18, on Friday night at the Patna Medical College and Hospital.

The cause of the death was not immediately known.

The shelter home offi cials said the two died at the hospi-tal, however the hospital yes-terday said that the inmates were “brought dead”.

Neither the police nor the Bi-har Social Welfare Department offi cials were told about the in-cident on Friday by the shelter home.

A police team along with de-partmental offi cials visited the shelter home in Patna’s Rajiv Hagar area and questioned the staff .

The deaths have come after revelations about the rape of at least 34 minor girls at another shelter in Bihar’s Muzaff arpur district. The case came to light in July when the Social Welfare Department fi led an FIR on the basis of a social audit by the Tata Institute of Social Scienc-es in Mumbai.

Twenty-four girls were res-cued from a shelter home in Uttar Pradesh’s Deoria last week after one of them told po-

lice that they were being sexu-ally abused.

A 35-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped by three men who promised to give her a job in Odisha’s Jajpur district, police said yesterday.

After committing the crime on Saturday evening they dumped her near a bypass. Lo-cals rescued the woman and in-formed the police.

The police said the woman, who was estranged from her husband, is a resident of Kua-khia area of Jajpur.

“We have recorded her state-ment and launched an investi-gation,” a police offi cer said.

In another incident, a woman in Reasi near Jammu is believed to have committed suicide af-ter being allegedly gang-raped, police said.

A civic volunteer was arrested yesterday for allegedly beating his mother to death in West Bengal’s Hoogly district, police said. “Rabin Kundu, a resident of Hoogly district’s Arambag was arrested for allegedly beating his septuagenarian mother to death today morning. He will be produced before a court tomorrow,” an off icer said. Kundu allegedly attacked his mother with a wooden stick after she had an altercation with his aunt, the police said. According to eyewitnesses, after the aunt left, Kundu hit her repeatedly until she became unconscious. The woman was taken to Arambag sub-divisional hospital where she was declared dead.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) yesterday arrested two men in Hyderabad for alleged links with Islamic State terror group. Mohamed Abdullah Basith, 24, and Mohamed Abdul Qhadeer, 19, were arrested after searches by NIA at seven places in Hyderabad on August 6. According to the NIA, the initial questioning brought out the involvement of Basith, Qhadeer and others pledging their allegiance to the terrorist organisation to carry out activities in India. The agency arrested the two to ascertain details of the ongoing conspiracy and also their role in furthering the IS ideology to carry out terrorist acts in India.

Telangana police yesterday arrested Rajya Sabha MP D Srinivas’ son D Sanjay on charges of sexually harassing students of a college. Sanjay, a former mayor of Nizamabad, was taken into custody over the case booked last year. Sanjay, whose father is a leader of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Simithi (TRS), was untraceable after the police registered a case for sexually harassing students of Shaankary Nursing College run by him at Borgaon in Nizamabad district. The girls alleged that Sanjay used to summon them to his room and make sexual advances. They had met Home Minister N Narasimha Reddy to complain against him and urged the government to shift them to some other college.

A Haryana policeman saved a man from drowning in a Faridabad canal, police said. According to a senior police off icer, a police team was on its way to conduct a raid in Faridabad. The team saw a man drowning in the Yamuna canal in Faridabad area and people gathered there were shouting for help to rescue the man. “Constable Lukman Khan, who was part of the team, took off his uniform and jumped into the canal and saved the man,” the police said in a statement in Gurgaon. “Constable Khan will be soon awarded with a cash prize and an appreciation letter,” the off icer said, quoting Gurugram’s Commissioner of Police K K Rao.

A strategically important bridge in Punjab’s Ferozepur district was yesterday dedicated to the nation by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman – 47 years after the old one was blown off in the 1971 India-Pakistan war. The 280ft-long bridge connects Ferozepur with Hussainiwala barrage on the Sutlej river on the old Ferozpur-Lahore highway. It is the only lifeline for residents of nearly 10 villages and connects Hussainiwala enclave with the outside world. After the 1971 war, a Bailey bridge was set up by the army to restore road links in the area. “To replace the old bridge, Project Chetak was launched,” a defence spokesman said.

Man arrested for killing mother in West Bengal

Two suspects arrestedfor alleged IS links

Telangana MP’s son heldfor sexual harassment

Policeman saves man from drowning

Bridge blown up in ’71 war restored in Punjab

CRIME TERRORISMINVESTIGATION RESCUE INFRASTRUCTURE

Kolkata police “Daredevils” motorcycle riders perform during a full dress rehearsal for India’s Independence Day parade in Kolkata, yesterday.

Independence Day dress rehearsal

PM building narrative through lies, saysCongressIANSNew Delhi

The Congress Party yester-day said Prime Minister Narendra Modi could not

list a single achievement of his government in his interviews and alleged he was seeking to build a narrative for the Bharati-ya Janata Party by “weaving lies and concocting theories”.

Congress spokesman Pawan Khera said Modi’s “mono-logues in the form of inter-views” showed his unwilling-ness to face an interactive press conference.

Khera said people would give the BJP a fi tting reply in assem-bly elections later this year and the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

“In the so-called interviews the prime minister could not even list one big achievement of his government,” Khera said.

“Spewing unadulterated lies on economy and development, shedding crocodile tears on swiftly tearing social fabric of the country by weaving lies and concocting theories to build a narrative, this is not what peo-ple want to listen from their prime minister. In the last lap of his term, Modi wants peo-ple to buy his massive failures as ‘Acche Din’(good days),” he added.

He said Modi promised 20mn jobs every year but his govern-ment could create a few thou-sand jobs and his claim of 10mn jobs having been generated in the past one year was laughable.

He said 12.6mn jobs were lost in the unorganised sector after demonetisation and 77% of In-dian workers would have “vul-nerable employment” by 2019, according to the International Labour Organisation.

Khera said there had been a four-time increase in non-per-forming assets under the Modi government and it had refused to give year-wise and bank-wise details of loans sanctioned af-ter May 2014 which turned into NPAs.

Referring to the National Reg-ister of Citizens in Assam, the Congress said Modi was playing politics to use it as “a divisive and emotional tool” to mislead people.

He said the Congress-led gov-ernment deported 82,728 Bang-ladeshis between 2005 and 2013 as against a mere 1,822 depor-tation under the Modi govern-ment.

The opposition, led by the Congress Party, is trying to pull together a grand alliance of regional parties and even communist groups to mount a joint campaign against Modi. But the prime minister debunked the grand alliance as “political adventurism” and a “failed idea.”

Former speaker stable but critical Former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who was hospitalised in a critical condition last week, suff ered a heart attack yesterday morning, off icials said. “His condition is now stable but critical. He is undergoing dialysis,” Pradip Tondon, CEO of Bellevue Clinic, said. The veteran Left leader had been on ventilator support since last Tuesday following a kidney-related ailment. The 89-year-old was earlier admitted to the nursing home on June 25 after suff ering a stroke. He underwent treatment for 40 days and was discharged just for three days after his health showed signs of improvement. However, he was re-admitted after his condition deteriorated last Tuesday, the off icial said. Chatterjee, regarded as an outstanding parliamentarian, served as the Lok Sabha speaker from 2004 to 2009. The 10-time Lok Sabha member was expelled from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on July 23, 2008.

Modi: confident

INDIA15Gulf Times


LATIN AMERICA


Mysterious manatee deaths in Mexican wetlands spurs quest for answersBy Suman Naishadham, Reuters Macuspana, Mexico

In the swampy wetlands of southern Mexico, offi cials and researchers are strug-

gling to explain the deaths of dozens of manatees, the chubby marine mammals once confused with mermaids by ancient mari-ners.

Fishermen who navigate the muddy waters inland from the coast of Tabasco state have dis-covered since May at least 28 dead West Indian manatees, also known as sea cows, along the Bit-zal River and nearby streams.

The cause of the deaths re-mains a mystery.

Locals report deaths of fi sh in the river and blame polluted wa-ter in an area that is near onshore and off shore drilling projects op-erated by national oil company Pemex.

The company says tests show no contamination in the area.

Other scientists wonder if the deaths of the placid animals, which divide their time between the ocean and inland rivers, are related to wider changes in the climate and rising sea levels.

“Whenever you see a die-off like this of a long-lived animal, it can be a canary in a coal mine,” said David Gonzalez-Socoloske, a tropical mammal ecologist at Andrews University, a small pri-

vate college located in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

“Beyond the concern for the species, it tells you that some-thing is going on with the envi-ronment,” he said.

Across the Gulf of Mexico in Florida, 92 manatees have died since January within an area where the growth of microscopic algae has caused a harmful “red tide,” according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

But the same type of algae, which only grows in sea water, cannot grow in Tabasco’s fresh water where manatees have been perishing, said Ricardo Aguilar of Mexican wildlife advocacy group AZCARM.

“The only relation is that the animals dying are manatees,” Aguilar said.

Desperate to prevent more deaths while they investigate the cause, wildlife authorities in Mexico have vowed to capture and transfer about 30 of the gen-tle herbivores to a nearby nature reserve.

But capturing a manatee, which can weigh up to 500kg, is diffi cult, said Leon Olivera-Gomez, a marine specialist at the Autonomous University of Tabasco and the rescue mission’s lead scientist.

Before the capture, Olivera-Gomez said scientists use sonar to locate the animal.

Then, a group of some 20 peo-

ple on wooden boats surround and trap it with large fi shing nets.

So far, the scientists have caught just two adults and a calf.

Olivera-Gomez said around 500 manatees, which are dis-

tantly related to elephants, are believed to live in Tabasco’s wa-terways.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, a lead-ing wildlife conservation group,

describes the population as vul-nerable.

Past eff orts in Mexico to save threatened marine mammals have seen mixed results.

In a bid last year to save the

vaquita, a pint-sized porpoise that swims in the Gulf of Cali-fornia, two of the critically en-dangered animals were placed in a breeding program, but one died in captivity.

The manatee deaths highlight threats to the Gulf’s lowland wetlands, which have historically been defi ned by seasonal rains and dry spells that scientists say will grow more extreme as global sea levels rise.

Climate swings, Gonzalez-So-coloske added, can make animals like manatees less resilient to disease-causing pathogens.

Tests around the district of Ma-cuspana, the birthplace of Presi-dent-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, plus waterways in Cent-la and Jonuta, have not shown any spills from oil activity, Pemex said in a statement last week.

Last month, Mexico’s water authority CONAGUA collected samples from the Bitzal lagoon and said the water did not con-tain high enough levels of oil, metals or pesticides to explain the deaths.

However, Dennis Potenciano, 43, the leader of the fi shing co-operative in Macuspana, home to around 700 fi shing families, said oil contamination has killed nu-merous fi sh and made the water undrinkable.

“The government doesn’t tell us anything,” he said. “They treat us as if we are illiterate.”

“We aren’t catching anything because the river is so contami-nated,” he said, on the grassy edge of a shallow waterway where he and friends found 12 dead mana-tees, fl ies swarming around their stiff , upturned fl ippers.

Workers clear Sargassum algae along Punta Piedra beach in Tulum in Mexico’s state of Quintana Roo.

Maduro would take FBI help over ‘murder plot’AFPCaracas

President Nicolas Maduro has said he would allow FBI agents come to Venezuela to help in-

vestigate a recent alleged plot to kill him with explosive drones — but with conditions.

If US offi cials confi rm “the off er for the FBI to investigate links in Florida with the assassination plan...I would agree for the FBI to come here,” Ma-duro said at an event with top military leaders late on Saturday.

The incident took place on the evening of August 4 when Maduro said he was targeted by an explosives-laden drone at a military parade in Caracas which was broadcast live on TV.

Maduro has blamed the attack on “terrorist cells” in Florida led by a man called Osman Delgado Tabosky, whom he claims was behind the plot.

The state is home to a large commu-nity of Venezuelan immigrants.

His apparent willingness to accept the FBI’s help came after Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said on Wednesday that Washington’s charge d’aff airs in Ca-racas, James Story, had expressed “the willingness of his government to co-operate” in the investigation of the plot.

During the incident, an explosion occurred above Maduro’s head as he was speaking then when a second ex-plosion was heard, the troops could be seen scattering in panic.

Authorities have arrested 10 sus-pects whom they accuse of involve-ment backed by support from neigh-bouring Colombia as well as from people living in the United States.

Maduro has repeatedly accused Washington of conspiring to oust him, with relations between the two coun-tries so frosty that ambassadors have not been exchanged since 2010.

Following the drone incident, Presi-dent Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton insisted there had been “no US government involvement.”

But he said that if Venezuela had “hard information” about any vio-lation of US law, Washington would “take a serious look at it.”

Trump has harshly criticized Ma-duro’s leftist regime, saying it has “de-stroyed a prosperous nation by impos-ing a failed ideology.”

On Saturday, Maduro again pointed the fi nger at former Colombian presi-dent Juan Manuel Santos of involve-

ment in the suspected plot — charges Bogota has dismissed as “absurd and unfounded.”

The drone incident came just days after Santos told AFP Maduro’s days were numbered, saying “that regime has to fall.”

One of those arrested on suspicion of involvement is opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens, with the government claiming he had admitted contact with

a second detainee who had allegedly confessed to participating in the pur-ported attack.

On Saturday, some 300 anti-gov-ernment protesters marched in Ca-racas demanding the release of the 29-year-old lawmaker.

Relatives say neither they nor his lawyer, have been able to reach him.

Venezuela’s all-powerful Constitu-ent Assembly, which is stacked with

Maduro loyalists and has usurped the powers of the opposition-dominated National Assembly, has stripped Re-quesens of his parliamentary immuni-ty along with another lawmaker, Julio Borges, so they can be put on trial.

The Supreme Court had last week or-dered the arrest of Borges, a former Na-tional Assembly speaker in exile in Co-lombia, for “attempted murder” over his suspected role in the drone incident.

An opposition activist takes part in a rally in Caracas in support of opposition Venezuelan lawmaker Juan Requesens, who was seized by intelligence off icers at his home this week.

20 bodies found in one week in Mexico’s Jalisco stateDPAMexico City

Twenty bodies showing signs of gunshot wounds have been found within one week in the

western Mexican state of Jalisco, home to one of the country’s most powerful drug cartels, prosecutors have said.

The bodies of six men and one wom-an were found on Thursday in a build-ing in the city of Tlajomulco, state prosecutor Raul Sanchez told report-ers.

The bodies of three other men had

already been found in the same build-ing on Tuesday but due to a foul smell police used sniff er dogs to search for further victims, eventually digging up the other bodies.

Three of those found had been re-ported missing, Sanchez said.

Several days before the bodies were found, a man who was shot in the same area as the building was treated in hos-pital for a gunshot wound.

The man, who died of his injuries, was believed to be the leader of a local unit of the drug traffi cking group Jalis-co New Generation Cartel, Sanchez said.

The cartel is notorious for its vio-lence and is in a fi erce battle for control of the regional drug trade with rival gangs including Los Zetas.

Tuesday’s discovery came after au-thorities found 10 bodies at a prop-erty in Guadalajara, the state capital on Friday. Four of those victims had been identifi ed as missing people, Sanchez said.

Also on Thursday, police in Mexico City announced the arrest of one of the capital’s most wanted crime bosses, Roberto “N,” known as El Betito, who had made major changes in his appear-ance in order to evade arrest.

National Security Commissioner Renato Sales told reporters El Betito had had hair implants and undergone gastric bypass surgery to lose more than 30kg in weight.

El Betito, believed to head a gang called La Union Tepito, was arrested on Wednesday afternoon on a city street with his brother, who was acting as his bodyguard.

Sales said he was believed to be “one of the main generators of violence” in the capital.

Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete said he had been linked to two murders in June in the Tlatelolco neighbour-

hood, which were believed to be the result of a territorial battle between gangs.

Although the capital ranks 21 out of the country’s 32 states in terms of the number of murders, the city has witnessed a recent uptick in violence, according to the Mexico City Secu-rity and Justice Observatory, an NGO which tracks violence in the city.

In a report released last week, it said Mexico City was at its most murder-ous since 1997, with murders up 7.7% on the same period last year, a rate of almost four per day. Seventy per cent of victims were shot.

Nicaragua protester shot deadAFPManagua

A supporter of Nicaragua’s Presi-dent Daniel Ortega was shot to death in the northern city of

Matagalpa as anti-government pro-testers marched past the city hall, po-lice said.

The incident Saturday came amid a wave of protests and counter-protests in several Nicaraguan cities, including the capital Managua.

Police identifi ed the gunshot victim in Matagalpa as Lenin Mendiola, the son of a longtime leader of the ruling Sandinista Front, according to a police statement reported by local media.

Other media, however, reported that pro-government paramilitaries fi red on protesters in Matagalpa.

More than 300 people have been killed and 2,000 wounded since an-ti-government protests erupted in mid-April, according to human rights groups.

The government puts the death toll at nearly 200.

Ortega, a 72-year-old former guer-rilla who has held power for 22 of the last 39 years, has responded with a bloody crackdown by security forces and paramilitaries.

Managua was the scene Saturday of rival marches for and against Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo.

Tens of thousands of people de-manding the release of jailed protest-ers joined the march against Ortega, who is in his third term as president since returning to power in 2007.

Supporters of the Ortegas, mean-while, marched along a separate route under a sea of red-and-black Sandi-nista banners, chanting for retribution against their opponents.

Duque rejects ELN ‘conditions’ for freeing abductees

Colombian President Ivan Duque has rejected the conditions set by the guerrilla group National

Liberation Army (ELN) for the release of nine kidnapped people, calling on the rebels to free them rapidly and without conditions. “I will not accept as president that we are intimidated by the kidnapping,” the president was quoted by Radio Caracol as saying.

Duque, who succeeded Juan Manuel Santos last week, has questioned the utility of his predecessor’s government’s peace talks with ELN and said he would only pursue them under a set of condi-tions including a unilateral ceasefi re.

ELN is holding three police offi cers, a soldier and two civilians abducted on August 3 in western Choco region.

It also kidnapped three soldiers last Wednesday in Arauca near the Ven-ezuelan border. The abductees were held “during operations of territorial control,” ELN said in a statement.

It requested that the army not try to release them by force and called for on the creation of a humanitarian com-mission including UN and Catholic Church representatives.

PAKISTAN17Gulf Times


Three times he has ruled Pakistan, and three times he has been de-

posed.Now Nawaz Sharif, the

“Lion of Punjab”, is being forced to watch the triumph of his great rival Imran Khan from behind bars.

Sharif, imprisoned since mid-July, is starting one of the last chapters of his long career from a cell, where the 68-year-old is serving a 10-year sen-tence for corruption.

His daughter and political heir Maryam is similarly im-prisoned, while his wife Kul-soom is fi ghting cancer thou-sands of miles away in London.

Sharif himself is also in frail health.

And the great gamble he took in returning to Pakistan days ahead of the July 25 election has failed to galvanise support.

Instead, Khan is set to take the oath as prime minister and usher in a “New Pakistan” on August 18.

“Now is the time to see how history remembers him,” says Muhammad Zubair, a senior member of Sharif’s epony-mous Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N).

Such a scenario seemed unthinkable a year ago when Sharif, then a prime minister hailed for his infrastructure projects, seemed to be moving towards easy re-election.

The Supreme Court shat-tered his momentum on July 28, 2017, deposing him follow-ing a corruption investigation.

He was banned from poli-tics, and fi nally jailed just two weeks before the vote.

The “Lion of Punjab”, named for the wealthy province which is his family stronghold, has insisted that the powerful Pa-kistani army – assisted by the judiciary – orchestrated his fall.

Khan, who captained Paki-stan to World Cup cricket vic-tory in 1992, has dismissed the claims, as have the generals.

However, Sharif is not alone: observers have described the campaign as the “dirtiest” in Pakistan’s history because of widespread allegations of mili-tary interference.

The opposition is protesting against alleged electoral fraud.

Supporters say that Pakista-nis will remember that Sharif and daughter Maryam were in London with his ailing wife when their jail sentences were handed down.

They chose to return to Pa-kistan, where they were arrest-ed as soon as they landed.

But the hoped-for surge of support for his party – led into the campaign by his less char-ismatic brother, Shehbaz – has not materialised.

Once ubiquitous in the me-dia, Sharif has issued no public statement in weeks.

“They wanted to sell this po-litically. But the gamble didn’t pay off ,” analyst Fahd Husain said.

Sharif is “being punished only for one reason, and that

reason is that he is not bow-ing his head” to the military, Mushahidullah Khan, a former PML-N minister, told AFP.

Imran Khan, who fi rst insti-gated the corruption charges against Sharif, has told AFP that the PML-N’s claims are “conspiracy theories” and a “smokescreen”.

The court decision ousting Sharif may have been contro-versial, but repeated accusa-tions over decades mean he is widely perceived as corrupt.

Critics dismiss him as a leader who stole billions from Pakistan, giving Khan’s vow to end graft an extra edge.

However, Sharif’s support-ers staunchly frame his ouster as part of the long battle be-tween the civilian and military leadership for power in Paki-stan, whose history is punctu-ated by coups and assassina-

tions.“(Sharif) is fi ghting for civil-

ian supremacy. If he is going to jail, it is worth giving that sacrifi ce,” says the PML-N’s Zubair.

Sharif has been down and out before.

Expelled from power in 1993 on suspicion of corruption, he won the 1997 election, only to be ousted and exiled after a military coup in 1999.

He returned in 2007, and took power once more in 2013.

Zubair said he will not fi ght for a fourth term.

Now, it is his political legacy at stake.

Saving that might not be up to him.

“If (Imran Khan’s party) does well, Nawaz Sharif’s nar-rative will be diluted,” said the analyst Husain.

The PML-N has criticised the conditions of Sharif’s de-tention.

Sharif, who suff ers from high blood pressure, was brief-ly hospitalised in late July.

“He looks far better than the fi rst time,” Zubair, who visits Sharif regularly, told AFP.

The former prime minister is “not in the worst possible cell”, and even has a television with three channels – state-run PTV, a weather channel, and a sports channel.

But he is in solitary confi ne-ment.

“He is not even allowed to meet Maryam, other than on Sundays,” Zubair said.

His fate has divided once-fervent supporters.

“Many PML-N leaders told him not to speak against the army and judiciary, but he didn’t listen,” said Naja Nisar, an estate agent in Rawalpindi.

Kashan Arshid, a former par-ty youth leader in Rawalpindi, is unwilling to write Sharif off .

“It’s the third time he’s suf-fered. Each time ... people say he is fi nished,” Arshid said. “But every time he comes back, stronger. The lion will roar again.”

The Caged Lion of Punjab: the fallof ex-PM SharifBy Joris Fioriti, AFPIslamabad

Sharif: down again...but not out?

Sharif took a gamble by returning to Pakistan from the UK, days before the July 25 election, to galvanise support ... a bet that did not pay off

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s tally has reached 158 members in

the National Assembly (MNAs) after bagging 33 seats reserved for women and minorities, and nine independents joined the Imran Khan-led party.

Out of the 60 reserved women seats, the PTI has clinched 28, followed by the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) with 16 seats, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) nine seats, the Mut-tahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) two seats, and one seat each by the Baluchistan Awami Party (BAP), the Baluchistan National Party (BNP), the Grand Demo-cratic Alliance (GDA), the Mutta-hida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and the Pakistan Muslim League – Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q).

Similarly, out of the 10 re-served seats for minorities, the PTI took fi ve, followed by two each by the PPP and PML-N, and one by the MMA.

If the number of MNAs of the PTI and its allied parties are counted, the total comes to 184 in the 339-strong lower house.

In addition to this, four inde-pendent MNAs-elect are also poised to support the PTI, there-fore making the strength of the PTI and its allies 188.

However, the PTI will not be facing a weak opposition, as the strength of arch-rival PML-N

and its allies comes to 151.The prominent women who

would be MNAs on reserved seats include Dr Shireen Mazari, Munaza Hassan, and Andaleeb Abbas of the PTI, Tahira Au-rangzeb, Shaista Pervez, former information minister Marriyum Aurangzeb, Zahra Wadood Fate-mi, the wife of former special assistant to the PM on foreign af-fairs Tariq Fatemi, Mussarat Asif Khawaja, former foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar, former re-ligious aff airs minister Shagufta Jummani, Shazia Marri, and former senator Rubina Irfan.

The National Assembly has a total of 342 seats: 272 general seats, 60 seats reserved for wom-en, and 10 reserved for minori-ties.

The July 25 elections were only

held in 270 constituencies as the polls in NA-60 Rawalpindi were postponed following the dis-qualifi cation of PML-N leader Hanif Abbasi, while elections in NA-103 (Faisalabad) had been put off after the death of a can-didate.

The notifi cation of the success of Fida Dero of the PPP from NA-215 (Sanghar) has been withheld by the Election Commission of Pakistan, thus only the results of 339 NA constituencies have so far been announced.

Out of the total 141 general seats of the National Assembly in Punjab, polls took place for 139, with the PML-N and the PTI clinching 61 and 60 seats, re-spectively.

However, all seven independ-ently-elected MNAs from the province joined the PTI, and the party was able to get 16 reserved seats for women as against 15 by the PML-N, out of the total 33 seats.

The PPP and the PML-Q, which had won six and four gen-eral seats from the province, re-spectively, received one each of the two leftover reserved seats for women.

There are 14 reserved seats of women from Sindh, out of which eight went to the PPP, four to the PTI, and one each by the MQM and the GDA.

Out of the nine reserved women NA seats from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the PTI got seven while the PML-N and the MMA secured one each.

There are four reserved NA seats for women from Balu-chistan, the PTI, the MMA, the BAP, and the BNP secured one seat each.

The fi nal party position after the allocation of reserved seats for women and minorities in the National Assembly shows that there will be a tough contest dur-ing the elections for the key of-fi ces of speaker, deputy speaker, and prime minister in the coming days.

The PTI has already nominated former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa As-sembly speaker Asad Qaiser for the offi ce of NA speaker, and he will face the PPP’s Syed Khur-sheed Shah, a joint candidate of the newly-formed 11-party al-liance named the Pakistan Alli-ance for Free and Fair Elections.

Similarly, PTI chairman Imran Khan will be up against PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif for the offi ce of the prime minister.

The PTI secured 158 seats in the lower house of parliament, but this number is certainly go-ing to decrease as the ECP has already asked those members who have won from more than one constituency to retain only one seat.

Such members will have to send their resignations to the ECP before taking their oath as MNAs today.

When such MNAs-elect va-cate their additional seats, the actual number of the PTI seats in the NA will come down to 152.

Similarly, the PML-Q’s

Chaudhry Pervez Elahi won two NA seats in addition to a Provin-cial Assembly (PA) seat.

As he has decided to retain his PA seat after he was nominated for the offi ce of Punjab Assembly speaker, the PML-Q will also lose two seats in the NA, leaving the party with only three members.

Since the PML-Q is an ally of the PTI, Imran Khan’s party will also lose two more votes in the crucial parliamentary elections.

The parties which have either already announced their sup-port to the PTI or are expected to vote for the PTI nominees are the MQM with seven seats, the PML-Q and the BAP with fi ve seats each, the BNP (four seats), the GDA (three), and the Awami Muslim League and Jamhoori Watan Party (with one seat each).

Besides them, nine independ-ents have joined the PTI.

Four independents, who have decided to maintain their inde-pendent status, are also expected to vote for the PTI.

Thus, the PTI should get 180 votes in all the elections against 151 votes of the candidates of the joint opposition.

The PML-N, with 82 seats, is the largest party in the opposi-tion group, followed by PPP (53 seats), the MMA (15 seats), and the ANP (one seat).

The PML-N’s Hamza Shehbaz won both a National Assembly and a Punjab Assembly seat.

If he decides to vacate the NA seat, the opposition’s tally will reduce to 150.

PTI ups lower house member tally to 158InternewsIslamabad

Imran Khan: will face the PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif for the country’s top off ice.

Greenlit

A building in Lahore is decorated and illuminated ahead of Pakistan’s Independence day. Pakistan will celebrate the 71st anniversary of the country’s independence from British rule tomorrow.

UK queen praises Pakistan off icerA platoon of cadets at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS), led by a Pakistan army major, has been declared the best platoon of the course this year, and Queen Elizabeth II has praised him for the “outstanding achievement”.Pakistan army Major Umar Farooq joined the British army’s military academy last year as an instructor – taking over from Major Uqbah, who returned to Pakistan last year after serving as the first Pakistani military instructor.The UK’s Chief of General Staff General Mark Carlton Smith was the chief guest at the Sovereign’s Parade of Commission Course 173, which was held at the military academy on Saturday.Farooq trained the cadets over the course of a year.Out of eight platoons, his platoon was declared as the best at the ceremony, which was also attended by Pakistan’s High Commissioner Sahebzada Ahmed.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has decided to appoint serv-

ing high court judges to adju-dicate in election tribunals, a senior offi cial of the commis-sion said yesterday.

Contrary to the tradition of appointing retired judges to election tribunals, the ECP has written letters to the registrars of fi ve high courts seeking lists of judges for the purpose.

A notifi cation for the ap-pointment of judges to election tribunals is expected to be is-sued next week.

According to legal experts, the appointment of serving judges for election tribunals may slow proceedings of other cases in the high courts.

More than 2mn cases are pending in the various courts – around 1.7mn cases in lower courts, 295,000 cases in the fi ve high courts, and 40,000 cases in the Supreme Court.

The Election Act 2017 states that if a serving judge works for an election tribunal, the elec-tion commission will request that the chief justice of the relevant high court not entrust the serving judge with any ju-dicial work until the election petitions are disposed of.

Normally, judges for election tribunals are appointed after issuance of the fi nal notifi ca-tion of election results, which is also the beginning of the countdown of 45 days given for fi ling cases against the results.

As the notifi cation for elec-tion tribunals was issued late this year, applicants will have less than 45 days to fi le cases

against the election results.The Election Act 2017 allows

the ECP to appoint a serving or retired judge of the high court to hear poll disputes in election tribunals.

It states that the ECP can appoint a sitting judge for elec-tion tribunal in consultation with the chief justice of the rel-evant high court.

According to the law, an election petition should have a complete list of witnesses and their statements on affi davits, documentary evidence relied upon by the petitioner in sup-port of allegations, affi davit of service to the eff ect that a copy of the petition along with cop-ies of all annexures, including list of witnesses, affi davits and documentary evidence, have been sent to all the respondents by registered post or courier service and the relief claimed by the petitioner.

The law states that an elec-tion tribunal has to decide a petition within 120 days of its fi ling, but at the same time if the decision is delayed, fur-ther adjournment sought by a party will be granted only on payment of special costs of Rs10,000 per adjournment, and adjournment cannot ex-ceed three days.

If an election tribunal itself adjourns a petition, it shall record reasons for such ad-journment.

The election tribunal can refuse to examine any wit-ness if it is of the opinion that the evidence of such witness is not material for the deci-sion of the election petition or that the party on whose behalf such witness has been sum-moned has done so on frivolous grounds.

Serving judges to settle poll disputesInternewsIslamabad

Pakistan plans to deploy more troops at its border with Afghanistan, offi cials

have said, in a move that is likely to trigger tensions between the neighbours.

Pakistan has been recruiting

and training around two dozen new battalions of the paramili-tary FC force since 2015 to in-crease patrols to stop militants moving across the militarised border, a security offi cial said.

At least 50,000 troops are be-ing trained for deployment along the 2,500km border, the offi cial added, asking not to be named.

“About half of them have fi n-

ished training and some are de-ployed,” a second offi cial said.

A fence is also being built at the border, which was drawn when British rulers of India carved a strip out of Afghanistan in the 19th century and has never been accepted by Kabul.

Pakistan and Afghanistan, two key allies in the US-led war on terrorism, have been accusing

each other’s spy agencies of us-ing Islamist militants as proxies across the Durand Line border.

However, the troubled rela-tions improved somewhat after Pakistan’s army chief promised to help Afghanistan set up peace talks with the insurgent Taliban during a visit to Kabul last year.

Kabul appears upbeat about the prospects of a second cease-

fi re with the Taliban, in what analysts believe could lead to the start of formal peace talks.

However, the Afghan defence ministry has reacted cautiously to Pakistan’s increased military presence at the border, calling it a positive move if it reduces mili-tants’ movement, but noting that all such steps in the past have failed to achieve that goal.

Pakistan to deploy more troops at border with Afghanistan

DPAIslamabad

The inaugural sessions of the Baluchistan and Pun-jab assemblies are set to

be held today and on Wednesday, respectively.

The newly-elected members of the two assemblies will be ad-ministered their oath of offi ce by the outgoing speakers.

Outgoing Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal will administer the oath to the Punjab MPAs-elect.

The session of the 17th provin-cial assembly will begin at 10am.

The election to the posts of speaker and deputy speaker will be held on August 16, or as scheduled by the speaker.

The chief minister’s election will be held a day after the speak-

er’s election, and the new chief minister’s oath-taking ceremony will be held at Governor House.

According to reliable sources, the inaugural session of the Balu-chistan Assembly has been sum-moned by Governor Muhammad Khan Achakzai at 11am today.

During the session, 62 out of the 65 newly-elected members

will take their oath, to be admin-istered by outgoing Speaker Ra-heela Hameed Khan Durrani.

The nomination papers for the slots of speaker and deputy speaker will be submitted today.

Once the speaker of the as-sembly is elected, he will conduct the election for the offi ce of the deputy speaker.

Baluchistan, Punjab assemblies hold inaugural sessions this weekInternewsLahore

PPP’s Leghari to be Sindh deputy speaker

Rehana Leghari, a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) lawmaker from Sujawal, is

joining an elite club of women who have been elected as deputy speakers

of the Sindh Assembly.

A lawyer by profession, Leghari will replace Syeda Shehla Raza, who had

completed two tenures – from 2008 to 2018 – as the deputy speaker.

Leghari will be the fourth woman deputy speaker of the house.

Jethi Tulsidas Sipahimalani was the first woman who made it to the Sindh

Assembly by getting elected in general vote and became the first woman

deputy speaker in 1937.

The assembly’s second woman deputy speaker was Raheela Tiwana, who

was a front-line leader of the PPP’s students wing along with Raza.


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Nasa’s Parker probe

on a fi ery mission to

shed light on the SunThe Parker Solar Probe, launched yesterday by

Nasa, is expected to make history in space exploration with its seven-year mission set to unravel hitherto unknown facts about the Sun. If indescribably searing temperatures have hindered further study of the solar surface, the new probe is anticipated to pry close, thanks to a state-of-the-art thermal protection system.

The probe will gather more information on solar winds – streams of plasma and particles emitted from the Sun’s surface. These winds which accelerate to speeds of about 250 miles per second as they are jettisoned from the Sun, travel hundreds of millions of miles, spewing past Earth in a constant stream. Earth’s magnetic fi eld defl ects the winds. It is a mystery how the winds ultimately break away from the Sun’s gravitational pull.

The probe will be the fi rst to make contact the Sun’s corona, blazing at temperatures up to 2mn degrees Fahrenheit and investigate the acceleration of high-energy particles away from the Sun’s surface. These particles are often associated with events such as solar fl ares or coronal mass ejections which can damage satellites and even cause power outages on Earth. Scientists hope the probe’s ventures will inform how the volatile corona manages to buoy both solar winds and these high-energy particles into space.

The probe is scheduled to make a fi nal approach to the Sun in late 2024, during which it will come within 3.83mn miles of the Sun’s surface. This is seven times closer than any spacecraft has ever been to the Sun—and closes about 96% of the distance between Earth

and its star. In a statement, Nasa said: “The spacecraft and instruments will be protected from the Sun’s heat by a 4.5inch-thick carbon-composite shield, which will need to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft that reach nearly 2,500F.” The carbon-foam core is 87% hollow. The Sun-facing side is coated in a specialised white paint that dissipates most of the Sun’s heat, guarding the fragile instruments below.

The back of the shield will stay at 600F, and the instruments cloaked within the probe’s bus will remain around 85F. To ensure that the sensitive electronics remains in shadow, the heat shield must always face the Sun. Seven specialised sensors surround the spacecraft, constantly sampling the probe’s exposure to light. If the spacecraft teeters into a precarious position, the sensors will trigger a protective response to rapidly correct the probe’s angle. The probe also comes with a liquid cooling system, packing in fi ve litre of pressurised water that can trickle along little veins along the machinery to maintain a workable ambient temperature.

The spacecraft will also sport instruments like the Solar Probe Cup, designed to scoop up the high energy particles streaming from the Sun’s surface, and a set of telescopes to snap sunlit photos of the sights. At closest approach, the Sun’s power will be 475 times what a satellite orbiting Earth would experience. Scientists have spent six decades working on the project, expected to cost £1bn. The Parker probe is named after American astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 91, who developed a pioneering theory on supersonic solar wind in 1958.

The probe is scheduled to make a fi nal approach to the Sun in late 2024

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CHAIRMANAbdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing EditorK T Chacko

By Simon TisdallLondon

Nineteen months into the Trump presidency, US democracy is running into serious trouble – but

it is not all, or even mostly, Donald Trump’s fault. This crisis of governance has been building for decades. It is only now, as Trump’s iconoclastic assaults on established beliefs, laws, institutions and values test the system to destruction, that the true scale of pre-existing weaknesses and faultlines is becoming apparent.

This deep crisis of confi dence, bordering on national meltdown, comes as the US hurtles towards midterm elections in November – a familiar American ritual now rendered strangely unpredictable by fears of foreign manipulation and an FBI investigation that could, by some estimates, lead ultimately to Trump’s impeachment.

The process of degradation aff ects US citizens and all those around the world who hold up the US democratic system as a paradigm worthy of emulation. Friends worry that the country’s ability to sustain its traditional global leadership role – moral and practical – is being undermined. Enemies, principally anti-democratic, authoritarian competitor regimes in Russia and China, hope this is so.

Take a case in point, with global implications: Trump has repeatedly bragged about his willingness to use nuclear weapons. As commander-in-chief, he oversees the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Last year he threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, a nation of 25mn people. He has also threatened Iran. Such recklessness appals many Americans. But it transpires there is little they could do to stop Trump should he decide, on a whim, to press the “nuclear button”.

Checks do exist. There is a chain of command that cannot be bypassed. But security experts say nobody, not even the secretaries of state and defence or the chairman of the joint chiefs, has legal power to block a presidential launch order. What could be less democratic? Yet this dilemma was not created by Trump. It has existed for many years. Congress is now belatedly reviewing it.

Trump’s frequent use of “executive orders” has provided another wake-up call. Most infamous was his travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries, but others – concerning his Mexican border wall, his unilateral imposition of steel tariff s, and his reversal of Barack Obama’s Aff ordable Care Act – were also highly contentious. Yet, once issued, such orders are rarely overturned. After numerous legal challenges, the supreme court upheld the travel ban.

Many were shocked to discover that a US president could issue diktats. But the use of such orders, avoiding public scrutiny, is long-established. Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbour by this means. Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation ending slavery was an executive order. In exercising this arbitrary power, Trump is following

precedent, however undemocratic. The expanding powers of what the Vietnam-era historian Arthur Schlesinger dubbed the “imperial presidency” is a long-recognised phenomenon and one that Congress, America’s primary constitutional pillar, has signally failed to curb over the years. This may be one reason why Americans, according to polling going back decades, exhibit a consistently low opinion of Congress. But there are many others. The dominant two-party system, virulent partisanship and out-of-touch politicians are blamed for chronic failures of governance. The advantages conferred by incumbency are overwhelming; most members are repeatedly re-elected, reducing democratic choice. In terms of the presidency – the second constitutional pillar – systemic problems produce even greater anomalies. Trump was the fifth president to win office despite losing the popular vote, thanks to the archaic, unaccountably unreformed electoral college process.

Members of Congress are widely viewed as overly beholden to corporations, wealthy donors and special interests. In other words, they are seen as corrupt. The sums involved in greasing the wheels of US democracy are indeed eye-watering. According to the campaign fi nance watchdog Open Secrets, an overall $6.5bn was spent by presidential and congressional candidates in 2016 – enough to give every teacher in the country a $2,000 pay rise.

The average cost of winning a Senate seat was $19.4mn. Winning a House of Representatives seat in the midterm elections will cost an average $1.5mn, at least. The need for such huge war chests eff ectively excludes many would-be candidates from the democratic process

and places others in hock to their fi nancial backers.

Again, worries over excessive, non-transparent or illegal campaign fi nancing long precede Trump. Despite many reform eff orts, a growing proportion of funding comes from anonymous sources. According to a recent USA Today investigation, 40% of all television ads for political candidates are fi nanced by secret donors with private political or commercial agendas. Then there is untraceable money emanating from foreign governments or individuals, via agents and lobbyists – an issue of heightened concern in the context of the Mueller inquiry into Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Mounting evidence of Russian infl uence-peddling and meddling has added to the sense of a gathering crisis of democracy. Yet while Trump’s minimising of the issue and his attempts to shut down the Mueller probe are plainly self-interested, these problems cannot all be laid at his door. Russians have been seeking to undermine US democracy since 1945. The diff erence now is they’re getting better at it – as are other foreign states.

US intelligence chiefs agree. “Our democracy itself is in the crosshairs,” the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, said last week. “Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, and it has become clear that they are the target of our adversaries, who seek … to sow discord and undermine our way of life.” Yet what if Trump really were to be proven guilty of conspiring with a foreign power? How would he react? This is unknown, scary territory.

Can the judicial branch and, in particular, the supreme court – the third constitutional pillar and proud symbol of the founding fathers’ doctrine of the separation of powers

– save US democracy? It seems unlikely. In nominating a prominent conservative, Brett Kavanaugh, for the latest court vacancy, Trump followed recent practice in shaping the court to suit his political outlook. It has not always worked this way. As the author David Greenberg has pointed out, supreme court nominations used to be mostly apolitical. This is not the constitution envisaged when they wrote the rules in Philadelphia in 1787.

Trump’s maverick behaviour highlights these entrenched structural problems. Yet, that aside, his rogue presidency is uniquely corrosive, right now, of democracy everywhere. His encouragement of ultranationalist, racist and neo-fascist forces from Warsaw to Charlottesville, divisive demagoguery, relentless vilifi cation of independent journalism, contempt for the Western European democracies, coddling of dictators and rejection of the established, rules-based international order all reinforce perceptions that the global role of the US as shining democratic beacon is dimming rapidly. Trump did this all by himself.

So what is to be done? The most urgent task is to recognise what is happening. Decades of complacent assumptions about America’s unending, unquestioning adherence to the democratic model have left it vulnerable to subversion within and without. Radical, inclusive political reform is urgently required. There needs to be a national conversation – and a revisiting of basic democratic principles. Maybe it’s time, 231 years on, for a follow-up constitutional convention in Philadelphia? – Guardian News & Media

Simon Tisdall is a foreign aff airs commentator

American democracy is in crisis, and not just because of Trump

Decades of complacent assumptions about America’s unending, unquestioning adherence to the democratic model have left it vulnerable to subversion within and without.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Monday, August 13, 2018 19

Girls with obesity have increased risk of depression

Prevention is the best migration cure

Live issues

By Lisa RapaportReuters Health

Obese girls are more likely to develop depression during childhood and adolescence than their peers who weigh

less, a research review suggests.Compared to girls at a healthy

weight, girls with obesity were 44% more likely to have depression or to be diagnosed with it in the future, the analysis of 22 studies with a total of almost 144,000 participants found.

Just being overweight rather than obese, however, didn’t appear to infl u-ence the risk of depression for girls, and there wasn’t any association be-tween weight and depression in boys.

The smaller studies included in the analysis were not controlled experi-ments designed to prove whether or how obesity might cause depression, or the role that gender might play.

But it’s possible boys and girls might have diff erent perceptions about body image that at least partially explain the results, said lead author Dr Shailen

Sutaria of Imperial College London in the UK.

“While a number of factors may be involved, clearly there are additional social pressures on girls to be a certain body shape, perpetuated and amplifi ed though social media,” Sutaria said by e-mail.

Sponsored Girls who experience body dissatisfaction may develop symptoms of depression as a result, Sutaria added.

But overweight or obese boys might think diff erently about their size.

“Boys may fi nd it desirable to be larger as this refl ects strength and dominance, traits that are likely to be desirable dur-ing childhood,” Sutaria said.

Globally, more than 40mn children are overweight or obese by the time they’re 5 years old, according to the World Health Organisation.

Depression is also a leading cause of reduced quality of life for children, im-pacting school performance, friend-ships and the risk of risky behaviours, researchers note in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

While previous research has linked

childhood obesity to an increased risk of depression, results have been mixed and the estimated excess risk has ranged from as low as 4% to as high as 64%, researchers note.

In the current analysis, children were 14 years old on average and al-most 16% were obese.

Slightly more than one in 10 obese children were depressed.

“We know that children with obes-ity are at risk of developing depres-sion and we know that children with depression are at risk of developing obesity,” said Dr Stephen Pont, a re-searcher at the University of Texas Dell Medical School in Austin who wasn’t involved in the study.

“To some degree we have been in a ‘chicken and the egg’ situation,” Pont said by e-mail. “We do not know if obesity causes depression or that depression causes obesity.”

Still, parents should keep the risk of depression in mind when they try to encourage overweight or obese chil-dren to achieve a healthy weight, said Rebecca Puhl of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the Univer-

sity of Connecticut in Hartford.That means avoiding talk about the

scale, Puhl, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by e-mail.

“When parents talk to their teen about losing weight, the teen is more likely to turn to unhealthy dieting and maladaptive weight control behav-iours — like binge eating,” Puhl added.

“But when parent conversations in-stead focus on healthy behaviours like eating nutritious foods, rather than body weight, the teen is less likely to engage in those unhealthy behaviours.”

At home, parents should also make sure kids aren’t teased about their weight and that there’s a supportive environment that encourages healthy behaviour, said Eleanor Mackey of Children’s National Health System in Washington, DC.

“Parents should also encourage friendships that support the adoles-cent without bullying,” Mackey, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by e-mail.“Finally, if a parent notices changes in mood, attitude, or increase in sleeping, diffi culty sleeping, poor concentration, irritability, or sad mood, please seek help.”

By Jorge Moreira da SilvaParis

With newspapers full of stories about the challenges migrant families face, it might

be tempting to assume that the causes of displacement are also being addressed.

In most cases, however, such an assumption would be wrong.

Today, solutions to forced migration focus almost exclusively on aiding refugees after they fl ee, rather than targeting the reasons for their fl ight.

To resolve the world’s refugee crises, the causes require as much attention as the eff ects.

Why would parents risk their lives, or the lives of their children, to leave home and journey into the unknown? And what can be done to keep families from being forced to migrate in the fi rst place? These are among the key questions that colleagues and I have attempted to answer in a new OECD study, States of Fragility 2018.

The fi ndings are as illuminating as they are troubling.

By 2030, more than 80% of the world’s poor will live in an area defi ned as “fragile” – a status that may refl ect any number of political, social, security, economic, or environmental causes.

Unfortunately, if current trends hold, far too little development aid will be allocated to address the factors contributing to fragility.

In 2016, for example, just 2% of the $68.2bn in offi cial development assistance (ODA) that went to places aff ected by fragility was used for confl ict-prevention activities, and only 10% went to peace-building initiatives.

There is no other conclusion to draw: we must change how ODA is allocated.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, a record 68.5mn people were forcibly displaced in 2017.

Many of these people hailed from just fi ve countries – Afghanistan, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria.

But, while countries hosting refugees have an urgent need for money to support long-term relocation eff orts, most ODA is still channelled to short-term solutions.

Humanitarian initiatives – like food and shelter – accounted for roughly a third of all ODA last year, and that share has been climbing for nearly a decade.

By contrast, funding for construction of schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure continues to lag.

While it’s understandable that donors would gravitate toward solutions that off er immediate

assistance to the displaced, neglecting refugees’ long-term needs is shortsighted.

Simply put, the international community’s ambition for aid must evolve beyond keeping people alive; it must also off er migrants a future.

If allocated properly, ODA can be a powerful tool in preventing confl ict and reversing the trends that contribute to fragility.

Moreover, this type of spending is often a source of hope for migrants, given that in many crisis-aff ected areas, ODA is among the most reliable funding sources.

That is particularly true as emergencies age, because funding levels typically drop as donations from other sources dry up.

To be sure, reversing current ODA spending trends will not be easy.

Fragility manifests in myriad ways, and addressing challenges as diverse as violent extremism, climate change, organised crime, and gender discrimination will require a new playbook for development spending.

Still, the need for actions has become urgent.

If unaddressed, confl ict, violence, and other forms of fragility will set development gains back decades, further fuelling the very dynamics that lead to instability in the fi rst place.

Unless the international community changes its approach to investing

in fragile regions, the world will fail to achieve a key objective of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: to leave no one behind.

Spending on long-term solutions also makes fi nancial sense.

According to the UN and World Bank, if more money were allocated to conflict-prevention programs, up to $70bn could be saved annually in refugee-relocation costs.

While the world has accepted the premise of cost-eff ective prevention in health care (by promoting regular screenings and checkups, for example), this philosophy has yet to be applied to policymaking on migration.

This can and should change.The global migration crisis – the

worst since the end of World War II – has consumed huge sums of fi nancial and political capital.

To address it effectively, the focus must shift to improving stability and security, and hope for better futures, in the places where migrants originate.

And that means the development community, and especially offi cial donors, must rethink their priorities and policies. – Project Syndicate

Jorge Moreira da Silva is Development Co-Operation Director at the OECD and former Minister of Environment and Energy of Portugal.

Why the Bank of England should target growthBy Linda YuehOxford

The Bank of England raised interest rates to 0.75% this month, in the belief that infl ation will exceed its

mandated 2% target in about two years.

But raising interest rates tends to dampen economic activity, and growth is hardly rampaging in the United Kingdom.

Should the BoE consider a change to its mandate to include economic growth?

In the United States, the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate: price stability and maximum employment.

Of course, the Fed has also raised interest rates this year; but the US economy is growing at over 4% and GDP is expected to be around 3% higher this year.

By contrast, the UK economy grew just 0.2% in the fi rst quarter of this year.

While the BoE expects growth to rebound and end up at around 1.5% for the year, it describes this rate as the “speed limit.” Faster growth would fuel infl ationary pressures.

With UK unemployment at 4.2% – a level consistent with full employment in the BoE’s view – hiring workers will mean higher wages.

And, because price increases are a function of wages plus a mark-up, infl ation will rise.

The BoE’s decision to raise interest rates despite slow economic growth refl ected its concern for its 2% infl ation target.

Given that the British economy grew at an average of 2.5% between 1980 and 2007, the BoE’s projection of 1.5% potential growth amounts to a signifi cant downgrade.

The culprit is poor productivity growth.

From 1998 until the 2008 global fi nancial crisis, annual productivity growth averaged 2.25%. The BoE now believes the rate to be closer to 1-1.25%. This productivity slowdown has occurred across advanced economies, for reasons – adverse demographic trends, lower investment demand, or any of a slew of other possible explanations – that remain unclear.

But Britain is the worst aff ected.And slower economic growth leads

to an expectation of lower interest rates.

For the fi rst time, the BoE has produced an estimate of what the “new normal” interest rate is likely to be, in line with its growth forecasts.

Rather than the 5% average rate that prevailed in the decades before the banking crisis, the BoE now expects interest rates to be 2-3%, implying a real (infl ation-adjusted) interest rate of below 1%. That is not out of line with estimates of where interest rates might be for other advanced economies experiencing a productivity slowdown.

But, because the BoE believes the economy is already growing at its full potential, it has raised interest rates now, even though GDP growth is slow and is estimated to only reach 1.7-1.8% between now and 2021, the end of its forecast period.

This is why the BoE’s latest move looks curious.

Won’t the eff ects of higher rates on

borrowing, spending, and investment by households and fi rms lead to even slower growth?

Of course, monetary policy aff ects the business cycle, not the economy’s long-term prospects, which depend on, among other things, technological innovation and the skills of the workforce.

So the BoE’s actions will not change the British economy’s potential growth rate.

But would a growth mandate give the BoE greater pause before raising rates when growth is anaemic?

Consider a scenario in which the BoE were given a mandate to maximise economic growth and meet a 2% infl ation target.

If policymakers expected infl ation to reach 2%, but economic growth to be less than 2%, in two years, then they would need to balance how much economic dampening a rate rise would bring about.

In other words, their infl ation target may be met, but if growth is tepid, confronting a trade-off between the two targets might stay the BoE’s hand for a while longer – just as the Fed keeps an eye on employment, even though monetary policy doesn’t really aff ect long-run growth.

What makes this tricky is that it is hard to estimate an economy’s potential growth rate, which can change.

If productivity growth picked up, then

2.5% GDP growth could again be the “speed limit.” So, a central bank with a growth mandate may tread a bit more carefully in case its actions dampened activity that could increase national output to its new potential rate.

Another reason for the BoE to consider a mandate that includes economic growth is the weakening relationship between infl ation and the rest of the economy.

In other words, unlike in the past, price growth is not that closely related to unemployment or output.

For example, infl ation was high in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 crisis, suggesting that the UK economy was booming when it wasn’t; unemployment was fairly high then as well.

Prices were rising because the pound was weak, boosting the cost of imports, and global oil prices were high.

During this period, the BoE often missed its infl ation target, fuelling criticism that the target was ineff ectual.

The reason not to raise rates, however, was evident: the economy was coping with the aftermath of the Great Recession.

With economic growth as an explicit part of its mandate, the BoE could explain itself better in such circumstances – and better maintain the credibility of its commitment to price stability.

Targeting price stability alone may have worked when infl ation was a more reliable proxy of the business cycle.

Now that it isn’t, the BoE – and perhaps other central banks – should consider a change in mandate to target growth as well. – Project Syndicate

Linda Yueh is Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, and a professor of economics at London Business School. She is the author, most recently, of The Great Economists.

For the first time, the BoE has produced an estimate of what the “new normal” interest rate is likely to be, in line with its growth forecasts.

WARNINGInshore : Expected strong wind

at places daytimeOffshore : Expected strong wind

and high sea to the north

WEATHERInshore : Hot daytime with slight

dust to blowing dust at places at times.

Offshore : Slight dust at times.WINDInshore : Northwesterly 10-20/25

KT

Offshrore : Northwesterly 07-17/23 KT

Visibility : 4-8/3 KM

Offshore : 2-4/7 FT at times

TODAY

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Minimum Temperature : 340c





BaghdadKuwait CityManamaMuscat Tehran

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QATAR

Exterior works and interior architectural fit-outs at the new Integrated Control Centre building inside the Al Wakrah depot “are virtually complete”, Qatar Rail has tweeted.

Completion of Al Wakrah depot

Qatar Airways’ Privilege Club announces shopping bonanza

Privilege Club, Qatar Air-ways’ award-winning fre-quent fl yer programme,

has provided its members an ex-clusive off er with its latest sum-mer shopping collection.

Until September 10, Privilege Club members can take advantage of a 50% discount when using their Qmiles on select products at Qatar Duty Free, both at Hamad International Airport (HIA) and at Oryx Galleria in Doha.

“Our special new summer shop-ping collection off ers our members an extensive variety of choices at an incredible range of luxurious retail outlets, where passengers can treat themselves or their loved ones to a moment of luxury in a world-class duty free shopping environment,” Qatar Airways chief commercial offi cer Ehab Amin said. “As a multiple award-win-ning airline and leader in the avia-tion industry, we continue to strive to reward our loyal and dedicated members with exclusive benefi ts to further elevate their experience

with Qatar Airways and make it a memorable one,” he added. Privi-lege Club launched its Qmiles re-ward programme in 2007 to off er its loyal passengers the opportu-nity to earn Qmiles when travelling on Qatar Airways, OneWorld air-lines, or any of the airlines’ part-ners. Qmiles has since served as another convenient means of pay-ment at the award-winning QDF outlets, located in both the depar-ture and arrival halls of HIA and at Oryx Galleria in Doha. In March 2018, Privilege Club launched a refreshed brand identity, off ering members a range of programme enhancements.

Privilege Club members can now do all their account activi-ties online, including purchas-ing award tickets using Qmiles, nominating family members to join their membership account, updating personal profi les and re-questing services including cabin upgrades, excess baggage, date changes, refunds, and much more. Qatar Airways Privilege Club was

named ‘Best Rewards Programme’ among airlines in the region at the seventh annual FlyerTalk awards 2018 for the second year in a row.

At the sixth annual FlyerTalk awards 2017, Privilege Club also won the “Outstanding Benefi t” award.

A multiple award-winning air-line, Qatar Airways was named ‘World’s Best Business Class’ by the 2018 World Airline Awards, managed by international air transport rating organisation Skytrax. It was also named ‘Best Business Class Seat,’ ‘Best Airline in the Middle East,’ and ‘World’s Best First Class Airline Lounge.’ Qatar Airways currently operates a modern fl eet of more than 200 aircraft via its hub, HIA, to more than 150 destinations worldwide.

Earlier this year, Qatar Airways revealed a host of forthcoming global destinations in line with its expedited expansion plan, including Tallinn, Estonia; Val-letta, Malta; Langkawi, Malaysia and Da Nang, Vietnam.

Tweet in Arabic believed to be behind Canada-Saudi rowFrom Page 1

Canadian foreign aff airs offi -cials including Freeland, who were gathered at a Vancouver hotel for a conference on Sunday, were taken aback by the Saudi reaction and left scrambling. Canada, government insiders said, was still unclear on what steps it can take to “fi x its big mistake”, as a Saudi offi cial called it. “I don’t think we have a con-clusive understanding as of right now,” said a Canadian government source. “There may be the need for another call (between Freeland and Jubeir). We’re also obviously talk-ing to our partners about it. We do not wish to have bad relations with them (the Saudis).”

Inside Saudi Arabia, the meas-ures were supported by a media campaign criticising Canada’s hu-man rights record and praising the Saudi ruler’s fi rmness in “protect-ing the kingdom’s sovereignty.”

Saudi state television channels aired reports on the struggle of in-

digenous people in Canada and said they had been historically subject to discrimination. Other reports listed “the worst Canadian prisons” and described harsh prison conditions.

Thousands of Twitter accounts bearing Saudi fl ags tweeted on the dispute, elevating the phrase “Saudi Arabia expels the Cana-dian ambassador” to one of the world’s most popular hashtags. Many of the tweets used suspi-ciously similar language, often a sign of a coordinated campaign by bots, or automated accounts.

Saud al-Qahtani, a senior royal court adviser, tweeted a link an-nouncing the decision to ban new trade on Monday along with the hashtag “Saudi fi rst” - echoing a phrase popularised by Trump.

But a Guardian report said the bizarre spat with Canada showed Mohamed bin Salman’s true col-ours. The Saudi crown prince has been feted as a moderniser but his petulant foreign policy should set alarm bells ringing, it said.

“The culprit is Mohamed bin Salman (MBS), a man who strives for status and is easily slighted. He is far from being the modernising prince that the New York Times, in its own badly timed Vogue mo-ment, described as leading Saudi Arabia’s Arab spring “from the top down”. Every signature cam-paign he has launched has ended up in a quagmire. The war in Yemen continues to claim civil-ian lives and taint Saudi Arabia’s international reputation.

The blockade of Qatar, a petty and intense aff air, is now more than a year old, a year in which the Qatari economy has contin-ued to grow. By contrast, in June, it was reported Saudi Arabia had suff ered a shock collapse in in-ward investment.

Bin Salman even managed to botch his best hand, the end of the ban on women driving. The good PR evaporated when several women activists were arrested a few days before it took eff ect.”

Ministry lines up new projects for the youthThe Ministry of Culture

and Sports is set to launch nine new projects for

young people next year, a senior offi cial disclosed yesterday on the sidelines of the World Youth Day celebrations at Mall of Qa-tar.

One of the most important of these projects is ‘Youth Am-bassadors’, which would en-able young people to take part in events and activities held outside the country, explained Nasser al-Malki, head of the Youth Work Licensing Depart-ment at the Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Accordingly, a database is be-ing created at the Ministry to include all the details and infor-mation of willing young people, to nominate them for such oc-casions based on their skills and capabilities. Registration is set to open next month.

“The Ministry supports the pioneers of home entrepreneurs and pays great care to support young people in many fi elds,” the offi cial said. Al-Malki pointed out that 17 youth cen-tres around the country have organised diff erent activities for the past two days to mark World Youth Day.

While the Ministry off ered them all the support, the op-tions and fi nal decision on how to mark the event and the fea-tured activities were taken by young people themselves. He stressed that one important feature of such centres is that that most of them are managed by youngsters less than 25 years old. A number of senior offi -cials, dignitaries and the youth were present at the event which focused on the role of young people as a driving force for country’s future and stressed the need to enhance their capa-bilities and empowering them to take the proper decisions and initiatives.

Dr Issa al-Hurr, head of the Youth Activities Section at the Ministry, said that this occasion is very important. He added that it raises public awareness on the importance of young people in

the country and the importance of empowering them and devel-op their potentials in the various fi elds of life.

The celebrations included discussions on related topics, quizzes and competitions for the participating public, and

interactive talks among young people on the best ways to en-hance their participation in the country’s development.

Young girls participating in a quiz at the event.

Young girls dressed in various uniforms at the event. PICTURES: Shaji Kayamkulam

Motorists are urged to park in designated spaces only

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