Q-Post launches e-commerce service - Gulf Times

TUESDAY Vol. XXXVII No. 10056

April 12, 2016Rajab 5, 1437 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals GULF TIMES

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QATAR

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In brief

QATAR

REGION

ARAB WORLD

INTERNATIONAL

COMMENT

BUSINESS

CLASSIFIED

SPORTS

26, 27

1 – 8, 13 – 16

9 – 13

1 – 12

2 – 7, 28

8

8 – 10

11 – 25

INDEX

SPORT | Page 1BUSINESS | Page 1

CI affi rms QIB ratings with stable outlook

REGION | Confl ict

Yemen ceasefi re‘largely holding’A ceasefire that took eff ect in Yemen yesterday appears to be largely holding despite reports of fighting in some areas, the UN spokesman said. The truce between the legitimate government and Iran-supported Houthi rebels and their allies came into force at midnight local time. “The cessation of hostilities seems to be largely holding,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, although he noted that there were “some pockets of violence”. Page 8

PALESTINIANS | Accusation

Israeli forces ‘abusing detained minors’Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday accused Israeli security forces of using unnecessary force in the arrest and interrogation of Palestinian minors in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. HRW also said that arrests of youths had spiralled since an October 2015 outbreak of violence that has killed more than 200 people. Page 10

TURKEY | Tour

Saudi King beginsvisit to AnkaraThe Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, arrived in Turkey yesterday for a visit aimed at tightening increasingly close ties between the two countries, receiving a lavish welcome that underlined the strength of relations. The king was welcomed at Ankara airport by a delegation led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Page 8

AMERICA | Policy

Obama calls Libya his ‘worst mistake’ US President Barack Obama says the biggest mistake of his presidency was the lack of planning for the aftermath of the fall of late Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, with the country spiralling into chaos. Reflecting on his legacy in a Fox News interview, Obama said his “worst mistake” was “probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya.”

INDIA | Tragedy

Charges fi led over fi reworks disaster Police in the Indian state of Kerala said yesterday they had filed initial charges against six people over a massive explosion during a banned fireworks display that killed more than 100 people and left many more with horrific burns. Page 20

Qatar hope for lucky draw in fi nal qualifying

round

CRA to launch new domain ‘.doha’ for city entities and organisations

The Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) plans to launch “.doha” as a new top-level do-

main (TLD) for eligible entities and or-ganisations in the city to register their websites.

This comes as part of CRA’s strategy to foster the development of Qatar’s domain extensions as a key public re-source, by providing stable, secure, and trusted domain name services, as a pri-ority in helping shape the country’s role in the digital economy.

“Qatar Domains Registry (QDR), an initiative under the CRA, has regis-tered as many as 21,601 domains since its launch in 2011,” said Faisal Ali al-Shuaibi, CRA spokesperson.

“After facilitating the steady growth in its domain volumes, QDR is now on a fast track to make .doha the dot capi-tal of Qatar on the internet world map. Strategic initiatives in Qatar can now have a web address ending in ‘.doha’ as a unique alternative to the traditional ‘.qa’,” he added.

The current set of extensions that are made available by QDR through its accredited registrars for public regis-trations include “.qa” and “.com.qa”, “net.qa”, and the Arabic equivalent of “.qatar”(.قطر) each second level “.qa” with its unique set of eligibility re-quirements.

Additionally QDR has also allotted certain extensions referred to as closed

zones only for various government and non-profi t entities, including “.gov.qa”, “.mil.qa”, “.org.qa”, “.edu.qa”, and “.sch.qa”. These domain extensions are serving the Qatari market well and in turn the market seems to be adapting quite naturally to the use of these TLDs in general.

The successful delegation of the ge-ographic TLD “.doha” by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in March 2015, came as a good news for QDR as it will help raise greater awareness for all TLDs. In fact, one of the reasons new TLDs were originally introduced by ICANN was to off er registrants greater availability in domain name choice.

With the onset of new TLDs being released in the market, the dynamic scenario in the domain name world has opened up newer challenges for Regis-try Operators and for Registrars across the world.

However, with every challenge there are even bigger opportunities, pre-cisely why QDR has witnessed a steady increase in the number of Registrars willing to expand their portfolio of of-ferings to their diverse customer base. Five out of the total of 17 registrars that QDR has accredited are based in Qatar and few more have approached to get accredited to realise the potential of of-fering geographic TLDs.

Meanwhile, international registrars

are taking leverage of their customer base to register the domains for those wanting to secure their trademarks and brand names in the new extensions. The CRA is continually monitoring the landscape to make adjustments based on demand. A full list of the QDR-ac-credited registrars is available at this link http://www.domains.qa/en/regis-trars/accredited-registrars

Qatar-specifi c domains provide businesses and individual users with a means of diff erentiating themselves as distinctly Qatari and also of getting noticed in search engines and country-specifi c directories, all of which can help target both local and global audi-ences, the CRA said.

Likewise, the new city domain ex-tension opens up a range of new op-portunities for our local minds to in-novate by securing a unique online space fundamentally associated with Doha.

The CRA would like to especially encourage locally-owned business-es and SME’s to register their busi-nesses through the Qatar Domain Registry.

To fi nd out more, go to https://www.domains.qa/en and connect with QDR through Twitter @QatarDomains.

The CRA regulates Qatar’s commu-nications and information technology sector, postal services, and access to digital media.

By Pratap JohnChief Business Reporter

Airfares may fall further this year on the back of lower oil price, the International Air

Transport Association (IATA) has said in a report.

“Further fall in air fares are likely to be seen in 2016 as hedging contracts unwind and the decline in oil prices seen towards the end of last year feeds through,” said the IATA report.

Oil prices are “still around 30% low-er than this time in 2015”, IATA noted.

Moreover, with storage levels re-maining very high for this time of year, the overriding market sentiment for oil prices is “lower for longer”, points out the Montreal-based IATA, which is the trade association of the world’s airlines.

Indeed, according to the latest fu-tures contracts, the market expects oil prices to remain below $50/b until late-2019.

“Crude oil prices gained in March, but the market expects them to re-main lower for longer,” IATA said.

Crude oil prices rallied in late-Feb-ruary and early March, driven by mar-ket expectations of a possible freeze in production levels. The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil ended March almost 10% higher than it stood

at the end of February, IATA said.Average global fares in reported

dollar terms fell by around 12% in 2015 compared to the previous year (ex-cluding taxes, fees and surcharges)

The strong appreciation in the dol-lar seen over the period exaggerat-ed the downward trend in airfares: adjusting for the currency eff ect, global fares were approximately 4.5% lower than in 2014.

“The distortion from the dollar is likely to ease in the coming months,” IATA said.

Competitive pressures within the industry mean that the declines in oil prices seen around the end of last year and into 2016 are likely to translate into further declines in fares as fuel hedges unwind.

Exchange rate-adjusted fares fell by 6.2% year-on-year in January 2016, it said.

The latest airline fi nancial results from the fourth quarter, 2015, further cemented the picture of a strong end to 2015, driven by carriers in North America, IATA said.

Financial performance improved in all regions relative to the fourth quarter, 2014, except Latin America, it said.

While the leap year may have fl at-tered things, the global air passenger market is enjoying a strong start to 2016.

Passenger loads have slipped in re-cent months, though, which will re-quire monitoring, IATA said.

Air freight volumes in the fi rst two months of 2016 fell by 1.5% year-on-year, although the comparison is complicated by the one-off boost last year from disruption at US west coast seaports.

The freight load factor in January and February combined was well be-low average for the time of year, keep-ing cargo yields under pressure.

Annual growth in global pas-senger traffi c accelerated to 8.6% in February.

“The outcome was helped by the fact that 2016 is a leap year, but the bigger picture is that the upward trend in seasonally-adjusted traffi c, which allows for the extra day in February, remains very strong,” the report said.

Air freight volumes, IATA said, fell by 5.6% year-on-year in Feb-ruary, although the comparison is complicated by the one-off boost to air freight in the same month last year during the disruption at seaports on the US west coast.

“Looking across January and Feb-ruary combined, air freight volumes were 6.3% higher than at the start to 2014, which translates into a reason-ably solid growth rate by air freight’s recent disappointing standards,” IATA said.

IATA expects airfaresto fall further this year

Drones set to deliver packages later this year

The Qatar Postal Services Com-pany (Q-Post) is embarking upon an ambitious project

“Plane without pilot”, where it would deploy drones to send packages to the customer’s doorsteps.

Informing this yesterday, Q-Post chairman Faleh al-Naiemi said the project is expected to be launched after six months.

So many mandatory procedures need to be completed before the project takes off , said al-Naiemi, while pointing out that a number of postal services across the world are already having similar facilities to meet cus-tomer requirements.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications signed an MoU with the Qatar Postal Services Company to develop the project.

Al-Naiemi said that the post-al company was working out plans on a war footing to make available the services of global level e-com-merce providers Alibaba.com, from China.

The tie-up with Alibaba.com is ex-pected to materialise within six weeks. As part of its eff orts to strengthen the e-commerce platform, Qatar Postal Services Company is also exploring the possibility of similar tie-ups in the coming weeks.

Q-Post launches e-commerce service The formal launch of the international parcel forwarding service was announced at the Arab Future Cities Summit

By Ramesh MathewStaff Reporter

To cash in on the growing e-commerce market across the world, Qatar Postal Services

Company (Q-Post) has launched its new service “Connected by Qatar Post”.

The formal launch of the interna-tional parcel forwarding service was announced yesterday at the Arab Fu-ture Cities Summit in the presence of HE the Transport and Communica-tion Minister Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti.

Speaking on the occasion, Q-Post chairman and managing director

Faleh al-Naiemi expressed the hope that the country’s residents would avail of the services of the new plat-form developed by the postal corpo-ration while placing orders for their ever-growing requirements from such markets as the US and the UK.

Within a couple of weeks, the e-commerce platform will also cover Japan, China and Germany. More countries are to be added to the net-work later.

Al-Naiemi said the service had been successfully tested and in place for more than a week. Qatar residents could place their orders after reg-istering on the www.connected.qa website within the Q-Post portal and ask for shipment from suppliers of goods they are looking for. They could receive the packages at their select location in Qatar or collect from any Q-Post branch of their choice.

The chairman said the Q-Post was looking for feedback on the new serv-ice from Qatar residents.

Earlier at the meeting, al-Naiemi announced the launch of the postal company’s e-locker parcels scheme, under which customers could col-lect their local or international parcel from e-lockers, likely to be installed in select locations.

E-locker is something like an ATM where a customer needs to use a se-cret password to collect his/her par-cel.

The password will be provided to the customer by the postal company once the parcel is sent to the e-locker. Page 4

Faleh al-Naeimi: Q-Post chairman and managing director

The excitement and thrill the various rides provide make the ongoing Souq Waqif festival a crowd-puller since its opening on April 4. From 4pm to 10pm, visitors gather at the Amusement Park which also hosts several booths, stalls, skills games and entertainment activities. The festival concludes on April 18. PICTURE: Shaji Kayamkulam

Thrill rides at festival

QATAR

Gulf Times Tuesday, April 12, 20162

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani endorsed yesterday Cabinet decision No 13 of 2016 setting up the Tenders Committee at the Ministry of Transport and Communications. The decision is eff ective starting from its date of issue and is to be published in the off icial gazette.

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani issued yesterday Emiri decree No. 21 of 2016 endorsing a Memorandum of Understanding on co-operation in the media sector between the governments of Qatar and Sri Lanka signed in the city of Colombo on 24.3.2015 which text is attached to this decree. It shall have the power of law according to Article 68 of the Constitution. The decree is eff ective starting from its date of issue and is to be published in the off icial gazette.

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, HH the Deputy Emir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani and HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani have sent cables of condolences to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia on the death of Princess Misha’el bint Faisal bin Turki I bin Abudulaziz al-Saud.

The Arab League’s permanent representatives will hold today a consultative meeting under the chairmanship of Qatar’s ambassador to Egypt and its Permanent Delegate to the Arab League Saif bin Muqaddam al-Bueinain in an eff ort to co-ordinate positions among the Arab side with regard to the upcoming 7th ministerial session of the Sino-Arab Forum at the level of foreign ministers. The Forum will be hosted by Qatar on May 11-12.

A delegation from Qatar Chamber, represented by its Chairman, HE Sheikh Khalifa bin Jassem al-Thani is taking part at the 43rd session of the Arab Labour Conference currently underway in Cairo with the participation of 21 Arab governments represented by ministers of labour along with Arab and international figures working in the field in economic and social development. The conference will tackle issues of joint Arab action in all administrative work and production, ways to develop relations between parties of production and development of the social dialogue in addition to issuing agreements and recommendations of the Arab action and follow-up actions taken by the member states for their ratification and implementation, said Qatar Chamber in a statement.

The Advisory Council yesterday held its weekly meeting under the chairmanship of HE the Deputy Speaker Issa bin Rabia al-Kuwari. The Council reviewed the approved agenda and endorsed the minutes of its previous meeting. The Council also read a memo by the Cabinet’s General Secretariat addressed to the Interior Ministry on the Council’s recommendations about a request for a general discussion on the delays in issuing licences to facilities by the General Directorate of Civil Defence. The Council then took note of it.

Qatar University College of Law (QU-LAWC) has given Qatar Chamber (QC) a certificate of appreciation for training 10 of its students as part of an external training programme of the college. The Qatar International Centre for Conciliation and Arbitration at QC had provided training to the 10 students of QU-LAWC in order to spread awareness of related issues and equip the students with the necessary professional skills.The training focused on both the theoretical and practical aspects of commercial arbitration and included field visits to some courts to introduce the students to the nature of work there.

The Lawyers Admission Committee met yesterday under the chairmanship of the Minister of Justice Dr Hassan bin Lahdan al-Mohannadi who is also chairman of the Committee. The committee discussed topics on its agenda and took a number of decisions. The committee discussed the topics on the agenda and took the appropriate decisions. It also underlined the need for lawyers who did not pay their annual fees to pay their dues.

Emir endorses Cabinet decision on tenders panel

Emir issues decree on media tie-upwith Sri Lanka

Emir sends condolences to Saudi king

Qatar to host Sino-Arab Forum

QC takes part in Arab Labour Conference

Advisory Councilholds meeting

Qatar Chamber trains law college pupils

Lawyers committee holds meeting

In brief

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani has sent a written message to Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Jaber al-Sabah pertaining to relations between Qatar and Kuwait. HE the Minister of Foreign Aff airs Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani handed over the message when the Emir of Kuwait met him at Al-Seif Palace yesterday.

HE the Minister of State for Defence Aff airs Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah received a written message from Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Second Deputy Premier and Minister of defence containing an invitation for the defence ministers of the Gulf Co-operation Council meeting with US Defence Secretary scheduled to be held in Riyadh during current April. The ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Qatar Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Aifan handed over the message when HE the Minister of State for Defence Aff airs met him yesterday.

Emir sends message to Kuwait i leader Defence Minister receives Saudi invite

Qatar’s oldest petrolstation set to closeThe 63-year-old Doha

Petrol Station (DPS) in Msheireb will be closed

starting tomorrow, according to announcements published in lo-cal newspapers yesterday.

But a visit to the station yester-day morning found the premises barricaded, preventing vehicles from refi lling at the station’s 16 dispensers. It was however re-vealed in the evening that the station would resume operations today and would close down only tomorrow as announced.

The closure announcement also requested coupon holders to visit the DPS offi ce (opposite to Al Jaidah tower and a few blocks from the National Human Rights Committee building) to claim refunds within two weeks.

Known as the fi rst petrol sta-tion in the country, a source told Gulf Times that the DPS has been serving about 6,000 vehicles a day during its round-the-clock operation.

An automated teller machine at the petrol station was re-moved by bank personnel re-cently, a source said.

Many motorists passing by the area seemed to be clueless on DPS’ closure as they tried to enter the station yesterday to make refi lls.

“I was actually thinking of re-fi lling at this petrol station but I was not aware it is closed now,” said an Asian expatriate who was trying to look for a parking slot.

Another motorist disclosed

that a privately-owned petrol station in Lusail city was closed recently. However, it resumed operations after some time due to the huge number of vehicles which had diffi culty looking for alternative refi lling stations.

“Now, drivers like me who want to avoid long queues at

petrol stations have to do it ei-ther before 6am or late in the evening,” he said. “Otherwise, the waiting time will be longer.”

It is also being observed that the long queues of motorists now a days extend up to the road outside the petrol station, block-ing the fl ow of traffi c. The Doha

Petrol Centre on the C Ring Road was also closed down last week, leading to long lines at almost all the Woqod stations. Motorists have complained of wasting pre-cious time, waiting for their turn at petrol stations.

Some motorists have also complained of petrol stations’

failure to speed up refi lling due to the lack of enough personnel to man each dispenser and lanes.

A motorist said in some cases there is only one attendant for every four dispensers, and in some cases some lanes are left unattended which slows down the refi lling of vehicles.

The Doha Petrol Station used to serve an estimated 6,000 vehicles daily.

Hot day, rain

forecast in

the evening

A hot day is expected in Qatar today, followed by rain and thunder in some

places and strong winds by the evening.

Strong winds and high seas, due to thundery conditions, are also likely in off shore areas, ac-cording to the weather offi ce.

The Qatar Met department, through a post on its social media outlets yesterday, said while there is a possibility of scattered rain this evening, the chances of thundershow-ers will increase tomorrow and on Thursday, and continue on Friday.

On Sunday, the Met depart-ment had said another spell of rain was expected in the country due to the infl uence of a low-pressure system between Tues-day afternoon and Friday.

Today’s forecast says it will be relatively hot during the day and partly cloudy to cloudy condi-tions are also expected.

There is a chance of scattered rain in some places, which may be accompanied by thunder, by the evening.

The wind speed may go up to 30 knots during the thunder-showers.

Off shore areas will remain partly cloudy to cloudy and there is a possibility of scattered rain and thunder by the evening. The wind speed there may reach 25 knots during the thunder-showers, with the sea level rising to 7ft.

The minimum and maximum temperatures in the country to-day are likely to be 22C and 36C, respectively, with the forecast for Doha being 23C and 36C.

MEC recalls two brands of edible oil

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC) has recalled two brands of ed-

ible oil from the market for being of substandard quality.

In a statement yesterday, the MEC said it carried out an unan-nounced inspection campaign - targeting edible oil vendors - and collected samples of cook-ing oil in order to ensure their conformity with standard speci-fi cations.

The inspection campaign was part of the ministry’s eff orts to crack down on violations and

protect consumer rights.The laboratory results con-

fi rmed that the fi rst sample did not comply with the specifi ca-tions in terms of its fatty acid content, while the second one contained a higher-than-per-mitted quantity of antioxidants (TBHQ, E391) vis-à-vis GCC specifi cations, the statement noted.

The products were recalled in accordance with Article 5 of Law No 8 of 2008, which pro-hibits the sale, display or adver-tising of fraudulent and corrupt

goods. An item is considered fraudulent or corrupt if it has expired or fails to meet standard specifi cations.

Penalties for violations of the law on consumer protection in-clude administrative closures and a minimum fee of QR3,000, going up to QR1mn.

The MEC stressed that it would intensify its inspection campaigns to crack down on all violations of the consumer pro-tection law. It will refer violators of laws and ministerial decrees to the competent authorities,

who will take the appropriate ac-tion in order to protect the rights of consumers.

The ministry has urged all consumers to report violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud depart-ment and send complaints and suggestions through the call centre (16001), e-mail ([email protected]), Twitter (MEC_QA-TAR), Instagram (MEC_QA-TAR) and the MEC application for smartphones available on iPhone and Android devices (MEC_QATAR).

QNRF, British Council bring FameLab to Qatar A total of 12 scientists from Qa-

tar pitched their projects at the world’s largest science commu-

nications competition, FameLab 2016, for the fi rst time in Doha. The global ini-tiative gave participants with a passion for public engagement just three min-utes to present a project of their choice.

A British Council initiative, in partner-ship with The Times Cheltenham Science Festival and Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF), the event was held in collabora-tion with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Qatar University and Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU).

More than 65 students, 45 teachers and 55 researchers applied to take part in the inaugural event. Divided into two catego-ries, 12 participants made it through to the national fi nal, which was held at HBKU’s Student Centre in Education City.

After each contestant delivered their presentation before an audience and a panel of judges, Aida Ra’fat was awarded fi rst place in the ‘Aspiring Scientists’ category, and Ro’aa Adel was the overall winner of the ‘Young Scientists’ contest.

“FameLab Qatar – in its fi rst cycle – has proven to be an innovative plat-form for enabling young scientists, high school students, teachers and engineers in Qatar to share their passion for sci-ence, technology, engineering and maths

with the public,” said Dr Abdul Sattar al-Taie, executive director of QNRF.

Aida Ra’fat will now go on to take part in the international FameLab fi nal held at The Times Cheltenham Science Fes-tival in June. Ro’aa Adel will participate

in the fi nals at the London International Science Youth Forum, where she will meet with other young scientists from all around the world.

Frank Fitzpatrick, country director, British Council, Qatar said: “It is the fi rst time that we have staged this tried and tested British Council competition in any Gulf country. The success that we have had is the fruit of an outstanding collabo-ration with our strategic partner, Qatar National Research Fund, and our delivery partners, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and Qatar University.”

The international competition has been hosted in more than 40 countries since its launch in 2007, and it aims to fi nd and mentor the new voices of science from across the world and engage the public with science, technology, engineering and mathematics, otherwise known as STEM.

Participants of the first FameLab competition held in Qatar.

QATAR3Gulf Times

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Ooredoo CEO highlights growing

importance of smart city solutions

The growing importance of smart city solutions and services were highlighted

by Ooredoo Qatar Chief Ex-ecutive Offi cer Waleed al-Sayed yesterday at the Arab Future Cit-ies Summit.

Speaking at the opening cer-emony, he hoped more than two-third of the human race would reside in the cities by 2050. As of now, it is around 54%, he said while mentioning that increasing number of peo-ple are moving into the cities these days.

This pace of urbanisation is creating signifi cant prob-lems, from rising congestion to increased pollution – which could only be addressed by the

deployment of smart technol-ogy, he said.

Ooredoo Qatar CEO outlined how municipalities in the GCC region have the opportunity to learn from the successes and challenges faced by cities in Asia and the Americas, and apply these lessons in order to take a leadership position in the devel-opment of future cities.

In particular, Qatar is already moving to the forefront of these discussions, ranking number one among Arab nations on the World’s Economic Forum’s Networked Readiness Index, he said.

“As operators, we provide the fi xed and mobile network as-sets that are the foundation for

smart cities around the world. Ooredoo has strived to ensure

these assets are among the very best available, providing 4G, 4G+ and nationwide Fibre across our markets in the Middle East, North Africa, and South-east Asia,” said al-Sayed

Al-Sayed demonstrated Ooredoo’s role at the forefront of building smart cities by provid-ing the required network infra-structure and connectivity, and through signing strategic agree-ments with leading technology providers to jointly develop so-lutions.

In particular, Ooredoo is a key partner of the fi rst-ever Smart City in Qatar – the state-of-the-art Lusail City – which will be supported by Ooredoo’s Super-net and Fibre network.

Waleed al-Sayed speaking at the Arab Future Cities Summit yesterday: PICTURE: Jayan Orma

NHRC chief opens Asia Pacifi c Forum’s sub-regional offi ce

The Asia Pacifi c Forum (APF) sub-regional offi ce was inaugurated yester-

day in Doha by Dr Ali bin Smaikh al-Marri, chairman of the Na-tional Human Rights Committee (NHRC) along with APF Secre-tariat director Kieren Fitzpatrick.

On the sidelines of the open-ing, Dr al-Marri stressed that Qatar is a good place for human rights work, and NHRC plays a key role in enhancing the protec-tion of human rights not only lo-cally but also on the regional and international levels.

He pointed out that the new sub-regional offi ce acts as a branch for APF, which covers all national human rights organisa-tions in Asia and Pacifi c region. The offi ce will be concerned with technical and administra-tive matters, but not with ob-serving the status of human rights in any of the areas under its jurisdiction.

However, in co-operation with concerned entities, it would conduct documented studies on the issues independent of ‘any unreliable media reports that promote particular agendas.’

The APF is a coalition of 22 national human rights institu-tions from all parts of the region, including NHRC.

Dr al-Marri said that NHRC’s hosting the APF offi ce indicates its commitment to maintain close co-operation with its re-gional partners.

The opening ceremony was attended by representatives

from United Nations High Com-missioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Development Fund, the Arab Network for Hu-man Rights, GCC countries and the civil societies organisations at the Arab countries.

Dr Ali bin Smaikh al-Marri and Kieren Fitzpatrick inaugurate the APF sub-regional off ice in Doha yesterday.

Case against director of Kindergarten

A Doha Misdemeanour Court is hearing a case in which a director of a

kindergarten is accused of ob-structing the work of a labour inspector.

According to local Arabic daily Arrayah, when the offi cer from the Labour Inspection Depart-ment asked the kindergarten di-rector to show her the records of the facility and the various de-

partments there, the latter was unwilling to show her around.

The director tried to limit the movement of the inspector in-side the kindergarten and did not give her access to the rel-evant records and information, the daily said.

Eventually, though, the in-spector was given full access to the place following an extended waiting period. She spotted a

number of labour violations there, including modifi cations in the attendance records of employees and non-payment of overtime dues, according to the report.

Further, the inspector accused the kindergarten of not operat-ing the surveillance cameras at all times, as required.

The case is being reviewed by the court.

Customs foils bid to smuggle in marijuana, gold

The General Authority of Customs (GAC) inspectors at the Hamad In-ternational Airport have foiled sepa-

rate attempts to smuggle in 17.8kg of mari-juana and evade paying customs charges for 6.5kg of gold bars and coins worth more than QR600,000.

The seized marijuana was spotted when an air cargo employee doubted a cargo com-ing from an African country and wrapped in a strange manner. When the cargo was scanned and searched manually by GAC in-spectors, marijuana was found hidden within food containers after being mixed with vari-ous types of food to avoid detection.

The seized gold was found with an Asian traveller coming from another GCC country. He approached the GAC offi cers asking for a form to list the gold pieces he had as a transit traveller. The customs offi cer reviewed the pieces he had in his bag and gave him a state-ment to the eff ect.

But, when the traveller was proceeding to fi -nalise his travel procedures, the customs offi cer in charge doubted his conduct and referred him

to another offi cer for a full search. Small pack-ets were found under his belt inside his clothes, and others were found tied to his thighs. A total of 84 pieces of gold were recovered.

GAC president Ahmed bin Ali al-Mohan-nadi honoured the two GAC employees who managed to foil the smuggling attempts. He also affi rmed that GAC would continue to fully support its employees and raise their level of alertness through various profes-

sional training courses. Air Cargo Management and Private Air-

ports director Ahmed al-Khanji also praised the effi ciency and alertness of the employees concerned.

Al-Mohannadi honouring one of the customs off icers.

The other GAC off icer who was honoured.

QATAR


Arab Future Cities Summit opens The advances taking

place in information technology, telecom-

munications and transport fi elds would go a long way in turning Qatar into a knowl-edge-based economy in line with the goals enshrined in the Qatar National Vision 2030, said HE Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti, the Min-ister of Transport and Com-munications, at the opening of the Arab Future Cities Summit yesterday.

Al-Sulaiti and HE Mo-hamed bin Abdullah al-Ru-maihi, the Minister of Mu-nicipality and Environment, inaugurated the summit for experts from telecommu-nications, IT and transport fi elds.

While highlighting the

necessity for co-ordination between the three sectors, the Minister said such co-ordination is essential for the overall development of Qa-tar, which aims to become a knowledge-based economy.

“The country is expected to benefi t from the excel-lent co-ordination between these three sectors and such an initiative would be-come the driving force of its economic growth,” he said.

The four pillars of the National Vision envision overall economic growth, social development, eff ec-tive environment manage-ment and enhancing human capabilities.

The Minister said coex-istence of both private and public sectors is essential for the country’s economic progress.

Besides, the Transport and Communication Minister,

Ooredoo Group chief execu-tive offi cer Waleed al-Sayeed, Q-Post chairman Faleh al-Naiemi and Assistant Under-secretary for Digital Society Sector Development Reem al-Mansoori also spoke.

The summit is being held under the patronage of the Ministry of Transport and Communications and the Ministry of Municipality and Environment. Ooredoo is the title sponsor.

By Ramesh MathewStaff Reporter

A view of the audience.

HE Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti speaking at the opening session of the Arab Future Cities Summit yesterday.PICTURE: Jayan Orma

QATAR5


French visa for Qataris within 48 hours: envoy There has been 20%

increase in the number of visas is-

sued to France from Qatar during 2015 compared to 2014.

“The total number of visas issued in 2015 from Qatar amounted to over 31,000. More than half of them were for Qatari na-tionals,” French ambas-sador Eric Chevallier said yesterday.

The ambassador was ad-dressing an event to high-light the scope of tourism in France as well as the facili-ties off ered by the embassy to get a Schengen visa for visiting the country.

“All Qatari citizens will be provided visa in 48 hours while other residents will be able to get the visa within two weeks through Capago Mena, the offi cial agency to handle the visa proc-ess for France in Qatar,” Chevallier said.

Capago Mena now also off ers a ‘doorstep applica-tion’ for all, whereby one agent off ers a personalised service at home or offi ce for the application procedure.

“We believe that the number will go up as we promote various destina-tions in France. We have

also set up a very effi cient visa application system which is very comfortable, smooth and easy. We hope the number of visitors from Qatar will improve this year too,” he continued.

The ambassador high-lighted that France has in-creased the security level for the visitors. “We have also increased the facilities. There is also an improved quality mechanism for taxis at the airport. We have in-creased security measures among several areas espe-cially since last year.”

He observed that France is one of the most sought after destinations in the world with a total of 85mn tourists visiting the coun-try in 2015. “We expect to attract 100mn visitors by 2020. Our government has been enhancing its eff orts to welcome guests in the best conditions by further developing infrastructures and reinforcing security measures in all tourist areas and monuments,” he added.

The envoy also noted that as the summer is fast ap-

proaching, the country is expected to witness a rush in travellers. He advised those who plan to travel to France to take an appoint-ment as early as possible before the holiday season to avoid any delays.

During the event Ca-pago Mena announced the launch of its new magazine entitled “My French Link”, dedicated to promoting France. A short movie, pro-duced by some Qatari youth about their latest visit to France, was also screened at the event.

By Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

Eric Chevallier addressing an event yesterday. PICTURE: Najeer Feroke

QATAR


HBKU centre to take part in London event

The Muhammad Bin Hamad Al Thani Centre for Muslim

Contribution to Civilisa-tion (CMCC) at the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Stud-ies, a college of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), will be participating in the London Book Fair for the fi rst time this year.

The fair is scheduled to take place from April 12 to 14 in Olympia, London, where the centre will display its English publications under its series “Great Books of Is-lamic Civilisation.”

Established with the aim of providing non-Ar-abic speakers with access to scholarly works which underscore the contribu-tions Muslims have made to human civilisation, the CMCC has translated a number of major works by Muslim scholars, spanning the period from the 1st to the 9th century AH.

The “Great Books of Is-lamic Civilisation” series covers a wide range of sub-jects such as law, theology, jurisprudence, history and politics, literature, medi-cine, astronomy, optics and geography. These books are authoritative sources in their fi elds, with each pub-

lished by the English pub-lishing house Garnet.

CMCC participated in a similar book fair in Oc-tober 2014 in Frankfurt, Germany, at which Dr Aisha al-Mannai, direc-tor of the Centre, spoke about the ‘Contribution of Qatar in the Dialogue of Civilisations.’ CMCC’s series of translated texts has generated a number of positive reviews from the international community, inspiring the Centre to consider developing ad-ditional translations of its books into French, Span-ish, German and Chinese.

“I am proud to see the Muhammad Bin Hamad Al Thani Centre for Muslim Contribution to Civilisa-tion participating in the London Book Fair this year,” al-Mannai said. “The Great Books of Islamic Civilisation series highlights the contri-butions of Islamic scholars to science and philosophy and constitutes a whole li-brary of informative and en-lightening Islamic scholastic works.”

The books translated by the CMCC have been success-ful in correcting a number of misconceptions about Islam and Muslim civilisations.

Dr Aisha Yousef al-Mannai

Man jailed for not paying car rent A Doha Misdemeanour Court has sentenced an Asian man to three months in jail for failing to pay the rent of a car, local Arabic daily Arrayah reported yesterday. The owner of the car, a real estate company, had complained that the ac-cused did not pay QR14,400,

being the rent of the car for six months. He had given four signed cheques to cover the rent, but they bounced for lack of suff icient funds. Upon reviewing the submitted documents and the testimony of witnesses, the court convicted the defendant.

The store was reopened at Lagoona Mall on April 9.

iSpace Store reopens at Lagoona Mall

Apple Premium Reseller iSpace Store reopened at Lagoona Mall recently.

The store off ers customers the op-portunity to learn about and experience Apple’s products and solutions, includ-ing the Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad, with a wide range of accessories, according to a statement.

“We are excited to re-open iSpace Store at Lagoona Mall after redesign-ing the store to the latest design in-novation approved by Apple, where customers will receive a fi rst-class shopping experience,” said Bader al-Darwish, chairman and managing

director of Darwish Holding. “Cus-tomers who want to learn more about Apple’s products and other items can now get personal attention from our many dedicated Apple-trained con-sultants.”

“At iSpace Store, trained consult-ants are available to help customers learn about all the latest products from Apple, including iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, the most advanced iPhones ever; Apple Watch, as individual as you are; iPad Pro, thin. light. epic; iPad Air 2, thin and powerful; iPad mini 4, now with Touch ID; the 13-inch Mac-Book Pro with Retina display with the

all-new Force Touch trackpad; the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display with a breathtaking 14.7mn pixels; and OS X El Capitan, the world’s most advanced desktop operating system,” the state-ment said.

iSpace also off ers a wide range of pre-mium accessories from brands such as Bose, Beats, B&O Play, Yamaha, Belkin, Monster and Speck, fi tness trackers like Fitbit and Jawbone, as well as fashion accessories such as Ted Baker, iOrigin, Moshi and more.

Apple-trained staff members are present to off er advice to both con-sumer and professional customers.

Qatar Foods and Services, the wholesale division of Quality Group International, announced that it has been appointed the sole dealer of Unikai food products in Qatar. The agreement was signed by Shamsudheen Olakara, chairman, Quality Group International and Neeraj Vohra, managing director of UAE-based Unikai Foods. Unikai, a company with a 40-year heritage, mainly produces milk and dairy products including ice-creams. Basmati rice, juices, snacks, yoghurt and margarine are also included in their product line. Quality Group general manager Moideen K, finance controller Mins Mathew and Unikai’s export manager Yasar al-Hamar were also present at the agreement signing ceremony.

Quality appointed Unikai dealer

Win Suzuki car with Ooredoo Mobile Money

Ooredoo has announced a new competition for Ooredoo Mo-bile Money (OMM) customers,

giving them a chance to win a brand-new Suzuki car when they transfer money internationally or buy Oore-doo services via the company’s mobile money service.

Anyone who registers for OMM and uses the service to make an in-ternational money transfer, purchase a Hala top-up, pay their Ooredoo bills or recharge data or the Ooredoo Passport by July 10 will automatical-ly be entered into the competition,

the company has said in a statement. New customers can register for mo-

bile money for free with a valid Qatar ID at any Ooredoo shop, by dialling *140# or by downloading the free “Ooredoo Money” app on their mobile and following the on-screen instruc-tions.

Once cash is deposited into a mo-bile money wallet at any Ooredoo shop or through Ooredoo self-serv-ice machines, customers can then use the mobile wallet balance to transfer money home to 200 countries, using MoneyGram for a fee “as low as QR1”,

according to the statement.Users can also top up any Hala ac-

count (with 10% extra recharge bo-nus), recharge data (with 25% extra recharge bonus), pay Ooredoo bills or send money locally to another mo-bile, “securely and reliably 24 hours a day, seven days a week”, the statement adds.

For more information, customers can ask about OMM at an Ooredoo shop or visit the mobile money sec-tion on the Ooredoo website at https://www.ooredoo.qa/portal/OoredooQa-tar/win-a-suzuki-car

Al-Kuwari holds talks in Pretoria

Dr Hamad bin Ab-dulaziz al-Kuwari, Qatar’s candidate to

the post of Unesco Director-General, and Adviser at the Emiri Diwan, yesterday met South Africa’s Minister of Basic Education Angie Mot-shekga in Pretoria.

Al-Kuwari explained his vision as Qatar’s nominee, stressing that enhancing the role of education will be a big part of his tenure.

Motshekga hailed Qatar’s role in improving education services worldwide. She highlighted the role of Edu-cation Above All initiative and its Educate a Child pro-

gramme as something South Africa benefi ted from.

Al-Kuwari later visited the Nelson Mandela Foun-dation, which aims to com-bat racism and promote peace. He met researchers at the foundation to discuss his vision for Unesco. The foundation endorsed al-Ku-wari for the role and wished him well. Today, he will at-tend a ceremony along with a number of diplomats and South African offi cials.

Al-Kuwari will speak at the ceremony about his vi-sion for Unesco, focusing particularly on the organi-sation’s role in Africa.

QATAR7Gulf Times


QA wins ‘Best In-fl ight Duty Free’ honour Qatar Airways has an-

nounced that its cus-tomer experience has

“again been recognised for its industry leadership position”, having received the “Best In-fl ight Duty Free” accolade for the Middle East and Africa 2016 at the Pax International Readers’ Awards.

The annual awards for “the industry’s most deserving players” are selected by read-ers of the travel trade title, Pax International, over a period of six months.

“The wide selection of lux-ury and aff ordable brands in Qatar Airways’ in-fl ight duty-free programmes were com-mended, together with com-petitive prices and outstanding customer service levels,” the

airline said in a statement yesterday.

The in-fl ight duty-free award comes just weeks after Qatar Airway’s hub, Hamad International Airport (HIA), was announced as the world’s fi fth best airport for shopping at the 2016 Skytrax World Air-port Awards.

Qatar Duty Free operates the 40,000sqm duty-free shop-ping emporium at HIA, in-cluding 70 boutiques and more than 30 cafés and restaurants.

Qatar Airways Group chief executive Akbar al-Baker said, “We curate a specifi c, exclusive collection of market-leading duty-free products for our guests travelling across our global network.

“Qatar Airways’ in-fl ight

duty-free has always been re-garded by our passengers as one of the fi nest in quality and product range, and this award recognises our customers’ sat-isfaction as well as Qatar Duty Free’s dedication to providing an exceptional shopping expe-rience to all passengers fl ying with Qatar Airways.”

The airline off ers a “hand-picked selection of aff ordable and luxury brands” that make in-fl ight shopping an essential part of every passenger’s jour-ney.

Qatar Airways’ in-fl ight duty free magazine, ‘Extravaganza’, introduces passengers to a col-lection of more than 170 in-fl ight products, off ering a bal-ance of classic best-sellers and contemporary new launches.

Off icials of Jaidah Automotive and ACDelco with staff , retail customers and suppliers at the celebratory event.

Jaidah celebrates ACDelco battery sales milestone Jaidah Automotive, exclusive

dealer of Chevrolet in Qa-tar, has recorded a 20% an-

nual increase in sales of ACDelco maintenance-free batteries.

To celebrate the milestone, Jai-dah IAM (Independent Aftermar-ket) division hosted a celebratory day for over 130 of its wholesale and retail customers, suppliers and Jaidah Automotive staff .

Ulf Sebecke, managing di-rector, Jaidah Automotive, re-called that 2015 has been an

extraordinary year for the company.ACDelco maintenance-free

batteries are designed specifi -cally to handle Middle East con-ditions, and can be fi tted to al-most any vehicle, he said.

“Jadiah’s battery custom-ers have supported the group to achieve 45% market share, re-markable result in the local bat-tery business,” the offi cial stated.

At the event, Jaidah awarded some of their key clients, includ-ing Marhaba International Trad-

ing Co, Ali International Trading EST, Falcon Trading EST, Doha Motors and TRD. Co, Khalid Seif Auto Spare Parts, Woqod Fuel, Al Fajer Auto Spare Parts, Hot Speed Center, Euro Trade WLL, and Mohamed Al Sharafi .

“We at ACDelco and Gen-eral Motors put our customers are at the centre of everything we do. We are delighted that we have Jaidah Automotive so well placed to deliver quality prod-ucts and services to people in

Qatar, which is one of our key markets,” said Bader El-Houssa-mi – ACDelco regional sales and marketing manager.

Salim Ayadi, quality engineer from the Middle East Battery Company, presented the lat-est “Stamped Grid” technology used in new ACDelco mainte-nance-free batteries. “The new technology is effi cient and ro-bust, lasting signifi cantly long-er than other manufacturing methods,” he claimed.

Training course for 30 HMC physiotherapists

The physiotherapy depart-ment at Rumailah Hospi-tal, in collaboration with

the Australian-based McConnell Institute, organised a training course on manual physiotherapy for around 30 physiotherapists from HMC.

Noora al-Mudahka, chief of the physiotherapy department, said that the course was aligned to HMC’s commitment to up-grading the skills and effi ciency

of its therapists in administering the latest techniques and de-livering high quality healthcare services to all patients.

“The McConnell concept is a novel therapeutic technique developed by Australian physi-otherapist, Jenny McConnell, and is based on the use of an ad-hesive tape on aff ected areas of the body to enable mechanical realignment and the correction of misalignments in joints as well

as to help reduce pain,” she added.The McConnell Institute

provides training for physical therapists, athletic trainers and other healthcare practitioners to improve the management of chronic musculoskeletal prob-lems. The McConnell concept for the management of muscu-loskeletal problems is based on understanding both the symp-toms and the causative factors, and addressing each of these us-

ing an adhesive tape technique and specifi c muscle training.

“We at HMC’s physiotherapy department are always keen to adopt evidence-based models of treatment to ensure that our pa-tients are provided with safe and eff ective care,” added al-Mudahka.

Manual physiotherapy ex-pert and faculty member at the renowned Australian Neurody-namic Institute, Alvio Alpacini led lectures at the course.

Fashion show to feature collections by VCUQatar students Innovative and creative designs from fashion students at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCUQatar) will be on display this week at ‘Reach’ - the university’s 17th annual fashion show. Hosted by Salam Stores at The Gate Mall, the show will feature collections of sophomore, junior, and senior fashion students. The three-day show will begin today. The timing is from 6.30pm to 7.30pm.Rami al-Ali, whose collections have been worn by the likes of Beyoncé, Aishwarya Rai, and

Diana Haddad, will be the guest designer at the show. He will present his most recent ready-to-wear collection. ‘Reach’ will also showcase the individual vision, creativity, and styles of VCUQatar’s students. The collections on show will present an eclectic mix of day to evening looks that reflect the singular aesthetic of each student and their individual concepts.The event is being supported by W Doha Hotel, Glam magazine, Guerlain, Carolina Herrera,

Tajmeel Qatar International Beauty Academy, Makeup District, Bombay Silk Centre, and Sara’s Secrets. Salam Stores, the W Doha Hotel, and Glam magazine will present awards that include opportunities for the students to use dedicated space at Salam Stores, platforms to showcase collections at W Hotels, and a magazine fashion spread. Tickets cost QR50 and can be purchased online from http://www.qatar.vcu.edu/events/reach-fashion-show-1

Yemen truce takes hold, raising peace talks hopes AFPMarib

A UN-brokered ceasefi re was taking hold in Yemen yesterday despite spo-

radic clashes, raising hopes that peace talks due next week may fi nally resolve the country’s dev-astating confl ict.

Forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the Shia Houthi rebels who drove his government out of the capital, and the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in Yemen last year all pledged to honour the truce that took eff ect at midnight yesterday.

The UN special envoy for Yem-en, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, called the ceasefi re “a fi rst step in Yemen’s return to peace”.

“This is critical, urgent and much needed. Yemen cannot af-ford the loss of more lives,” he said.

Previous eff orts to stop the fi ghting in Yemen - which has killed thousands and forced more than 2mn people from their homes - collapsed amid mutual recriminations.

The confl ict in the impov-erished Arabian Peninsula na-tion has ruined large parts of the

country and raised Middle East tensions, with Saudi Arabia and its allies backing the government and Iran supporting the rebels.

Militants including from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the powerful Yemeni branch of the extremist net-work, have exploited the confl ict to seize territory and gain infl u-ence.

But pressure had been build-ing for the ceasefi re and there are hopes it can be the cornerstone of a long-lasting peace deal that can be hammered out at talks taking place from April 18 in Kuwait.

General Mohamed Ali al-Mak-dashi, the chief of staff for Hadi’s forces, said early yesterday the ceasefi re was largely holding de-spite some violations by rebels.

“The truce has not collapsed and we hope the rebels end their attacks and respect the cease-fi re,” he said, alleging breaches in several areas including the cit-ies of Taiz in the southwest and Marib east of Sanaa.

Loyalists accused Houthis of 25 violations around Taiz, where one civilian was killed in rebel bombing.

The rebels, meanwhile, said in a statement there was at least one coalition air strike in Taiz

province, and accused loyalists of being behind 33 truce viola-tions north and east of Sanaa, as well as in the south.

Five soldiers were killed in clashes with rebels in Marib province and Taiz, military sources said.

A committee of representa-tives from both sides will try to ensure the ceasefi re is respected.

Coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed Assiri earlier de-scribed the violations as “minor”.

“It is the fi rst day and we should be patient,” the top Saudi offi cer said. “Day by day, it will be better.”

An AFP photographer in Sanaa said the rebel-held capital has not been targeted by coalition warplanes since Sunday.

Prime Minister Ahmed bin Dagher also played down vio-lations, saying that the truce “seems good”, adding after meeting the UN envoy in Riyadh that “we want a durable peace”.

A UN spokesman said the ces-sation of hostilities was “largely holding”, while noting “some pockets of violence.

The UN says more than 6,300 people have been killed in Yemen in the past 12 months, around half of them civilians.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomes Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman of Saudi Arabia upon his arrival at Esenboga Airport in Ankara yesterday.

Red carpet welcome for King Salman in Turkey AFPAnkara

Saudi King Salman arrived in Turkey yesterday for a visit aimed at tightening

increasingly close ties between the two countries, receiving a lavish welcome that underlined the strength of relations.

The 80-year-old king was welcomed at Ankara airport by a delegation personally led by President Recep Tayyip Er-dogan, in an unusual break from

protocol and showing the im-portance Turkey attaches to the visit.

Television footage showed the king, wearing black sunglasses, serenely descending from the plane with a special escalator rather than steps before being welcomed by Erdogan.

King Salman is expected to hold talks today at Erdogan’s presidential palace in Ankara expected to focus on the Syrian confl ict and the fi ght against militants.

He will then attend the Or-

ganisation of Islamic Co-oper-ation (OIC) summit in Istanbul on Thursday and Friday after wrapping up talks in the Turkish capital.

A 300-person Saudi delega-tion had earlier arrived in An-kara to co-ordinate the king’s accommodation and deal with security issues, the Hurriyet newspaper said.

Five hundred luxurious Mer-cedes, BMW and Audi cars had been hired for the king’s trans-port in Ankara and Istanbul, it added. The king’s personal be-

longings had all been shipped to Turkey in cargo planes.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey have co-operated closely over the fi ve-year Syrian war.

In February, Saudi jets ar-rived at Incirlik air base in southern Turkey to join the air campaign against Islamic State militants.

Turkey will take over the OIC’s rotating presidency from Egypt at the Istanbul summit, which is seen as a new bid by Erdogan to showcase Turkey’s infl uence in the Islamic world.

Saudi king ends landmark Egypt visit AFPCairo

Saudi King Salman on Monday wrapped up a landmark fi ve-day visit to Egypt marked by lavish

praise and multibillion-dollar invest-ment deals, in a clear sign of support for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime.

The 80-year-old monarch’s visit came as Riyadh aims to shore up ties with Cairo.

The visit also highlights Saudi Ara-bia’s fi rm support for Egypt’s fi ght against the militant Islamic State group.

“The other mission that we should work on together is the fi ght against extremism and the fi ght against ter-rorism,” King Salman said on Sunday in an address to the Egyptian parlia-ment.

Yesterday, he was awarded an hon-orary doctorate from Cairo University.

Over the past fi ve days, King Salman and Sisi signed a slew of multibillion-dollar investment deals that included a plan to build a bridge over the Red Sea connecting Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Egypt also agreed to demarcate its maritime borders with Saudi Arabia by offi cially placing two islands in the Straits of Tiran in Saudi territory.

The agreement provoked an im-mediate backlash in Egypt, with thousands of Twitter users accusing Sisi of selling the islands. The islands had historically been Saudi and were “leased” to Egypt in 1950.

Analysts said Salman’s visit puts to rest months of reports in Saudi and Egyptian media of strained ties be-tween the two countries over Cairo’s unwillingness to participate fully in Saudi-led operations against Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen.

Egypt had announced it would back Saudi Arabia with ground forces if needed, but appears to have balked at sending troops for fear of becoming mired in the confl ict.

“The two countries realise that common interests outweigh their practical diff erences,” said Fawaz

Gerges, professor of Middle East poli-tics at the London School of Econom-ics and Political Science.

Following Salman’s visit, Egypt would now be expected to off er more vocal support for Saudi Arabia when it comes to Iran and Yemen, he said.

“The Egyptians are basically going to convince the Saudis that they are in the same trench when it comes to the Saudis’ existential fi ght with Iran, and Saudi Arabia too seems to be very committed to Egyptian national secu-rity and the Sisi administration,” said Gerges.

Libya coastguard rescues 115 migrants

US woman on trial for ‘insulting’ UAE

AFPTripoli

Libya’s coastguard yesterday rescued 155 migrants east of Tripoli who had been trying to

reach Europe by boat, an offi cial said. “We were told that a boat with

people of African nationalities on board was in trouble off Ghout Rum-man,” coastguard Colonel Ashraf al-Badri said, adding that the informa-tion came from fi shermen.

“We found the boat and rescued the migrants,” he added, standing among the migrants in Tripoli’s port.

Badri said the vessel had been car-rying about 115 people from Mali and other African states.

UN refugee agency staff gave them clothes and food, as well as fi rst aid to some, as buses arrived to take them to detention centres in Tripoli.

Libya has long been a stepping stone for migrants seeking a better life in Europe, with Italy some 300km (185 miles) away across the Mediter-ranean.

Smugglers have stepped up their lucrative business in the chaos that has followed the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Muammar Gadd-afi.

In late March, the Italian coast-guard said it had rescued nearly 1,500 migrants, including many women and children, in the Mediter-ranean off the coast of Libya in just two days.

An American woman who has been in custody for seven weeks in Abu Dhabi for allegedly insulting the UAE and its leaders appeared in court yesterday, local media reported. The unnamed woman, 25, is charged with “insulting the country and its leaders through verbal assault,” English-language daily The National said. She told the court that she was waiting for a taxi at Abu Dhabi airport when two men approached her and did not like the way she spoke to them. The woman told the court she did not know why she was on trial. The case is being treated as a misdemeanour. “The men tried to help me. I had another flight to catch at 1:29am. I refused to engage with them and nothing happened,” the paper cited the defendant as saying. The woman said she has been in cus-tody since February 23. She asked the judge if she could pay a fine and go. A verdict is set for May 2.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman of Saudi Arabia receiving a honorary doctorate degree from Jaber Nassar, the head of Cairo›s University,.

8 Gulf TimesTuesday, April 12, 2016

REGION/ARAB WORLD

ARAB WORLD

Gulf Times Tuesday, April 12, 2016 9

UN envoy: next phasein Syria talks ‘crucial’ AFPDamascus

The UN peace envoy to Syria said yesterday in Damascus that an upcoming round

of negotiations in Geneva aimed at ending the country’s five-year war would be “crucially impor-tant”.

Staff an de Mistura’s comments came as off ensives by Syria’s Al Qaeda affi liate and allied rebels triggered a spike in violence that could endanger the negotiations.

“The Geneva talks’ next phase are crucially important because we will be focusing in particular on the political transition, on governance and constitutional principles,” de Mistura told reporters after meet-ing Foreign Minister Walid Mual-lem.

“We hope and plan to make them constructive and we plan to make them concrete,” the envoy said.

Scheduled to resume tomorrow, the Geneva talks are aimed at end-ing a confl ict that has killed more than 270,000 people and forced millions to fl ee their homes since it erupted in March 2011.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution in December that paved the way for the talks and called for elections in Syria to be held 18 months after a transitional government is agreed.

The fate of President Bashar al-Assad is a major sticking point, however.

While the opposition insists As-sad can play no role in a future tran-sitional government, the regime says voters should decide his fate.

The Syrian Observatory for Hu-man Rights said yesterday that Al Nusra Front and allied militia were pressing off ensives around north-

ern, central and coastal Syria. “Al Nusra and allied rebel groups

are waging three synchronised of-fensives” on front lines in Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces, Ob-servatory director Rami Abdel Rah-man said.

So far, they have seized a hilltop in Latakia province, the heartland of Assad’s Alawite sect, the group said.

The Syrian army was yesterday reported to be sending reinforce-ments to Aleppo, where renewed fi ghting is threatening a fragile truce in the run-up to the next round of peace talks.

Underlining the confl ict’s re-gional dimensions, Iranian media announced the fi rst deaths of mem-bers of its regular army in Syria, a week after Tehran said army com-mandos had been deployed in sup-port of Damascus. Iran’s military support has so far mostly been provided by the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps.

An eruption of fi ghting near the ancient city of Aleppo in the last two weeks marks the most seri-ous challenge yet to a “cessation of hostilities” brokered by the US and Russia with the aim of facilitating peace talks.

Meanwhile, Russia said there were no plans to storm Aleppo de-spite thousands of Al Nusra mili-tants massing around the city.

Sergei Rudskoy, head of the Rus-sian General Staff ’s main opera-tions command, said around 9,500 Al Nusra fi ghters had gathered to the south-west and north of Aleppo and were planning a large-scale of-fensive to cut the city off from Da-mascus.

“All actions of the Syrian military and Russian air force are directed at disrupting the plans of Jabhat al-Nusra. No storming of the city of Aleppo is planned,” he said.

Residents inspect damages after an airstrike on the rebel held al-Maysar neighbourhood in Aleppo, Syria, yesterday.

Netanyahu admits Israel attacked Hezbollah in Syria

Israel has launched “dozens” of air-strikes in Syria against weapons convoys headed to Lebanon’s radi-

cal Shia Hezbollah movement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted yesterday.

“We act when we have to act, including here, on the other side of the border, in doz-ens of attacks, to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining destabilizing weapons,” Netan-yahu told reserve soldiers during a military

exercise in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights said.

“We act also at other fronts, near and far,” he added, “but only if we can’t avoid dan-gers to Israel in any other way.”

Israeli offi cials have said in the past that their country acts to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining dangerous weapons via Syria, but it was a rare public admission by Netanyahu, in which he also referred to the quantity of airstrikes.


ARAB WORLD10

Darfur votes on unifi cation as one district DPAKhartoum

Residents of the violence-torn Darfur region of Sudan be-gan voting in a three-day

referendum yesterday on whether its fi ve states should form a single entity, more than a decade after the beginning of a confl ict that has killed 300,000 people.

“Arrangements have been com-pleted to assure a smooth and se-cure [voting] process, and we hope to announce the results within 10 days” after polls close tomorrow, referendum offi cial Omar Ali Jamie

told Sudanese national radio from Darfur.

Jamie said the ballot was being monitored by observers from the Arab League, the African Union, as well as more than 700 local observ-ers.

Rebel groups operating in Darfur, which accuse President Omar al-Bashir’s government of neglecting the region, believe it would carry more weight as a single administra-tive unit.

The rebel group Sudan Libera-tion Army (SLA) has called for a boycott of the referendum. In a statement released on Sunday, the SLA called on “all the people of

Darfur ... to stand with full force to confront the referendum, which leads to fragmentation of the social fabric.”

But the government’s argument that decentralisation guarantees more local development was ex-pected to win the vote, even amid concerns that it was not really rep-resentative of local opinion.

More than 3mn people had regis-tered to vote in the referendum.

The US expressed concern that insecurity and inadequate registra-tion of internally displaced Darfuris “prohibit suffi cient participation” in the referendum.

“If held under current rules and

conditions, a referendum on the status of Darfur cannot be consid-ered a credible expression of the will of the people of Darfur,” the US State Department said ahead of the vote.

About 300,000 people have died from the fighting or related malnutrition and disease, while more than 2.5mn have been dis-placed, including more than 100,000 since January, according to the UN.

Al-Bashir recently challenged ac-cusations that the Sudanese army has been bombing and torching vil-lages in Darfur and said the region was at peace.

Israel clears colonel over Palestinian shooting death AFPJerusalem

An Israeli colonel has been cleared of any criminal charges after shooting dead

a Palestinian teen who stoned his jeep in the West Bank last year, the military said yesterday.

A rights group that distributed a video showing the shooting denounced the decision, which

comes amid controversy over a separate killing of a Palestinian by an Israeli soldier last month.

Colonel Israel Shomer had been under investigation for the July 3 shooting near Qalandia checkpoint, south of Ramallah, that killed Mohamed Kasba, 17.

The army said at the time Shomer and another soldier had opened fi re when the vehicle was damaged “and in response to the imminent danger”.

But a video distributed by the B’Tselem human rights group appeared to dispute the claim, showing the shots were fi red at Kasba while he seemed to be run-ning away after stoning the jeep.

The army said a Palestinian had thrown a rock through the windshield of Shomer’s vehicle and that in response the offi cer “exited his vehicle and fi red into the air and towards the lower ex-tremities of the assailant.”

“However, due to the reality of the operational situation, the shots resulted in the death of the assailant,” it said in a statement.

“The military advocate general concluded that the shooting of the perpetrator was not criminal and the event does not justify taking legal action against the of-fi cer.”

B’Tselem condemned the ar-my’s decision, which it called “an integral part of the whitewash

mechanism which is Israel’s mil-itary investigative system.”

It said the “assertion that the fi ring was legal, since the of-fi cer claimed that he aimed at the youth’s legs but missed, clearly indicates the investigative sys-tem’s willingness to ignore the law and the open-fi re regulations.”

The decision comes with ten-sions high over the actions of another Israeli soldier, who was caught on video shooting a Pal-

estinian assailant in the head on March 24 as he lay on the ground wounded and posing no apparent danger.

B’Tselem also distributed the video in that case in Hebron in the occupied West Bank and it was widely shared online.

The soldier’s lawyers say he thought the Palestinian could have been carrying explosives, though he had reportedly already been checked for a suicide belt.

The Palestinian had along with another man stabbed an Israeli solider minutes earlier before be-ing shot and wounded, the army says.

The soldier, whose bullet to the head killed the Palestinian, has been arrested and could face charges of manslaughter.

Top military brass have strong-ly condemned his actions, though far-right protesters and politi-cians have called for his release.

HRW: Israeliforces abusingminors heldin detention AFPJerusalem

Human Rights Watch yes-terday accused Israeli security forces of using

unnecessary force in the arrest and interrogation of Palestin-ian minors in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.

HRW also said that arrests of youths had spiralled since an Oc-tober 2015 outbreak of violence that has killed more than 200 people.

It cited fi gures released by Israeli rights group B’Tselem showing that in January 406 Pal-estinians under 18 years of age were held “as security detainees and prisoners” compared with 183 in January 2015.

“Interviews with children who have been detained, video foot-age and reports from lawyers reveal that Israeli security forces are using unnecessary force in arresting and detaining children, in some cases beating them, and holding them in unsafe and abu-sive conditions,” the rights group said in a statement.

“Screams, threats, and beat-ings are no way for the police to treat a child or to get accurate in-formation from them,” it quoted its Israel and Palestine director Sari Bashi as saying.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the report was “inaccurate and misleading”.

“The youths were arrested for being directly involved in terror-ist and criminal activity,” he said.

HRW cited testimony from three young men, one - iden-tifi ed as 16-year-old Ahmed A. - from the West Bank city of Hebron and two from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

“Soldiers arrested Ahmed on November 27 at about 7pm in the garden of a friend... near his home in Hebron,” the HRW re-port said.

“He said that the soldiers blindfolded and handcuff ed him and took him to a police sta-tion in the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba, where he was made to sit outside on the ground until about 12:30am.

“He asked to have his father come there, but police offi cers told him his parents would not be

allowed into the interrogation. “He was permitted to speak to

his lawyer by phone before the interrogation,” it added.

“He said interrogators accused him of having a knife, which he denied, and then took him to a military compound,” where six or seven soldiers forced him to lie on the ground and hit and kicked him.

He told Human Rights Watch he was “hit on my back and legs, with kicks and blows to my head.”

“He was transferred to a de-tention facility the next day and released six days later without charge, after a DNA test failed to link him to a knife that had been found,” the report said.

Violence since October has left 200 Palestinians and 28 Israelis dead.

Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out attacks and many of the assailants have been young people, including teenag-ers, according to Israeli authori-ties.

Other youths have been shot dead during protests and clashes with security forces.

Iraq parliament to blockPM’s technocrat cabinet ReutersBaghdad

Iraq’s parliament is unlikely to vote on a new cabinet line-up proposed by Prime Minister

Haider al-Abadi in an attempt to curb corruption after lawmak-ers said yesterday the dominant political blocs would name their own ministerial candidates.

Abadi last month present-ed parliament with a list of 14 names, many of them academ-ics, to free the ministries from the grip of a political class he has accused of using a system of ethnic and sectarian quotas instituted after the US-led in-vasion in 2003 to amass wealth and infl uence.

But political blocs, unhappy with Abadi’s proposal to replace their representatives with unaf-fi liated technocrats, have opted instead to name substitutes that maintain the current party bal-ance, lawmakers said.

Abadi asked parliament on March 31 to accept, reject or modify a line-up which also shrank the cabinet to 16 posts from 22. Lawmakers said they would take up to 10 days to re-spond. That deadline passed at the weekend without a decision.

“There is no agreement on the list,” said Abbas al-Bayati, a Shia Muslim MP from the rul-ing State of Law coalition. “The blocs are trying to fi nd substi-tutes for their own ministers in the outgoing cabinet who would

be technocrats at the same time.”

Another senior Shia lawmaker said it could take another 10 days or more before parliament votes on a revamped list. “I see no clear response from the political blocs,” to Abadi’s list, said Hamid al-Mutlaq, a Sunni Muslim MP.

At least two of Abadi’s candi-dates, nominated for the posts of fi nance and oil ministers, have withdrawn their names.

The three ministers from the political bloc led by powerful Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has pressed Abadi for weeks to replace party-affi liated minis-ters with independents, resigned yesterday, citing frustration with the other parties’ refusal to give up their posts.

Israeli security forces prevent relatives of Abed Dawiyat from accessing their home after they sealed off the building in the Palestinian east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sur Baher, yesterday. Jailed Palestinian Abed Dawiyat is suspected of the stoning of Alexander Levlovich’s car. The stones had hit the car of the 64-year-old Israeli man, causing him to veer off the road and hit a tree. He died in the crash, and two female passengers were injured.

Abbas tightens grip withnew constitutional court ReutersGaza/Ramallah

Palestinian President Mah-moud Abbas has quietly established a constitu-

tional court that analysts say concentrates more power in his hands and may allow him to sideline Hamas in the event of a succession struggle.

The nine-member body, which will have supremacy over all lower courts, was created without fanfare by presidential decree on April 3 and will be in-augurated once its ninth mem-ber is sworn in, offi cials said.

Critics say the body is packed with jurists from Abbas’s Fa-tah party and risks deepening Palestinian political divisions. Fatah says it is Abbas’s right to create the court, which it says is independent of the 81-year-old president.

“Neither the president nor any of the leaders (of Fatah) has a private agenda regarding this issue,” said Osama al-Qwasmi, the spokesman for Fatah in the West Bank. “The prime task of the constitutional court is to monitor laws. By the law, it is a completely independent body and we have full confi dence in it.”

Abbas’s decision comes at a time of worsening splits be-tween Fatah and Hamas and as questions are raised about what will happen when the president steps down or if he were to die in offi ce without a successor.

Abbas took offi ce after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004,

and was elected to a four-year term as president in 2005.

But new elections were not held in 2009 and he continues to govern by decree. Parliament has not sat since 2007. In theory, the speaker of parliament, a Ha-mas member, would take over as president on an interim basis were Abbas to die in offi ce, al-though Fatah disputes whether that remains constitutional.

While Abbas may have the authority to create the court, which is being established 14 years after the Palestinians drafted a basic law, a form of constitution, some analysts see it as a way of circumventing op-position at a critical time.

“It’s a blatant power grab at a time when he knows he can get away with it,” said Grant Rumley, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defence of De-mocracies in Washington, DC.

“From Abbas’s standpoint, this is his way of both thwarting his rivals in Hamas and secur-

ing his Fatah party’s hold on the Palestinian Authority once he is gone,” Rumley said.

Palestinian commentators also see the court, whose deci-sions would be binding on the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, as a means of bol-stering presidential authority and marginalising Hamas. All nine members are either Fatah members or seen by Hamas and others as being allied with Fatah.

“It is as if you are confi scating everything and putting all the institutions in your hands,” said Hani al-Masri, an unaffi liated political analyst based in Ram-allah.

Hamas, which won Palestin-ian elections in 2006 and seized control in Gaza a year later, saw itself sidestepped during the swearing-in process. Two of the nine members are from Gaza. Fatah said Hamas prevented them from leaving the territory to be sworn in at a ceremony in the West Bank on April 5. So

instead they were sworn in via video link on Sunday.

“This is a factional court,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas’s spokesman, arguing that it gave Abbas the ability to side-step parliament - if the cur-rent one ever sits again - or if a new parliament is eventually elected.

Abbas’s legal adviser, Has-san al-Awry, said the court was needed in part because parlia-ment’s legal status was in ques-tion given the lack of elections.

“It is not a shame if the con-stitutional court would debate this issue,” he said, adding that the justices on the court were all legal experts and independent. “We want a judicial reference should such an issue be brought up.”

Yet Palestinian scholars say the court raises problems. Is-sam Abdeen, a law professor at Birzeit University in the West Bank, said it would have little check on its authority.

“It can be a lethal weapon if misused,” he said, pointing out that Abbas’s political oppo-nents, such as Mohamed Dah-lan who now lives in exile, have a new hurdle to clear in eff orts to mount legal challenges to his authority.

Rumley regards the court as a potential barrier to reform.

“Rather than reforming his party, preparing for elections, or reactivating the defunct parlia-ment, (Abbas) is creating anoth-er judicial body by presidential decree in order to, among other things, approve presidential de-crees,” he said.

Mohamed Qassem, President of the Palestinian constitutional court, is sworn in by President Mahmoud Abbas (second left) in Ramallah on April 5.

AFRICA11Gulf Times


Car bomb targets Somali govt offi ce ReutersMogadishu

A car bomb at local gov-ernment headquarters in Mogadishu killed fi ve people

yesterday and wounded fi ve, an of-fi cial said, in an attack claimed by Somali Islamist group Shebaab.

Shebaab has frequently attacked government targets, hotels and restaurants in the capital since be-ing pushed out by African Union peacekeeping forces in 2011 and re-basing in the country’s south.

“We are behind the governor HQ attack,” Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group’s military operations spokes-man, said.

On Saturday, another bomb killed three and wounded fi ve in Mogadishu.

A police spokesman said that in yesterday’s attack a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explo-sives into the entrance of the head-quarters.

But mayoral spokesman Abdifa-tah Omar blamed a car parked at the rear of the heavily fortifi ed com-pound. “So far we have confi rmed fi ve civilians died and fi ve others were injured,” he said.

The blast, which other reports suggested may have been deto-nated remotely, destroyed part of a guardroom. “We heard a huge bang and then (saw) huge clouds of smoke over us. We are safe,” one fe-male worker inside the compound, who identifi ed herself as Nasra, told Reuters.

Separately, a former media offi cer

for Shebaab was publicly executed by a government fi ring squad yes-terday for ordering the death of six journalists, court offi cials said.

Hassan Hanafi , who arranged news conferences for the Islamist group when the militants control-led the capital Mogadishu, admitted during his trial to personally killing one journalist in Somalia.

“Today, the court fulfi ls the ex-

ecution of Hassan Hanafi who had killed journalists,” Abdullahi Has-san, deputy judge of the court, told reporters at the scene on Monday.

A masked Hanafi was tied to a pole before government forces opened fi re at an execution fi eld at a police training camp, according to witnesses.

Since 1992 a total of 59 journal-ists have been killed in Somalia, ac-

cording to industry body, the Com-mittee to Protect Journalists.

Hanafi , 30, admitted joining She-baab in 2008 when he worked as a journalist for a local broadcaster. He was arrested in neighbouring Kenya last year and returned to Somalia for trial. A few days ago, a military court executed two men accused of killing a female reporter employed by the state radio, court offi cials said.

A Somali policeman walks to secure the wreckage of a car destroyed in a bomb explosion at a local government headquarters in Mogadishu.

Parents of Chibok girls cling to hope By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Reuters Lagos

When Dauda Yama retrieved his mobile phone from a neighbour’s house in January this year, he no-

ticed a missed call from his daughter Saratu who had been missing for almost two years.

The last time he spoke with Saratu was on April 14, 2014, when she rang to say men from the Islamist group Boko Haram had loaded her and her classmates from the Gov-ernment Girls’ Secondary School in Chibok in northeast Nigeria onto trucks.

Attempts to reach her again failed and two years on, 219 girls abducted that night remain missing, despite a global campaign #bringbackourgirls involving celebrities and US fi rst lady Michelle Obama calling for them to be found.

The students are among an estimated 2,000 girls and boys abducted by the Boko Haram since the start of 2014, with many of those abducted used as sex slaves, fi ghters and even suicide bombers, according to an Amnesty International report.

But when Yama returned the missed call that evening, a man answered. Yama hung up and rushed to the home of Yakubu Nkeki, chairman of the Association of Parents of the Abducted Girls from Chibok.

“He asked me what he should do,” Nkeki, 58, a schoolteacher, whose 17-year-old adopted daughter Maimuna Yakubu Usman is among those missing, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Nkeki took the phone and redialled the number that was again answered by a man who said the phone belonged to his wife.

Reporting the matter to any of the armed personnel around Chibok was out of the question so instead they informed a cam-paigner with the Bring Back Our Girls group, which advocates the return of the missing girls “now and alive”.

“We don’t know who to trust,” said Nkeki who has received physical threats for his ef-forts to keep the abduction of the Chibok girls in the headlines and the government’s sights with the abduction becoming a politi-cal issue for Nigerian leaders.

Providing counsel to parents of the missing Chibok girls is part of Nkeki’s role as chair-man of the association. He also checks up on the parents to see if they need help at all.

“I check if they have food items or if someone is seriously sick,” he said. “If there is any issue, I call the committee members.”

Some months ago, for example, the as-sociation received a donation of 128 bags of corn from a missionary group. The associa-tion decided to give three bags to one parent to sell and raise money for medicine for his son who was bitten by a snake.

Nkeki said he had not intended to become a leader for the parents but was catapulted into the role when he tried to rally families into action after the abduction.

Under his lead, and frustrated by a lack of offi cial action, the parents formed a team to search the Sambisa forest for missing girls the day after the abduction, fi nding scarves and other items along a trail until heavy rain forced them back.

Nkeki then organised a meeting of parents in his village of Mbalala, calling for a peaceful demonstration and seeking media coverage to get the word out, with his initiatives prompt-ing the parents to appoint him as their leader.

It was Nkeki’s eff orts that ascertained exactly how many girls were missing after the school said the Boko Haram had razed all records. He cycled from village to village for two weeks with pen and paper to build a register.

“I got the names of the girls, their pic-tures. I asked for proof. They showed me their daughters’ books so that I could get the exact name the girl used in the secondary school,” he said.

His census revealed the number of girls abducted was 276 but 57 were able to escape as the trucks took off and came home.

But the attempts to rally parents were not always welcome.

Nkeki said some parents refused to have anything to do with the parents association and he has been harassed and arrested by armed forces personnel, displeased with his media appearances and eff orts to keep the missing Chibok girls in the news.

Former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan was criticised for his slow reaction to the Chibok kidnappings, which was seen by some as indicative of his response to Boko Haram, which at its strongest held large swathes of northeastern Nigeria.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who de-feated Jonathan in an election last year, or-dered a new investigation into the abduc-tions in January.

“My family is afraid for me. Even my un-cle’s wife whose daughter was abducted, the one I adopted, said to me that she does not want to lose her daughter and then also lose me,” said Nkeki.

But despite Nkeki’s eff orts, his daughter and the other girls are still missing, with the parents desperate for any leads that could help locate their daughters.

Hopes were raised earlier this month when a suspected female suicide bomber who claimed to be one of the missing Chibok girls was arrested in northern Cameroon.

But offi cial investigations revealed the 12-year-old girl was not from Chibok but abducted from Bama in northeastern Nigeria by Boko Haram a year ago.

Nkeki and Yama dialled Saratu’s number a few more times after the initial success but the line repeatedly went dead. However, Nkeki says it rang when Yama tried again in February.

“The man warned him never to call his wife’s number again. He said if he is not careful, he will lose his life,” he said.

Yana Galang, the mother of Rifkatu Galang, one of the abducted Chibok girls, holds a phone with a picture of her daughter.

Regional bloc to try former Nigeria security adviser

West African regional bloc Ecowas ruled yesterday it will hear the case of Nigeria’s ex-national security

adviser Sambo Dasuki, who claims he has been unlawfully arrested and detained without trial.

The Economic Community of West Afri-can States (Ecowas) court set aside the Ni-gerian government’s objections to it taking the case, saying the matter dealt with “fun-damental” human rights issues.

Dasuki, on trial for fraud in connection with the alleged looting of millions of dol-lars from arms contracts, has been detained since December despite being granted bail.

“From the totality of the issues brought

before this court, it is clear and there is no ambiguity that the applicant is seeking en-forcement of his right to freedom,” said judge Friday Chijoke Nwoke.

“In our opinion, what Dasuki brought be-fore us as a case is an issue for the enforce-ment of his fundamental rights to liberty.”

Last week, an Abuja court directed the Ni-gerian government to allow the former secu-rity chief access to his lawyers.

“This government needs to take more se-riously the judicial process,” human rights lawyer Clement Nwankwo told AFP. “When it fails to do so, it discredits any trial that it conducts.”

Zimbabwe puts down female rhino injured by poachers

Game wardens in Zimbabwe have killed a

black rhino popular with tourists to end its

suff ering after suspected poachers shot

and severely wounded the animal, the

wildlife parks’ agency said yesterday.

Ntombi, whose name is a native Ndebele

word for girl, was an eight-year-old female

with a 13-month-old calf living in Matopo

National Park in western Zimbabwe.

The rhino had four bullet wounds in

its legs and shoulder after being shot last

week, said Caroline Washaya-Moyo, a

spokeswoman for Zimbabwe Parks and

Wildlife Management Authority (ZPWMA).

Its horns had been sawn off but were later

recovered.

Veterinarians from animal conservation

group Aware Trust carried out an X-ray

that showed Ntombi had “endured unim-

aginable pain caused by broken legs and

open wounds”, Washaya-Moyo said.

“The animal was very immobile and was

unable to walk to access food and water.

Because of the seriousness of the wounds

the authority had to put the animal to

sleep,” she said.

The ZPWMA is investigating the incident.

Wardens are taking care of Ntombi’s calf,

which was not harmed by the poachers.

The World Wildlife Fund said in a Janu-

ary report that 50 rhinos had been killed

in Zimbabwe in 2015, double the figure for

the previous year.

“It’s been a gut-wrenching weekend ...

one of the most diff icult things we’ve had

to do,” Aware Trust said on its off icial Face-

book page which also showed pictures of

Ntombi’s injuries.

Internet remains cut in Chad AFPN’Djamena

The Internet remained mysteriously cut yes-terday in Chad’s capital

a day after elections held amid tight security, which are ex-pected to see President Idriss Deby extend his 26-year rule.

Some foreign television me-dia, who had worked until Sun-day evening, were meanwhile unable to cover the post-elec-tion situation because they had not received authorisation from the communications ministry, by the middle of the day.

Mobile Internet was sus-pended from Sunday morning, while fi xed Internet went out in the evening in N’Djamena, and text messages could not be sent over the local phone network.

The online blackout, which occurred without offi cial expla-nation, was preventing discus-sion about how the election had gone.

The situation was reminis-cent of that in Congo, where authorities cut all communi-cations - Internet, phone and texts - for four days for presi-dential elections on March 20.

On Sunday evening, a crew for French-language broadcast-er TV5, which had been cover-ing scuffl es between soldiers and young opposition activists in the capital’s Ampata Grillage district over alleged ballot box stuffi ng, had its camera roughly taken away by security forces.

It was returned to them later at a local police station, but with the recording erased, a TV5 representative told AFP.

Traffi c, which had been sus-pended Sunday during voting, was back to normal in the capital and the election was widely dis-cussed in poorer districts where

there were calls for “real change.” Opposition chief Saleh Kebz-

abo had on Sunday accused au-thorities of “ballot stuffi ng and massive buying up of voter cards”.

In the absence of exit polls it was impossible to get a sense of voting trends. Provisional re-sults are not expected for two weeks, according to the In-dependent National Electoral Commission.

Deby, who took offi ce in a 1990 military coup, faces 12 challengers but is widely ex-pected to win a fi fth term after consolidating his grip on power in the central African nation.

Elections workers count votes cast in Chad’s presidential election at a polling station in N’Djamena.

Pirates abduct 6 Turkish crew off Nigeria AFPAbuja

Pirates have attacked a Turkish cargo ship off the coast of Niger-ia, kidnapping six crew members

in a region increasingly hit by piracy in recent years, the Nigerian navy said yesterday.

“All the six Turkish crew members, including the captain of the vessel, the chief offi cer and the chief engineer, were abducted by the attackers,” Ni-gerian Navy spokesman Chris Ezekobe told AFP.

The pirates attacked the vessel in the dead of night while it was steam-ing through the oil-rich Niger Delta, added the spokesman.

Ezekobe said the ship - a mer-chant tanker - was used for crude oil operations and the navy was working with Interpol and Nigeria’s secret police to secure the crew’s release.

Turkey’s Deniz News Agency said the ship, the M/T Puli, was owned by Kaptanoglu Shipping.

Both the kidnapped crew and those who remained on the ship, were “in

good health”, the company was report-ed as saying.

It was unclear how many crew members were aboard, which was carrying chemicals, when it was attacked. Company officials said they have had no contact with the pirates.

Dirk Steff en, director of maritime security at the Denmark-based Risk Intelligence fi rm, said the vessel was en route from Port Gentil in Gabon to the Ivory Coast capital, Abidjan, at the time.

“The attackers had possibly already attempted to board another ship in the vicinity the previous day,” he said in an email.

“It is extremely busy outside the Niger Delta at the moment and we had three attacks against tankers before this one between April 7 and 10.”

At the end of 2015, pirates kidnapped

and later released crew members from Lithuania, Ukraine and Poland in sep-arate attacks in the area, increasingly a piracy hotspot.

Ship hijackings have become more frequent since President Muham-madu Buhari took office in Nigeria last year and started winding down an amnesty to former militants in the delta region.

Payments were off ered in exchange for an end to violence, which included kidnappings of oil workers and sabo-tage of pipelines that plagued the re-gion in the 2000s.

The Control Risks consultancy in February told reporters in Lagos there had been 24 cases of “piracy and armed robbery at sea” since the turn of the year - double the number in the fi nal two months of 2015.

Attacks in the Gulf of Guinea have increased while incidents of piracy off the coast of Somalia in eastern Africa have signifi cantly fallen in the past three years.

Patrols by international warships and armed guards aboard commercial vessels have signifi cantly reduced the problem in what was once the global hub for high-seas piracy.

Ship hijackings have become more frequent since President Muhammadu Buhari took offi ce last year and started winding down an amnesty to former militants in the delta region

AMERICAS


Protesters demonstrate in front of the US supreme court as the court takes up a major abortion case in Washington.

Young doctors seek abortion training as clinics are closedReutersTexas

Even as scores of US abortion clinics have shut down, the number of doc-tors trained to provide the procedure

has surged – but only in some parts of the country.

Two little-known training programmes say they have expanded rapidly in recent years, fuelled by robust private fund-ing and strong demand. Launched nearly a quarter century ago amid protest and violence, the programmes now train more than 1,000 doctors and medical students annually in reproductive services, from contraception to all types of abortion, ac-cording to interviews with Reuters.

But their impact is limited. Most of the doctors end up working near where they train, not in several Southern and Mid-western states that have imposed waiting periods, mandated counselling and enact-ed other controls.

“I don’t think we have a provider short-age anymore,” said Sarah W Prager, a Uni-versity of Washington Medical School professor. “What we have is a distribu-tion problem. We have a lot of providers in some of our city centers, but in rural areas there are very few people willing or able to provide care.”

Texas is emblematic of areas of scar-city. More than half the clinics in the state have closed since 2013 when a law went into eff ect that required clinics to

meet surgery centre standards and abor-tion providers to have hospital admitting privileges.

In its fi rst abortion case in nearly a dec-ade, the US supreme court is considering whether the Texas law violates the right to abortion. The case focused attention on a decline in clinics in the United States. Ac-cording to a survey by the Guttmacher In-stitute, a nonprofi t research organisation that supports abortion rights, the number of clinics dropped nearly 40% after peak-ing in 1982.

Medical Students for Choice was start-ed in 1993 by a student at the University of California, San Francisco. The nonprofi t now has 185 chapters and a $1.4mn annual budget funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Rockefeller Fam-ily Fund and others.

Last year, it sent 137 medical students and residents for abortion training, more than twice as many as in 2010. Its two-day and three-day Abortion Training Institute has received 321 applications so far this year, surpassing the 228 who applied in all of 2015.

The Kenneth J Ryan Residency Training Program was started in 1999 by Uta Landy, who ran one of the fi rst abortion clinics af-ter the procedure was legalised.

While obstetric-gynecology residencies are required to off er abortion training, not all do. The Ryan programme has helped set up and expand family planning and abor-tion training at 85 teaching hospitals - in-cluding 31 since 2010 - which train about 1,000 residents a year.

The programme declined to discuss its budget or funding. It is a part of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at

the University of California, San Francis-co, which does not disclose contributions at the programme level.

Tax disclosures show the Susan Thomp-son Buff ett Foundation, which supports abortion rights, donates to many of the universities that host Ryan programme training. But it does not disclose the pur-pose of those donations, and representa-tives did not respond to phone queries.

At a hearing before the supreme court in March, lawyers for clinic operators argued that the new standards in Texas caused or contributed to the shutdown of 22 clinics. The Texas state solicitor general argued that Whole Women’s Health, the lead plaintiff in the case, failed to show that the law was the only reason the clinics shut down.

A study funded by abortion rights groups recently reported that waits in Texas grew as long as 23 days, and some women have travelled more than 250 miles to get an abortion.

Some doctors also travel to bring abor-tion services to areas where they are scarce. Bhavik Kumar went to New York for Ryan residency training because it was not off ered at his Texas medical school. He returned to Texas and travels more than 2,000 miles a month providing abortions at clinics in San Antonio and Fort Worth.

“Rights are being taken away from not just patients but us as well,” Kumar said. “A lot of us are angry. We’re trying to get back what the opposition has taken.”

Randall K O’Bannon, director of edu-cation and research for the anti-abortion National Right to Life organisation, said the training programmes are recruiting

medical students with rhetoric he views as dishonest.

“They have been promoting and re-casting the image of the abortionists in the United States,” O’Bannon said. “They want to make them appear more noble - heroic. But they’re not.”

Lois V Backus, executive director of Medical Students for Choice, said the stu-dents who go the extra mile to seek training are heroes who “deserve the gratitude and admiration of all of us for their willingness to meet all the needs of their patients.”

Landy, the Ryan programme founder, said laws limiting abortion are stoking in-terest in training.

“The more controversy there is,” she said, “the more motivation, commitment and passion grows and responds.”

Most of the new providers are women, who comprise 80% of ob-gyn residents. Some, like Jennifer Conti, are vocal about the need for women to have access to a full range of reproductive care. Growing up in a traditional Mexican-American fam-ily, Conti opposed abortion as “this hy-pothetical thing that bad people did.” But her views changed in her teens when an acquaintance got pregnant.

Now, as an ob-gyn, she teaches and provides reproductive care, including abortion, at Stanford University School of Medicine, and she writes for Slate and other outlets.

“There is a new generation of activist doctors,” said Lori Carpentier, who runs Planned Parenthood clinics in Michigan. “They choose to do terminations of preg-nancies because it is a deeply held and passionate belief that women should have access to care.”

Restaurant staff are tricked into smashing glassReutersMinnesota

Several employees of a Burger King fast-food outlet in Minnesota were

persuaded by a prank caller posing as a fi re offi cial to smash the restaurant’s windows, con-vinced that rising gas pressure was threatening to cause an ex-plosion, police said.

Police in the Minneapolis suburb of Coon Rapids were dispatched to the scene Fri-day night after someone at a gasoline station next door called emergency services to report what appeared to be an act of vandalism in progress, police Captain Tom Hawley said.

The restaurant manager told arriving offi cers she had just received a phone call from a man identifying himself as a fi re department offi cial who seemed to have a work-ing knowledge of commercial fi re safety systems, which he asked her to check, according to Hawley.

In the course of their con-versation, she recounted, the caller spoke as if he were re-motely monitoring the situ-ation inside the restaurant, and said he could tell that “gas pressure inside the building was rising”.

As he gave her “updates,” the caller insisted the gas buildup was reaching excessive levels,

and fi nally warned that the restaurant was in danger of exploding unless the exterior windows were immediately broken to relieve pressure, Hawley said.

After quickly ushering out the handful of customers who were present at the time, the manager and three other em-ployees ran out to their cars, grabbed tire irons and other objects and began smashing all the glass ringing the build-ing.

By the time authorities ar-rived, the employees had shat-tered virtually all the ground-fl oor windows, causing several thousand dollars in damage, Hawley said. One worker suf-fered minor cuts and was treat-ed on the scene by medics.

Firefi ghters called to the res-taurant checked the building but found no traces of leaking gas, and the incident was con-fi rmed to have been a hoax, ac-cording to Hawley.

He said investigators were trying to trace the origin of the prank, and were comparing notes with police in other cit-ies around the country where similar phony calls have been reported at fast-food chains in recent days, including outlets in California and Oklahoma.

On Saturday, the smashed windows of the Burger King in Coon Rapids were still board-ed up, but the restaurant was open for business, according to Hawley.

Spate of suicide bids in remote community Agencies Attawapiskat, Ontario

The federal and Ontario governments are mov-ing to help a remote

First Nation that has declared a state of emergency due to a ris-ing number of suicide attempts among its young people.

The federal and Ontario health ministers said Sunday that a crisis team, including mental health nurses and so-cial workers, was being fl own immediately to the James Bay community of about 2,000.

Attawapiskat resident Jackie Hookimaw says the suicide epidemic started last fall, when a number of people tried to kill themselves.

Hookimaw, whose 13-year-

old great niece took her own life in October, says the com-munity doesn’t have the re-sources to deal with the crisis.

That sentiment was echoed by the local MP, New Demo-crat Charlie Angus, who said northern communities aren’t given the resources they need to deal with complicated grief.

Angus said it has been a “rolling nightmare” of more and more suicide attempts among young people through-out the winter.

He said the community didn’t think it could get any worse than it was in March, but April brought even more sui-cide attempts.

On Twitter, prime minister Justin Trudeau called the news from Attawapiskat “heart-breaking.”

Foot, other remains found in bin A Seattle homeowner found three adult body parts, including a foot, in a recycling bin over the weekend, police and local media said on Sunday.A homeowner dialled emergency services after discovering the items in a recycling bin about 4pm PDT (2300 GMT)Saturday afternoon, said Patrick Michaud, a spokesman for the Seattle Police Department.Homicide detectives and the King County medical examiner’s off ice confirmed the remains were human, Michaud said.The remains were likely placed in the recycling bin between Friday and Saturday night, he said.One of the body parts found was a foot, the Seattle Times reported, citing sergeant Mike Renner of the Seattle Police Department. Renner told the paper the body parts were “fresh”.It was unclear where the remains came from.The parts were sent to the medical examiner’s off ice and will be searched for evidence on Monday, a spokesman with off ice said.

Training programmes have increased the number of doctors able to provide the service

AMERICAS13Gulf Times


US Democratic presidential candidate and US Senator Bernie Sanders speaks at a campaign rally in Binghamton, New York, yesterday.

Bernie Sanders charts a White House path ReutersNew York

Defying opinion polls and expert predictions, US Democratic hope-ful Bernie Sanders aims to seize

the party’s White House nomination from Hillary Clinton’s grasp with a last-ditch come-from-behind triumph in California.

By far the most populous US state, Cali-fornia is the largest prize of the state-by-state nominating contests, and the vote on June 7 is one of the last before Democrats convene in July to select a nominee for the November 8 presidential election.

An aggressive schedule of large rallies is planned along with heavy purchases of TV, radio and online advertising in three languages and a “far, far more expensive” campaign eff ort than in any other state, Sanders campaign sources disclosed.

“I think they’re still riding rainbow uni-corns if they think there’s a path,” said Steve Schale, a Florida-based strategist, of Sanders’ bid for the White House.

California has been a reliable source of campaign funds for Clinton, and opinion polls show her ahead there by as many as 14 percentage points. The statistical anal-ysis media site FiveThirtyEight gives her a 91 chance of winning the state primary.

The Sanders campaign push aims to net

as much as a 10-point win in California, helping him deny the front-running Clin-ton the 2,383 convention delegates she needs to clinch the nomination and give him the momentum to force a contested convention where he can try to win over the “superdelegates”, those not decided by a state nominating contest and free to sup-port anyone, the campaign sources said.

Sanders, a US senator from Vermont, has eroded Clinton’s lead in California, according to a Field Poll released on Fri-day. Clinton led Sanders by only 6 points in that survey, down from a double-digit lead earlier this year.

“With California what we’re going to do is something that (Sanders) really likes to do: Barnstorm the place,” said Tad Devine, Sanders’ senior adviser, acknowledging Sanders’ underdog status against Clinton, the former secretary of state.

That means two or three large-scale rallies a day for weeks, possibly start-ing in late April to target early voters, he said. Such rallies are a sweet spot for the 74-year-old New York-born democratic socialist’s fi rebrand speaking style cham-pioning the working class and vowing to erase economic inequality.

At a late March event in The Bronx, he drew 18,500 people.

Clinton leads in pledged convention delegates - those allocated to candidates on the basis of the state primaries and caucuses - with 1,287 to 1,037 for Sanders.

A candidate needs 2,383 delegates to

clinch the nomination. California has 475 delegates, to be divided proportionally ac-cording to the June 7 primary vote.

The Clinton campaign plans to put up a fi ght. Local and national surrogates will speak out in English and Spanish and staff will beef up offi ces up and down the West Coast as the California vote nears, her campaign said.

“We’re fi ghting for every vote by talking to Californians about why Hillary Clinton is the only candidate in this race who will break down the barriers that hold people back and deliver real results,” Amanda Renteria, Hillary for America national po-litical director, said in a statement to Reu-ters.

“Headed into the June 7 primary, our volunteers and supporters are knocking on doors and hitting the phones to share with friends, family and neighbours Hil-lary Clinton’s plans to create more good-paying jobs in California, keep our streets safe from gun violence, protect our envi-ronment, reform our immigration system and ensure all Californians have access to a good education and quality aff ordable health care.”

Sanders has won seven of the last eight state nominating battles but faces a po-tentially rougher road in big states like New York, where Clinton was a US senator and which holds an April 19 primary.

Sanders aims to overcome the edge that Clinton, wife of former President Bill Clinton, has enjoyed with minorities.

Larry Cohen, a senior adviser to the campaign, said the campaign aims to match or outdo the 10,000 volunteers it enlisted in New York by drawing on the Labor for Bernie volunteer group, local and national unions and other groups.

“We’ll certainly do Spanish-language advertising,” Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver said. Devine said that Viet-namese was also part of the plan. The lan-guages are nods to California’s large popu-lations of Latino and Asian voters.

Weaver compared California to Michi-gan, where Sanders notched a surprise win in early March after advertising in Arabic to woo the state’s heavy concentration of Muslims.

The campaign has yet to set a budget for California, but given the state’s size, the eff ort will be “hugely expensive - far, far more expensive than any other state that we’ve done,” Weaver said.

In California so far, the campaign has raised about $9.8mn from more than 26,000 donors, the most Sanders has re-ceived from any one state, according to a Reuters analysis of campaign fi nance dis-closures.

Clinton has raked in signifi cant sums also in California.

An analysis of campaign reports fi led with the Federal Election Commission in-dicate her campaign raised $26,687,011.37 from donors in California from the time she entered the race in 2015 until the end of February.

Chinese national’s seed theft exposes vulnerability ReutersArlington, Iowa

Tim Burrack, a northern Iowa farmer in his 44th growing season, has taken

to keeping a wary eye out for un-familiar vehicles around his 300 acres of genetically modifi ed corn seeds.

Along with other farmers in this vast agricultural region, he has upped his vigilance ever since Mo Hailong and six other Chinese nationals were accused by US authorities in 2013 of digging up seeds from Iowa farms and plan-ning to send them back to China.

The case, in which Mo pleaded guilty in January, has laid bare the value — and vulnerability — of advanced food technology in a world with 7bn mouths to feed, 1.36bn of them Chinese.

Citing that case and others as evidence of a growing economic and national security threat to America’s farm sector, US law enforcement offi cials are urging agriculture executives and secu-rity offi cers to increase their vigi-lance and report any suspicious activity.

But on a March 30 visit to Iowa, justice department offi -cials could off er little advice to ensure against similar thefts, un-derlining how agricultural tech-nology lying in open fi elds can be more vulnerable than a computer network or a factory fl oor.

“It may range down to tradi-tional barriers like a fence and doing human patrols to mak-

ing sure you get good visuals on what’s occurring,” assistant attorney general John Carlin, head of the justice department’s national security division, said when touring Iowa State Univer-sity.

But agriculture sector execu-tives say fences and guards are not feasible, due to the high cost and impracticality of guarding hundreds of thousands of acres.

Tom McBride, intellectual property attorney at Monsanto — one of the fi rms whose seeds were targeted by Mo — said it safeguards its genetically modi-fi ed organism (GMO) technology by protecting its computers, pat-enting seeds and keeping fi elds like Burrack’s unmarked. Mon-santo says it is not considering physical barriers like fences or guards.

The FBI and the US justice de-partment say cases of espionage in the agriculture sector have been growing since Mo was fi rst discovered digging in an Iowan fi eld in May 2011. Over the past two years, US companies, gov-ernment research facilities and universities have all been target-ed, according to the FBI.

Although prosecutors were unable to establish a Chinese government link to Mo’s group, the case adds to US-China fric-tions over what Washington says is increasing economic espionage and trade secret theft by Beijing and its proxies.

A US law enforcement offi cial told Reuters the agency looked for a connection between the

Chinese government and the conspiracy carried out by Mo.

“In cases like this, we can see connections, but proving to the threshold needed in court re-quires that we have documents that the government has directed this,” the offi cial said. “It’s al-most impossible to get.”

Mo, an employee of Chinese fi rm Kings Nower Seed, pleaded guilty to stealing seed grown by US fi rms Monsanto, Dupont Pio-neer and LG Seeds.

Prosecutors say he specifi -cally targeted fi elds that grow the parent seeds needed to replicate GMO corn. The FBI says it sus-pects he was given the location by workers for the seed compa-nies, but did not charge any em-ployees.

Mo, whose case was prosecut-ed by the justice department as a national security matter rather than a simple criminal case, now faces a sentence of up to fi ve years in prison. Five others charged in the case are still wanted by the FBI and are believed to have fl ed to China or Argentina. Charges were dropped against a sixth Chinese suspect.

The number of international economic espionage cases re-ferred to the FBI is rising, up 15% each year between 2009 and 2014 and up 53% in 2015. The majority of cases reported involve Chinese nationals, the US law enforce-ment offi cial told Reuters. In the agriculture sector, organic in-secticide, irrigation equipment and rice, along with corn, are all suspected to have been targeted,

including by Chinese nationals, the offi cial said.

China bans commercial grow-ing of GMO grains due to public opposition to the technology and imports of GMO corn have to be approved by the agriculture min-istry. Still, president Xi called in 2014 for China to innovate and dominate the technique, which promises high yields through resistance to drought, pests and disease.

In January, a Greenpeace re-port found some Chinese farmers are illegally growing GMO corn whose strains belong to compa-nies including Monsanto, Syn-genta and DuPont Pioneer.

Monsanto, which supplies Burrack’s seed, said it can block foreign groups who request to tour their lab and learning center in Huxley, Iowa. For the past few years, Monsanto says it has run its own background checks on Chinese delegations that ask for a tour, and, if they are approved, boosts security to be sure they do not steal anything or take pic-tures.

In Washington, US sena-tors have called for a review of the $43bn deal by state-owned ChemChina to buy Swiss seed group Syngenta, which generates nearly a quarter of its revenue from North America.

Acquiring GMO seed and suc-cessfully recreating a corn plant would allow Chinese companies to skip over roughly eight years of research and $1.5bn spent annu-ally by Monsanto to develop the corn, the company says.

Trumpcalls Cruz strategy ‘crooked’ ReutersWashington

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s concerns about

how delegates are allotted turned into a roar yesterday as he ac-cused the campaign of rival Ted Cruz of buying votes after his weekend win in Colorado.

The New York billionaire, who has won many state contests for a delegate lead, is confronting Cruz’s strategy of using state party rules to secure more del-egates in hopes of winning the nomination at a brokered Repub-lican convention in July.

Cruz’s campaign has worked eff ectively in states that have a complex delegate allocation process, including Colorado, where the US senator from Texas picked up 34 delegates on Satur-day at the state Republican con-vention.

“The people out there are going crazy, in the Denver area and Colorado itself,” Trump said on Fox News. “They’re go-ing absolutely crazy because they weren’t given a vote. This was given by politicians - it’s a crooked deal.”

Trump’s camp has amplifi ed complaints about the delegate allocation system, which varies from state to state, as the pros-pect of a contested Republican convention looks more likely to determine the party’s nominee for the November 8 election.

The Cruz campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Trump’s latest allegations but spokeswoman Catherine Frazier told CNN on Sunday: “More sour grapes from Trump who continues to lash out in tantrums every time he loses. We are winning because we’ve put in the hard work to build a superior organisation.”

A Republican candidate needs 1,237 delegates to clinch the nomination and avoid a conven-tion fl oor fi ght, which could in-volve several rounds of voting for delegates. Trump has 743 dele-gates while Cruz has 545, accord-ing to an Associated Press count.

Trump yesterday also accused

Cruz of trying to steal delegates in South Carolina, a state Trump won in February. Cruz came in third but won three delegates Saturday at congressional dis-trict meetings, according to local media.

“Now they’re trying to pick off those delegates one by one,” Trump said on Fox News. “That’s not the way democracy is supposed to work. They off er them trips, they off er them all sorts of things and you’re al-lowed to do that. You can buy all these votes.

“What kind of a system is that? ... It’s a rigged system.”

Trump’s new delegate strate-gist, Paul Manafort, said on Sun-day the campaign would protest what he called Cruz’s “Gestapo tactics, the scorched-earth tac-tics” on delegates.

A tweet from the Colorado Republican Party appeared to briefl y verify Trump’s fears that state party offi cials favoured Cruz. After Saturday’s results, the party tweeted, “We did it. #Never Trump,” the Denver Post reported.

The party then deleted the tweet, which it said was unau-thorized, and said it was inves-tigating.

Colorado Republicans de-fended their voting process on Twitter yesterday morning, re-tweeting a post by commentator Ari Armstrong who called the system “representative”.

“Claiming delegates were ‘stolen’ insults the Republicans who participated,” Armstrong wrote, which the state party re-posted.

Trump was the target yester-day of a new ad by the Democrat-ic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, that listed Trump’s most divisive comments on women, Mexican immigrants and Muslims.

Both Clinton and rival Bernie Sanders, a US senator of Ver-mont, have tried to position themselves as the Democrat most capable of defeating Trump.

“Donald Trump says we can solve America’s problems by turning against each other,” Clinton’s ad said. “It’s wrong and it goes against everything New York and America stand for.”

Navy offi cercharged forespionageReutersWashington

A US Navy offi cer with ac-cess to sensitive US intel-ligence faces espionage

charges over accusations he passed state secrets, possibly to China and Taiwan, a US offi cial told Reuters on Sunday.

The offi cial, speaking on con-dition of anonymity, identifi ed the suspect as lieutenant com-mander Edward Lin, who was born in Taiwan and later became a naturalised US citizen, accord-ing a Navy profi le article written about him in 2008.

A redacted Navy charge sheet said the suspect was assigned to the headquarters for the Na-vy’s Patrol and Reconnaissance Group, which oversees intelli-gence collection activities.

The charge sheet redacted out the name of the suspect and the Navy declined to provide details on his identity.

It accused him twice of com-municating secret information and three times of attempting to do so to a representative of a for-eign government “with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the advantage of a foreign na-tion”.

The document did not identify what foreign country or coun-tries were involved.

The US offi cial said both China and Taiwan were possible but stressed the investigation was still going on.

The suspect was also accused of engaging in prostitution and adultery. He has been held in pre-trial confi nement for the past eight months or so, the of-fi cial added.

USNI News, which fi rst re-ported Lin’s identity, said he spoke fl uent Mandarin and man-aged the collection of electronic signals from the EP3-E Aries II signals intelligence aircraft.

The US Navy profi led Lin in a 2008 article that focused on his naturalisation to the United States, saying his family left Tai-wan when he was 14 and stayed in diff erent countries before coming to America.

“I always dreamt about com-ing to America, the ‘promised land’,” he said. “I grew up believ-ing that all the roads in America lead to Disneyland.”

The Navy’s article can be seen here: http://1.usa.gov/1SIEJDe

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said he was not aware of the details of the case. He did not elaborate. Chi-na’s defence ministry did not im-mediately respond to a request for comment. Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had no informa-tion on the case. Taiwan’s foreign ministry declined to comment.

Canada pledgesanti-nukeeff ort

AgenciesOttawa

Canada will focus on controlling the spread of material that could

be used by terrorists to cre-ate nuclear weapons as its contribution to the world’s “stalled” disarmament ef-forts, Foreign Aff airs Minister Stephane Dion says.

Dion said Canada views the creation of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, or FMCT, as the most practical option the country can pursue in a re-newed push towards nuclear disarmament.

Dion joined his G7 coun-terparts yesterday in calling for a renewed eff ort towards nuclear disarmament after visiting the atomic-bombed Japanese city of Hiroshima.

“It’s a challenge because over the last 20 years, it’s stalled,” Dion said in an in-terview from Tokyo, adding that there’s been “no ma-jor progress” on ridding the world of nuclear weapons in that time. Dion said the road to that goal will be long, but steps will have to be taken.

“What I think we should do, very strongly, is focus on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty,” he said. “It’s the one that is the least diffi cult to reach.

Bernie faces the final challenge in California

Call to reject Thailand military-drafted charter

ReutersBangkok

A Thai opposition leader warned the ruling junta yesterday that his fol-

lowers would reject in an August vote a military-drafted constitu-tion, which critics say would en-

shrine the generals’ domination of politics.

The military seized power in May 2014, overthrowing an elected government, saying it needed to steer the country out of a decade of fractious and at times violent politics.

It has promised to hold a general election in 2017, but under a constitution that crit-ics say will hobble democracy and preserve the power of the military-dominated establish-ment at the expense of politi-cians.

Jatuporn Prompan, leader of the “red shirt” movement loyal

to ousted former Prime Min-ister Thaksin Shinawatra, said the military-backed constitu-tion would damage the country and he would urge his activists to vote ‘no’ in the referendum.

“The red shirts will show their strength again on August 7,” Jatuporn told Reuters in an interview.

“If the constitution passes it will be devastating for both politics and the economy,” he said. “We need to overthrow this constitution.”

The junta discarded the pre-vious constitution and has de-fended the new draft saying it

wants to promote stability and good government, not prolong its power.

Critics say they will not ac-cept the constitution if the military retains control behind the scenes, pointing to clauses in the draft such as provision for an unelected upper house Senate.

“If the military government wants to stay in power longer it should just say so,” said Jatu-porn. “But it should not hand back only a bit of power.”

The prime minister of the military government, Prayuth Chan-ocha, apparently mind-

ful of investor concern about prolonged political deadlock if the charter is rejected, has said an election will be held in 2017 no matter what.

The junta has kept a firm lid on freedom of speech since the coup and has barred gatherings of a political nature and lead-ers of the “red shirt” move-ment have been largely keeping quiet.

Thaksin’s old foe, the pro-establishment Democrat Party, Thailand’s oldest political par-ty, is also urging people to op-pose the draft charter too, say-ing it would stifle democracy.

Jatuporn Prompan, leader of the “red shirt” movement loyal to ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has said the military-backed constitution would damage the country

People take part in water battles with elephants as part of celebrations of Songkhran - the Thai new year - in the city of Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok yesterday. The Songkhran Festival is marked throughout Thailand with water fights during the days around the new year on April 13.

Water festival Malaysian state sets stage for election amid scandal AFPKuala Lumpur

Malaysia’s Sarawak state dissolved its as-sembly yesterday, the

country’s offi cial news agency Bernama reported, paving the way for an election that is be-ing closely scrutinised for its impact on a huge fi nancial scandal.

Prime Minister Najib Razak and his nationally ruling coa-lition have taken a battering over allegations that billions of dollars were plundered from a state-owned investment fund which he founded.

Parties from the Barisan Nasional (National Front) have long had fi rm control of Sarawak. But political observ-ers are watching for any signs of eroding support before na-tional elections due by mid-2018.

New polls for Sarawak’s state assembly must now be held within 60 days. A date is expected to be set this week.

Sarawak, known for its vast tropical forests, is one of Ma-laysia’s most sparsely inhabit-ed states, yet plays an outsized role in politics.

It is often referred to as a re-liable “fi xed deposit” of sup-port for the ruling coalition even as Malaysia’s opposition has gained ground elsewhere.

Although richly endowed with oil, timber and hydro-

power resources, its people - many from tribal commu-nities - are among Malaysia’s poorest.

It is one of ten Malaysian states controlled by the Ba-risan Nasional while three are held by the opposition.

Despite the scandal swirl-ing around the state-owned investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), ruling coalition parties are widely expected to remain in fi rm overall control of Sarawak.

The opposition and elec-toral reform advocates say Barisan Nasional parties re-tain control of the states via “money politics”, control of the media, and other means, adding that a recent redraw-ing of electoral boundaries in Sarawak blatantly favoured the ruling coalition.

Analysts say a strong show-ing by the coalition could boost its position in the next national polls. Barisan Na-sional has governed Malaysia since independence in 1957.

A recent independent sur-vey found that most people in Sarawak supported the cur-rent government and were little infl uenced by the 1MDB scandal.

Najib, who denies wrong-doing, has weathered the scandal so far by taking steps to scuttle investigations and clamping down on his power-ful ruling party.

Heatwave shuts more than 250 schoolsAFPKuala Lumpur

More than 250 Malay-sian schools were closed yesterday due

to a heatwave brought on by the El Nino weather phenom-enon which is severely aff ect-ing food production and caus-ing chronic water shortages in many countries.

Authorities ordered schools in the states of Perlis and Pa-hang to shut after tempera-tures soared above 37 degrees Celsius over a 72-hour period, according to local reports.

The education ministry said the decision was made to protect the health of some 100,000 students, the offi cial news agency Bernama report-ed.

The sweltering heat in Ma-laysia has reportedly slowed

vegetable production, leading to price hikes. Paddy fi elds and rubber plantations have been also been aff ected by the se-vere temperature rise.

January and February 2016 smashed global temperature records, the World Meteoro-logical Organisation said in March, attributing the highs to the “unprecedented” advance of climate change.

Many parts of Asia have been aff ected by the strong El Nino dry spell which has also hit agriculture in Thailand and the Philippines.

El Nino is triggered by a warming in sea surface tem-peratures in the Pacifi c Ocean. It can cause unusually heavy rains in some parts of the world and drought in others.

But Malaysia’s Meteorologi-cal Department said the cur-rent heatwave was expected to ease soon.

Opposition MP held over ‘fake’ border mapReutersPhnom Penh

A Cambodian opposi-tion member of parlia-ment has been arrested

for posting a map on Facebook professing to show that the gov-ernment had ceded territory to Vietnam to whip up opposition, a government spokesman said yesterday.

Cambodia has for centuries fretted about its much bigger neighbours — Vietnam to the east and Thailand to the north-west — encroaching on its terri-tory. The issue remains emotive and many Cambodians are sus-picious of both countries.

Um Sam An, a member of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was ar-rested on Sunday in the province of Siem Reap after arriving from overseas, a party colleague and fellow lawmaker said.

“He created a fake border map and used it as an incitement to overthrow the government,” said government spokesman Phay

Siphan. Formal charges would be fi led when he appeared be-fore a court. Phay Siphan said he would be charged with forgery and incitement.

The opposition in Cambo-dia has for years accused Prime Minister Hun Sen of ceding land to Vietnam in the hope of turn-ing voters against him.

The prime minister, who rose to power in the 1980s as part of a government that was backed by Vietnam, has dismissed the accusations. The government spokesman said Um Sam An had repeatedly posted “fake” border maps on Facebook, accusing the government of ceding land.

Tension has been rising in Cambodia as Hun Sen’s ruling party and the main opposition CNRP look to a 2018 general election that could be the big-gest test of the prime minister’s three-decade rule. The CNRP condemned Um Sam An’s arrest in statement yesterday.

An arrest warrant has been is-sued for CNRP leader Sam Rain-sy on charges of defamation in several diff erent cases.

Policemen shout to warn residents before an eviction as machinery demolishes illegal houses at Luar Batang fisheries village in Jakarta, Indonesia yesterday.

Crackdown on illegal houses

The Malaysian police have opened four investigation papers against former premier Mahathir Mohamed, inspector-general of police (IGP) Khalid Abu Bakar said yesterday. “We have already opened up four investigation papers against Mahathir,’’ the Malaysiakini news website quoted the IGP as saying. “Some are incomplete and some are being discussed with the attorney-general (Mohamed Apandi Ali),” IGP Khalid was quoted as saying, The Straits Times reported. “Some (investigations) are for sedition and some for other things. No decisions have been made so far,” he added. He would not confirm if any of the investigations are related to Dr Mahathir’s latest call for foreign intervention to oust Prime Minister Najib Razak, according to the report.In an interview with The Weekend Australian newspaper, Dr Mahathir said that the chances of ousting Datuk Seri Najib, who is under fire over heavily indebted state investor 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), were slim if there was no ex-ternal pressure. In response, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said Dr Mahathir’s comment could result in the people losing respect for the former premier.

Police launch probe against Mahathir

INVESTIGATION


ASEAN

AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA15Gulf Times


Japan’s foreign minister Fumio Kishida shows the way to US Secretary of State John Kerry and Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond after laying wreaths at the Memorial Cenotaph for the 1945 atomic bombing victims in the Peace Memorial Park, on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Hiroshima.

Kerry ‘deeply moved’ by visit to HiroshimaAFPTokyo

John Kerry said yesterday he was “deeply moved” by his unprec-edented visit to the Hiroshima

atomic bomb memorial — and urged President Barack Obama also to make the trip.

The US secretary of state, who was joined by other G7 foreign ministers, is the highest-ranking administra-tion offi cial to pay respects at the spot where American planes launched the fi rst-ever nuclear attack more than seven decades ago.

Washington offi cials say Obama is considering a trip to Hiroshima late next month around the time of a Group of Seven summit, which is be-ing held in another part of Japan.

An Obama visit would have huge symbolic importance as the fi rst to Hiroshima by a sitting US president.

“I want to express on a personal level how deeply moved I am” to be the fi rst US secretary of state to visit Hiroshima, Kerry told reporters yes-terday as he and his G7 counterparts wrapped up two days of talks.

A museum at the memorial site is a “gut-wrenching display that tugs at all your sensibilities as a human be-ing”, Kerry said.

About 140,000 people died from the Hiroshima blast on August 6, 1945, or later from severe radiation exposure. The city, a key military in-stallation during the war, was fl at-tened by the massive detonation.

The atomic bombing of Naga-saki followed three days later, kill-

ing some 74,000 people. Japan sur-rendered within a week to end World War II.

“Everyone should visit Hiroshima, and everyone means everyone,” Kerry said.

“I hope one day the president of the United States will be among the eve-ryone who is able to come here.”

But Kerry declined to comment on the likelihood of an Obama visit.

“Whether or not he can come as president, I don’t know,” he said.

“That is subject to a very full and complicated schedule that the presi-dent has to plan out way ahead of time.”

Yesterday morning, the G7 minis-ters and the foreign policy chief of the European Union visited the memorial museum, which shows the devastat-ing impact of the bombing — such as survivors’ burned clothing and other personal eff ects.

“It is a stark, harsh, compelling re-minder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our eff ort to avoid war itself,” Kerry wrote in the muse-um’s guest book.

The G7 later issued its Hiroshima Declaration that called for a “world without nuclear weapons”.

The foreign ministers discussed a range of other issues, from the refu-gee crisis and war in Syria to North Korea’s latest military provocations and confl ict-wracked Ukraine.

They pledged to step up the fight against the Islamic State group, while expressing concern about maritime disputes in Asia — an ob-lique criticism of China’s territorial ambitions.

Earlier, hundreds of schoolchildren waved fl ags of G7 nations and the EU

as the group walked to a cenotaph in the leafy park next to the museum.

Later children presented them with necklaces made of paper cranes — a symbol of peace — woven in the bright colours of their national fl ags.

The ministers laid wreaths at the site, with the ruins of a domed build-ing gutted by the blast in the back-ground.

“There are no bad feelings and we’re not angry,” 43-year-old Hiro-shima businessman Jun Miura told AFP, adding that he hoped Obama would visit the city.

“I want the president to see for himself exactly what happened. I am sure he has seen video of it, and read about it. But you have to come here to see it and contemplate.”

For US tourist Jeremy Griffi ths, vis-iting the memorial is a stark reminder of the scale of the damage.

“You can read all you want, but until you are actually at the place (where the bombing) occurred — it just changes how you look at it,” said the 29-year-old IT programmer from Florida.

The bombings are a highly emotive subject in both Japan and the United States.

Japan, as the only nation to have experienced a nuclear attack, empha-sises the suff ering its people endured. But while publicly calling for the eradication of nuclear weapons, it has for decades been a close security ally of Washington under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella.

Many in the US, meanwhile, chafe at any suggestion of an apology, say-ing Japan started the war with its at-tack on Pearl Harbor and that the bombings hastened the war’s end — preventing more deaths.

US ready to raise pressure onNorth Koreans, open to talks AFPHiroshima

Washington is ready to “ratchet up” pressure on an increasingly aggressive North Korea, US

Secretary of State John Kerry said yester-day, but remains open to negotiations if Pyongyang scraps its nuclear weapon de-velopment.

North Korea has taken a series of actions this year that have ramped up regional tensions, starting with its fourth under-ground nuclear test in January.

That was followed by the launch of a long-range rocket a month later — which was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.

In response the UN Security Council slapped its toughest sanctions yet on the secretive state.

“I would like to see a few measures we were not able to get into the (Secu-rity Council) resolution implemented, depending on what actions the North de-cides to take,” Kerry told reporters after a Group of Seven foreign ministers’ meeting in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

On Saturday North Korea said it had suc-cessfully tested an engine designed for an inter-continental ballistic missile, which it claimed would “guarantee” an eventual nuclear strike on the US mainland.

“So it is still possible we will ratchet up even more depending on the actions” of North Korea, Kerry said.

“But we have made it clear... we are pre-pared to negotiate a peace treaty” on the Korean peninsula.

“It all depends on the North making the decision that they will negotiate on denu-clearisation. We are waiting for that op-portunity.”

The 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice and not a full peace treaty. The US has long insisted that Pyongyang must denuclearise as a condition for talks on a peace pact.

The state department confi rmed in Feb-ruary that Pyongyang had reached out to Washington in a tentative bid to discuss a treaty, but said its January nuclear test had derailed the possible talks.

Saturday’s test was the latest in a se-

ries of claims by the North of signifi cant breakthroughs in nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.

They included Pyongyang’s alleged suc-cess in miniaturising a nuclear warhead to fi t on a missile.

Earlier yesterday the G7 meeting in Hi-roshima, which suff ered the world’s fi rst nuclear attack in the closing days of World War II, issued a statement calling for a “world without nuclear weapons”.

It said North Korea’s nuclear ambitions were a key hurdle to achieving that lofty goal.

Kerry also took a swipe at North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, saying his actions “stand out as such an aberration against the direction the world wants to go” — re-ferring to moves aimed at reducing nuclear weapons.

“It is also why any suggestion by any candidate for high public offi ce that we should be building more weapons and giving them to a country like (South) Korea or Japan are absurd on their face and run counter to everything that every president, Republican or Democrat alike, has tried to achieve since World War II,” he said, apparently referring to Donald Trump.

The Republican front-runner for No-vember’s presidential election sparked criticism recently by suggesting that he could accept a nuclear-armed Japan and South Korea to counter North Korea.

North Korea has been jamming GPS signals in South Korea since March 31,

threatening the safety of civilian aircraft and vessels and violating international agreements, Seoul told the United Nations Security Council in a letter released yes-terday.

South Korean UN ambassador Oh Joon said the electronic jamming signals have come from fi ve North Korean regions - Haeju, Yonan, Pyongyang, Kumgang and Kaesong - and “dangerously aff ect” the Global Positioning System.

“The GPS jamming by DPRK (North Korea) is an act of provocation that poses a threat to the security of the Republic of Korea and undermines the safety of civil transportation, including aircraft and ves-sels,” Oh wrote in the April 5 letter.

On April 1 South Korea warned North Korea to stop and vowed to take action if it continued amid heightened tension over the North’s nuclear and rocket tests.

The reclusive North and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war since their 1950-53 confl ict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. Oh said the GPS jamming violates that armistice agreement.

South Korea has been on high alert against possible cyber attacks from the North after Pyongyang’s weapons tests and angry rhetoric threatening war in re-sponse to new sanctions imposed last month by the UN Security Council and the South.

“The government of the Republic of Korea strongly urges DPRK to stop its GPS jamming without further delay,” Oh wrote.

Seoul reveals defection last year of two North Korean offi cials ReutersSeoul

Two senior North Korean offi cials, including an army colonel specialising

in espionage against the South, defected to South Korea last year, the Seoul government said yes-terday.

News of the defections fol-lowed a South Korean announce-ment on Friday that 13 workers at a restaurant run by the North in an unidentifi ed country had defected, a case it described as

unprecedented, arriving in the South a day earlier.

South Korea did not say where the 13 had worked. China said yesterday that 13 North Koreans had been there and had left law-fully. It did not say if they were the same group.

The South’s unifi cation and defence ministries said yesterday that a North Korean army colonel defected last year and had been granted political asylum. He had worked in the secretive General Reconnaissance Bureau, which is focused on espionage activities against the South.

South Korea’s unifi cation min-istry, which handles North Korea issues, also said that a senior dip-lomat who was posted in an Af-rican country had defected to the South last year with his family.

The defection of a high-rank-ing offi cer in the General Re-connaissance Bureau is a coup for Seoul. The North set up the bureau in 2009, consolidating several intelligence agencies to streamline operations aimed at the South.

Its head, General Kim Yong Chol, is accused by the South of being behind a 2010 torpedo at-

tack against the South that sunk a navy ship and killed 46 sailors. The North denies any responsi-bility for the sinking.

The bureau is also known to operate an elite team of computer specialists working to infi ltrate the networks of the South and other countries and to conduct cyber attacks against key institu-tions.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the North Korean colonel specialised in anti-South espionage operations be-fore defecting and had divulged the nature of his work to South

Korean authorities. South Ko-rean offi cials declined to com-ment.

News of the defections come after a period of tension on the Korean peninsula following the North’s fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch the next month.

The South Korean govern-ment’s public acknowledgement of defections is unusual.

The main liberal opposition Minjoo Party yesterday accused the government of conserva-tive President Park Geun-hye of trying to infl uence conservative

voter turnout ahead of Wednes-day’s parliamentary elections by announcing the defection of the restaurant workers last week.

Both ministries denied sug-gestions that yesterday’s rev-elations were made for domestic political reasons and said dis-closing the defections was in the public interest.

China is North Korea’s main ally, so South Korean media re-ports that restaurant workers had been there initially raised some surprise.

Asked about the workers yes-terday, a Chinese foreign min-

istry spokesman said it had re-ceived a report about a group of 13 North Koreans in China who had gone missing.

“After an investigation, (we found) the 13 North Koreans used valid passports to leave the coun-try normally in the early hours of April 6,” Chinese foreign min-istry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular briefi ng, without saying where they had gone.

“What needs to be stressed is that these people had valid iden-tity documents and legally came to the country, not North Kore-ans who have entered illegally.”

Kim Jong-Un

Australian prisoner ‘carves IS slogan on fellow inmate’AFPSydney

A radicalised prisoner al-legedly carved an Is-lamic State slogan into

the forehead of a fellow inmate in Australia, reports said yes-terday, but offi cials denied ex-tremism was a problem in the jail system.

The 18-year-old, named as Bourhan Hraichie, has been charged with causing grievous bodily harm and intentional choking following the incident after lockdown at the medium-security Kempsey prison north of Sydney last week.

He reportedly assaulted his cellmate then used a razor blade to carve “e4e” into his head, an apparent reference to the Is-lamic State group’s “eye for an eye” mantra, before placing a towel on his face and pouring boiling water over him.

The cellmate, who was rushed to hospital with inju-ries to his head and burns to the face, was initially reported to be a former soldier, although offi cials later distanced them-selves from the claim.

New South Wales correc-tions minister David Elliott

said he was outraged by the al-leged attack.

“I will ask the inspector of custodial services for a full and thorough investigation of the management of radical-ised prisoners in the system, including the assault,” he told reporters.

The manager of the facil-ity has been suspended but the state’s corrective services com-missioner Peter Severin denied Islamic radicalisation was a big problem in the prison system.

“What we are dealing with is not a systemic issue,” he told the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

“Yes, we have a range of in-mates who are clearly at risk of being radicalised, but we also have robust strategies.”

Steve McMahon, a spokes-man for the Public Sector Asso-ciation, which represents prison guards, told reporters Hraichie should have been segregated.

“The 18-year-old, in our belief, had presented enough information and bad behaviour to have been segregated, or at the very least, been put in a single cell,” he said.

The teenager, who has been transferred to a maximum se-curity prison, is due to face court in May.

Kerry’s visit lays the ground for a trip by President Obama

BRITAIN


Man dies after throatslashed in petty row London Evening StandardLondon

A man has died after being slashed across the throat following a “petty row

over a few pounds” in west Lon-don.

Witnesses and friends told how the victim’s mother sobbed as she cradled him while he lay in the road in a housing estate in Isleworth. He was named lo-cally as Sahil Roy, 28.

Police who were called to Summerwood Road at about 4pm on Sunday found a man collapsed in the road. They and air ambulance medics fought for more than an hour to save him, but he was pro-nounced dead at 5.18pm.

Neighbours said he was yards from his flat when he was pushed to the ground and stabbed in the neck in a “petty row over a few pounds”.

His younger brother and mother arrived, friends said. “I saw his mother with him in

the road crying, holding his neck and head as he lay there in the road bleeding. It really was terrible,” a witness added.

Friend Larissa Maher, 21, said: “He was really lovely. He wouldn’t say boo to a goose. We have a lot of bad people on the estate, but he wasn’t one of them and you wouldn’t expect it to be him.

“A lot of people are in tears. It’s very hard. A lot of people came out to pay their respects, which shows how much peo-ple loved him. His brother came down and saw it as well, he must be going through hell. You can’t feel safe around here. People just need to not carry knives around.”

Another friend, Yj Burton, wrote on Facebook: “Such a

shame and over nothing really. Now Sahil has lost his life and a family in bits for a tenner.”

The victim’s cousin Asil As-tars posted: “Just heard dis-turbing news that my cousin Sahil Roy is pronounced dead over stabbing on his estate. I can’t believe it — still hoping it’s not true. Feeling devas-tated and not sinking in. Get-ting loads of flashbacks of the times we spent together. I only saw him recently for a few minutes, didn’t know it would be the last time.”

Malik Arshard, 32, a father-of-two who lives nearby, said 15 police cars went to the scene with the air ambulance.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “Next of kin are in the process of being informed. We await formal identification. A post-mor-tem examination will be held. Enquiries continue.”

A 22-year-old man was ar-rested on suspicion of murder and was being questioned by police yesterday.

Celebrity drug dealer,author ‘Mr Nice’ dies ReutersLondon

Former drug smuggler Howard Marks who wrote about his exploits

in an autobiography Mr Nice has died at the age of 70 after suff ering from bowel cancer.

Marks, who learned of his condition last year, died in the early hours of Sunday at his home near Bridgend in Wales, according to a state-ment from his publisher Har-vill Secker.

Marks turned to cannabis traffi cking in the 1970s after graduating from Oxford Uni-versity with a degree in phys-ics.

After a series of multi-mil-lion pound deals and high-profi le court cases, his career in drug smuggling fi nally came to an end in 1988 when he was caught after a raid on his house in Spain and extradited to the US.

He was sentenced to 25 years in a high-security American prison but released on parole after seven years.

In 1996 Marks published his autobiography, which sold over a million copies and was followed later by a film of the same name in which he was played by his friend and fel-low Welshman Rhys Ifans.

“Mr Nice was above all an adventure story,” said his edi-tor at Harvill Secker, Geoff Mulligan.

“Around the time of publi-cation a close friend of Howard said to me: ‘people are going to think he’s made half of this up’ but I know he left out half of it.”

In later life, Marks cam-paigned for the legalisation of cannabis and even stood for parliament in 1997 for the sole purpose of legalising the drug.

A skilled raconteur, he toured a one-man show re-counting his experiences on the wrong side of the law and in 2015 published a follow-up to his autobiography called Mr Smiley: My Last Pill and Testa-ment.

He said when he fi rst learned of his cancer last year that he had no regrets about his life.

Sir Tom Jones’ wife, Lady Melinda Rose Woodward, has died following a “short but fierce: battle against cancer. A statement posted on the singer’s website said the 75-year-old had died on Sunday morning at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, surrounded by her husband and loved ones. The singer had recently cancelled several shows due to “serious” family illness. Sir Tom, 75, had been married to ‘Lady Linda’ since 1957. They have one son, Mark. The couple were both children of coal miners in South Wales and became childhood sweethearts at the age of 15 before marrying a year later.

A man has appeared in court accused of murdering a gay police off icer whose decomposed remains were found in a flat. The body of constable Gordon Semple, 59, was found in a property in the Peabody Estate a week after he went missing. The gruesome discovery was made after a neighbour alerted Scotland Yard to a “smell of death” coming from the flat in Southwark, south London. Stefano Brizzi, 49, was arrested at the property, which was his flat, and appeared via videolink at London’s Bromley Magistrates’ Court. Wearing a grey prison issue tracksuit, he appeared calm as he confirmed his name, age and address during the brief hearing.

A Scottish newspaper has printed the identities of a celebrity couple who took out a superinjunction to suppress details of alleged infidelity that has been the subject of growing global speculation in recent weeks. The paper, which cannot be identified for legal reasons, said it was printing the names of the pair on its front page, not because it was concerned with their private lives but because it was championing free speech and a free press. Legally, the newspaper can publish the identities of the couple in Scotland as the appeal court order applies only in England and Wales. It cannot refer to the names online.

Council off icials in Epping Forest spent £5,000 on two drones this year to fly them over sites where owners plan building works. The Essex council was among a dozen local authorities that have admitted buying or hiring unmanned aerial vehicles for off icial purposes, but campaigners have expressed concerns. Renate Samson, chief executive of the Big Brother Watch, said yesterday: “Councils must refrain from using this technology as flying spies in the sky.” Epping Forest district council said the drones were available for use by its planning enforcement and emergency planning departments.

A Covent Garden penthouse in a Baroque mansion once owned by an admiral famed as much for corruption allegations as for battles he won has gone on sale for £7.75mn. The four-bedroom duplex is at the top of Russell House in King Street, built as the London home of naval hero Edward Russell in 1689 and rebuilt in 1717. The Grade II* double-fronted house is said to be the oldest surviving property on Covent Garden piazza. A door in the dining-room leads to a hidden staircase used by guests including William III and his wife Queen Mary. The mansion later served as a hotel and a private members’ club.

Singer Tom Jones’ wife dies of cancer

Man accused of constablemurder remanded

Paper reveals identityof superinjunction couple

Fears over ‘spies in the sky’after council uses drones

Naval hero’s penthousefor sale at £7.75mn

OBITUARY CRIMECONTROVERSY CONCERN REALTY

Brexit votespendingrules forbusinessesset out

ReutersLondon

The electoral watchdog has issued fresh guidance for businesses on how to

ensure they do not fall foul of campaign spending rules in the run-up to a June 23 referendum on membership of the European Union.

Earlier this month, several leading banks said they had tak-en legal advice on how to make sure they comply with electoral rules, with some issuing guid-ance to staff on how to avoid breaching them.

Electoral law bars all organi-sations and individuals from spending more than £10,000 on influencing the outcome during the campaign, unless they formally register as cam-paigners.

Ahead of the start of the offi -cial campaign period on April 15, the Electoral Commission issued a fi ve-page factsheet yesterday, giving a range of examples to help organisations determine what kind of spending would fall under the rules.

“Many of your activities will not meet the test for referendum spending. Business as usual ac-tivities are not usually aimed at voters and may not reach a value judgement on the two outcomes at the referendum,” the guidance said.

“You will need to decide whether your spending is in-tended to, or is otherwise in connection with, promoting or bringing about a particular out-come in the referendum.”

The commission said research reports that make a judgement on which referendum outcome is preferred, or use positive or neg-ative language rather than taking a neutral tone are more likely to count as referendum campaign-ing.

It also asked businesses to consider the audience for such reports, pointing out those pro-moted online or to the media rather than just clients could be seen as seeking to infl uence the wider voting public.

Camerontightens taxlaws in bid torestore trust ReutersLondon

Prime Minister David Cam-eron yesterday said he was tightening laws to end tax

evasion without deterring “aspi-ration”, hoping to end scrutiny of his personal wealth and restore trust in his leadership.

In a charged session in parlia-ment during which one opposition lawmaker was ejected after label-ling the prime minister “dodgy Dave”, Cameron defended those who want to use money to support their families - something he said his late father had done when he set up an off shore fund revealed by the Panama Papers.

But the measures he announced did little to ease some of the criti-cism of a leader accused by the opposition of being a hypocrite for going after tax evaders in view of his father’s fund and for being slow to detail his fi nancial aff airs.

Cameron sought to underline the diff erence between illegal tax evasion and legal tax avoidance, trying to address concerns over his leadership, hurt not only by questions about his wealth in the past week but also by divisions in his Conservatives over EU mem-bership.

“It is right to tighten the law and change the culture around investment to further outlaw tax evasion and discourage aggres-sive tax avoidance. But as we do so, we should diff erentiate be-tween schemes designed to arti-fi cially reduce tax and those that are encouraging investment,” he said.

“Aspiration and wealth crea-tion are not somehow dirty words, they are the key engines of growth

and prosperity in our country and we must always support those who want to own shares and make investments to support their fam-ilies.”

He said most of Britain’s over-seas territories, including the British Virgin Islands and Cay-man Islands, and Crown De-pendencies, like Jersey, would now provide British law enforce-ment and tax agencies full access to information on benefi cial ownership of companies to off er greater transparency.

He also said he was introduc-ing legislation this year to make it a criminal off ence for compa-nies if they fail to stop employees from instructing clients on ways of evading tax, part of what he called some of the most robust action ever taken by a govern-ment to close tax loopholes.

The plan had been announced by Finance Minister George Os-borne in March 2015, but pre-viously the commitment was to introduce the legislation by 2020, Downing Street said.

His message was aimed at balancing action to crack down on tax evasion to soothe critics who accuse him of being part of an elite, and to appeal to his own lawmakers, many of whom are against his campaign to keep Britain in the European Union, by underlining that he wanted to inspire wealth creation.

On Thursday, Cameron bowed to pressure and said he had profited from selling his shares in the fund in 2010 and on Sunday he published a sum-mary of his tax records for the past six years.

In parliament, he again detailed his fi nancial aff airs and pointed to the fact that his fi nance minister,

George Osborne, had also pub-lished a summary of his tax aff airs.

But any hope he might draw a line under the row was short-lived, as the leader of the opposi-tion Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, accused the prime minister of staging “a masterclass in the art of distraction”.

“There is now one rule for the super-rich and another for the rest. I am honestly not sure ... that the prime minister fully appreciates the anger that is out there over this injustice,” he said to shouts of disagreement from Conservative lawmakers.

Labour lawmaker Den-nis Skinner was forced to leave the chamber when he refused a request by the parliamentary speaker to withdraw his charac-terisation of Cameron as “dodgy Dave”.

Financial offi cials questioned the government moves to close loopholes.

Some accountants said the move to punish companies could see fi rms taking responsibility for “rogue employees” and may increase the risk burden on fi rms doing business in Britain, which is seeing lower levels of invest-ment because of uncertainty over the June 23 referendum on EU membership.

“We need to be proportion-ate and realistic in any new leg-islation being introduced,” said Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of tax at ACCA, a global accounting body based in London.

The questions come at a diffi -cult time for Cameron’s cabinet of senior ministers, who are split over whether Britain should stay in the European Union and have been criticised for failing to bail out the steel industry.

Colin Firth and Helen Mirren pose for photos at the premiere of Eye in the Sky, at a cinema in central London yesterday.

Film premiere

Prime Minister David Cameron speaks in the Houses of Parliament in London yesterday.

Neighbours said he was yards from his fl at when he was pushed to the ground and stabbed in the neck in a “petty row over a few pounds”

‘Selfi sh’ mothergets 24 years fortoddler murder Guardian News and MediaEdinburgh

A “devious, manipula-tive and selfi sh” young mother will serve at

least 24 years behind bars after brutally stamping her toddler daughter to death in the child’s bedroom.

Kathryn Smith, 23, was jailed for life yesterday following her conviction for murder after the savage attack on 21-month-old Ayeeshia Jane Smith at the fam-ily home in Staff ordshire on May 1 2014.

Justice Geraldine Andrews, sentencing a weeping Smith at Birmingham Crown Court, said: “You are a devious, manipula-tive, selfi sh, young woman who would stop at nothing to get your own way.

“To that end you were pre-pared to tell lie after lie.”

The judge added: “Ayeeshia was a particularly vulnerable victim, thin and slight of frame, deserving of protection and under the protection of social services for the whole of her short life.

“She was killed in her own home by her own mother - that is the grossest breach of trust.”

The judge jailed Ayeeshia’s stepfather, 22-year-old Mat-thew Rigby, for three years and six months after he was con-victed of causing or allowing the death of a child.

Ayeeshia collapsed at the fl at in Britannia Drive, Burton-up-on-Trent, after suff ering a fatal heart laceration - a type of in-jury usually only found in crash victims.

It emerged after the toddler’s death that what the judge de-scribed as a “delightful little girl” had previously suff ered a bleed on the brain from an as-sault at her mother’s hands in February 2014, and a pattern of recent injuries including a huge bruise on her spine.

Ayeeshia, who was taken into care for a period in mid-2013, also had several bro-ken ribs, and other marks and

abrasions on her fragile body.Smith, of Sandfi eld Road,

Nottingham, who cried in the court dock throughout sentenc-ing, and Rigby, of Sloan Drive, Nottingham, had denied having anything to do with the young-ster’s death but were convicted by a jury on Friday.

Justice Andrews told Smith: “You wanted to take care of Ay-eeshia yourself but not at the expense of running your life, and especially your love life, the way you wanted.”

As the young mother, wear-ing a grey sweater hoodie and with her dyed red hair pulled into a ponytail, gazed out from the dock, the judge told her Ay-eeshia had come “a poor sec-ond” in her brief life.

She said: “She was a de-fenceless child, thin and frag-ile for her age, and it was your responsibility as mother to take care of her and protect her from harm, yet on the af-ternoon of May 1 2014, for no apparent reason, her life was brutally snuffed out in a vi-cious beating in her own bed-room, surrounded by her toys and playthings.”

The judge criticised Smith for “maintaining a wall of silence” over what triggered the murder-ous attack, robbing the child’s natural father, Ricky Booth, and other loved ones of vital answers regarding the toddler’s last mo-ments.

She told the young woman: “The picture you wished to paint of yourself of the down-trodden subservient mother is far from the truth.”

Concluding her remarks, the judge added: “Neither immatu-rity nor lack of intelligence was a signifi cant factor in the com-mission of these off ences. Just a case of venting your anger on a defenceless child.”

Rigby, meanwhile, who was unanimously cleared of mur-der and a separate cruelty charge, was guilty of what the judge called his “failure to act” over the obvious violence be-ing infl icted by the little girl’s mother.

Four men cleared ofcollege ball rape claim Guardian News and MediaLondon

Four men have been cleared of raping a woman at a col-lege ball at the Royal Ag-

ricultural University after their trial collapsed on the day it had been due to open.

Prosecutors at Gloucester crown court off ered no evidence against Thady Duff , 22, James Martin, 20, Leo Mahon, 22, and Patrick Foster, 22. Duff , Mahon and Foster were students at the college in Cirencester, Glouces-tershire, while Martin, an ap-prentice farrier and amateur jockey, was visiting them.

All four were accused of raping the woman at an end of year ball in May 2014. Their trial was due to begin two weeks ago but was delayed by issues surrounding the late disclosure of evidence to the defence by the prosecution.

Fiona Elder, prosecuting, told the court yesterday that after a review of the case it had been decided not to off er any evidence against the four defendants.

“The decision was made that there was no longer a reason-able prospect of conviction and therefore in the circumstances it was not for the crown to pursue this case to trial,” Elder said.

“The police were informed and discussed the decision with

the head of the south-west rape and serious sexual off ences unit. The head of the unit consulted with the complainant and her family to ensure they knew and understood the decision, what-ever their view of it.”

Lawyers for the men ex-pressed concern that the charges had hung over them for so long.

In court, Edward Henry, for Martin, described the case as “one long exercise in confi rma-tion bias” and accused offi cers of “airbrushing” and “cherry-picking” evidence.

“We need to know the an-swers to some questions,” Henry added. “Why … should this have gone on for so long as it has?”

A jury of six men and six women was sworn in on March 29 to hear the case but was dis-charged a week later without hearing any evidence.

Judge Jamie Tabor QC had told jurors they should prepare for footage of the alleged sexual activity to be shown during the trial. “This case concerns sexual activity on a ball night at the Royal Agricultural University,” he said.

“Some of that was fi lmed. (There) is going to be what we call adult pornographic mate-rial – very short in length – to be watched.”

Elder told Tabor yesterday she had been instructed to apply for

a restraining order against the four defendants to prevent har-assment but off ered no evidence to support the application. The judge refused it and issued a warning about commenting on the case on social media.

Eleanor Laws QC, represent-ing Duff , Jane Bickerstaff QC, for Mahon, and Kieran Vaughan QC, representing Foster, said they would be seeking to recover their clients’ legal costs following the collapse of the trial.

Bickerstaff told the court: “We are very grateful that no evidence has been off ered. We have had no information as to why that deci-sion was reached or why it took 13 months to decide to charge.”

Scotland schools closuresparks safety review calls Guardian News and MediaEdinburgh

Scotland’s largest teaching union has called for a re-view of all public-private

partnership contracts in Scot-land following the emergency closure of 17 schools in Edin-burgh because of safety con-cerns, leaving 7,000 pupils un-able to start the new term.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) questioned how construction of the schools, which are about 10 years old and were all built under the same PPP1 contract, was approved, resulting in the serious struc-tural problems.

Larry Flanagan, the EIS gen-eral secretary, told Good Morn-ing Scotland: “We’ve been long-term critics of these initiatives, largely because the main con-tracts have been a huge drain on school budgets.

“We are concerned to find there are major structural dif-ficulties. There is a question mark around building con-

trols and how they are applied. One question is about value for money in terms of how the work was done initially and then an ongoing question of the drain on budgets.”

Edinburgh city council has closed 10 primary schools, five secondaries, two addi-tional support needs schools and a community centre from yesterday. No date has been set for reopening, and parents and teachers have already ex-pressed their worry about sec-ondary pupils, who are three weeks away from sitting im-portant exams.

Edinburgh city council has said that, while contingency plans are being put in place, some schools will remain closed until the end of the week.

Edinburgh Schools Part-nership, which built and manages the buildings, has apologised to parents and pu-pils, and promised to “accept full financial responsibility for investigating and resolv-ing these issues”.

The Education Secretary, An-

gela Constance, told GMS: “The immediate priority is to ensure that everything is being done to support children. We will cer-tainly need answers about what went wrong and why.

“There are, of course, big questions about PFI (private finance initiative) contracts. It’s no secret that this govern-ment has long-standing con-cern but I’ve no doubt that when parliament reconvenes in three or four weeks’ time that there will be renewed interest in this area.”

Andrew Kerr, the chief ex-ecutive of City of Edinburgh council, told Radio 4’s Today programme that he anticipated contingency plans for pupils would be in place by the end of today.

“We have had lots of off ers from our partners – universi-ties, other local authorities and the Scottish government – to help us fi nd those alternatives so everyone in Edinburgh is pulling together to make sure that we al-leviate this problem as much as we can,” he said.

Ukip backtracks ondeportation stance Guardian News and MediaLondon

Ukip’s Northern Ireland leader has sought to clarify his position after

claiming his party would deport foreign doctors even if they were only found guilty of a parking in-fringement.

David McNarry, the former Stormont assembly member for Strangford - who defected from the Ulster Unionists to Ukip - was challenged on Radio Ulster yesterday morning over what he would do if a Polish surgeon was fi ned for overstaying in a car park.

“It’s a crime. He has bro-ken the law,” McNarry told presenter Stephen Nolan. The Ukip spokesman said his party would deport foreigners guilty of crimes in the UK including traffi c off ences.

Campaigning for a ‘no’ vote in June’s referendum on EU mem-bership, McNarry said: “We need our country back. We need to be running our own aff airs. We are capable of doing it.

“We have a great opportunity

in Northern Ireland, a marvel-lous opportunity in Northern Ireland to keep going as we have been going. Let’s stand up for ourselves and give ourselves a break.”

However, later yesterday, McNarry rowed back on his re-marks. He issued a statement from Ukip’s central press offi ce to clarify his line on deport-ing foreigners convicted in the courts.

“This morning’s remarks were part of what I considered a silly line of questioning taking an extreme example and blow-ing it out of all proportion. I wanted Stephen Nolan to con-sider Ukip’s deportation policy seriously and not in an extreme light as he did, geared more to entertainment rather than pub-lic information.”

He said: “Let me make the position absolutely crystal clear – Ukip would not deport any-one for anything other than a serious offence followed by due process and conviction in the courts. That is our policy on deportation. Ukip have serious policies on migration and de-portation.”

Another day, another ticket

A traff ic warden puts fixed penalty notices on a string of cars in SW3, London.

BRITAIN/IRELAND


17

Art sale

A gallery assistant poses with the painting “No 17” by Mark Rothko during a media preview of the Post-War and Contemporary sale at Christie’s in London yesterday.

NHS ‘squandering’ millions on over-the-counter drugs AgenciesLondon

The NHS is spending mil-lions of pounds a year on prescriptions for items that

can be bought in high street phar-macies.

Household brands such as Vase-line, Rennie, Strepsils, Benadryl and Bazuka account for hundreds of thousands of prescriptions eve-ry year, NHS data shows.

The fi gures for England, ana-lysed by the Press Association, show multi-vitamins made up 1.33mn prescriptions in 2015 at a spend of more than £3.8mn.

One of the biggest spends was for antacids - mostly Rennie and Gaviscon - with more than 4mn prescriptions at just over £26mn.

Calpol accounted for 12,605 at a cost of £84,997, while Benadryl made up 97,629 prescriptions at a £1.55mn spend.

Cough medicines including Be-

nylin, Buttercup, Boots own brand and Covonia were also available on prescription.

Millions of pounds worth of mouthwash was prescribed, with one type available for £2.99 in Su-perdrug accounting for a £1.8mn spend, and a further £964,399 was spent on Corsodyl.

Hand sanitiser was prescribed, while Strepsils, Halls, Throaties and Tyrozets lozenges accounted for more than £25,000.

In 2015, £9.27bn was spent on

all prescriptions dispensed in the community - a 4.68% rise on the £8.85bn in 2014, the data from the Health and Social Care Informa-tion Centre (HSCIC) showed.

In 2015, 1.08bn prescription items were dispensed - a 1.79% rise from the 1.06bn in 2014.

Around 90% of prescriptions are free of charge to patients. Crit-ics said too much money was being “squandered” on bathroom cabi-net items but the Royal College of GPs said doctors issued prescrip-

tions in the best interests of pa-tients.

Katherine Murphy, chief execu-tive of the Patients Association, said: “The NHS is under enormous fi nancial pressure right now. Every penny in the NHS must be spent appropriately and wisely. Practi-tioners must always make sure that prescription items are necessary.

“However, patients also have responsibilities to not waste the NHS’s scarce resources and should endeavour to pay for everyday

items such as cold remedies out of their own pocket.”

The data showed thousands spent on head lice treatments, with the Hedrin head lice treatment ac-counting for 41,560 prescriptions at £279,143 while the bill for Full Marks was £12,591.

Thousands of pounds was also allocated to Nytol (£122,079) alongside Kalms herbal sleeping pills, Berocca, Lemsip, Day Nurse, Alka-Seltzer and Sudafed.

Bonjela made up over 59,000

prescriptions at a cost of £152,272 while Bazuka cost £133,875.

Dr Maureen Baker, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, said: “Prescribing is a core skill in gen-eral practice and family doctors will always prescribe in the best interests of our patients.

“It is certainly important to be mindful of the cost of prescrip-tions to the NHS, especially if the medications and products are readily available over the coun-ter.”

EUROPE


Athens, Skopje bicker over migrant violence AFPAthens

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras yesterday accused neighbouring Macedonia

of “shaming” Europe by fi ring tear gas and rubber bullets at migrants desperately trying to break through a border fence.

Tensions were still running high after Sunday’s violence, which saw 250 migrants and refugees hurt at the fl ashpoint Idomeni crossing as they tried to force their way into Macedonia.

“Faced with people who were clearly not armed and constituted no serious threat, they attacked with chemicals, with tear gas and rubber bullets,” Tsipras told report-ers, blaming Macedonian police.

“This is a great shame for Eu-ropean culture and for countries who want to be part of it,” he said, calling on the EU and the UN refu-gee agency UNHCR to take a stand as Europe struggles cope with its worst migration crisis since World War II.

It was the latest violence to erupt at Idomeni, where more than 11,000 migrants have been living rough for weeks after Balkan states closed their borders, cutting off ac-cess to western Europe. Many are refugees fl eeing war in Syria and Iraq.

But Macedonia, which has aspi-rations to join the European Union, hit back. It accused Greek police of failing to intervene as around 3,000 migrants “violently” tried to cross the frontier, hurling stones and other objects in a bid to break down the fence.

Medical charity Doctors With-out Borders (MSF) said 200 people suff ered breathing problems, 30 sustained injuries from rubber bul-lets - three of them children under 10 - and 30 had other injuries.

Tensions were still high yester-day although there was no immedi-ate repeat of the weekend clashes.

“Protesters in Idomeni have dragged a train wagon in front of the police bus. Tensions are high,” MSF said in a tweet.

An hour later, it said another 200 people were heading for the bor-der, but described the situation as “quite calm”.

The makeshift encampment at Idomeni, where people are living in squalid conditions, has become a symbol of the misery faced by thousands who have fl ed war and poverty to reach Europe and Greek eff orts to move them into nearby reception centres have so far been unsuccessful.

Germany said it was watching developments there “with con-cern” and urged all states to ensure border security was strictly in line with human rights.

“We are watching with concern the diffi cult living conditions in the provisional camp Idomeni and the

events of the past 24 to 48 hours on the Greece-Macedonia border,” said Steff en Seibert, spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Asked about the actions of the Macedonian border guards, he said: “Controlling the borders must, in every country, be in line with inter-national legal standards.”

He urged migrants to leave Ido-meni and move into offi cial shelters set up by Greece and not to attempt to cross the border illegally.

“Trying to cross the border... is not a hopeful option,” he said.

The European Commission also reiterated calls for the people

blocked at Idomeni to be relocated, with spokeswoman Mina Andreeva warning them not to push ahead with “a dangerous and irregular onward journey”.

Sunday’s incident began when leafl ets in Arabic were distributed around the camp falsely suggest-ing the border was about to open, prompting Greece to double its po-lice presence in the area.

Sunday’s violence has only served to escalate the row between Athens and Skopje.

Countries which display behav-iour “incomprehensible and un-acceptable to humanity certainly

have no place in the EU or Nato,” Greek President Prokopis Pav-lopoulos said. “I am referring to (Macedonia) specifi cally.”

Skopje has furiously defended its actions, saying 23 of its border police were injured in the incident and accusing the Greek police of failing to lift a fi nger to stop the protesters.

It also denied using any kind of bullets against the crowd.

MSF, however, confi rmed treat-ing “30 to 40 people” for such wounds, among them women and children. “According to their ac-counts, Macedonian police fi red on

them,” spokesman Jonas Haeensen said.

The Greek government said it had lodged two “very strong protests” with Macedonian authorities.

The refugee crisis has piled fur-ther pressure on already strained ties between the two neighbours over a two-decade dispute over Macedonia’s name.

Athens does not accept its neighbour using the name Mace-donia, claiming to have a historical right to the name because the heart of Alexander the Great’s ancient kingdom lies in Greece’s northern Macedonia region.

Ukraine seeks pro-EU govt AFPKiev

Ukraine yesterday prepared to usher in a stable new pro-Western govern-

ment following the resignation of Prime Minister Arseniy Yat-senyuk over public anger with his seeming inability to fi ght gov-ernment graft.

Yatsenyuk’s Sunday an-nouncement came barely two months after he survived a no-confi dence vote in parliament that left the government para-lysed and put the release of vital foreign aid on hold.

The former Soviet republic has been roiled by a pro-Russian eastern revolt and an economic collapse that has wiped out peo-ple’s savings and stirred public resentment toward the govern-ment since Yatsenyuk assumed offi ce in February 2014.

President Petro Poroshenko’s party has proposed replac-ing Yatsenyuk with parliament speaker Volodymyr Groysman - a coalition builder who has gained stature by keeping the notori-ously rowdy chamber in relative peace since his appointment in November 2014.

But some economists fear that

the 38-year-old protege of Poro-shenko may lack the toughness needed to stand up to a handful of tycoons who have dominated Ukraine’s fractious politics for years.

Parliament is to decide today whether to accept Yatsenyuk’s resignation at what is expected to be a marathon session that might also include a vote on Groys-man’s candidacy.

Yatsenyuk’s party member Anton Gerashchenko wrote on Facebook that there were “more than enough votes” needed to accept the premier’s resignation.

Yet what comes next is far less clear.

“There is still huge uncertain-ty about the political situation,” London’s Capital Economic con-sultancy warned.

The parliamentary factions headed by Poroshenko and Yat-senyuk have been trying for weeks to muster the majority necessary to push through a new cabinet leader and form a gov-ernment that could appease the other dissatisfi ed parties.

But smaller groups such as the one headed by former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko have pulled out of the pro-EU coali-tion that formed in wake of the February 2014 ouster of Ukraine’s

despised Russian-backed presi-dent Viktor Yanukovych.

Tymoshenko’s party and other rebellious factions have so far been non-committal about whether they were ready to see Groysman assume one of Ukraine’s two top posts.

This confusion comes against the backdrop of fi erce jostling for senior cabinet seats and a rag-ing trade war with Russia that has hurt producers and further stalled Ukraine’s return to eco-nomic growth.

Groysman himself warmly praised Yatsenyuk for his deci-sion but said nothing about his own chances of becoming the next premier.

“I understand that this was a thought-through and dignifi ed step, perhaps a diffi cult one, but one that deserves respect,” Inter-fax-Ukraine quoted Groysman as saying.

He called on parliament to quickly forge a coalition “that can form a new reform-driver government and choose a prime minister, thus ensuring the inev-itability of (Ukraine’s) European integration.”

Analysts and the Ukrainian media had predicted that one of the most important changes in the government would involve

the departure of Finance Minis-ter Natalie Jaresko.

The US-born former State Department worker and private banker has been widely praised by the West for being able to pull together a crucial debt restruc-turing deal in August 2015.

Yet some analysts said she would not want to serve under Groysman after herself volun-teering for the premiership post.

Slovakia’s reformist former deputy prime minister Ivan Miklos has agreed to join the cabinet if he is allowed to keep his citizenship and pursue the austerity measures prescribed by the International Monetary Fund under its $17.5bn rescue plan.

The IMF suspended tranche payments to Ukraine late last year due to the government’s slow implementation of some of the reforms.

But the Ukrainska Pravda news site quoted sources as saying that Miklos will “defi nitely” not re-place Jaresko at the crucial post.

And Liga.net cited presidential party member Vadym Denysenko as saying that Jaresko would in fact keep her job.

Capital Economics called the possibility of Jaresko’s departure “a key concern”.

Candles are lit in front of portraits of late Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria, in front of Presidential Palace in Warsaw yesterday during a memorial marking the sixth anniversary of the presidential plane crash in Smolensk. Poland marked the anniversary of the jet crash amid louder-than-ever claims it was no accident - fuelled by his twin brother’s party winning power last year.

Sombre tribute

Moroccan on trial in Germany for New Year assault AFPDusseldorf

Germany yesterday put a 33-year-old Moroccan on trial for sexual assault, the fi rst man accused over a spate of such attacks at New Year’s celebrations

that shocked the country. The defendant, who entered the Dusseldorf courtroom hiding his face under a blue jacket, allegedly groped a woman while he and some 15 to 20 other men encircled and also assaulted her.

The 18-year-old woman told the court of her panic as the man lifted her skirt to touch her buttocks while feel-ing countless other hands touching her breasts and genital area in a terrifying mob attack. She said she later iden-tifi ed the defendant from unrelated television footage screened in a “Spiegel TV” news reportage on pickpockets in the city of Duesseldorf.

Germany was appalled by the wave of sexual assaults and other crimes targeting women on New Year’s Eve, mainly in Cologne but also in several other cities includ-ing Duesseldorf, where police received 118 criminal com-plaints. The Cologne attacks in particular - committed in a crowd of mostly North African men, according to wit-nesses - heightened public fears about a mass infl ux of refugees and migrants.

Right-wing populist groups protested against “rape-fugees” and “sex-jihadists” while condemning the arrival of more than 1mn asylum seekers last year, the majority from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The court heard that the Moroccan man accused of at-tacking the woman in Duesseldorf also faces separate un-specifi ed assault and property damage charges, and has four previous theft convictions.

Prosecutor Laura De Bruyn said that “the accused and his accomplices encircled and trapped the young woman and repeatedly touched her breasts, her buttocks but also her genital area”. The man had entered Germany in April 2014 when he fi led a request for political asylum which was later rejected, but continued to stay in a shelter for asylum seekers, she said.

“The injured party has said that she was watching a tel-evision report in which the defendant gave an interview about a diff erent matter,” said De Bruyn. “She clearly rec-ognised him as the perpetrator and decided to fi le charges.”

Red Cross, aid groups to resist tougher Austrian asylum bill

Aid groups, including the Red Cross, said yesterday they would resist plans by the Austrian govern-ment to toughen its asylum process, shifting deci-

sion-making to centres near its borders. Draft legislation Austria says is needed to safeguard

public order and internal security would make family re-unifi cation harder for migrants and would see the bulk of asylum requests being dealt with within an hour of cross-ing Austria’s border.

“This is probably the most fundamental change in re-cent decades. A change which means Austria virtually takes leave of the right to asylum,” Michael Landau, head of the Christian non-governmental organisation (NGO) Caritas, told reporters.

Austria’s government has relied heavily on NGOs such as Caritas, the Red Cross and German aid group Diakonie to manage migrant fl ows and accommodation centres, provide legal assistance and collect and distribute clothes and food to asylum seekers.

The head of Austria’s Red Cross, Werner Kerschbaum, said he had sent a letter to the government to say his group would refuse to help enforce the new measures, should parliament approve them in a vote expected to take place in May.

The heads of all three organisations said the bill breached both European law and the Austrian constitu-tion and would encourage migrants to make use of human traffi ckers. The groups will appeal to each lawmaker’s conscience in writing to encourage them to vote against the draft tabled by Austria’s centrist coalition govern-ment, Chalupka said.

The new plans would go beyond previous restrictions Austria introduced to limit the number of asylum claims it accepts this year to 37,500 - less than half of last year’s 90,000. It has received around 14,000 claims so far this year alone.

Citizen’s arrest of migrants sparks protest in Bulgaria

A citizen’s arrest of three illegal

migrants sparked controversy in

Bulgaria yesterday, with rights

groups protesting while the govern-

ment refrained from condemning the

practice.

Amateur video footage broadcast

on several Bulgarian televisions and

in social media showed three men

lying on the ground, their hands

tied behind their backs as someone

shouts: “Go back to Turkey!”

Border police who arrived at the

scene found the three unhurt and

with their hands free.

Such arrests have happened in-

creasingly in recent weeks, targeting

migrants arriving through the border

with Turkey in a move denounced by

the Bulgarian branch of the Helsinki

Committee (BHC) rights group.

“These images (show) the most

brutal citizen’s arrest so far in Bul-

garia. The prosecution must open a

probe immediately,” BHC president

Krasimir Kanev said, warning that a

failure to act by the authorities would

only encourage such acts.

But the authorities’ reaction has

been ambiguous.

“This is.. illegal,” border police

chief Antonio Angelov told private

bTV television in comments a

week after he handed out certifi-

cates of appreciation to another

vigilante group for intercepting

some 20 migrants near the border

with Turkey.

Prime Minister Boyko Borisov also

expressed his thanks to the group’s

leader in a telephone call. “The state

belongs to all of us, whoever wants

to help (protecting it) is welcome,” he

said on Monday.

But the BHC denounced such

rewards as “unacceptable”, warning

that Bulgaria risked turning “into a

cradle of Balkan fascism”.

Bulgaria, which has so far re-

mained on the sidelines of Europe’s

worst migration crisis since World

War II, is concerned that the closure

of the western Balkans migrant route

could see increasing numbers of peo-

ple trying to cross its territory.

To prevent an influx, it has sped up

construction of a 132km fence along

the Turkish border and holds regular

army and border police training

sessions along the frontier in a show

of force.

According to a survey published

last week, 60% of Bulgarians see

migrants as “a threat to national

security” and 51% would not like

to work with or live next door to a

migrant in a country which is the

poorest in the EU.

Refugees and migrants protest as a tear gas canister, fired on Sunday, exploded yesterday near their makeshift camp in the northern Greek border village of Idomeni.

EUROPE19Gulf Times


Hungary’s government yesterday moved to scrap an unpopular year-old ban on Sunday trading for most shops, avoiding what looked set to be an embarrassing referendum defeat on the issue for Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “The government proposes that parliament abolishes the legislation and reinstates the previous system,” said Orban’s cabinet chief Antal Rogan. Parliament could vote on the proposal as soon as today, meaning shops could be trading again next Sunday, he said. In eff ect from March 15 last year, the law ordered shops larger than 400sq m to stay closed on Sundays. A recent poll showed over 60% of those surveyed were against it.

Fighting raged yesterday between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey as the cabinet held an unprecedented meeting on the edge of the restive region to discuss ways of rebuilding its shattered economy. The Turkish army said 39 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party had been killed in clashes in four towns over the weekend, adding to a death toll that has risen sharply since the collapse of a ceasefire last July. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu chaired the cabinet meeting in the city of Sanliurfa, which though located in southeast Turkey is still hundreds of kilometres from the main areas of conflict.

A ferry headed to the French island of Corsica ran aground yesterday as it manoeuvred out of a port in Sardinia, but nobody onboard was injured, the Italian Coastguard said in a statement. The ferry operated by Italian company Moby set off from Santa Teresa di Gallura, on the northern tip of Sardinia, and was due to sail across to Bonifacio, at the southern end of Corsica, but at around 10.15am, it hit a reef and got stuck. Two Guardia Costiera vessels rushed to the scene and evacuated 67 passengers. Two more passengers - lorry drivers who had their vehicles on the deck - stayed aboard to help the ferry’s 12-strong crew.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls yesterday unveiled measures to help young people into work, in response to weeks of protests against proposed reforms to labour laws. Valls made the proposals in a meeting with eight youth organisations that oppose the reforms. The measures, worth up to 500mn euros ($570mn) a year, include an initiative to encourage employers to hire young workers on full-time contracts. Employers would be forced to pay additional taxes on short-term contracts. Another proposal is for new graduates of modest means to receive a four-month extension to their study grants to tide them over until they find work.

An artefact that was stolen from the Roman Forum more than 50 years ago and ended up in the hands of a German collector was returned to Italy yesterday, its Ministry for Culture said in a statement. The terracotta plate fragment, showing a human face, went missing in August 1961. It resurfaced in December 2014, inside a package mailed to the Greek embassy in Berlin by the widow of its owner, who wrongly presumed it came from Greece. Greek Culture Minister Aristides Baltas handed over the object to his Italian counterpart, Dario Franceschini, during a meeting in Athens. Franceschini said the gesture was a testimony to their joint eff orts in fighting the smuggling of looted art.

Hungary to scrap unpopular Sunday trading ban

Turkish cabinet meets in strife-torn southeast

Ferry runs aground in Sardinia, passengers safe

After protests, French PM vows to help youth get jobs

Ancient Roman artefact returned to Italy

RESENTED DEFIANCEREEF GRIEF JOB CRUNCH LOOTED ART

Suicide bombers hit Russia police station AFPMoscow

Three suicide bombers yesterday blew themselves up as they tried to storm a rural police station in a

usually peaceful region of southern Rus-sia, causing no other casualties, police said.

After the attack in the village of Nov-oselitskoye in the southern Stavropol region, regional authorities ordered the tightening of security measures in kin-dergartens, schools and hospitals.

Russia’s North Caucasus - including Chechnya where the Kremlin has fought two wars against separatists over the past 20 years - has been gripped by nearly dai-ly violence for years due to a simmering Islamist insurgency there.

Attacks in the Stavropol region - which is close to the Muslim-majority Northern Caucasus - are rare, however.

“We were holding a meeting in the morning when fi ve explosions went off ,” Sergei Karamyshev, a senior local police of-fi cial, told AFP. “Three people blew them-selves up after an offi cer on duty at the en-trance blocked the door to the building.”

He said three of the explosions were caused by the suicide bombers, while a fourth was caused by a grenade. The source of the fi fth blast was not immedi-ately clear, he added.

There was no immediate information on the identities of the bombers. “There are only fragments of fl esh over there,” said Karamyshev.

A regional police spokeswoman said however that just one of the attackers had detonated an explosive charge while the other two assailants were killed by “re-turn fi re.”

“They were shooting at the building,” said Natalya Tyncherova.

The lifenews.ru news outlet known for its close ties to police and security agen-

cies posted an eyewitness video shot af-ter the attack showing the police station with an alarm sounding and what appear to be fragments of bodies outside.

“There were fi ve explosions and a vol-ley of automatic gunfi re,” a male witness can be heard saying in the video. “There’s no one here, everyone has run away in a panic.”

Investigators said in a statement that “three unknown men” tried to storm the police station and detonated grenades, adding that the building and nearby cars had been damaged.

In a sign of the signifi cance of the in-cident, deputy chairman of the Moscow-based Investigative Committee which probes major crimes, Boris Karnaukhov, arrived at the scene.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said eff orts were under way “to understand what was behind” the attack, which is likely to be seen as a blow to the Kremlin’s prestige.

“Was this a terrorist threat or gang-sters? Without knowing the circum-stances it is hard to say,” he told reporters during a conference call.

The Islamic State group claimed respon-sibility in December for a deadly shooting in Derbent, a city in the North Caucasus re-public of Dagestan with an ancient citadel that is popular with tourists.

IS has vowed revenge against Russia after Putin launched a bombing cam-paign in Syria last September.

The Syrian army backed by Russian forces recently scored a hugely symbolic victory over IS jihadists in the ancient city of Palmyra and is preparing to retake control of the northern city of Aleppo from rebels fi ghting the regime of Presi-dent Bashar al-Assad.

In 2009, the Kremlin formally can-celled a decade-long counter-terrorism regime in Chechnya, claiming a sem-blance of normality had returned to the war-scarred region.

Russian soldiers secure a neighbourhood in Novoselitskoye, Stavropol region in southern Russia.

Steel workers from Germany’s ThyssenKrupp AG and IG Metall trade unions demonstrate for higher wages in Duisburg. The text on banner reads ‘Cleaner steel is the future’.

Wage protest Summer may bring Zika to southern Europe AFPAmsterdam

With summer approaching, Zika may fi nd its way into virus-car-rying mosquitoes in Europe or

the US, disease experts have warned, but any outbreaks are likely to be small and short-lived.

Doctors and scientists attending a ma-jor infectious diseases conference in Am-sterdam said there was no reason to panic, and the idea of screening travellers was far-fetched.

Zika is borne by the Aedes aegypti mosquito found in Latin America and the Caribbean - in the grips of an outbreak of the virus which has been linked to severe brain damage in babies and rare neuro-logical diseases in adults.

“We have to accept that someday there will be a... traveller coming back from South America with Zika virus in his or her blood and there is a potential risk of starting a transmission,” tropical medi-cine professor Eskild Petersen of Den-mark’s Aarhus University said yesterday.

“I would say that the southern part of the US and southern Europe are defi nitely at risk,” he told AFP on the conference sidelines. However, he stressed, the risk should not be exaggerated. “It is a disease which in the vast majority of cases is a mild viral disease.”

Rare cases of sexual virus transmission have also been recorded.

The warmer summer months bring with them the peak mosquito season for Europe and the US after the insects’ eggs - typically found in stagnant water - hatch.

In Europe, the potential threat comes from a related mosquito, Aedes albopic-tus, which began to spread in southern Europe about 25 years ago.

Albopictus is not known to have trans-mitted Zika to humans in the wild, but has been shown capable of doing so in labora-tory experiments.

“A real risk for Europe? No, I don’t think so,” said Jean-Paul Stahl, an infec-tious diseases expert from the Grenoble University Hospital in France.

“The vector (the mosquito) is in the Mediterranean areas, but we don’t have the virus. Not yet.”

There is a risk of “some little out-breaks” around a single imported case, he added, “but I don’t think at this time the virus will resettle in Europe.”

The main challenge, according to Pe-tersen, would be to prevent infected blood making its way into blood banks and being given to a patient with low immune pro-tection.

According to Nick Beeching, a senior lecturer on infectious diseases at the Liv-erpool School of Tropical Medicine, it is hard to predict threat based on the limited data available.

Very little is known about Zika - how long it may hide out in the human body, the degree of risk of sexual transmission, and the full list of diseases it may cause.

“We think its mostly transmitted by the mosquitos that transmit dengue and sim-ilar infections, so we think there is prob-ably not going to be much of a problem in countries where you don’t have those mosquitoes,” said Beeching.

But “we don’t know that for sure.” Studies are ongoing to see if other mos-

quitoes elsewhere may also transmit the virus.

Turkey lashes out at German satire over Erdogan jibe AFPBerlin

Germany said yesterday it was reviewing a request by Turkey to prosecute a

TV satirist who crudely insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on air, amid a bitter row over free speech.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steff en Seibert told reporters that Berlin had received a “note verbale”, a formal diplo-matic protest, from Ankara ask-ing for “criminal proceedings” against celebrity comedian Jan Boehmermann.

Seibert said offi cials at the chancellery, foreign ministry and justice ministry would de-cide after “careful review” in the coming days whether a probe under the rarely enforced sec-tion 103 of the criminal code - insulting organs or representa-tives of foreign states - could go forward.

If prosecutors decide to bring charges, they could carry a sen-tence of up to three years in pris-on.

German prosecutors last week opened a preliminary probe against Boehmermann, 35, over his so-called “Defamatory Poem”, recited with a broad grin on public television, which ac-cused Erdogan of having sex with goats and sheep.

That investigation was based on complaints from several Ger-man viewers.

However the Turkish govern-ment’s request gives the aff air a far broader diplomatic dimen-sion and puts Merkel in the line of fi re.

Seibert stressed Berlin’s con-stitutional commitment to free-dom of expression, calling it “non-negotiable”.

“This applies, and this is very important to me, regardless of whether the chancellor person-ally fi nds something artistically successful or repellent, tasteful or tasteless,” he said.

Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin confi rmed the complaint to reporters in Ankara.

“This type of insult against a president, against an entire peo-ple, has nothing to do with free-dom of expression and the press, it is a criminal off ence,” he said.

During the broadcast on March 31, Boehmermann glee-fully admitted the piece fl outed Germany’s legal limits on free speech and was intended as a provocation.

In the German-language rhyme, Boehmermann, seated before the Turkish fl ag and a portrait of Erdogan, also charges that the Turkish leader loves to “repress minorities, kick Kurds and beat Christians”.

Seibert quoted Merkel last week criticising the poem as “deliberately insulting” dur-ing a telephone call with Turk-ish Prime Minister Ahmet Da-votoglu, in a move Berlin had hoped would smooth ruffled feathers.

The case comes at an ex-tremely awkward time as Eu-rope, and Germany in particular, are relying on Turkey to imple-ment a pact to curb the infl ux of migrants setting sail for the EU from Turkey’s shores.

German critics have savaged the government’s muted re-sponse to Turkey’s diplomatic protest, accusing Merkel of kow-towing to the Turkish leader.

News website Spiegel Online said the impression had arisen “that Merkel can be blackmailed over the EU-Turkey migrant pact” and said the government now faced a serious dilemma be-tween democratic principles and the letter of an evidently out-dated law.

The head of the Turkish com-munity in Germany, Gokay So-fuoglu, blasted the poem as “not satirical but inappropriate and insulting” and demanded an apology from Boehmer-mann.

The comedian was reacting to Ankara’s decision to summon Germany’s ambassador in pro-test last month over a previous satirical song broadcast on Ger-man TV which lampooned Er-dogan in far tamer language.

The two-minute clip “Erdow-ie, Erdowo, Erdogan”, set to the tune of a 1980s pop song, takes aim at the Turkish president over his alleged spending excesses and his government’s crackdown on civil liberties.

Free speech advocates have rallied around Boehmermann, with his employer, public broad-caster ZDF, saying his show would “continue as planned” although it has removed the of-fending clip from its website.

“This type of insult against a president, against an entire people, has nothing to do with freedom of expression and the press, it is a criminal off ence”

W Bengal’s restored Danishchurch to open on April 16

New UP BJP chief hopes to win 265 seats in 2017

Police beat up several journalists in Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, causing an outcry which led to the suspension of four police personnel. The incident happened on Sunday night at Sitaramdera police station in steel city Jamshedpur where journalists had gone to report on the detention of a Bharatiya Janata Party-supported builder. “The police objected to the media coverage,” Manoj Singh, a reporter of a local TV channel and who sustained head injuries, said. “All of sudden, they started beating journalists. We were just doing our professional work,” he said. One head constable and three other policemen were suspended. The Jharkhand Journalist Association has condemned the incident and demanded action against the police off icials involved.

The desire to do stunts for a television reality show claimed the life of a teenager in Hyderabad, police said. Mohamed Jalaluddin, 19, died of severe burns he sustained while practicing fire stunts in Falaknuma area on April 7. He sustained 60% burns as he could not take off the T-shirt which he had set on fire after pouring kerosene. His friends were recording the stunts on their mobile phones as he wanted to participate in a reality show on a television channel by sending these clips, Assistant Commissioner of Police M A Bari said. The off icer said the teenager was keen to participate in ‘India’s got talent’ show and wanted to take some video clips of the stunts with the help of his friends.

Twelve guerrillas of the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) have surrendered to the police, off icials said in Agartala yesterday. “Ten NLFT militants along with their two associates fled their Bangladeshi hideout last week and crossed over to Tripura before surrendering to the superintendent of police Arindam Nath on Sunday in Tripura’s border village Bhandarima,” a police off icer said. The militants were accompanied by 20 family members, including eight children, he said. Border Security Force (BSF) off icials were present during the surrender. The NLFT is short of funds and the condition of the lower rank cadres was miserable, BSF’s Deputy Commandant Lakshya Mehta said in a statement.

Cops suspended afterattack on journalists

Stunt with fire for reality show claims teen’s life

12 militants surrender with families in Tripura

OUTCRY TRAGEDYINSURGENCY

St Olav’s Church, dating back to the Danish settlement in West Bengal, will be thrown open for regular service as well as visitors from April 16 following restoration of the building. The church at Serampore in Hooghly district - locally known as ‘Danish church’ - is one of the over 100 buildings constructed between 1755 and 1845 when Serampore was under Danish management and known as Frederiksnagore. “On April 16, there will be a small ceremony after which it will be opened for regular service,” Father Terence Ireland, who was involved in the restoration project, said. The 210-year-old church was kept locked since 2013 as there was danger of its collapse.

HERITAGE POLITICS

Newly-appointed president of Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party Keshav Maurya, who arrived in Lucknow yesterday to a grand welcome by supporters and party workers, said the party would win 265 seats in the 404-member state assembly polls next year. He was mobbed by enthusiastic party workers at the Charbagh railway station. Thanking party workers for their support, Maurya exuded confidence that the next government in the state would be of the BJP. “We will win 265 seats in the 2017 state polls.” Among others welcoming him at the railway station was former state BJP president Laxmikant Bajpayi. The Congress, however, protested Maurya’s arrival, accusing him of being the extremist face of the BJP.


INDIA20

Relatives in desperate search for loved ones AgenciesThiruvananthapuram

After scouring six hospitals and three morgues, N P Anoop is no closer to fi nd-

ing his father who was caught in a massive blast and fi re at a Kerala temple that claimed more than 100 lives.

Like thousands of others, his father had gone on Saturday night to the temple to see the annual fi reworks display.

But in the chaotic hours after the explosion that ripped through the Puttingal Devi complex, the increasingly desperate 32-year-old could fi nd no trace of his fa-ther, Vishwanathan, and feared the worst.

“I don’t know if he is alive or dead. All I want is to see him, we are ready for the worst but this search is painful,” he said af-ter questioning ICU staff at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital.

“My father had gone to the fes-tival with his friend. We were able to fi nd the body of his friend but have yet to get any information on my father,” the weary-looking Anoop said, before heading off to yet another hospital.

At hospitals, morgues and po-lice stations, families are involved in a heart-wrenching search for loved ones feared swept up in the blast that tore apart concrete buildings.

But the task is being made more diffi cult by the fact that some of the more than 100 people killed are unrecognisable.

Local residents reported fi nding body parts strewn at the complex from the force of the explosion, while others were charred in the fi re, in a tragedy that Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi described as “shocking beyond words”.

Some 15 families fl ocked to Paravur police station, just 100m

from the temple, to fi ll out miss-ing person reports and implore of-fi cers to help.

“There are 20 unclaimed bod-ies at the morgues and we suspect some of them (the missing) might be there. But only a DNA test will establish their identities as the bodies are beyond recognition,” offi cer in charge N Vijayan said.

At Thiruvananthapuram hos-pital, families move through the corridors, some sobbing, others peeking through glass windows, as overworked doctors and nurses race around them.

Others who found relatives now face an agonising wait as they un-dergo treatment for serious burn and other injuries.

“We can only pray to God. There is nothing we can do, doc-tors are doing their best to save him,” Ramesh, who only has one name, said of his injured 22-year-old son.

Emergency room doctor Rajesh Kumar said the hospital was ini-tially overwhelmed after the dis-

aster, with victims arriving with head wounds and mangled limbs.

At the temple in Kollam dis-trict, witnesses described mass panic after the explosion, thought to have been sparked by a fi rework that landed on a stockpile of oth-ers during the show.

Labourer K Manayan said

thousands of “jubilant people” had been enjoying the lengthy display in the early hours of Sun-day morning.

“Everything changed in a mo-ment after a huge thud. There was silence and people were crying for help. It was so powerful that I fell to the ground and in no time peo-

ple started running over me,” he told said.

“Someone pulled me towards the side and later took me to hos-pital.”

The Kerala government has opened a temporary medical out-post at the temple premises. It will function for a week.

Kerala policefi le charges over temple fi re tragedy Toll rises to 113, collector denies there was political pressure to let event go ahead

AgenciesKollam, Kerala

Police said yesterday they have fi led initial charges against six people over

a massive explosion during a banned fi reworks display that killed over 100 people and left at least 300 with horrifi c burns.

Thousands had packed into the Puttingal Devi Temple in Paravoor on Saturday night for the show when a stray fi rework apparently landed on a stockpile of them, triggering a huge blast that tore through concrete buildings.

Three people died of their in-juries overnight, taking the death toll from the disaster to 113. Hun-dreds more are still being treated.

Police said they were investi-gating who was responsible for the fi reworks display going ahead even though authorities in Kollam district had refused permission for it.

“A case was registered yes-terday against six people,” said the head of Kerala police crime branch S Ananathakrishnan.

“Six people have been named in the case - three from the temple committee and three who were contractors for the fi reworks dis-play.”

Initial charges against the six include culpable homicide not amounting to murder, he said.

None of the six has yet been ar-rested. Police said one was in hos-pital and the other fi ve had gone missing.

Police also said they were ques-tioning fi ve temple workers in-volved in staging the fi reworks display. They faced no charges at this stage.

Kollam District Collector A

Shinemol yesterday said the dis-trict police had initially submit-ted a report saying permission cannot be given for the fi reworks show.

“But on the 9th of this month, the police changed their position. An explanation will be asked on this change of stand,” she said.

She denied there was political pressure for the change of mind.

Witnesses told of how the force of the explosion sent concrete slabs and roof tiles slamming into the panicked crowd of onlookers in the early hours of Sunday.

Thousands had gone to the temple to celebrate the festival of Vishu, marking the Hindu new year.

Local resident Shiva Kumar said many families had left the display by the time the explosion occurred and the victims were mostly young men competing to set off the most explosive crack-ers.

“It was a sort of competition between two groups,” he said.

“The fi recrackers are sponsored by families who get them made, they are locally manufactured and don’t follow the usual norms. Sometimes they use gunpowder to get that extra fi repower.”

He described scenes of cha-os after the fi re broke out, with onlookers having to ferry the wounded to nearby hospitals us-ing their own cars and motorcy-cles.

One man living near the temple told how his son Adiraj, a factory worker, had gone to the display with three old friends. Only one survived.

“He was with his friends near the structure where the fi recrack-ers were kept,” said Baba, 46, giv-ing only one name.

“He had dressed up for the fes-tival after having dinner and said he will be with his friends. We saw his body afterwards at the hos-

pital morgue... his memory will haunt us every year on this day.”

Firefi ghters and police battled to douse the fi re that broke out after the explosion and to rescue those trapped at the complex, but some victims were charred be-yond recognition.

More than 30 have yet to be identifi ed and a team of specialist doctors was deployed from New Delhi to treat the horrifi c burn in-juries.

Some buildings at the temple complex were completely fl at-tened by the force of the blast, while others had their roof tiles blown off or plaster ripped from the walls.

The main temple building had its windows blown out. Dozens of shoes lay scattered on the dusty ground outside.

The scale of the tragedy has ignited demands that fi reworks shows be banned at crowded places in Kerala. The chief of the state unit of the Indian Medical Association, A V Jayakrishna, said he planned to fi le a petition before the Kerala High Court curbing the use of fi reworks.

Fires and stampedes are not uncommon at temples and during religious occasions, often because of poor security arrangements and lax safety standards.

The Kerala government has or-dered a judicial inquiry into the disaster, which comes as the state heads to the polls.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the scene of the disaster on Sunday and messages of condo-lence have poured in from around the world.

Pope Francis’s offi ce said he was “praying for all aff ected by this tragedy” while Britain’s Prince William and wife Kate said through a spokesman they were “saddened by the news” after ar-riving in India on Sunday for an offi cial tour.

Rules werefl outed inholdingfi reworks,says expert IANSKollam, Kerala

A day after a fi re tragedy claimed 113 lives, Chief Controller of Explosives

Sudarshan Kamal said all rules were violated in holding the fi re-works display at the Puttingal Devi Temple in Kerala’s coastal town of Paravur.

Kamal and his team of offi cials from Nagpur arrived at the dev-astated temple site yesterday.

The offi cials went around the place inspecting the debris and also collected samples which could throw light on the nature of the explosives used for the fi reworks display.

“All the rules related to use of explosives have been violated. More details can be revealed only after all tests are conducted,” Kamal said at the temple site.

Thousands of people were gathered at the temple for the pyrotechnic show to mark the start of the Hindu year when sparks ignited a cache of fi re-works stored inside the temple grounds.

The temple remained closed yesterday.

The customary religious ritu-als and other associated activi-ties of the temple were not per-formed, residents living in the neighbourhood said. No respon-sible offi cial of the temple trust was present in the premises.

The temple itself appeared to be largely unaff ected while a concrete building nearby where a large quantity of fi reworks was stored was destroyed after the horrifi c fi re and explosion.

Senior offi cials of the temple remain unreachable.

Yesterday morning, the tem-ple compound was fi lled with locals and others from nearby places who had come to see the disaster site. A large number of policemen were also posted at the site.

Marxist leader and former chief minister V S Achuthanan-dan called for a probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

“The need of the hour is an NIA probe into the entire episode as there are reports of very pow-erful explosives used,” he said.

Volunteers from Seva Bharathi, a group linked to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), man a help desk for relatives of injured or deceased victims of the Puttingal Devi Temple fire tragedy at Kollam District Hospital in Kollam yesterday.

Fireworks show approved for Thrissur Pooram

Authorities yesterday gave

conditional approval for the

hugely popular fireworks show

at the Thrissur Pooram festival.

“Two temples have been given

permission to use a maximum

of 2,000kg each of explosive

powder to make the crackers.

The sound decibel will be less

than 125,” Thrissur Collector V

Ratheesan said. “Also, the dis-

tance from the display area and

the spectators should be adhered

to strictly,” he said. “A special

squad will be set up to monitor

everything.” During the festival,

more than 50 elephants will be

paraded and there will be a spec-

tacular firecracker display too.

The history of Pooram dates back

to the late 18th century and was

started by Sakthan Thampuran,

the Maharaja of the erstwhile

Kochi state.

Hospital staff and relatives gather near freezers where unclaimed bodies have been kept at the mortuary of Kollam District Hospital.

21Gulf TimesTuesday, April 12, 2016

INDIA

Second phase of elections seeshigh turnout IANSKolkata]/ Guwahati

Braving the sweltering heat and oppressive humid-ity, people turned out in

huge numbers yesterday to ex-ercise their right to franchise in the second phase of elections in West Bengal and Assam.

In West Bengal polls, were held in 31 constituencies, amid reports of sporadic violence and intimidation.

Opposition parties accused the ruling Trinamool Congress of resorting to widespread vio-lence during the day, when the second phase of the assembly election took place covering 13 constituencies in West Mid-napore and nine each in Bankura and Burdwan districts.

According to Election Com-mission offi cials, between 75 and 85% polling was seen in the three districts till 5pm.

At least 13 people were injured in a clash between political rivals at Jamuria of Burdwan district. “Three-four people have been detained,” said a police offi cer.

In Assam, the second and fi nal phase was held in 61 constitu-encies which saw 82.02% of the over 10mn voters casting their ballot.

In West Bengal, the Left Front, Congress and the Bharatiya Ja-nata Party alleged that the polls were far from peaceful and fair.

Several crude bombs kept in a bag were seized from near a booth in Jamuria, while a Com-munist Party of India (Marxist) polling agent had to be hospi-talised after he was attacked at

a polling booth in Chandrakona.Tension prevailed in Banku-

ra’s Sonamukhi where a CPM polling agent was attacked and masked men, armed with bam-boos and cane, were seen roam-ing around.

Locals, said to be Trinamool Congress activists, staged angry demonstrations against CPM state secretary and the candi-date from Narayangarh con-stituency of West Midnapore Surjya Kanta Mishra when he visited some of the booths on receiving complaints of elec-toral malpractices.

In Assam, one person died fol-lowing a baton charge by Cen-tral Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel after a scuffl e took place between a group of people and security forces at a polling station in Barpeta Road. Three other people were injured in the incident.

In another incident, security personnel deployed at a polling station at Nagarbera had to open fi re in the air to control a crowd. No one was, however, injured in the incident.

Election offi cials said similar incidents were reported from some other areas as well.

Former prime minister and Congress leader Manmohan Singh cast his vote at the Dispur Government High School in Dis-pur area of Guwahati.

His wife Gurcharan Kaur, also a voter in Dispur constituency, however, did not come to vote.

“I think the people of Assam will reward the Congress Party for the good work it has done for the people in the last 15 years,” Singh said.

A train with ten wagons carrying 50,000 litres of drinking water each departs for the drought-aff ected region of Latur from Miraj, in Maharashtra yesterday.

Railways sends ‘water train’ to parched Latur Many areas in Maharashtra are facing severe water shortage

IANSSangli, Maharashtra

In a humanitarian gesture, Indian Railways yesterday sent a ‘water train’ for the

parched Latur district, offi cials said here.

The 10-wagon train chugged off from Miraj in Sangli district of western Maharashtra yes-terday afternoon and reached Latur city in Marathwada region around midnight after covering the 375km journey.

The initiative was taken by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu as many parts of his home state are reeling under a severe water crisis due to a

prolonged drought, especially villages in Latur district that has a population of around 20mn.

People of Osmanabad too have demanded a similar train to help them cope with water shortage in the district.

Following Prabhu’s direc-tives, 50 wagons, similar to the ones used to transport oil and milk, were sent to Kota in Ra-jasthan earlier this month for a thorough cleaning and then routed to Sangli.

The wagons, each with a ca-pacity of holding 54,000 litres, were fi lled with water in Sangli over the past two days, the of-fi cials said.

The railways plans to make a few more trips to Latur villages, the schedules of which are not yet fi nalised.

In Latur, the water will be

fi rst transferred into a tank ad-jacent to the railway station, sent to a treatment plant before it is distributed to the thirsty population.

Currently, around 15,000 villages in Maharashtra, a ma-jority of them in Latur, Beed and Osmanabad districts, are facing an acute water short-age.

Police have imposed prohibi-tory orders till May 3 to prevent violence over water distribu-tion, and posted armed guards at public water storage tanks and reservoirs.

Villagers in some areas trek more than 2km daily to fetch a pot of water and keep their water stock under lock and key. Schools in the aff ected areas have been closed, marriages and other social events cancelled or postponed and agricultural

activities have come to a stand-still.

Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Min-ister Arvind Kejriwal yesterday urged the people in the national capital to save water and send it to Latur.

“Severe water crisis in Latur. We all should help. Are all Del-hiites ready to save some water daily to send it for our people in Latur,” Kejriwal asked in a tweet. The Odisha government

yesterday announced the clo-sure of schools till April 20 due to a severe heat wave in the state, where 19 deaths due to sun stroke have so far been re-ported.

Normal life continued to re-main aff ected in Odisha as the mercury hovered above 40 de-grees Celsius in most parts of the state.

A meteorological offi ce state-ment said 17 places in Odisha recorded temperatures above 40 degrees while Talcher, Sun-dargarh and Chandbali recorded above 43 degrees.

The state capital Bhu-baneswar recorded a high of 45.8 degrees, the highest for the month since 1985 when it was 45 degrees on April 23 that year.

The Met department said in-tense heat wave would continue for a week.

“Since there seems no respite from the heat wave, we decided that schools will remain closed till April 20. If examinations are scheduled to be held during these holidays, school authori-ties will fi x the timings in the morning or evening hours,” said Special Relief Commissioner P K Mohapatra.

Funding inadequate for climate adaptation: activists ReutersNew Delhi

The Indian government has come under fi re after allo-cating Rs3.5bn ($52.8mn)

for climate change adaptation over the next two fi nancial years, a sum which environmental ex-perts say is woefully inadequate given the size of the country and the challenges it faces.

In a written response to a question by a member of parlia-ment during a session to discuss the upcoming budget, Environ-ment Minister Prakash Java-dekar said that the sum allocated

to the National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change (NAFCC) will cover the two fi nancial years 2015-16 and 2016-17.

He also said that the adapta-tion fund had not yet allocated cash towards climate adapta-tion activities under either the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) or state cli-mate action plans.

Experts expressed surprise and concern at the government’s announcement.

Upasana Ghosh, of the In-dian Institute of Health Man-agement Research, which looks into the health impacts of cli-mate change, and also a princi-

pal investigator in the UK-based STEPS Centre, which looks at sustainability issues, said the funding was inadequate given the increasing costs associated with climate change impacts.

“After cyclone Aila, which af-fected Rs100,000 (in 2009), the Indian part of the Sunderbans was allocated Rs5bn ($75mn). That is just one event in one single vulnerable area. So isn’t Rs3.5bn ($53mn)... for the en-tire country a bit of a joke?” she asked.

India, the seventh largest country in the world, is home to more than 1.2bn people, and has a range of landscapes and re-

gions, each with its own needs to adapt to and tackle the impacts of climate change, experts say.

Lyla Mehta, a professor at the UK-based Institute of Develop-ment Studies and a visiting pro-fessor at the Norway University of Life Sciences, said via e-mail that many parts of the coun-try, both rural and urban, will need help dealing with climate change.

“Dryland and wetland areas, apart from the major mountain ranges, are of course extremely important but we do feel that in-creasing priority needs to be paid to rapidly emerging urban areas ... which (are) witnessing inward

migration, and where most of the urban population growth is likely to take place,” she said.

Mehta highlighted particular problems in the Sunderbans, a low-lying southern delta area. People are migrating away from the hard-hit area because of ero-sion and rising sea level, she said.

According to a 2013 study by the Zoological Society of Lon-don, the Sundarbans coast is re-treating by up to 200mper year.

Mehta said that the govern-ment’s allocation of funds for climate adaptation was “a start but not enough”.

She added that decisions on which areas receive funds are

often shaped by political factors such as pleasing groups of vot-ers, expediency and the whims of political leaders.

“The money needs to be spent wisely and really reach the peo-ple who need it the most and not be lost on white elephants or through corruption,” Mehta wrote.

Sanjay Vasisht, director of the Climate Action Network South Asia, an advocacy group, said he also believed the sum allocated for climate adaptation was too little.

“The amount required is much bigger,” he said, though he noted that there are no credible

estimates of how much actually would be required to adequately deal with climate change.

Vasisht believes that the most reliable source of funding for cli-mate change adaptation could be the National Clean Energy Fund, which has received more than $2.5bn from a carbon tax introduced by the government in 2010 on industries - such as steel production - that use large quantities of coal.

The tax is supposed to fund clean energy programmes, but Vasisht said some of it is instead being used to clean up the pol-luted Ganges river rather than on climate adaptation measures.

Cafe owner tells William: give my regards to grandma AgenciesMumbai

As he stood in a room at Mumbai’s Taj Palace ho-tel chatting with Prince

William and Kate it was a dream come true for 93-year-old Boman Kohinoor, owner of the city’s iconic Britannia restaurant.

Britannia is a Mumbai land-mark. It is what locals call an Ira-ni restaurant, off ering signature dishes with Persian fl avours.

And Kohinoor claims to be one of the British royal family’s most devoted fans in India.

“My father has written to Queen Elizabeth many times. She has sent him a letter and a life-size portrait of hers,” Boman Kohinoor’s son Afshin Kohinoor said yesterday.

Afshin Kohinoor says a video of his father talking about him-self and his desire to meet the young royal couple put out by

Conde Nast Traveller India went viral on YouTube catching the attention of British offi cials.

The Duke and Duchess heard about the story of the 93-year-old Mumbai resident and were touched and invited them to their hotel on Sunday night, Kensington Palace said on Twit-ter.

The tweet is accompanied by a photograph of the frail elderly man talking to the young royals.

“My father is hard of hearing and cannot talk over telephone, but I was in the room with him ... Prince William asked him how did your restaurant get the name Britannia,” Afshin Kohinoor re-counted.

Prince William also asked what Boman Kohinoor rated as Britannia’s best dish and was told it was the berry pulao. “The prince told father he would come back to taste it on his next visit,” Afshin said.

“My father asked Prince Wil-

liam to give his warm regards to his grandmother, the queen. He also said: You kiss your chil-dren Prince George and Princess Charlotte on my behalf when you get back.”

Boman Kohinoor’s father Rashid Kohinoor came to Mum-bai from Yazd in Iran along with many others of Zoroastrian faith and opened the now iconic res-taurant in 1923 and named it Bri-tannia to honour the then British rulers.

The restaurant has life-size cut-outs of Prince William and Kate, the laminated letter from Queen Elizabeth hangs on the wall along with her portrait. Boman Kohinoor named his granddaughter Diana after the former princess of Wales, Prince William’s mother.

Sadly, if Prince William does decide to come back for the ber-ry pulao he may not get it. Afshin Kohinoor said his father and his uncle are really old now and his

children are not interested in carrying on the family business. “So I am looking to sell out,” he said.

William also tried his hand at Indian cookery.

The Duke of Cambridge ear-lier spoke with entrepreneurs and inventors before making the Indian pancake known as a dosa, using an innovative automatic device called DosaMatic.

After watching a demonstra-tion, William gladly poured some batter and waited for the dosa to cook before tasting a bit and declaring it “not bad”, al-though the Duchess could not be tempted to take a bite.

“The Duke said he would love to have the machine in his pal-ace,” Eshwar Vikas, device in-ventor and chief executive of Mukunda Foods, told reporters afterwards.

Prince William and Kate are on a week-long tour of India and Bhutan. Prince William and Kate speak with Boman Kohinoor during a meeting in Mumbai.

Nine people were killed and sixteen seriously injured yesterday after an electricity wire snapped and fell on a mob protesting outside a police station in Assam. A large mob armed with sticks and stones had tried to forcibly enter a police station in Tinsukia district to get hold of and punish five men arrested on murder charges earlier this month. Police fired in the air to disperse the crowd,

which they say numbered around 5,000, and local media reported that the overhead electricity wire snapped after it was hit by a stray police bullet. “They wanted to get the arrested suspects for immediate, retributive justice,” local police off icial Mugdhajyoti Dev Mahanta said. “There were only 40 cops at the police station and they had to fire in the air to disperse the mob of over 5000,” Mahanta said.

9 killed by falling electricity wire


LATIN AMERICA

Death toll in guerrilla attack climbs to 10 AFPLima

A weekend guerrilla at-tack targeting soldiers on the eve of Peru’s

presidential elections killed 10 people, authorities said yes-terday, raising an earlier toll.

The army said in a statement that eight soldiers and two civilians were killed in Satur-day’s attack in the jungles of central Peru.

The earlier death toll of seven rose after forces found the bodies of soldiers who had previously been reported as missing.

The army said guerrillas at-tacked a military convoy that was transporting election ma-terial and forces tasked with guarding polling places in the central Junin region.

Authorities blamed rem-nants of the Shining Path communist guerrilla group, which was largely crushed in the 1990s, but still has mem-bers hiding in the jungle.

The army said attackers fi rst struck at Hatun Asha, located

in a jungle zone considered a stronghold of the guerrillas and a major coca-producing area. In a second attack, they targeted a military ship on the Apurimac River in the south, wounding two soldiers, au-thorities said.

President Ollanta Humala condemned the “demented” violence.

“Terrorism and those who collude with it have no place in our society or in our family,” he said on Saturday.

Some 23mn Peruvians voted on Sunday for a new president and members of congress.

Conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori topped the bal-lot and must face a runoff vote against her centre-right rival Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

Keiko Fujimori’s father Al-berto Fujimori waged a fi erce confl ict against the Shining Path when he was president from 1990 to 2000.

Around 69,000 people were killed between 1980 and 2000 in the confl ict with the Shining Path, according to the coun-try’s Truth and Reconciliation commission.

Cubans fl ock to learnEnglish language ReutersHavana

Gilberto Gonzalez learned Russian at a school in Havana at the height of

the Cold War when the Soviet Union was Cuba’s closest ally, but 30 years later he’s rusty and remembers little more than, ‘da,’ and ‘nyet.’

Now, as relations thaw with the US, Gonzalez wants his children to learn English to grasp oppor-tunities arising from Cuba’s new closeness to the old enemy. He has ordered them to sign up at a pri-vate English school in the city.

“It doesn’t matter that it’s ex-pensive, but it is what can open doors now what we are start-ing a new era,” said Gonzalez, a 45-year-old civil engineer who has changed jobs and now works as a taxi driver, earning more.

Teaching English has become a minor boom industry in Ha-vana, with dozens of schools opening in private homes in the wake of President Raul Cas-

tro and US President Barack Obama’s December, 2014 agree-ment to normalise relations.

English has been the most popular second language for many years in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. But the detente has added new im-petus and learning the language has won support from the Com-munist leadership.

“We have to speak English. If you can speak two or three lan-guages, all the better, but English is essential,” said Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, No. 2 in the Communist Party and one of the original leaders of the revolution that defeated a pro-American government in 1959.

The government added Eng-lish to the list of priorities for schools last year, along with Cu-ban history and Spanish.

The offi cial embrace of Eng-lish and the prospect of millions of US tourists coming to the Caribbean island once Washing-ton completely removes travel restrictions have led to a surge of teachers and students.

Classes cost between $10 and $30 a month, in a country where the average state salary is just $25. But a growing number of Cubans are enjoying income from private ventures and from money sent by family members overseas.

Not everyone, however, is happy. Teacher Deisy Perez says her informal school in her Ha-vana home has lost customers as more options open up.

“There’s more competition now between the private language schools,” said Perez, who has been giving classes for 15 years.

It wasn’t always this way. For a period in the 1970s, learn-ing Russian was mandatory for about a third of secondary school pupils. But even former president Fidel Castro lamented his decision to focus on Russian when the Soviet Union was Cu-ba’s closest ally.

“The Russians learned Eng-lish, the whole world learned English, and we learned Rus-sian,” Castro said in televised remarks last year.

Scientists fi ndnew Zika-linkedbrain disorderin adults ReutersChicago

Scientists in Brazil have un-covered a new brain dis-order associated with Zika

infections in adults: an autoim-mune syndrome called acute disseminated encephalomyeli-tis, or ADEM, that attacks the brain and spinal cord.

Zika has already been linked with the autoimmune disorder Guillain-Barre syndrome, which attacks peripheral nerves out-side the brain and spinal cord, causing temporary paralysis that can in some cases require pa-tients to rely on respirators for breathing.

The new discovery now shows Zika may provoke an immune at-tack on the central nervous sys-tem as well.

The fi ndings add to the grow-ing list of neurological damage associated with Zika.

According to the World Health Organisation, there is a strong scientifi c consensus that, in ad-dition to Guillain-Barre, Zika can cause the birth defect mi-crocephaly, though conclusive proof may take months or years.

Microcephaly is defi ned by unusually small heads that can result in developmental prob-lems.

Brazil said it has confi rmed more than 940 cases to be re-lated to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating nearly 4,300 additional suspect-ed cases of microcephaly.

In addition to autoimmune disease, some researchers also have reported patients with Zika infections developing encepha-litis and myelitis - nerve disor-ders typically caused by direct infections in nerve cells.

“Though our study is small, it may provide evidence that in this case, the virus has diff erent eff ects on the brain than those identifi ed in current studies,” Dr Maria Lucia Brito, a neurologist at Restoration Hospital in Recife, Brazil, said in a statement.

ADEM typically occurs in the aftermath of an infection, causing intense swelling in the brain and spinal cord that dam-ages myelin, the white protec-tive coating surrounding nerve fi bres. It results in weakness, numbness and loss of balance and vision, symptoms similar to multiple sclerosis.

Brito presented her fi nd-ings on Sunday at the American Academy of Neurology meet-ing in Vancouver. The study in-volved 151 patients who visited her hospital between December 2014 and June 2015. All had been infected with arboviruses, the family of viruses that includes Zika, dengue and chikungunya.

Six of these patients devel-oped symptoms consistent with autoimmune disorders. Of these six, four had Guillain-Barre and two had ADEM. In both ADEM cases, brain scans showed dam-age to white matter. ADEM symptoms typically last about six months.

All six patients tested positive for Zika, and all had lingering ef-fects after being discharged from the hospital, with fi ve patients reporting motor dysfunction, one with vision problems, and one with cognitive decline.

At least 13 countries have re-ported cases of Guillain-Barre linked with outbreaks of Zika, according to the World Health Organisation, and WHO believes that Zika likely is the cause.

Dr James Sejvar, a neuroepi-demiologist for the US Centers for Disease Control and Pre-vention, said the ADEM cases linked with Zika do not appear to be occurring at the same ac-celerated rate as cases of Guil-lain-Barre, but said doctors should be on the lookout for ADEM and other central nerv-ous system illnesses.

“Of course, the remaining question is ‘Why?’” Sejvar said. “Why does Zika virus appear to have the strong association with GBS and potential other im-mune/infl ammatory diseases of the nervous system?”

People jump off a bridge, which has a height of 30 metres, in Hortolandia, Brazil, yesterday. According to organisers, 149 people were attempting set a new world record for “rope jumping”, in which people, tied to a safety cord, jump off a bridge.

Record bid

Divisive Fujimori facesrunoff battle to lead Peru AFPLima

Keiko Fujimori has vowed to unite Peru after her fi rst-round presidential

election victory, but she faces a fi erce runoff battle to overcome the divisive legacy of her jailed father.

The 40-year-old conserva-tive candidate claimed a boost from Sunday’s vote in her quest to become the fi rst female pres-ident of the South American mineral-exporting nation.

But she faces resistance from voters who mistrust her be-cause her father Alberto Fuji-mori is in jail for corruption and human rights atrocities com-

mitted during his 1990-2000 presidency.

She also faces a challenge from moderate conservative Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, 77, a British- and US-educated former World Bank executive, who has vowed to defeat the “Fujimoristas.”

Offi cial results with 67% of votes counted showed Fujimori had 39.5% of the vote against 23.4% for Kuczynski, known as “PPK.”

He beat left-wing contender Veronika Mendoza to win sec-ond place.

In the second round on June 5, “Kuczynski will get lots of anti-Fujimorista votes,” said Luis Benavente, head of the polling agency Vox Populi. “The second

round will be very polarised.” Keiko Fujimori worked dur-

ing her campaign to distance herself from her father’s au-thoritarian image. He was sen-tenced in 2009 to 25 years in jail for massacres of supposed ter-rorists by death squads in 1991 and 1992.

Celebrating her fi rst-round victory with a broad smile on Sunday night, Keiko Fujimori vowed to unite the country. “Peru wants reconciliation and no more confl ict,” she said.

“We have to step on the ac-celerator of growth again so it reaches all the remote villages” of the country, she added.

Strengthening her hand, Keiko’s Popular Force party also won a big majority in Peru’s

single-chamber congress in Sunday’s vote.

Her younger brother Kenji scored highly and is seeking to be elected president of the chamber.

With a slick electoral ma-chine that held glittering cam-paign rallies, Keiko Fujimori had been widely tipped in polls to win Sunday’s vote by dou-ble digits. But the balance of power can shift over the com-ing months. Opinion polls have given a mixed picture of which candidate might win in June.

“The big question is can Keiko Fujimori obtain more than a third of the vote?” said Gaspard Estrada, executive of the OPALC think-tank.

“In the second round, unu-

sual coalitions can be built to bar someone’s path.” Fujimori and Kuczynski have vowed to strengthen law and order and invest in services for the poor in this country of 30mn people.

Forty percent of Peruvians live at risk of poverty, according to development charity Oxfam.

Economic analysts said for-eign investors would be relieved that Mendoza was out of the running since she had vowed to tighten state control of Peru’s resources.

The country has one of the fastest-growing economies in Latin America, despite a re-cent fall in commodity prices. Growth slowed in recent years under outgoing President Ol-lanta Humala.

Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto and his wife Angelica Rivera pose with German President Joachim Gauck during a welcoming ceremony at the Bellevue presidential palace in Berlin, Germany, yesterday.

Official visit

Holdouts to be paid fi rst from new Argentina bond IFRNew York

The hedge funds that waged a 15-year battle to force Argentina to make

a bigger payout on its defaulted bonds will get fi rst dibs on the proceeds from the country’s new bond next week.

In an arrangement both unu-

sual and unusually complicated, the sovereign will pay off its liti-gant creditors fi rst when it sells the new bond, which is expected to price on April 18.

Making them whole will pave the way for the remainder of the proceeds from the bond to be used, according to an off ering memorandum seen by IFR yes-terday.

Argentine President Mauricio

Macri, who took offi ce in De-cember, has made it a priority to settle the legal battle with the group of holdout creditors.

The holdouts, led by Elliott Management and Aurelius Capi-tal, refused the terms of Argen-tina’s debt restructuring after its 2001 default and fi led suit for a bigger payout.

The complex legal wrangling ended up with a US court block-

ing Argentina from paying other bondholders before the holdouts - and pushing the country into yet another default.

Macri’s administration reached an agreement with the main creditors in February, help-ing clear the way for Argentina’s return to the international bond markets with next week’s deal.

In a further twist, the US Court of Appeals will hold a

hearing tomorrow on the injunc-tion that blocked Argentina from paying other bondholders who did not fi ght the restructuring.

That injunction was a major defeat for Macri’s predecessor, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, whose administration had re-peatedly called holdouts vultures and vowed never to pay them.

It put added pressure on the sovereign to reach an agreement,

as Argentina was eff ectively blocked from the bond markets until its defaults were cured.

According to the off ering memorandum for the new deal, the injunction will have to be lifted - and the holdouts paid - before the remaining portion is allowed to settle in phase two.

In order for the two-phase process to take place, each series of the new bonds will carry two

distinct CUSIP and ISIN identi-fying codes.

Once both phases have closed, the second set of identifying codes will be cancelled and the two sets of bonds of each series will be merged.

In all Argentina currently owes roughly $11bn to all holders of its defaulted bonds, including the $8.2bn it has agreed to pay litigant creditors so far.

PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN23Gulf Times


Govt ready to probe ‘Panama Papers’: Minister

The Pakistan government was ready to investigate ‘Panama Papers’ through

the Federal Investigative Agency (FIA) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf chairman Imran Khan can name any offi cial to probe the matter, Interior Minister

Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said yesterday.

‘Panama Papers’ are an un-precedented leak of 11.5mn fi les from an off shore law fi rm Mos-sack Fonseca, based in Panama.

Nisar Ali Khan made the statement at a press conference in Islamabad and off ered Imran Khan to name any FIA offi cial to head the investigation, Geo News reported.

“We should move forward from politics of objection, threats and rallies and should rather focus on the resolution of the issue,” Nisar Ali Khan said.

Imran Khan on Sunday de-manded that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should tender his resignation after “losing moral authority” to keep the post amid Panama Papers’ revelations.

In an “address to the nation”

from his Bani Gala residence, Imran Khan said the government should form an inquiry commis-sion led by the chief justice of Pakistan.

“The commission should also include white-collar crime ex-perts and an audit fi rm that fol-lows the trail of money to deter-mine where it leads,” he said.

Imran Khan gave the govern-ment time till April 24 to take

an appropriate action over the issue, after which he added he will announce a future course of action.

Leaked confi dential docu-ments, spanning over nearly 40 years that spell out the extensive use of tax havens by politicians, world leaders and celebrities to launder money and evade taxes through one of the most secre-tive companies the Panamaian

law fi rm Mossack Fonseca, have taken the world by storm.

The documents identify many Pakistani business tycoons and politicians, including late two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as well certain members of Sharif family (excluding Na-waz Sharif and his brother Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif) to have used tax havens to hide their wealth.

IANSIslamabad

Helicopters overhead as British actors bring Hamlet to Kabul

Occasionally fi ghting to be heard over the clat-ter of helicopters fl ying

into the nearby Nato headquar-ters, British actor Naeem Hayat delivers Hamlet’s refl ections on mortality and retribution to a shivering audience in Kabul.

He is part of a production of William Shakespeare’s most famous play by Britain’s Globe Theatre company which has already travelled to countries ranging from Rwanda to An-tigua or Lithuania as part of a two year-long tour intended to visit every country in the world.

But even with such exotic lo-cations behind it, British ambas-sador Dominic Jermey said the improvised stage on the tennis court of the British embassy in Kabul on Sunday night was “one of the more unusual locations for performing Hamlet”.

The story of the melancholy Danish prince and his doubting quest to avenge a murdered fa-

ther is not without relevance to a country that has known more than its fair share of assassina-tion and betrayal over 30 years of war.

Its 400 year-old iambic pen-tameter verse, not to mention the particular stage conventions of Shakespearean drama, can make it a challenge for audi-ences, even in English-speaking countries.

But Abdul Qadir Farookh, a well-known Afghan actor who featured in the 2007 Hollywood fi lm of Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling novel The Kite Runner, said the poet’s heritage extended well beyond Britain.

“Shakespeare was no ordinary person,” he said.

Although Afghan audiences have had little contact with Western theatre over decades of war and austere Taliban rule, the Bard, a reliable staple of British cultural diplomacy over the years, has a limited but re-spectable record in the country.

Farookh himself played Oth-ello in an Afghan television pro-duction before the Taliban era and a Dari-language version of

Love’s Labour’s Lost was per-formed in the bomb-damaged surrounds of the 16th century Babur Gardens in Kabul in 2005. More recently, a troupe of Af-ghan actors took a Dari Comedy of Errors to the Globe Theatre in 2012.

“When I was very young, I studied Shakespeare in Afghan theatre,” Farookh said. “He has a huge heritage and I am proud to say that I have played Shake-speare’s Othello.”

Sunday’s performance of Hamlet, close to the site of a rocket attack the previous night, was preceded by instructions about what to do in the event of a security emergency.

But a mixed audience made up of diplomats and other members of Kabul’s much-reduced inter-national community as well as Afghan dignitaries and students gave it an appreciative welcome on a chilly spring night.

“This is really something new for us,” said theatre student Masood Hunardost. “I have been waiting for such a day to see foreigners performing a Shake-speare drama in Afghanistan.”

ReutersKabul

Actors from Britain’s Globe Theatre company perform in a production of William Shakespeare’s drama Hamlet at the British embassy in Kabul yesterday.

Bus bombings kill 14 in Afghanistan

A Taliban suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed at least 12 army recruits on a

bus in eastern Afghanistan yes-terday, offi cials said, hours after a similar attack killed two people in the capital Kabul.

The latest blast hit a bus in the Sorkh Rud district of Nan-garhar province, which borders Pakistan.

Twelve bodies and at least 38 wounded had been taken to the main hospital in Jalalabad, the principal city in eastern Afghanistan, hospital chief Ihsanullah Shinwari said. The number of casualties was ex-pected to rise, several offi cials said.

“The suicide bomber was on a three-wheel motorcycle and targeted new army recruits who were heading to Kabul for train-

ing,” said a police offi cial, who asked not to be identifi ed be-cause he was not authorised to discuss matters concerning the Afghan army.

Defence Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri confi rmed one of

the ministry’s buses carrying army recruits had been attacked but put the number of wounded at 26.

“It was a crowded area and it is hard to say now how many of them were from the defence ministry,” Waziri said.

Hours earlier, a bomb hit a mini-bus carrying Education Ministry workers in eastern Kabul, killing two people and wounding seven, the ministry said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihul-lah Mujahid said the Islamist

group had carried out the attack outside Jalalabad. However, no group had claimed responsibility for the Kabul attack.

Government workers and members of the security forces are often targeted by insurgent groups, including the Taliban, who are seeking to topple the US-backed government in Ka-bul.

The Taliban have stepped up their insurgency since most foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan at the end of 2014, although Kabul had enjoyed a period of relative calm during the harsh winter months.

That lull was expected to end soon with the Taliban poised to launch their annual spring of-fensive.

In Kabul, bus conductor Ra-him Gul said the force of the blast threw him out of the vehicle.

“We picked up the Education Ministry staff and we were driv-ing on the road when there was an explosion,” Gul told Reuters Television.

“It was very powerful and threw me out of the car win-dow. A few minutes later I found myself in a wheat fi eld and then I rushed to the site of the attack and helped some injured people and they were taken to hospital.”

Suicide bomber kills 12 army recruits in Afghanistan’s east ; Off icials say number of casualties expected to rise ; Separate blast kills two Education Ministry workers in Kabul ; Insurgents poised to launch annual spring off ensive

ReutersJalalabad, Afghanistan

Nisar Ali Khan

Afghan lawmaker under fi re after controversial interview

A video of an Afghan law-maker purportedly threatening to cut off a

reporter’s nose after she asked his views on marital rape has gone viral and sparked wide-spread condemnation online.

The clip, which has been retweeted more than 4,000 times since it was posted by the VICE website on Saturday, highlights the parlous state of women’s rights more than 14 years after the fall of the hard-

line Taliban. VICE reporter Isobel Yeung is

seen questioning Afghan parlia-mentarian Nazir Ahmad Hanafi about his opposition to the Elimination of Violence Against Women Act.

It was submitted to parlia-ment in 2009 but has yet to be passed due to strong resistance from MPs.

“What if a husband rapes his wife, is that domestic abuse? Should the man be punished or should the woman be punished for that, in your opinion?” she asks Hanafi .

He represents the western city

of Herat and is also an Islamic scholar who lectures at various universities and madrassas.

“There is a kind of rape you have and another we have in Is-lam,” he replies. Yeung attempts to press on with another ques-tion but is cut off by Hanafi , who tells her: “I think you should stop it now.”

He is then seen turning in an-other direction and says: “May-be I should give you to an Afghan man to cut your nose off .”

Hanafi later denied making the comments in an interview with Radio Free Europe, sug-gesting the video was fabricated.

“Actually I haven’t said such a thing, neither have I behaved in a such a way with anyone,” he said.

“This video has been manipu-lated and made up. Fabricating a video is something normal and everyone can do it.”

The clip sparked angry reac-tion online after being widely shared on Facebook.

User Mohamed Bashir Haid-ary wrote in Dari: “Dear MP...you have defamed the dignity of the entire Afghan people. May you face the wrath of the Al-mighty, you are representing the ancient province of Herat.”

Another user, Aminullah Fa-

rahi, wrote: “This dirty man knows well that the interview is watched by millions of Eastern-ers and Westerners, and you are representing Islam, is this Is-lam?”

Gender equality has improved somewhat since a US-led coali-tion toppled the hardline Taliban regime in 2001, with women — particularly from cities — taking up numerous professional jobs and holding more than a quarter of all seats in parliament.

President Ashraf Ghani has also pledged to place women’s rights at the top of his agenda, but major challenges remain.

AFPKabul

Afghan security forces inspect the site of a suicide attack on a bus carrying Afghan army recruits in Jalalabad yesterday.

Pakistan, India are respected partners, says US

US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter has said that both Pakistan and

India are friends and partners of the United States and there is no Indo-Pak hyphenation from its perspective.

Speaking at the Council of Foreign Relations here ahead of his three-day visit to In-dia, Carter said: “The US has a ‘whole global agenda’ with India, covering all issues, while the relationship with Pakistan has to do with issues of terror-ism and Afghanistan.”

He reiterated that “the fi rst thing one needs to say, from an American policy point of view, is that these are both respected partners and friends. They fi nd themselves in very diff erent situations.

And the days are gone when we only dealt with India as the other side of the Pakistan coin, or Pakistan as the other side of the India coin. I know that there are those in India and Pakistan who are still glued to that dyad way of thinking. But the US put that behind us some time ago.

“With respect to Pakistan, which also is an important se-curity partner, we have a whole lot of issues of which counter-terrorism looms largest. And we work with the Pakistanis all the time on that.”

Anwar Iqbal adds from Washington: A US military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, reported that Carter would visit India and the Philippines to discuss new regional US bases and more defence in-vestments in both countries. He could announce new mili-tary investments in aircraft carriers and jet engine tech-nologies in India, it said.

“The US-India relationship is destined to be one of the most signifi cant partnerships of the 21st century. Ours are two great nations that share a great deal,” he said.

Carter said he would discuss with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and defence minister the progress the two countries had made on ma-jor military projects such as building an aircraft carrier and jet fi ghter and engine collabo-ration.

“There is so much potential here, which is why we are seiz-ing every opportunity we can.”

InternewsIslamabad

Six dead in Pakistan after strong quake

Six people were killed across northern Pakistan although there appeared

to be no widespread damage after a strong earthquake rat-tled major cities across South Asia at the weekend, authori-ties said yesterday.

The 6.6-magnitude quake yeterday startled residents in the Afghan capital, Ka-bul, and forced some in high-rise buildings to fl ee into the streets of the Indian capital, New Delhi. It was also felt in Islamabad and in Lahore in

Pakistan’s east, about 630km from the quake’s epicentre in remote northeastern Afghani-stan, just inside the border with Tajikistan and across a narrow fi nger of land from Chitral - a district in the Khy-ber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan’s northwest.

Pakistan’s National Disas-ter Management Authority (NDMA) said fi ve people were killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Another was killed in north-ern Gilgit-Baltistan state, the NDMA said. At least seven people were reported injured across Pakistan, many of them in the northwestern frontier city of Peshawar.

ReutersIslamabad

PHILIPPINES

Gulf TimesTuesday, April 12, 201624

Tough-talking Duterte surges ahead in new poll

ReutersManila

A tough-talking mayor in the southern Philip-pines, who has vowed to

end corruption and crime, has topped the latest opinion poll and become the new frontrunner in the presidential election cam-paign ahead of elections in May.

Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, 71, the only candidate for presi-dent from the southern island of Mindanao, has seen a steady rise in support after polling badly early in the campaign. His tough stand on crime has begun to res-onate with many Filipinos.

In the latest opinion poll, former favourite Senator Grace Poe dropped to second.

The May 9 general elections will be closely watched by inves-tors, who fear the political suc-cession in one of Asia’s fastest growing economies could derail gains made during President Be-nigno Aquino’s six-year single term.

The SWS opinion poll released yesterday found Duterte was the top choice among 27% of 1,500 respondents in the March 30 to April 2 survey.

“The SWS survey validated Duterte’s numbers are rising steadily as evidenced by large

crowds attending his political rallies,” said Ramon Casiple, ex-ecutive director of the Institute of Political and Electoral Re-forms.

“But, elections are still about a month away, so you cannot count the other candidates out.

It will be a tight race until the end. It’s still anything goes.”

In the previous SWS opinion poll in early March, Duterte had 21% while Poe, abandoned in a church when a baby, had 27% in that period. She slid down to second place with 23% in the

latest poll. Vice President Je-jomar Binay remained in third spot with 20%, former interior minister Manuel Roxas, who is the president’s hand picked successor, was fourth with 18% and Senator Miriam Santiago had three percentage.

“We are grateful that the surveys are now reflecting what we have been witness-ing and experiencing on the ground,” Peter Tiu Lavina, Duterte’s spokesman, said in a statement.

In the vice president contest, the only son and namesake of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos has taken a lead with 26% after Senator Francis Es-cudero, who led opinion polls since 2015, dropped seven points to 21%.

In power since 2010, Aquino is barred by the constitution from seeking a second term. Under his leadership, the Phil-ippines has seen economic growth of more than 6% on av-erage, its best five-year record in four decades.

About 54mn of a population of 100mn are eligible to vote to choose a president, vice presi-dent and more than 18,000 lo-cal government executives and lawmakers in the general elec-tions, which take place every six years.

Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, 71, the only candidate for president from the southern island of Mindanao, has seen a steady rise in support after polling badly early in the campaign

Philippine Marines take position during a beach landing as part of the 11-day “Balikatan” (shoulder-to-shoulder) annual joint US and Philippine military exercises at San Jose airport in Antique province in the central Philippines yesterday. US and Philippine troops began major exercises on April 4 as China’s state media warned “outsiders” against interfering in tense South China Sea territorial disputes.

Joint military drill Four militants killed in armyoff ensive AFPZamboanga

Philippine soldiers killed four more militants as they pressed their of-

fensive against the Abu Sayyaf after suff ering heavy losses in weekend clashes in the trou-bled south, authorities said yesterday.

Troops killed the four on the strife-torn island of Basilan on Sunday, a day after the guer-rillas killed 18 soldiers in the worst fi ghting so far this year, regional military spokesman Major Filemon Tan said.

“It is continuous. There will be no let-up in the operations,” Tan told reporters, adding that the military was determined to get Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon. Hapilon is one of Abu Sayyaf’s most senior leaders. The US has placed a reward of $5mn on his head for his role in the kidnapping of three Amer-icans in 2001, two of whom later died.

Nine Abu Sayyaf fi ghters were also killed in Saturday’s battle, including Moroccan national Mohamed Khattab, Tan told reporters, bringing the group’s total losses to 13.

Tan said Khattab was an in-structor in bomb-making who was trying to unify the various outlaw groups in the south and establish links with “interna-tional” groups.

“We pre-empted the possi-bility of bombing attacks. He can no longer teach his terror-istic tradecraft,” he said, but played down fears the Moroc-can could have been linked to the Islamic State group.

In Manila, the defence sec-retary and military chief of staff briefed President Benigno Aquino on the off ensive and assured him that “in accord-ance with his instructions, pursuit operations are still being conducted and that the troops are fully equipped and adequately supported,” a pres-idential spokesman said.

The Abu Sayyaf, a small group of militants notorious for kidnapping foreigners and demanding huge ransoms, was established in the early 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

Based in the southern is-lands of Basilan and Jolo, it has been blamed for the country’s worst terror at-tacks, including a 2004 Ma-nila Bay ferry bombing that claimed 116 lives.

Its leaders have in recent years pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group that controls swathes of Iraq and Syria. The group has stepped up its activity in recent weeks, abducting Indonesian and Malaysian seamen trav-elling near the Philippines’ maritime borders.

Children take a dip in a container outfitted as a swimming pool, to cool off from the intense heat, in Manila yesterday.

Cooling off

A recent photo shows Davao City mayor and presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte shaking hands with his supporters during his campaign sortie in Lingayen, Pangasinan, north of Manila.

Army on defensive after bloody clash ReutersManila

The Philippines army defended its opera-tions yesterday after 18

soldiers were killed and more than 50 wounded in a jungle ambush by militants in the south of the country who have pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

Security experts and some media criticised the handling of Saturday’s encounter with the Abu Sayyaf rebels, which had echoes of a grisly 2011 clash when 19 troops died - some beheaded - and another last year when 44 police com-mandos were slain.

“It’s deja vu. The govern-ment forces underestimated the rebels’ fi repower capabil-ity and ties with other lawless groups on Basilan,” said secu-rity analyst Rommel Banlaoi, referring to the southern is-land where the clash raged for 10 hours.

Military spokesman Brig-adier-General Restituto Pa-dilla said the troops had been adequately trained and the operation had been well co-

ordinated, but they had been lured into a trap of improvised landmines that could not have been anticipated.

“The situation on the ground is much diff erent from how these armchair generals and analysts saw it. They tend to magnify this unfortunate incident when the army has had many successes.”

Padilla said eight Abu Sayyaf rebel bodies were found on Sunday, bringing to 13 the number of dead on the rebels side, including a Moroccan national.

Describing the incident, he said the military had pounded the Abu Sayyaf camp on the island with bombs and artil-lery shells before sending in ground troops.

“When they got in there, there were explosions around them, the place was booby-trapped and they were pinned down and the rebels were fi r-ing at them at all sides,” he said.

Padilla said that, as well as the army, the government had a role to play in stamping out militancy in the south of the country through development and providing social services.

Govt ‘must include casinos in dirty money law’

ReutersManila

The Philippines must make sure casinos are covered by anti-money launder-

ing legislation, the World Bank said yesterday, joining calls for the government to better regu-late its gambling industry after stolen millions from Bangladesh found their way to Manila.

A Philippine panel is trying to fathom how $81mn hacked in February from the New York Federal Reserve account of Bangladesh’s central bank wound up with two casinos and a junket operator in the Philip-pines in one of the biggest cy-ber heists in history.

The government has since recovered part of the stolen money.

“Reforms should be made, for instance, in making sure that casinos are included (in

the anti-money laundering law),” World Bank lead econo-mist Rogier van den Brink told reporters in Manila. “...Loop-holes must be closed.”

The enactment of the anti-money laundering law in 2001 was a good start, van den Brink said, but the Philippines must “keep reforming it so that you are sure these untoward effects will not materialise”.

In February 2013, the Philip-pines was up against a dead-line to amend its Anti-Money Laundering Act and get itself off the “grey list” of a global watchdog, and lawmakers were arguing over whether to in-clude casinos under the legis-lation. They decided not to.

World Bank senior country economist Karl Kendrick Chua also reiterated the bank’s rec-ommendation to ease the Phil-ippines’ bank secrecy laws to help combat money laundering and identify tax evaders.

The Department of Health has raised a nationwide alert on the emergence of “six illnesses of summer” (6S) as the weather temperature continues to rise, Manila Times reported. In Iloilo City and the rest of the Panay Island provinces, the temperature rose to 36° and above as the El Nino phenomenon continues to wreak havoc on crops, livestock and the population. DOH regional director Marlyn Convocar said the 6S – diarrhoea and vomiting, sore eyes or conjunctivitis, sunburn, skin diseases, cough and colds, and rabies – are common ailments the Ilonggos must watch out for in the next two-to-three months. She also said that many people head-ing to the beach or swimming pool may accidentally drink water that is infected with the e.coli bacteria, thus, causing nausea, di-arrhoea and vomiting. Poorly chlo-rinated swimming pools may also cause sore eyes or conjunctivitis when the virus enters through the eyes. DOH also warned against dog bites as dogs become irritable due to the heat.

Health department warns on summer illnesses

PRECAUTION

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL/MALDIVES25Gulf Times


Bangladesh boosts security for New Year festivities There will be “unprec-

edented” security for this week’s Bengali New

Year festivities which hard-line clerics have branded “un-Islamic”, Bangladesh police announced yesterday, as the country faces rising religious violence.

Police said thousands of of-fi cers would be deployed for the annual street parade to cel-ebrate the New Year on April 14 that traditionally sees hundreds of thousands of revellers swarm through the capital.

“We want people to celebrate the festival safely. Therefore, we have taken unprecedented steps to prevent any mishaps,” Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesperson Maruf Hossain Sorder said.

Open-air evening concerts, normally held at Dhaka Uni-versity and the main Ramna Park, have been banned as part of the stepped up security arrangements.

“We’re erecting nine secu-rity watch towers at the festival venues in an eff ort to prevent any untoward incident,” Sorder said.

Masks, commonly worn dur-ing the New Year parades, are banned this year for security reasons, along with plastic vu-vuzela horns to reduce noise pollution, the home minister said last week.

Sorder said police have also launched a stepped up hunt for Islamic militants as Muslim-majority Bangladesh reels from

deadly attacks on religious mi-norities and foreigners in recent months.

The government has blamed the attacks on home-grown Is-lamic militants, rejecting claims of responsibility from the Is-lamic State group as well as Al Qaeda.

Several foreigners were mur-dered last year, while minority Sufi and Shia Muslims, Chris-tians and Hindus were also targeted in a series of deadly attacks.

An activist, who posted against Islam on Facebook, was killed last week, the latest in a series of murders of secular bloggers and a publisher.

Police did not say if Bang-ladesh was facing any specifi c threat during the New Year, but in 2001 a bomb blast in the Ramna Park killed 10 people. Eight Islamist militants were later sentenced to death for the attack.

Ahead of this year’s festival, a group of clerics has asked the government not to promote the festival, calling it “un-Islamic and haram (forbidden),” ac-cording to mass-circulated Bengali daily Prothom Alo.

A long-running political cri-sis in the majority Sunni Mus-lim but offi cially secular coun-try has radicalised opponents of the government and analysts say Islamist extremists pose a growing danger.

Government provides ex-tremists an opportunity: An international report issued yes-terday said that by using force and denying justice, the Bang-ladesh government has provid-ed extremists “an opportunity

AFPDhaka

A Bangladeshi Dhaka University Art Institute student paints masks to sell as part of Bengali New Year preparations in Dhaka yesterday. The Bengali calendar is solar, with the year beginning on Pohela Boishakh, which this year falls on April 14, in Bangladesh.

to exploit the resultant aliena-tion and justify their anti-state agenda”.

The Brussels-based Inter-national Crisis Group (ICG) said the government needs to recognise that “it is in its in-terest to change course, lest it fail to either contain violent extremism or counter political

threats”, bdnews24 reported.The independent and non-

profi t body also suggested that the US and the European Union should pressurise Dhaka “using its economic levers” to respect civil and political rights.

It has also called upon India “using close ties” to urge the ruling Awami League to allow

the opposition legitimate po-litical expression and participa-tion.

“There is no time to lose,” according to its new report on “Political Confl ict, Extrem-ism and Criminal Justice in Bangladesh”.

The Crisis Group is also criti-cal to the International Crimes

Tribunal (ICT), established in 2010 to prosecute individu-als responsible for atrocities committed during the 1971 liberation war.

It termed the ICT “deeply fl awed” and said it was “an im-portant example of the dangers of using rule of law institutions for political ends”.

NGOs allowed to engage in Nepal’s reconstructionNepal’s National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), a body established to co-ordinate the reconstruction of the quake-damaged infrastructures in the country, has allowed non-government organisations (NGOs) to mobilise their resources in the process after a hiatus of three months.A meeting of the authority’s directive committee headed by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on Sunday evening endorsed a guideline related to the mobilisation of NGOs in reconstruction, thus paving the way for domestic and international NGOs to use their resources in the reconstruction, Xinhua reported.“There was a policy vacuum on mobilisation of NGOs since mid-December. Following the latest decision, NGOs now can continue with their works,” said NRA spokesperson Ram Prasad Thapaliya.At a time when policy vacuum was creating confusion about involving NGOs in the reconstruction, the NRA had temporarily banned NGOs from the reconstruction since the last week of February 2016, stating that it was finalising the guidelines about NGOs mobilisation.The guideline has a provision of requiring signing an agreement involving NRA, NGOs and earthquake-affected households in presence of local bodies, according to NRA officials.With the government agencies just starting reconstruction, international and national NGOs working in Nepal, had long been seeking authorisation to spend their resources for reconstruction.Due to delay in reconstruction, many quake aff ected families have been forced to stay in make-shift houses.The guideline was introduced after consulting with all stakeholders, NRA officials said.

Court suspends criminal lawsuits against editor

A Bangladesh court yes-terday suspended 72 defamation and other

criminal lawsuits fi led by gov-ernment supporters against a top newspaper editor, follow-ing criticism of a crackdown on the press.

Daily Star editor Mahfuz Anam faced the multiple law-suits seeking billions of dollars in damages over his news-paper’s reports published in 2007 alleging corruption against the woman who is now prime minister.

The High Court stayed the lawsuits and granted Anam bail after he fi led a petition challenging their legality, said assistant attorney general Arobinda Roy.

“The High Court granted him bail in all the cases to-day and also stayed the pro-ceedings until a rule (for-mal request) is disposed of,” Roy said.

The court formally asked authorities for an explanation as to whether continuing the cases “should not be declared illegal”, he said.

Anam conceded in February that the 2007 stories had been based on uncorroborated leaks from the military-backed caretaker government at the time. It ruled Bangladesh until Sheikh Hasina become premier in 2009.

He admitted he had been

wrong to publish them, sparking an outcry from government supporters and calls from Hasina’s son for Anam to be tried for treason.

Pro-government groups fi led sedition cases and law-suits seeking over $17bn in damages for defamation, a criminal off ence that in Bangladesh also carries a penalty of up to two years in jail.

The Star’s reports, based on information supplied by a military cell, were also car-ried by most other Bangladesh newspapers.

The cell was set up by the caretaker government that ruled Bangladesh for two years after a military takeover in 2007. The regime arrested Hasina and her main po-litical rival Khaleda Zia, now leader of the opposition, on corruption charges.

Neither was convicted of any crime. The pair, who de-nied corruption, were later released.

Human Rights Watch and other groups have slammed the lawsuits, saying they “are part of a larger, organised assault on independent media”.

Criminal defamation cases are rarely brought before the courts in Bangladesh.

Fears over freedom of speech have been mount-ing in the nation, which has seen a spate of killings of secular bloggers andpublishers.

AFPDhaka

IMF signals 36-month Lanka bailout

The International Mon-etary Fund (IMF) said yesterday it was on track

to agree a bail-out loan for Sri Lanka, which is facing a balance of payments crisis.

It said it had made progress in talks with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and other leaders towards a deal

that could be fi nalised within two weeks.

“The mission made signifi -cant progress toward a staff -lev-el agreement with the govern-ment on an economic program that could be supported by a 36-month Extended Fund Fa-cility (EFF),” the IMF said in a statement.

It did not say how much would be provided, but Sri Lankan offi -cials had said they were seeking about $1 to $1.5bn immediately.

An EFF is designed to help countries resolve serious bal-ance of payment problems brought on by structural weaknesses in the economy.

The IMF said Sri Lanka need-ed to take further steps to re-move “bottlenecks” to trade and investment and enhance access to fi nance.

The remarks came a day after Premier Wickremesinghe an-nounced legal reforms to en-courage much-needed for-

eign investment in Sri Lanka’s slowing economy.

Sri Lanka enjoyed a blistering economic growth rate averaging more than 8% for two years after a prolonged civil war ended in 2009. But the pace of expansion has since slowed, falling to 4.8% in the third quarter of 2015, ac-cording to offi cial data.

The IMF said it expected Sri Lanka’s economic growth in 2016 to remain around 5%, but the country had the

potential to perform better. Wickremesinghe’s govern-

ment sought an IMF bailout im-mediately after taking power in January last year, but the fund turned down the request, saying the country’s reserves were at a comfortable level then.

It received $2.6bn from the IMF in 2009 to boost its fi nancial reserves, which had dropped be-low $1bn at the height of fi ghting between Tamil Tiger rebels and government forces.

AFPColombo

Maldives and India exchange six agreements

Referring to India’s Neigh-bourhood First policy, Prime Minister Narendra

Modi yesterday said that the se-curity and stability of the Mal-dives are in the interest of India.

“The Maldives is among In-dia’s closest partners,” Modi said while addressing the media after holding bilateral delegation-level talks with visiting Maldiv-ian President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom over a working lunch.

“The stability and security of the Maldives are in the interest of India,” he said.

The prime minister’s state-ment comes in the face of Chi-na’s growing infl uence and in-vestments in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation.

India and the Maldives ex-changed six agreements in the fi elds of taxation, tourism, space research, defence and conser-vation of mosques following yesterday’s talks.

Referring to India’s Neigh-bourhood First foreign policy, Modi said he and President Yameen discussed the entire gamut of bilateral relations.

“India understands its role as

a net security provider in the In-dian Ocean and is ready to pro-tect its strategic interests in this region,” Modi said.

“The prompt implementation of a concrete action plan in the defence sector will strengthen our security cooperation,” he said.

The prime minister said that development of ports, continu-ous training, capacity building, supply of equipment and mari-time surveillance would be the main elements of the security cooperation.

“President Yameen and I are aware of the growing dangers of cross-border terrorism and radi-calisation in South Asia,” he said.

“Information exchange be-tween security agencies and training and capacity building of Maldives Police and security forces is an important part of our security co-operation.”

Modi also said that the South Asian Satellite proposed by India would help the Maldives in the fi elds of education, health and tourism.

He said the agreement on co-operation in the tourism sec-tor would boost people-to-people ties.

The agreement on conser-vation of ancient mosques in the Maldives would strengthen cultural ties, he said.

IANSNew Delhi

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right, with Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen at Hyderabad House in New Delhi yesterday.

“President Yameen, India is a well-wisher and will match steps with the Maldives in its journey towards progress,” the prime minister said.

On his part, President Yameen said that India was the most im-portant friend of the Maldives.

“Our ties are based on civilisational roots,” he said.

“Our security is intimately linked with India’s security.”

Earlier yesterday, External Af-fairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on President Yameen in his fi rst engagement of the day in the city.

Yameen also called on Presi-dent Pranab Mukherjee before departing from India.

Yameen had earlier come to India on a bilateral visit in Janu-ary 2014 and was among the South Asian leaders who at-tended Prime Minister Modi’s swearing-in in May 2014.

Though India and the Mal-dives completed 50 years of dip-lomatic ties last year and the two countries historically enjoy a close relationship, Yameen’s vis-it assumes signifi cance because of New Delhi’s discomfi ture over China’s increasing investments

and infl uence in the Indian Ocean region.

Sushma Swaraj visited the Maldives in November 2014 and again in October 2015 for the In-dia-Maldives Joint Commission meeting, which was held after 15 years.

This year, Maldivian minis-terial delegations to India, led by the foreign minister, defence minister, tourism minister, and foreign secretary “have further strengthened bilateral ties be-tween India and Maldives”, said a Maldives high commission state-ment.

Heatwave to continue in Dhaka region The mild to moderate heat wave blazing across Bangladesh’s Rajshahi and Khulna divisions along with Dhaka region may continue for two more days, the Met Off ice said yesterday.A severe heat wave sweeping over Kushtia region may also continue, the forecast said.The heat wave is the first of the season, bdnews24 reported citing the weather off ice. Sunday’s highest temperature

was recorded at 40.3 degrees Celsius in Chuadanga. It was 36 degrees Celsius in Dhaka.According to the weather forecast, the mild to moderate heat wave that is also sweeping over Rangpur, Dinajpur, Syedpur, Tangail and Faridpur regions also may continue and spread over adjacent areas.The weather was unlikely to change much over the next two days, it said.

Jordan Spieth knocked in a putt on the ninth green of Augusta National for his fourth birdie in succession in the fi nal round of Sunday’s Masters and could have been forgiven for thinking he was on the verge of more history.

Last year he destroyed the fi eld to claim his maiden major and now he held a fi ve-shot lead and was on course to become just the fourth player to retain the green jacket.

A mere 50 minutes later he was not only no longer leading, he trailed Danny Willett by three shots. And a couple of hours after that, he was draping a green jacket over Willett’s shoulders in one of the most brutal handovers in the history of the tournament.

“It’s tough, it’s really tough,” he said after walking off the 18th green. “We have the confi dence that we’re a closing team. I still have that confi dence. But it was a very tough 30 minutes for me, and I hope I never experience it again.”

Spieth handled the victory ceremony with his usual grace. On helping Willett into his jacket, he smoothed

down the rumpled collar and gave the winner a pat on the back.

A small gesture perhaps, but a gesture which testifi es to the strength and grace of the man inside this 22-year-old body.

It is easy to forget Spieth’s tender years as he already has two

majors to his name. His record at Augusta, in three visits, contains one victory and two ties for second. He is already held to a standard as high as no other since Tiger Woods broke onto the scene.

What happened on the back nine is easy to explain: “I went bogey, bogey, quad. I went fi ve, fi ve, seven.”

The bogeys on 10 and 11 were not fatal but fi nding the water on the short par-three 12th via the bank in front of the green was a diff erent matter. Having taken a penalty drop, he then caught an uncommitted wedge fat.

Spieth fought back with a couple of birdies on the par-fi ves 13 and 15 but another bogey at 17 sealed his fate.

But if what happened on the back nine was easy to explain, why it happened will surely be the focus of self-refl ection up until the US Open in June, when Spieth will defend his other major title.

The brilliance displayed to bag four consecutive birdies on six through nine seemed to have won the day, but in golf, as in most sports, it isn’t over until it’s over.

Spieth would have held onto his green jacket but for his meltdown, but his dignity in the most crushing of defeats will — in time — prove he too was winner on this of all days.

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The American 22-year-old proved he is a gentleman despite his heartbreaking Masters meltdown

According to “Corruption Perceptions Index 2015”, Iraq is ranked 161st among 167 countries in corruption avoidance

By Harun YahyaIstanbul

Since the 1990s, Iraq has been a

country ravaged by the never-ending disasters; it has been dragged into such pitiful condition as the result of war, terror, dissensions, internal confl icts, sectarian strife, ethnic problems, domestic migrations and seemingly ceaseless suicide attacks.

As if all these catastrophes were not enough, Iraq is now faced with another serious crisis that has been secretly gnawing at the administrative system: Massive corruption. Certainly this atmosphere of strife and commotion, caused by ethnic-sectarian tensions added to the political instabilities that have been plaguing Iraq for a long time, has played a signifi cant role in the increase of the corruption.

For more than 10 years, corruption and degeneracy have been spreading like cancer at almost all the levels of the Iraqi government and bureaucracy. According to “Corruption Perceptions Index 2015”, Iraq is ranked 161st among 167 countries in corruption avoidance.

With the encouragement of religious leaders such as Moqtada al-Sadr, the people of Iraq have taken to the streets and staged protests time and time again, demanding that those responsible for the current situation should be held to account

as soon as possible. They accuse the current government of not taking the necessary measures.

Factors such as the government taking delayed and inadequate measures, overall weakness of authority, as well as high-ranking military and political offi cials who are stuck in the same swamp of corruption protecting each other, make the situation even worse. Furthermore, coercions and threats against offi cials investigating corruption make it even harder for the country to get out of this desperate situation.

This situation has been covered continuously by the international media as well. In an article published by the Guardian last January were these revealing lines:

One of Iraq’s anti-corruption leaders sat in his offi ce, waving his hands in exasperation. “There is no solution,” he said. “Everybody is corrupt, from the top of society to the bottom. Everyone. Including me.”

… Iraq’s political class, military leaders and some senior religious fi gures have led a staggering 13-year pillage that has left Iraq consistently rated as one of the top fi ve least transparent and most corrupt countries in the world.

The same source includes the following statements of Mishan al-Jabouri, a senior member of the parliamentary committee investigating offi cial

corruption:”Believe me, most of the senior names in the country have been responsible for stealing nearly all its wealth, there are names at the top of the tree who would kill me if I went after them.”

Now, let’s reveal the reality of the situation via concrete examples:

Hundreds of millions of dollars as salaries being paid to imaginary 57,000 ghost soldiers which, in reality, directly go into the pockets of certain offi cials: billions of dollars in military spending for mostly non-delivered items such as warplanes, ammunition, equipment, costs of which were infl ated to four to fi ve times of their actual values: thousands of government tenders and projects, fi ctitious buildings, roads and harbours that were paid for but never materialised: all the briberies, commissions, embezzlements that took place in tenders, projects, trade agreements; these are only a part of the money that is unlawfully spent from the coff ers of the state.

Frankly, all this corruption pales in comparison to the ill-gotten gains made from the oil trade that constitutes 95% of Iraq’s total national income.

Last month, allegations of a major bribery and corruption scandal were made by the American Huffi ngton Post and Austrian Fairfax Media Group regarding the oil contracts signed by certain Iraqi government offi cials. In response to these serious allegations, the Iraqi government ordered an immediate investigation.

Tens of thousands of internal correspondences and e-mails sent and received between the years of 2002-2012 were presented as evidence in the report, documenting the scandal; the report was said to include significant documentary evidence regarding substantial

bribes given by many international oil companies to certain Iraqi executives in exchange for securing multibillion-dollar tenders.

The numbers presented by Iraq’s Parliamentary Integrity Commission spokesman Adil Nouri shows that the extent of the corruption is far more terrifying than has been suspected.

According to Nouri, who addressed the Iraqi parliament on the issue, the amount that disappeared from government coffers between 2006 and 2014 was some $500bn ; this amounts to over half of the $822bn oil income the state generated over the eight-year period along with the $250bn fund obtained from many donor countries; this adds up to a total of about $1tn.

For Iraq, which has some of the richest natural resources in the world, and is virtually “swimming” in oil, to fall into such a grave situation is not only thought-provoking but deeply disturbing. Confl icts among brothers, sectarian diff erences, disputes and unwarranted wars, all of these are leading this beautiful country and its people into an even more diffi cult situation and weaken them further with each day.

In order to avoid such incidents, fi rst of all, the world of Islam should start to learn our religion from the Qur’an, pull itself away from the abysmal darkness of negligence and ignorance, put an end to inner confl icts as soon as possible, and learn to live together through the common spirits of love, unity and fellowship. The day that happens is going to be the day when the dark clouds of disasters, troubles and degeneracy will begin to disperse.

Harun Yahya may be followed at @Harun_Yahya and www.harunyahya.com

Iraq needs to tackle its corruption crisis

New front opens in war on superbugs By Mariette Le RouxAFP/Amsterdam

A newly-discovered antibiotic-resistant gene is threatening to open a new front in the war against

superbugs by rendering a last-resort drug impotent, experts warn.

The gene’s resistance to colistin, a life-saving medication which has been around for 60 years, is the latest frustration for physicians battling disease with a shrinking arsenal of antibiotics to treat a wide variety of ailments, many once easily curable.

Dubbed mcr-1, the resistance-conferring gene easily transfers between bacteria, benign or otherwise, found in humans, animals or the environment.

First identified in China last November, the gene has since been discovered in livestock, water, meat and vegetables for human consumption in several countries, and in humans infected with E.coli - one of the disease-causing bacteria it targets.

For the fi rst time, mcr-1 has now also been found living in the gut of healthy humans, a conference of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases

(ESCMID) heard in Amsterdam this weekend.

“(A) key element for the emergence of superpathogens (superbugs, or drug-resistant germ strains) has made its way to our bodies,” researcher Aycan Gundogdu of Turkey’s Erciyes University told delegates.

“It is (only) a matter of time (before) the dissemination of mcr-1 gene will be prevalent in the clinic, bringing the world closer to an antibiotic crisis.”

Colistin has been available since 1959 to treat infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria - a category including the food-poisoning germs E-coli and Salmonella, as well as Acinetobacter which can cause pneumonia or serious blood and wound infections.

It was abandoned for human use in the 1980s due to high kidney toxicity, but is widely used in livestock farming, especially in China.

As bacteria have started to develop resistance to other, more modern drugs, colistin had to be brought back as a treatment of last resort in hospitals and clinics.

Now resistance to that too is becoming a problem.

Gundogdu and a team analysed DNA in faecal samples of individuals from China, Europe and Turkey.

Of the 344 Chinese study subjects, six harboured the gene in their gut - a known major reservoir of drug resistance, the team found.

“They are healthy people. They are hosts, they are carrying this gene,”, Gundogdu told AFP.

Why is it scary? Because water treatment “can’t eliminate these bacteria or these genes perfectly”, he said.

“After treatment, this water directly goes to the environmental water. And then we, the people, use this water for fi shing, for many things, which means there is a circulation.”

Another research team, which retrospectively tested stored E.coli and Salmonella samples from food-producing animals, said the gene has already been around in Europe for more than a decade.

Resistance to drugs can emerge through changes in the bacterium’s genetic code - altering the target on

its surface to which antibiotics would normally bind, making the germ impenetrable

These supergerms spread easily with human help. The wrong antibiotics, taken for too short a period or in too low a dose, help them proliferate - also in animals given antibiotics to fatten them up.

Experts at the conference lamented that not enough new drugs were being developed.

“We have to fi ght all these micro-organisms,” said ESCMID president Murat Akova. “They are emerging, and we are defenceless, we are losing patients.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that drug resistance “threatens a return to the pre-antibiotic era”.

A large-scale study commissioned by the British government and released last year, said between $16bn and $37bn would have to be spent over a 10-year period to bring vital new antibiotics to the market.

This paled in comparison, it said, to the estimated cost of $20bn per year to treat drug resistant illnesses in the US alone.

The AMR report said 700,000 people died every year as a result of drug resistance - a number expected to rise to 10mn by 2050.

Spieth loses green jacket but retains his class Hundreds of

millions of dollars as salaries being paid to imaginary 57,000 ghost soldiers

The WHO has warned that drug resistance “threatens a return to the pre-antibiotic era”

Supporters of Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr shouting slogans during a protest against government corruption in Baghdad’s Sadr City.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Tuesday, April 12, 2016 27

It’s not sneaky to want to connect with people in a way that will make communication easier

By Rex HuppkeChicago Tribune/TNS

Consider this hypothetical work conversation:

“Hey, boss. Check out this cute picture of a panda. Oh,

also, would it be possible to ...”“I HATE PANDAS! GET OUT OF

MY OFFICE!!”That didn’t go well, in large part

because the worker forgot that the boss once fell into an exhibit at the city zoo and was mauled by an unexpectedly violent panda. What seemed adorable to the worker was traumatising to the boss, and communication broke down.

(FUN FACT: Hypothetical conversations involving unexpectedly violent pandas are actually quite common in workplace advice circles.)

The point here is the conversation would’ve gone a lot better if the worker had taken the time to learn something about the boss, and used a bit of strategy. That may be the most overlooked element of workplace communication - the need to think fi rst before speaking.

Some might recoil at the idea of communicating in a strategic manner, viewing it as sneaky or inauthentic. I disagree, in large part because all you’re really doing is listening to people and engaging with them in a way that makes them comfortable.

Mattersight, a tech company that creates personality evaluation software to guide interactions with customers and employees, recently published a networking guide that outlines six personality traits: adviser,

connector, organiser, original, dreamer and doer.

For each trait there are explanations of what drives the individual and suggestions on the best ways to interact.

For example, advisers are: “driven by deeply-held convictions and have fi rm opinions about how things should be done. They care about tradition, loyalty, integrity and credibility.”

You might spot them at a

conference asking probing questions or “frowning intensely at the speaker” because they’re listening carefully.

And the best way to connect with that type of person is: “Asking their opinion - ‘What do you believe the

right approach to X is?’ - or validating their judgments or actions - ‘You bring up a really great point’. This will help you to establish a values-based common ground, which is the ideal launching pad for a deeper relationship with this style.”

I spoke with Jason Wesbecher, Mattersight’s chief marketing offi cer, and he explained that the company’s work is based on a process communication model developed by Nasa in the 1970s. It was used to monitor the language patterns astronauts used as they communicated with each other and with mission control, looking for signs of distress or other changes in emotional state.

“Language is a very reliable advertisement for personality, distress, what your psychological needs are,” Wesbecher said. “We took the model and tried to test whether we could hear these patterns reliably in phone calls. We had behavioral scientists manually listening to calls. Then we set out to create software algorithms that can give second-by-second data and feedback.”

The company has analysed more than 1bn phone calls and built millions of behavioural algorithms that can help people in call centers improve how they interact with customers.

“Before the customer even speaks to an agent, we can route them to an agent best capable of dealing with their personality style, based on the agent’s past history of dealing with people with that personality style,” Wesbecher said. “And after the call, we can provide coaching and training to the agent based on what happened inside that call.”

That doesn’t strike me as devious. In fact, it seems downright sensible, both for call centres and for anyone who has to communicate with other human beings.

“We’re talking past each other,” Wesbecher said. “We’re not listening for those clues that are being dropped, those advertisements that are being dropped in every conversation.”

Mattersight has made a business out of this communication strategy, but that doesn’t mean we can’t perform similar analyses on our own.

You may not agree with the personality traits Wesbecher and his colleagues have compiled (and you can view the whole list here: www.tinyurl.com/gwlh7sk), but it provides an excellent guide for the way we should be thinking in the workplace.

Don’t just expect people to sync with your tone or your sense of humour or your patience or lack thereof. Study your co-workers and managers. Listen, and start a mental database of their traits and communication styles.

Learn who likes jokes and who has a deep-rooted fear of pandas. Learn who needs a little conversation before getting down to business and who hates small talk.

This requires thought and practice. I can’t speak for all of you, but I know I often fi nd myself talking to people without giving thought to their personality traits. We fancy ourselves strategic communicators, but if we’re honest, that approach is probably only taken occasionally. We slip into default mode and chatter away.

It’s not sneaky to want to connect with people in a way that will make communication easier. It’s smart.

So try to pay attention to those advertisements - those personality cues - in the language people use.

And watch out for pandas. They’re cute, but deadly.

Rex Huppke writes for the Chicago Tribune. Send him questions by e-mail at [email protected] or on Twitter @RexWorksHere

Communication requires strategy

Live issues

The transition from colleague to manager

Letters

By Marie G McIntyreTribune News Service

QUESTION: When I joined the small busi-ness where I currently work as a salesperson,

I expected to eventually become department manager. With that in mind, I proposed some changes that would expand our market and increase sales. Although the owner seemed to like my suggestions, she never followed through.

A few months ago, I was shocked to learn that a sales manager had been hired from outside the company. The new hire immedi-ately began implementing the very changes I had previously suggest-ed. The owner acknowledged that these were my ideas, so I asked why I had been passed over for the management job.

Her initial response was that she needed my talents in the sales position. Then she told me that I expect everyone to do things my way, which she said is not a good quality for a manager to have. She said I should treat my colleagues as I do my customers. How should I interpret this feedback?

ANSWER: Let me attempt to translate. Your manager appreci-ates both your sales ability and your helpful ideas. However, based on your co-worker relationships, she feels you are not yet ready to manage people.

Her primary concern is that you seem locked into your own way of thinking and resistant to other views.

If management is your goal, then you should take this feedback seri-ously. Great bosses can effectively supervise a wide variety of per-sonalities, including people whose opinions and approaches differ from their own. The good news, however, is that you may already possess this ability.

As a successful salesperson, you can undoubtedly relate well to many dif-ferent types of customers. If you begin putting equal eff ort into colleague relationships, your manager may eventually change her mind.

Q: My boss does a great job of running the offi ce, but seems to have trouble regulating her emo-tions. “Diane” frequently rolls her eyes and sighs condescendingly when people are talking to her. She also responds irritably to relative-ly minor issues.

Although Diane does this with everybody, I’m the only one who has objected. I recently informed her that these immature behav-iours were interfering with her stated goal of improving our com-munication. She replied that we needed to fi nd a mediator.

I think Diane is missing the point, because there is no confl ict to be mediated. I’m just tired of her negative emotional reactions. How should I handle this?

A: Diane is not the only one missing the point. Based on your own descrip-tion, she is not a horrid manager, just an annoying one. So the real issue is your inability to accept her imperfec-tions.

If I were talking to Diane, I would strongly suggest making her feelings less obvious. But since I can’t change her behaviour, I hope that I can alter yours. Giving orders to the boss sel-dom works out well, so continuing this confrontational criticism would be a major career blunder.

Diane’s expressive reactions obviously push your hot buttons, so instead of focusing on her emotions, you should try to control your own. If you practice what you preach and stop “responding irritably” to this “rela-tively minor issue”, the relationship with your boss might greatly improve.

Marie G McIntyre is a workplace coach and the author of Secrets to Winning at Offi ce Politics. Send in questions and get free coaching tips at http://www.youroffi cecoach.com, or follow her on Twitter @offi cecoach.

Let us all help Kerala fire victimsDear Sir,

I would like to express my heartfelt condolences and deepest sympathy to the families of the victims and all those aff ected by Sunday’s massive fi reworks explosion in Kollam, Kerala.

At least 109 people have been killed and more than 383 injured in the explosion. When the news broke about the tragedy on Sunday, I turned to various Indian TV channels for updates.

I expected to see extensive television coverage, given the gravity of the situation, but unfortunately many of the Indian channels (except a few, of course), disappointed me with the way they handled the news. They were busy with issues, which I felt, were of less importance.

I regret to note that these same channels were so excited about the Sheena Bhora murder case when that story broke a few months ago that they had been off ering non-stop coverage

about it, obviously because of the involvement of some celebrities and the nature of the scandal.

Is this what we have become: A culture obsessed with scandals and celebrities? It is strange indeed when real tragedy strikes a corner of a country, its television channels refuse to acknowledge the importance it deserves.

Our news sense and priorities need urgent reassessment and review.

My request to all Indians, specially non-resident Keralites, is to give full support to the family members of the blaze victims. They need our help.

Masud Hasan(e-mail address supplied)

A shockingdisaster

Dear Sir,

The fi reworks tragedy that struck the Indian state of Kerala during a temple festival on Sunday has come as

a huge shock to all Indian expatriates living in the Gulf.

This incident once again proves that the importance of maintaining strict safety standards during mass gatherings. It is one of the worst human tragedies the Kerala state had ever seen.

Despite the denial of offi cial permission, some people went ahead with a massive fi reworks display, which ended in a tragedy.

There is no point in political parties criticising and blaming each other over the incident; some of them are exactly doing that, especially since it is election time in Kerala. Instead, a combined eff ort is needed to help those survived. All political parties must keep their diff erences aside and extend their full support for a thorough investigation into the accident.

But I’m happy to note that both the central and state governments in New Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram deserve a word of praise for the way they reacted to the tragedy so far.

Ramachandran Nair(e-mail address supplied)

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OFFSHORE DOHAWind: SE-NE 05-15/25 KTWaves: 2-4/7 Feet

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20/16

Toyota’s all-new Innova launched Toyota is once again rede-

fi ning conventional no-tions of a multi-purpose

vehicle (MPV) with the launch of the all-new Innova 2016 in Qatar.

The new model combines the essence of an MPV with the tough elements of an SUV, mak-ing it an ideal vehicle for the family.

“The new Innova is more spa-cious and stylish with additional features,” executive chief engi-neer Hiroki Nakajima said. The vehicle is powered by a 2.7-li-tre four-cylinder petrol engine which produces 164hp and 25.0 kg-m of torque.

“Our team had held exten-sive interactions with custom-ers to determine the design and mechanical direction the new Innova should take,”explained Takayuki Yoshitsugu, chief rep-resentative, Mena Representa-tive Offi ce, Toyota.

The exterior is carefully de-signed with SUV elements. The sculpted body is both stylish and impressive. Subtle aerodynamic eff ects and more emotional col-ours also enhance the exterior.

The vehicle is available in six colours: super white, white pearl

CS, silver ME, gray ME, atti-tude black MC and Avant-Garde bronze ME.

The Innova’s steering wheel has a tilt and telescopic steer-

ing column and it is designed to combine the structural motif of the instrument panel with the luxurious elegant touches.

A 4.2-inch TFT colour Multi-

Information Display allows the driver to access a multitude of vehicle information, important warnings and in-car entertain-ment.

The new Innova is powered by a 2.7-litre 164hp four-cylinder petrol engine.

Off icials at the launch of the all-new Innova in Qatar. PICTURES: Nasar T K

The car is available either as a seven-seater model (with cap-tain seats for second row) or with an eight-seat (60/40 split, fold-down seats for second row) con-fi guration option. It comes with an all-new air-conditioning unit that helps maintain a cool inte-rior even in traffi c on a hot day at maximum occupancy.

Various storage compartments have been made available to pro-vide practical storage options for both family and business use. Device connections are in place to provide superior functionality

and allow devices such as smart-phones and laptops to be used freely.

The car’s anti-lock braking system with electronic brake-force distribution prevents the tyres from locking during braking and allows for measured brake-force distribution between the front and rear wheels according to the vehicle condition.

High-tensile strength steel sheets and supplementary ma-terials are also widely used throughout the body structure to help reduce passenger injuries.

Impact-absorbing materi-als throughout the cabin further contribute to occupant protec-tion.

In the event of a collision, im-pact energy is absorbed and ef-fectively distributed. The frame structure absorbs impacts in three steps, reducing their eff ect on areas such as the body, engine and interior.

The new Innova is also avail-able with a full-colour display. The rear view monitor system ensures peace of mind when re-verse parking.

Commercial Bank’s Man United soccer camp proves a big hit with customers

Commercial Bank has an-nounced the successful conclusion of the third

Manchester United Soccer School coaching camp in Doha.

More than 160 boys and girls aged seven to 16 years took part in the initiative at Al Arabi Stadium last month, with two coaches from Manchester Unit-ed’s Soccer School specially fl own in from the UK to provide the coaching.

Commercial Bank is the ex-clusive fi nancial services part-ner of Manchester United in Qatar.

The bank’s customers won places for their children to participate in the exclusive fi ve-day coaching camp, by spending on their Commercial Bank Manchester United credit cards.

The training camp consisted of on-fi eld training and techni-cal skills, similar to what is used to train Manchester United players.

The coaches gave an insight into Manchester United youth training techniques and phi-losophy and off ered advice on how to prepare off the pitch, improve their understanding

of the game, develop a winning mentality and have lots of fun.

Each child also received a certifi cate upon completion of the training.

The two Manchester United Soccer School coaches said it was a great experience to work with the kids in Qatar - they demonstrated a “genuine en-thusiasm and passion for play-ing football and learning about

how to play the Manchester United way.”

The coaches were particular-ly impressed with the way the children communicated with each other and worked together during the sessions.

Dean Proctor, Commercial Bank EGM, chief consumer and private banking, said: “Com-mercial Bank is delighted by the success of our partnership with

Manchester United and the popularity of the Manchester United Soccer School with our customers’ children.”

“Customers can win price-less Manchester United ex-periences for themselves and their families simply by using a Commercial Bank Manchester United credit card, a card prod-uct that is unrivalled in the Qa-tar marketplace,” he added.

Three new judges have been appointed to the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre.

Qatar International Court appoints three judges

The Qatar International Court and Dispute Reso-lution Centre (QICDRC)

has appointed three new judges, one to the court and two to the regulatory tribunal.

George Arestis, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Cyprus and European Court of Justice

in Luxembourg, has joined the court.

Edwin Glasgow QC, an Eng-lish silk, arbitrator and media-tor, and Gopal Subramanium, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India and a former solicitor-general of India, have joined the specialist Regulatory

Tribunal of the Qatar Financial Centre.

Christopher Grout, the reg-istrar of the QICDRC, said: “The QICDRC now has 16 judges from 10 different juris-dictions, reaffirming its posi-tion as a truly international centre.”

Canon Solutions opens direct operation in Qatar Canon Middle East, a lead-

er in imaging solutions, yesterday held the offi cial

inauguration of its direct opera-tion Canon Offi ce Imaging Solu-tions (Doha) and the launch of its fi rst dedicated business solu-tions showroom.

This is the fi rst time a global technology brand has set up a di-rect in-country presence in Qa-tar, Canon Middle East claimed in a statement.

Canon Offi ce Imaging Solu-tions (Doha) has been estab-lished in partnership with Salam Technology, Canon’s longstand-ing imaging solutions distribu-tion partner in Qatar.

The inauguration of the showroom was marked by the presence of Stefano Zenti, ex-ecutive vice president, Canon Europe; Anurag Agrawal, man-aging director, Canon Middle East; Wim Wynants, general manager, Canon Offi ce Imaging Solutions (Doha) and Abdul-Salam Issa Abu Issa, member of the board of directors of Salam International.

Salam Technology’s strong

local presence and proven track-record will ensure that Canon provides the high quality, tech-nologically advanced products required across all industries, the statement said.

Canon has been meeting customers’ demands in Qatar through its direct presence and new and diversifi ed business of-ferings over the last year and a half, with 50 Canon employees and a full-fl edged service and support team.

With its fi rst B2B showroom in place, the company will con-tinue to give Qatari customers the opportunity to receive direct advice on products and services from Canon professionals. “Qa-tar has been a key market for us

and the establishment of Canon Offi ce Imaging Solutions (Doha) as a subsidiary of Canon Mid-dle East, to specially cater to the market is refl ective of our com-mitment to this region,” said Zenti.

“This showroom is designed to provide hands-on demon-strations of our B2B services and solutions to existing and new customers. It is also meant to display our end-to-end busi-ness solutions such as profes-sional print, document and imaging management systems to provide a complete portfolio of innovative products and so-lutions for businesses across a wide variety of sectors,” added Zenti.

“The Qatari market is one of the key, strategic markets for Canon Middle East in the re-gion and our aim is to contrib-ute to the Qatari economy,” said Agrawal.

Wim Wynants, general man-ager of Canon Offi ce Imaging Solutions (Doha), pointed out that in the showroom, Canon will provide a complete port-

Stefano Zenti and AbdulSalam Issa Abu Issa formally inaugurating Canon Off ice Imaging Solutions (Doha) yesterday.

Off icials with participants in the soccer school.

folio of innovative products for businesses across a wide vari-ety of sectors. “Our outstand-ing customer service, thanks to

a thoroughly-trained staff , puts us in a position to off er expert advice on Canon products. With this showroom, we will ensure

that Canon maintains its posi-tion as a leader in imaging solu-tions and off ers unprecedented amenities throughout Qatar.”

Canon’s business solutions showroom is located in Bin Om-ran, Ahmed Bin Ali Street, Town Centre, Doha.

“Qatar has been a key market for us and the establishment of Canon Offi ce Imaging Solutions (Doha) as a subsidiary of Canon Middle East, to specially cater to the market is refl ective of our commitment to this region”


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Q-Post launches e-commerce service - Gulf Times

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