Palestinian PM in Gaza unity visit - Gulf Times

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QATAR

since 1978TUESDAY Vol. XXXVIII No. 10595

October 3, 2017Muharram 13, 1439 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

Qatar imported $27mnworth of furniturefrom Turkey in 2016

BUSINESS | Page 1

Wily Herath spins Sri Lanka to fi ghting victory

SPORT | Page 1

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Palestinian PM in Gaza unity visitAFP Beit Hanun

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah visited Gaza for the fi rst time in two years yester-

day, in a potential fi rst step to ending a decade-long confl ict between the two major factions.

Arriving in the enclave Hamdallah said the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority would resume control of Gaza’s government in the coming days.

Hamdallah met with the leaders of Hamas.

Washington gave a cautious wel-come to the PA’s return to Gaza, while stressing that any new Palestinian government would have to recognise Israel.

“The United States welcomes ef-forts to create the conditions for the Palestinian Authority to fully as-sume its responsibilities in Gaza,” White House special envoy Jason Greenblatt wrote on his Facebook page.

The UN welcomed the visit, saying it was “carefully optimistic” of ending the split which is seen as a key compli-cating factor in potential peace talks with Israel.

Al-Azhar, one of the world’s lead-ing Islamic seats of learning, also wel-comed the steps taken towards nation-al reconciliation.

Hamdallah was welcomed by thou-sands of Gazans, with hopes that this reconciliation plan can avoid the prob-

lems that wrecked several previous at-tempts.

Hamas recently agreed to hand over civilian power to a unity government after Egyptian mediation and Ham-dallah said they would get to work im-mediately.

“The government began to exercise its roles in Gaza from today,” Hamdal-lah said.

“We return to Gaza again to end the division and achieve unity.”

Later he met with Hamas’ overall leader Ismail Haniya and its Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, and is expected to chair a cabinet meeting.

Hamas ousted the PA in 2007, but recently agreed to dissolve what has been seen as its rival administration and make way for a unity government.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s PA is the internationally rec-ognised Palestinian government and supposed to steer its people to an in-dependent state.

UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov said he was “carefully opti-mistic” about the reconciliation talks.

“If the region stays engaged, if Egypt’s role continues and if the po-litical parties themselves continue to show the willingness they are cur-rently showing to work with us on this process, then it can succeed,” he said.

The logistics of Hamdallah’s visit were themselves an indication of divi-sions and challenges.

Arriving by road from Ramallah, about 70km away in the West Bank, Hamdallah’s convoy crossed Israel and then transited the fortress-like Erez

crossing into Gaza before passing a Hamas checkpoint.

Hamas last month fi nally agreed to the PA’s return to Gaza.

For Gaza’s 2mn residents, the hope is to see an improvement in their mis-erable living conditions in the over-crowded territory.

Abu Musa Hamduna, a 42-year-old Gazan, welcomed the return of central government.

“We call on it to take care of the young - this is the most important - and to resolve the electricity crisis and improve the living conditions of the people of Gaza,” he said.

Hamas and Fatah, which dominates the PA, have both expressed confi -dence the latest unity initiative will fare better than in the past.

Particularly thorny issues include the potential future of Hamas’ military wing.

The Hamdallah delegation’s visit is seen as largely symbolic and preparing the ground for further talks, probably in Cairo.

The outcome will determine the Palestinians’ acceptance on the inter-national stage.

The PA recognises Israel, but that appears to remain out of the question for Hamas.

Israeli construction minister and former general Yoav Galant says eve-rything depends on Hamas accepting Israel’s existence and ending armed struggle.

“If the answer is positive, we can talk about a lot of things,” he says. “If it is negative, nothing has changed and all this is a deception.”

From left: Hamas’ leader in the Gaza Strip Yahya Sinwar, Director of Palestinian General Intelligence in the West Bank Majid Faraj, Hamas’ overall leader Ismail Haniya and Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah at a meeting in Gaza City yesterday.

‘Port market’ to open at Ruwais soonQatar Ports Management Com-

pany (Mwani Qatar) has an-nounced that a ‘port market’

will open soon at Ruwais Port to es-tablish it as “the northern gateway to commercial trade in Qatar”.

A post on the Twitter page of Mwani Qatar informed about the next phase of Ruwais Port’s development. The mar-ket will serve as a facility from where one can buy a “wide range of interna-tional products from commercial ships calling on the port”. It is expected be handed over to traders later this year.

A video presentation by Mwani Qa-tar provides details of the Port Market Project, stressing that the Ruwais Port is strategically located in the centre of the Arabian Gulf and hence receives a wide variety of commercial goods.

“The second phase of the three-phase port development, which is currently underway, includes the es-tablishment of a regional commer-cial market. It is expected to serve the commercial needs of the northern side of Qatar,” according to Mwani Qatar.

Besides boosting economic activity in the northern parts of the country, the port also seeks to become a trading hub for goods from neighbouring countries.

The market at Ruwais Port will fea-ture “state-of-the-art” facilities and services, ranging from a mosque, a lounge and a cafeteria to restrooms and offi ces for supervisory bodies, accord-ing to the presentation.

The market will be spread over some 6,700sq m in the fi rst phase, while future expansion will see the facility

cover an additional 3,200sq m. “The Ruwais Port Market Project, which is currently under construction, will be handed over to traders later this year,” Mwani Qatar added.

In another boost to trade to and from Qatar, the ports management fi rm had recently informed that the Ocean Alli-

ance, the world’s largest maritime al-liance, had resumed its service to the country after it was disrupted by the ongoing siege.

The alliance includes fi ve of the larg-est shipping companies with a fl eet of more than 350 vessels and a capacity of over 3.5mn TEUs.

59 killed andover 525 hurtin Las Vegasmass shooting

Gunman, 64, acted alone, had ‘no militant links’

Trump calls shooting ‘act of pure evil’

ReutersLas Vegas

A 64-year-old man armed with multiple machine guns strafed an outdoor country music fes-

tival in Las Vegas from a high-rise ho-tel window on Sunday, slaughtering at least 59 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history before killing himself.

The barrage of gunfi re from a 32nd-fl oor window of the Mandalay Bay ho-tel into a crowd of 22,000 people lasted several minutes, sparking panic as throngs of music fans desperately cow-ered on the open ground, hemmed in by fellow concertgoers, while others at the edge tried to fl ee.

More than 525 people were injured - some by gunfi re, some trampled - in the pandemonium adjacent to the Las Vegas Strip as police scrambled to lo-cate the assailant.

Police yesterday identifi ed the gun-man as Stephen Paddock, who lived in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada.

They said they believed he acted alone and did not know why he at-tacked the crowd.

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the massa-cre, but US offi cials said there was no evidence of that.

The preliminary death toll, which offi cials said could rise, surpassed last year’s shooting massacre of 49 people

at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.The dead in Las Vegas included a

nurse, a government employee and an off -duty police offi cer.

Shocked survivors, some with blood on their clothing, wandered streets, where the fl ashing lights of the city’s gaudy casinos blended with those of emergency vehicles.

Police said Paddock had no criminal record.

The gunman killed himself before po-lice entered the hotel room from where he was fi ring, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters.

“We have no idea what his belief sys-tem was,” Lombardo said. “I can’t get into the mind of a psychopath.”

Federal offi cials said there was no evidence to link Paddock to militant organisations.

“We have determined to this point no connection with an international terrorist group,” Aaron Rouse, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) fi eld offi ce in Las Vegas, told reporters.

“We advise caution on jumping to conclusions before the facts are in,” CIA spokesman Jonathan Liu said in an e-mail.

Lombardo said there were more than 10 rifl es in the room where Paddock killed himself.

His arsenal included multiple ma-chine guns, according to a law enforce-ment offi cial.

Trump said he would travel to Las Vegas tomorrow to meet with victims, their family members and fi rst re-sponders.

“It was an act of pure evil,” said Trump, who later led a moment of si-lence at the White House in honour of the victims. Page 11

Emir condoles with US president; Qatar slams attack

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, His Highness the Deputy Emir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani and HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani sent yesterday cables of condolences to US President Donald Trump on the victims of the criminal incident in Las Vegas in which dozens of people were killed and hundreds injured.

Meanwhile, Qatar has strongly condemned the shooting in Las Vegas. In a statement yesterday, the Foreign Ministry reiterated Qatar’s full solidarity with the US and its full support for all measures taken to maintain security and stability. The statement expressed Qatar’s condolences to the families of the victims, the government and the people of the US, and its wishes for speedy recovery to the injured.

REGION | Diplomacy

Iranian FM meets Sultan QaboosSultan Qaboos of Oman received Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif yesterday. Qaboos and Zarif discussed co-operation between the two countries and regional issues, Omani state news agency ONA said.

QATAR | Weather

Strong winds and highseas forecast for todayStrong winds are expected in parts of the country today, the Qatar Met department has said. The weather off ice has also issued a warning for strong winds and high seas in off shore areas today, with the conditions expected to last until tomorrow evening. Northwesterly winds will blow at 10-20 knots inshore, going up to 23 knots in some places. Off shore, the speed of northwesterly winds will range from 17-27 knots, reaching a high of 32 knots, according to the weather report. Elaborating on the marine warning, a Met department post on social media said the windy conditions were likely to be particularly intense today and tomorrow, resulting in high waves. The department urged people to avoid venturing into the sea during this period due to the expected conditions.

EUROPE | Referendum

Catalan leader calls forinternational mediationThe secessionist leader of Catalonia called for international mediation yesterday in the region’s dispute with Madrid, a day after hundreds of people were hurt as police swung truncheons and fired rubber bullets to disrupt an independence referendum. Results showed voters had overwhelmingly backed independence in the referendum, which Spain has ruled illegal and which opponents of secession mostly boycotted. The vote was valid and must be implemented, said Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont. “It is not a domestic matter,” he told a news conference yesterday. Page 15

BRITAIN | Aviation

Monarch collapse leaves110,000 strandedBritish short-haul carrier Monarch Airlines went bust yesterday in the biggest airline failure in Britain, prompting the government to take emergency action to return home 110,000 stranded passengers. Monarch and its holidays business went into administration, with KPMG appointed to oversee the financial chaos that has left nearly 2,000 employees having to find new employment. Page 13

Mass murderers haveno religion or race

That terrorism or mass murders need not be linked to race or religion has been once again

highlighted after a white man with no known affiliation to any ‘organisa-tion’ shot dead 59 people attending a concert at the Las Vegas Village and Festival Grounds in the US late Sun-day.

More than 525 people, some of them critically, were also injured in the car-nage. Stephen Paddock, the killer, was a “wealthy” 64-year-old who liked playing video poker in Nevada’s ubiq-uitous casinos, according to his broth-er. His family and police grapple with a mass murder that came apparently out of the blue.

According to his brother Eric Pad-dock, Stephen “absolutely” had no mental problems or political motives that the family was aware of. He had “nothing to do with any political or-ganisation, religious organisation, no white supremacists, nothing - as far as I know,” Eric said.

In Las Vegas, an FBI official said there was “to this point no connec-tion with an international terrorist group.”

But several people said it is a terror-ist attack and blamed ‘Western bias’ for not calling it terrorism.

The social media was abuzz with chatterati that argued the shooting was an act of terror and it needed to be called so. Many were of the view that the attacker was not called a terrorist because he was a white man.

A view of Ruwais Port. PICTURE: Mwani Qatar

Stephen Paddock: the gunman

2 Gulf TimesTuesday, October 3, 2017

QATAR

Guinea greeted onIndependence Day

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Deputy Emir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani yesterday sent cables of congratulations to President of Guinea Alpha Conde on the anniversary of his country’s Independence Day.HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani also sent a similar cable to the Prime Minister of Guinea Mamady Youla.

QC seminar oncustoms clearance

The Qatar Chamber organised a seminar for representatives of government agencies, businessmen and representatives of private companies to discuss the facilitation of customs clearance procedures, shipping and storage for importers and companies. The seminar reviewed the integrated land and sea system developed by the Ministry of Transport and Communications in this context, which was linked to the regulations and policies aimed at promoting economic growth in the country. The participants made a number of recommendations to improve the performance of customs clearance, avoid delay, and achieve smoothness in the port, demanding an increase in the number of customs agents, and issuing a procedural guide covering all customs clearance procedures to be circulated to companies.

Advisory on parachute jump

The Directorate of Moral Guidance at the Ministry of Defence announced that Qatar Armed Forces will conduct a parachute jump at Sealine area at an altitude of 1,500ft and a radius of one mile from 6am to 12 midnight from October 8 to 19. The Directorate called on those who frequently visit the area to take precautions for their own safety.

QRC provides relief aid to 1,000 Rohingyafamilies in Bangladesh

QNADoha

The Qatar Red Crescent (QRC) has distributed re-lief aid to 1,000 Rohingya

refugee families in Bangladesh as part of an emergency response campaign to the crisis that forced them to fl ee the Rakhine region of Myanmar. QRC said $100,000 was approved for a relief project for 300 families, including distri-bution of non-food items.

It said in a statement yesterday that it distributed and provided urgent needs for shelter, non-food items, health, water and sanitation for these families and vulnerable groups in the aff ected area, as well as carried out fi eld assessments by the relief team that was sent to Bangladesh, in co-operation and co-ordination with representa-tives of the Bangladesh Red Cres-cent, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Com-mittee of the Red Cross, the em-bassy of Qatar in Bangladesh and United Nations organisations.

The representative of the Unit-ed Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) appreci-ated the eff orts of QRC’s initiative for supporting the Rohingya refu-gees and providing them relief.

QRC said that it had signed two memorandums of understand-ing with the Bangladesh Red Crescent and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to co-operate in the implementation of joint relief projects in Bangladesh.

HE Dr Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari, the Minister of Public Health, along with Dr Abdulla al-Ansari and other members of HMC’s leadership team, attends the opening ceremony of the fifth Qatar Colorectal Conference.

Experts discuss waysto treat colon cancerColorectal cancer is the

third most commonly diagnosed cancer in

Qatar and a leading cause of cancer-related deaths in both men and women in Qatar, an offi cial of Hamad Medical Cor-poration (HMC) said.

Dr Mohamed Abunada, lead colorectal surgeon at HMC added that the disease can be caused by a number of factors, including environmental con-ditions, family history, con-sumption of high protein and fat-rich foods, alcohol, and smoking.

HMC hosted the fi fth Qa-tar Colorectal Conference re-

cently in which over 300 local and international delegates participated. Internationally renowned colorectal cancer experts presented the latest fi ndings in the diagnosis, man-agement, and treatment of the disease.

HE Dr Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari, the Minister of Public Health, attended the event’s opening ceremony along with Dr Abdulla al-Ansari, HMC’s acting chief medical officer.

“This annual conference al-lows our colorectal healthcare specialists to collaborate with international experts from a

number of countries, includ-ing Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom to dis-cuss practical ways in which we can enhance the quality of our healthcare services to best benefi t our patients,” said Dr al-Ansari.

The three-day conference also helped raise awareness about colorectal cancer, a sometimes non-symptomatic disease, and the availability of screening services in Qatar.

The National Breast and Bowel Cancer Screening Pro-gramme, Screen for Life, was established by the Primary

Health Care Corporation as an outcome of the National Health Strategy. The pro-gramme is the fi rst of its kind in the region and aims to raise awareness of breast and bowel cancer and to reinforce the importance of early and regu-lar screening.

“Colorectal cancer doesn’t have early warning signs, so it’s important for patients to undergo regular screenings at their designated primary healthcare centre,” said Dr Salwa Sayed Ahmad, gen-eral and colorectal surgeon at HMC.

“As the disease progress-

es, people may experience blood in their stool, have pain in their belly, constipation or diarrhoea, unexplained weight loss, or fatigue. Un-fortunately, by the time these symptoms appear, the disease is more difficult to treat,” he added.

The conference featured keynote addresses from UK-based professors Amjad Par-vaiz and Tahseen Qureshi, Dr Rodrigo Perez from Brazil, Prof Ayman Agha from Germany, Andre D’Hoore from Belgium, Dr Runjan Chetty from Cana-da and Prof Frederic Ris from Switzerland.

HBKU event examines legaldimensions of blockadeThe Hamad Bin Khalifa

University (HBKU) host-ed a public lecture titled

“Qatar’s International Posi-tioning on Peace and Justice” yesterday.

The lecture was one of sev-eral events that aim to provide community members with an open space for constructive dialogue and discussion on the blockade of Qatar. By facilitat-ing such discussions, HBKU is actively contributing to de-veloping thought leadership and fulfi lling its mission as a leading global university that values the pursuit of truth and knowledge.

Yesterday’s event was held in conjunction with The Hague Institute for Global Justice to examine various legal dimen-sions of the blockade. Steven van Hoogstraten, interim CEO and Dr Stephen J Rapp, non-resident fellow from The Hague Institute for Global Justice were invited to provide their exper-

tise on international law and dispute resolution, Law of the Sea, aviation law, and interna-tional human rights.

On October 17, HBKU is in-viting Dr Hassan Hakimian,

director of the London Mid-dle East Institute and visiting professor at HBKU’s College of Humanities and Social Scienc-es, to give a lecture titled “Do Economic Sanctions Work?” at

the Qatar National Convention Centre.

The lecture will highlight the historical experiences of this region when it comes to eco-nomic sanctions, and will pro-vide analysis to refl ect critically on recent developments.

Dr Hakimian will also spend time examining the possible motivations behind the adopted measures by the blockading countries, and will off er his views on the eff ectiveness of such sanctions in the Qatari context.

On October 23, a panel dis-cussion on the impact and prospects for Qatar after the blockade will be held by HB-KU’s College of Islamic Stud-ies. The panellists will discuss the dynamics of the blockade against Qatar by investigating its political, economic, legal, and social aspects to provide audiences with a comprehen-sive picture of the current situ-ation and potential policy out-comes for the future.

WISE team presents work at UN meeting

The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) team joined key

education-focused meetings on the occasion of the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week.

The WISE team presented its work at a roundtable discussion on how creating a global eco-system for education could help achieve the sustainable devel-opment goal on quality and in-clusive education for all (SDG4), part of the 2030 Agenda for Sus-tainable Development.

The roundtable concluded with plans for the group to reconvene at the WISE 2017, taking place in Doha from November 14 to 16, to continue the discussion and for

the launch of a key initiative.WISE members met with

various education stakeholder partners and took part in gath-erings for the Global Goals Week 2017. The members attended public and private events on ed-ucation in emergencies, fi nanc-ing education, and the role of innovation in education.

Key education stakehold-ers attending included Teach for All, Brookings Institution, Asia Society, Boston Consult-ing Group, Results for Devel-opment, J-PAL, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Save the Children, Unicef, and World Bank, among others.

The roundtable was followed by a public event on ‘What Glo-bal Education Can Learn from

Public Health: Strengthening a Global Ecosystem to Achieve Quality Education for All’. The discussion brought to light what education advocates and practi-tioners can learn from the suc-cesses and challenges of their health sector colleagues. Speak-ers called for greater investment in public schools to support the global ecosystem for building local capacity and knowledge sharing across borders.

The WISE team presented its work on global education map-ping, and considered the chal-lenges and opportunities in ef-forts to advance the framework among global priorities.

Elyas Felfoul, director, Policy Development and Partnerships at WISE, commented, “We look

forward to welcoming this very productive and dynamic group of education change-makers to WISE in Doha in November for the launch of our mapping platform, and to continue our productive talks on this exciting movement for strengthening of the global education ecosystem.”

HE the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs Dr Ahmed bin Hassan al-Hammadi has met with a delegation from the Hague Institute for Global Justice. The delegation included Winand Staring, Senior Ambassador at the Institute, Dr Stephen Rapp, a legal expert in the US government and the United Nations, and the Chief Executive Off icer (CEO) of the Institute Steven van Hoogstraten. The meeting was attended by the Assistant Director of the Diplomatic Institute Nadia Ahmed al-Shaibi. They discussed ways to enhance co-operation, as well as issues of common concern.Dr al-Hammadi thanked the delegation for participating in the seminar on the Gulf crisis held at the Ministry’s Diplomatic Institute.

Al-Hammadi meets officials

Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano expressed his deep appreciation for the contribution of Qatar and other member states to fund the renovation of the IAEA laboratories at a cost of €30mn. At the opening ceremony of the IAEA new laboratories, Amano said that the donation enabled the agency to renovate its laboratories and thereby assist its member states benefit from nuclear science and technology to fight insects and pests that spread deadly diseases such as malaria, destroy agricultural crops and livestock and endanger public health. The ceremony was attended by Qatar’s Ambassador to Austria and its Permanent Representative to the United Nations and international organisations in Vienna Sheikh Ali bin Jassim al-Thani.

IAEA appreciates Qatar’s contribution

Delegates attend a lecture to discuss the illegal blockade.

Elyas Felfoul speaking at the event (photo courtesy: Asia Society).

In Brief

In the story ‘Milaha launches shipment tracking app’, published in Gulf Times yesterday, Abdulrahman Essa al-Mannai was erroneously mentioned as president and chief executive of Nakilat. Al-Mannai is the president and chief executive of Milaha (formerly Qatar Navigation). The error is regretted.

Correction

QATAR3Gulf Times

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

NBK and Sons names winners of Michelin ‘Kilometers of Safety’ driveNasser Bin Khaled (NBK)

and Sons has announced the two winners of the

Michelin ‘Kilometers of Safety’ campaign.

The draw, supported by Michelin Tyres, NBK Automo-biles and Qatar Automobiles Company (QAC), was held yes-terday at the Michelin Tyre-Plus outlet in Gharafa.

While Mohamed Shahjahan won a Mercedes-Benz C-Class in the draw, Jith Meethal won a Mitsubishi Pajero, according to a press statement from Nasser Bin Khaled and Sons.

Sheikh Faleh bin Nawaf al-Thani, operations director at Nasser Bin Khaled Holding – Automotive, said: “I would like to thank again our part-ners from Michelin, NBK Au-tomobiles and QAC for their support. This is yet another successful campaign that per-fectly ties within our objective to turn every customer pur-chase to an exciting experi-ence. I am very happy for the winners and looking forward to more exhilarating promotions to come in the near future.”

The Michelin raffl e draw

Michelin and NBK off icials handing over the keys to the winners.

was part of an exclusive sum-mer campaign promotion that ran from May 29 until August 28. The promotion was launched to ensure that customers were well aware of the importance of tyre safety when purchasing and

maintaining tyres, the statement noted.

“We are happy not only to bring added value to our con-sumers in Qatar with the excep-tional quality of our products, but also with very unique pro-

motions. We are glad to have the highly professional team of Nasser Bin Khaled and Sons on our side to support our end-users and to realise our growth ambitions in Qatar,” said Daoud Helmi, commercial director of

Michelin Importers for Africa and the Middle East.

Each year, Michelin-NBK or-ganises promotional campaigns to award their customers for their loyalty and trust in their brand and service.

Ooredoo unveils new advertising campaignAs part of its continu-

ous eff orts to make the Internet accessible

and enjoyable for everyone, Ooredoo launched yesterday a new advertising campaign designed to encourage cus-tomers to take advantage of the company’s superfast net-work and the great variety of ‘tailor-made’ plans it off ers to cater to their daily needs.

Customers in both ma-ture and emerging markets increasingly demand speed, reliability, and aff ordability from their mobile network providers, and Ooredoo’s ‘Enjoy the Internet’ cam-paign is intended to help customers use the network better to their own specifi c purposes, based on their own specifi c personalities and usage patterns.

The campaign includes a fun and inviting video featur-ing Khalid Jassim, Hanan al-Emadi, and Meshaal al-Nuai-mi, and showcases just a few of the many ways the Internet helps everyone stay connect-ed and up-to-date with the people, places, and passions they love.

Ooredoo has also created a dedicated microsite (en-joytheinternet.com) that contains an interactive quiz designed to reveal to partici-pants which ‘Internet person-ality’ they have. Depending on the results, new and existing customers will be able to fi nd

out which Ooredoo plan suits them best.

Ooredoo Group CEO Sheikh Saud bin Nasser al-Thani said: “Our customers are becoming increasingly centred on data and dig-ital services. As a company, Ooredoo has been ahead of the curve in building the right networks to deliver the best data experience.

“We’ve also made sure that this development was sup-ported by an increased port-folio of great content and mobile apps that enhance our customers’ digital experience, enabling more people to enjoy the Internet.”

Ooredoo builds and main-tains world-class networks across its footprint, and its network modernisation pro-gramme has brought 4G serv-ices to customers in eight of its 10 markets.

The company has also launched 4G+ services in a number of key markets, and is already testing 5G solutions to ensure Ooredoo’s network continues to evolve with cus-tomer needs.

To take part in Ooredoo’s ‘Enjoy the Internet’ cam-paign and watch the com-pany’s latest video, visit enjoytheinternet.com

QNRF awards 16 fellowships to graduate studentsQatar National Research

Fund (QNRF), a mem-ber of Qatar Foundation

Research and Development (QF R&D), has awarded 16 fellowships to graduate students in the fourth cycle of its Graduate Sponsorship Research Award (GSRA).

Out of 152 applications, 16 winning proposals were awarded to graduate students and long-term residents in Qatar to pursue masters and doctorates at Ha-

mad Bin Khalifa University, Texas A&M University at Qatar, Qatar University, University of Sydney, and University of Michigan. All fall under the pillars of the Qatar National Research Strategy: En-ergy and Environment, Biomedi-cal and Health, ICT and Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities.

Through investments in cut-ting-edge research projects, QNRF is working to enhance a science and research culture that

supports Qatar’s innovation and technology capacity, helping the nation develop as a hub of research excellence.

The GSRA programme aims to build human capital in Qatar and promote postgraduate education in Qatar and abroad by providing fellowship support to outstand-ing scholars pursuing graduate degrees at approved institutions.

Dr Aisha al-Obaidly, director of capacity building, QNRF, said,

“I am proud to see that six out of the 16 awardees are Qataris – a signifi cant increase in this cycle. Through the competitive schol-arships off ered by QRLP-GSRA, outstanding graduate students will be supported as they under-take their research-based studies towards masters and doctoral de-grees within and beyond Qatar.”

GSRA provides research sup-port for up to four years, allow-ing faculty and researchers to

identify outstanding graduate students, from inside and outside Qatar. The programme supports the continuity of research-based doctoral education while simul-taneously building awareness of local research opportunities.

While the primary benefi t of GSRA is to assist in building human capital, it also aims to boost Qatar’s reputation as a re-search hub by off ering graduates world-class education.

QATAR

Gulf Times Tuesday, October 3, 20174

Ministry begins campaign to support national productsThe Ministry of Municipality and Environment, represented by the Public Relations and Communication Department and WASEL for Sustainable and Environment-Friendly Advertising Solutions, has launched advertising campaign to support national products in

various areas of the country.The month-long campaign aims at educating the public on the importance of buying local products to support the national economy. It includes the publication of billboards in various parts of the country.The campaign comes within the eff orts made by the

Ministry of Municipality and Environment in various fields that serve the community and provide all kinds of support for national projects of various kinds, in order to achieve self-suff iciency by encouraging the private sector to contribute to the development plan of the state.

Need for collaboration in research highlighted The need for col-

laboration across all sectors in build-

ing a research and inno-vation ecosystem capable of meeting the challenges Qatar faces was highlight-ed to science and tech-nology leaders by Qatar Foundation Research and Development (QF R&D) at a high-level international gathering in Japan.

A QF R&D delegation is currently participating in the Science and Tech-nology in Society (STS) Forum’s 14th Annual Meeting, which con-cludes today in Kyoto. The three-day event has brought together heads of state, government ministers and diplomats, and prominent fi gures in academia, industry, and policy making to provide a long-term, century-spanning perspective on how scientifi c and tech-nological advancements will shape and defi ne the future of humankind.

The STS Forum has been attended by a number of dignitaries,

including Shinzo Abe, prime minister of Japan and honorary chairman of the STS Forum, and around 1,000 delegates.

HE the Minister of Education and Higher Education Dr Mohamed Abdul Wahed Ali al-Hammadi participated in the STS Forum’s 14th Science and Technology Ministers’ Roundtable on ‘Society 5.0’, the con-cept of a human-centred society that capitalises on technologies such as artifi cial intelligence, the Internet of Things,

robotics, and Big Data.Speaking during a

forum session titled: ‘Collaboration Among Academia, Industries, and Government’, Dr Hamad al-Ibrahim, executive vice president, QF R&D, out-lined to the audience how the ongoing blockade on Qatar by neighbouring countries has provided fresh impetus for the na-tion’s research and inno-vation eff orts.

“This situation has giv-en us incentive to refl ect

Dr Hamad al-Ibrahim with Lim Chuan Poh, chairman, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore, at the STS Forum in Kyoto.

on our progress toward building a sustainable, di-versifi ed economy, to ana-lyse how we can become more resilient through de-veloping our own capacity across many areas and sec-tors, and to ensure that we are the drivers of our own destiny,” he said.

“Necessity can drive action, change, and progress in a research and innovation ecosystem, if it is built on collabora-tion, synergy, and a vision

that all sectors share. Fos-tering such an ecosystem in Qatar is central to the work of QF R&D.

“The challenges now faced by Qatar have brought us together, in-creased our awareness of the need to build our resil-ience, and inspired us to re-spond positively and with purpose. This mindset will continue to defi ne Qatar’s research and innovation ecosystem, which has no boundaries, only horizons.”

Qatar participates in falconry festThe fifth international falconry festival held in Morocco ended yesterday with a Qatari participation. The festival marks the anniversary of listing falconry on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.The festival was organised by the regional association for cultural aff airs in El Jadida with the co-operation of the Moroccan Minister of Culture and was held from September 29 to October 2.Al Gannas Qatari Society chairman Ali al-Mihshadi said the society’s participation included booklets that explain the objectives of the association and its local and international championships, in addition to its world-leading projects, including the genome falcon project in co-operation with Qatar University and Qatar’s International Veterinary Falcon Conference and other projects.

QSC runs workshop on solar energyQatar Scientific Club (QSC) announced that online registration for participating in a training workshop on solar energy started yesterday. The workshop will take place on October 14 and 15 at the club headquarters.The workshop includes an introduction on how to calculate the consumption of cells and batteries needed and the implementation of the project and the connection of cells and batteries and various devices that operate on solar energy.

Ministry of Justice and QatarDebate sign MoUThe Ministry of Justice, represented by the Legal and Judicial Studies Centre, and QatarDebate Center have signed a memorandum of understating (MoU) for joint co-operation in the fields of training, education and skills development and the dissemination of legal knowledge.The MoU, signed by QatarDebate Center executive director Dr Hayat Abdullah al-Maarafi and Legal and Judicial Studies Center director Fatma Abdulaziz Bilal, aims at establishing co-operation in all legal, academic and professional fields

to prepare and qualify legal persons and members of judicial bodies for legal work.In accordance with the agreement, the two parties shall exchange documents, publications, scientific journals and other means that may contribute to the development of legal knowledge and skills, as well as the legal and judicial training programmes adopted by the two parties, in addition to organising seminars, debates and workshops on subjects of mutual interest.

Ministry joins call centre No. 109The Ministry of Justice has joined the unified government call centre number (109), keeping up with the State’s strategy for Qatar Digital Government 2020.The ministry had completed all arrangements related to joining the unified call centre number in co-ordination with the Ministry of Transport and Communications.The unified government call centre will provide communication with the public to respond to their queries on

all issues related to the services provided by the ministry.The communication service will be provided by the centre based on the global standards of call centres and customer services through various channels (telephone calls, faxes, SMS, e-mails and e-conversations).In the current stage, the Ministry of Justice continues to receive public communications on the Ministry’s Hotline (137), which responds to communications through three lines.

5Gulf TimesTuesday, October 3, 2017

QATAR

Date palms gifted to South Korea embassyThe Ministry of Mu-

nicipality and En-vironment’s (MME)

Agriculture Research De-partment planted three date palms at the South Korean embassy in Doha.

The date palms, gifted by the MME, were planted in the presence of the South Korean ambassador Park Heung-kyeong, Agricul-ture Research Department director Massoud Jarallah al-Marri and a number of

other offi cials from the em-bassy as well as the MME. Al-Marri stressed that the event is part of the joint co-operation between Qa-tar and South Korea, within the Higher Joint Committee for strategic co-operation between the two countries, which cover many fi elds in-cluding agriculture.

He explained that there are a number of memoran-dums of understanding be-tween the two countries be-

ing prepared in the fi elds of fi sheries, and agriculture, in particular greenhouses and smart farming.

“The gifting of these date palms is an expression of the strong and fruitful re-lationships between the two countries,” al-Marri said while adding that there will be meetings in November in Korea that would gather the various technical teams of the two countries in the fi elds of agriculture and in-

dustrial economy and other commercial activities.

In addition, a high-level meeting will be held in Doha in December, headed by HE the Minister of Energy and Industry to complete the various aspects of co-operation between the two countries. The South Kore-an envoy thanked the MME for the gift and hoped for more co-operation between the two countries, especial-ly in the agriculture fi eld.

South Korean ambassador Park Heung-kyeong and the MME’s Agriculture Research Department director Massoud Jarallah al-Marri plant a date palm yesterday.

Land Cruiser, Lexus models recall

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC), in collaboration with Abdullah Abdulghani & Bros Co, has announced the recall of nine Toyota Land Cruiser (LC100) models of 2003-2007, six Toyota Land Cruiser (LC200) models of 2007-2015 and two Lexus LX570 models of 2010-2015 over the possibility of a defect in front passenger side airbag. The MEC

said the recall campaign comes within the framework of its ongoing eff orts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicles’ defects and repair them. The MEC said that it will co-ordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works and will communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs

are carried out. The MEC has urged all customers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department through the following channels: Call centre: 16001, e-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @MEC_Qatar, Instagram: MEC_Qatar, MEC mobile app for Android and IOS: MEC_Qatar

QATAR7Gulf Times


Doha Festival City to host biggest Confetti Dome everDoha Festival City (DHFC),

the largest entertainment, retail and hospitality des-

tination in Qatar, will be home to the biggest Confetti Dome ever seen in the country. From Octo-ber 5 to 14, mall-goers can enter the impressive dome structure, standing at more than 6m high, and enjoy the strong whirlwind of confetti all around them.

In addition, participants will have just one minute to catch a winning confetti to score one of 1,000 prizes available.

DHFC has urged visitors to grab the winning confetti for a chance to take home an ar-ray of gifts, ranging from toys, restaurant vouchers, furniture, fashion products, movie tick-ets from retailers including Ikea, Marks & Spencer, Toys R Us, VOX Cinemas, GAP, Borders, Ber-shka, Stradivarius, Calzedonia, Tezenis, IAM, Reserved, Punto

Roma, Old Navy, Salsa, and Pull & Bear.

Customers will need to show a QR200 receipt value or more for each entry to be able to par-ticipate in the Dome, which will be open for children aged five years and above daily from 3pm to 9pm at the DHFC’s Centre Court, Ground Floor. It is free of charge.

With a gross building area of 433,000sqm, and a gross leasable area of 244,000sqm, the QR6bn mixed-use development includes the biggest mall in Qatar and one of the largest entertainment and retail developments in the Gulf. DHFC is a destination with a world-class entertainment com-plex, and will be home to indoor and outdoor attractions unique to Qatar. This comprehensive mix of entertainment – from Qatar’s fi rst VOX 4D cinema complex with 18 digital screens to outdoor spaces

for exercise and cycling – is de-signed to appeal to all ages.

In addition, DHFC will delight visitors with four unique theme parks, including ‘Angry Birds

World’ – the fi rst of its kind in the Middle East, ‘Snow Dunes’ – Qa-tar’s fi rst indoor snow park, ‘Ju-niverse’ – an edutainment park for children that harnesses the

power of dynamic learning and ‘Virtuocity’ – created exclusively for teens and adults, the park de-livers an immersive digital expe-rience.

Children enjoying the entertainment shows and activities at DHFC.

Population returns to 2.6mn mark

Qatar population has once again returned to exceed the 2.6mn mark

after more than three months, according to latest fi gures made available by the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics. As per the fi gures released yesterday, the popu-lation stood at 2.634mn at the end of September, which was 3.2% more than the fi gures of the corresponding period last year.

It was at the end of Octo-ber last year, the population crossed the 2.6mn mark for the fi rst time. The latest fi gure is about 7.7% more than the pop-ulation a month ago (August 30), which was 2.446mn, the lowest in the last four months as a considerable number of the country’s residents were away

on annual vacation. That fi gure was even lower than the previ-ous month’s (July 31) fi gure of 2.546mn.

The country’s highest popu-lation ever was recorded in the month of May, when the min-isterial authorities released fi g-ures exceeding 2.7mn.

Usually, there is a steady rise in the population be-tween the months of October and May (barring in Decem-ber when a large segment of the residents are usually away on vacation).

Compared to the fi gures of the corresponding month last year (May 2016), there was a 4.4% rise this time. It is ex-pected that the fi gure would continue to rise until May next year, perhaps with the excep-tion of December.

Qatar Airways organises blood donation driveAs part of its commitment

to support the local com-munity and its respon-

sibility as a global corporate citizen, Qatar Airways hosted a blood donation campaign at its headquarters for its employees and their families.

The blood donation drive, a collaboration between the award-winning airline and Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), was hosted on Septem-ber 28 at Qatar Airways’ head-quarters in Doha to help increase the blood supply in the State of Qatar.

“As the national carrier of the State of Qatar, it is our re-sponsibility to support our lo-cal community and those in need. By hosting this initiative, we hope to raise awareness and educate our staff on the numer-ous benefits of donating blood,”

Qatar Airways group chief ex-ecutive Akbar al-Baker said. “We are proud to host such an event at our corporate head-quarters, which highlights the many ways we can all make an important contribution to our local community via this wor-thy cause,” he added.

Blood donation off ers many benefi ts to both the donor and the donee. While the donee re-ceives the specifi c blood type they need to recover from illness or injury, the donor also benefi ts from the process, as donating blood is believed to help in low-ering the risk of cardiovascular diseases as well as certain forms of cancer.

Qatar Airways is one of the fastest-growing airlines operat-ing one of the youngest fl eets in the world. Now in its 20th year of operation, the country’s national

carrier has a modern fl eet of 200 aircraft fl ying to business and leisure destinations across six continents. Qatar Airways will be adding fl ights to many more

exciting destinations to its net-work in 2017 and 2018, including Canberra, Australia; Chiang Mai, Thailand and Chittagong, Bang-ladesh, to name a few.

The award-winning airline received a number of accolades this year, including Airline of the Year by the prestigious 2017 Sky-trax World Airline Awards, which

was held at the Paris Air Show. This is the fourth time that Qatar Airways has been given this glo-bal recognition. Qatar’s national carrier also won a raft of other

major awards at the ceremony, including Best Airline in the Middle East, World’s Best Busi-ness Class and World’s Best First Class Airline Lounge.

The blood donation drive is in collaboration between the award-winning airline and HMC. Qatar Airways employees and their families take part in a blood donation drive.

Hyundai retains spot amid world’s top-valued brandsHyundai has maintained

its position as one of the world’s 40 most valuable

brands for the third year in a row, according to the latest Best Global Brands report from international consultancy Interbrand.

The carmaker retained its place as the world’s 35th most valuable brand and sixth most valuable automotive brand, despite chal-lenging conditions in many glo-bal markets, according to a press statement issued in Doha by Sky-line Automotive, offi cial distri-bution partner of Hyundai Motor Company for Qatar. Interbrand’s rankings are calculated using companies’ fi nancial balance sheets combined with market-ing activities, while also refl ect-ing each brand’s potential profi t.

The analysis assessed Hyundai’s brand value as growing to $13.2bn for 2017 – a 5.1% increase on the previous year. The ranking comes after Hyundai sold 4.86mn units annually worldwide.

This follows a “period of ex-ponential growth” for South Korea’s leading automotive manufacturer that has seen a fourfold increase in brand value since 2005, rising from $3.5bn to its current record value, the statement notes. “Our brand philosophy and blueprint for fu-ture mobility has resulted in the rise of our brand value and, in addition to quality, technology and price, our creativity and in-novation will lead us to achieve sustainable brand growth in the future,” said Wonhong Cho,

chief marketing offi cer at Hy-undai Motor Company.

“A key element of Hyundai Motor’s sustainable growth in brand value was its ongoing com-mitment to the development of its vision for ‘Future Mobility’, in spite of tough market conditions,” said Mike Rocha, global direc-tor of Brand Valuation for Inter-brand. In addition to maintain-ing its reputation for the highest quality, Hyundai also strength-ened its global product portfolio, including the new-generation Azera and signifi cant upgrades to the Sonata, both available in Af-rica and the Middle East and fea-turing the latest evolution of Hy-undai’s unifi ed design language.

Internationally, the company unveiled the Kona premium com-

pact SUV and the i30N, the fi rst model of the company’s high-performance N lineup.

During the past year, Hyundai also set out its blueprint to move into new automotive spaces, which incorporates the launch of 15 eco-friendly vehicles by 2020. The company is also advancing its research into aff ordable au-tonomous driving and connec-tivity technologies, through its future-focused Project IONIQ and open-innovation collabora-tions with external parties.

“Hyundai is adding excitement to our brand, both for the prod-ucts we have now and for those we will be bringing to the market in the future,” said Mike Song, Hyundai’s head of operations for Africa and the Middle East.

HMC mentors new intake of QU College of Medicine

Hamad Medical Corpo-ration (HMC) and the College of Medicine at

(CMED) Qatar University recent-ly held an orientation for the new intake of medical students who commenced their medical stud-ies in September 2017.

Over a two-day period, near-ly 80 new fi rst-year students from CMED attended intro-ductory presentations at Hajar Auditorium, located in HMC’s Medical Education Centre. The students, who are train-ing to be doctors, learned about HMC’s key objectives concern-ing best practice in clinical care, education, and research. HMC residents and other staff participated in the programme that included showing students around the various departments at Hamad General Hospital.

The students were divided into

groups with each group accom-panied by second- and third-year medical students. After com-pleting their fi rst year of medical school, students begin seeing pa-tients in a hospital and offi ce set-ting. Dr Abdullatif al-Khal, dep-uty chief medical offi cer, Medical Education, HMC outlined the importance of mentoring.

Al-Khal said, “It is im-mensely valuable to have exist-ing students participate in these orientation sessions as fi rst-year students can often relate much better to individuals who are closer in age to themselves and who can help them under-stand the complexities of hos-pital systems. HMC has a well-established partnership with CMED and such joint activities help to strengthen the bond be-tween our organisations.”

Dr Yousuf al-Maslamani, medi-

cal director, Hamad General Hos-pital, added, “One of our strategic goals is to have a skilled national workforce to help lead healthcare delivery in the future. We want to give our medical students a glimpse into their working environment and an idea of what the training is all about. We particularly want to remind them of the reason for em-barking on this career path, which is taking care of patients who will rely on them to deliver the best, most eff ective, and most compas-sionate care available.”

The medical students were joined by senior representatives from Qatar University’s College of Medicine’s education team, in-cluding Prof Egon Toft, vice pres-ident for Medicine and Health and dean of the College of Medi-cine and Dr Alison Carr, head, Clinical Education and Professor in the College of Medicine.

CNA-Q to celebrate World Teachers’ Day

College of the North Atlantic-Qatar (CNA-Q) has welcomed all teachers and educators to a Unesco-sponsored World Teach-ers’ Day event, to be held on October 5 at the College campus.World Teachers’ Day is an annual Unesco event celebrated in over 100 countries, which honours the dedication, and commitment of all educators who make a diff er-ence in the lives of students. This year’s theme is “Teaching in Free-dom – Empowering Teachers”. The morning programme is from 9am to noon at the Dr Latifa al-Houty auditorium. The keynote

speaker is Dr John Fien, professor of practice at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He will speak on the topic: ‘Why Excel-lent Teachers and Trainers are Essential to Achieve High Quality, Relevant and Eff ective Schooling for all.’ A panel discussion will follow, featuring post-secondary leaders from Qatar. Simultaneous translation will be provided.The afternoon session will be a hands-on workshop for K-12 teachers entitled, ‘Exploring Skills in Schools’, which will run from 1.30pm to 4.30pm. The three-hour workshops will showcase cutting-

edge practices and technology, and advise educators on how to integrate these tools into their learning environments. Session will be off ered in English and in Arabic. Teachers and educators will be provided certificate of participation.CNA-Q’s World Teachers’ Day programme is under the purview of the College’s Unesco Chair on Technical and Vocational Education and Training and Sustainable Devel-opment, Dr Rupert Maclean. CNA-Q hosts the Unesco-UNEVOC Centre on its campus, and it is a vital link between teacher enrichment and the Unesco mandate in Qatar.

HMC and the CMED at Qatar University held an orientation session for 2017 intake of medical students.

QU-CENG holds panel discussion

Qatar University College of Engineer-ing (QU-CENG) on Sunday hosted a discussion session entitled “A Day

in The Life of An Engineer” in collabora-tion with The British Council Qatar and BAE Systems.

Attending the event were QU president Dr Hassan al-Derham, British ambassador Ajay Sharma, CENG dean Dr Khalifa al-Khalifa, British Council Qatar director Dr Frank Fitzpatrick, BAE Systems vice presi-dent – Qatar John Taylor, and engineers and scientists from QU, as well as various local schools and members of the general public.

Panellists were Red Arrows junior engi-neering offi cer fl ight lieutenant Alicia Ma-son, CENG Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering associate professor Dr Samer Ahmed, and BAE Systems engineer Jack Tucker. They discussed topics related to various areas of science and engineering.

Dr al-Khalifa said, “This event represents a networking opportunity between CENG, academia and industry to exchange ideas and expertise in a way that benefi ts students and gets them acquainted with modern technol-

ogy, and puts them in close touch with inter-national teams to develop their skills and im-prove their technical capacities.”

Dr Fitzpatrick said, “Our work with young people in culture and education en-courages them to realise their goals and sup-ports the communities and society where we work. The Red Arrows is a professional, high-quality aeronautical team, and we hope that seeing them perform will inspire young people to participate in innovative

engineering and scientifi c programmes.”John Taylor said, “STEM education is vi-

tal to encouraging young Qataris to embark on exciting and diverse engineering careers. Today’s panel discussion really showed what technical careers can hold for stu-dents, whether it is developing systems that provide the information to pilots to enable them to get the most from their aircraft such as head-up displays, or maintaining aircraft that makes it possible for teams like the Red Arrows to put on awe inspiring displays.”

Mason said, “The Red Arrows epitomise teamwork and showcase not only preci-sion in the air but also engineering excel-lence on the ground by dedicated Royal Air Force technicians. This focus on delivering a world-renowned performance is the result of specialist training in the UK and across the vital subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as STEM.”

The Red Arrows – the aerobatic display team of the UK’s Royal Air Force – displayed their skills in the skies over Doha’s Corniche on Saturday.

Dr Hassan al-Derham, ambassador Ajay Sharma, and Dr Khalifa al-Khalifa at the QU event yesterday.

REGION/ARAB WORLD

Gulf TimesTuesday, October 3, 20178

Five civilians were killed and eight wounded yesterday in an air raid on a rebel-held town in south Yemen, an off icial said, days after the UN agreed to investigate war crimes in the country. Speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, the government off icial said the raid targeted the Barh district in the southern province of Taiz, which is largely controlled by Yemen’s Saudi-backed government. Barh, however, is held by the country’s Houthi rebels. The rebel-run Saba news agency said Saudi Arabia was behind the raid.Saudi off icials did not comment on the news yesterday.

The Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah has received a verbal message from China’s President Xi Jinping over means to cement bilateral relations between the two countries in various fields. Kuwait News Agency said that the message was con-veyed to Deputy Minister of Emiri Diwan Aff airs Sheikh Ali Jarrah al-Sabah by the Chinese ambassador to the State of Kuwait, Wang Di.

A Saudi was executed yesterday in Riyadh, the off icial SPA news agency reported, taking to 100 the number of people put to death in the kingdom so far this year.The man was sentenced to death for murdering another Saudi man and an appeals court upheld the ruling, SPA said without elaborating.

Five civilians killed in Yemen air raid: govt off icial

Kuwait emir gets Chinese message

Saudi executesmurderer

CONFLICT

DIPLOMACY

CRIME

At least 16 deadas suicide bombings hit police stationAFPDamascus

A double suicide bomb at-tack hit a police station in Syria’s capital Damascus

yesterday, state media said, with a monitor saying at least 16 peo-ple were killed.

Damascus has been largely insulated from the worst of the violence during the country’s brutal six-year war, but several bomb attacks have shaken the city.

Syria’s interior ministry said two suicide bombers had blown themselves up at the police sta-tion in the southern district of Midan, leading to the “deaths of a number of civilians and a number of policemen”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said at least 16 people were killed in the at-tack, among them eight police offi cers, revising an earlier death toll of 11.

The monitor also reported that a car bomb had been deto-

nated during the attack, but state media made no mention of a third blast.

Interior Minister Mohamed Shaar told reporters that one of the attackers had managed to enter the police station and reach the fi rst fl oor of the build-ing.

State television showed im-ages of damage from inside the building, with a black police uniform shirt covered in dust ly-ing in the rubble of partially col-lapsed walls.

The entire front of one room on the fi rst fl oor had been blown out by the explosion, and inside what remained, twisted bits of metal were scattered across the rubble.

Policemen carried one body away from the scene wrapped inside a white tarpaulin.

Manal, a 28-year-old teacher living in Midan, said she heard at least two blasts yesterday af-ternoon.

“I was coming back from work when I heard the sound of an ex-plosion, it was around 2:30pm, I didn’t know what it was, and

then there was another explo-sion a few minutes later and buildings shook,” she said.

“Afterwards I heard gunfi re, which usually happens to get people to move out of the way and clear the road so ambulanc-es can get through to retrieve the injured,” she added.

Damascus has also been rocked by occasional bomb blasts throughout the Syrian confl ict, including previous at-tacks on Midan, a middle-class residential and shopping dis-trict.

In December 2016, three po-lice offi cers were wounded when a seven-year-old girl walked into the neighbourhood’s police sta-tion wearing an explosive belt that was remotely detonated.

Rebel groups have been grad-ually expelled from territory in the capital they once held, though they maintain a presence in a handful of positions, includ-ing the Jobar neighbourhood.

They also hold territory in the Eastern Ghouta region outside the capital, and have regularly launched rockets into the city.

A handout picture provided by the Iranian Presidency yesterday shows President Hassan Rouhani posing for a picture with Turkish Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar (left) and Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, General Mohamed Hossein Bagheri, in the capital Tehran.

Rouhani meet Turkish army chief

Saudi women get right to drive but price is silenceReuters Riyadh

Saudi Arabian women were given the right to drive last week after nearly three

decades of campaigning, but some activists say that break-through has come with a price: their silence.

While the royal decree end-ing the ban on women driv-ing has been hailed as proof of

a new progressive trend in the deeply conservative kingdom, some women say they have been cowed into not speaking about it — a charge the government denies.

Four women who previously participated in protests against the ban told Reuters they had received phone calls instruct-ing them not to comment on the decree.

Two women said around 25 activists had received such calls.

As Saudi Arabia pushes through reforms over the ob-jections of conservatives, the leadership is trying to modernise without losing the support of its traditional base.

Some clerics seen by the gov-ernment as dabbling in politics have been detained after an ap-parent crackdown on potential opponents of the kingdom’s rul-ers last month which now ap-pears to have paved the way for lifting the driving ban.

Activists and analysts say the government is also keen to avoid rewarding activism, which is forbidden in the absolute mon-archy, and seems determined not to antagonise religious sen-sitivities.

But seemingly inviolable Saudi norms are being turned on their head, with some cler-ics who supported policies such as bans on women driving and gender mixing now apparently changing their minds.

The changes suggest a pos-sible shift in the power balance towards the al-Saud ruling fam-ily away from the clerical estab-lishment.

In the fi rst protest against the driving ban, in 1990, 47 women drove around central Riyadh for nearly an hour until they were detained by the religious police, then fi red from their jobs and barred from travelling.

One participant, a university professor now in her 60s, re-

calls that act of defi ance which sparked a new era in the Saudi women’s rights movement.

“On the fi rst loop, we were not caught. But the second time, we were caught. I think somebody called. I remember one man, he was in front of us in his car. He went like this,” she said, wagging her fi nger. “That meant he didn’t want us to drive.”

More protests followed, but the government has not ac-knowledged the activists’ eff orts

since ending the ban.Activ-ists who said they had received phone calls ordering them to remain silent spoke on the con-dition of anonymity, fearing re-prisals.

“He was very straightforward. He said you are ordered not to comment on the women driv-ing issue or procedures will be taken against you. You are held accountable for anything posted after this call,” one of the callers said.

Oman’s Sultan meets Iran ministerQNAMuscat

Sultan Qaboos bin Said of the Sultanate of Oman met yesterday with the

visiting Iranian Foreign Min-ister Mohamed Javad Zarif, in Muscat yesterday.

The meeting reviewed ties between the two countries in all areas, as well as the latest regional and interna-

tional developments. Earlier, Oman’s Minister Responsi-ble for Foreign Affairs Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah also met with the Iranian Foreign Minister who began a one-day visit to the country.

REGION/ARAB WORLD9Gulf Times


Iran and Iraq hold exercises near KurdistanAFPSulaimaniyah, Iraq

Iranian and Iraqi forces staged joint military exercises yes-terday near the border with

Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan re-gion, a Kurdish offi cial said, fol-lowing tensions over the Kurds’ independence vote.

Iraqi Kurds voted 92.7% in favour of independence on Sep-tember 25 in a non-binding referendum held in defi ance of the central government, which quickly retaliated.

Following the vote, Iraq, Iran and Turkey — which all have sizeable Kurdish minorities — took measures to isolate Iraqi Kurdistan, including suspending international fl ights to and from its two main airports.

The measures included Iran announcing an indefi nite ban on the transport of oil and en-ergy products to and from Iraqi Kurdistan.

An Iranian offi cial said yester-day that some 600 full fuel tank-

ers were now blocked by Iranian customs from crossing the bor-der.

“Iraqi and Iranian units be-gan exercises at 11:00am (0800 GMT) with tanks and infantry only 250 metres from the bor-der,” said Shwan Abu Bakr, the Kurdish customs chief at the Bashmakh border post.

“Iraqi forces are dressed in black and there is a large number of Iranian forces,” he said, the black uniforms indicating that the Iraqi forces were from the country’s elite Counter Terror-ism Service.

The Iranian military on its website announced joint mili-tary exercises with units of the Iraqi army involving armour and artillery units as well as drones and other air units.

It appeared the manoeuvres were the fi rst joint military exer-cises between Iran and Iraq since Iran’s 1979 revolution.

An Iranian military offi cial had announced on Saturday that the joint exercise would be staged in response to the referendum.

Baghdad declared the ballot illegal and suspended fl ights in retaliation.

Turkey and Iran, has also threatened action against the Iraqi Kurds. On Saturday, Iranian armed forces spokesman Masoud Jazayeri told reporters the exer-cises would be held “in the com-ing days along the shared border”.

The decision to carry out the exercises followed a high-level meeting of Iranian commanders where “the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq and the illegiti-macy of the independence ref-erendum in northern Iraq were stressed again”, he said.

Iraqi soldiers last week also took part in a Turkish military drill close to the Iraqi frontier.

The referendum was held in the three provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan and in several disputed areas un-der Kurdish control.

Iraqi authorities have demand-ed that Kurdish forces withdraw from disputed areas and that Kurdish authorities hand over control of the region’s airports and border posts.

Forces claim recapture of IS areas near HawijaAFP Baghdad

Iraqi forces yesterday seized a strategic militant-held area southeast of the Islamic

State group’s bastion of Hawija, a senior commander said.

Government forces and the Hashed al-Shaabi, an alliance of militias, are fi ghting to retake

the northern town of Hawija af-ter expelling IS from large parts of the territory they seized in Iraq in 2014. “The Counter-Terrorism Service and Hashed al-Shaabi captured Rashad and 45 villages and hamlets around as part of the second phase to liberate Hawija,” Lieutenant General Abdel Amir Yarallah said in a statement.

The Hashed al-Shaabi said it

had retaken fi ve villages west of Rashad, which is 35 kilometres southeast of Hawija.

Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition launched an of-fensive on September 21 to re-take a militant enclave around Hawija, swiftly taking the town of Sharqat on its second day be-fore pushing on towards Hawija itself.

On Friday, they started the

battle to retake the town itself, one of the last IS bastions in the country along with a stretch of the Euphrates Valley near the border with Syria. As Iraqi forc-es pushed the off ensive against IS, retreating militants set light to three wells in the Allas oil-fi eld some 85 kilometres to the south of Kirkuk, the Kurdish-controlled North Oil Company and local offi cials said.

Iraqi forces and the Hashed al-Shaabi advance towards the Islamic State group’s stronghold of Hawija yesterday to recapture the town from the militants.

Trial of alleged ringleader of Benghazi attack beginsReuters Washington

Federal prosecutors opened their case against Ahmed Abu Khatal-lah yesterday by telling jurors

he orchestrated the 2012 attack on a

US diplomatic compound in Beng-hazi, Libya, that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Khatallah has been awaiting trial since 2014, when he was captured by a team of US military and FBI offi cials in Libya and transported on a 13-day

journey to the United States aboard a Navy vessel.

In his opening statement, federal prosecutor John Crabb said Khatallah hates America “with a vengeance” and played a leading role in organising the Sept 11, 2012, attack on the US diplo-matic mission in Benghazi.

Khatallah “didn’t do the killing by himself,” he said. ”He didn’t light the fi res and he didn’t fi re the mortars but you will hear he is just as guilty as the men who lit those fi res.”

Khatallah, who face charges including murder and providing material sup-port to terrorists, sat at the table wearing a white shirt and headphones that al-lowed him to hear an Arabic translation of the proceed-ings.

Defence attorney Jeff rey Robinson denied that his client had anything to do with the planning of the at-tack. “The evidence is going to show that Mr Abu Khatal-lah did not participate in the attack,” he said.

The Benghazi attack led to a political fi re storm in Washington, where Repub-licans repeatedly accused then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of failing to adequately protect the dip-lomatic compound.

Crabb told the jury they would hear from witnesses who heard Khatallah discuss his plans and complain that Americans were operating a “spy base” in Benghazi.

One witness, who was later paid $7mn to help the United States lure Khatal-lah to the spot where he was captured, will tell jurors he heard the defendant say he “would have killed all of the Americans that night,” Crabb said.

People buy bread with card unit at a bakery in Cairo, Egypt yesterday.

Food queueJordan accused of ‘deporting’ refugeesAFP Amman

Human Rights Watch yes-terday accused Jordan of “summarily deporting”

Syrian refugees despite possible risks of harm to them in their war-torn country.

Jordan hosts hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees who have fl ed a six-year war in their home country.

“Jordanian authorities have been summarily deporting Syr-ian refugees — including collec-tive expulsions of large families,” HRW said.

A new report quoted a 30-year-old mother of three who said her family was deport-ed despite the United States ex-amining their request for reset-tlement.

“They never gave us a reason,” she said.

During the fi rst fi ve months

of 2017, Jordanian authorities deported about 400 registered Syrian refugees each month, HRW said.

Some 300 registered refugees appeared to return voluntar-ily each month, and another 500 returned “under circumstances that are unclear”.

“Jordan shouldn’t be send-ing people back to Syria without making sure they wouldn’t face a real risk of torture or serious harm and unless they have had a fair opportunity to plead their case for protection,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at HRW.

The rights group called on other countries to support Jor-dan “to enable it to provide safe and decent asylum space for Syr-ian refugees and asylum seekers”. The United Nations says Jordan is hosting more than 650,000 Syrian refugees, while the king-dom puts the actual number

at 1.3mn.

AFRICA


Kenya police fi re teargas at election protestersReutersNairobi

Police yesterday fi red teargas at op-position supporters who rallied in Kenya’s capital Nairobi calling for

the sacking of election board offi cials they blame for August’s botched presi-dential vote.

Offi cers also clashed with crowds and fi red teargas in the western opposition stronghold of Kisumu, forcing busi-nesses to close, a Reuters witness said.

Local media reported scattered pro-tests in other western towns and the port city of Mombasa.

Kenya’s Supreme Court voided the August 8 election citing irregularities, without fi nding any individual at the election board responsible.

President Uhuru Kenyatta, who won the August vote only to have his vic-tory annulled, has accused the Supreme Court of bringing the country close to “judicial chaos”.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga and his supporters have turned their ire on the election board, accusing it of wrong-ly handing the August vote to Kenyatta.

Supporters from both sides have traded insults and accusations, raising fears tensions could boil over into ethnic violence, as in 2007 when 1,200 people were killed after a disputed election.

In the capital of the East African eco-nomic powerhouse, police fi red rounds of teargas at small groups over several hours in at least three locations in the downtown business district, a Reuters witness said.

After a meeting with the election board, British and US diplomats con-demned “infl ammatory rhetoric” by politicians and said it undermined the voting authorities’ preparations for the new election.

In the fi rst signal that Western gov-ernments might take concrete action against hate speech, a British diplomat told reporters: “Anyone who is found to be inciting or engaging in violence must be held accountable...the UK reserves right to take appropriate action which may include refusing or revoking visas.”

Kenyatta and Odinga have been spar-ring over proposed changes to the elec-tion system to prevent the Supreme Court from annulling the results again, raising doubts about the date of the re-run, currently scheduled for October 26.

Kenyatta said yesterday opposition supporters should accept the Supreme Court’s timeline for the new poll.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it,” he said at an event in Nairobi.”If you celebrated the court’s decision to re-peat the election you must also respect the court’s decision to have (the election board) preside over the repeat election within 60 days.” Protesters react to teargas fired by riot policemen during a protest in Kisumu, Kenya.

Victim’s parents ‘horrifi ed’ by Pistorius movieAFPJohannesburg

The parents of Reeva Steenkamp, the model shot dead by Oscar Pistorius, expressed outrage

yesterday over an upcoming US fi lm about how the Paralympic athlete gunned down their daughter.

June and Barry Steenkamp said they were “horrifi ed and upset” at reports that the fi lm claimed to tell the story of the 2013 killing from the perspective of Reeva and June, her mother.

The Steenkamps stressed they had not collaborated in the project or knew anything about it be-ing made, and said they were still

in mourning for their daughter.“Any impression that is created

that this is June’s view, or that the movie is endorsed by the Steenkamp family, is untrue and incorrect,” they said in a statement.

A trailer for the movie — titled Blade Runner Killer — was released yesterday, showing Pistorius and Steenkamp in bed, having arguments before her death and Pistorius open-ing fi re.

Pistorius, 30, is serving a six-year jail term for murder over the killing of Steenkamp in his house in the South African capital Pretoria in the early hours of Valentine’s Day 2013.

He has always maintained that he mistook her for an intruder when he fi red four high-calibre bullets

through a locked toilet cubicle. Pisto-rius became the fi rst double-amputee to race at Olympic level when he ap-peared at the London 2012 games.

In 2016, an appeals court upgraded his manslaughter conviction to mur-der. The South African state is push-ing for a longer sentence, with the case due to be heard in court on No-vember 3.

Pistorius vomited in the dock as details of his girlfriend’s death were examined during his seven-month trial in 2014 that attracted fevered global attention.

The fi lm, which stars German model Toni Garrn as Steenkamp, is due to have a TV premiere on the Lifetime network in the US on No-vember 11.

A June 15, 2016, file photo of Barry and June Steenkamp arriving at the Pretoria High Court for sentencing procedures in Pistorius’s murder trial in Pretoria.

Security tight in CameroonAFPBuea, Cameroon

Police yesterday main-tained a clampdown in English-speaking Cam-

eroon, a day after the country’s restive anglophone minority declared symbolic independ-ence, amid clashes that left seven dead.

Highways in the anglophone Southwest Region remained blocked or fi ltered by police checkpoints in the early morn-ing, and in the city of Buea the streets were virtually deserted and heavily patrolled.

Police and troops set up fi ve roadblocks on the vital 70km road link between Cameroon’s economic hub of Douala and Buea, Southwest Region’s chief city, an AFP journalist saw.

In the rundown Buea district of Mile 17 — a reputed haven for separatists — rocks, hurled in demonstrations on Sunday, were strewn in the streets.

Police carried out overnight arrests in one of the city’s dis-tricts, and left with individuals who were in handcuff s, an AFP journalist saw.

On social media, pro-inde-pendence campaigners report-ed a wave of raids and arrests, but it was diffi cult to confi rm their claim.

On Sunday, separatists used the October 1 anniversary of the offi cial unifi cation of the English- and French-speaking parts of Cameroon to declare independence for ‘Ambazo-nia’, the name of the state they want to create.

Clashes left at least seven dead, all of them at the hands of security forces, according to a toll compiled by AFP.

Four were killed on the side-lines of pro-independence demonstrations and three were prisoners who tried to es-cape from a jail in the town of Kumbo.

Amnesty International yes-terday called for the govern-ment to open an inquiry into the deaths.

The violence was the culmi-nation of weeks of mounting tension in the Southwest and Northwest Regions — home to anglophones who account for about a fi fth of the West African nation’s population of 22mn.

AMERICAS11Gulf Times


US geneticists Jeff rey C Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W Young

were awarded the Nobel Medi-cine Prize yesterday for shedding light on the biological clock that governs the sleep-wake cycles of most living things.

The team’s work revealed the role of genes in setting the “cir-cadian clock” which regulates sleep and eating patterns, hor-mones and body temperature, the Nobel committee said. “Their discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth’s revolutions.”

All life on Earth is tuned to the rotation of our planet.

Scientists have long known that living organisms, including humans, have an internal time-keeper that helps them antici-pate and adapt to the rhythm of the day.

Hall, 72, Rosbash, 73, and Young, 68, “were able to peek inside our biological clock and elucidate its inner workings”, the jury said.

They identifi ed genes that reg-ulate the clock, and the mecha-nism by which light can synchro-nise it.

Rosbash told Swedish Radio he was rattled when the commit-

tee’s call woke him from his sleep at 5.10am.

“I was called on the land-line next to my bed which never rings unless someone has died or something of this magnitude happens,” he recounted. “I was breathless, both literally and fi guratively. My wife said: ‘Please start to breathe’.”

Young told reporters in New York that the prize “really did take me by surprise”.

“I really had trouble even get-ting my shoes on this morning. You know, I’d go and pick up the shoes and then I’d realise I

needed socks and then I’d realise I needed to put my pants on fi rst.”

A disrupted circadian clock is what causes jetlag – which hap-pens when the internal clock and external environment move out of sync as people rapidly change time zones.

The clock also regulates sleep, which is critical for normal brain function.

Circadian dysfunction has been linked to depression, bipo-lar disorder, cognitive function, poor memory formation and some neurological diseases.

Studies have indicated that a

chronic misalignment between a person’s lifestyle and the circadi-an clock – when doing irregular shift work, for example – might be associated with an increased risk for cancer, neurodegenera-tive diseases, metabolic disorders and infl ammation.

Scientists are working hard on methods to alter the rhythm of errant clocks as a means to “im-prove human health”, the Nobel jury said.

Using the fruit fl y as a model organism, this year’s Nobel lau-reates isolated a gene that con-trols the daily biological rhythm,

called the period gene.“They showed that this gene

encodes a protein that accumu-lates in the cell during the night and is then degraded during the day,” the Nobel statement said. “Subsequently they identifi ed additional protein components of this machinery, exposing the mechanism governing the self-sustaining clockwork inside the cell.”

The three scientists will share the prize of 9mn Swedish kronor (about $1.1mn or €937,000).

“Just about every facet of our body changes predictably over the course of the day and night and these changes are driven by this internal timing mechanism,” Michael Hastings of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge told AFP.

“Every dimension of our health, every dimension of our personality or reactions to medi-cines, our reactions to disease are variable and are on the very pre-cise programme set by this inter-nal body clock,” he said.

The physics prize laureates will be revealed today, with the dis-coveries of gravitational waves and exoplanets both regularly mentioned as possible winners.

The chemistry prize will be announced tomorrow, the litera-ture prize on Thursday, and the peace prize on Friday.

The economics prize will wrap things up on Monday, October 9.

US body clock geneticists take 2017 Nobel Medicine PrizeAFPStockholm

This handout photograph taken on September 25, 2013 and released yesterday by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) shows US geneticists Hall (left), Rosbash, and Young (right) during a lecture at CUHK’s Shaw College in Hong Kong.

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello report-ed progress in getting

fuel supplies to the island’s 3.4mn inhabitants yesterday as they faced a 13th day largely without power after the US territory was devastated by Hurricane Maria.

US President Donald Trump, who has faced criticism for his administration’s response to the disaster, is scheduled to visit Puerto Rico today, as food and drinking water remain in short supply.

Nearly two weeks after the fi ercest hurricane to hit the island in 90 years, some resi-dents got cell phone service back on Sunday.

Others gathered at bars for drinking and dancing after a dry law was lifted this week-end.

The ramping up of fuel sup-plies should allow more Puerto Ricans to operate generators and travel more freely where the state of the roads allows.

“We’ve been increasing the number of gas stations that are open,” Rossello said at a news briefi ng, with more than 720 of the island’s 1,100 gas stations

now up and running.Puerto Rico relies on fuel

supplies shipped from the mainland United States and distribution has been disrupt-ed by the bad state of roads.

“We will be receiving more fuel supplies in the coming days,” said Rossello, who is ex-pecting some 300,000 barrels of diesel on Wednesday and 100,000 barrels of gasoline.

Within the next couple of days, he expects 500,000 bar-rels of diesel and close to 1mn barrels of gasoline to arrive on the island.

“The fl ow is coming, gaso-line is getting here,” Rossello said. “We have been able to reduce the time that it takes to get gasoline and diesel at dif-ferent stations.”

He said 8,800 people now were housed in 140 shelters.

There were as many as 500 shelters in operation 10 days ago.

He said that 47% of water and sewer service is up but there is variation across the island.

Federal and local authori-ties were working together to keep 50 hospitals operational and Rossello said the US Navy hospital ship Comfort would arrive in Puerto Rico between today and tomorrow.

Fuel supplies on the way to Puerto RicansReutersSan Juan

Canada defended its im-migration and refugee vetting system yester-

day after a Somali immigrant, who had drawn scrutiny for his alleged extremist views, was charged with attempted mur-der for a weekend vehicle and knife attack that injured fi ve.

Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, 30, is accused of running down a police offi cer with his car in Edmonton, Alberta, and then stabbing him repeatedly.

He then ran down four pe-destrians during an attempt to evade capture.

Sharif faces 11 charges in-cluding fi ve for attempted murder linked to the rampage in the western Canadian city on Saturday night.

Though police have not charged Sharif with terrorism, they said the investigation was still in its early stages.

He was targeted in a probe two years ago for promot-ing extremist ideology, but deemed to pose no threat af-ter what the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) de-scribed on Sunday as an “ex-haustive investigation”.

“The complexities of a ter-rorism investigation are vast. As the investigation unfolds and further information is gathered, if further charges are warranted they will be pursued at that time,” RCMP Superin-tendent Stacey Talbot told a news conference.

Two of the four people in-jured on Saturday remained in hospital, with one listed in se-rious condition, Talbot said.

The attack puts sharp focus on the relatively warm wel-come Prime Minister Justin Trudeau off ered refugees ear-lier this year after US President Donald Trump issued a travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries.

Canada has seen a surge in illegal border crossings this year as people fearing a US immigration crackdown and

possible deportation sought asylum.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said it would be wrong to blame the attack on any al-leged shortcomings or failures in Canada’s immigration and refugee vetting system.

“There’s absolutely no evi-dence of that whatsoever. The investigation is ongoing, but that conclusion is just not sup-ported by the facts,” Goodale told reporters in Ottawa as he headed into a meeting of the Liberal government’s cabinet.

The incident in Edmonton began when a Chevy Malibu slammed into a police offi cer standing in front of a football stadium about 8.15pm (0215 GMT on Sunday), hitting him with enough force to send him fl ying into the air.

The driver then got out of the car and stabbed the offi cer multiple times before fl eeing in a truck, according to police ac-counts and surveillance foot-age.

Police identifi ed the suspect when he stopped at a check-point and his licence showed that he was the owner of the Malibu.

He fl ed the checkpoint, however, and was only arrested after careening across a down-town street and hitting four pedestrians.

A fl ag of the Islamic State (IS) militant group was found inside the Malibu, said Rod Knecht, police chief of Ed-monton, Alberta’s provincial capital.

Despite the incident, Can-ada’s government said it was keeping the terrorist threat level at medium, where it has been since late 2014 after two deadly attacks attributed to homegrown radicals.

The incidents led to tougher new anti-terrorism measures.

In October, 2014, a gunman killed a soldier at Ottawa’s national war memorial before launching an attack on the Ca-nadian Parliament.

In the same week, a man ran down two soldiers in Quebec, killing one.

Canada defends immigration system after weekend attackReutersEdmonton

At fi rst glance, it seemed Stephen Paddock, 64, was set for a quiet life

in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, where he had bought a new home in 2015 near his beloved casinos.

From there, it was only an hour’s drive to Las Vegas, where he embarked on the worst mass shooting in recent US history be-fore killing himself.

His brother, Eric Paddock, said he was a peaceful man who moved back to the red desert hills of Nevada partly because gam-bling is legal in the state and he loathed Central Florida’s humid-ity.

“He was a wealthy guy and he liked to play video poker and he liked to go on cruises,” Paddock said from his doorstep in Orlan-do, Florida. “He’s never drawn his gun, it makes no sense.”

His brother had a couple of handguns he kept in a safe, per-haps a long rifl e, “but no auto-matic weapons”.

The two were last in touch last month, texting about power outages after Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida.

“He had nothing to do with any political organisation and re-ligious organisations” as far as he was aware, Eric Paddock said.

Their father was Patrick Ben-jamin Paddock, a violent bank robber who was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s Most Wanted list in the 1960s.

The shooter himself had no criminal record beyond a traf-fi c violation, police in Las Vegas said.

“We didn’t know him,” Eric Paddock said of their father.

In recent weeks, Paddock made

gambling transactions worth tens of thousands of dollars, though it was unclear whether they were wins or losses, NBC News reported, citing unnamed law enforcement offi cials.

Public records point to an itin-erant existence across the Amer-ican West and Southeast: A few years in California, a few years in other parts of Nevada.

Paddock had a hunting licence in Texas, where he lived for a while.

He got his pilot licence, and

had at least one single-engine aircraft registered in his name.

In early 2015, he bought a two-storey home in a new housing development for retirees on the dusty edge of Mesquite, a small desert town popular with golfers and gamblers that straddles Ne-vada’s border with Arizona.

“It’s a nice, clean home, and nothing out of the ordinary,” Quinn Averett, a Mesquite police department spokesman, told re-porters yesterday.

Some guns and ammunition

were found inside, though noth-ing remarkable in a region where gun ownership is high.

Roughly an hour’s drive south-west is Las Vegas, where Paddock checked into a 32nd-fl oor room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino last Thursday with at least 10 rifl es for a shooting spree that would kill least 58 people and hurt more than 500.

The FBI said he had no con-nection with international mili-tant groups.

Before moving to Mesquite,

Nevada, he lived in another town called Mesquite in Texas, where he worked as the manager of an apartment complex called Cen-tral Park.

Records as recent as 2015 list Paddock as single, though it ap-pears he may have married while living in California in the 1980s.

Police and public records said he lived with Marilou Danley in the Nevada community.

Police said she had no con-nection with the attack, CNN reported.

Vegas gunman was ‘set for a quiet life’By Jonathan Allen, ReutersLas Vegas

People scramble for shelter at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival on Sunday night amid gunfire.

After a gunman killed more than 50 people at a Las Vegas concert on Sunday,

here are some of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States in the past 25 years.

Florida club: 49 killed – A heavily-armed gunman opens fi re inside a gay nightclub in the city of Orlando on June 12, 2016 and kills 49 people. The attacker is killed in a shootout with po-lice; he pledges allegiance to the

Islamic State (IS) group, which later claims responsibility.

Virginia Tech: 32 killed – A 23-year-old student of Korean origin goes on a rampage at Vir-ginia Tech University in the town of Blacksburg in April 2007. He guns down 27 students and fi ve teachers before committing sui-cide.

Sandy Hook: 26 killed – A disturbed 20-year-old kills his mother in Newtown, Connecti-cut, in December 2012 before blasting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and shooting dead 20 six- and seven-year old

children and six adults. He com-mits suicide.

Texas restaurant: 22 dead – In October 1991 a man shoots dead 22 people in a restaurant in the town of Killeen, Texas and then kills himself. Another wounded victim dies later.

California offi ce party: 14 dead – A newlywed radicalised Muslim couple storm a Christ-mas offi ce party at a social serv-ices centre in San Bernardino in December 2015 and gun down 14 people, wounding 22 others. They are shot dead by police.

Fort Hood military base:

13 dead – In November 2009 a US army psychiatrist opens fi re at his military base in Kil-leen, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 42, before being over-powered by police.

New York immigrant cen-tre: 13 dead – A Vietnamese im-migrant shoots dead 13 people at a civic centre in the New York state city of Binghamton in April 2009, before killing himself.

Columbine High: 13 dead – Two teenagers shoot and kill 12 classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Lit-tleton, Colorado, in April 1999,

before killing themselves. Marines: 12 dead – A trou-

bled former serviceman shoots randomly at workers at the Washington Navy Yard head-quarters in September 2013, kill-ing 12 people before he is shot dead by offi cers.

Denver cinema: 12 dead – A young man wearing body ar-mour storms a cinema showing a late-night premiere of a Batman fi lm in Aurora, Colorado in July 2012, opening fi re and releasing tear gas. Twelve people and 70 wounded. He is sentenced to life in prison.

Worst mass shootings in the modern United StatesAFPWashington

Canadian Sikh politician wins race to lead federal New Democrats

Jagmeet Singh, an Ontario provincial lawmaker and practicing Sikh, was elected on Sunday as leader of Canada’s left-leaning New Democrats, becoming the first non-white politician to head a major Canadian political party.The 38-year-old lawyer, whose penchant for colourful turbans and tailor-made three-piece suits made him a social media star, was elected on the first ballot to lead the New Democratic Party into the 2019 election against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.“Thank you, New Democrats. The run for Prime Minister begins now,” Singh tweeted.Singh secured 54% of the vote, defeating three rivals to become the new head of the NDP, succeeding Thomas Mulcair.The NDP is the third largest party in the federal Parliament, with 44 of 338 seats.


ASIA/AUSTRALASIA

Refugee found dead at Australia camp on PNGAFPSydney

An asylum-seeker being held on one of Austral-ia’s remote Pacifi c island

camps was found dead yesterday, rights groups said, in a suspect-ed suicide that has once again thrown Canberra’s treatment of refugees into the spotlight.

Australia sends asylum-

seekers who try to enter the country by boat to processing facilities on Nauru and on Pa-pua New Guinea’s Manus Island, with those found to be refugees barred from resettling in Aus-tralia. Conditions in the camps have been widely criticised by refugee advocates and medi-cal professionals, with reports of widespread abuse, self-harm and mental health problems.

Sydney-based Refugee Action

Coalition said yesterday that a 32-year-old Tamil man from Sri Lanka took his own life at a hos-pital Manus Island, where he was being treated for self-harm. It is the second apparent suicide on the island in the last two months, with an Iranian man found dead in August. “Once again, such tragedy highlights the acute vul-nerability of refugees and asy-lum-seekers under Australia’s ‘off shore processing’ approach,

and the need for proper care,” the United Nations High Com-missioner for Refugees (UN-HCR) said in a statement yester-day. A PNG court ruled last year that holding people on Manus was unconstitutional, and Can-berra is set to shut the detention centre by the end of this month.

It has tried with little success to relocate the detainees to third countries like Cambodia, or set-tle them elsewhere in PNG.

Last week, a fi rst wave of ref-ugees departed from the Pacifi c camps for the US in a deal struck with Washington under former president Barack Obama. The pact has angered President Don-ald Trump who has begrudgingly agreed to accept an unspecifi ed number of people who can fulfi l rigorously-vetted requirements. But it remains unclear what will happen to those not taken by the United States. “UNHCR has long

urged that the planned closure of the Manus Island ‘Regional Processing Centre’ must only take place in the context of con-tinued critical services,” the UN refugee body added. Australian immigration data as of July 31 said nearly 800 men were being held on Manus, in addition to 371 men, women and children on Nauru.

Amnesty International said the latest death is the sixth re-

lated to Manus and the ninth overall attached to Australia’s off shore processing.

“This death proves, yet again, that off shore processing is un-tenable, and must end imme-diately,” Amnesty Pacifi c re-searcher Kate Schuetze said in a statement. The Australian gov-ernment yesterday said it was aware of the death in Manus but directed any further queries to PNG authorities.

Women plead not guiltyto murdering Jong-namAFPShah Alam, Malaysia

Two women pleaded not guilty yesterday to mur-dering the half-brother

of North Korea’s leader at the start of their trial in Malaysia, as prosecutors alleged they prac-tised for the assassination before carrying it out. The trial heard dramatic testimony from a doc-tor who described the agonis-ing fi nal moments of Kim Jong-nam’s life after he was attacked with a deadly nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur airport.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong were arrested just days after the killing of Kim on February 13 as he waited to board a plane to Macau. The women are ac-cused of rubbing toxic VX, a chemical so deadly it is listed as a weapon of mass destruction, on his face.

Kim died an agonising death about 20 minutes after the hit, which was caught on airport CCTV as the VX rapidly shut down his central nervous sys-tem. The defendants – who face death by hanging if convicted –

claim they were duped into be-lieving they were taking part in a prank for a reality TV show and their lawyers have pointed the fi nger at North Korean agents.

The murder sparked an angry row between Pyongyang, which was accused of masterminding the killing of Kim Jong-un’s es-tranged relative, and Malaysia, historically one of Pyongyang’s few allies. The women arrived at

the heavily guarded High Court in Shah Alam, outside the capital Kuala Lumpur, wearing bullet-proof vests and handcuff s.

The murder charge was read to Aisyah, 25, and Huong, 29, in their native languages and in-terpreters indicated they were pleading not guilty.

Opening the prosecution, Muhamad Iskandar Ahmad said the women’s actions showed

their “intention to kill” and de-scribed how they had practised for the hit before carrying it out for real. The chargesheet accuses the women of killing Kim with four others still at large, who are not named. Four North Korean suspects fl ed Malaysia on the day of the murder.

The prosecutor said that before the murder Aisyah and Huong had carried out “simula-tions” which were “overseen by

the four who are still free”. The exercises “were a preparation by all of them to cause the death of the victim,” he said.

Defence lawyers argued the charge was ambiguous due to the failure to identify the four other suspects, and urged the court to reveal their identities. Judge Azmi Ariffi n refused the request. The women’s lawyers believe the four unnamed individuals are the main suspects in the murder.

They argue that their clients, who were living precarious ex-istences among Malaysia’s army of migrant workers, are simply the fall guys.

Witness Nik Mohamad Adzrul Ariff , a doctor who was on duty at the airport clinic when Kim was brought in af-ter the attack, described how the victim’s health deterio-rated rapidly. “I saw this man clutching his head and his face was very red,” he told the court. “His hands and legs stiff ened, his eyes rolled upwards, he was drooling.”

He was given medicine and his condition stabilised but he died in an ambulance en route to hospital. Huong’s family, who followed the start of the trial from Vietnam, said they felt powerless to help her but in-sisted they still believed she was innocent.

“I don’t know what to do,” said Nguyen Thi Vy, the stepmother of Huong, who came from a con-servative, rice-farming village.

“We hope for amnesty for her.” South Korea accuses the

North of ordering the murder of Kim, who had voiced criti-cism of the regime after falling from grace and going to live in exile overseas. Pyongyang denies the allegations. As well as the North Koreans who fl ed imme-diately after the assassination, several others allegedly linked to the murder plot were allowed to leave Malaysia later to ease a diplomatic crisis.

Prosecutors — who insist the women will get a fair trial — will lay out their case over two months and call 30 to 40 witnesses. The defence is then likely to be called. Before the murder Malaysia had been one of Pyongyang’s few allies amid a global outcry over the country’s atomic weapons programme. After the assassination sent dip-lomatic relations plummeting between Pyongyang and Kuala Lumpur, tensions only eased when Malaysia agreed to return Kim’s body in March.

A convoy of Royal Malaysian Police vehicles carrying Vietnamese defendant Doan Thi Huong and Indonesian defendant Siti Aisyah leave the Shah Alam High Court after their trial in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Vietnamese defendant Doan Thi Huong (2nd left) after her trial at the Shah Alam High Court in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur.

Kim Jong-nam

A crew member stands beside a portrait of US President Donald Trump, onboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, as it stations, during a port visit to Hong Kong, China.

Port of callBali volcano evacuees outside red zone fearful to return homeAFPJakarta

Thousands of residents who fl ed a rumbling vol-cano on the island of Bali

are refusing to leave evacuation centres after being told to return to their homes outside of the im-mediate danger zone.

Offi cials announced the high-est possible alert level for Mount Agung, about 75km from the re-sort hub of Kuta, on September 22, telling people not to venture within nine to 12km of the sum-mit. Some 144,000 people fl ed their homes following the warn-ing, including about 75,000 who were not in immediate danger, according to offi cials.

The government has since urged evacuees from outside the red zone to return home, but many are refusing to go. “Hon-estly I don’t have the courage

to go home right now because my children are still young, our house is located in a narrow al-ley, I don’t know if we will have enough time to evacuate (if the volcano erupts),” mother Cecilia Eka Setyarini Utami, who fl ed to an evacuation centre in Den-pasar, told AFP.

Kadek Kanda, the co-ordi-nator of an evacuation centre in Bali’s capital Denpasar, said his shelter was so full he had stopped accepting evacuees. “Some peo-ple whose houses are not within the danger zone have started to return home this morning, but for those who decided to stay, we don’t have the heart to tell them to go home.”

Indonesia’s Center for Vol-canology and Geological Hazard Mitigation said the number of volcanic tremors was still high — 222 between midnight and 6am yesterday — but the situation was stable. “You have accelera-

tion prior to September 22. At that moment we increased the alert level, but thereafter the number of seismicity is almost the same day by day,” said Devy Kamil, a senior offi cial at the centre, told AFP.

White steam clouds — which contain sulphurous fumes — have been observed rising 50 to 200m above the summit. Indo-nesia sits on the Pacifi c “Ring of Fire” where tectonic plates col-lide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity. In 2010, Mount Merapi on the island of Java erupted after rumbling since 2006, while Mount Sinabung on Sumatra island — which is cur-rently also on the highest alert level – has been active since 2013.

Volcanologists cannot predict when an eruption may occur, but Kamil said the risk had not de-creased.

Mount Agung last erupted in 1963, killing nearly 1,600 peo-ple.

Cambodia’s detained leader denies charges

Cambodia’s detained opposition leader, who is accused of treason by the government of strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen, denied the charges against him yesterday in his first comments since his arrest last month. Kem Sokha, head of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) is accused of trying to overthrow the government with help from the United States and of espionage — charges he denies and says are politically motivated.His arrest last month is part of ongoing efforts by the government to silence political opponents and independent media ahead of a general election next year. Earlier on Monday Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge officer who defected and has ruled Cambodia for more than three

decades, attacked opposition figures as “rebels in the city” bent on staging a revolution.In a three-page letter posted on his Facebook page yesterday Kem Sokha said that he was seeking positive change in Cambodia through the ballot box and not through revolution as charged. “As the leader of the CNRP and a representative of more than half of the country’s population, I always choose changes through elections without violence,” he said in the letter.Rights groups say Hun Sen, 65, is determined to extend his rule and dismantle the burgeoning popularity of the CNRP, who have gained from public anger over inequality and cronyism in the country under Hun Sen’s rule. The US embassy has rejected any suggestion of interference in politics.

ReutersWashington

The US Supreme Court yesterday rejected New Zealand-based Internet

mogul Kim Dotcom’s challenge to the US government’s bid to seize assets held by him and others involved in the now-de-funct streaming website Meg-aupload.

The justices left in place a lower court’s ruling that the US government could seize up to $40mn in assets held out-side the United States as part of a civil forfeiture action be-ing pursued in parallel with criminal charges for alleged

copyright violations and money laundering. Dotcom and several other defendants have con-tested US attempts to extradite them from New Zealand.

German-born entrepreneur Dotcom is wanted by US law enforcement authorities on copyright and money-laun-dering allegations related to Megaupload, which was shut down in 2012 following an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion. He was indicted the same year along with fellow Megaupload executives.

US authorities say Dotcom and his colleagues cost fi lm studios and record companies more than $500mn and gener-ated more than $175mn in prof-

its by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted material including movies and TV shows.

The US government sought up to $175mn in assets but the defendants say the assets in question are worth only around $40mn. The assets include two houses, luxury cars and bank accounts. A New Zealand court ruled in February that Dotcom and three other New Zealand-based defendants -- Finn Bata-to, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk — could be extra-dited to the United States to face the charges. Two other in-dicted Megaupload associates, Sven Echternach and Julius Bencko, who live in Germany

and Slovakia respectively, have not been arrested, according to court fi lings.

The defendants contested the US government’s forfeiture claims, saying in part that it could not seize property under the ju-risdiction of a foreign court. The US government’s legal argument, adopted by the appeals court, is that the defendants are fugitives seeking to avoid criminal pros-ecution in the United States and therefore are not allowed to con-test the forfeiture.

The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Dotcom in August 2016, and he asked the Supreme Court to hear his appeal.

US top court rejects Internet mogul’s appeal

A splinter group from Japan’s biggest opposition camp yesterday announced plans to create a new centre-left party, the latest change in the nation’s political landscape ahead of an election. Yukio Edano, deputy head of the Democratic Party (DP), said he would form the new party with like-minded members after the former main opposition group imploded last week. DP leader Seiji Maehara announced last week the party would not field candidates in the October 22 poll, joining forces with the new “Party of Hope” formed by popular Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike in a bid to topple Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. While Koike is trying to unite opposition forces, she has reportedly rejected DP members that oppose a bigger role by the nation’s Self-Defence Forces.

New centre-left party launched in Japan

BRITAIN13Gulf Times


Cabinet ‘split over howBrexit should happen’Guardian News and MediaLondon

Philip Hammond has con-ceded that the Cabinet is split over the implementa-

tion of Brexit and warned Boris Johnson that his interventions risk weakening the UK’s negoti-ating position. On the second day of the Conservative party confer-ence, which has been dominated by the issue, the chancellor was unusually frank in admitting that the foreign secretary was not keeping to the agreed Cabinet line over Brexit.

Asked about a series of news-paper articles and interviews by Johnson in which he set out his personal “red lines” for Brexit, Hammond said he accepted that the Cabinet was divided.

“We know, on this big issue of how we take forward our exit from the European Union, what type of relationship we should have with the European Union in the future, there are diff erences of view, nobody is denying that,”

he told Sky News. “What Boris has been saying is stuff Boris has been saying for the last 18 months. He hasn’t said anything that people didn’t know he was thinking about.”

Asked whether he felt John-son should “shut up” on the is-sue, Hammond replied: “I think the more we can show unity, the stronger our negotiating position with the European Union would be.” Tory backbenchers and busi-ness groups alike have been frus-trated by the splits. Adam Mar-shall, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, accused the foreign secretary of destabilising the government and said Cabinet divisions were un-dermining economic confi dence.

Hammond insisted, however, that Johnson’s interventions would change nothing.

Asked about the diff erences between Theresa May and John-son over the length of a planned Brexit transition period – she said in her recent speech in Flor-ence this should last “around” two years, while the foreign sec-

retary has argued that 24 months should be the absolute maxi-mum – Hammond said there was no doubt. “The position is very clear,” he said. “I was sitting there in the front row at Florence, and I heard the prime minister very clearly say, a time-limited interim period of around two years. And that’s what the posi-tion is.” Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Ham-mond described Johnson’s views on limiting the period to two years as “a rhetorical fl ourish” and said the government would stick to the position outlined by May in Florence.

“We had a Cabinet discussion before the speech and the whole Cabinet signed up to that posi-tion,” he said. “That is our posi-tion.”

May’s close ally Damian Green, the fi rst secretary of state, reiter-ated the prime minister’s posi-tion during a fringe event at the Conservative conference yester-day morning, saying the transi-tion period could extend slightly beyond two years.

Universal creditrollout to go aheadGuardian News and MediaLondon

The government is to press ahead with its rollout of universal

credit, the work and pensions secretary has confi rmed, de-spite a last-minute appeal from Tory backbenchers for a delay.

More than a dozen Conserv-ative MPs had raised concerns with David Gauke’s depart-ment that claimants were be-ing forced to use food banks because of the mandatory six-week wait to receive money.

Yesterday the MP who led the plea, Heidi Allen, ap-pealed directly to Theresa May to intervene.

But in his speech to the Con-servative party conference in Manchester, Gauke praised the controversial system, which is being gradually introduced around the country.

“Universal credit is work-ing,” he said. “So I can con-firm that the rollout will continue, and to the planned timetable.

“We’re not going to rush things; it is more important to get this right than to do this quickly, and this won’t be completed until 2022. But across the country, we will continue to transform our wel-fare system to further support those who aspire to work.”

Gauke said the govern-ment would be “refreshing the guidance” to staff at the department for work and pensions (DWP) over the possibility of giving advance payments to claimants in dif-ficulty.

“Claimants who want an advance payment will not have to wait six weeks, they will re-ceive this advance within fi ve working days,” Gauke said. “And if someone is in imme-diate need, then we fast-track the payment, meaning they will receive it on the same day.”

Debbie Abrahams, the shadow work and pensions secretary, condemned the confirmation of the rollout, saying Gauke “should imme-diately end the misery caused by the six-week wait for pay-ment of universal credit”.

The country’s largest supplier of supermarket chicken has suspended production at one of its main processing plants after undercover filming revealed poor hygiene standards and food safety records being altered. The temporary closure by 2 Sisters Food Group (2SFG) came as Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket chain, joined the boycott of the poultry group’s West Midlands plant. In the investigation by Guardian and ITV News, 2 Sisters workers were seen altering the source and slaughter date of poultry being processed in the firm’s Site D plant to artificially stretch the commercial life of the meat and dupe consumers into buying chicken past its use-by date.

Police are hunting a cyclist who attacked a group of pedestrians after colliding with them on a pavement. The man, who had a distinctive large beard, crashed into three people as they walked home after a night out in Hackney. Police yesterday released CCTV footage showing the man riding with one hand on the handlebars on August 13 before he collided with the group at a bus stop in City Road. After the rider fell from his bike he challenged the victims before punching a 24-year-old man to the ground, leaving him unconscious. A woman, 31, was punched in the face and suff ered a broken nose. The suspect retrieved his bicycle and fled towards Islington.

A hospital worker was stabbed to death as a house party advertised on social media raged out of control. Lamar Stewart, 21, was chased and knifed in Bow. He was treated at the scene before being taken to hospital where he died. Groups from east and south London had clashed at the party in Ropery Street. The former pupil at Bishop Thomas Grant School in Streatham had been due to start full-time at a south London children’s hospital yesterday. Detective chief inspector Andrew Packer said: “Our enquiries have established there was a large group of young people who attended this party and I need to trace as many people as possible to piece together the events.”

A sexual predator who loitered in the lavatories of top London hotels and attacked eight female victims over three days has been jailed for 10 years. Philip Ogun, 34, robbed and sexually assaulted them in a campaign of escalating violence. In one attack he also attempted to assault a schoolgirl in a park while holding a knife against her throat, before she ran to safety. One of his traumatised victims was ambushed in the toilets at the four-star Hilton Kensington in Holland Park Avenue. Ogun, from Fulham, was caught from CCTV images which captured him in the hotel and the McDonald’s. He was found guilty at Isleworth crown court of 20 separate charges.

A nine-seat sushi counter in central London has won three Michelin stars, joining a select group of British restaurants with the coveted top rating, the French gastronomic guide announced yesterday. The Araki - where the set menu costs £300 per person - in London’s upmarket Mayfair district is the first Japanese restaurant in the UK to be awarded three stars in the annual appraisal. It joins Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London, as well as The Fat Duck and The Waterside Inn, both in Bray, Berkshire as three-star rated. The Araki had previously won two Michelin stars before getting upgraded this year.

Scandal-hit poultry plant’soperations suspended

Hunt for bearded cyclistafter vicious street attack

Hospital worker killed asparty spirals into chaos

Sexual predator jailed for 10 years

Tiny London sushi barwins three Michelin stars

FALLOUT LAW AND ORDERCRIME JUSTICE RATING

Passengersfl ee trainafter man’swarning

Guardian News and MediaLondon

Hundreds of thousands of commuters experienced major disruption dur-

ing rush hour yesterday morning after passengers evacuated from a train in London and spilled on to the track because they feared a fellow passenger was acting erratically. The incident, which took place at about 8.30am just outside Wimbledon station on a South Western Railway train running from Shepperton to Wa-terloo, forced Network Rail to switch off power in the area, caus-ing long delays. Passengers said a man wearing a rucksack was talk-ing about homosexuality and sex outside of marriage being sins. He was also said to have referred to “doomsday”. A passenger pulled the emergency alarm and some people prised open the doors and went on to the tracks.

The guard went to the carriage to speak to the man in question and fellow passengers. British Transport Police (BTP) ques-tioned the man and the electric-ity on the lines was turned off for safety reasons.

A Network Rail spokesman said the incident caused signifi cant delays. “Passengers self-evacuat-ed off a train and on to the tracks at Wimbledon yesterday morning after a passenger incident. British Transport Police are investigating and there were no injuries to pas-sengers or staff ,” he said.

The Rail, Maritime and Trans-port (RMT) union, which is bal-loting South Western Railway members on whether to strike in a dispute over guards on trains, praised the guard’s response.

The union’s general secretary, Mick Cash, said: “Once again a guard has stepped in and calmed a potentially dangerous situation in an exemplary and professional manner”.

“Panic could have broken out but for the guard’s calm and meas-ured response. This was a packed passenger train at the height of the rush hour. It illustrates just why RMT members are fi ghting so hard to keep the guard on South Western Railway services.”

Thousands left strandedas MonarchAirlines foldsLondon Evening StandardLondon

The largest ever emergency airlift of British holiday-makers was ordered yes-

terday as more than 100,000 passengers were left without fl ights home after Monarch Air-lines collapsed.

The Luton-based carrier and tour operator slumped into ad-ministration in the early hours af-ter a desperate last-ditch struggle to keep it afl oat ended in failure.

It is the largest airline to go bust in British aviation history, aff ecting 860,000 passengers on 300,000 separate bookings that were immediately rendered worthless.

The Civil Aviation Author-ity triggered plans that it has been working on for four weeks to charter an emergency fl eet of 34 aircraft to bring 110,000 holiday-makers home on the day they were booked to fl y with Monarch.

However, the government faced angry claims that it “stood by” and allowed passengers to make book-ings when it was clear that Mon-arch was doomed.

Airlines that have contributed planes to the rescue mission in-clude EasyJet, British Airways and Qatar Airways.

All 700 fl ights over the next fortnight will be free of charge, but up to 5,000 passengers who are due to return from holiday after October 15 will have to make their own arrangements.

The operation is expected to cost the government between £60mn and £70mn, but ministers hope to recoup the bill from credit card issuers, tour operators and in-

surers. The fi rst rescue fl ight, car-rying 165 passengers from Ibiza, landed at Gatwick yesterday.

However, hundreds of thou-sands of holidaymakers who have paid for Monarch fl ights over the next few weeks have been left with plans in ruins.

Yesterday, signs about the col-lapse were erected at Gatwick’s South Terminal. A wedding party of 30 people, including a disabled child, were stranded at the airport after their fl ight was cancelled without notice.

Donna Smith and Alan Jee were fl ying out to tie the knot in Gran Canaria with friends and fam-ily and were preparing to board when they were told of Mon-arch’s demise. Jee, 41, a builder from Bournemouth who has paid £12,000 for the wedding on Sat-urday, said: “I am beyond gutted. I am devastated. We were through the security and waiting to board the plane at 5.35am and they just said, ‘No more fl ights’.

“We contacted Monarch yes-terday and they said everything would be fi ne as long as we weren’t on a package holiday. We had no notice at all. There are 30 of us here, including a disabled child facing sleeping at the airport. No one off ered to help us.”

Barbora Durcikova, 27 and her fi ancee Vera Bunatova, 25, were due to fl y to Lanzarote for their fi rst overseas holiday together be-fore they saw a poster about Mon-arch’s collapse.

Durcikova said: “It’s very disap-pointing. We are really upset. We are determined to get there, but it will be tough. We have paid £600 for our holiday and had no con-tact from anyone warning us this might happen.” Flight companies

were accused of cashing in on the chaos as ticket prices were alleg-edly raised by the minute as pas-sengers tried to rebook.

An intensive care nurse from south London rebooked fl ights to Alicante and saw the quoted price rise from £138 to £199 per person on one site in the time it took to complete the booking.

She said: “It is scandalous that Monarch were allowed to carry on taking bookings when it is clear the government knew they were about to fold. I haven’t had a proper pay rise in seven years and was forced to cancel my holiday or stump up an infl ated price.”

Blair Nimmo, a partner at ad-ministrators KPMG said Monarch, which employs 2,100 people, had struggled with mounting costs and competitive conditions. He said administrators were consid-ering breaking up the company because no buyer has been found to purchase the entire fi rm.

In a letter to staff , Monarch chief executive Andrew Swaffi eld said the “root cause” of plunging rev-enues was terror attacks in Egypt and Tunisia and fall of the tour-ist trade in Turkey. The fi rm was also hit by the decline in the value of the pound. The Unite union, which represents 1,800 Monarch engineers and cabin crew, claimed ministers had rebuff ed requests by the company for a bridging loan at commercial rates while it restruc-tured.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: “I have ordered the country’s biggest ever peacetime repatriation to fl y about 110,000 passengers who could otherwise have been left stranded. This is an unprecedented response to an un-precedented situation.”

A passenger stands with her luggage near to the check-in desks for Monarch Airlines, in the departures area of Birmingham Airport in Birmingham yesterday.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond speaks at the Conservative party conference in Manchester yesterday.

EUROPE


French lawmakers will vote today on a tough new counter-terrorism law de-

signed to end the country’s two-year state of emergency which critics say expands police pow-ers at a cost to civil liberties.

The vote comes following a string of attacks in France since 2015 and just two days after more bloodshed in the south-ern port city of Marseille when a suspected religious extremist killed two women with a knife.

While Interior Minister Ger-ard Collomb defends the bill as a “lasting response to a lasting threat”, it has come under fi re from human rights groups.

“What makes us angry is that it’s a state of emergency that would become permanent and roll back our freedoms,” said Christine Lazerges, the head of the National Consultative Com-

mittee on Human Rights, a state body.

The law, designed to replace the state of emergency that France has been under since the November 2015 Paris attacks, would come into force on No-vember 1 if approved by both houses of parliament.

The lower house will vote to-day on the bill which will give authorities the power to place people under house arrest, order house searches and ban public gatherings without the prior ap-proval of a judge.

The state of emergency was meant to be temporary but was extended six times for various reasons, such as the need to pro-tect major sporting and cultural events, as well as presidential and parliamentary elections earlier this year.

The vote comes after a man stabbed two women to death on Sunday at the main train station in Marseille while shouting “Al-lahu Akbar”.

He was shot dead by soldiers.The Islamic State (IS) group

claimed that the attacker was one of its “soldiers”, though a source close to the investigation told AFP that no solid evidence linked him to the extremist group.

The stabbings bring to 241 the number of people killed in reli-gious militant attacks in France since January 2015, while Col-lomb said last month that 12 planned attacks have been foiled since the start of the year.

In an environment of wide-spread fear about religious mili-tant violence, extensions of the state of emergency have met with little public opposition, with critics of the new law lim-ited to the hard left and human rights groups.

“Gradually our public freedoms ... are being eroded,” said lawmaker Alexis Corbiere of the hard-left France Unbowed party.

Last week two UN experts

raised fears that the bill could see security forces discriminate against Muslims and undermine France’s standing as a beacon for human rights.

“The normalisation of emer-gency powers has grave con-sequences for the integrity of rights protection in France, both within and beyond the context of counter-terrorism,” UN hu-man rights expert Fionnuala Ni Aolain warned.

Under international human rights standards, “the duration of the state of emergency must be time-bound, revised regu-larly, and meet the criteria of necessity and proportionality”, she wrote in a letter co-signed by Michel Forst, the UN’s spe-cial rapporteur on human rights defenders.

In their letter, addressed to the French authorities, they said that the bill’s “vague defi nition of terrorism” deepened fears that “emergency powers could be used in an arbitrary way”.

Some lawmakers from the French right-wing Republicans party as well as the leader of the far-right National Front have criticised the bill for not going far enough.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, calling the proposed leg-islation “soft”, said it could not be considered “the great law to eradicate (religious) terrorism”.

Interior Minister Collomb

said last week the bill “aims to guarantee the fullness of our in-dividual and collective freedoms but promises that all measures will be taken to ensure the secu-rity of the French people”.

Macron, whose centrist party has a comfortable parliamentary majority, has promised that the legislation, which was approved by the Senate in July, would be reviewed in 2020.

French MPs vote on tough anti-terrorism law todayAFPParis

Collomb: said last week the bill ‘aims to guarantee the fullness of our individual and collective freedoms but promises that all measures will be taken to ensure the security of the French people’.

The man who stabbed two young women to death in Marseille in an attack

claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group used seven diff erent iden-tities and had been arrested just days earlier, French prosecutors said yesterday.

Authorities said the killer, who was shot dead by anti-ter-ror troops after Sunday’s attack outside the southern city’s main train station, had used a Tuni-sian passport last week under the name of a 29-year-old with the fi rst name Ahmed.

But investigators are seeking to confi rm his identity as the attacker – who had a history of petty crime but was not on a religious extremist watch list – used seven aliases, anti-terror prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters in Paris.

Molins said that “the method of the attacker” was in line with calls from the Syria-based ter-ror group to followers in the West to strike vulnerable tar-gets, such as train stations.

The IS group’s propaganda agency Amaq claimed that the killer was one of its “soldiers”, but a source close to the inves-tigation told AFP no solid evi-dence linked him to the extrem-ist group.

The attack in France’s sec-ond-biggest city followed a string of stabbings around Eu-rope claimed by or blamed on religious radicals.

The man killed two 20-year-old cousins, one of them a “bril-

liant” medical student who was studying in the city, accord-ing to Aix-Marseille University chief Yvon Berland.

Her cousin, a nursing student from the eastern city of Lyon, was visiting her for the week-end.

Molins confi rmed that wit-nesses heard the attacker shout “Allahu Akbar” as he lunged at the women with a 20cm knife before threatening soldiers, who shot him dead.

The attacker’s fi ngerprints showed he had had seven brushes with the law since 2005 – most recently when he was

arrested last Friday in Lyon for shoplifting.

He presented the Tunisian passport to police, saying that he was divorced, used “hard drugs”, and had no fi xed address.

The shoplifting charges were dropped for lack of evidence, and local authorities “were not able to take a decision to deport him”, Molins added.

Police evacuated Marseille’s ornate Saint Charles station af-ter the attack, temporarily halt-ing all train traffi c on some of France’s busiest lines.

France has been under a state of emergency since the IS gun

and bomb attacks in Paris in No-vember 2015 – part of a string of religious militant assaults that have left more than 240 people dead over the past two years.

Knives have been the weapon of choice in a string of smaller-scale attacks in recent months, mainly targeting troops from the 7,000-strong Sentinelle anti-terror force set up to patrol the streets and vulnerable sites such as stations and tourist at-tractions.

In most cases, the attackers were shot dead at the start of their rampage, before they could kill others.

Offi cial: Marseille attacker was arrested days beforeAFPMarseille

A woman prepares to light a candle among flowers, candles and other items at a makeshift memorial set up outside Saint-Charles train station in Marseille, where two students, two 20-year-old cousins, were killed.

The brother of the man who shot dead seven people in southwest

France in 2012, including three Jewish schoolchildren, went on trial yesterday, accused of complicity in the fi rst of a wave of attacks by homegrown reli-gious extremists.

Mohamed Merah’s attack on the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse was the deadliest on Jews in France in three decades.

The 23-year-old Toulouse native gunned down a rabbi, two of the rabbi’s children aged three and fi ve, and an eight-year girl.

Over the course of his nine-day killing spree he also shot dead three soldiers based in the nearby garrison town of Montauban before police killed him after a 32-hour siege of his home.

The attacks, which Merah carried out in the name of Al Qaeda, were the fi rst in a wave of religious extremist assaults that continued in 2015 with the massacre at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a bloodbath at a Paris concert hall.

In the latest incident, a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed two women to death at the main train station in Mar-seille on Sunday.

The trial of Merah’s brother Abdelkader is the fi rst arising out of the spate of killings.

Emotions ran high in the Paris courtroom as the 35-year-old, who in 2012 had declared himself “proud” of his brother’s actions, was brought into in the dock.

“Pile of (excrement),” Sam-uel Sandler, who lost his rabbi son and two grandchildren in the school shooting, hissed repeatedly as Merah’s mother blew her son a kiss from the public gallery.

Abdelkader Merah is ac-cused of helping to facilitate his brother’s attacks, in particular by helping him steal the scoot-er used in three shootings.

His co-defendant, 34-year-old Fettah Malki, is accused of helping Mohamed Merah ob-tain a bulletproof jacket, Uzi submachine gun and ammuni-tion.

Neither man denies helping the gunman obtain materials but claim they were unaware of his intentions.

Abdelkader faces a possible life sentence while Malki could get 20 years in prison.

Dressed in white, with a fl owing beard and long hair pulled back in a ponytail, Me-rah told the court that he was employed as a painter and dec-orator.

Abdelghani Merah, the eld-est of the brothers, who has disavowed his family to be-come a campaigner for peace, told France Inter radio that his parents – both Algerian immi-grants – had provided “fertile ground for hatred”.

“Our parents tried to edu-cate us through the (prism of the) post-colonial traumatism between France and Algeria, the hatred of Jews, through conspiracy ideas and the Is-raeli-Palestinian confl ict,” he said. “Mohamed Merah was immersed in all that. He was a bomb and the (ultraconserva-tive Muslims) were the detona-tor.”

Mohamed Merah, who had a history of violence and crime, ran rings around French intel-ligence services.

Questioned by the authori-ties on his return from a trip to a tribal area of Pakistan where he met an Al Qaeda off shoot, he claimed that he had been on a mission to fi nd a wife.

“This trial will also be the chance to discuss dysfunctions at government agencies, no-tably in Merah’s surveillance,” said Olivier Morice, a lawyer for the family of one of the dead soldiers.

Investigators believe Ab-delkader, who was also known to intelligence services for his ties to religious radicals, had considerable infl uence over his brother.

Prosecutors have said that the pair were repeatedly in contact in the days before the shootings.

“Abdelkader Merah ex-pressed the sympathy he felt with his brother’s acts. He is not a scapegoat,” said Simon Cohen, a lawyer representing some of the plaintiff s. “If Mo-hamed Merah has blood on his hands, Abdelkader has blood on his soul.”

Brother of gunman who attacked French Jews goes on trialAFPParis

A court sketch made yesterday shows Abdelkader Merah during his trial.

Pope Francis has urged gov-ernments and people to do more to help migrants and

not see them as enemies, wearing a plastic identifi cation bracelet used by asylum-seekers to drive home his message.

Francis visited a drab refugee centre on the outskirts of Bolo-gna known simply as “The Hub”, on Sunday.

Run by a charity, it is home to about 1,000 asylum-seekers, most of whom risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean from Africa and the Middle East.

There, they live in grey con-tainers and other forms of tem-porary housing while await-ing decisions on their asylum requests to be moved to other towns in Italy.

Many of the refugees and mi-grants are without documents

and all wear a plastic yellow bracelet.

The Pope wore one bearing his name and the number 3900003 on his right wrist.

It was given to the Argentine

Pope by an African refugee.“Many who don’t know you

are afraid of you,” he told them as a light drizzle fell. “That makes them think they have the right to judge (you) coldly and harshly.”

He paid homage to those who “never arrived because they were eaten up by the desert or the sea”.

Some 600,000 impoverished migrants and refugees have ar-rived in Italy in less than four years.

In that time, more than 13,000 have died trying to cross the Mediterranean.

Francis, who has made defence of migrants and refugees a major plank of his papacy, also con-demned Internet trolling against foreigners, saying that they had been subjected to “terrible phrases and insults”.

“If we look on our neighbours without mercy we risk that even God will look on us without mer-cy,” he said.

The Pope’s defence of mi-grants, his second in less than a week, comes at a time of grow-ing anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States and many Eu-ropean countries where far-right parties have made inroads.

Last week, the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Ger-many (AfD) party surged to third place in a national election, tap-ping into public disquiet over the arrival of more than a million mi-grants in Germany over the past two years.

Francis called on more gov-ernments to facilitate initiatives backed by the private sector and community groups to set up “hu-manitarian corridors for refugees in the most diffi cult situations”.

This was a reference to pro-grammes such as one run in Italy by the Rome-based Sant’ Egidio peace community, which regu-larly brings into Italy refugees fl eeing the civil war in Syria.

Italy’s anti-immigrant North-ern League, whose base is in the regions just north of Bologna, has vowed to clamp down on migra-tion from developing countries if it forms part of a coalition gov-ernment after next year’s elec-tions.

Pope wears refugee bracelet in appeal for aid for migrantsReutersBologna, Italy

Pope Francis’s hands are seen shaking the hand of a migrant during his visit to a migrant reception centre in Bologna. The plastic identification bracelet can be seen on his wrist.

Protesting cabbies block airport

Czech taxi drivers blocked traff ic at Prague’s international airport yesterday to protest what they and many of their counterparts abroad call unfair competition from the controversial ride-sharing app Uber.Cab drivers have previously staged demonstrations against Uber in countries including Britain, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Indonesia, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Taiwan.Around 1,200 cabs, according to organisers, deliberately drove slowly for three hours in the Czech capital, causing a traff ic jam on the main access road to Vaclav Havel airport.Prague mayor Adriana Krnacova said the city “does not have the legal means to regulate digital platforms”.

Drunks attack refugee home

Three intoxicated assailants forced their way into a home for young refugees in the eastern German town of Apolda overnight and injured four, police said yesterday.Two of the perpetrators were known as right-wing extremists, a police spokeswoman in the state of Thuringia said.The local police in the town of 22,000 residents called in reinforcements for the larger nearby cities of Weimar and Jena.All three assailants are under investigation for disturbing of the peace, the spokeswoman said.Four residents of the home, which is designated as an accommodation for young people and minors entering Germany without legal guardians, sustained light injuries in the attack.

Socialists win big in Portugal votePortugal’s ruling Socialists made major gains in Sunday’s municipal elections, according to near final results.The Socialist Party (PS) won 158 of a total 308 town halls and 38% of the vote across the country with only a few municipalities left to be counted, the interior ministry’s website said.“The Socialist Party had its biggest local election victory in history,” Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa said on Sunday.Former conservative prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho said his Social Democratic Party (PSD) had “one of the worst results in its history”.Alone or leading a coalition, the centre-right party won 96 town halls and nearly 30% of the vote, down from 2013 when it lost votes for its austerity policies.

250kg WWII bomb found in Berlin

About 10,000 people in Berlin were forced to leave their homes yesterday as bomb disposal units prepared to defuse an unexploded World War II bomb.Construction workers found the 250kg device earlier in the day, prompting police to seal off the area within a 500m radius of the site in west Berlin’s Innsbrucker Platz.Underground and suburban rail traff ic was disrupted, and off icers went house to house to ensure that the area was cleared before disposal experts moved in.

EUROPE15Gulf Times


Newspapers across Spain warned yesterday that the country has been

“deeply torn apart” and “we have all lost” after the violence that marred Catalonia’s independ-ence referendum, denouncing the actions of both the region’s separatist leaders and the central government.

Centre-left newspaper El Pais said Sunday’s events were a “dis-aster for our country ... for the fate of our democracy and for the stability and future of the system of co-existence we have had for nearly 40 years”, referring to the 1978 constitution Spain adopted three years after the death of dic-tator Francisco Franco.

The newspaper denounced the “xenophobic arrogance” of Cat-alan leader Carles Puigdemont and the “absolute incapacity of

(prime minister) Mariano Rajoy to handle the problem since the start of this crisis”.

“Rajoy declared (the referen-dum) a failure, but his strategy of waiting, then sending in the po-lice proved to be perhaps an even greater failure,” said centre-right newspaper El Mundo.

Even the conservative ABC newspaper criticised Rajoy’s strategy: “It is very diffi cult to say that yesterday’s violence will have a lower cost than invoking

Article 155 of the constitution”, which would have suspended the powers of Catalonia’s regional government.

However, ABC said that “the use of force has been legitimate, proportionate and necessary” and the aim of the Catalan politi-cal leaders was not to “celebrate a referendum but provoke an oc-cupation on the Catalan streets ... to seek confrontation with the state and the fracturing of Cata-lonia”.

“There was not a referendum in Catalonia worthy of the name, because it was illegal,” the news-paper said.

Catalan newspaper La Van-guardia at least partly agreed, saying that “there was not a ref-erendum worthy of the name in Catalonia yesterday”.

“The tear is deep. The situa-tion is serious. We have all lost,” the paper said.

After what happened on Sun-day, “does anyone really believe

that independence has been weakened? And worse, more dif-fi cult days and tense incidents are to come”, wrote La Vanguar-dia’s Marius Carol.

Madrid newspapers also criti-cised Catalan’s regional police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, with ABC and El Mundo labelling their actions “treason”.

“If the Mossos had stopped the polling booths from open-ing as they were ordered, the job would not have been done by the

national police and the Guardia Civil, which would have saved us from many of the lamentable scenes seen around the world,” El Pais said.

Catalan newspaper El Periodi-co predicted that there will soon be a “unilateral proclamation of the Catalan Republic”, followed by a “strong response from the state” in which “all Catalans and the institutions that allow au-tonomy in the region will pay the consequences”.

Spanish press berates both sides after Catalan violenceAFPMadrid

Spain came under interna-tional pressure yesterday to resolve a spiralling cri-

sis with its Catalan region after a banned independence refer-endum was marred by shocking scenes of police violence.

The country’s central govern-ment vowed to stop its north-eastern region breaking away from Spain after Catalonia’s leader claimed that 90% of vot-ers backed independence in Sun-day’s referendum, which Madrid says is unconstitutional and a “farce”.

Abroad, the focus was on Sun-day’s violence, which saw riot police move in on polling stations in towns and cities across the re-gion to stop people from voting, in some cases baton-charging and fi ring rubber bullets to dis-perse crowds.

“We call on all relevant players to now move very swiftly from confrontation to dialogue. Vio-lence can never be an instrument in politics,” European Com-mission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said, breaking weeks of virtual EU silence on the Catalan issue.

UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said he was “very disturbed” by the violence and urged the Spanish authorities to ensure a thorough and impartial investigation while EU President Donald Tusk urged Madrid to avoid “further use of violence”.

The European Parliament will hold a special debate tomorrow on the referendum, the head of the assembly said.

In Catalan cities, many resi-

dents briefl y stopped work at midday and descended onto the streets in silent, solemn protest.

In Barcelona, hundreds more stopped traffi c as they rallied, many draped in the blue, yel-low and red Estelada fl ag used by Catalan separatists, shouting “the streets will always be ours”.

The government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was holding emergency talks after Catalan president Carles Puig-demont declared on Sunday that the region – which accounts for one-fi fth of the nation’s GDP – had “won the right to an inde-pendent state”.

Puigdemont appealed for in-ternational mediation to help solve the crisis, and hinted that he may be willing to drop the independence drive if that hap-pened.

“It is not a domestic matter,” Carles Puigdemont told a news conference yesterday.

He said it was “obvious that we need mediation”, adding: “We don’t want a traumatic break ... We want a new understanding with the Spanish state.”

Puigdemont also called for all police deployed to Catalonia from other parts of Spain for the vote to be removed.

The regional government said 2.26mn people took part in the vote, or just over 42% of the elec-torate in Catalonia.

But any attempt to unilaterally declare independence is likely to be opposed not just by Ma-drid but also a large section of the Catalan population, a region of 7.5mn people which is deeply split on the issue.

Rajoy reiterated his govern-ment’s position that the vote was an illegal act, to which the state

had reacted “with fi rmness and serenity”.

Puigdemont has said he would now present the results to the region’s parliament, ruled by majority separatist lawmakers, which has the power to adopt a motion of independence.

Several top fi gures in the far-left party Podemos called for Ra-joy to resign over his handling of the crisis.

Shocking videos posted on so-cial media showed police drag-ging voters from polling stations by their hair, throwing people down stairs and attacking Cata-lan fi refi ghters protecting polling stations.

Puigdemont said that close to 900 people had received medi-cal attention, although Catalan authorities confi rmed a total of 92 injured.

Four were hospitalised, two in serious condition – a 70-year-old man had a heart attack and another was hurt in his eye.

Adding to tensions, unions and Catalan associations have called a region-wide strike for today due to “the grave violation of rights and freedoms”.

The Catalan situation is con-sidered Spain’s biggest political crisis since an attempted military coup d’etat in 1981.

While Spanish newspapers were unanimous in criticising Puigdemont for pushing ahead with the referendum despite a court ruling it unconstitutional, they also took aim at Rajoy’s han-dling of the crisis.

“I don’t agree with the police charging at people but, on the

other hand, when you do some-thing illegal you have to take re-sponsibility for the risks,” said Madrid resident Gemma Lopez.

“It’s a clash between two mad-men,” said one 63-year-old pen-sioner, resting after jogging in central Barcelona, who did not vote on Sunday and did not want to give his name. “It’s a failure of politics in the face of hard-and-fast extremism.”

Rajoy was due to hold talks

with the leader of the main op-position Socialist party, Pedro Sanchez, as well as Albert Rivera, the leader of the centrist party Ciudadanos, his minority gov-ernment’s ally in parliament, on the matter.

Justice Minister Rafael Catala said the government could in-voke Article 155 of the constitu-tion which would allow it to sus-pend the powers of Catalonia’s regional government in order to

block any declaration of inde-pendence.

“That is a tool that is there ... we have always said that we will use all the force of the law, all the mechanisms that the constitu-tion and the laws grant the gov-ernment,” he said in an interview with public television.

Some analysts said the images of the crackdown may help boost international support for the se-cessionists.

“Catalan secession remains unlikely, but separatist senti-ment now has a momentum of its own,” said Federico Santi, an analyst at political risk consul-tancy Eurasia Group. “The re-sulting institutional crisis will be severe and poses signifi cant risks to Spain’s economic outlook.”

The euro and the Spanish stock market slid yesterday after the vote, with bank shares particu-larly hard hit.

Spain under pressure over police violenceAFP/ReutersMadrid

Right: A Spanish National Police off icer salutes his Catalan counterpart during a protest by civilians outside the national police station in Barcelona.

Below: A woman runs through a park in Barcelona while holding up an Estelada (the Catalan separatist flag) during a protest a day after the banned independence referendum.

Ballots were secretly printed in France: activist

Millions of voting papers used in Catalonia’s banned independence

referendum at the weekend were secretly printed in France and trans-

ported over the border, a pro-Catalan activist said yesterday.

France has a large Catalan community based in the southwest of the

country, and printers sympathetic to the cause of the region’s independ-

ence were employed to produce “several million” ballots, Jordi Vera

from the pro-Catalan group “Oui au Pays Catalan” (Yes to the state of

Catalonia) said.

“The people who worked on this don’t want to be identified because

Spanish judges could try to prosecute them or ask for their extradition,”

Vera added.

“We wanted to show our solidarity and that borders don’t separate us,”

Vera said in an interview with AFP.

An estimated 450,000 French Catalans live in and around the city of

Perpignan.

However, they are less active in the separatist movement than their

counterparts across the border in Spain.

Left: Puigdemont is reflected on a window during a press conference in Barcelona.

The Bavarian sister party of German Chancellor An-gela Merkel’s Christian

Democratic Union (CDU) has said that her conservative bloc must agree policies on immigra-tion, pensions and healthcare before opening coalition nego-tiations with two other parties.

Leaders of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) – stung by a drop in support of more than 10% in the September 24 elec-tion – have redoubled their push for a 200,000 per year cap on im-migration, a demand that Merkel has rejected, complicating her eff orts to form a new govern-ment.

Merkel’s bloc of the CDU and CSU, which have worked as part-ners for decades, hung onto their

position as the largest group in parliament after a September 24 vote, despite seeing their com-bined support fall to its lowest since 1949.

They must fi nd coalition part-ners to build a government, with

the most likely path toward a majority being an alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens.

CSU leader Horst Seehofer said the conservative allies could not begin negotiating with the

other parties until they resolved their own position on major is-sues, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported yesterday.

It quoted the Bavarian premier, who is fending off calls for his own resignation, as saying that the two parties faced their big-gest challenge since 1976 – when his predecessor Franz-Josef Strauss threatened for weeks to break up the alliance.

Seehofer, whose biggest chal-lenger is Bavarian fi nance minis-ter Markus Soeder, a hardliner on immigration, will meet Merkel and other top offi cials on Sun-day, with top offi cials in Merkel’s CDU split on the need for a right-ward shift.

The confl ict inside the con-servative camp is straining Mer-kel’s already diffi cult task of bringing together parties with big diff erences on energy, Eu-rope, migration and taxes.

Armin Laschet, premier of Germany’s most populous re-gion, North Rhine-Westphalia, told the Handelsblatt newspaper that the migrant cap sought by CSU leaders was unacceptable.

However, he suggested that a compromise could be found that included some “ballpark” fi g-ures.

Laschet also said the Greens would have to step back from some of their hardline environ-mentalist demands.

The CDU’s leader in the east-ern state of Thuringia argued yesterday against the rightward shift demanded by the CSU and the conservative premiers of two states – Saxony and Saxony-An-halt – where the far-right Alter-native for Germany (AfD) party made big gains in Sunday’s na-tional elections.

“Our job is to fence ourselves off against the left and the right,”

Mike Mohring told Reuters.Manfred Weber, deputy leader

of the CSU and head of the cen-tre-right group in the EU Parlia-ment, told Deutschlandfunk ra-dio that it was important to avoid setting “red lines” before the coalition talks, given the urgent need to win back AfD voters.

Weber said he expected all mainstream parties to focus on preventing the anti-immigrant AfD from gaining a permanent foothold in the German parlia-ment.

He said a three-way coalition among conservatives, Greens and the FDP, dubbed a “Jamaica” coalition since the parties’ col-ours match those of the black, green and yellow Jamaican fl ag, off ered a chance to build consen-sus on other issues such as en-ergy and agriculture.

“Jamaica off ers us a chance ... to embark on a new start,” he

said. “The CSU is ready to do that.”

Merkel has sought to keep the door open for a renewal of her “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats that has ruled for the past four years, but the SPD is determined to stay in opposition after suff ering its worst result since 1933.

“We got 20.5% of the vote. That is not a mandate to govern,” SPD secretary general Hubertus Heil told broadcaster ARD yes-terday.

He accused the other parties of stalling coalition talks until after a state election due on October 15 in Lower Saxony.

“They want to govern, now they should govern,” he said.

A new poll by the Hannover-sche Allgemeine Zeitung news-paper showed the CDU and SPD nearly tied in Lower Saxony, with 33.1% and 32.8%, respectively.

Merkel’s allies insist on conservative unity before coalition talksReutersBerlin

This file picture taken last month shows Merkel with Seehofer during an election rally in Munich.

By Ashraf PadannaThiruvananthapuram

Kerala Chief Minister Pi-narayi Vijayan yesterday launched a scathing at-

tack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the eve of its widely pub-licised roadshow.

The BJP’s Kerala unit president Kummanam Rajasekharan begins a campaign today against what the party describes as “red ter-ror” that Vijayan’s Communist Party of India (Marxist) allegedly sponsors.

Underlining the crisis, Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of the party’s ideological fountainhead Rash-triya Swayamsevak Sangh, de-scribed the state as a source of anti-national activities.

BJP president Amit Shah will fl ag off the Janaraksha Yatra, or

‘tour to liberate people’, from the northern town of Payyanur that had recently witnessed three po-litical killings, two of the victims being BJP activists.

He will also walk a total of 25km with Rajasekharan at two points, including through Vijayan’s Pi-narayi village, a hotspot of revenge killings, where a CPM and a BJP worker were murdered last year.

There were 14 killings of politi-cal activists this year, and a ma-jority of them were from the BJP. Many fear more violence during the 15-day tour as the two parties are fi ghting for supremacy in their strongholds.

“But no communalist, sedi-tionist or anti-national individual or organisation can provoke Ker-alites who have rejected these outfi ts completely,” Vijayan said in a Facebook post, referring to Bhagvat’s allegations.

“The RSS chief should clarify what he means by saying that the Kerala government is supporting anti-national forces for narrow political interests. I understand that Bhagwatji is speaking such utter nonsense because their out-fi t has failed to poison the minds of Keralites for BJP’s narrow po-litical gains.”

He also accused the RSS of be-traying the freedom struggle and being subservient to the British, allegation the rivals level against Communists as well, and remind-ed that Kerala revolted against the British rulers even before the fi rst freedom struggle of 1857.

“We have grown fi ve-fold in support (in Kerala), and that’s what they are worried about,” re-torted federal Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javadekar who is here as part of Shah’s tour.

Leaders spar ahead of BJP chief’s roadshow in Kerala IANS

Chennai

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader V K Sasikala, who

is currently in a Bengaluru prison following her conviction in a cor-ruption case, is likely to be re-leased on parole to visit her ailing husband M Natarajan.

Sasikala has applied for parole and might come out today, her nephew and leader of one of the AIADMK factions T T V Dinaka-ran told reporters here.

“We have applied for parole for our general secretary. She might come out on parole tomorrow most probably,” he said.

Dinakaran said lawyers have sought a 15-day parole but he was not sure how many days she would be granted leave.

Asked about the health of Na-tarajan, who is awaiting a liver

transplant in a hospital in Chen-nai, Dinakaran said he was “sta-ble”.

A recent statement from Gle-neagles Global Health City said Natarajan has a history of chronic liver disease and has been re-ceiving treatment for the last six months.

Meanwhile, Dinakaran, gun-ning for the K Palaniswami gov-ernment, expressed the hope that the newly-appointed Governor of Tamil Nadu Banwarilal Purohit will maintain “neutrality”, while Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader M K Stalin said they will decide on meeting him after the madras High Court verdict on the trust vote issue.

Dinakaran, whose 18 MLAs have withdrawn support to Chief Minister Palaniswami, told re-porters that the acting Governor Vidyasagar Rao had “dilly dal-lied” on the demand for a fl oor test in the assembly.

Sasikala may get paroleto visit ailing husband

Singer misbehaves with airline staff , apologises

Metro fare hike is illegal, says Kejriwal

BHU vice chancellorgoes on indefinite leave

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah yesterday flagged off the “Mathru Purna” scheme, which aims to provide nutritious meals to about 1.2mn pregnant women and lactating mothers. “The scheme aims at reducing under-nutrition among women and children,” the chief minister said. “Besides nutritional supplements, counselling and other maternity benefits will be provided at the Aanganwadis under the scheme,” Siddaramaiah said. A provision of Rs3bn has been made by the state government during the 2017-18 financial year for the implementation of the scheme in all the 30 districts of Karnataka. “Despite the Supplementary Nutrition Programme (of the Ministry of Women and Child Development), the improvement in the maternal and child health indicators of Karnataka has been slow compared to the rest of the south Indian states,” the government said in a statement.

A woman allegedly murdered her husband in West Bengal’s Jhargram district after he came to know about her extramarital aff air, police said yesterday. “Madan Paik was found dead in his house today morning. His relatives accused his wife of killing him after Paik raised questions about her extramarital aff air,” a police off icer said. “There is no major external injury marks on Paik’s body apart from a deep cut in one of his arms. The body has been sent for autopsy,” he added. Chandana, his wife, was allegedly involved in an extramarital aff air with a local man. The family members said the couple had a heated argument on Sunday. The wife, however, denied the allegations and claimed Paik died due to binge drinking in the last few days.

Karnataka scheme to feed pregnant women

Wife kills husband overher extramarital aff air

WELFARECRIME

Budget carrier IndiGo yesterday said Bollywood actor-singer Aditya Narayan misbehaved with its staff at Raipur airport but later apologised. The incident occurred around noon yesterday, when Narayan travelling to Mumbai and used “unparliamentary language” while arguing with a female staff member of the airline. The argument was triggered after Narayan was asked to pay for carrying excess baggage. He was travelling with a group and was allegedly carrying excess baggage of 40kg - well above the free prescribed limit of 15kg. According to the airline, Narayan was asked to pay Rs13,000, which he refused and thereafter used “unparliamentary language” with a female staff member. “Later, Narayan apologised and thereafter was given his boarding card,” the airline said.

AVIATION REACTION CAMPUS VIOLENCE

Benares Hindu University Vice Chancellor Girish Chandra Tripathi, who is being blamed for last month’s violence and baton-charge on protesting girl students on the campus, has gone on leave, citing personal reasons. BHU sources that Tripathi, whose term is ending next month, has gone on leave for an “indefinite period.” The federal Human Resource Development Ministry has started the process of choosing a new vice chancellor. Earlier, the VC had said that he would quit if he was asked to go on leave. BHU’s Chief Proctor O N Singh resigned last week taking moral responsibility for the violence inside the campus. A report by the Varanasi Commissioner had also blamed the university administration and the baton-charge on protesting students for the violence. Opposition parties have been demanding the sacking of the vice chancellor.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal yesterday said that Delhi Metro’s proposed fare hike, the second in five months, is clear a violation of law and urged the central government to put the hike on hold. Kejriwal said the hike will be in violation of the Fare Fixation Committee’s (FFC) recommendation that “there shall be a gap of one year between two fare hikes”, an off icial statement from the chief minister’s off ice said. It said the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has claimed it is bound by recommendations of the FFC on fare hike, but by ignoring the time gap between two fare hikes the FFC recommendations are being “selectively implemented” by DMRC. “The Delhi government has never interfered in DMRC functioning, but it can’t remain a mute spectator when commuters are being hit,” Kejriwal said.


INDIA16

India’s plansto producesmartphoneshit hurdlesCountry only able to assemble phones, say industry execs citing lack of engineers, labour unrest

ReutersNew Delhi

India’s ambitions to become a smartphone-making pow-erhouse are foundering over

a lack of skilled labour and part suppliers along with a complex tax regime, industry executives say.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has championed a manufacturing drive, under the slogan ‘Make in India’, to boost the sluggish econ-omy and create millions of jobs.

Among the headline-grabbing details was a plan to eventually make Apple iPhones in India.

Three years on, as executives and bureaucrats crowded into a Delhi convention centre for an inaugural mobile congress last week, India has managed only to assemble phones from imported components.

While contract manufacturers such as iPhone-maker Foxconn Technology Co and Flextronics Corp have set up base in India, one of the world’s fastest-growing smartphone markets, almost none of the higher value chip sets, cam-eras and other high-end compo-nents are made domestically.

Plans for Taiwan-based Fox-conn to build an electronics plant in Maharashtra, which local of-fi cials said in 2015 could employ some 50,000 people, have gone quiet.

According to tech research fi rm Counterpoint, while phones are assembled domestically because of taxes on imported phones, locally made content in those phones is usually restricted to headphones and chargers - about 5% of a device’s cost.

“Rather than feeling that India is a place where I should be mak-ing mobile phones, it’s more like this is the place I need to (assem-ble) phones because there is lower duty if I import components and assemble here,” a senior execu-tive with a Chinese smartphone maker said.

He declined to be named for fear of harming business.

Others listed the lack of skilled engineers and a sparse network of local component makers.

They also cited high-profi le tax disputes between India and for-eign companies such as Nokia.

Nokia eventually suspended mobile handset production at its facility in Tamil Nadu.

“The Nokia escapade is in peo-ple’s memory when they try to come here,” a second industry source told Reuters at the fi rst Indian Mobile Congress in New Delhi, which ended on Friday.

India’s nationwide Goods and Services Tax (GST), which kicked in this year to replace a string of diff erent levies, is also fraught with its own challenges, such as a lengthy tax-refund process that delays payments to suppliers, the source added.

Last week, India rattled inves-tors after publicly musing about possible changes in a $2.6bn 2015 diesel locomotive contract with General Electric.

The government has since said it would not take any hasty deci-sions.

“We needed some push from the government to start manufac-turing,” said Neeraj Sharma, the India head of Chinese chipmaker Spreadtrum.

“It was required, because with-out that nothing was happening.”

But India now needs more so-phisticated technology - such as surface-mounting technology, which places components direct-ly on top of a printed board - to

build a supply chain, he said.Otherwise, fi rms will not do re-

search in India, Sharma said.“For design to happen, we need

strong local players.”The government says it has a

phased programme to manufac-ture phones, aiming to step up value added locally every year.

“While we have made a start with getting in mobile assem-bling, we want to move up the value chain,” India’s telecoms secretary Aruna Sundarajan told reporters.

“A lot of investors have shown very signifi cant interest in this area.”

The Phased Manufacturing Programme began in 2016 with the manufacture of phone charg-ers and batteries and envisages the production of higher-end components by 2020.

Sundarajan said the govern-ment was also trying to give in-vestors “a reasonable degree of certainty”, while also dealing with constant disruption to the indus-try.

But for smartphone makers used to China’s predictability, In-dia may need to do more, execu-tives warn.

A third senior source at a Chi-nese smartphone maker in India said some Chinese players were rattled by labour unrest, includ-ing suspended operations at a facility belonging to smartphone maker Oppo earlier this year, after a foreign employee was reported to have torn a picture of the In-dian fl ag.

Oppo said at the time it regret-ted the incident.

“Labour laws are lax, there’s little eff ort to build a component ecosystem and logistics, and transport remains a big problem,” the third source said.

“No one seems to be investing in skilled labour that will build the phones.”

A man pushes his motorcycle through a flooded street after rains lashed Hyderabad yesterday.

Rains lash Hyderabad

Tourists riding on elephants watch one-horned rhinoceroses at Pobitora wildlife sanctuary, some 55km east of Guwahati, yesterday. After a devastating wave of floods, Pobitora wildlife sanctuary and Kaziranga National Park have been reopened for tourist season.

Kaziranga Park reopensIANSGuwahati

Assam’s Forest and Envi-ronment Minister Prami-la Rani Brahma yesterday

opened the Kaziranga National Park for the 2017-18 tourist sea-son.

Accompanied by Agriculture Minister Atul Bora, chairman of the Assam Tourism Develop-ment Corp (ATDC) Jayanta Malla Baruah and other dignitaries, Brahma cut the ceremonial red

ribbon to offi cially declare the park open and said that the For-est Department has advanced the tourist season by one month.

Earlier the park used to open for tourists from November 1 until April 30. The new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance government that came to power in 2016 ordered the park to open from October 1 until May 30.

“The puja vacation is on in schools and parents love to bring their children to Kaziranga. Keeping the vacation season in mind, we have decided to open

the park on October 2 this year.“We have opened only two

ranges today, the Bagori and Ko-hora. Other ranges will open at a later stage,” Brahma said.

Massive fl oods hit Kaziranga twice this year leading to severe infrastructure damage. It also killed 430 animals including rhi-nos and a tiger.

Park offi cials said that only 25% of the Kohora range was ready for jeep and elephant safari as of now.

“We are going to launch only jeep safari in Bagori range today.

We expect to begin elephant sa-fari from October 11.”

Kaziranga has the highest number of the one-horned rhi-nos in the world.

The park covering an area of 430sq km is also famous for three giant herbivores: the Asi-atic elephants, swamp deer and Asiatic water buff aloes.

A Unesco World heritage Site, Kaziranga has also been demar-cated as an Important Bird Area by the Birdlife International to promote the conservation of en-dangered species.

Suspended Ryan principal reinstatedIANSGurugram

The suspended principal of a Ryan International School, where a boy was

found brutally murdered on Sep-tember 8, has been reinstated in another of the group’s schools, leaving the parents of the seven-year-old victim fuming.

Neerja Batra, the acting prin-cipal of Ryan International in Bhondsi, who was suspended for her negligence in the murder

of Pradhuman Thakur, has now joined as a teacher in the Sector 40 school of the group.

“Why was Neerja Batra sus-pended if she was not guilty? If she was guilty then why has she been reappointed in the middle of the inquiry in the murder,” asked Barun Chandra Thakur, the father of Pradhuman.

“While Principal Batra was so irresponsible regarding her responsibility and duties, how will she fulfi l her responsibilities now?”

Batra was reinstated on an or-

der by Gurugram Deputy Com-missioner Vinay Pratap Singh.

Sushil K Tekriwal, advocate for Thakur, said that Pratap Singh’s order was “totally illegal, uncon-stitutional and unfortunate. How can he grant clean chit to a sus-pended principal in such a hurry”.

“DC Vinay Pratap Singh has been appointed administrator of the school by the Haryana gov-ernment for just three months. He must be sacked for his de-cision. It seems that Singh is also part of a group involved in hatching a conspiracy to provide

clean chit to the school manage-ment,” Tekriwal added.

Pratap Singh, in the order, had said that after a discussion with stakeholders, he decided to send Batra to the Ryan Group’s Sector 40 branch.

The order said that since Batra had “highlighted defi ciencies to Ryan management multi-ple times about the Sohna Road branch and had no fi nancial powers, she has not been directly held responsible for the unfor-tunate incident” in preliminary inquiry.

INDIA17Gulf Times


My next fi lm will be biggerthan Dangal,says AamirReutersMumbai

Aamir Khan, the Bol-lywood superstar with a conscience,

says his next movie about a small town teenage girl who uses the Internet to become a singing sensation will be much bigger than his last film, which was India’s high-est grossing ever.

Khan, 52, plays a sleazy mu-sic producer in the fi lm Secret Superstar and says he is second lead to teenager Zaira Wasim, playing a schoolgirl who de-fi es her conservative family to pursue her dream of a singing career.

Khan’s last fi lm Dangal, or wrestling pit, was based on the true story of a former wrestler who trains two of his daugh-ters to become champions in the sport.

It was the highest grossing movie for Bollywood, and was powered by huge collections in China.

“While both are about the empowerment of the girl child, I feel it (Secret Superstar) is a much bigger fi lm,” Khan said in an interview in Singapore ahead of the movie’s release later this month.

He and his wife have pro-duced the fi lm.

“While Dangal was about the dream of a father which a daughter fulfils, this is about the hopes and aspirations of a 14-year-old girl from a small town in India. I don’t know what the box office will be but it’s a bigger film than Dangal in what it’s trying to say.”

Three of Khan’s fi lms are in Bollywood’s top four all-time hits.

Besides Dangal, these in-clude PK, in which he played an alien dealing with reli-gious divisions in India, and 3 Idiots, about the frailties in

India’s education system.All three have also done well

in China, and Khan said he was “very happy with the type of relationship that’s building between me and my audience in this part of the world with each fi lm”.

He also produced and acted in a popular television docu-mentary series on social ills in India called Satyameva Jayate, or Truth Alone Tri-umphs.

That series led him to set up a non-profit to work on a project to ease the shortage of water in Maharashtra, he said.

Despite the social messages in his movies, Khan said he has no desire to become politician, as some other Bollywood stars have.

“The desire in me to con-tribute back to society is something I can do very well in the fi eld that I am in,” he said.

“I don’t have to join politics. That’s an area I don’t ever want to go into.”

Khan was embroiled in con-troversy two years ago when he said his Hindu wife had asked him if they should move out of India over concerns about in-security.

Khan later said the family had no plans to leave.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been accused of intolerance to-wards liberal and dissenting views.

Khan said intolerance had not affected his abil-ity to express himself as an actor.

“For me, when I’m making a fi lm, my primary responsi-bility is to give my audience a good time. Then if it’s giving a message which is important and creative, if it’s chang-ing the way we look at things, great.

“If it’s giving a message which is highly negative, then I would not be a part of it.”

Journalists protest growing intolerance

Bihar launches campaignagainst child marriage, dowry

IANSNew Delhi

Hundreds of journalists yesterday formed human chains at various places

across the country to protest against intimidation of the me-dia and the killings of journal-ists, including the murders of Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru and Shantanu Bhowmick in Tripura, and to draw attention towards “increasing intolerance against criticism”.

Scores of journalists turned up at the Press Club of India (PCI) here and formed a human chain in the heart of the capital to ex-press their solidarity with their colleagues who were killed in the line of duty.

The protests on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti were organised

by various media associations, including the Press Club of In-dia, Federation of Press Clubs in India, Indian Women’s Press Corps, Press Association, Kerala Union of Working Journalists and Indian Journalists Union.

The trigger for the protests were the killings last month of Lankesh, the editor of Karnata-ka-based Lankesh Patrike, who was shot dead at her own door-step, and Bhowmick, who was abducted and later hacked to death by a tribal group in Tripura while he was covering a fi ght be-tween two local factions.

According to data compiled by an independent non-profi t organisation ‘Committee to Pro-tect Journalists’, at least 10 jour-nalists have been killed in India since 2014 for various reasons.

“Silent protests, meetings and human chains were organised in

various state capitals and cities under the aegis of press clubs in the country to draw attention to the killings, threats and in-timidation of journalists,” a joint statement from the media asso-ciations said.

“Expressing concern at the growing incidents of attacks on sections of the media frater-nity across the country – the symbolic protests on October 2 sent out one single message – violence against journalists in any form will not be tolerated in the land that preaches non-violence.”

The protests were held to draw attention to the “increas-ingly unsafe environment for journalists, the misogynistic and abusive targeting of media persons for their views on online forums, covert and overt threats to physically harm journalists for

holding diff erent opinions and increasing intolerance against criticism”.

They resolved that journalistic freedoms and the right to dissent needed to be protected and the right to freedom of expression needed to be upheld in the in-terests of India’s liberal secular democracy.

The protesting journalists lat-er signed a memorandum to be given to Home Minister Rajnath Singh “requesting his interven-tion for a status report on attacks against journalists in various states and action in this regard”.

Meanwhile, popular south In-dian actor Prakash Raj criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his silence over the murder of Lankesh and said it was “dis-appointing” to see the PM fol-low those celebrating Lankesh’s murder on social media.”

“Gauri’s killers have not been caught yet. But what is more dis-appointing is people celebrating her murder over social media spreading hatred,” Raj said on Sunday speaking at the 11th state meeting of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) in Bengaluru.

“Some of these people who celebrated her murder are fol-lowed by our prime minister on Twitter. We have a PM who shuts his eyes to this,” he said.

Also hitting out at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Raj said, “When you look at the kind of statements he makes, you don’t understand whether he’s a chief minister or a priest.

“He is a better actor than me. I think I must give out all my five national awards to him,” he said.

IANSPatna

A massive campaign against child marriage and dowry was launched in Bihar

yesterday.The state government will

organise a human chain against child marriage and dowry on January 21 next year.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar launched the statewide cam-paign at the newly-built Bapu Sabhagaar here on the sidelines of Mahatma Gandhi’s 148th birth anniversary celebrations.

He administered oath to over 5,000 people, including Minis-ters, MPs, MLAs, government of-fi cials and others, to fi ght against child marriage and dowry.

“It is only a beginning to fi ght against child marriage and dow-ry in the state. We will involve people, government offi cials, including police, teachers, over

half-a-million women self-help groups, civil society organisa-tions, to intensify the campaign to ensure a child marriage- and dowry-free Bihar in coming years,” Kumar said.

After forming the world’s larg-est human chain in support of prohibition and de-addiction in the state in January this year, he said “we will form a human chain against child marriage and dowry in Bihar in January next year”.

Kumar recalled that when Bihar formed a human chain in support of prohibition and de-addiction, it was a rare move.

“Bihar will now set another ex-ample by forming human chain against child marriage and dowry. It will inspire other states in the country to follow us,” said Kumar.

“We had initiated several measures for women empower-ment in Bihar, including 50% reservation to women in pan-chayat polls, bicycle and uni-form schemes for girl students,

35% reservation for women in police constable job followed by 35% reservation in all govern-ment jobs.”

The chief minister said that a campaign against child marriage and dowry is part of his resolve to eradicate the two social evils in Bihar.

“I strongly believe that num-bers of child marriage and dowry cases would be reduced in the next one year in the state with the active support of people, government offi cials including police, more than 600,000 self-help groups and civil society organisations. It will certainly change the face of Bihar in the coming years.”

Kumar said the fi ght against child marriage and dowry is part of a social campaign and has nothing to do with politics.

“The opposition should extend support to it. People’s help and support to this campaign will re-sult in its success,” he added.

Dalit man killed for attendingNavratri festival in Gujarat

Hazare slams Modi on corruption, threatens protest

AgenciesAhmedabad

A 21-year-old man from the Dalit community was beaten to death at a Hindu

festival over the weekend, amid allegations that a group of upper caste men attacked him, saying he had no right to be part of the celebrations.

The victim, Jayesh Solanki, went to watch Navratri festivi-ties – which include perform-ances of garba, a popular dance performed with sticks – in a vil-lage in Gujarat state’s Anand dis-trict on Sunday.

His cousin, identifi ed as Pra-kash, told reporters yesterday that upper caste men from the Patel community confronted their group, made derogatory remarks about their caste and later told them they had no right to watch garba in which upper caste community members were participating.

“They attacked us during the altercation and banged Jayesh’s head against a wall. They punched and kicked him when he fell to the ground,” Prakash said.

The man succumbed to his injuries at a hospital later on Sunday, police offi cer A M Patel said, adding that all eight of the alleged assailants, between the ages of 20-21, were arrested by yesterday.

The accused were booked on charges of murder.

Police said it did not appear to be a pre-planned attack.

“The boy was killed due to the sudden provocation, it did not appear to be pre-planned as there was no enmity between them. People from all commu-nities were participating in the festival for days now,” Patel said.

Dalits, formerly known as “untouchables”, are among the most marginalised groups in In-dia, where caste discrimination is outlawed but remains wide-spread.

IANSNew Delhi

Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare yesterday accused Prime Minister

Narendra Modi of failing to keep his promise of creating a corrup-tion-free India and threatened to begin an agitation if the govern-ment “did nothing” to enforce the Lokpal Bill.

Hazare, who sat on a one-day protest at Rajghat on the occa-sion of Mahatma Gandhi’s 148th birth anniversary and paid trib-

ute to the Father of the Nation, also wrote a letter to Modi. He said that even after three years in power, the prime minister had not enforced the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, but had instead “hastily” passed amendments to weaken the anti-corruption law.

“I had started a movement for appointing a Lokpal. It is still incomplete. There is a need for another agitation. The govern-ment not only failed to appoint a Lokpal but has weakened the Act (The Lokpal and Lokayukta Act, 2013),” he told reporters.

Hazare said he would launch

the agitation by the end of the year or early next year.

“During the agitation no party or its member would be allowed to sit on stage. If someone wants to join, he can join the people,” he said.

He said that his volunteers will reach Ralegan Siddhi in Mahar-ashtra to discuss the course of the movement.

In his letter to Modi, Hazare said that while earlier it was mandatory for those covered under the Lokpal to disclose their assets as well as the assets of their family members, the

amendment passed in July last year exempted the family from doing so.

He also accused the prime minister of postponing the en-forcement of the anti-corrup-tion law by making “one or the other excuse”.

“It appears you have no inten-tion to bring Lokpal and Lokay-ukta Act... And that you don’t want to build a corruption-free India,” Hazare wrote.

“Looking at the present situ-ation, it appears that no eff orts are being made to end corrup-tion and establish eff ective de-

mocracy in the country. Instead, eff orts are being made to weaken democracy and strengthen the party.

“Distressed by this, I will pray for the country on the occa-sion of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary and will launch a ‘satyagraha’ from his footsteps,” he added.

The social activist said that Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promised many things to the common man in-cluding an end to farmer sui-cides, fair price for agricultural produce, safety of women and

solution to all problems of all sections of the society.

Modi also promised getting back the black money stashed abroad within 30 days of coming to power, Hazare wrote.

“But neither the Lokpal and Lokayuktas were appointed, nor the citizen charter enforced. Neither the black money came back from abroad, nor the black money from within the country got exposed through demoneti-sation.

“Farmer suicides did not stop but have been increasing. They do not get fair price for their

produce. There has been no ac-tion on the Swaminathan report.

“Women haven’t got the security, respect and justice that they deserve. And when it comes to corruption, it has been increasing by the day,” Hazare added.

Hazare’s remarks has come at a time when BJP-led govern-ment has been claiming that it did not allow any scam to take place during the past three years in power. The Modi government has also been claiming it has tak-en many steps to curb the men-ace of corruption.

People participate in a campaign against child marriage and dowry in Patna yesterday.

Journalists participate in a peace protest near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad yesterday.


LATIN AMERICA

Colombia’s drug policy must be long-term: govtReutersBogota

Colombia must maintain eradication and substi-tution of coca crops as

a long-term policy across the Andean nation’s isolated jungle and mountain zones to perma-nently defeat drug traffi cking and consolidate peace, the de-fence minister said.

A new government, which will be elected next year, must keep up the policy if the na-tion hopes to stamp out the il-legal drugs industry, which has funded Colombia’s half century war that has killed more than 220,000 and displaced mil-lions.

“There can be no interruption to this policy because there’s a new government, not in 2018, nor in 2022 or 2026,” Defence Minister Luis Carlos Villegas, 60, said in an interview.

“It has to be a process of at least a generation so that it bears fruit and that there’s true peace.”

Since signing a peace accord last year with the Revolution-ary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the government has fo-cused eff orts on clearing coca from areas once controlled by the rebels.

Coca, the raw material that makes cocaine, is cultivated in about 188,000 hectares across Colombia by subsistence farmers who have few other opportunities to feed their families.

Criminal gangs, right-wing paramilitaries and Marxist rebels form the purchasing chain that has helped make Co-lombia one of the biggest pro-ducers of cocaine.

Cocaine seizures reached 300 tonnes so far this year and may exceed the record 362 tonnes seized last year, said the minister, who formed part of the government’s peace negoti-ating team with the Farc.

As part of the policy, the government plans to invest in development programmes — building schools, health cen-tres and roads — to allow poor

farmers to improve their social conditions and sell legal crops like cacao, fruits, coff ee and palm oil.

Colombia’s vast rural ex-panse lacks roadways, so Vil-legas said infrastructure that brings communities closer to market are vital for eradication to work.

“It’s not enough to plant ca-cao to replace coca...thousands of miles of tertiary roads are needed,” he said.

Colombia wants to manu-ally eradicate 100,000 hectares of coca this year, with farmers voluntarily destroying half of it.

The US has raised concerns about the increase in coca pro-duction and cultivation, which has reached levels seen a dec-ade ago, arguing that the in-crease is a result of Colombia’s ban on aerial fumigation.

Despite pressure to resume spraying, using glyphosate, a chemical linked to cancer, Villegas ruled out the possi-bility. “It’s off the radar,” he said.

Cuba, Bolivia,remembering‘Che’ 50 yearsafter deathAFPHavana

A half-century after his death, Ernesto “Che” Guevara will be remem-

bered in ceremonies next week in Cuba and in Bolivia, whose CIA-trained troops sent shockwaves around the world when they ex-ecuted the Cold War revolution-ary icon in 1967.

In Cuba — where schoolchil-dren still begin their day with a raised fi st salute and chant “Pio-neers for communism, we will be like Che” — President Raul Cas-tro will lead a ceremony at his mausoleum in the central town of Santa Clara.

The 86-year-old Castro’s memories will be deeply person-al as he fought alongside Che in the Cuban revolution led by his brother Fidel that in 1959 over-threw dictator Fulgencio Batista.

In Bolivia, the army will partici-pate at a public commemoration of his death for the fi rst time.

“We want this to be a moment of unity for the Bolivian people,” said deputy co-ordination minis-ter Alfredo Rada, saying the con-text was diff erent from 1967, when staunch anti-communist presi-dent Rene Barrientos gave the or-der to execute the wounded Che.

Times have changed, and the incumbent President Evo Mo-rales is a fervent admirer of the revolutionary leader.

Che’s four children will attend the memorial ceremony in the South American country, where the guerrilla leader was executed by a CIA-trained unit of the Bo-livian army on October 9, 1967.

“If he had not died in Bolivia in 1967, Latin America would now be free, sovereign, independent and socialist, which is what he want-ed,” his brother Juan Martin Gue-vara said at his home in Argentina.

With his death, at the age of 39, the myth of “Che” — the personi-fi cation of rebellion — was born.

Fidel Castro called him an “artist of revolutionary warfare” in a speech to an estimated 1mn people during a three-day pe-riod of national mourning.

In time, through T-shirts, posters and berets bearing his iconic image, he became a sym-bol of the capitalist consumer society he sought to destroy.

Born in the Argentine city of Rosario, Guevara travelled across Latin America in 1952 and 1953 and was shocked to see the eco-nomic disparity in the region, a road trip that was immortalised in the 2004 fi lm The Motorcycle Diaries.

It convinced him violence was necessary to overturn Latin America’s unjust social order.

His life changed dramatically when he met Castro in Mexico in 1955 and joined his guerrilla ex-pedition to Cuba.

In the early 1960s, he worked with Castro to consolidate the rev-olution, supervising the repression of counter-revolutionaries, and even for a time heading the Central Bank and industry ministry.

In 1965, he bid farewell to Cuba in a letter to Castro in which he resigned his posts and wrote: “other nations of the world summon my modest ef-forts of assistance.”

After leading a group of Cuban revolutionaries fi ghting with Marxist guerrillas in the Con-go, Guevara travelled to Bolivia in late 1966. Struggling with asthma, he led a small clutch of rebels in Bolivia for 11 months trying to spread revolution but was tracked, cornered and wounded in the mountains in a gunbattle that wiped out most of his remaining rebels.

The Bolivian army and two Cuban-American Central In-telligence Agency agents cap-tured him. He was executed in a schoolhouse in La Higuera the following day, October 9, 1967.

The small revolution he start-ed in Bolivia died with him.

Hundreds of people gather at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires during a demonstration calling for information about the whereabouts of Santiago Maldonado, who disappeared on August 1 during a Mapuche protest in the southern province of Chubut. Maldonado disappeared on August 1 when the police broke up a Mapuche protest in the Pu Lof community, some 1,850km southwest of Buenos Aires. He is said to have last been seen being put into a military police vehicle.

Where is Maldonado?

US travel warning worriesCuban tourism industryReutersHavana

Businesses catering to US tourists visiting Cuba have had a rude awaken-

ing in the last few months after enjoying a two-and-a-half year boom.

First, US president Donald Trump in June ordered tighter restrictions on travel to the Caribbean island.

Then the US state depart-ment warned on Friday against going there after a spate of al-leged attacks on its diplomats in Havana, stating until the cause was determined, it could not guarantee Americans’ safety.

The new regulations have not yet been published, and the warning does not mean Ameri-cans cannot travel to Cuba.

Still, the moves relegate the island back to the realm of “for-bidden fruit” to be enjoyed at one’s peril.

“Just as the re-establishment of Cuba-US relations was a pos-itive infl uence, now this will be very negative,” said Jose Enrique Montoto, who rents an apart-ment, often to American guests, through the online marketplace Airbnb. “They are creating a mood of insecurity for those who want to travel to Cuba.”

Montoto, 57, said three US citizens who were set to ar-rive in Havana on Saturday had

cancelled their reservation with him at the last minute without an explanation.

He worried that more would do the same.

To be sure, less than 10% of foreign visitors to the island are Americans, even though the number of those travellers tripled to 285,000 last year due to new exemptions to the travel ban in the wake of the 2014 US-Cuban historic detente under former US president Barack Obama.

According to Cuban govern-ment statistics, that would place local revenues from Americans’ sojourns at about $300mn.

Cuba has long catered large-ly to Canadian and European tourists, and some local busi-

ness owners said recent events under Trump were a harsh re-minder not to rely too much on one market.

Still, others said Americans were particularly good clients who paid well. They also feared the US travel warning would further tarnish Cuba’s image as a safe and idyllic destination after Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc there last month.

A dip in tourism this year would be a further blow to Cu-ba’s economy, which already is struggling with a drop in cheap oil shipments from key ally Venezuela, lower exports and a cash crunch.

Airbnb, American Airlines, United Airlines and other US

companies said they would con-tinue their operations on and to Cuba despite the travel warning and the new, tighter regulations.

However, business could suff er if fewer Americans visit there. Trump has said he wants to eliminate one of the most popular exemptions to the US

travel ban on Cuba, the self-directed “people-to-people” category.

Confusion remains about what will be allowed. “I’m con-cerned about the impact (the warning) will have on our 2018 and 2019 business,” said Andrea Holbrook, owner of Gainesville, Florida-based Holbrook Travel, which runs tours to more than 30 countries.

US destroys chemicalarms left in PanamaAFPPanama City

The US has started destroy-ing a stock of old, World War II-era chemical weap-

ons it left in Panama decades ago, the foreign ministry said.

“The operation started in mid-September to destroy the chemical munitions located on San Jose island” off Panama’s southern coast, the ministry’s director for legal aff airs, Farah Urrutia, said.

US specialists were working with Panamanian counterparts to carry out the task, she added.

The project is supported by the Organisation for the Pro-hibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).The eight bombs be-ing disposed of were uncovered on the island in 2002 during an OPCW inspection.

US tests of mustard gas, phos-gene and other chemical weapons for possible use in WWII and the Vietnam War were alleged to have been carried out on the island.

The US maintained military bases in Panama from the time it completed the Panama Canal in

1914 until its withdrawal in 1999.The US and Panama had dis-

cussed for years what to do with the weapons.

The clean-up was initially scheduled for 2013 but never carried out because the Ameri-cans failed to set aside money for the procedure. Urrutia said the OPCW had submitted a pre-liminary report confi rming the destruction of four of the eight bombs.

She added that no indica-tions of health hazards from the munitions had been detected among people on the island or in the environment.

Juan Mendez, a former foreign ministry offi cial who had been involved in the OPCW’s 2002 inspection, said he had recently visited San Jose island and seen a large US military contingent at work there, including explosives experts, with six helicopters and a large supply ship. “It was a huge team,” he said.

Carlos Guevara Mann, a pro-fessor in international relations, said that, under international law, the US “has an obligation to destroy chemical weapons it abandoned.”

Giant butterflies (12-m each) – an installation by Chilean Valeria Merino as part of “Hecho en Casa Fest” (Made at Home Festival) - are placed on the shaft of the Entel Tower in Santiago yesterday.

Giant butterflies in Chile

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has announced a 3.9% hike to spending in the proposed budget for 2018, when she said the economy of the world’s top copper producer could expand twice as fast as this year. Speaking in a broadcast speech, Bachelet said that next year’s spending will prioritise investments in infrastructure and education, key focuses of her centre-left government. “Economic forecasts are encouraging. In 2018 we could grow twice as much as in 2017,” Bachelet said, but added, “we must face this new scenario with the same responsibility as always.”

El Salvador has launched the first commission to search for persons who went missing during its civil war, 25 years after the end of a conflict that left tens of thousands dead and hundreds of cases unresolved. The commission will seek victims who were killed or kidnapped by the military or rebels in order to help reunite them with families or return their remains. People who lost relative have demanded such measures for decades. “With this instrument we reaff irm our deep commitment to pay off the historical debt to the victims of forced disappearances in the country,” said leftist President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, himself a former guerrilla leader.

A Cameroonian migrant was killed in an armed clash between security forces and people smugglers in Nicaragua, the military said. Fourteen arrests were made after the exchange of gunfire, which occurred near La Virgen, 100kms south of the capital Managua and close to the border with Costa Rica. Two vehicles ignored an order to halt at a military checkpoint on a bridge and occupants “fired shots and tried to run over personnel at the checkpoint,” prompting the troops to return fire, the statement said. Authorities managed to halt one of the vehicles but the other got away. The Cameroonian killed in the exchange was identified as Mbang Atanga Azehfor.

British off icials are in talks with Peru, Colombia and Ecuador to use the three countries’ existing trade agreement with the European Union as the basis for forming new deals after Brexit, the British embassy in Lima said. Britain has courted new trade deals from India to Canada as it prepares for its 2019 scheduled departure from the European Union. The vote last year to leave the EU was widely seen as a setback to global eff orts to reduce trade barriers, but London said it off ers new opportunities. “As we leave the EU, we need to look outwards and be a beacon for free trade by forging independent trading arrangements,” British Minister for Trade Policy Greg Hands said.

State-run Eletrobras, Brazil’s largest power utility holding company, will auction its ineff icient and heavily indebted electricity distribution subsidiaries for a symbolic 1 real ($0.31) to the buyers who off er to charge the lowest rates to consumers, sources said. The two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, but who requested anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly, said this would allow the buyers to invest more to improve the service of the companies located in the North and Northeast of Brazil. Brazil’s government plans to sell the six distribution companies in the first quarter of 2018 before it privatises Eletrobras.

Bachelet announces 3.9%spending hike in budget

El Salvador searches thosemissing during civil war

Migrant killed assoldiers, traff ickers clash

UK in new deals withPeru, Ecuador, Colombia

Eletrobras to auctionindebted distributors

DECISION COMMISSIONLAW AND ORDER TRADE CORPORATE

PAKISTAN19


PML-N nominates Sharif as party chiefThe ruling Pakistan Muslim

League-Nawaz (PML-N) party yesterday nominat-

ed ousted premier Nawaz Sharif as its leader, local media said, hours before it used its parlia-mentary majority to amend a law to permit him to be re-elected as party chief.

Sharif resigned as prime min-ister in July after the Supreme Court disqualifi ed him for not declaring a source of income. He was also forced to step down as president of PML-N, though he kept control of the party and in-stalled Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, a loyalist, as prime minister.

Dawn newspaper and other

local media reported a parlia-mentary meeting of the ruling party chaired by Abbasi nomi-nated Sharif as its leader. He will be formally re-elected president in a session scheduled for today.

Hours later, Pakistan’s parlia-ment amended a law to enable Sharif to re-take PML-N lead-ership. The amendment bill was presented by Law Minister Za-hid Hamid and passed by lower house with a majority.

“We feel very strongly Nawaz Sharif has to lead our party. He’s the symbol of unity in our party,” said Rana Afzal Khan, a PML-N lawmaker.

Khan said Sharif was battling to assert “civilian supremacy” and boost democracy in a nation that has been beset by military interference in politics.

In protest some opposition lawmakers tore up paper copies of the Election Bill 2017, passed by the Senate last week, that al-lows Sharif to become the party president again despite his dis-qualifi cation by the court. But the vote was more of a formality as PML-N has a vast majority.

A previous election bill barred from offi ce someone disqualifi ed under Article 62 and 63 of the constitution, which was used by the courts to remove Sharif.

“You are making a law for one person. You are putting the as-sembly on stake for one person,” said Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, the leader of Awami Muslim League, a small opposition party.

Main opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chair-man Imran Khan yesterday said

that his party will attempt to block the Elections Bill 2017 from passing, hours before it was due to be presented to the lower house of parliament.

Speaking to the media, the PTI chief said he was contacting other opposition parties to invite them to challenge the bill, which had been passed with a majority vote by Senate last month after a key amendment proposed by the PPP to retain a clause res-urrected by retired Gen Pervez Mushar raf through the Political Parties Order 2002 was rejected.

“This bill will provide an op-portunity to a criminal to be-come the head of a party,” Khan said, referring to the former prime minister. “You are creat-ing a law for a criminal,” Khan said, adding that the moral con-

ReutersIslamabad

Nawaz Sharif

science of the country was being jeopardised.

“Does this happen in democracies? Democracy means transparency,” Khan said, threatening to approach the courts if the ruling party attempted to bulldoze the bill through the National Assembly. Khan also said that he had “already planned rallies” in case of such an eventuality.

PM to name new navy chief soon

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is likely to appoint the new Chief

of Naval Staff (CNS) from among three vice-admirals – Zafar Mehmood Abbasi, Syed Arifullah Hussaini and Shah Sohail Masood – as the term of Admiral Muhammad Za-kaullah, the serving CNS, is coming to an end on October 7.

All the three offi cers, whose names are being considered for the post of CNS, belong to the navy’s operations branch.

Zafar Mehmood Abbasi is the incumbent Chief of Staff at the naval headquarters. Syed Ari-fullah Hussaini is deputy chief of naval staff (projects) and Shah Sohail Masood is com-mander naval strategic force command. He also served as spokesperson for the defence ministry a few years ago.

Offi cial sources said that the PM had decided to prefer sen-

iority factor in line with the na-vy’s tradition, instead of resort-ing to a pick-and-choose policy.

PM’s adviser Ameer Muqam confi rmed that the appointment of the new naval chief was under consideration, but he was clue-less as to who would become the next navy boss. “Some names are under consideration but I have no idea who would get the coveted slot,” he said.

The sources said PM Abbasi has already consulted relevant circles in the armed forces and the security establishment for the promotion of Zafar Mehmood Abbasi, but has yet to approve a formal summary in this regard.

Recently, the defence min-istry moved a summary to the PM Offi ce on naval chief’s ap-pointment which is seeking PM’s nod of approval. It would then be moved to the presi-dent for a fi nal notifi cation.

With the exception of the Pakistan army, seniority factor is generally considered over ap-pointment of services chiefs at PN and Pakistan Air Force.

InternewsIslamabad

Court adjourns hearing in former PM graft case

Sacked Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made a second appear-

ance before an anti-corruption court yesterday, as offi cials said he would be indicted at a later hearing on corruption charges that could ultimately see him jailed.

A helicopter hovered over the Islamabad court and sup-porters chanted slogans from behind security barriers as Sharif arrived in a convoy of BMW SUVs, escorted by elite police guards.

Media along with many law-yers and offi cials - including Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal - were prevented from entering the court, with security forces forming a human barrier as the former premier entered.

Sharif left again just over an hour and a half later without making any statement. Of-fi cials said the case had been adjourned until October 9, with no confi rmation when the in-

dictment might take place.Sharif’s sons Hussain

and Hassan and his daugh-ter Maryam have also been named in the case and are currently in London with their mother Kalsoom, who is receiving treatment for throat cancer.

A court offi cial told media that Sharif would be indicted “when all accused are present in the court”, though another senior offi cial suggested later that if his children do not ap-pear then his case could be tried separately.

Mohsin Ranjha, a leader of Sharif’s ruling Pakistan Mus-lim League (Nawaz) party who spoke to reporters outside the court, said they were willing to return and appear before it. He did not say when.

Iqbal threatened to resign after he was blocked from the court, expressing fury that se-curity forces under his author-ity appeared to have defi ed his orders and calling for the court process to be fully transparent.

“I can’t be a puppet interior minister ... There can’t be two

AFPIslamabad

Security off icials escort a vehicle (third left) carrying sacked prime minister Nawaz Sharif as he arrives to appear before an accountability court to face corruption charges in Islamabad yesterday.

states in one state,” he said, al-luding to Pakistan’s military establishment, which has long clashed with Sharif and vied for power with the civilian government.

The Supreme Court deposed Sharif in July following an in-vestigation into corruption al-legations against him and his family, making him the 15th prime minister in Pakistan’s 70-year history to be ousted

before completing a full term.The Supreme Court also

banned him from holding public offi ce and ordered the country’s anti-corruption watchdog, the National Accountability Bureau, to open a criminal case against him and his children, which could see him facing imprison-ment.

Sharif has faced such chal-lenges before. In 1993 he was sacked from his fi rst term as

prime minister for corruption, while in 1999 he was sentenced by a military court to life in pris-on after his second term in offi ce ended in an army coup.

On that occasion he was al-lowed to go into exile in Saudi Arabia, returning in 2007 before winning the premiership for a third time in 2013.

Sharif made his fi rst appear-ance before the anti-corruption court last week.

He later held a press confer-ence in which he vowed a land-slide win for his ruling party in general elections due by the end of next year, and insisted he was seen as innocent in the court of public opinion.

Last month his wife Kalsoom won his former parliamentary seat during a by-election in La-hore, in a poll seen as a test of the ruling party’s popularity after his ousting.

10% tax on Bahbood, pensioners certifi cates

Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) of Pakistan has slapped a fl at 10% tax on

income from Bahbood (welfare) savings certifi cates and pen-sioners account – two popular investment avenues for senior citizens and widows.

“Persons deriving income from Bahbood certifi cates and pensioners benefi t account are required to pay tax at the rate of 10% on gross amount of prof-it on debt on such accounts,” the FBR said in a notice on late Friday.

Analysts said the uniform tax rate will boost investment in saving certifi cates off ered by the national savings.

The analysts said the tax rate on fi nancial derivatives will not be more or less than 10% under the concession-ary rates and so such instru-ments continue to maintain their competitive advantage over other debts charged with variable tax rates.

FBR has progressive tax slabs for profi t on debt under Section 7B of Income Tax Ordinance 2001. There is 10% tax on in-come from debt up to Rs25mn, while the rate is 15% on debt exceeding Rs50mn.

State-run Central Direc-torate of National Savings (CDNS) recorded Rs5.43bn in-vestment in its Bahbood cer-tifi cates in July, while infl ows in pensioners’ benefi t account amounted to Rs1.37bn during the month, CDNS latest data showed.

Total investment in nation-al savings schemes stood at Rs12.03bn in July.

Total deposits in all its schemes, including prize bonds, stood at Rs3.44trn till July-end.

FBR said it has received sev-eral request for explaining the tax treatment for yield or profi t on investment in Bahbood cer-tifi cates and pensioners benefi t accounts.

It said Section 7B of Income Tax Ordinance 2001 explained the applicable rates for profi t on debt on an individual, other than a company.

The revenue body said indi-viduals deriving income from yield/profi t on investment in Bahbood certifi cates/pensioners benefi t accounts are taxed under Section 7B of the ordinance.

The FBR further said the in-come tax is not subject to with-holding tax. “Therefore, the amount chargeable to tax un-der Section 7B is to be paid at the time of fi ling of returns of income,” the FBR added.

The revenue body said the concessionary tax rates are ap-plicable on gains. “Any amount paid as yield or profi t on invest-ment in Bahbood certifi cate or pensioners benefi t account shall not exceed 10% of such profi t,” FBR said.

InternewsKarachi

Mumbai attack suspect threatens to sue FM

The alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people has

threatened to sue Pakistan’s foreign minister for suggest-ing he drank wine at the White House.

Hafi z Saeed, designated a global terrorist by the US and who has a $10mn bounty on his head, accused minister Khawaja Asif of “slander” according to

a legal notice from his lawyer seen by AFP.

Asif, speaking with the dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism Steve Coll in New York last week, was re-acting to US President Donald Trump’s claim this year that Pakistan was giving safe haven to “agents of chaos”.

“We went to hell and we are still burning in that hell... Don’t blame us for Hafi z Saeeds, these were the people who were your darlings,” Asif said.

“Just only 20 years, 30 years

back they were being dined and wined (at the) White House. And now you say go to hell Paki-stanis because you are nurtur-ing these - I don’t want to use the word for them,” he added, sparking a lively debate on Pa-kistani social media.

The notice issued by Saeed’s lawyer, dated September 29 but obtained by AFP yesterday, slammed Asif for the comments and described Saeed as a “patri-otic Islam loving Muslim”.

“It is shocking to know that (the) foreign minister of my

country is accusing Hafi z Mu-hammad Saeed of taking wine!” it said.

“This is abusive language and can never be used about my cli-ent,” it continued, saying that it was issuing 14 days warning of a defamation suit.

Saeed will seek Rs100mn ($950,000) in damages, accord-ing to the notice.

The horror of the Mumbai carnage played out on live tel-evision around the world as commandos battled the heavily armed gunmen, who arrived by

sea on the evening of November 26, 2008.

It took the authorities three days to regain full control of the city.

Saeed heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) group, listed as a terror outfi t by the United Na-tions, and considered by the US and India to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the militant group blamed for the Mumbai attack.

JuD is also popular for its charity work in Pakistan, where Saaed led a high-profi le pub-

lic life and regularly delivered fi ery anti-India speeches as his group operated freely across the country.

He was placed under house arrest earlier this year as Paki-stan bowed to foreign pressure.

JuD has lately backed a newly formed political party, the Mili Muslim League (MML), which Pakistan’s Election Commission has so far refused to register.

Their candidate contested a recent by-election in Lahore as an Independent, coming third with 5,822 votes.

AFPIslamabad

Inmates at Mardan jail to get library, education

The elementary and sec-ondary education de-partment (ESED) of

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has launched a literacy programme at the Mardan prison to reha-bilitate inmates into the main-stream and increase employ-ment opportunities for them upon their release.

During the fi rst phase, a total of 68 prisoners including 22 females were enrolled in basic classes for Urdu, English and mathematics. For now, prisoners who are al-ready well-versed in the subjects are teaching their peers.

The provincial government plans to pay each prisoner Rs15,000 per month to teach and eventually plans to hire teachers for them.

The ESED has also started such a programme at the Pe-shawar Central Jail and 30 pris-oners are enrolled in it.

ESED Minister Muhammad Atif Khan also inaugurated a library for the prisoners com-prising 2,000 books on dif-ferent topics with the support of a non-profi t organisation, Katabi.

Atif said that very soon a library would be inaugurated at Mardan jail too, adding that a hospital for the inmates would also be estab-lished on jail property.

“The classes at the Mardan jail are segregated and the in-mates that have been cho-sen as teachers have received training from the education department,” said Atif.

He said trained inmates would be off ering three hour classes per day, for which they would receive Rs15,000 per month as salary. The classes would go on for six months for each batch, aimed to bring prisoners to a grade three level in the three basic subjects, he added.

According to the minister, most prisoners are illiterate and do not understand the impor-tance of education. “This will not only make them more aware but also make their rehabilita-

tion into society easier,” he said of the classes in jail.

“Prisoners have a lot of time on their hands in jail this pro-gramme will ensure that they have something to do, while positively impacting their lives,” said Atif.

A female prisoner appreci-ated the initiative by the KP government and that she was excited to benefi t from the opportunity.

“We would have nothing to do with our time but now we will be taught to read and will be able to pass the time by focusing on edu-cation,” she said, adding that most the inmates were illiterate and were excited to receive an education “even if it is basic, for now”.

InternewsIslamabad

Monkeys blamed for streetlights failure in capitalIn a somewhat hilarious response to public complaints, on dysfunctional lights along Margalla Hills Road, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has held monkeys responsible and said another two-three months were required to resolve the issue.The majority of the streetlights along the city’s most visited tourist spot, Daman-e-Koh, are non-functional, posing serious threat to the safety of the visitors and local residents.More than half of the lights along a 9km hilly stretch with numerous hazardous curves require the urgent attention of CDA to safety of travellers both tourists and local people. An off icial of CDA at the services and maintenance department requesting

anonymity said: “Monkeys are responsible for non-functioning of the lights. They break the top of the lights where bulbs are inserted. The flexible mode of the lights entice them to play with, thus they get damaged.”The off icial admitted his department had received a number of public complaints on the issue but paucity of funds was a hurdle to resolve it.He also had a justified excuse for shortage of maintenance staff and vehicles to address day-to-day complaints.The CDA chairman, he said, has recently approved replacing the damaged lights with new ones, but it would take another two to three months before the problem was fixed, as it involves lengthy departmental procedures.

PHILIPPINES

Gulf TimesTuesday, October 3, 201720

Most Filipinos believe drug war ‘kills poor people only’Reuters Manila

Most Filipinos believe only the poor are killed in their coun-

try’s war on drugs, and want President Rodrigo Duterte to reveal the identity of alleged narcotics kingpins and charge them in court, a survey re-leased yesterday showed.

The survey of 1,200 Filipi-nos by Social Weather Stations (SWS) conducted late in June also showed public opinion was split over the validity of police accounts of operations against illegal drugs that re-sulted in deaths.

More than 3,800 people have been killed during Duterte’s 15-month-old crackdown, all during police operations.

Human rights group say the death toll is much higher and the official figures overlook murders attributed to shad-owy vigilantes.

Some activists say unknown gunmen have collaborated with police to kill drug dealers and users.

Police and the government vehemently reject those al-legations and accuse critics of exaggerating the death toll for political gain.

The high death toll in Du-terte’s fight against crime and drugs, a key election plank, has stoked interna-tional alarm, although do-mestic polls have shown Fili-pinos are largely supportive of the tough measures.

The crackdown has come under heavy scrutiny of late, prompted largely by the po-lice killing of a 17-year-old student on August 16.

Two witnesses yesterday told a senate inquiry they saw police officers kill another teenager arrested earlier in the same area for robbery.

In both teen killings, how-ever, police said the victims had violently resisted arrest.

A third teenager arrested with the second victim was found dead with 30 stab wounds in a province about a three-hour drive away from the capital.

Duterte has several times brandished what he called a file on 6,000 alleged dru-glords at the centre of the country’s trade.In the SWS survey, 74% of respondents said they wanted him to make that list public. The survey also showed 60% agreed with the statement that only poor drug pushers were killed.

Duterte, who enjoys huge support among working class Filipinos, has been angered by critics who character-ised his campaign as a war against the poor.The survey also showed nearly half of respondents were undecided whether police were telling the truth when saying that drugs war deaths happened only when suspects refused to go quietly.

A witness to a recent teen killing linked to illegal drugs, wearing a sweatshirt and mask to hide his identity gestures while parents of the killed teenager, wearing bulletproof vests listen during the Senate investigation on illegal drugs at the Senate headquarters in Pasay city, Metro Manila, yesterday.

Church to protect officers who talk on extrajudicial deaths

Philippines police officers who want to speak out about “extrajudicial killings and sum-mary executions” in President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war have been offered sanctuary and legal help by the Catholic Church.Human rights groups accuse Duterte of waging a crime against humanity as he seeks to eradicate illegal drugs in society in a crackdown that has claimed thousands of lives since he took office in the mid-dle of last year.The Catholic Church, which counts 80% of Filipinos as followers, has been one of the leading critics of the drug war and its offer to police yesterday was another step in its efforts to stop the killings. Unnamed “law enforcers” with troubled consciences have ap-proached the Church over the

killings, Archbishop Socrates Villegas, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said in a pastoral letter. “They have expressed their desire to come out in the open about their participation in extrajudicial killings and summary executions,” he said without naming the officers or the victims. “Within the bounds of Church and civil laws, we express our willingness to grant them accommodation, shelter and protection,” he said, adding that the offer will also be extended to independ-ent lawyers.“If such law-enforcers wish to testify, then the Catholic Church will see to it that they are in no way induced to speak, to disclose nor to make allegations by any member of the clergy or the hierarchy.”

The Philippine police did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment. Duterte’s govern-ment has denied that killing drug suspects was state policy, but critics allege his frequent public pronouncements on the drug war were direct induce-ments to kill.Duterte, who remains popular, has said he was “happy to slaughter” 3mn drug addicts and vowed no officer would go to jail for implementing his drug war. Villegas last month urged his flock to speak out against the “systematic murders and spreading reign of terror” that he said were unleashed by the drug war. Catholic bishops played lead-ing roles in peaceful street protests that led to the ousting of two Philippine presidents, Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and Joseph Estrada in 2001.

US, Philippine troops launch new counter-terror drillsAFPManila

US and Philippine troops launched new joint coun-ter-terrorism exercises

yesterday, days after President Rodrigo Duterte, a fi erce critic of Washington, reversed course in favour of pursuing one of Asia’s oldest military alliances.

Duterte vowed last week to be “friendly” with the United States, in contrast to comments he made a year ago calling joint military exercises a “humilia-tion” and threatening to sever defence ties forged after World War II.

The week-long joint opera-tion — another turnaround from Duterte’s initial stand — involves live-fi re training, rescues in combat situations, and mass-casualty situations aboard ships, according to the American side.

The US embassy said the drills “will increase overall US and Philippine readiness, improve bilateral responsiveness to crises in the region, and further rein-force our illustrious decades-long alliance,” in a statement yesterday.

“(The operation) perpetuates a long and lasting partnership founded fi rmly on common her-itage between freedom-loving countries,” said Philippine Ma-

rines spokeswoman Captain Maria Rowena Dalmacio.

About 900 US troops are tak-ing part in the training, to be held in various locations in the northern Philippine region of Luzon, including the former US military base of Clark.

The Filipino side did not dis-close its numbers.

Duterte, 72, had sought to loosen his nation’s alliance with the United States since assum-ing the presidency last year as he looked to forge stronger rela-

tions with China and Russia.During a visit to China last

October he announced his “sep-aration from the United States” and later explained he was an-gry at then US president Barack Obama for criticising his cen-trepiece war on drugs which has since seen thousands killed.

However Duterte said last week these comments were “water under the bridge” and thanked the US for helping the Philippines fi ght militants who occupied parts of the southern

city of Marawi on May 23. The US provided intelligence, weap-ons and urban warfare training to Philippine forces trying to retake the city in fi ghting which has left more than 900 people dead.

The continuing Marawi crisis has prompted Duterte to refocus the Philippine-US military alli-ance towards counter-terrorism.

Last week, US and Philippine forces staged an exercise simu-lating the seizure of an American plane by IS and a hostage rescue.

File photo shows Philippine marines (in green) and their US counterparts (in light brown) after simulating an assault during the annual Philippines-US amphibious landing exercise (Phiblex) at the navy base facing the South China Sea in San Antonio, Zambales province, north of Manila.

Call to produce cop who recanted testimonyManila TimesManila

The Senate committee on Public Order and Dan-gerous Drugs directed the

Philippine National Police (PNP) yesterday to produce the offi cer from Catanduanes who recanted on his previous testimony.

The testimony was about how some of his senior offi cers abused the government’s all-out war on drugs.

“I have done some serious soul searching and I have come to re-alise that I love my organisation and I continue to hold it and its ranks in highest respect despite some sad experiences I went through,” said Police Offi cer 1 (PO1) Vincent Tacorda in a letter Sen. Panfi lo Lacson read yester-day at the Senate hearing.

Tacorda addressed his letter to the committee dated July 3 recanting his claims in his fi rst affi davit in which he accused former Catanduanes Police Chief Supt. Jesus Martinez and former Viga Offi cer-in-Charge Senior Inspector Nathaniel Jacob of ordering him to kill sus-pected drug pusher Samuel Ro-jas in Viga, Catanduanes.

Tacorda also informed the committee that he executed an affi davit of recantation on June 29.

Aside from being given the di-rect order to kill Rojas, Tacorda also confessed in his fi rst affi da-vit dated May 10 that there were instances when he was ordered to plant evidence to support the arrest of certain individuals.

Tacorda’s fi rst affi davit and a video of his interview disclosing the alleged abuses committed by police offi cers were presented in yesterday’s hearing.

PNP Chief Ronald “Bato” De la Rosa informed the committee that Tacorda was facing charges for his alleged involvement in the killing of journalist Larry Que in December 2016.

Que was killed by unknown gunmen on December 19 while he was about to enter his offi ce in Virac, Catanduanes.

Que wrote about the “shabu” laboratory discovered by police and military forces on November 26 and named several individu-als behind the drug operation prior to his killing.

The PNP chief said Tacorda came up with his supposed ex-pose against some Cantandu-anes police offi cials after charges were fi led against him.

Three Chinese arrested, kidnap victim rescued

Manila TimesCalamba City, Laguna

The City Police and the Special Weapons and Tactics team rescued

a Chinese from Makati City and arrested three of his al-leged abductors on Saturday night.

Calamba City Police Chief, Supt. Sancho Cel-edio, identified the sus-pects as Su Sheng Fu, 27; Yu Guang Dong, 33; and Chen Wen, 22, all residents of Makati City.

Celedio said the sus-pects’ vehicle driven by Yu was flagged down along the highway at about 10pm, af-ter they received a call from Allan Pedraja, chairman of Barangay Makiling, about a suspicious Toyota Innova bearing only a conduction sticker roaming the area.

Yu immediately alighted from the car and the po-licemen saw one of the men inside the vehicle raise his handcuffed hands. His legs were also restrained.

The man was identified as Jackie Ong, 36, head of the Finance Department of DF Communications, Inc at Paseo de Roxas in Bel-Air, Makati City.

Initial investigation showed that Ong was taken in front of Forbes Tower

Condo on Valero Street, Barangay Bel-Air on Friday.

Police also recovered a .45-caliber pistol from the suspects, a plate with number ZKX- 699, as-sorted identification cards, assorted cash in yuan bills and passports.

The suspects could not speak Tagalog or English. They were subjected to in-quest proceedings on Sun-day morning and detained at the Calamba City Police while the Chinese Embassy was notified of the incident

Celedio said Ong was in a state of shock since aside from the handcuffs on his arms and legs, he also sustained wounds in the head from constant bash-ing by the suspects. He was placed under his brother’s custody on Sunday.

Police said that based on the testimony of Ong’s Filipino employer whose identity was withheld, the victim owes the suspects a huge amount of mon-ey from his losses in the casino.

Initial investigation showed that Ong was taken in front of Forbes Tower Condo on Valero Street, Barangay Bel-Air on Friday

Cagayan mayor faces graft charge

Manila TimesManila

The Offi ce of the Ombuds-man fi led a graft case be-fore the Sandiganbayan

against Cagayan de Oro City mayor Oscar Moreno and two others over a building lease con-tract without authorisation by the city council.

Named respondents along with Moreno were Percy Salazar, then budget offi cer, and Beda Joy Elot, then city accountant.

The Ombudsman alleged that sometime between September 2013 and January 2014 Moreno entered into an agreement with a private individual for the lease of a residential building to be used by the city’s Sports Development Programme for Professional and Amateur Boxing at P35,000 monthly rental. Elot alleg-edly certifi ed the disbursement voucher “as to the obligation of allotment and the completeness of supporting documents.”

Salazar allegedly certifi ed “Ob-ligation Request No. 01-13088 as to the existence of available ap-propriation.” The Ombudsman alleged that “all of the said acts caused the payment and dis-bursement of P70,000 in public funds when there was neither a specifi c prior authorisation by the Sangguniang Panlungsod.

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL21


Myanmar ready to take back refugees: ministerA Myanmar minister yes-

terday proposed taking back hundreds of thou-

sands of Rohingya Muslims who fl ed to Bangladesh after a military crackdown, according to Dhaka’s top diplomat.

But no details of the planned repatriation were given by Bangladesh Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali, and there was widespread scepticism over whether any of the more than 800,000 Muslim Rohingya now in Bangladesh would return.

More than half a million have arrived over the last fi ve weeks after militant attacks in My-anmar’s Rakhine state sparked violent reprisals which the UN has said could amount to eth-nic cleansing in the Buddhist-dominated country.

The talks between Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s Minister of the Offi ce of State Counselor Kyaw Tint Swe came as UN rep-resentatives were given their fi rst access to Rakhine since the trouble erupted on August 25.

UN offi cials, diplomats and aid groups were taken on a one-day visit organised by Myanmar authorities. They were fl own by helicopter to Maungdaw, epicentre of the violence.

Mahmood Ali held what he called “friendly” talks in Dhaka with the representative of My-anmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

“Myanmar has made a pro-posal to take back the Rohingya refugees,” the minister told reporters.

“The two sides have agreed

to a proposal to set up a joint working group to co-ordinate the repatriation process.”

Suu Kyi, who has been se-verely criticised for her failure to curb the military crackdown, said last month that Myan-mar would take back “verifi ed” refugees.

This would be done according to criteria agreed in 1993, when tens of thousands of Rohingya were repatriated, she said.

The Bangladesh minister gave no timeframe for repatria-tion and did not say whether Myanmar would also take back 300,000 Rohingya refugees who fl ed to Bangladesh during earlier violence.

He said refugees would be verifi ed by the joint work-ing group, but without UN involvement.

“Bangladesh has proposed a bilateral agreement (with My-anmar) to help implement the repatriation,” he said.

There was no immediate comment from Suu Kyi’s repre-sentative, who was to return to his country yesterday.

Myanmar denies the Ro-hingya minority citizenship even though many have lived there for generations. It consid-ers the Muslims as illegal mi-grants from Bangladesh.

Myanmar’s insistence on verifying the Rohingya could prove a “stumbling block” to repatriation, according to Sha-hab Enam Khan, an interna-tional relations specialist at Ja-hangirnagar University.

“Myanmar has shown good initiative but their proposal is not adequate, particularly the verifi cation is a non-starter,” he said.

AFPDhaka

Kyaw Tint Swe, left, Myanmar’s Union Minister for the Off ice of the Ministry of the State Counsellor, and Bangladesh Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali speak prior to a meeting in Dhaka yesterday.

“The Rohingya fl ed to Bang-ladesh without any legal docu-ments and it is diffi cult to prove their identity.”

Mohammad Amin, who ar-rived in Bangladesh on Sunday with two neighbours in a rick-ety boat, said he would consider returning if their safety was guaranteed.

“If they treat us as equals, we would go back,” he told AFP in a

coastal town near the border.Nurul Amin, a labourer who

also arrived Sunday by boat with six of his family members, said they fl ed after Buddhist mobs threatened them with violence if they did not leave.

“If they accept us as Ro-hingya, and said they would not harm us, we would return,” he said at a refugee registration booth.

The refugees are packed into overcrowded UN and makeshift camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. Aid groups have warned that epidem-ics could easily spread in the desperate conditions.

It remains unclear where the Rohingya would go if they were re-turned to Myanmar. Many of their villages have been burnt to the ground in the reprisal operations.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly last month, Bangla-desh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina proposed creating UN-supervised safe zones inside Myanmar.

Hasina accused Myanmar authorities of laying landmines on the border to prevent the Ro-hingya from returning and said the UN must fi nd a solution to the crisis.

WB backs technical education project in Nepal

The World Bank yesterday approved a $60mn credit to support the Enhanced

Vocational Education and Train-ing Project in Nepal.

Issuing a statement yesterday, the World Bank offi ce in Nepal informed that the second phase of project is designed to help the country improve equitable ac-cess to market relevant training programmes and to strengthen the delivery of Technical Educa-tion and Vocational Training.

The project is designed to sup-port Nepal at diff erent levels in-cluding the system, the institution, and the individual. It will also sup-port migrants through training and skill testing and certifi cation.

According to the bank, be-tween 450,000 and 500,000 Nepali youth come of working age every year, most of whom enter either the domestic or the foreign labour market with lim-ited education and skills.

While technical training has grown in size over time with formal and informal providers across a variety of government and non-government entities, it continues to face the challenges of quality training for domestic and foreign labour markets, in-clusion and cohesion.

“Skill development of the workforce through investment in human capital including techni-cal and vocational education and training are critical for the suc-cessful implementation of the country’s emerging jobs agenda,” said Takuya Kamata, the World Bank’s country manager for Nepal in the statement.

IANSKathmandu

Lanka remands monk for attacking Rohingya

A Sri Lankan court yester-day remanded in custody a Buddhist monk charged

with leading a mob which evict-ed Rohingya refugees, includ-ing 16 children, from a UN-protected shelter.

A magistrate ordered that Ak-meemana Dayarathana be held for a week pending an identi-fi cation parade in connection with last Tuesday’s attack on a refugee centre near Colombo.

Police told the court in Mount Lavinia that the monk was a member of an unlawful as-sembly, obstructed police and caused disaff ection among peaceful Buddhists.

“Peace-loving Buddhists were shocked to see a saff ron-robed monk behaving so badly,” a prosecuting police offi cer said. “We are charging the monk for

causing distress to Buddhists.”The raid on the refugee centre,

which housed 31 Rohingya refu-gees, was led by Dayarathana’s radical Sinhale Jathika Balamu-luwa (Sinhalese National Force), which uploaded videos of the at-tack on their Facebook page.

Several other people, includ-ing monks, were seen on the vid-eo urging supporters to destroy the refugee facility.

Dozens of men and women led by monks stormed the building and smashed windows and fur-niture. Police eventually rescued the refugees who had huddled in upstairs rooms.

Five men and a woman ar-rested over the weekend were also remanded in custody until October 9.

The government of the Bud-dhist-majority country has ac-cused the monks of behaving like “animals” during the attack, which left two police offi cers injured.

The refugees arrived in Sri Lanka fi ve months ago after the navy found them drifting in a boat off the north coast.

Before that, they had been living in India for several years.

More than 800,000 Rohingya Muslims have fl ed Myanmar in recent years. While most are in refugee camps in Bangladesh, a sizeable minority have moved to other parts of South Asia.

The Rohingya have been the target of decades of state-backed persecution and dis-crimination in mainly Buddhist Myanmar, where many view them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Extremist Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka have close links with ultra-nationalist counterparts in Myanmar. Both have been ac-cused of orchestrating violence against minority Muslims.

The UN High Commission-er for Refugees has expressed alarm over last Tuesday’s attack.

AFPColombo

Police escort Buddhist monk Akmeemana Dayarathana, centre, after he was remanded in custody in Colombo yesterday, over his involvement in a violent attack on Rohingya refugees.

Nepal and India to conduct joint tiger census in Nov

Nepal and India will be conducting in Novem-ber a joint headcount

of tigers in the national parks, forests and sanctuaries along the international border be-tween the two neighbours us-ing a similar camera tapping method.

Conservation authorities and experts from both the countries will use the method in which they would install cameras in various locations in the tiger habitats as well as their roam-ing areas and capture and track down their movements, the

Himalayan Times reported yesterday.

“The counting of tigers will begin from the second week of November,” said Man Bahadur Khadka, director general of the department of national parks

and wildlife conservation.Khadka said that although

the tiger census had been conducted jointly in Nepal and India in the past, this is the fi rst time when both the countries were employing the same method that is globally preferred.

By using this method, chanc-es of counting the same tiger over again remain slim, said Khadka.

The decision was taken after a recent meeting between the offi cials of both countries re-garding the tiger census.

The Chitwan National Park in Chitwan and Parsa Wildlife Reserve, which are the habitats of tigers in Nepal, are adjacent

to the Balmiki Tiger Reserve in Bihar state of India.

Similarly, Nepal’s Bardiya National Park is close to India’s Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctu-ary in Uttar Pradesh while the Shuklaphanta National Park in Nepal adjoins India’s Dudhwa Tiger Reserve, also in Uttar Pradesh.

As per the last tiger census in Nepal in 2013, as many as 198 Royal Bengal Tigers were found in Nepal with Chitwan National Park alone housing 120 of them, the report said.

The tiger is regarded as an endangered animal and is listed in the Convention on Inter-national Trade in Endangered Species.

IANSKathmandu

Nepal is home to 198 tigers.

Indian speaker to attend Lanka’s special session

India’s Lok Sabha (Lower House) Speaker Sumitra Mahajan will attend a spe-

cial parliamentary session in Sri Lanka that is being convened to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of parliament in island nation.

The Sri Lankan Parliament is also hosting the eighth confer-ence of the association of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) speakers and parliamentarians.

The association of the Saarc Speakers and Parliamentarians is a platform for the parliamen-tarians of South Asia to work to-gether to reach the 2030 agenda

for “Sustainable Development”.Mahajan is leading an In-

dian parliamentary delegation to the conference to be held in Colombo from October 4-6.

She will deliver the lead speech on the importance and need for parliamentarians of South Asia to work together to reach the 2030 agenda for “Sustainable Development”.

Speakers and delegates from the Saarc countries, includ-ing Afghanistan, Bangladesh,

Bhutan, India, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, will attend the conference.

The Saarc envisages promoting parliamentary diplomacy and open Parliament in the digital age, en-courage parliamentarians’ role in preserving cultural and archaeo-logical heritage in South Asia, sup-port women to uplift themselves from poverty and build a better fu-ture for their communities, and at-tempts to counter violent extrem-ism among the youth to prevent terrorism among other things.

The Young Parliamentarians Committee meeting will be held for the fi rst time at the event.

The inaugural ceremony of the conference will be attended by Sri Lankan President Maithripa-la Sirisena and Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremsinghe.

IANSNew Delhi

The Sri Lankan Parliament is also hosting the eighth conference of the association of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) speakers and parliamentarians

As Catalonia’s unauthorised referendum on independence was wrapping up on Sunday, workers were already busy erecting a stage for the all-but-assured “yes” victory, with proud banners proclaiming: “Hello Republic” and “Hello New Country.”

That night, crowds cheered as they were told that they “gained the right” to secede from Spain, after 90% of voters backed secession.

But yesterday, the party was over, leaving open the question: Can it really happen?

“I’m not clear if independence is a real alternative, we will have to be good at negotiating - but not with this government,” Pilar, a 61-year-old former teacher, said after casting her “yes” vote.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been a hated fi gure for Catalans seeking independence since 2010, when, as opposition leader, he led a challenge against a statute granting Catalonia more autonomy.

At his request, the Constitutional Court clipped the statute.

On Sunday, Rajoy again did little to endear himself to secessionists: At the end of a violent day in which Spanish police stood accused of injuring more than 800 people while trying to stop the referendum,

Rajoy thanked offi cers and said the state “did what [it] had to do.”In response, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont

promised to forward referendum results to the Catalan parliament “in the coming days” so “that it may implement” a law that obliges it to declare independence within 48 hours of a “yes” victory.

But the legitimacy of such a move is dubious, to say the least.

Putting aside the issue of the validity of a ballot that took place in defi ance of the Spanish constitution, with no certifi ed procedures and under police duress, its result was far from unequivocal.

Catalan authorities said 2.26mn votes were cast, and with 95% of votes counted, about 90% backed independence.

However, turnout was only 42% - which makes it hard to say that the majority has spoken.

“This was not a referendum but a plebiscite, representing

the preference of about 40% of Catalans,” said Francisco de Borja Lasheras, head of the Madrid offi ce of the European Council of Foreign Relations, a think tank.

Referendum organisers bristle at such criticism, claiming that 700,000 people were denied a vote by police raids on ballot stations.

Had the raids not happened, they argue, the turnout would have risen to 55% - though it’s near impossible to prove that statement.

Nevertheless, even accepting that Catalan independence is a loud, but minoritarian, movement, its capacity to mobilise millions of people is real.

A referendum in which many people could be seen crying as they cast their votes proved that, if nothing else.

“You cannot leave to judges, prosecutors and police the solution of political problems,” an editorial in the pro-union, Barcelona-based La Vanguardia newspaper said yesterday, as it criticised Rajoy’s failure to negotiate on Catalan autonomy demands.

According to Borja Lasheras, the solution would be “an ambitious constitutional reform, including a specifi c recognition of Catalan nationhood [within Spain] and granting it more home rule, including tax powers.”

But, he argued, a dialogue is practically impossible because Catalan leaders want “independence or nothing” and will force Madrid “to come down even harder” against them, with their arrest and the suspension of Catalan self-government among the options.


COMMENT22

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Secessionist leaders say there is “no other option” but independence

Europe’s future afterGermany’s election

‘Hello New Country’:Can Catalonia reallybreak off from Spain?

Bad medicine: toxic fakes the silent killer

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When it came to the most pressing challenges confronting the European Union and the eurozone, Germany’s mainstream parties were largely silent

By Guy VerhofstadtBrussels

There is no doubt about it: the outcome of Germany’s recent federal election is as important as it is remarkable.

The parties that have dominated German politics for years – the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), plus its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) – all lost support at the ballot box.

The CDU/CSU and SPD’s inward-looking election campaigns were astonishingly parochial. The most widely discussed topics included a proposed diesel ban, tax policies, rental fees, and internal security issues. Yes, these are relevant matters for German voters. But when it came to the most pressing challenges confronting the European Union and the eurozone, Germany’s mainstream parties were largely silent.

Those challenges are manifold. The United Kingdom is negotiating its exit from the EU, and there is deep uncertainty as to what the

future UK-EU relationship will look like. The EU desperately needs to prevent a further decline of democracy and the rule of law in Poland and Hungary. It has yet to develop a long-term solution to the migration and refugee crisis. And it must confront the security challenges stemming from terrorism, a revanchist Russia, and a rudderless America under President Donald Trump. At the same time, while the eurozone is finally showing signs of growth, its recovery still must be stabilised.

How these issues are (or are not) addressed will defi ne the future of Europe, and Germany’s position in it. Mainstream German leaders should have discussed them more broadly as they campaigned in TV studios, convention halls, classrooms, and on city streets. Indeed, the two big parties’ failure to do so helps to explain why they lost support. By patching up small problems and avoiding the big issues, the CDU/CSU and SPD created a vacuum. And populist nationalists from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) were happy to fi ll it, capturing 13% of the vote.

To sideline these illiberal elements, Europe will have to deliver on meaningful reforms. And the only way to do that is for those in Europe who still stand for liberal democracy to join forces.

When the German election result was reported, many analysts were quick to conclude that it represented a damaging blow to French President

Emmanuel Macron and his plan to reinvigorate the European project. But I disagree with that assessment. Lest we forget, it was the CDU’s German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schauble who blocked most of the proposed eurozone reforms over the past decade.

Another way of looking at the German election outcome, then, is as an opportunity for a new beginning. An end to the CDU-SPD “grand coalition” could mean an end to political stagnation not just in Germany, but at the European level, too.

Germany’s post-election coalition negotiations are now underway, and, with the SDP determined not to join the government, the most likely result is a “Jamaica” alliance (named for the colours of that country’s fl ag), comprising the CDU, the Free Democrats (FDP), and the Greens. Germany’s next government, one hopes, will include pro-European politicians with fresh ideas and a willingness to push for European-level reforms, possibly along the lines of what Macron has proposed. In that case, a new crop of leaders could be a driving force shaping Germany’s role in Europe for years to come.

Like Macron, the FDP aims to make Europe more democratic: it supports transnational candidate lists for EU-level elections; and it wants to bring European citizens closer together with democratic conventions in member states. The FDP is also pushing for common European rules

on migration, and for a shared border and coast guard. And it supports the establishment of a European FBI to co-ordinate the fi ght against terrorism.

The FDP’s leader, Christian Lindner, is right to say that the rules of the EU Stability and Growth Pact must be respected, and that spending taxpayers’ money without proper budgetary accountability will only nourish populist and nationalist forces such as AfD. Fortunately, in this respect, his outlook does not confl ict with Macron’s. Both agree that Europe needs better governance, based on a combination of consistently applied fi scal rules and growth-enhancing investments.

This is a decisive moment for Europe. We Europeans need to find solutions to shared problems, and we need Germany and France to lead the way. The French-German axis that drove European integration forward in the past must do so again. I am confident that a new coalition government in Germany will be able to work with France to build a closer political and economic union. Making the EU more democratic is the only way to push back the nationalist tide that the European project was meant to prevent. – Project Syndicate

Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, is President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE) in the European Parliament.

By Tatum AndersonLondon

Sometimes the vials are fi lled with dirty water. Occasionally they contain saline and a tiny amount of antibiotic, so as not

to infect the site of the vaccination and draw attention to its true ingredients. But however good or bad the disguise, the fact is that these “vaccines” will actually have no eff ect at all.

The recent news that another batch of fake meningitis vaccine had been discovered in Niger is just the most recent incidence of a particularly dangerous and cruel criminal racket. As many as 1,500 cases have been reported to a surveillance database launched by the World Health Organisation in 2013, and that’s probably an underestimate, says Mick Deats, head of the substandard and falsifi ed medicines group at WHO.

The latest fake was discovered because the manufacturer listed on the packaging of vaccine is a well-regarded Brazilian pharmaceutical company, Bio-Manguinhos/Fiocruz. A pharmacist in Niger’s capital, Niamey, became suspicious of one batch because she didn’t recognise the packaging. She contacted the manufacturer in Brazil, which confi rmed that it doesn’t manufacture this particular vaccine. It informed the WHO, which quickly sent out a worldwide alert.

But not all pharmaceutical staff are as vigilant, and the problem is that by their nature, most falsifi ed medicines are hard to spot. “This is a clandestine business and people try to stay off your radar,” says Deats. “The drugs are

designed not to be discovered and not to cause a toxic reaction. They just fail to treat the disease or condition for which they were intended.”

The gangs making these vaccines and medicines work in makeshift backstreet dives or in sophisticated large-scale operations with tablet-making machines, ovens and other kit. Gangs worldwide have tried making everything from Hepatitis C to cancer medicines. The most common fakes are anti-malarial drugs and antibiotics – often made entirely of potato starch or cut with other ingredients such as chalk or talc.

Deaths are inevitable, and heartbreaking. In 2008, at least 80 babies died in Nigeria after taking a teething syrup containing diethylene glycol – used in anti-freeze. Diethylene glycol killed 400 Panamanians in 2007 who thought they were taking a glycerine cough syrup.

But those are just the high-profi le cases. It is almost impossible to quantify the eff ects of, say, ineff ective anti-malarials, says Isabel Lucas-Manzano, international pharmacist co-ordinator at Medecins Sans Frontieres, which tightly controls its own supply chain to minimise risks, but has occasionally fallen victim to falsifi ed and substandard medicines. “The cost can be quite high,” she said. “The person thinks they have been treated and they continue to spread the disease.”

What’s clear is that the industry is global, but poorer and war-torn countries with the weakest health systems, like Niger, bear the greatest burden. Fake vaccines most often appear at the height of deadly

outbreaks across the 26 sub-Saharan African countries that are known in medical circles as the meningitis belt, especially when there are shortages of genuine vaccine.

In this most recent case, the Niger police have now formed a coalition with the country’s medicines regulatory agency, a dedicated WHO team and the police in neighbouring Burkina Faso, where the medicine is thought to have originated from, to search for the site where the vaccine was manufactured. Help has been requested from Interpol, which carries out region-wide swoops and seizes tonnes of fake medicines.

But a new technology developed by three recent graduates from the City College of New York may improve matters. Family experiences with counterfeit drugs motivated Egyptian biomedical engineer Bishoy Ghobryal and his fellow undergraduate Da Wi Shin (born in South Korea but brought up in China) to form a company, Veripad, and to work with a surface chemist from the University of Notre Dame, Dr Marya Lieberman, to come up with a simple way to test up to 60 medicines, listed by the WHO as being the most essential, from anti-malarial to anti-TB drugs and painkillers, in the fi eld. The equipment is a simple testcard that contains 12 diff erent chemical tests. The medicine is smeared over the card and the resulting image uploaded to a database via a mobile phone app that reveals what’s inside the drug.

The technology is already being used by at least one NGO, AmeriCares, on the batches of drugs that it ships for humanitarian aid missions. And the Kenyan medicines regulator has

sent secret shoppers to buy drugs at local pharmacies, and is comparing the cards with laboratory-based chemical analysis using the gold standard – high-performance liquid chromatography.

Veripad is one of a few so-called fi eld-screening technologies, used to make quick decisions as to whether to seize or quarantine a shipment on the ground. Other screen technologies are diverse, from chemical reagents that fi t into a container the size of a suitcase, to handheld Raman spectrometers.

The many fi eld-screening technologies on off er are being evaluated over the next year, to determine which should be recommended for use by countries around the world. “Screening equipment is absolutely vital because the countries that are most vulnerable are unlikely to have easy access to laboratories,” said WHO’s Deats, who is overseeing the evaluation process.

These innovations will be part of a wider strategy to combat falsifi ed and substandard medicines. As well as better surveillance, doctors and pharmacists across poorer countries are being trained to improve their recognition of suspect packaging – as happened in Niger – and an African super-regulator is even in the works to check quality manufacturing across the continent.

Meanwhile, Veripad’s founders are working on increasing the number of medicines that can be tested by a single card. The hope is that these new initiatives will at last turn the tide against those producing bad medicines. – Guardian News and Media

File photo: German Chancellor Angela Merkel (centre), leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU); Horst Seehofer (right), leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU); and Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), hold copies of a signed coalition treaty during a ceremony in Berlin in December 2013.

COMMENT

Qatar to mark the World Mental Health Day

The power of active citizenship

QNADoha

Ahead of World Mental Health Day on October 10, Qatar’s Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and other health

organisations are marking the World Mental Health Day and the theme for this year is “Mental Health in the Workplace”. The ministry encourages all organisations across the country to mark this important day.

The health ministry along with key health partners Hamad Medical Corporation, Primary Health Care Corporation and Sidra Medical and Research Center will host activities to highlight the importance of promoting good mental health and well-being in the workplace. The aim is to encourage employees to seek help and challenge stigma.

To mark this day, The ministry will utilise the Wheel of Wellbeing (WoW) framework and activities, based on Positive Psychology, to promote

mental health and well-being at work. This will also help with the ongoing promotion of good mental health, resilience and stress management across the organisation. MoPH Mental Health and Wellbeing Champions will run activities around the six domains of WoW, which include promotion of physical activities, strong social connections, ongoing learning, taking notice, spirituality and looking after the environment. Information resources about managing stress, tips for mental well-being and details of services available in Qatar will be shared on the day.

MoPH would like to encourage all organisations across Qatar to plan similar activities within their own workplaces in celebration of this day and to acknowledge this important occasion. Activities can range from: providing employees with information on how they can support self-care, well-being and work-life balance; empower individuals and employees to take actions that promote mental health resilience; address the negative

attitudes and prejudices associated with mental illness in the workplace and promote employment practices that support good mental health and well-being.

Sheikh Dr Mohamed bin Hamad al-Thani, director of the Public Health Department at MoPH, said: “Mental health and well-being is one of the priority areas in the Qatar Public Health Strategy 2017-2022, with the main focus of encouraging people to speak openly about mental health and to seek help as early as possible. The Ministry of Public Health’s ‘Healthy Workplace Programme’ complements this year’s theme of World Mental Health Day by focusing on mental health and well-being at work and valuing the dual relationship between an individual’s mental health and their workplace”.

The Acting Executive Director of the National Mental Health Programme at MoPH, Susan Clelland, added: “The mental health objectives of the Public Health Strategy have been designed to

complement and build on the Qatar National Mental Health Strategy (QNMHS) launched in December 2013. QNMHS identifies workplaces as one of the priority settings for effective mental health programs to raise awareness about Mental Health and Wellbeing and lessen the likelihood of mental illness developing at work. The goal is for workplaces to promote good mental health and help create healthy, safe working environments”.

She concluded that if organisations wanted more information on common mental health conditions and how to support staff wellbeing they can contact the National Mental Health Programme ([email protected]) based at the Ministry of Public Health.

The World Federation of Mental Health celebrated the fi rst World Mental Health Day on October 10, 1992 and is observed every year with the aim to raise awareness and mobilise support for mental health issues around the world.

By Lucy P MarcusLondon

The Congress of South African Trade Unions, the country’s largest labour organisation, recently held what were

billed as the largest popular pro-tests since the end of apartheid, over chronic corruption and state capture. In Moldova, citizens continue to protest a controversial electoral law that favours the country’s two largest political parties, at the expense of smaller movements. In the United States, professional football players are taking a knee during the national anthem to draw attention to police violence against black people.

As diff erent as these examples of public protest are, they have one thing in common: they refl ect eff orts by ordinary citizens to hold not just their governments, but also companies and other institutions, to account. Such actions, and the right of citizens to organise and participate in them, are essential to a vital democratic society, especially during tumultuous times.

There is no doubt that these are tumultuous times. US President Don-ald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have been exchanging incendiary rhetoric, causing many to fear a war on the Korean Peninsula – and perhaps a nuclear clash. Large-

scale natural disasters – hurricanes in Puerto Rico, fl oods in South Asia, earthquakes in Mexico – have brought massive damage and loss of life, and not nearly enough relief aid.

Moreover, corruption scandals have erupted far beyond South Africa, including in Brazil and South Korea, yet the links between business and government across the world remain complex, close, and opaque. Far-right populists have made great political strides in Western democracies, most recently in Germany. And, all the while, income inequality continues to grow.

Against this background, it is easy to see why ordinary people the world over are feeling increasingly help-less. But it is in the most trying times that we show who we really are. And, from small gestures between neigh-bours and large private contribu-tions to crisis-relief eff orts by major companies, there have been plenty of stories of humanity, individually and institutionally, that off er reason for hope. Indeed, such actions, and the sense of personal accountability they refl ect, are what enables our societies to progress and thrive.

As we well know, without rules and accountability, government offi cials and business leaders cannot always be counted on to do the right thing. Moreover, given their infl uence over policy and the economy, their ethical

and moral failures have far-reaching consequences.

Yet, while the need to hold govern-ment to the highest ethical standards is generally agreed (if not necessar-ily implemented), many argue that companies should be free to pursue profi ts at any cost. Like government, however, companies are ultimately run by people in order to serve people; they must therefore also be account-able to people.

The key to enforcing this account-ability is active citizenship. Taught in schools around the world, from Canada to the United Kingdom, active citizenship means political participa-tion at every level. It is not just a nice idea; it a dynamic and vital concept that individuals, organisations, and institutions should be putting into practice every day.

The ethos of active citizenship applies in every sphere. Speaking up about a controversial issue in a board meeting not so long ago, I felt it was important to note that I was speaking not just as a board member, but also as a person. That recognition, however trite it may sound, served as a power-ful reminder of a broader lesson: that one must maintain one’s sense of right and wrong, regardless of the circum-stances.

Convincing oneself that a deci-sion is purely pragmatic, in order to avoid knotty ethical questions, is not

an option. If I, as a person, believe in protecting the environment, or seek in my personal life and business to protect my own security and privacy, I cannot abandon those beliefs in the boardroom in the name of profi t. Avoiding active discussion, in an eff ort not to have to confront the more nu-anced ethical implications that might emerge, is no less disingenuous.

Being an active and engaged citizen means being authentic and empathet-ic. It means considering not only what an issue means for us, individually, but also how it aff ects others. Many have wondered why American football players, who often make millions of dollars per season, are protesting injustice. The reason is simple: active citizenship means standing up – or kneeling down – for what we believe in, whether it be a government free of corruption or law enforcement free of racism.

An ethos of personal integrity and authenticity may seem powerless in the face of unbridled greed and narcis-sism. And yet the diffi cult and trying times in which we fi nd ourselves re-fl ect the need to place more emphasis, not less, on the values we claim to uphold, and on devising ways to realise those values in our communities and countries. – Project Syndicate

Lucy P Marcus is CEO of Marcus Venture Consulting.

Gulf Times Tuesday, October 3, 2017 23

By Larry ElliottLondon

The golden age for central banks is over. That much was plain from the two-day shindig held by the Bank of

England to mark the 20th anniversary of its being granted independence by Gordon Brown within days of Labour coming to power in May 1997.

Many of the participants were critical of the bank – some sharply so. Adair Turner, former chairman of the Financial Services Authority, used a footballing metaphor to describe Threadneedle Street’s record: a game of two halves with a strong performance in its fi rst decade but dire since the onset of the fi nancial crisis in 2007.

The numbers do not lie. In terms of productivity and living standards, the last 10 years have been by far the worst in modern times. To extend Turner’s metaphor, it has been relegation form and in the Premier League such bad results over so prolonged a period would mean the sack.

When he was chancellor Alistair Darling fl eetingly thought about fi ring Mervyn King, and relations between the Treasury and the bank were at a particularly low ebb in 2008, but the story of the past 10 years has been of governors being granted more power rather than being shown the door.

So whereas in the fi rst 10 years after independence the bank was essentially a monetary policy institute that spent its time tweaking interest rates to hit the government’s 2% infl ation target, it now also takes on fi nancial responsibility.

Threadneedle Street has two powerful committees: a monetary policy committee that has been using interest rates and quantitative easing to try to get the right balance of

growth and infl ation; and a fi nancial policy committee that has the power to rein in bank lending if it thinks there is a risk of the City repeating the mistakes that led to the crisis of 2008.

But although the bank has become more powerful it has also become more vulnerable. The tools used to manage the economy – ultra low interest rates and quantitative easing – have not led to a sustainable recovery. Rather, they have led to booming asset prices and excessively strong credit growth.

In recent months, the bank has been publicly voicing concerns about the 10% annual increase in unsecured borrowing but this is, to

be frank, a bit rich. Credit is growing fast because 0.25% interest rates, QE and inducements to the commercial banks to lend have made borrowing easy and cheap. Put simply, the bank’s financial policy committee is now trying to mop up the problems caused by the bank’s monetary policy committee.

To make matters worse, the bank’s decisions have helped some sections of the population more than others. Soaring asset prices have been great for property owners but terrible for young people with dreams of getting a foot on the housing ladder.

As Andrew Tyrie, the former chairman of the Commons Treasury

select committee, put it at last week’s conference, many people have no memory of the years when infl ation was routinely high but they are fully aware of the distributional consequences of the policies that have been used to fi ght defl ation.

Clearly, there are other reasons for Britain’s housing crisis. Mark Carney, the bank’s governor, routinely (and rightly) states that Threadneedle Street does not build a single house. Yet the fact that the bank can infl uence the demand for property but not its supply suggests that the current structure of independence is not working properly. Housing policy is highly political, which is why

Brown is suggesting the creation of a strategic oversight body – involving the chancellor and the governor – to look at fi nancial policy.

Carney was pretty sniff y about this idea, but Brown has a point when he says such a system would provide the bank with some much-needed political cover by ensuring that ministers could not walk away from their responsibilities.

That said, the idea that the bank can be de-politicised is for the birds – and always was, because giving technocrats the power to set interest rates is in itself a political decision. The fact that the way the bank operated was relatively uncontroversial in the fi rst 10 years after independence is neither here nor there.

What is true is that today’s central banks have become more overtly political. Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, regularly lectures eurozone governments on the need for structural reform. Brown bridled at the way King called on his government to take action to reduce the budget defi cit during the fi nancial crisis. And, of course, the Bank of England courted controversy with its warnings of the potential economic consequences of both Scottish independence and Brexit.

Central banks have become more political as their performance has got worse and therein lies the danger for them. To take one obvious example, the Bank of England is currently gearing up to raise interest rates for the fi rst time in more than a decade, with strong hints that the decision will come at the next meeting of the MPC in early November.

The thinking behind the move is that ever-decreasing unemployment will lead to higher infl ation unless policy is tightened now. But there is not a lot of evidence of a looming

wage-price spiral and unless one starts to develop, the annual infl ation rate should start coming down over the next few months as last year’s drop in the value of the pound ceases to have an impact on import prices. At no time in the past 20 years has the bank raised interest rates when the economy is as weak as it currently is, so the dangers of the MPC getting it wrong are obvious.

Now, no politician is going to strip the Bank of England of its independence because it makes the wrong call on interest rates, especially since that decision could swiftly be reversed.

But here’s the position. Central banks failed to spot the last crisis coming, assuming wrongly that excessive credit growth didn’t matter because infl ation was low. The tools banks deployed to deal with the crisis of a decade ago have boosted asset prices but not the real spending power of ordinary citizens. Household debt is rising and the whiff of Groundhog Day is unmistakable. All this at a time when voters cut elites far less slack than they once did.

So imagine the worst happens and there is another crash. At the very least, central banks will be forced to come up with some new ways of stimulating their economies. Ideas that are currently frowned upon – targeted QE or straight cash payments to voters – will become mainstream.

Central bank infallibility was always something of a myth. Much of the decline in infl ation in the 1990s and early 2000s was due to globalisation rather than the brilliance of central bankers. The crisis has exposed that myth. It probably wouldn’t take that much for politicians to decide to take back control. In footballing parlance, one more heavy defeat would do it. – Guardian News and Media

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22/12

QATAR


Conference stresses building Arab engineering competencyQNADoha

A three-day conference on building engineering capabilities, competen-

cies and qualifying them for the workforce got underway yester-day with the participation of sev-eral Arab countries.

The conference, which is being held under the patronage of HE the Minister of Energy and In-dustry Dr Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, will discuss a number of topics which include building the engineering capabilities and com-petencies to achieve development, activate the role of engineering and scientifi c societies and higher education institutions to develop and upgrade engineering com-petencies and to benefi t from the experiences of Arab engineering entities in qualifying engineers.

The conference also aims to activate the role of offi cial and private institutions in developing the engineering capabilities and boost them as well as introducing the eff ects of modern technology on the engineering fi eld and how it refl ects in the labour market and to harmonise between the gradu-ates of higher education and qual-ifying them for the labour market.

Organised by Qatar Society of

Engineers (QSE) in co-operation with the Federation of Arab En-gineers, the conference is sched-uled to review the experiences of Arab and non-Arab engineers who have long-term knowledge in their fi eld of specialisation, and those from academic insti-tutions, ministries, government bodies and private sector.

Speaking at the opening cer-emony, Qatar General Elec-tricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) president Eng Essa bin Hilal al-Kuwari said that the conference was an important op-portunity to discuss ways to fur-ther improve engineering profes-

sion and the challenges facing the Qatari engineer and Arab engi-neers in general in building their capacities and competencies.

He stressed Qatar’s interest in human being as the country’s most important investment, pointing out that achieving sustainable human development is one of key pillars of the Qatar National Vi-sion 2030, which was launched by His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.

The focus on human develop-ment is also an essential objec-tive within the national develop-ment strategy, al-Kuwari added.

The Kahramma president said

that the government of the State of Qatar is working to equip the Qatari nationals with knowledge to be an eff ective contributor to the economic and social life and a major participant in the compre-hensive development witnessed by the State.

To this end, the State has pur-sued in co-operation with many specialised think tanks in various fi elds to obtain the latest interna-tional technologies, as well as by sending many students to distin-guished international universi-ties to obtain degrees that would contribute to the growth and de-velopment of the country through

attracting and sponsoring a group of outstanding students in high school and technical high schools and qualifying them at the high-est levels in engineering and other disciplines in international uni-versities inside and outside the country, while providing them with full support during their academic studies and graduation to qualify them to gain profes-sional and technical knowledge necessary to prepare them for the labour market in Qatar.

Since the Arab countries are in the stage of growth and develop-ment, the biggest support for that is to develop human and techni-

cal capacities and raise effi ciency, al-Kuwari said, adding that the conference on building engineer-ing capabilities, competencies and qualifying them for the workforce is a strong impetus to the joint work between the Qatari engineers represented in Qatar Society of En-gineers and their counterparts in the Federation of Arab Engineers.

It is a platform for exchanging experiences to work together to achieve the ambitions of the Arab peoples in meeting the desired growth and development.

Al-Kuwari pointed to impor-tant challenges facing Arab en-gineers, including the provision

of new engineers with an oppor-tunity to engage in work and gain experience as well as the con-tinuous development of experi-enced engineers and giving them opportunities for self-develop-ment and skills development.

The Kahramaa president ex-pressed confi dence that the conference, through its working papers and constructive discus-sions in various aspects, will re-sult in positive outcomes, solu-tions and proposals in favour of the development and building of engineering capabilities, saying that Kahramaa welcomes crea-tive solutions in this fi eld.

Kahramaa president Eng Essa bin Hilal al-Kuwari addressing delegates at the conference. Some of the delegates attending the conference.

Egypt ban violates students’ rightsEgypt’s move to ban Qataris

from studying in its universities

or from entering the country is a

violation of basic human rights,

Doha resident and Human Rights

Committee member Ramazan Ali

Miya told Qatar Urdu Radio’s live

show Haqeeqat yesterday.

“Education is a fundamental

right of every human being and

anyone who denies that basic

right violates all moral and legal

codes of conduct,” he said.

Miya, also the chairman of

Qatar Nepal Society, explained

that 44 Qatari students seeking to

complete their degrees in various

universities in Egypt were recently

banned from entering the country.

He also praised the initiatives

taken by the Qatari government

for students from the blockading

countries since the June 5 Saudi-

led siege.

“As many as 770 students from

the blockading countries were

given admission in the govern-

ment sector schools of Qatar this

academic year, which is clearly

a sign of the moral high ground

Qatar has taken during the crisis.”

Haqeeqat, which aims to en-

gage and interact with the large

South Asian expatriate commu-

nity in Qatar, is a joint venture of

the Gulf Times and Qatar Media

Corporation Urdu Radio. It is

broadcast from Sunday to Thurs-

day on FM107. The show is hosted

by Saif-ur-Rehman.

Log on to Qatar Urdu Radio on

Facebook and ‘@QatarUrduRadio’

on Twitter for feedback and com-

ments about the show.

Ramazan Ali Miya (right) was a guest on Qatar Urdu Radio’s live show Haqeeqat yesterday.

Elan Signage factory inauguratedThe Elan Signage factory, special-

ising in the production of high-quality traffi c and road signs was

inaugurated in Doha Industrial Area yes-terday in the presence of Ashghal presi-dent Saad bin Ahmed bin Ibrahim al-Mo-hannadi, Elan Group chairman and Qatar Development Bank CEO Abdul Aziz bin Nasser al-Khalifa and Elan Group CEO Jaber Abdullah al-Ansari.

Elan Signage factory design and man-ufacture products in accordance with the highest international standards, the company said in a statement.

The factory is spread over an area of 12,000sq m with a total production ca-pacity of about 200,000 signs per year.

It is equipped with a highly advanced automated production line, which uses the latest technologies to produce signs with very durable aluminium and steel, and high-quality silk screen and digital printing to deliver highly refl ective signs.

Elan Signage is operated by a joint ven-ture between Elan Group and VIS Mobil-ity, a prominent Italian company in the design and manufacturing of road and rail signs, and mobility infrastructure with over 50 years of expertise working with international clients.

VIS Mobility operates the factory and provides high-quality signs to supply development projects across the country and meet growing local demand.

Al-Ansari said: “The urge to establish this factory was to meet the increasing demand generated by the multiple in-frastructure and development projects across the country ahead of the World Cup 2022. This will directly contribute to ensuring a self- suffi cient Qatari market.”

He said the future plans of Elan Sig-nage factory are not limited to supplying the local market but also the export of these Qatari products worldwide.

“We are keen to produce traffi c and road signs of various types in line with interna-tional standards as we plan to export our products to foreign markets,” he said.

Elan Signage is a subsidiary of Elan Group which is owned by Qatar Develop-ment Bank. It is a 100% Qatari company that manufactures traffi c, industrial, and way fi nding signs.

Al-Mohannadi expressed the hope the new manufacturing facilities being set up in the country would be able to

effectively meet the growing require-ments of Qatar in such areas as roads and other infrastructural develop-ments.

He said the country seeks to increase reliance in local products for implement-ing its projects in line with supporting the local manufacturers.

Ashghal president Saad bin Ahmed bin Ibrahim al-Mohannadi, Elan Group chairman and Qatar Development Bank CEO Abdul Aziz bin Nasser al-Khalifa, Elan Group CEO Jaber Abdullah al-Ansari and other off icials at the opening of Elan Signage Factory yesterday.

Doha Bank holds ‘Employee Recognition Awards’

Doha Bank recently hosted its monthly ‘Employee Recog-nition Awards’ ceremony for

August 2017 to acknowledge and congratulate the outstanding serv-ice and achievements of employees from various work disciplines.

The award recipients were rec-ognised in a ceremony held at the bank’s head offi ce in West Bay in the presence of Doha Bank CEO Dr R

Seetharaman, senior management, and department heads.

The recipients have excelled in their respective areas of work “and have gone the extra mile” to ensure customer satisfaction and boost business growth towards their de-partments and the bank.

The award categories includ-ed, ‘Most Committed Employee’, which was given to Ali Abbas of

Housing Loan; ‘Best Call-Centre Executive’, received by Donna Mayekar; ‘Best Personal Finance Executive’, awarded to Sharon Pereira of Direct Sales; and ‘Best Dealer’, which went to Chetan Joshi of Investments.

Special recognition was given to three employees in the ‘Best Recov-ery Agent’ category for their out-standing eff orts towards recovery:

Ashraf Abouelela, Tariq Jootawala, and Shirin Sameer.

Seetharaman, who handed out the awards, said: “I’m very proud once again to celebrate the outstanding performances and commitment of our staff members. Their dedica-tion to our organisation is tangible day after day and it is our duty and absolute pleasure to recognise these eff orts on a regular basis.”

Doha Bank executives with the recipients of the monthly ‘Employee Recognition Awards’ for August 2017.

Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) yesterday celebrated the International Day of Older Persons as part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Several employees of QFC Regularity Authority, QFC Authority, Qatar Finance and Business Academy and Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Center visited Qatar Foundation’s Centre for Empowerment and Elderly Care (Ehsan). “This year’s theme is about tapping the talents, contributions and participation of older persons and this theme fits exactly into what Ehsan does,” Yousef Fakhroo, QFC Authority chief marketing off icer said.

International Day of Older Persons

Palestinian PM in Gaza unity visit - Gulf Times

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