Qatar economic growth 'poised for a rebound' - Gulf Times

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GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978

SUNDAY Vol. XXXVII No. 10257

October 30, 2016Muharram 29, 1438 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

BUSINESS | Page 1

GCC energy fi rms play lead role in promoting sustainability: Al-Attiyah

SPORT | Page 1

Sadd held by Gharafa in 6-goal thrillerQATAR

REGION

ARAB WORLD

INTERNATIONAL

COMMENT

BUSINESS

CLASSIFIED

SPORTS

30, 31

1-6, 17-20

7-17

1-12

3-11

12

12 - 14

15-29

INDEX

Qatar economicgrowth ‘poisedfor a rebound’In real terms, the economy picked up by 2% year-over-year in the second quarter, compared to a 1.4% gain in the first quarter

Despite the moderation in Qa-tar’s real GDP expansion in the fi rst half of 2016, QNB be-

lieves growth is poised to rebound in the second half of this year.

Qatar’s Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) re-leased GDP data for the second quar-ter of 2016 last week.

In real terms, the economy picked up by 2% year-over-year in the sec-ond quarter, compared to a 1.4% gain in the fi rst quarter. This puts real GDP growth for the fi rst half of the year at 1.7% year-over-year.

The hydrocarbon sector contracted by 1.2% year-over-year in the second quarter, however, this was an im-provement over the decline of 2.9% year-over-year experienced in the fi rst quarter and drove overall real GDP higher. Through the fi rst half of the year, the hydrocarbon sector declined by 2% year-over-year. Crude oil pro-duction, according to the Joint Organ-isations Data Initiative (JODI), fell by just 0.2% year-over-year through the fi rst two quarters of the year and ac-

counts for about one-third of Qatar’s hydrocarbon production.

Therefore, most of the decline in hydrocarbon production came from the remaining two thirds of the hy-drocarbon sector, which consists of natural gas, condensates and other liquids, mainly extracted from the gas fi elds.

Nominal hydrocarbon GDP, which includes the infl uence of prices, ex-perienced a contraction of 34% year-over-year in the second quarter, also an improvement from the fi rst quar-ter where growth fell by 41.3%.

In the fi rst half as a whole, nomi-nal hydrocarbon GDP declined by 37.8%. This sharp decline is largely explained by the weakness in global

crude oil prices experienced in early 2016. Consequently, the hydrocarbon sector now accounts for just below 30% of the Qatari economy.

In terms of the non-hydrocarbon sector, year-over-year growth was 5.5% in the second quarter, slowing from 6.2% in the fi rst quarter. Growth in the fi rst half of 2016 stood at 5.8%. Weakness in the manufacturing sec-tor was the main driver of the quar-terly decline and was attributable to lower production of basic chemicals and plastics.

In nominal terms, non-hydrocar-bon GDP grew by 4.4% year-over-year, down slightly from 4.9% in the fi rst quarter. However, nominal growth in the fi rst half of the year is up 4.7% year-over-year.

According to QNB, weaker hydro-carbon production appears to have bottomed out and historically gov-ernment spending has been stronger in the second half of the year, aiding non-hydrocarbon growth.

Moreover, population growth has picked up to 8.7% in the third quar-ter, compared to 6.7% in the fi rst half of the year. This should support de-mand for the service sector, adding to non-hydrocarbon sector growth, QNB said.

QATAR | LPG

Woqod extends Shafaf off er Qatar Fuel Company (Woqod), the exclusive dealers of LPG cylinders in the country, has announced that its off er to switch from the metal cylinders to Shafaf cylinders is extended until December 31. Page 4

New electronic system toprocess labour recruitment

The Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and So-cial Aff airs announced yester-

day that it was cancelling its perma-nent committee charged with labour recruitment and replacing it with an electronic system, starting next year.

The new initiative comes as a result of a meeting HE the Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani had with the chairpersons of companies listed at Qatar Exchange, the offi cial Qatar News Agency (QNA) said. The meeting among other things discussed easing the restriction and procedures of recruitment of workers by the private sector.

According to a statement issued by the ministry, the necessary software is being developed to handle employers’ requests to recruit new employees. The programme will deal with the entire process, starting from submitting the

application to getting the approval of the required nationalities.

The electronic system, besides speeding up the process of recruitment will enhance transparency and is in line with the ministry’s strategy to increase online services, the statement said.

“This would be through adopting clear mechanisms and standards for the employer regarding granting ap-provals on the requested nationali-ties and avoid repetition of submitted transactions,” the statement added.

A report commissioned by Qatar Foundation had recommended an overhaul of the process of recruiting blue-collar workers to the country.

It said the system of recruiting and hiring semi- and unskilled expats to work in Qatar is riddled with prob-lems, many of which begin with the recruitment process in their home countries.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attending a Republic Day ceremony at Anitkabir, the mausoleum of modern Turkey’s founder Ataturk, to mark the republic’s anniversary in Ankara yesterday. Page 23

Anniversary ceremony

QATAR3Gulf Times

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko arrived yesterday in Doha on an off icial visit. HE the Minister of Finance Ali Sheri al-Emadi, Qatar’s ambassador to Belarus Soud bin Abdullah al-Mahmoud and Belarus’ ambassador in Qatar Roman Golovchenko received the Belarus president at Hamad International Airport yesterday.

Belarus president arrives in Doha

Ministry’s approval mustfor studying abroad

The Ministry of Edu-cation and Higher Education said

yesterday that any Qa-tari student wishing to study abroad must obtain its approval, regardless of whether it is the student or his company that will cover the expenses.

The student must also commit to the conditions set by the ministry to guar-antee the equation of their certifi cates, chair of the ministry’s committee for equating certifi cates Dr

Ibrahim al-Naimi said in a press conference held yes-terday.

On what would students who have been study-ing abroad for more than two years without gaining the approval of the min-istry should do, al-Naimi said that the ministry’s approval was only bind-ing starting December 29, 2014. So students studying abroad before that date can continue with their stud-ies and the committee will look into their situation case by case.

He also noted that the fi rst list of recommended universities was issued two

years ago. Al-Naimi main-tained, however, that it was the right of the student to study at any university he pleases. However, if he wanted to work at any of the state’s institutions he will have to stick to the ministry’s rules. He said that these rules were put in place to ensure students get the quality education required to realise Qatar National Vision 2030.

Al-Naimi said that the committee equated 1,070 certifi cates since the be-ginning of 2016 to Octo-ber 20, with 80% of those certifi cates for Qatari stu-dents.

QNADoha

Minister highlights Qatar’s achievementsin education sector

HE the Minister of Education

and Higher Education Dr

Mohamed Abdul Wahed Ali

al-Hammadi said that

Qatar has made significant

progress with its educa-

tion system, highlighting

the global competitiveness

report which ranked Qatar’s

education system the best in

the Arab world in the primary

stage.

Addressing the First ISESCO

Conference of Education

Ministers, currently held in

Tunisia, the Minister said the

report also praised the quality

of Qatar’s secondary level

education system, especially

the quality of teaching maths

and science.

Qatar was also ranked second

in terms of providing Internet

access at schools.

Qatar Chamber holds workshop on investing in gold

Emir sends National Day

greetings to Erdogan

Qatar Chamber organised yesterday a workshop on the basics of investing in gold, The workshop, held in co-operation with Sabayik Al Doha, shed light on the importance of investing in gold and its return. The workshop also covered how

investment in the asset can be done in accordance to Islamic Shariah. Vice-Chairman of Qatar Chamber Mohammed bin Ahmed bin Towar said that gold has proven its ability to withstand fluctuations and crises that face investors

around the world, whether it was wars or economic and political crises. He noted that demand for gold increases during crisis times. This quality makes it a safe haven for investors and a better way to save money.

QATAR

Gulf Times Sunday, October 30, 20164

President of National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) Dr Ali bin Sumaikh al-Marri held a meeting yesterday with the director of Middle East and North Africa at the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mohamed Eagles. The NHRC stressed its support to the eff orts of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in the Arab World. The two sides reviewed challenges facing the Arab World and the role of the national institutions and governments in solving them. They stressed on the importance of co-operation to develop the capabilities of national human rights institutions.

NHRC chief holds meeting

Woqod extends Shafaf cylinder off er to end of 2016

Qatar Fuel Company (Woqod) has an-nounced in a state-

ment that its off er to switch from the metal cylinders to Shafaf cylinders is extended till December 31.

Woqod, the exclusive dealers of LPG cylinders in the country, is off ering a QR100 discount to those exchanging their metal cyl-inders with Shafaf cylinders,

so that they will receive a special rate of QR265.

The statement stressed that Woqod is committed to meeting the growing de-mand for Shafaf cylinders. Currently, the market has 250,000 Shafaf cylinders available at point of sales and retailers.

Woqod said it is utilising retailers of steel cylinder to distribute Shafaf cylinders

to meet the increasing de-mand of the customers.

“Shafaf is one of the most advanced gas cyl-inders in the world, dis-tinguished with its light weight and product safety. Woqod reiterates its com-mitment to the Qatari so-ciety and to facilitating the highest international standards of safety,” the statement added.

Expat accused of stabbing compatriot

A Doha Criminal Court is reviewing the case of a Kenyan man ac-

cused of stabbing a com-patriot causing him serious injuries.

Local Arabic daily Ar-

rayah has reported that the investigations re-vealed that the accused stabbed his victim in his stomach.

The incident happened after a dispute about money

at their accommodation. The accused claimed

that he and his victim were intoxicated when the inci-dent took place and he did not mean to kill or injure him.

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Ha-mad 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 yesterday sent cables of congratulations to Turk-ish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on his country’s National Day.

QNADoha

QATAR


Qatar genome project to bring personalised medicine closer

A Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI) scientist has embarked on a study

to fi nd genetic variations associ-ated with a particular disease by analysing the data available at the Qatar Genome Programme.

According to a top QBRI offi cial, Qatar Genome Programme can take the country closer to person-alised medicine.

Speaking to Gulf Times, Prof Omar El-Agnaf, acting executive director of QBRI, one of the three research institutes under Hamad Bin Khalifa University ( HBKU) ex-plained: “The Qatar Genome Pro-

gramme is a great initiative, not just in Qatar but across the whole region. The aim of the project is to sequence the whole Qatari popu-lation and it will take us closer to personalised medicine.”

Prof El-Agnaf pointed out that the hard work in the project is in an-alysing the data. He noted: “It is not just sequencing the genes but ana-lysing the data that is where the real and hard work starts. Our scientists have got the approval to access the data and have worked and put time into the analysis of it.”

“We recently signed a con-tract to deal with the project. We have got the first project now which is led by one of the geneticists we recruited from Edinburgh University, Scotland, one of the leading universities

in Europe,” he disclosed.“He is going to lead what is

called the “genome-wide associa-tion study” for the Qatar Genome Programme. This is an approach that involves rapidly scanning markers across the complete sets of genomes to fi nd genetic varia-tions associated with a particular disease,” elaborated the offi cial.

Qatar Genome Programme is an initiative that aims to use the latest DNA sequencing technology to es-tablish a genome map of the local population. The programme was announced by HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qa-tar Foundation, during the World Innovation Summit on Health (WISH) 2013.

Prof El-Agnaf continued, “A whole population-based project like this has happened only in Ice-land so far. Once completed, Qatar

will be the next country that will be developing such a highly ad-vanced programme.”

According to Prof El-Agnaf, personalised medicine has become a reality now in cancer. “There are some types of cancer where people carry mutation in specifi c genes. There is a specifi c treatment that works only for that mutated gene. It is an area that is developing re-ally fast and it is going to be used more and more in the future,” he highlighted.

“This is the beginning and more QBRI scientists will be involved in the projects of the Qatar Genome Programme. More geneticists also will be joining QBRI to further study and work with the genome project and analyse the data,” he added.

By Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

Prof Omar El-Agnaf

Quarantine section clears over 375,000 imported livestock

The Veterinary Quar-antine Section in-spected and released

some 375,133 heads of im-ported livestock during the summer months, the Min-istry of Municipality and Environment said in a press statement yesterday.

Farhoud Hadi al-Hajiri, director of the MME’s Ani-mal Resources Department, said these included 358,662 heads of sheep, 5,168 cows and 11,303 camels.

He stressed that the de-partment made sure that the necessary equipment was available at the entry points into Qatar to examine such animals and ensure that the imported animals were free

from any diseases that could negatively impact public health and animal wealth in the country.

The department is also keen to ease the necessary procedures to release these animals expeditiously, and facilitate the business of importers and suppliers.

Al-Hajiri said livestock import activities usually start before the holy month of Ramadan every year, not-ing that the percentage of rejected consignments did not exceed 1% of the total livestock coming into the country, and mostly involv-ing small consignments.

In case a violation of veterinary quarantine reg-

ulations is detected, the importer has to re-export

the infected animal to the country of origin at his

own expense, it was ob-served. Meanwhile, dead

animals are disposed of in environment-friendly in-cinerators.

The import of livestock for slaughter or breed-ing is only allowed from countries where adequate veterinary checks are made before the consignment is sent. Also, imported ani-mals are quarantined as soon as they arrive in Qa-tar for further examination before being allowed into the country.

Veterinary quarantine is the fi rst line of defence to prevent the entry of com-municable and infectious diseases, which may aff ect public health and wealth in the State, he added.

Veterinary quarantine is the first line of defence to prevent the entry of communicable and infectious diseases.

Stranded workers to be repatriated as salary arrears issue is settled

MoI wins awardfor combatingdrug traffi cking

Workers of a con-struction fi rm who have not

been paid salaries for several months, will be paid their ar-rears and repatriated starting tomorrow, it is learnt.

The Dubai-based com-pany, a major construc-tion fi rm of the region, had run into problems after it was hit by a fi nancial crisis a few months ago.

Yesterday, an expatriate social activist said he has learnt from the workers that they would start leaving the country starting Monday as the company’s sharehold-ers have pooled in adequate

funds to settle salary arrears.Earlier, offi cials of two

embassies had held nego-tiations with the company offi cials to work out a set-tlement plan to repatri-ate the stranded workers. Sources said the present plan is to clear the work-ers’ arrears in batches.

Gulf Times had report-ed the workers’ plight last month. More than 450 workers belonging to different nationalities, staying on the compa-ny’s accommodation on Street 38 in the Industrial Area, were among the af-fected.

The Ministry of In-terior (MoI) has won the “best in-

telligence and operational co-operation award at the Arab, regional and inter-national levels” in com-bating drug traffi cking.

This was announced during the 30th confer-ence of chiefs of anti-narcotics agencies in Arab countries held at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Council of Arab Interior Ministers in Tunisia on October 27 and 28.

The award was achieved through the “distin-guished eff orts of the Drugs Enforcement Ad-ministration (DEA) and its constant collaboration”

with diff erent anti-nar-cotics agencies operating at the regional and inter-national levels, the MoI said in a press statement yesterday.

The Qatari delegation was headed by Brigadier Amr Ali al-Homaidi, assistant direc-tor of the DEA. He received the award from Dr Mohamed bin Ali Kouman, secretary-general of the Arab Interior Ministers’ Council. Brigadier Ahmad Khalifa al-Kowari, director of the Drugs En-forcement Administration, said the MoI received the prize for the second year in a row, which marked the “great eff orts exerted by the DEA personnel along with relevant agencies in neigh-bouring countries”.

Another supermarketclosed in Al Khor for fl outing norms

Yet another errant outlet has been shut down by authorities

at Al Khor and Al Thakhira Municipality for fl outing regulations.

Juma Khamis al-Muraikhi, director of the municipality, issued an administrative de-cision to permanently close a supermarket for operating without a licence.

The municipality’s in-spectors detected a number of other violations as well - pertaining to health require-ments - at the supermarket.

These included lack of health certificate for workers, leaving food un-covered, improper storage conditions for meat and chicken, and the absence of labels indicating the coun-try of origin and validity, among others.

A violation report was is-sued against the outlet for not complying with Law No 8 of 1990 on the regulation of human food control and Law No 3 of 1975.

The violator was accord-ingly referred to the govern-ment department concerned for necessary legal proce-dures, the Ministry of Mu-nicipality and Environment said in a press statement.

Al Khor and Al Thakhira Municipality has closed down some 13 food outlets and supermarkets in recent times for operating without licences.

Meanwhile, the MME yes-terday tweeted that Al Maz-rouah environmental patrols found waste being dumped at an undesignated site and took action against the vio-lator.

Waste dumping at an undesignated site.

Besides operating without a licence, a number of other violations were detected at the supermarket.

QATAR


The General Directorate of the Traff ic Department recently held a workshop on winter camping season, which is set to start in November. The event focused on the safety and security measures that should be followed by campers, with off icials stressing the rules and regulations of driving caravan and trailers on the road. The workshop, held at the main headquarters of the Traff ic Depart-ment, also hosted a number of off icials from the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Municipality and Environment.

Camping safety focus of workshop

Ooredoo addsnew mobile sites in popular camping areasOoredoo has completed

a “signifi cant” net-work enhancement pro-

gramme across popular camp-sites and desert areas in Qatar to enable customers to get the most out of camping season.

Building on the success of its 2015 initiative, ‘Project Desert’, which installed mobile shelters in popular camping locations, Ooredoo has upgraded its net-work infrastructure in 2016 for a smoother online experience in desert areas.

As part of this process, Oore-doo has introduced the latest 4G+ technology supporting CAT9 in all camping locations to provide enhanced coverage and data speeds.

The company has also added new mobile sites in some of the most popular camping areas, in-cluding Sealine, Ghawaryah, and Khor Al Udaid.

Ooredoo was named as pro-

viding the “Best Operator Net-work” by Telecoms World Mid-dle East in September 2016, and the company is continuing to expand its network enhancement programme to ensure that cus-tomers enjoy the best possible experience wherever they are in Qatar.

Fatima Sultan al-Kuwari, di-rector of Community & Public Relations at Ooredoo Qatar, said: “Ooredoo continues to upgrade

our network to ensure we stay at the cutting-edge in terms of cov-erage and performance, and also in response to requests from our customers.

“People have told us that reli-able data networks and crystal-clear voice coverage are a key part of their camping experience, so we’re continuing to upgrade the network to support the increas-ing number of visitors in Qatar’s desert areas.”

With the best desert network experience, Ooredoo customers can stay connected while explor-ing and have the peace of mind of knowing that they can contact help in the event of an emer-gency.

Customers looking to take ad-vantage of the Ooredoo Supernet network at popular camping sites can use an Ooredoo Broadband plan, Shahry or Hala Smart bun-dle, or a Mi-Fi Netgear device to connect to the Internet 24/7.

‘Happy Data Days’ promo back

Ooredoo has announced that it has brought back its ‘Happy Data Days’

promotion due to “unprecedent-ed demand.”

The ‘Happy Data Days’ pro-motion, which was last available in March, is regularly requested by Ooredoo users via the com-pany’s social media pages and call centre, demonstrating the growing demand for data serv-ices across Qatar, Ooredoo said.

Under the promotion, Hala and Shahry customers who re-charge their data can get up to six times their purchased allow-ance. All bonus data is valid for

seven days once activated and cannot be forwarded. Data re-charges must be activated during the promotional period to get the bonus data.

Ooredoo’s ‘Happy Data Days’ enables users to enjoy surfi ng the award-winning Ooredoo Super-net for less, and the promotion was designed to give back to all of the company’s diverse customer base who use the Internet to stay in touch, purchase goods and keep up to date with world news.

‘Happy Data Days’ will be valid until tomorrow only. Ooredoo us-ers who purchase and activate a 500MB data recharge between Oc-

tober 29 and 31 will enjoy 500MB of extra data, 1GB data top-ups will receive 2GB extra data, 3GB recharges will get 9GB extra, 6GB top-ups will have access to 24GB extra data, and 15GB purchases will get 75GB extra data.

Ooredoo customers can top up their data in a host of easy and secure ways, including via the Ooredoo App, Mobile Money App, Ooredoo website, Self-Service Machines, or purchasing a data card or e-voucher from Ooredoo Shops and authorised dealers.

For more information on mo-bile data from Ooredoo, visit www.ooredoo.qa

Customers can now get the most out of camping season with Oore-doo’s network upgrade.

New Barwa Bank deposit schemelets clients collect profi ts upfront

Barwa Bank has launched its new Shariah-compli-ant ‘Profi t-in-Advance’

Term Deposit account, ‘Wadi-ati’, to give customers the ben-efi t of collecting their profi ts as soon as opening their accounts.

With ‘Wadiati’, the bank’s clients no longer have to wait until maturity to collect their profi ts and can get the profi t of the entire term upfront in their current, savings, or Thara’a ac-count.

Having previously presented clients with the fi rst Islamic cred-it card in the country, followed by the introduction of the bank’s “unmatched” Shariah-compliant savings account, ‘Thara’a’, which gives clients the chance to win

up to QR1mn, the launch of ‘Wa-diati’ marks Barwa Bank’s third Shariah-compliant off ering “that successfully becomes the fi rst-of-its-kind among Islamic banks in the Qatari market.”

Khalid Yousef al-Subeai, act-ing GCEO of Barwa Bank Group, said: “For our clients who have a sum of money that they’re will-ing to deposit and would like to receive assured returns, Barwa Bank’s new ‘Profi t-in-Advance’ Term Deposit account makes all the diff erence. ‘Wadiati’ is ap-proved by our Shariah Supervi-sory Committee and allows our customers to make the most of the account’s value-added ben-efi ts as they create immediate wealth at low risk.”

The ‘Profi t-in-Advance’ ac-count functions on the ‘Mudara-bha’ structure as detailed in the general terms and conditions of Barwa Bank. Clients can choose between six, 12, and 18 months terms with a minimum invest-ment of QR4mn. ‘Wadiati’ has high expected profi t rates and allows the profi t amount to be credited in the linked savings or current account. Customers can draw the funds as per their con-venience.

In addition to accepting de-posits made by cash, cheque, or direct account transfer, which are administered in accordance with Shariah principles, ‘Prof-it-in-Advance’ allows clients to easily manage their account

24/7 via Barwa Bank’s online, SMS, or automated telephone banking services.

‘Profi t-in-Advance’ accounts are available for expatriates, as well as Qatari nationals. Dedi-cated relationship managers are also available for Premium Cus-tomers. Clients can book their deposit at any of Barwa Bank’s branches upon fi lling and sub-mitting an application form for opening the account.

Barwa Bank provides a full range of Shariah-compliant banking services, including per-sonal banking, corporate and commercial banking, private banking, real estate fi nance, structured fi nance, and invest-ments and asset management.

Minor fi re at mall store

A small fi re broke out at one of the stores undergoing fi t-out at Mall of Qatar on

Friday. No injuries or loss in prop-erty were reported during the inci-dent, the mall management said in a statement.

“At Mall of Qatar, we have in-vested in the latest state-of-the-

art fi re control systems that worked perfectly. Moreover, our safety and security offi cers are highly trained to act promptly in emergency situ-ations,” the statement noted. “On top of this, we follow global best practices when it comes to safety and emergency evacuation proce-dures.”

Hyundai distributor off ers new package for light duty trucks

National Car Company, the sole distributor for Hyundai trucks and buses in Qatar, has

launched the ‘Total Peace of Mind’ package off er.

The off er includes three-year/unlimited kilometre warranty and seven free services up to 30,000km or one year, whichever comes fi rst. The limited-period off er is applicable for Hyundai light duty trucks and is valid until December 15, according to a press statement from National Car Company.

By applying “state-of-the-art technology, the HD series trucks maintain the highest standards in de-velopment and manufacturing,” the statement notes, adding that these trucks undergo stringent endurance tests. The Hyundai D4DC diesel en-gine delivers “powerful performance, combined with exceptional reliability and durability.”

A “heat-treated, web-strength-ened, ultra-rigid upper frame” pro-vides the chassis basis for the superior performance and safety of all Hyundai HD trucks. Optimal suspension resil-ience, fully loaded or empty, comes from the proven toughness of leaf springs with advanced shock absorber technology. Large size brake linings and tandem brake boosters give con-sistently dependable and powerful braking. For greater loading capacity, the HD series off er increased axle ca-pacities, reinforced suspension, and uprated clutch and brake perform-ance.

The HD series off ers one of the saf-est and most ergonomic cabs available and features high-back seats, built to support, comfort and reduce driving fatigue. With the new expanded wind-screen and optimised seating position, drivers enjoy a maximum fi eld of view, which allows them to confi dently ma-noeuvre in tight spots.

The HD series light duty trucks - HD65, HD72 & HD78 - are equipped with Euro 1, D4DC engines, deliv-

ering an “outstanding power out-put” of 120 ps@3,200 and a toque of 295Nm@2,000rpm. To off er real cargo carrying fl exibility, these trucks can be selected for chassis payload capaci-ties ranging from 4.1 to 5.2 tonnes and GVW ranging from 6.5 to 7.5 tonnes.

Though nicknamed the “baby truck,” HD46 has the power to deliver with an engine output of 80ps@4,000 and can comfortably take a chas-sis payload of 2.3 tonnes. The most compact in the range with a narrow 1,760mm width, HD46 is most suited for congested city streets.

The HD series trucks also off er “ex-traordinary active safety and security” through a four-channel ABS integrat-ed Electronic Brake-force Distribu-tion system as an option. When the system senses the wheels locking in

adverse or slippery road conditions, it easily adjusts and controls the braking pressures to all wheels by hydraulic control, while increasing brake pres-sure in an emergency automatically.

“From refrigerated vans (chiller/freezer) to mobile service trucks, dump trucks as well as crane trucks, the Hyundai HD series will fulfi l your needs whatever be your specifi c busi-ness requirements. Tanker, aerial platform, recovery, maintenance and waste management, etc, are the other commonly used applications for the HD series,” the statement added.

National Car Company has been as-sociated with the Hyundai brand since 1978.

For more information, one can call 44355117 or e-mail at [email protected]

Hyundai reefer truck.

The Hyundai HD78. The HD series trucks maintain the highest standards in development and manufacturing.

QATAR9Gulf Times


Qatar Airways Group holds conference on safety, securityQatar Airways Group held

its fi rst annual confer-ence on safety and secu-

rity for its staff , with an agenda designed to embed the group policy that safety and security is the highest priority as expressed in all corporate values. The team members were educated on the robust processes spanning sev-eral operational areas.

Named ‘Priority 1’, the one-day conference aimed to pro-vide company-wide awareness on how various departments are implementing best-in-class processes, to share informa-tion and enhance collaboration throughout the organisation.

More than 600 executive leaders, managers and supervi-sory staff from the Qatar Airways Group participated in 16 interac-tive sessions to broaden their knowledge about various safety and security best practices. The workshops and presentations

moderated by senior business representatives highlighted risk management, emergency response, business resilience, environmental sustainability, ground, fl ight and cabin safety, occupational health and fi re safety as well as security topics among others. Additionally, the talent development team show-cased key elements of safety and security learning.

The conference was opened by Akbar al-Baker, Qatar Air-ways Group chief executive, who emphasised the QR Group’s underlying commitment and complete focus on safety and security enhancement across all Qatar Airways operations network-wide, 24 hours a day out of the airline’s hub in Doha.

These continued improve-ments of current best practice have led to numerous company-wide achievements including a well-established integrated

safety and security management programme, full safety and secu-rity audit compliance, improved carbon effi ciency, successful joint emergency exercises with HIA and government emergency stakeholders and implementing centralised documentation and

emergency information systems.Al-Baker said: “The primary

commitment we ask of each of our staff is to put safety and se-curity as their number one prior-ity every day, and we encourage our team members to constantly seek ways to share best practices

and innovative safety methods with their colleagues”.

Ashish Jain, senior vice presi-dent, group safety and security, said: “Our core objective of this conference is to emphasise that together we need to actively have a socially-conscious approach to

our day to day work environment; every day in every department in every activity and conversation, we make safety and security our Priority 1. Good safety and secu-rity is not just about complying with applicable laws it is also very good for business.”

Akbar al-Baker, Captain Abdulrahman al-Hammadi, director of Air Safety Department at Qatar Civil Aviation Authority, Ashish Jain and other guests at the airline’s first annual “Priority 1” safety and security conference.

Awareness drive on protection of competition in tendersThe Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC) has announced the launch of an awareness campaign on the protection of competition and prevention of collusion in tenders.The initiative was in line with Law No 19 of 2006 on the protection of competition and prevention of monopolistic practices, the MEC said in a statement yesterday. The law contains provisions related to the protection of competition in tenders, with its executive regulations also outlining cases of collusion and co-ordination for tender bids.The campaign includes an infographic that highlights the importance of competition protection for tenders and the risks associated with the common forms of collusion. It also outlines measures and procedures to be followed to detect collusion faced by the authorities that off er such tenders.In addition, the MEC has issued an awareness guide on the protection of competition for tenders. The guide includes international case studies that show examples of successful tenders in terms of transparency and fairness. These case studies were showcased at an international workshop on the protection of competition and anti-collusion organised by the ministry in late-2015.

QA adds more fl ights to Dammam and Riyadh

Qatar Airways has announced an increase in services to Dammam and Riyadh, con-

necting travellers from Saudi Arabia to more than 150 worldwide desti-nations through the award-winning Hamad International Airport in Doha.

From today, Qatar Airways will add another eight fl ights a week to Riyadh and one more daily fl ight to Dammam, increasing its connec-tivity to the two major Saudi cities. Through its hub in Hamad Inter-national Airport, Qatar Airways will operate four fl ights a day to

King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh, and fi ve daily fl ights to King Fahad International Airport in Dammam.

Ehab Amin, senior vice president of commercial Middle East, Africa and Pakistan, Qatar Airways, said: “There has been signifi cant de-mand for our services in the king-dom within the last year, and we have stepped up our services to pro-vide our passengers with the fl ights they need to make travelling more convenient.”

“By adding more fl ights, we are off ering our travellers more choice

to connect to our extensive network. With the increase in services to 158 weekly fl ights from eight points in the Kingdom, Qatar Airways will also have more First Class seats available, allowing even more passengers to experience the airline’s award-win-ning premium class service.”

The additional fl ights take Qatar Airways’ total connectivity within the kingdom to 158 fl ights a week, serving eight destinations: Riyadh, Jeddah, Madinah, Dammam, Hofuf, Gassim, Taif, and Abha.

Qatar Airways, the offi cial spon-sor of Al-Ahli Saudi FC and F C Bar-

celona recently announced hosting a friendly football match bringing to-gether both teams to play at Shiekh Thani Bin Jassim Stadium (Al-Gharrafa Stadium) on December 13.

Travellers from Saudi Arabia can take advantage of the increased frequencies to visit the new desti-nations that Qatar Airways has an-nounced this year, which include exciting cities all around the globe, such as Los Angeles and Atlanta in the USA, Adelaide in Australia, Auckland in New Zealand, and nu-merous others in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

QATAR


QSTP launches discussion platformfor tech communityQatar Science and Technol-

ogy Park (QSTP), a member of Qatar Foundation for Edu-

cation, Science and Community De-velopment (QF), has launched ‘QSTP Technovate’, a new discussion plat-form to engage the local tech com-munity in the latest developments in innovation and entrepreneurship.

QSTP launched the new event with a fi reside chat moderated by Dr Ma-her Hakim, managing director, QSTP, who explored the topic of ‘Innovation Going Global and Mena has Role to Play’. Guest speakers included Dave McClure, CEO and co-founder of 500 Startups, a leading global ven-ture capital seed fund and startup accelerator, and Ikhlaq Sidhu, chief scientist and founding director of UC Berkeley’s Centre for Entrepreneur-ship and Technology.

Dr Hakim said the latest addition to the local tech calendar promises to off er a fresh perspective and inspire innovation. “Sometimes, it will take the format of a fi reside chat, seminar or talk, and sometimes it will sur-prise; but our overall aim is to engage the technology community in Qatar in discussions on the hottest top-ics on startups, product and services development, innovation, and com-mercialisation.”

The fi rst event in the Technovate series was attended by hundreds of

QU-LAWC hosts forum on Qatar-S Korea trade tiesQatar University

College of Law (QU-LAWC) has

hosted the “Qatari-South Korean Law Forum: Com-parative and International Approaches” with the aim of discussing the legal framework of international relations related to business and trading between Qatar and South Korea.

Organised in collabora-tion with Korea University Law School, the forum was an opportunity to promote dialogue among students, researchers and experts from Qatar and beyond to share their ideas and knowl-edge on comparative and international approaches of Qatari-South Korean law, according to a statement from QU.

South Korean ambas-sador Park Heung-kyeong delivered the welcoming

remarks at the opening cer-emony, followed by LAWC associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies and professor of Civil Law Faouzi Belknani, and pro-fessor of Law at Korea Uni-versity Law School Young-Hwan Chung.

The event’s programme included a fi lm screening on LAWC and two panel discussions themed “New laws, policies and trends in Qatari-Korean busi-ness” and “Business dispute resolution”.

Discussions focused on a wide range of topics, such as “International legal as-pects of monetary relations within northeast Asia: se-lected issues”, “Evaluation of the conditional-abso-lute payment issue in let-ters of credit: identifying which position provides maximum party autonomy,

certainty, fl exibility, fair-ness and good faith”, “As-sessment of shareholders protection in the new Qa-tari corporate law: paving the road for investors” and others.

LAWC dean Dr Mohamed bin Abdulaziz al-Khulaifi said, “This forum is the fi rst of its kind in the re-gion to highlight the solid relations between Qatar and South Korea and both countries’ legislations from the perspective of commercial law.”

Dr al-Khulaifi stressed the importance of provid-ing a legal environment, which contributes to the establishment of legislation that protects investment and preserve the rights of investors.

He also highlighted the need to create an eff ective and effi cient justice system,

which is one of the most sig-nifi cant factors for the sus-tainability and the develop-ment of Qatar’s openness to foreign investment.

On his part, the Korean envoy said: “This forum is both opportune and ap-propriate in discussing important legal aspects of business between Qatari and Korean companies from monetary relations, fi nancial transactions and investments to dispute resolutions and the ap-plication of Korean judi-cial systems for foreign nationals.”

Prof Belknani added, “This forum is a valuable opportunity to establish comparative and interna-tional approaches of the Qatari and South Korean law, and to provide a bet-ter understanding of each country’s legal culture.”

Off icials and dignitaries at the event.

The first event in the Technovate series was attended by hundreds of local entrepreneurs and innovators.

local entrepreneurs and innovators, as Sidhu and McClure highlighted the growing entrepreneurial market and investment potential in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), while also addressing the rapid evolution of a business in the startup landscape.

Dr Hakim said, “The incredible turnout for the fi rst event is a testa-ment to the thriving local technol-ogy community, and the desire of its members to be actively involved in inspiring further innovation in Qatar and beyond.”

Sidhu noted, “Many businesses do not start out as tech businesses – they are often set up with minimum capital and then witness fantastic return on investment in the months that follow. Since the entrepreneur saw something

that others didn’t see, they evolve into building their own business ecosys-tem that addresses a widespread need or solves a problem.”

Commenting on the growing po-tential for entrepreneurship in the Mena region, he said: “Smarter inves-tors are realising there is tremendous opportunity to develop infrastructure and businesses in the Mena region. It has its own cultural rules, and there-fore localisation of the ecosystem is key to innovation and business devel-opment.”

McClure said, “ To advance regional growth, entrepreneurs need to reward risk-takers and inspire innovation within the community – these are two essential components of business de-velopment and commercialisation.”

Family Fun Friday activities at Pearl-Qatar attract residents, GCC visitors‘Family Fun Fridays’ activities held at The Pearl-Qatar continued for the second consecutive Friday, attracting the island’s residents and families.The activities are organised by United Development Company, main developer of The Pearl-Qatar.This weekend, the events took place at Qanat Quartier 6A, where the “evening was characterised by the extensive involvement of kids in the presence of their families”, according to a statement. ‘Family Fun Fridays’ activities at Qanat Quartier have also been “very successful in attracting a large number of families from other countries, especially visitors and tourists from the Gulf Co-operation Council countries who have registered a significant presence”, the statement noted.The innovative games platform

attracts hundreds of children and their families, giving them the opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities in competitions in front of guests and family members. Finally, all the children who participated received gifts.The initiative features a series of events

fit for all ages and members of the family, helping turn the island into an “ideal destination for the entire family and providing a community experience with a distinct combination of activities, with the idea and concept of a family carnival”, the statement added.

‘Family Fun Fridays’ at The Pearl-Qatar.

HEC Paris holds research conference in QatarHEC Paris has concluded its inaugural research

conference in Qatar, hosting more than 80 in-ternational researchers, academics and busi-

ness leaders.The conference’s theme, ‘Setting the Stage for a

Knowledge-Based Economy in the Gulf – with a Focus on Qatar’, was hosted by HEC Paris’ Doha campus.

Organised with academic support from Qatar Uni-versity (QU) and co-sponsored by Qatar National Re-search Fund (QNRF), the conference brought together local and international scholars to discuss the latest research fi ndings and global experiences on the knowl-edge-based economy while focusing on the applicabil-ity of global best practices and knowledge in Qatar.

“Since the establishment of our dedicated Research Of-fi ce at HEC Paris in Qatar in 2014, our research activities are all geared towards the building of a sustainable society in Qatar. More than a dozen case studies were developed HE Dr Saleh Mohamed Salem al-Nabit addressing the gathering.on local and regional busi-nesses. As a member of Qa-tar Foundation, HEC Paris is aimed at contributing posi-tively to the fulfi lment of the country’s National Vision 2030,” said Professor Laou-cine Kerbache, dean and CEO, HEC Paris in Qatar.

Setting the tone for the proceedings, HE Dr Saleh Mohamed Salem al-Nabit, Minister of Development Planning and Statistics, joined Dr Hassan al-Der-ham, president of QU, for a keynote session on ‘Qa-tar National Vision 2030 and the Knowledge-Based Economy’.

“This conference and its distinguished par-ticipants go a long way in supporting our eff orts in encouraging Qatar’s growth through essential research and the sharing of best practice. By working together to diversify the nation’s economy and en-hance educational off er-ings, it will create a benefi t for the whole region,” said Dr Abdul Sattar al-Taie, executive director, QNRF.

Distinguished speak-ers and panellists during the event included Dr Tian Zhu, professor of Econom-ics, China Europe Inter-national Business School, China; Dr Martin Hvidt, associate professor, Centre for Contemporary Mid-dle East Studies, Southern Denmark University, Den-mark; and Steven Geiger, founder of Innova Partners, US, and former original di-rector of Masdar Institute, UAE; as well as representa-tives from ministries and leading academic institutes in Qatar and the GCC.

Heya expo showcases top creationsHeya Arabian Fashion Exhibi-

tion (Heya), Qatar’s leading platform for contemporary

Arabian fashion creations, has opened its doors to the public. The exhibi-tion which began on October 27 at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre (DECC), ends tomorrow.

Heya showcases authentic Arabian fashion designs of abayas, kaftans, veils, jalabiyas, shaylas and evening gowns with over 220 booths from high level designers.

Playing an increasingly im-portant role in supporting Qatari businesswomen and entrepre-neurs, Heya has attracted its larg-est number of home grown talents to participate in this year’s edition including Al Motahajiba, Debaj, Al Dukan and Ckali.

The opening of the exhibition fol-lows a series of tours by the organis-ing team including visits to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait for the very fi rst Heya fashion forum outside of Qatar.

This has resulted in an increased number of regional designers taking

part. Visitors have the opportunity to see the latest collections from M2me by Maali Alsaleh, Naseem Aland-aos, Butterfl y Abaya and Ghudfah, amongst many more.

Heya is now attracting increasing international attention with brands such as Asiyam Australia from Aus-tralia, Fazzali from Egypt, French Oriental from France, Indian brands Nirraamyaa and Paridhi, Doris Dorothea from Indonesia, Turkish brands Ecem Bocam, Rafine Istan-bul and Lale Deuri, as well as Marina Qureshi and Amirab from the United Kingdom.

“The Heya Arabian Fashion Exhi-bition is no doubt the strongest and the biggest fashion exhibition in Qa-tar, and our vision now is to achieve the title of being the number one fashion platform in the region. It of-fers a unique fashion platform with many marketing, positioning and branding opportunities available to Qatari and regional designers, both new and established. Heya also pro-vides a wonderful opportunity for international designers to test the

market in the GCC. We are proud to say that visitors can expect a com-plete Arabian fashion experience from Heya. Our long term objective is to help play a key role in Qatar’s journey to becoming a global hub for international conferences and exhi-bitions,” said Jawaher al-Kuwari, head of Advisory Committee for or-ganisers Design Creationz.

Besides the presence of fashion enthusiasts, designers, industry ex-perts, and visitors, there will be five forums which focus on the fash-ion industry and the ways in which female entrepreneurs can develop their business.

Additionally, there are workshops and forums with brands participat-ing from regional countries includ-ing Debaj from Qatar, My Boutique by Sahar Al Hamoud from Kuwait and Naseem Alandalos from Bah-rain.

In line with Qatar’s cultural tradi-tions, Heya is a female-only event and visitors should be aged 13 and above. The exhibition is free for vis-itors throughout.Off icials and guests at the exhibition

QC opens education centre in IndonesiaQatar Charity (QC), with

the support of Qatari phi-lanthropists, has opened a

huge educational centre in West Java, Indonesia to help orphaned students who cannot afford to pay their fees.

Among the dignitaries present at the opening ceremony were Minister of Religious Affairs in the Indonesian government, Mayor of Purwakarta, Executive Director of

Operations Department at QC and chairman of the Board of Directors of the House of Qur’an Schools and Institutes in Indonesia.

The inauguration of the centre came on the sidelines of a visit to Indonesia by a QC delegation headed by Khalid Abdullah al-Ya-fei, executive director of Opera-tions Department.

During the visit, the QC delega-tion opened a number of projects

covering various areas, including education .

The newly-opened project was built at a cost of QR4mn on an area of 20,000 square metres. It includes two schools, two mosques, ac-commodation for male and female students, a clinic, administrative offi ces, cultural activities hall, ac-commodation for teachers, shops, playgrounds, green spaces, internal roads and a surrounding wall.

Off icials and guests at the opening of the education centre in West Java, Indonesia.

Katara - the Cultural Village Foundation has announced that the sixth annual Dhow Festival will be held under the patronage of HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, from November 13 to 19. Registration will be open from tomorrow until November 10 for those interested in the festival’s traditional competitions, which reflect the country’s rich maritime heritage, Katara said in a press statement. Applications to register in the competitions will be received at Katara’s beach management build-ing at the Cultural Village Founda-tion from 9am to 3pm.The festival’s most prominent events will include seven tradi-tional tournaments, which include weaving, diving and rowing, among others. The festival’s organ-ising committee has stressed that the event will be open for all GCC nationals.Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim al-Sulaiti, gen-eral manager of Katara, said: “The previous editions of Katara’s Tra-ditional Dhow Festival have seen significant participation from Qatar and the GCC states as we regis-tered nearly 110 dhows and more than 300 participants. This festival is one of its kind in the region and sees a huge public turnout from within Qatar and abroad.”The number of competitions has been increased with the addition of two new categories. “Other sporting, environmental, traditional and cultural tournaments are also awaiting our participants and visi-tors ,” he added.

Registration begins for annual dhow festival

Customs clearance regulations issued

General Authority of Customs (GAC) presi-dent Ahmed bin Ali

al-Mohannadi has issued De-cision No 7 for 2016 regarding the conditions and regula-tions for practising the pro-fession of Customs clearance.

The decision classifi es Customs clearance compa-nies into three categories - A, B and C - based on their de-gree of compliance with the standards set by GAC and their practical application.

Besides, the decision specifi es the conditions that applicants for a professional licence to work in the fi eld of Customs clearance need to fulfi l, the terms for issuing a licence to private Customs clearance offi cers and nec-essary procedures to issue a professional licence for such offi cers and bank guarantees of Customs clearance com-panies, according to a press statement from the GAC. The decision also specifi es the Customs departments where Customs clearance companies are allowed to work and the permitted number of representatives and Customs clearance of-fi cers, the procedures for dismissal and transfer of such offi cers and their rep-resentatives and other regu-lations that cover all related issues, the statement noted.

The decision specifi es a minimum capital for each

category of the classifi ca-tion. Besides, the number of Customs clearance state-ments for the previous year should not be less than 7,000, 3,500 and 500 state-ments for companies in cat-egory A, B and C, respec-tively, the statement added.

According to the decision, A companies enjoy a number of privileges, including ex-emption from submitting paper documents (invoice and certifi cate of origin), and electronic documents will be accepted from them through the Customs clear-ance system. However, the company should keep such documents for fi ve years and produce them to Customs of-fi cers when requested.Such companies can also benefi t from the pre-Customs clear-ance service and clearance of goods through the green channel, besides being given priority in accomplishing their Customs clearance statements before other agencies. Sultan al-Nuaimi, director of the GAC Customs aff airs department, said the decision will refl ect positively on Customs clearance work, especially regarding com-panies’ classifi cation, which is expected to improve their performance. The author-ity recently issued a com-prehensive handbook, titled Guide of Customs clearance companies’ classifi cation.

QATAR11Gulf Times


Yemenis, including security forces, gather at the site where a suicide car bomb exploded next to the central bank in Yemen’s second city Aden yesterday.

Yemen president Hadi rejects UN peace planAFPAden

Yemen’s president yester-day rejected a UN peace proposal for his war-bat-

tered country, as rebels said air strikes by his Saudi-led coalition allies killed 17 people.

Forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s govern-ment have been locked since 2014 in deadly battles with Iran-backed Shia Houthi rebels who overran Sanaa late that year.

The latest peace proposal sub-mitted by UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed was rejected by Hadi who even refused to receive it as he met the mediator in Riy-adh.

The contents of the roadmap which the envoy already present-ed to the rebels on Tuesday have not been made public.

But informed sources say it calls for agreement on naming a new vice president after the rebels withdraw from Sanaa and other cities and hand over heavy weapons to a third party.

Hadi would then transfer power to the vice president who would appoint a new prime min-ister to form a government in which the north and south of Yemen would have equal repre-sentation.

It was unclear how Hadi’s Arab backers would react to his re-fusal, especially after a key coa-lition member, the United Arab Emirates, hailed the proposal on

Thursday as a “political solution for the Yemeni crisis”.

In August, US Secretary of State John Kerry outlined a simi-lar plan which off ered the Houthi rebels participation in govern-ment in exchange for an end to violence and a surrender of weapons to a third party.

Gulf states, most of which are members of the coalition, had “agreed unanimously” with that initiative, Kerry said at the time from the Saudi city of Jeddah.

But Saudi Arabia has not com-mented on the UN envoy’s latest proposal and the rebels have yet to respond.

Warring parties in Yemen are under mounting international pressure to end the confl ict that has left the already-impover-

ished country grappling with increasing cases of malnutrition and a spread of disease.

The coalition, for its part, is under pressure over for the high civilian death toll from its bomb-ing campaign.

Yesterday, four air strikes hit three residential buildings killing 17 people and wounding seven others in the battleground town of Salo, southeast of third-city Taiz, according to rebel-control-led media. There was no immedi-ate comment from the coalition.

Guards in Aden yesterday thwarted a suicide attack on the central bank, opening fi re on the bomber’s vehicle and blowing it up before it reached the building, a security offi cial said.

The bank has been based in

Aden since Hadi last month or-dered its relocation from Sanaa, accusing the rebels of running down Yemen’s foreign reserves.

Five guards were wounded when the bomber’s vehicle blew up around 30m from the bank building, the security offi cial yesterday.

The bank’s relocation has been a major blow to the rebels, forcing them to halt salary pay-ments to state employees in the large areas of the country they control.

A UN report released in August found that the rebels and their al-lies were diverting about $100mn a month from the central bank, and that its foreign reserves had dwindled to $1.3bn from about $4bn in November 2014.

OIC slams fi ring of missiletowards Makkah

Mogherini in Tehran for Syrian crisis talksFloods kill 26 in Egypt

QNAJeddah

The Organisation of Is-lamic Co-operation (OIC) strongly de-

nounced here the fi ring of a ballistic missile by the Houthis that targeted Makkah.

In a statement, carried by Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Sec-retary General of the OIC Iyad Ameen Madani said that this heinous aggression is only an-other chain in a long series of targeting holy places, inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, following the previous bomb-ings in the surroundings of the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah last June.

Madani called the fi ring of the missile by the Houthis and forces loyal to deposed Ali Abdullah Saleh as big foolish-ness emanating from a group that doesn’t care about Mus-lims sentiments, let alone their sanctities, and consider-ing it as an aggression against Muslims, entirely, all over the world, taking into account Makkah, as the main holy

place, because it is the cradle of the revelation of Islam and the direction of worshippers, in their fi ve compulsory prayers, the other optional and volun-tarily observed prayers.

He said that he is in con-sultation with other members of the executive committee to hold a meeting to discuss this dangerous act that targeted Makkah by the Houthis and the deposed Saleh.

Meanwhile in Tunis, the General Secretariat of the Council of Arab Ministers of Interior condemned the fi r-ing of the missile, saying it showed the real face of that terrorist gang and its affi lia-tion and allegiance to external circles.

The secretariat released a statement to the press de-nouncing the fi ring of the mis-sile and described it as a reck-less and terrorist act.

The secretariat also ex-pressed its appreciation to the role of the Arab Coalition in confronting such acts.

The statement then stressed the importance of solidarity to defeat sectarian stigmas.

DPATehran

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini was in Tehran for talks on the

Syrian crisis yesterday and was due to head to Saudi Arabia later in the day.

The diplomatic push vis-a-vis key regional pow-ers comes a day after Syrian rebels launched a major assault aimed at breaking the months-long siege of opposition-held districts of Aleppo in northern Syria.

Mogherini met with Foreign

Minister Jawad Zarif and was due to meet with President Hassan Rouhani in an eff ort to achieve a breakthrough in the confl ict, in which regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia have taken opposite sides.

Mogherini was set to travel to Riyadh later yesterday to continue talks with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, a major pro-vider of arms to several Syrian rebel groups trying to over-throw al-Assad’s regime.

The news comes a day after the foreign ministers of Rus-sia, Syria and Iran held talks about the Aleppo siege in Moscow.

DPACairo

Twenty-six people have been killed in accidents related to fl ash fl oods in

parts of Egypt this week, state television reported on its web-site yesterday.

The deaths occurred in the provinces of southern Sinai, the Red Sea and Sohag, areas hard-est hit by torrential rains that started on Thursday, the report said, citing the Health Ministry.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail visited the Red

Sea town of Ras Gharib and inspected the damaged caused by fl ooding there, Egyptian television said.

Dozens of Ras Gharib resi-dents, angered by the govern-ment’s response to the fl oods, blocked a main road in the town and prevented Ismail from completing his tour, in-dependent newspaper al-Masry al-Youm reported.

The protesters chanted slo-gans against the prime minis-ter, the report said.

Online pictures purportedly from Ras Gharib showed cars trapped in fl ooded streets.

Palestinian attacker shotAFPJerusalem

A Palestinian attacked Is-raeli troops with his car and then with a knife in

the occupied West Bank be-fore being shot and seriously wounded, the army said yester-day.

The attack happened late on Friday near the Jewish settle-ment of Ofra, northeast of the city of Ramallah, an army state-ment said.

The assailant attempted to

run over soldiers with his car, prompting them to open fi re.

He then got out of the vehicle brandishing a knife and troops fi red again, seriously wounding him, the statement said.

Human rights groups have ac-cused Israeli security forces of using excessive and often lethal force in tackling the violence, most of which has been car-ried out by lone-wolf assailants, many of them young.

Internal reviews by the army of two fatal shootings of attack-ers earlier this month found that the use of deadly force could have

been avoided, public radio re-ported on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Israel apologised yesterday after a deputy minister said an earthquake in Italy was punishment for a Unesco resolu-tion on east Jerusalem that has angered the Jewish state.

Ayub Kara, deputy minister of regional co-operation, said during a visit to the Vatican on Wednesday he was sure the quake that hit central Italy the same day happened because of the resolution, which Israel has said denies the Jewish connec-tion to the city.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meeting with EU’s High representative for foreign affairs and security policy Federica Mogherini in Tehran yesterday.

12 Gulf TimesSunday, October 30, 2016

REGION/ARAB WORLD

ARAB WORLD13Gulf Times


Life terms for Brotherhood backersReutersCairo

An Egyptian court sen-tenced two Muslim Brotherhood support-

ers yesterday to life in prison and 16 others to 15 years in jail for a violent assault on a Cairo neighbourhood in 2013 after the ouster of former president Mohamed Mursi.

The attack, which left seven dead, was part of a wave of vio-lence that swept across Egypt after the army removed elected

Islamist president Mursi from power in July 2013 following mass protests against his rule.

Since deposing Mursi, the authorities have held mass tri-als for thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, with hundreds receiving death sen-tences or lengthy prison terms.

Mursi has been sentenced in four cases since his ouster, including a death penalty for a mass jail break in 2011.

The 104 defendants in yes-terday’s case, dubbed by local media as the “Boulaq Abou al-Ela case” for the run-

down Cairo district where the riot took place, were part of a pro-Brotherhood march held two days after sit-ins supporting the group were violently dispersed leaving hundreds dead.

The defendants were tried on a range of charges that in-cluded murder, assault, join-ing an armed gang, resisting arrest, damaging public and private property, and pos-session of firearms, judicial sources said.

Eighty-six of the defend-ants were found innocent,

the sources added.The government deems the

Brotherhood a terrorist group.The Brotherhood, Egypt’s

oldest opposition movement dating back decades, says it remains committed to peace-ful activism.

Mass trials that have ended in death penalties and life sentences have drawn criti-cism from activists and rights groups at home and abroad.

The Egyptian government says the judiciary is inde-pendent and that it never in-tervenes in its work.

Syria rebels fi ght to break Aleppo siegeAFPAleppo, Syria

Car bombs and rocket fi re shook Aleppo yesterday as rebels battled to break

a suff ocating siege by the Syrian regime, accused by Washington of using starvation as a “weapon of war”.

The off ensive, launched on Friday, aims to break through a three-month encirclement of the battered city’s eastern districts, where more than 250,000 people live without access to food or hu-manitarian aid.

“In just a few days, we will open the way for our besieged broth-ers,” rebel commander Abu Mus-tafa said from the frontline district of Dahiyet al-Assad, on the south-western outskirts of Aleppo.

Fighting and air strikes pound-ed nearly all of Aleppo’s western outskirts, with the most intense clashes reported in the districts of Al-Zahraa and Dahiyet al-Assad.

Yasser al-Youssef of the Noureddin al-Zinki rebel faction said opposition fi ghters opened a new front in Al-Zahraa yesterday with a massive car bombing.

The Syrian Observatory for Hu-man Rights monitoring group said rebels and allied militants have unleashed a barrage of rocket fi re and at least 10 car bombs since their assault began.

The British-based group said two days of fi ghting have killed at least 20 regime forces and allied

fi ghters as well as 26 Syrian rebels, but it did not give a toll for foreign militants battling alongside the opposition.

At least 21 civilians, including two children, have been killed in rebel bombardment since Friday morning.

Syrian state news agency SANA said rockets fi red by opposition groups yesterday wounded six people including a child in two regime-held districts.

The off ensive has seen more than 1,500 rebels from the prov-inces of Aleppo and nearby Idlib amass along a front stretching for 15km down the city’s western edges.

Their aim is to work their way east through a sprawling military complex, then to the district of Al-Hamdaniyeh to break through government lines.

Fighting yesterday was so fi erce around Al-Zahraa and Dahiyet al-Assad that the explosions and gunfi re could be heard across Aleppo’s eastern half, AFP’s cor-respondent there said.

“There have not been clashes this intense in Al-Zahraa since 2012,” when opposition fi ghters seized Aleppo’s east, said Observ-atory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

He said pro-government forces launched a counter-attack yes-terday and managed to recapture

several positions in Dahiyet al-Assad, where rebels had scored a major advance.

An AFP correspondent who visited the district saw deserted streets and extensive damage to buildings battered by air strikes and artillery fi re.

Syria’s second city, Aleppo has been devastated by some of the heaviest fi ghting of the country’s fi ve-year civil war that began with anti-government protests and has since killed more than 300,000 people.

Much of the once-bustling economic hub has been reduced to rubble by air and artillery bom-bardment, including barrel bombs - crude unguided explosive de-vices that cause indiscriminate damage.

Last week, Russia implemented a three-day “humanitarian truce” intended to allow civilians and surrendering rebels to leave the east, but few did so.

Russia, whose intervention in September 2015 with air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces was seen as a game-changer, says it has not bombed Aleppo since October 18.

The Observatory said yester-day that Russian raids have been battering Aleppo’s western bat-tlefronts, but confi rmed the halt to Moscow’s aerial bombing of the city itself was holding.

The Russian military said on Friday it had asked President Vladimir Putin for authorisation to resume the raids.

Rebel fighters ride a vehicle after they took control of Dahiyet al-Assad, west Aleppo, yesterday.

“In just a few days, we will open the way for our besieged brothers”

ARAB WORLD


Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) personnel fire artillery during clashes with Islamic State militants south of Mosul yesterday.

Iraq forces aim to cutMosul off from SyriaAFPAl Qayyarah, Iraq

Iraqi paramilitary forces launched an operation yes-terday to cut the Islamic State

group’s supply lines between its Mosul bastion and neighbouring Syria, opening a new front in the nearly two-week-old off ensive.

Forces from the Hashed al-Shaabi, a paramilitary umbrella organisation dominated by Iran-backed Shia militias, have largely been on the sidelines since the launch of the operation to retake Mosul.

But yesterday, they began a push on the town of Tal Afar on the western approach to the city, the only side where ground forc-es, which have advanced from the north, east and south, are not yet deployed.

“The operation aims to cut supplies between Mosul and Raqa and tighten the siege of (IS) in Mosul and liberate Tal Afar,” Hashed spokesman Ahmed al-Assadi said, referring to IS’s main stronghold in Syria.

Assadi said the operation was launched from the Sin al-Dhaban area south of Mosul and aimed to retake the towns of Hatra and Tal Abta as well as Tal Afar.

The drive toward Tal Afar could bring the fi ghting peril-ously close to the ancient city of

Hatra, a Unesco world heritage site that has already been vandal-ised by IS.

Though it was not mentioned by name, the operation may also pass near the ruins of Nimrud, another archaeological site that has previously been attacked by IS.

The involvement of Shia mi-litias in the Mosul operation has been a source of contention, al-though some of the Hashed’s top commanders insist that do not plan to enter the largely Sunni city.

Iraqi Kurds and Sunni Arab politicians have opposed their involvement, as has Turkey which has a military presence east of Mosul, despite repeated demands by Baghdad for the forces to be withdrawn.

Relations between the Hashed and the US-led coalition fi ghting IS are also tense, but the paramil-itaries enjoy widespread support among members of Iraq’s Shia majority.

Tal Afar was a Shia-majority town of mostly ethnic Turkmens before the Sunni extremists of IS overran it in 2014, and its recap-ture is a main goal of Shia militia forces.

As the Hashed push on Tal Afar got under way, Iraqi forces bat-tled IS in Al-Shura, an area south of Mosul with a long history as a militant bastion that has been the

target of fi ghting for more than a week.

Iraq’s Joint Operations Com-mand later announced “the com-plete liberation of Al-Shura area”, saying that security forces ad-vancing from four diff erent sides had now linked up in the area.

The off ensive operations came despite an assertion from the US-led coalition on Friday that Iraqi forces were temporarily halting their advance on Mosul for a pe-riod expected to last “a couple days”.

“They are pausing and reposi-tioning, refi tting and doing some back clearing,” coalition spokes-man Colonel John Dorrian told Pentagon reporters via videocon-ference.

An Iraqi military statement, apparently issued in response to Dorrian’s remarks on the halt, said that “military operations are continuing” and proceeding on schedule.

More than 17,500 people have fl ed their homes toward govern-ment-held areas since the Mosul operation began, the Interna-tional Organisation for Migration said yesterday.

Numbers are expected to soar as Iraqi forces close in.

Civilians are suffering even more in militant-held terri-tory, with the United Nations saying that there are credible reports of IS carrying out mass

executions and seizing tens of thousands of people for use as human shields.

IS’s “depraved, cowardly strat-egy is to attempt to use the pres-ence of civilians to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military opera-tions”, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said in a statement.

The militants are “eff ectively using tens of thousands of wom-en, men and children as human shields”, he said.

The UN cited reports indicat-ing IS has forcibly taken civil-ians into Mosul, killing those who resist or who were previously members of Iraqi security forces.

It said more than 250 people were executed in just two days earlier this week.

The militants have also launched a series of diversion-ary attacks since the operation began, including one in the city of Kirkuk that sparked multiple days of fi ghting and left dozens dead.

Offi cials said yesterday that another such diversion, this time in the Ramadi area, west of Bagh-dad, had been foiled and 11 people arrested.

And in Baghdad, IS claimed a suicide bombing targeting Shia Muslims that killed at least four people and wounded more than 15 yesterday morning.

Lebanon set toelect presidenttomorrow amidpolitical riftsBy Layal Abou Rahal/AFPBeirut

Lebanon’s parliament is set to end more than two years of stalemate to-

morrow by electing ex-general Michel Aoun as president, but the vote is unlikely to heal deep political divisions.

Aoun, a Christian former army chief, is allied with the Iran-backed Hezbollah move-ment whose forces are fi ghting in Syria alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

But his election has been made possible by the surprise endorsement of former prime minister Saad Hariri, a fi erce opponent of Syria’s govern-ment and head of a bloc that is Hezbollah’s key rival and has received regional support from Saudi Arabia.

So, while a deal has been made on the country’s next president, analysts say Leba-non’s key political blocs still disagree on almost everything else.

Aoun is expected to nominate Hariri to return as prime minis-ter, but with little consensus in the political landscape, the process of forming a govern-ment is likely to be long and arduous.

“Aoun’s election is not a magic wand,” said Sahar Atra-che, a researcher at the Interna-tional Crisis Group think tank.

“Certainly the presidential vacancy will end, but it doesn’t solve the political crisis, or the stagnant political institutions or the major divisions over do-mestic and foreign issues, par-ticularly the war in Syria,” she said.

Under a power-sharing agreement, Lebanon’s presi-dency is reserved for a Maronite Christian while the prime min-ister is a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament is a Shia Muslim.

The presidency has been vacant since May 2014 when Michel Sleiman’s mandate ex-pired.

Since then, parliament has held 45 failed sessions to elect a successor, each time failing to make quorum.

Each session was boycotted by the 20 members of Aoun’s parliamentary bloc who insist-ed he be elected, with Hezbol-lah also keeping its 13 members away as a show of support.

Tomorrow’s session is ex-pected to involve two votes, with Aoun unlikely to win the two-thirds majority necessary to avoid a second round.

The additional round only requires him to win a 50% plus one majority, which now looks assured.

The vote is set to end a void

that has been seen as a refl ec-tion of a broader malaise: a di-vided polity with government institutions that have been im-potent in the face of challenges including a garbage collection crisis.

The economy meanwhile has struggled with regional and do-mestic instability and already strained resources have been tested by an infl ux of more than a million Syrian refugees.

“Given what we know from history and the profi les of the personalities that have come together and the overall politi-cal climate, nothing guarantees any progress from fi lling the vacancy,” said Carol Sharabati, a political science professor at the Jesuit University in Beirut.

“We’re looking at an alliance of interest, in which each party has their demands. Aoun wants the presidency at any cost, and Hariri wants to rebuild his crumbling political bloc,” added Sharabati.

“Will the personal agendas of each party allow them to build a common, long-term strategy, given that their alliance is not formed on common ground?”

Atrache said the agreement could not be described as a “political alliance,” and said it would “prove diffi cult to main-tain because they don’t agree on how to share power.”

The track record of recent years does not bode well: the last government led by Hariri, between 2009 and 2011, was hamstrung by tensions with Hezbollah’s bloc which eventu-ally brought it down.

And after going into self-im-posed exile, Hariri’s infl uence has waned domestically even as his personal fi nances have taken a hit because key backer Saudi Arabia is no longer willing to pump aid into Lebanon to shore up its infl uence.

Last time Hariri formed a government, it took fi ve months, and the incumbent, Tamam Salam, spent 10 months crafting a national unity cabi-net, which has nonetheless proved largely impotent.

“We can’t rule out the pos-sibility that we’ll have a presi-dent, a prime minister without a government and a suspended parliament” until the next leg-islative election, Sharabati said.

Parliament has twice extend-ed its mandate without holding elections because of disagree-ments over a new electoral law, with the next vote scheduled for mid-2017.

Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who opposes Aoun’s election, has already said he expects the formation of a new government to take fi ve to six months.

But even if a government is formed, it will be full of “con-tradictions, and the question is whether it will be able, even partially, to restore institutions and put them back on track,” said Atrache.

“We can’t expect miracles.”

Gaza flotilla raid victims’ kinvow legal battle against IsraelAFPIstanbul

The families of Turkish ac-tivists killed in a 2010 Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid

ship say they will not drop their legal cases despite a deal between Turkey and the Jewish state.

Nine Turks died when Israeli marines stormed the “Mavi Mar-mara”, which was part of an aid fl otilla to break a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

One more died in hospital in 2014.

Ties between Israel and Tur-key crumbled after the raid but in June they fi nally agreed to end the bitter six-year row after months-long secret talks.

Israel had off ered an apology over the raid, permission for Turk-ish aid to reach Gaza through Is-raeli ports, and a payout of $20mn to the families of those killed.

Turkish offi cials confi rmed the amount was transferred to the justice ministry account last month.

Under the deal, both sides agreed that individual Israeli citi-zens or those acting on behalf of the government would not be held liable.

Families of the victims however say they will press on with their legal battle until the alleged per-petrators are brought to justice.

Cigdem Topcuoglu, an aca-demic from southern Adana province, said her husband was killed as the couple embarked on the ship.

“We are certainly not accept-

ing the compensation,” she said in Istanbul.

“They will come and kill your husband next to you and say ‘take this money, keep your mouth shut and give up on the

case’. Would you accept that?”In total, there were six ships in

the fl otilla that were boarded in international waters about 130km (80 miles) from the Israeli coast.

After the deal with Israel, an Istanbul court on October 19 held another hearing in the trial of the four former Israeli military com-manders, though it was later ad-journed to December 2.

Turkish prosecutors are seek-ing life sentences for former mili-tary chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, former navy chief Eliezer Marom, former military intelligence head Amos Yadlin and former air force intelligence chief Avishai Levy, who went on trial in absentia in 2012.

“We have no intention to drop the lawsuits,” Topcuoglu said.

Human rights lawyer Rod-ney Dixon said the criminal case against the accused must go on “at all costs”.

“We are strongly supporting the case here in Turkey and our very fi rm plea to the court has been that they must continue with the case,” he said.

“The so-called agreement be-tween Israel and Turkey is not a treaty that is enforceable.

It is unlawful under interna-tional law, under the convention on human rights and Turkish law.”

Families say they were not in-formed of any details about the deal with Israel and they have

not received any money.Ismail Songur, whose father

died in the raid, said: “Nobody from the Turkish government asked our opinion before they struck a deal.

“Unfortunately the Turkish government is becoming a part of the lawlessness carried out by Israel.”

“Even if families of the victims accept the money, that would not aff ect the case,” said Gulden Son-mez, one of the lawyers in the trial and also a passenger on the ship.

“That is a criminal suit, not a suit for compensation. The $20mn is an ex gratia payment. It’s a donation and cannot be ac-cepted as compensation.”

A vocal advocate of the Pales-tinian cause who regularly lam-basts Israeli assaults in Gaza, the Turkish President in June caught many by surprise when he criti-cised the 2010 aid mission to Gaza, only a few days after his government reached an accord with Israel.

“Did you ask then-prime min-ister to deliver humanitarian aid from Turkey?” he said in com-ments seen as veiled criticism of the Turkish Islamic charity IHH that organised the fl otilla.

Bulent Yildirim, head of the IHH, said the legal case would never end.

“Those who believe the case would drop will be disappointed.”

Ismail Songur, whose father was killed in the 2010 Israeli storming of a Turkish aid ship to Gaza, poses in Istanbul. The families of victims of the raid have no intention to drop legal cases, in defiance of a deal between Turkey and the Jewish state.

A giant poster that bears the portrait of Lebanese presidential candidate Michel Aoun is seen hanging of a building in Sassine square in Beirut’s Ashrafieh neighbourhood.

An armyservingfood tofi ghters

AFPFishqeh, Iraq

Abu Ahmed drove all night and half-way across Iraq to bring the meat stew

and rice in the back of his pickup truck to fi ghters on the Mosul front lines.

Seven hours after leaving Najaf in a convoy, he stopped under a road sign saying the northern city of Mosul was 59km away.

As he unloaded the food from his truck, Abu Ahmed, a white scarf wrapped around his head, said he had come to “bring his support” to the Iraqi forces that have been fighting on Mosul’s southern front for two weeks.

The convoys known as “mawakeb” have been relent-lessly delivering food, water, juice, tea, clothes and other ba-sic supplies to the fi ghters bat-tling the Islamic State militants.

“They are heroes who are sac-rifi cing their lives for us, so we are supporting them in whatever way we can, such as by cooking for them,” said another member of the convoy, Ryad al-Attabi.

The 42-year-old car dealer left his wife and children in Baghdad to spend a week behind the front lines, serving food to pro-government fi ghters.

The mawakeb, a religious term that usually describes services volunteered to Shia pil-grims, have become an informal but eff ective organisation that forms an integral of the war ef-fort.

In June 2014, Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani urged Iraqis to take up arms against IS, which had swept across the Sunni Arab heartland and was threatening Baghdad and Shia holy cities in the south.

That call for fi ght saw the emergence of the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation), a mix of volunteers and pre-exist-ing Shia militias that has played a key role in pushing back the militants.

The paramilitary umbrella group has vowed to stay out of Mosul proper but yesterday opened a new front by pushing toward Tal Afar, a town west of Mosul, with the aim of cutting off the city from Syria.

The mawakeb are sometimes described as the civilian branch of the Hashed al-Shaabi.

On their vehicles, Sistani’s portrait is everywhere.

Some of the volunteers have his picture taped to their clothes or the back of their mobile phones.

“Certainly the presidential vacancy will end, but it doesn’t solve the political crisis”

AFRICA15Gulf Times


Kenyatta meets Bashir as Africans mull ICCAFPKhartoum

Kenyan President Uhuru Ken-yatta yesterday began a two-day visit to Sudan, just days

after Khartoum issued a call to all African countries to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Sudan has urged African mem-bers to quit the Hague-based ICC which it said was a “new colonial tool” against African leaders, after South Africa announced its decision to withdraw last week.

Kenyatta, who was himself in-vestigated by the ICC over deadly 2007-2008 post-election violence, was welcomed at Khartoum airport by his counterpart Omar al-Bashir, who is also wanted by the ICC on al-leged charges related to the confl ict in Darfur.

The ICC was dealt a blow last week when South Africa announced its intention to withdraw.

Burundi had already declared its intention to withdraw, and earlier this week Gambia became the latest African nation to follow their lead.

The ICC, created in 2002, is often accused of bias against Africa and has struggled with a lack of coop-eration, including from the United States, which has signed the court’s treaty but never ratifi ed it.

Of the 10 ICC investigations since 2002, nine have been into African countries and one into Georgia — and most ICC cases have been re-ferred to the court by African gov-ernments themselves.

Pretoria’s decision followed a dispute last year when South Africa faced international condemnation for not arresting Bashir when he visited for an African Union sum-mit.

Kenyatta and Bashir are expected to discuss Kenya’s possible with-drawal from the ICC, Sudanese of-fi cials said.

“President Kenyatta’s visit comes at an important time,” Sudan’s Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Kamal Ismail told reporters at Khar-toum airport.

Asked specifi cally about Kenya’s

possible withdrawal from the ICC, Kamal replied: “This is an issue for Kenya. When it decides to with-

draw is something that Kenya will decide.”

The ICC faced a severe setback

in late 2014 when prosecutors dropped a crimes against human-ity case against Kenyatta for his

alleged involvement in post-elec-tion violence in the east African country.

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir welcomes Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta at Khartoum Airport yesterday.

ICC’s Gambia-born prosecutor vows to press on despite African withdrawals

The International Criminal Court’s

chief prosecutor has described deci-

sions by three African countries to

withdraw as a “setback”, as she vowed

that the tribunal will continue its work

on the continent.

“You could expect a setback as the

ICC started to make more progress,”

Bensouda told the NRC daily paper in

an interview, published yesterday.

But “I don’t believe we should feel

defeated and that the ICC is going to

close up tomorrow,” said Bensouda,

in her first reaction to the shock an-

nouncements by Burundi, South

Africa and the Gambia to leave the

Hague-based court. Last week, Burundi

became the first country to declare

its intention to leave the ICC, after the

court’s prosecutor said she might open

a case against the government.

South Africa and Gambia followed

suit, raising fears of an exodus of

African countries, many of which are

founding members of the court.

Bensouda stressed that all coun-

tries who currently number among

the ICC’s 124 members “are sovereign

states.” “They joined voluntarily and if

they withdraw it’s voluntarily as well,”

said the Gambian-born Bensouda, to

whom Banjul’s decision to leave is said

to be a particular blow.

Bensouda again called on the

African Union to co-operate with the

world war crimes court, set up in 2002

to try the world’s worst crimes.

“I don’t think the AU should close

the door (on the court). Eventually we

share the same values: peace, security,

stability and justice.

“It’s essential that we keep up

prosecutions, inside and out of Africa,”

Bensouda said.

Britain’s Prince Harry (right) helps a tranquilized young male elephant to the ground in Malawi with African Parks as part of an initiative to relocate 500 elephants over 350km from the Liwonde National Park and Majete Wildlife Reserve to the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve. Prince Harry says of the picture: “A few of us trying to ‘tip an elephant’. The young male was fighting the sedative drug and was heading towards the trees, which would have made it very diff icult for us to get him on the truck. All directions were taken from Kester Vickery from Conservation Solutions and Andre Uys, the vet.”

Pachyderm pushPolice break up Abidjan protest ahead of constitution referendumAFPAbidjan

Around 1,000 people dem-onstrated in the Ivorian economic capital Abidjan

against today’s referendum on a new constitution which the op-position has denounced as dan-gerously anti-democratic.

The proposed new constitu-tion has been championed by President Alassane Ouattara, who claims it will “defi nitively turn the page on successive cri-ses” in Ivory Coast.

But the opposition has called for a boycott of the referendum on the adoption of a new consti-tution that changes contentious rules on presidential eligibility.

There was a heavy police pres-ence early on Friday as demon-strators took to the streets hold-ing up banners reading “Two mandates is enough” and shout-ing “Power to the people”.

But when several groups of protesters tried to make their way to a square near the presi-dential residence, police began fi ring tear gas to stop them, sev-eral witnesses told AFP.

An interior ministry spokes-man confi rmed police had tried to break up the demonstration, saying it was to prevent the pro-testers from causing a distur-bance in Abidjan’s business dis-trict.

“Some of them with negative intentions tried to go to Place de la Republique which would have disturbed business activity, so we stopped them from reaching these areas.”

The Ivorian Popular Front, the party of former president Lau-rent Gbagbo, is fi ercely opposed to the proposed new basic law, criticising the lack of consul-tation involved and warning it would worsen, not improve, se-curity.

The draft constitution, which

parliament overwhelmingly ap-proved earlier this week, changes the rules on presidential eligibil-ity and establishes a senate.

Critically, it would lift the cur-rent requirement that both par-ents of a presidential candidate must have been born in Ivory Coast.

Ouattara’s father was born in neighbouring Burkina Faso and the question of parentage was one of the issues which led to months of deadly post-election violence in 2010.

At the time Gbagbo, the de-feated candidate, refused to cede power over the issue, triggering

widespread violence in which around 3,000 people died.

Ouattara says the amendments will help end years of instability and confl ict in the world’s top cocoa producer.

The draft also sets up the post of vice president and allows the president to appoint a third of the senate, a provision the op-position is particularly unhappy with.

Gbagbo is currently on trial at the International Criminal Court for war crimes in connection with the deadly unrest that fol-lowed his refusal to concede his election to Ouattara in 2010.

Ivory Coast opposition leaders walk with their supporters as they protest during a political rally ahead of the referendum on a new constitution, in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Suicide bombers hit Nigeria again

AFPKano

Two suicide bombings rocked Nigeria’s northeast city of Maiduguri yesterday, kill-ing at least nine people and injuring scores

of others, emergency services said.One explosion happened outside a gas station,

while the other was near the Bakassi camp for internally displaced persons (IDP), underscoring the continued threat from Boko Haram extrem-ists who are suspected of being behind the at-tacks.

“Two suicide bombers riding in motorised rick-shaws this morning detonated their explosives 10 minutes apart, with one of them targeting the Ba-kassi IDP camp on the outskirts of the city,” Mo-hamed Kanar, spokesman for Nigeria Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), told reporters yes-terday.

“One of the bombers tried to enter the Bakassi IDP camp but the explosives detonated at the gates, killing four people,” Kanar said.

“The explosives on the other one detonated minutes later as he rode with two other people towards the (Bakassi) IDP camp near the fuel de-pot.”

Following the blast, one of the yellow rickshaws burst apart in half, while the ground was littered with metal shards.

“Nine persons lost their lives with twenty-four persons injured and evacuated to various hospi-tals,” NEMA said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Boko Haram has devastated northeast Nigeria in its quest to create an Islamist state, killing over 20,000 people and displacing 2.6mn from their homes.

Since taking up arms against the Nigerian gov-ernment in 2009, Boko Haram has disrupted trade routes and farms.

Now nearly 50,000 children are facing death by starvation if they don’t get food and almost 250,000 more are severely malnourished in Borno state, according to Unicef.

“Nigeria is facing the worst humanitarian crisis on the African continent,” Peter Lundberg, acting United Nations Deputy Humanitarian Coordina-tor, warned last week.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has led a successful off ensive against the insurgents since coming into offi ce last year, but Boko Haram is still capable of carrying out deadly attacks.

In October, Boko Haram attacked a town near Chibok, where in 2014 it kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls, drawing global attention to the insur-gency.

Later in the month, the militants claimed that they killed 20 soldiers in “fi erce clashes” in the Ghashghar area of northeastern

Nigeria.The violence is spilling into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, with Niger early in October declaring two days of national mourning after 22 soldiers were killed in an attack blamed on the extremists against a camp sheltering almost

4,000 refugees.

Activists arrested after anti-Kabila protestAFPKinshasa

A dozen activists who do not want President Joseph Kabila to remain in power in the Democratic Republic of

Congo were arrested yesterday after a sit-in at the African Union headquarters in Kin-shasa, an AFP journalist said.

The arrests were the latest sign of rising tensions in the vast central African nation, where the opposition does not want Kabila’s grip on power to continue beyond the expiry of his term on December 20.

The arrests occurred despite repeated condemnations from human rights organi-

sations in the fraught nation. “Arrests were made at the central station and the Bon Marche neighbourhood,” police spokesman Ezekiel Mwana Mputu said, referring to the detention of the activists.

Some 30 activists affi liated to the Filimbi movement, whose name means “whistle” in Swahili, chanted slogans calling on Kabila to step down. Police offi cers confi scated their banners as they gathered in front of the seat of the AU, braving pouring rain.

“We came to remind the AU that it holds great responsibility in the constitutional coup d’etat that was decided by the (partici-pants in the) dialogue, with its full agree-ment,” protest organiser Carbone Beni Wa Beya said.

“December 19 will be the last day of Pres-ident Kabila’s mandate, in accordance with the constitution,” he added.

Shortly afterwards, the activist was de-tained. The dissident was referring to an AU-facilitated “national dialogue”, which last week reached a deal to keep Kabila in power until 2018 by postponing this year’s vote.

The opposition rejected the deal, with the main dissident coalition — “Rassemble-ment” (Gathering) — branding the talks a ploy by Kabila to stay in power beyond the end of his term.

Kabila fi rst took offi ce in 2001, and in 2006 a new constitutional provision limited the presidency to a two-term limit which expires in December.

AMERICA


Reuters Denver

The DNA analysis that prompted a Colorado prosecutor to exonerate the family of 6-year-old beauty

queen JonBenet Ramsey in her 1996 mur-der was not as clear cut as she portrayed it at the time, a newspaper reported on Fri-day.

The Boulder Daily Camera, in conjunc-tion with Denver television station KUSA-TV, said the results an outside laboratory conducted on DNA found in the slain girl’s clothing contained genetic markers from two people.

That conclusion is at apparent odds with statements made by former Boulder prosecutor Mary Lacy when she cited the report to clear the Ramsey family of in-volvement in the girl’s murder.

Lacy said in 2008 that the DNA be-longed to a single male and there was “no innocent explanation” for its presence other than it belonged to an unidentifi ed intruder who was the killer.

The beaten and strangled body of Jon-

Benet Ramsey was found in the basement of her parent’s Boulder, Colo.

home on December 26, 1996. No one has been charged with her killing.

The latest disclosure adds another twist to the investigation of the case that has been plagued by missteps including a con-taminated crime scene and in-fi ghting be-tween police and prosecutors.

In 1999, a grand jury voted to indict the girl’s parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, for child abuse resulting in death, but then-district attorney Alex Hunter declined to prosecute, citing a lack of evidence.

It was unknown that the grand jury vot-ed to indict until 2013, when the Boulder Daily Camera won a legal battle to have the document released.

Lacy did not respond to the Camera’s request for comment on the article, and could not be reached by Reuters on Fri-day.

However, she told ABC News that in clearing the family, she was trying to pre-vent “a horrible travesty of justice”.

“I was scared to death that despite the fact that there was no evidence, no psy-chopathy and no motive, the case was a train going down the track and the Ram-seys were tied to that track,” ABC quoted her as saying.

Reached by telephone, John Ramsey’s lawyer, L

Lin Wood, told Reuters that he has not seen the underlying documents, but said he supports Lacy’s conclusion that the Ramseys were not involved in the girl’s murder.

Bob Grant, a former district attorney who served as a consultant to Hunter dur-ing the grand jury probe, said the revela-tion adds “further baffl ement” to the un-solved homicide. Oklahoma County prosecutors fi led

fi rst degree murder charges on Friday against a man who has been on the run for nearly a week after being suspected of kill-ing two relatives and trying to decapitate them.

Michael Vance, 38, is also suspected of wounding two police offi cers in a shoot out and posting his getaway on social media.

Police believe he was shot twice in a gunfi ght, in which he wounded two police offi cers and then stole a police vehicle.

The US marshal service has joined in the search for Vance.

He could face the death penalty if he is convicted of killing Ronald Wilkson, 55, and his wife Valerie Wilkson, 54, who were found dead in their home on Sunday about 50km northeast of Oklahoma City.

Vance is thought to have killed his aunt and uncle about three hours after the shootout with police, the Oklahoma coun-ty sheriff ’s offi ce said.

He then stole their car.The Sunday incident crime spree start-

ed with offi cers responding to a call of shots being fi red.

Both suff ered wounds that were not life threatening.

Vance also has an infectious disease that he may be trying to spread.

In July, he was charged with child sexual abuse, the offi ce said.

In a video posted on Facebook Live while fl eeing, Vance can he heard saying he is about to steal another car and that the chase has been “intense”.

“This ain’t a joke.This ain’t a prank,” Vance said, adding

he was set up.Vance also stated in the video that he

was shot.The Oklahoma County Sheriff ’s Offi ce

said there appeared to be a large amount of blood on his shirt and a rifl e or shotgun next to him in the vehicle.

Vance is suspected of shooting at least one person in attempts to steal vehicles.

The shooting victim survived, local law enforcement said.

DNA cited to clear Ramsey family in murder in question

Bryan Chang, a dental hygiene student at Washington Institute of Technology, wears Halloween face paint as he works with a patient as people get free dental, vision and medical care during the Seattle/King County Clinic at the Key Arena in Seattle, Washington.

Halloween dental

Reuters Florida

Offi cials in Florida and Virginia fi led voter fraud charges against

three people in apparently un-related cases on Friday, just 11 days before American voters cast ballots in the hotly con-tested presidential race.

The charges targeted a Florida woman and a Virginia man accused of fi ling bogus voter registration forms and a Florida woman alleged to have tampered with absentee ballots she was opening at the Miami-Dade Elections De-partment.

In the Iowa capital of Des Moines, county election of-fi cials referred three cases of suspected voter fraud to police earlier this week, leading to one arrest on Thursday, police said.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has charged in recent weeks that the election will be rigged in favour of Democrat Hillary Clinton, though he has shown no proof for these claims and many Republicans have called them unfounded.

Miami-Dade state attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in Florida said that 74-year-old Gladys Coego had been work-ing as an absentee ballot open-er when a supervisor allegedly saw her changing ballots that had been left blank to support a mayoral candidate.

Prosecutors said that Coego admitted to marking the bal-lots and was charged with two felony counts of marking or designating the ballot of an-other.

“The integrity of the elec-toral process is intact because our procedures work,” said Christina White, the county’s election supervisor, in a state-ment.

Tomika Curgil, 33, was charged with fi ve felony counts

of submitting false voter regis-tration information for alleg-edly handing in forms fi lled out by fi ctitious voters while work-ing on a voter-registration drive for a medical marijuana advocacy group.

A Virginia man was also charged with submitting falsi-fi ed forms while working for a voter-registration campaign, state prosecutors said.

Vafalay Massaquoi, 30, was arraigned on two felony counts of forging a public record and two counts of voter registra-tion fraud.

“There is no allegation that any illegal vote was actually cast in this case,” said Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorney Bryan Porter. “Furthermore, since the fraudulent applica-tions involved fi ctitious peo-ple, had the fraud not been uncovered, the risk of actual fraudulent votes being cast was low.”

Neither Coego, Curgil nor Massaquoi could be reached for immediate comment.

Police in Des Moines on Thursday arrested a woman who was accused of voting twice — casting early-voting ballots at two locations — in one of three cases of suspect-ed voter fraud reported by the Polk County Auditor’s Offi ce.

Police did not disclose the political affi liation of the wom-an, identifi ed as Terri Lynn Rote, 55, but the Des Moines Register newspaper reported she was a registered Republi-can.

A man in Texas, where early voting started on Monday, was arrested on Monday on charges of electioneering and loiter-ing near a polling place, public records show.

The man, Brett Mauthe, had been charged for showing up to vote in a Trump hat and T-shirt with the phrase “basket of deplorables,” a reference to a comment Clinton made dis-paraging her rivals’ supporters, election offi cials told media.

Florida,Virginia fi le cases of voter fraud

Reuters Chicago

The engine of an Ameri-can Airlines Group Inc jet caught fi re seconds from

takeoff at Chicago’s O’Hare In-ternational Airport on Friday, prompting the crew to abort its departure and evacuate passen-gers via emergency chutes, au-thorities said.

No serious injuries were re-ported in the incident, which oc-curred hours before an unrelated mishap in Fort Lauderdale, Flor-ida, where the landing gear of a FedEx Corp cargo plane collapsed on touchdown, sparking a fi re that was quickly extinguished.

The company later said the Fe-dEx pilots were safe.

American Airlines Flight 383,

a Boeing Co 767 bound for Miami with 161 passengers and a crew of nine, was headed down an O’Hare runway at about 2.30pm CDT (1930 GMT) when the right-side engine of the twin-engine jet burst into fl ames, authorities said.

Footage from Chicago’s ABC News affi liate station, WLS-TV, showed the idled plane on the ground with fl ames and large clouds of black smoke billowing from its right side and emergency slides deployed on the left side.

Passengers milled about watching the blaze as fi re trucks pumped water on the fl ames.

Timothy Sampey, assist-ant deputy fi re commissioner, said the mishap could have been much worse.

The plane was fully loaded with 19,504kg of jet fuel, which

was leaking when fi re crews reached the jet, Sampey told a news conference later.

“So they had a heavy volume of fi re on both the engine and the entire wing,” he said.”This could have been absolutely devastating if it happened later.”

Sampey confi rmed the in-cident began with a fi re in the right-side engine.

The plane’s CF6 engine, the “workhorse” of the commer-cial aviation industry, was built by General Electric Co, and GE dispatched investigators to the scene, the company said.

The Federal Aviation Admin-istration initially said the pilot aborted takeoff after reporting a blown-out tire.

But city fi re spokesman Larry Langford said he saw no blown tires at the scene.

Langford said 19 passengers and one fl ight attendant were taken to a hospital with minor injuries — such as bumps, bruises and sprained ankles — suff ered in exiting the plane.

There were no burns or cases of smoke inhalation.

“The fi re never got into the cabin,” he said. “This happened so close to one of the airport fi re stations that they were on it in a minute.” He said the plane was 15 to 20 seconds away from being airborne when the fi re erupted.

Inside the aircraft after it came to a stop, frantic passengers shouted at each other to hurry while making their way down the aisle to an emergency exit slide, as seen in a video posted on Face-book by passenger Hector Gus-tavo Cardenas.

The incident forced the closure

of at least three of the airport’s eight runways, the city Aviation Department said.

By about two hours after the incident, the airport had expe-rienced 130 delays of departing fl ights and 170 inbound fl ights, according to fl ight-tracking website FlightAware.com.

The Fort Lauderdale airport said 29 fl ights were diverted due to the FedEx plane incident, but the facility was later reopened to air traffi c.

As the Chicago mishap unfold-ed, O’Hare’s tower controllers began ordering inbound planes to abort landing approaches and “go around,” initially closing all runways so emergency vehicles could reach the stricken aircraft, according to audio recordings of the main tower frequency posted by the website liveatc.net.

AA jet catches fi re on takeoff at Chicago airport

Reuters Washington

A US banking regulator said on Friday it had told Congress about what it

called “a major information se-curity incident” after a former employee was found to have downloaded a large number of fi les onto thumb drives before his retirement.

The Offi ce of the Comptrol-ler of the Currency said in a statement that there was no evidence to suggest that the data in the downloads had been disclosed to the public or mis-used in any way.

Before he retired in Novem-ber 2015, the former employee downloaded a large number of fi les onto two removable thumb drives though the in-cident was only detected last month during a routine secu-rity review, the OCC said in a statement.

When the former employee was contacted, the OCC said, he “was unable to locate or return the thumb drives to the agency”. The stolen data was encrypted, the agency said.

The Offi ce of the Comp-troller, along with the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, is one of the nation’s three most infl uential bank regulators that is tasked with protecting consumers and fi nancial markets.

The OCC has deemed the breach a “major incident” be-cause the devices containing the information are not recov-erable and more than 10,000

records were removed, the agency said.

An offi cial familiar with the investigation declined to com-ment on a possible motive.

The official, who was not authorized to discuss the case, noted that a large batch of unclassified person-nel records were among the cache.

Shane Shook, an independ-ent cyber crime expert who helps governments and fi nan-cial institutions respond to breaches, said that he was not particularly concerned about the loss of the data, which OMB regulations require the OCC to report to the public, regardless of impact.

“This happens quite a lot,” he said.”The risk would be if the information somehow gets released to unauthorized sources” such as WikeLeaks or another website where stolen data is posted.

He said that in many case employees or consultants who report missing thumb drives with sensitive data on them eventually end up fi nding them.

Representatives with the Department of Homeland Se-curity and FBI said they had no immediate comment.

A number of high-profi le data breaches at the federal level have highlighted the vul-nerability of sensitive informa-tion.

In recent weeks, the Nation-al Security Agency has come under fresh scrutiny after a contractor was accused of hav-ing hoarded sensitive informa-tion at his home.

US regulator says former employee stole data

The murder of six-year-old Jon-Benet Ramsey was never solved

AMERICAS17Gulf Times


DPA Los Angeles

Bob Dylan has fi nally broken his si-lence on his Nobel Literature Prize win, saying the announcement Oc-

tober 13 left him “speechless,” the Nobel Foundation said Friday. The US singer and songwriter is the fi rst musician to be awarded the prestigious literature prize.

The choice sparked controversy in the literary establishment, with many publicly arguing the prize should have gone to a writer of books, not songs.

Dylan’s initial failure to publicly ac-knowledge the prize drew broad criticism, with Swedish Academy member publicly calling his silence “arrogant”. The Acad-

emy said after fi ve days trying to contact Dylan to personally inform him of the award it had given up.

Dylan called Swedish Academy perma-nent secretary Sara Danius this week, the Nobel Foundation said.

“The news about the Nobel left me speechless,” he said.”I appreciate the hon-our so much.”

The Nobel Foundation said it had not yet been decided if Dylan would attend the prize ceremony in December in Stockholm.

The news of Dylan’s acknowledgement of the prize coincided with the publication of an interview with the musician by Great Britain’s Telegraph newspaper.

In it, he said he would “absolutely” at-tend the ceremony — “if it’s at all pos-sible”. The famously taciturn artist told

journalist Edna Gunderson it was “amaz-ing, incredible” to receive word of the honour.”Whoever dreams about some-thing like that?”

He tentatively agreed with Danius’ as-sertion that his work is literature, fi tting into the oral and sung tradition of ancient poets like Homer and Sappho.

“I suppose so, in some way,” he said, cit-ing his songs Blind Willie A Hard Rain and Hurricane, among others. But he said the meaning of his lyrics was for others to de-termine.

“The academics, they ought to know.I’m not really qualifi ed,” he said.The Swedish Academy said yesterday

that Bob Dylan is not obliged to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, but is required to hold some sort of lecture or even

sing a song. Dylan could provide anything from a short speech, a performance, a video broadcast — or even a song, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, told the public Swedish Radio.

“I hope he will do what he desires to do,” she said, adding that the academy will “do everything it can” to adapt the festivities to his wishes.

Danius told TT news agency that Dylan was “humble, friendly and humorous” during a 15-minute phone conversation with him on Tuesday.

Asked why he did not respond to the Academy’s calls, Dylan told the Daily Tel-egraph: “Well, I’m right here.”

Dylan, whose lyrics have infl uenced generations of fans, is the fi rst songwriter to win the literature prize.

AFP Des Moines, United States

Hillary Clinton embarks this weekend on the frenetic fi nal 10 days of her White House cam-

paign, determined to shake off renewed controversy over the FBI probe into her private e-mails.

The 69-year-old Democrat — vy-ing to become America’s fi rst female president — is still the frontrunner to win the November 8 election over her Republican rival Donald Trump.

Clinton has a clear lead in the polls, and voting has already begun in 34 of 50 states to choose a successor to Presi-dent Barack Obama, who will hit the campaign trail again next week in de-fence of his onetime secretary of state.

But her momentum was threatened Friday by a renewed eruption in a scan-dal that has long dogged her in the race: investigations into her use of a private email server while at the State Depart-ment.

Trump gleefully seized on news that FBI agents are investigating a newly discovered group of mails sent to Clin-ton’s private address, to see if they ex-posed any US secrets.

The probe had been thought fi nished in July, when the Federal Bureau of In-vestigation had recommended that no charges be fi led against Clinton, al-though it found her to have been “ex-tremely careless” in her use of a private server.

But FBI Director James Comey’s let-ter to US lawmakers announcing that inquiries had been renewed shocked the campaign and rocked world mar-kets.

Clinton cried foul, demanding that Comey reveal more information about the probe, and declared herself “con-fi dent” that voters, and the FBI, would conclude that she had done nothing wrong.

“The American people deserve to get the full and complete facts imme-diately,” she said. “We don’t know the facts, which is why we are calling on the FBI to release all the information that it has.”

Clinton’s defi ant words came after Trump — himself dogged by scandal

over alleged sexual misconduct — de-clared her unfi t for offi ce as a jubilant crowd of supporters in New Hampshire chanted: “Lock her up!”

Concern that the renewed probe would damage Clinton’s formerly im-pressive momentum spooked the mar-kets, with US stocks, the dollar and oil prices tumbling lower on the prospect of a close vote.

Comey dropped his bombshell in a letter to lawmakers, revealing that “in connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation,” and would take “ap-propriate investigative steps”.

Clinton’s campaign was outraged and implied that Comey’s intervention could be politically-tinged because, in Clinton’s words, the letter was only sent to “Republican members of the House”.

“I’m confi dent, whatever they are, they will not change the conclusion reached in July,” she added.

According to the New York Times, the newly discovered mails emerged after agents seized electronic devices used by Clinton’s closest aide, Huma Abe-din, and her husband, Anthony Weiner.

Weiner, a Democratic former con-gressman who resigned in 2011 after he was exposed for sending explicit online messages, is under investigation over allegations he sent sexual messages to a 15-year-old girl.

NBC News said the newly discov-ered e-mails were sent by Abedin to

Clinton from a laptop used by Weiner, whose bid to become mayor of New York foundered over similar “sexting” claims in 2013.

Meanwhile, Trump, trailing in polls both nationally and in the swing states he must win to secure the White House, seized triumphantly on the news.

“We must not let her take her crimi-nal scheme into the Oval Offi ce,” the 70-year-old billionaire told cheering crowds at a campaign rally in Manches-ter, New Hampshire.

“I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the department of justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made,” he added.

Republicans on Capitol Hill also seemed jubilant over Clinton’s latest travails.

“Everything that has happened... is the natural, probable consequence of deciding you’re going to have a rogue e-mail system,” Trey Gowdy, chairman of the congressional committee that fi rst uncovered the existence of Clin-ton’s private server, told Fox News late Friday.

Several leading newspapers yester-day faulted Comey for being overzeal-ous in announcing that the FBI will be scouring the newly-discovered e-mails.

“By revealing it, he inevitably creates a cloud of suspicion over Ms Clinton that, if the case’s history is any guide, is unwarranted,” The Washington Post wrote on its editorial page Saturday.

News of the probe took the shine off what should have been a good day for Clinton on Friday, with the Obama ad-ministration announcing stronger than expected economic growth numbers.

Clinton was due to campaign in Mi-ami on Saturday in the most important potential swing state in terms of elec-toral votes, Florida.

Trump was due to make stops in Colorado and Arizona before heading to Nevada for a Sunday rally in Las Vegas.

Next week, both candidates will con-

tinue to barnstorm battleground states.Trump’s campaign was rocked this

month by the release of 2005 foot-age showing him bragging about his groping women, followed by a string of accusations of sexual misconduct — which he denies.

As he faltered, Trump piled on the defi ant rhetoric, claiming the allega-tions were part of a plot to rig the elec-tion, and threatening not to recognize the outcome if he loses.

US Republican presidential nomi-

nee Donald Trump shifted quickly on Friday to take advantage of a new twist in Democrat Hillary Clinton’s long-running email saga, seeking a much-needed boost in the campaign’s waning days.

At rallies in New Hampshire, Maine and Iowa, Trump hit hard on his mes-sage that Clinton is a corrupt leader who cannot be trusted and he pulled back a bit on his charge that the politi-cal system is rigged against him.

Trump called the new development part of “the biggest political scandal since Watergate”, the 1970s scandal that forced the resignation of Republi-can President Richard Nixon.

Trump abruptly changed his tune after repeatedly attacking FBI Director James Comey in the last three months for not indicting Clinton for her han-dling of classifi ed information while US secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

“As you know, I’ve had plenty of words about the FBI lately, but I give them great credit for having the cour-age to right this horrible wrong.

Justice will prevail,” Trump said in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Trump has spent weeks railing about a “rigged system,” accusing the Clin-ton campaign of coordinating attacks on him with the US news media after a 2005 video surfaced of him boasting about groping women.

“It might not be as rigged as I thought,” Trump told a crowd in Man-chester, New Hampshire.

By Cedar Rapids, however, he was still criticising “the corrupt political class” and calling the news media dis-honest.

At each stop, Trump’s supporters cheered loudly and chanted “lock her up” when the New York businessman talked about Clinton’s new headache, a sign that his boosters see the impor-tance of some good news for his cam-paign with 10 days left until the Nov

8 election.Trump noted that he is competitive

in opinion polls nationally and in some states where the election is likely to be decided, but admitted he has got some distance to go.

The new disclosures, he said, might help him.

“We have gaps but we are really moving and I just wanted to say that because I don’t know what’s going to happen now,” he said.

Clinton faces FBI probe as race enters fi nal 10 days

Supporters cheer as Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Right: Supporters of Donald Trump on the streets of West Hollywood, California.

Revellers proceed down Fleming Street during the Fantasy Fest Masquerade March in Key West, Florida.

AFP Los Angeles

To say Kunal Nayyar looks up to his wife would be an understatement — he barely reaches the beauty

queen’s shoulder when she puts on stiletto heels for the red carpet.

But the Big Bang Theory star, who measures 5ft 7in (170cm) — three inches less than former Miss India Neha Kapur — has no reason for “short man syn-drome”.

Towering astride the entertainment in-dustry as one of the world’s best paid ac-tors, the 35-year-old British-Indian has become one of the biggest celebrities in Hollywood.

“I feel like the tallest guy in the room,” he tells AFP in an interview to promote his latest project, a starring part in DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls along-side Justin Timberlake and Anna Kend-rick.

“Maybe I’m the short guy who got the beautiful woman, I don’t know.

I have no qualms about it.

She’s not only a beautiful person, she’s also an amazing human being.”

Nayyar has good reason for his easy self-confi dence, having seen his salary bloom from $100,000 per episode to a reported $800,000 for his role in “The Big Bang Theory,” known by its dedicated fans as “BBT.”

He is making around $22mn a year, ac-cording to Forbes, making him the world’s fourth highest paid television actor, a short distance behind three of his fellow cast members.

There has been much speculation over whether season 10 of BBT will be the last, and while Nayyar says he’s “not ready to say goodbye yet,” he is already looking forward, with plans to star in Bollywood.

Outside of the show, he recently took on a starring part in Jesse Eisenberg’s ac-claimed play The Spoils and has a success-ful book — “not a memoir” — in stores, called Yes, My Accent Is Real.

Trolls, inspired by the fuzzy-headed dolls popular in the early 1990s, is set for release in the US on November 4.

Ostensibly for children, it follows Poppy

and Branch on their mission to rescue their friends from the Bergens, giants who be-lieve the only way to lift their melancholy is to eat the cute, colourful trolls.

Nayyar plays one of the captives, an endearing little troll called Guy Diamond who refuses to wear clothes and farts glit-ter as a means of spreading joy.

When he talks about the fi lm’s message that “humanity is about positivity and love,” he comes across like his character — disarmingly animated.

“It’s a fi lm for both kids and adults and the music is incredible...

And the world looks beautiful — the hair on the trolls, the glitter on Guy Diamond, the quality,” he enthuses.

Born in London and brought up in New Delhi, Nayyar moved to the US at 18, ini-tially to pursue a business degree at the University of Portland, Oregon.

He was already on BBT when he met Kapur on a trip to India and married her there in 2011, in a lavish six-day cer-emony involving white horses and 1,000 guests.

The couple were dubbed Beauty and the Geek, irritating Nayyar, who admits

he gets frustrated by the media confl ating him with Raj, his shy, nerdish character on the sitcom.

Trolls comes out four days before Amer-ica gives serious consideration to electing Donald Trump, a populist presidential candidate who has polarised the public with his rhetoric on Muslims, Mexicans and immigration.

“As an immigrant, I am beginning to seriously worry — if Trump gets elected does that mean I could get deported and no more Raj?” he tweeted a few days be-fore his interview with AFP.

But the actor — again, like his troll char-acter — is an optimist at heart and clarifi es that he was being “glib.”

“I think the world is becoming a smaller place and I really do believe in the bottom of my heart — and this may sound trivial to some people — that good always over-comes evil,” he tells AFP.

“That’s why the universe, the world, is where it is today.

A lot of bad things have happened in the past, in many diff erent generations.

Our parents survived world wars.I think we’re going to be okay.”

Things looking up for star of BBT

Kunal Nayyar and his former Miss India wife Neha Kapur.

Dylan: Nobel left him speechlessA Native American tribe and other activists opposed to a multibillion-dollar oil pipeline project in North Dakota vowed on Friday to continue their fight through direct action, legal challenges and growing celebrity support, a day after police arrested 141 of their members. Thursday’s arrests came at the site of the $3.8bn Dakota Access pipeline when dozens of riot police swept through a protester camp on private land using pepper spray, bean bag rounds and an audio cannon against demonstrators who refused to leave.Some of the protesters set fire to roadblocks and threw rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails at the law enforcement off icers, the local Morton County Sheriff ’s Department said. Dallas Goldtooth, 33, an activist from the Indigenous Environmental Network, said on Friday the demonstrators were taking the day off to regroup and pray.He added there were still ample opportunities for them to stop the pipeline. “They still have miles of construction to happen and that is miles of construction yet to be stopped,” Goldtooth said via telephone from the protest site in North Dakota. “There are still windows of opportunity to disrupt construction.” The sheriff ’s department said in a statement Friday that it was maintaining a presence in the area and that a section of a state highway remained closed. Protesters were nonconfrontational, the department said, but still not cooperating with orders to leave a bridge that was damaged by a fire on Thursday.

Tribe vows to continue pipeline fight

The probe has come at an extremely critical juncture in campaigning

ASEAN

Gulf TimesSunday, October 30, 201618

Tens of thousands queue topay respects to late Thai kingAFP Bangkok

Thousands of Thais streamed into the gates of Bangkok’s Grand Pal-

ace yesterday as the public was granted its fi rst chance to enter the throne hall where the body of late King Bhumibol Adulya-dej is lying in state.

Bhumibol, who died aged 88 two weeks ago, was adored by many of his subjects and seen as an anchor of stability in a kingdom rocked by political turmoil.

His passing has thrust the country into a year of offi cial mourning, with many Thais wearing only black and white since his death and TV chan-nels devoting hours of airtime to footage from his 70-year reign.

For the past two weeks crowds have massed outside the Grand Palace, a compound of shimmering temples and pavil-ions in Bangkok’s old quarter, to

pay tribute before a portrait of the late monarch.

But yesterday was the fi rst time the public has been al-lowed to enter the ornate throne hall where his body is lying in a coffi n, out of sight, near a gilded urn.

“I have been waiting here since 1:00 am,” said Saman Daoruang, an 84-year-old sit-ting in a massive queue that snaked around a large fi eld out-side the palace.

Like many in the crowd, Sa-man camped out under a tent on the grassy parade grounds, hav-ing arrived in Bangkok by train from northern Nakhon Sawan province.

“But I wasn’t able to sleep because I was so thrilled and proud to come here,” he said, clutching several portraits of the monarch.

An initial plan to limit visitors to 10,000 per day was dropped yesterday after crowds swelled to 100,000, according to a monitoring centre outside the palace.

However Sansern Kaewkam-nerd, a government spokesman, urged people “not to rush to

come in the early days” as the throne hall would be open for “a long time”.

Thailand’s arch-royalist mil-itary government, which came to power in a 2014 coup, has en-

couraged mass displays of de-votion for the late king and ar-ranged a fl urry of free bus, train and boat rides to move mourn-ers to the capital.

It has also stepped up its en-forcement of lese majeste — a law that punishes criticism of the monarchy with up to 15 years in prison per infringe-ment.

All media based in Thailand must self-censor to avoid fall-ing foul of the law.

The legislation has also se-verely curbed public discussion about the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralong-korn, who has yet to attract the same level of devotion as his fa-ther.

In a move that surprised many and veered from tradi-tion, the 64-year-old asked to delay his proclamation as king in order to grieve with the na-tion, according the junta.

The government has not pro-vided a clear timeline for when he will formally ascend the throne.

Pressure on Myanmar over Rakhine abusesAFPYangon

Allegations that Myanmar soldiers are killing, rap-ing and torturing villag-

ers in Rakhine, a restive region that is home to the persecuted Muslim Rohingya, must be independently investigated, rights groups said.

Northern Rakhine has been under a military lockdown since an attack on border guards three weeks ago left nine policeman dead.

The government has blamed the raids on Rohingya militants and a search for the culprits has seen more than 30 people killed and dozens arrested, according to offi cial reports.

Stories of grave abuse by security offi cers — including sexual violence, summary exe-cutions and the torching of vil-lages — have spiralled on social media but are diffi cult to verify with the army barring rights groups and journalists from the remote region bordering Bang-ladesh.

On Friday Amnesty Inter-national and Human Rights Watch joined calls for an im-partial investigation into the allegations, which the UN has called “alarming and unac-ceptable”.

“If Myanmar’s security forces are not involved in any human rights violations as the authori-ties claim, then they should have no trouble granting in-dependent observers access,” said Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty’s

Southeast Asia and Pacifi c di-rector.

Writing on Facebook Fri-day, government spokesman Zaw Htay dismissed an article in the Myanmar Times that described reports of a “mass rape” in a Rohingya village on October 19.

“There was information that

some attackers were kept in that village. So security was taken very seriously and (the search team) was very careful about being safe and would not think to rape up to fi ve women,” he wrote.

The government says the October 9 border raids were carried out by hundreds of Ro-

hingya fighters linked to Tali-ban-trained militants.

If true, it would mark a trou-bling development in a reli-giously-split region where the stateless Rohingya have lan-guished under years of repres-sion but so far shown little in-terest in jihadist ideology.

Rakhine has sizzled with ten-

sion ever since waves of com-munal violence in 2012 killed more than 100 and pushed tens of thousands of people, mostly Rohingya, into destitute dis-placement camps.

Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar insist the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and viscerally op-

pose any moves to grant them citizenship.The recent upsurge in violence deepens and com-plicates a confl ict that already posed a top challenge to a new civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who has dis-appointed rights groups by not coming out in stronger support of the Rohingya.

Democracy group chief released on bail

ReutersKuala Lumpur

Malaysian police released the chairman of de-mocracy group Bersih

on bail yesterday, after detaining her for more than two hours for questioning, just weeks before a big protest rally planned against Prime Minister Najib Razak.

The group said Maria Chin Abdullah was arrested in the Borneo state of Sabah for dis-tributing fl yers promoting the group’s upcoming rally in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on November 19. The Sabah po-lice declined to comment.

The rally, called Bersih 5, is or-ganised to call for the resignation of Najib to facilitate a probe into a scandal involving 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a state fund set up by the prime minister.

More than 200,000 people turned out in Kuala Lumpur last August for a similar rally organ-ised by Bersih, demanding the resignation of Najib.

The rally, called Bersih 5, is organised to call for the resignation of Najib to facilitate a probe into a scandal involving 1MDB

A recent photo shows armed Myanmar border guard patrol the border area along the river dividing Myanmar and Bangladesh located in Maungdaw, Rakhine State following attacks that killed nine border police.

Man held in slaying of karaoke hostessAgenciesPrachuap Khiri Khan

A Myanmar man accused of murdering a kara-oke hostess admitted he

raped and strangled her in a fi t of anger after she refused to stay overnight with him, police said yesterday.

Wae Khuewae, 40, who works at a rubber plantation in Bang Saphan district, was apprehend-ed at his living quarters yester-day morning, two days after the death of Prakarak Promkhot, Bangkok Post reported.

The 22-year-old waitress at the Tawan Daeng karaoke bar was found dead in a hotel room on Oct 27.

A hotel maid found her lying naked in the room with severe bruises on her neck.

Police said Wae told them through an interpreter that he had been drinking beer at the ka-raoke bar on Wednesday night.

He said he approached the victim about having sex and that she agreed to spend a night with him at the hotel for 1,800 baht.

Police said the suspect told them that the two had sex before the woman asked him for anoth-er 500 baht to buy speed pills. He gave her the money and she returned shortly afterward with three pills.

He said she off ered him one pill but he refused and asked to have sex again instead.

At that point, she received a phone call, which the suspect thought might be from her boy-friend. After that, she told him she did not want to stay over-night.

According to police, the sus-pect grew angry and the pair quarrelled before he raped her. As she cried out for help, he re-peatedly strangled her until she stopped moving, they said.

The suspect told police he was shocked by what had happened and fl ed back to his living quar-ters.

He said he did not try to es-cape as he felt sorry about what he had done.

The suspect said he had been a soldier in Myanmar and had killed people, but had never killed a woman before, police said.

Police yesterday took Wae for a crime re-enactment at the ka-raoke bar and then at the hotel room. Fifty offi cers escorted him to prevent angry relatives and local residents, numbering over 100, from assaulting him.

Mourners line up to get into the Throne Hall at the Grand Palace for the first time to pay their respects in front of the golden urn of Thailand’s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej in Bangkok yesterday.

Mourners from the Kamphaeng tribe line up to get into the Throne Hall at the Grand Palace for the first time to pay respects.

AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA19Gulf Times


Thousands of South Kore-ans rallied in Seoul yes-terday, demanding the

resignation of President Park Geun-hye, as a crisis deepened over allegations a friend exerted inappropriate infl uence over her and interfered in state aff airs.

The street protest came as prosecutors investigate presi-dential aides and other offi cials to determine whether they broke the law to allow Park’s friend, Choi Soon-sil, to wield undue infl uence and gain fi nancially.

Angry Koreans say that Park betrayed public trust and mis-managed the government, and has lost a mandate to lead the country.

Over the past week, the media has been full of increasingly sen-sational reports regarding Choi, the 60-year-old daughter of a shadowy religious leader and one-time Park mentor.

Invoking a lurid back-story of religious cults, shamanist rituals and corruption, the reports have portrayed Choi as a Rasputin-like fi gure whose infl uence over Park extended to vetting her presidential speeches and ad-vising on key appointments and policy issues.

Yesterday morning prosecu-tors confi scated computers and documents from the homes of a top presidential adviser and two other aides as well as a deputy culture minister, Yonhap news agency said.

Teens in school uniforms, col-lege students, labour activists, and middle-aged couples with young children joined the rally, carrying banners and chanting “step down Park Geun-hye”.

“I came here today to show how angry I am,” said Lee Ji-Hu, a 33-year-old housewife from Gimpo, northwest of Seoul, ac-companied by her husband and two infant children in strollers.

“How can a leader have a sha-man, or someone linked to a reli-gious cult as a secret advisor and let her handle state aff airs and squander taxpayers’ money like that?” Lee said.

“I feel so ashamed ... I can’t let our country where my children will live be corrupted like this,” she added.

Similar protests also took place in several provincial cities, including the country’s second largest city, Busan.

“She must step down,” Lee Jae-myung, mayor of Seongnam city south of Seoul and a vocal critic of the government, said to a loud cheer from the crowd.

“If Park Geun-hye is no long-er president, will our lives be any worse off and will the ten-sion with North Korea be any worse?” he asked the crowd, which responded “No!”

About 8,000 people attended the rally, according to police, or-ganised by a group of left-lean-ing civic groups.

Organisers said that up to 30,000 people took part in the march through the capital.

“It’s become clear the peo-ple made a wrong decision and picked the wrong president,” Jeong Hong-woo, 22, told Reu-ters at the rally.

Police in riot gear faced some protesters as they tried to march on the presidential Blue House.

Park is in the fourth year of a fi ve-year one-term presidency.

Opposition parties have de-manded a thorough investiga-tion, but have not raised the possibility of impeaching her.

Park’s offi ce said late on Friday that she ordered her senior sec-retaries to tender their resigna-

tions, and she will reshuffl e the offi ce in the near future.

Her chief of staff separately off ered to resign earlier, the of-fi ce said.

The deepening crisis over Choi has sent Park’s public sup-port to an all-time low.

In one opinion poll, more than 40% of respondents said Park should resign or be impeached.

Prosecutors are investigating two of Park’s aides who alleg-edly helped Choi get access to drafts of Park’s speeches and set up two foundations with about 50bn won ($44mn) in contribu-tions from conglomerates that she later benefi ted from, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency re-ported.

The presidential offi ce said that it was co-operating with the prosecutors’ investigation, including a request for docu-ments.

A public apology by Park on Tuesday – for giving Choi ac-cess to draft speeches during the early months of her presidency – has done little to defl ect de-mands that the president reveal the full extent of her ties with Choi and whether Choi gained favours from the relationship.

Choi said in a newspaper in-terview on Thursday from Ger-many, where she was staying, that she read and revised Park’s speeches early in the presiden-tial term, but denied all allega-tions she interfered in state af-fairs.

Park is the latest South Korean leader to be embroiled in scandal involving family or friends.

As well as demanding Park stand down, civic groups and students want criminal charges brought against her aides and others who helped Choi have ac-cess to government documents.

However, the real focus of public anger has been the ex-tent to which the president – the daughter of South Korea’s late military leader Park Chung-hee – apparently allowed herself to be controlled by a such a cult-like fi gure.

The head of the main opposi-tion Minjoo Party said it was like discovering you were being ruled by a “terrifying theocracy”.

Choi is the daughter of the late Choi Tae-min, who married six times, had multiple pseudonyms and set up his own religious group known as the Church of Eternal Life.

Choi Tae-min fi rst befriended a traumatised Park after the 1974 assassination of her mother, who he said had appeared to him

in a dream, asking him to help her daughter.

Park Geun-hye subsequently formed a close bond with Choi Soon-sil that endured after Choi Tae-min’s death in 1994.

Choi Soon-sil’s ex-husband served as a top aide to Park until her presidential election victory in 2012.

Choi left the country for Ger-many in early September as re-

ports of her alleged infl uence-peddling began to emerge.

Her lawyer has said she is well aware of the gravity of the situ-ation and was willing to return home “to be punished if she did anything wrong”.

Prosecutors have detained two people close to Choi for ques-tioning, including one who told reporters that Choi had been be-having as Park’s de-facto regent.

Mass rallies to demand that Korea’s Park quitReuters/AFPSeoul

A bird’s eye view of the rally last night in central Seoul.

Protesters scuff le with riot police last night as they try to march toward the presidential Blue House after a candle-lit rally in central Seoul.

Protesters wearing masks of President Park (seated) and her confidante Choi perform yesterday before last night’s candle-lit rally in central Seoul.

Cleaning power

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is seen during his visit to the newly-built Ryongaksan Soap Factory in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang.

The Red Cross is struggling to raise needed funds to aid fl ood-aff ected re-

gions of North Korea after a dis-appointing response from the international community to its emergency appeal, a spokesman said yesterday.

At least 133 people have died in North Korea and some 600,000 people have been af-fected by fl ooding caused by heavy rain in late August and early September.

Concerns are growing about the health and welfare of those aff ected as winter sets in.

Red Cross has only managed to raise 25% of the 15.2mn Swiss francs ($15.38mn) it sought in an emergency appeal aimed at helping more than 330,000 people needing humanitar-ian assistance over the next 12 months.

International donors need to “put politics aside and recog-nise this is a humanitarian trag-edy for thousands of people”, Patrick Fuller, communications manager for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told reporters in Beijing after return-ing from North Korea.

Donors’ political concerns about the North Korean gov-ernment have hampered eff orts

to raise funds, Fuller said, even though the money donated to the Red Cross is spent by the organisation, without passing through the government.

In March, the 15-member UN Security Council imposed tough new sanctions on North Korea following its fourth nuclear test in January.

“We can really make progress with the funding we have but it’s not nearly enough. It’s not near-ly enough to support the opera-tion over the coming months,” Fuller said.

The North Korean govern-ment has pledged to build 20,000 houses before the worst of the winter hits.

The Red Cross plans to pro-

vide some roofi ng supplies and help with plumbing as it is dif-fi cult for the government to im-port items including piping and water pumps because of inter-national sanctions.

Government-led reconstruc-tion eff orts have moved at an incredibly fast pace, the IFRC said, with cement factories working overtime and a con-stant stream of building mate-rials reaching the aff ected areas by train and ship.

“Credit has to go to the gov-ernment for what they’ve achieved,” Fuller said. “They will have achieved in three months probably what most other countries achieve in three years after a major disaster.”

Red Cross struggles to raise fl ood aid fundsReutersBeijing

This recent undated handout photo received by the Finnish Red Cross yesterday shows Pak Un-hye, 37, a North Korean Red Cross volunteer, who was made homeless when her home in Kangson-gu, Musan County, was swept away by the August 30 floods, helping out in Musan County in North Korea’s North Hamgyong Province. Pak now lives in a temporary shelter with her 11-year-old daughter where she checks on the welfare of other displaced people in her community.

Tens of thousands of people packed Taipei’s streets yesterday in

Asia’s biggest gay pride parade, wearing colourful costumes and carrying rainbow fl ags as they called on Taiwan’s new government to legalise same-sex marriage.

Supporters waved handmade placards with slogans like “How long will tongzhi have to wait?” – referring to the Chinese term for someone who is gay – as they circled downtown Taipei.

Some took the opportunity to dress up, donning a variety of outfi ts including swimsuits,

wedding dresses and loincloths usually worn by Japanese sumo wrestlers.

Many of the attendees were hopeful that same-sex mar-riage would soon become a re-ality under the pro-gay ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which is in control of parliament for the fi rst time.

“The call for marriage equal-ity feels stronger than last year,” said Corinne Chiang, who works in the information tech-nology industry.

“We hope same-sex marriage can be realised as soon as pos-sible so our child can have two legal mums,” the 34-year-old said, referring to her family.

Taiwan is one of the region’s most forward-thinking socie-

ties when it comes to gay rights, but progress on marriage equal-ity has remained stagnant, be-cause of resistance from the Kuomintang (KMT) party, which dominated politics for decades before being unseated by the DPP in May.

As a result, previous attempts to pass a same-sex marriage bill had stalled, but parliament is soon expected to deliberate fresh proposals on the issue.

President Tsai Ing-wen has also openly supported marriage equality and said she would re-spect any decision reached by parliament.

“Even though my role has changed, my values remain un-changed,” she wrote on her of-fi cial Facebook page yesterday.

Calls for marriage equality in Taiwan gay pride paradeAFPTaipei

Hollywoodmovie producers lose China legal battle over logo

AFPBeijing

The Hollywood studio that made the latest Trans-formers blockbuster must

pay a Chinese scenic area more than 2mn yuan ($300,000) be-cause it failed to include the park’s logo, state media report-ed.

A court in Chongqing ordered Paramount Pictures and its Bei-jing partner to pay the money to a park in the southwestern mu-nicipality, the offi cial Xinhua news agency said late on Thurs-day.

The fi lms are wildly popular in China, with Chinese companies from milk producers to banks fl ocking to link their products to them, and when Transformers: Age of Extinction came out it be-came the country’s highest-ever grossing movie.

Some of its scenes were fi lmed in the gorges and caves of the Wulong Scenic Area, and the tourism group managing the park claimed that it had a prod-uct placement agreement for the logo to be shown in the footage.

It fi led suit in 2014, saying that its contract had been vio-lated and demanding 20mn yuan in compensation, reports at the time said.

Neither Paramount Pictures nor its Chinese partner 1905 Internet Technology could be reached for comment by AFP on Friday.

Age of Extinction was the fourth fi lm in director Michael Bay’s robot action franchise, with a fi fth instalment due next year.

Offi cials seize 176kg of drugs

DPAWellington

The New Zealand Cus-toms Service has made its biggest ever seizure of

methamphetamine, discovering 176kg of the drug hidden in the doors of shipping containers.

The haul has an estimated street value of NZ$176mn.

Customs said on Friday that the seizure was the result of a 16-month investigation which began after offi cers identifi ed a company believed to have been set up to smuggle methamphet-amine into the country.

Offi cers found the drugs in July after intercepting 10 ship-ping containers sent to the com-pany from China.

A 20-year-old Hong Kong na-tional had appeared in the Auck-land District Court on a charge relating to the smuggling, the department said.

It follows the record breaking seizure by New Zealand police in June of 500kg of methampheta-mine.

BRITAIN


Britain’s Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, leaves the observation pod during a visit to off icially open the British Airways i360 cable car attraction in Brighton, southeast England. The vertical cable car that ascends to a height of 450 feet aff ords 360-degree views of up to 26 miles, according to the attraction’s website.

Observation pod

Evening Standard London

Lily Allen claimed a black cab driver refused to let her in his taxi yesterday, telling

the singer: “Find an immigrant to drive you, you stupid tart”. The pop star has suff ered a fi erce backlash online after apologising on behalf of Britain to a young refugee in Calais.

And the storm continued yesterday when she claimed the current attitudes towards refugees were like Nazi Ger-many.

Yesterday, the Brent resident claimed a black cab refused to pick her up when she was out with her children because of the controversy.

She tweeted: “Just tried to get in a black cab with my kids.

“The driver looked at me and said: ‘Find an immigrant to drive you you stupid tart’.”

She went on: “Having lived a life of privilege, that interaction has given me a tiny glimpse of what it feels like to be discrimi-nated against.

Lily Allen’s representatives declined to comment.

A spokesman for Transport for London, which regulates the capital’s black cabs, said the or-ganisation was looking into the allegations.

But taxi drivers hit back at Al-len on social media yesterday af-ternoon, accusing her of invent-ing the whole story.

Twitter user taxidrivergaz wrote: “Reg and plate No.

Or it didn’t happen.”The singer hit back: “I had

both my hands full with children, couldn’t get to my phone fast enough.”

And when Matt White accused her of “defi nitely making it up”,

she replied: “Victim shaming.Cool.”Steve McNamara, general sec-

retary of the Licensed Taxi Driv-ers Association (LTDA), said: “The LTDA represents 11,000 black cab drivers – about half of those in London.

“Whilst it is not clear whether

the driver in question was an LTDA member, we take any alle-gation such as this extremely se-riously and would condemn any cabbie who treats anyone with such disrespect and uses abusive language in this way.

“The driver in question has put their licence in jeopardy with this appalling behaviour, and we would urge TfL as the regulator for our industry to undertake an investigation.”

The 31-year-old has caused a storm in the weeks since her tearful visit to the Calais ‘jungle’ camp.

Speaking to a teenager at the camp on Victoria Derbyshire’s BBC show she said: “We’ve bombed your country, put you in the hands of the Taliban and now put you in danger of risk-ing your life to get into our country.

“I apologise on behalf of my country.

I’m sorry for what we have put you through.”

Many social media users were unimpressed with the star’s an-tics.

One tweeted: “On behalf of England, we apologise for Lily Allen.”

Lily Allen says cabbie called her a ‘stupid tart’

Lily Allen claims a London taxi driver called her a ‘tart’


Protesters have set up a sofa and are serving tea in a blockade outside a busy bank branch in Piccadilly Circus.

Campaigners from Friends of the Earth stood outside the glass windows of the central London Barclays branch and held signs and teapots as they protested against fracking.

The protest is a bid to stop council-approved plans for company Third Energy, which is largely owned by Barclays, to begin fracking in Ryedale, north Yorkshire.

The protesters, including some who dressed up in high-vis workmen’s outfi ts and hard hats, held signs which read “keep Ryedale rural, NO fracking”. Campaigners also gave out biscuits imprinted with anti-fracking messages.

Other signs read: “Don’t keep calm and stop fracking.”

The sit-in, at the busy London intersection, was noticed by many passers-by, some of whom shared what they had seen on social meida.

Stephen Rockman said on Twitter: “Cops, pro-testers, Barclays & tourists…hard tell who’s more bemused.”

Piccadilly Circus Barclays Bank has been rather invaded by anti-fracking people.

Well, shouty banner — waving at the en-trance, anyhow The protest was organised

by Frack Off London and Divest London.The sit-in began at 11.45am and saw Ryedale res-

ident Nicky Hollins and her 13-year-old daughter sit in a mock-up of their living room.

Photos from the crowded scene also showed of-fi cers from the Met Police standing by.

The protest is part of a week of similar action, with sit-ins also held outside branches in Cam-bridge, Manchester and Hastings.

North Yorkshire County Council gave permission to Third Energy to frack in May this year.

The Standard has contacted Barclays for com-ment.

Activists blockade Barclays bank by sipping tea on sofa

The protest targets Barclays bank, which largely owns a company which plans to frack in Yorkshire.

Ruth Bacon, 88, who has lived in her home for 67 years and is believed to be the village’s longest living resident, poses for a portrait in Harmondsworth Village, west London. Much of the historic village will be razed and concreted over under plans to enlarge Europe’s busiest airport.

Heathrow’s third runway faces its fi rst legal chal-lenge only days after the government gave it the green light.

A residents’ group in Teddington, southwest London, has accused the chairman of the airports commission, Sir Howard Davies, of ‘bias’ over his decision to recommend the third runway to government.

In a letter to the department of transport, the group said Sir Davies’s recommendation should be disregard-ed because of his paid role as an advisor to a Heathrow shareholder.

Teddington Action Group said Sir Davies’s did not de-clare his role at GIC Privates Ltd in the commission’s reg-ister of interests.

The group challenges the legality of ministers accept-ing the recommendation of the airports commission.

There are expected to be more legal challenges to Hea-throw’s expansion.

Friends of the Earth have already written to the DfT criticising the way it handled the decision.

According to The Times, the letter accuses the govern-ment of “substantive procedural fl aws” by announcing that a third runway will be built before parliament has scrutinised the decision.

Heathrowexpansion: First legal case fi led


A historic market which has become a trendy destination for Lon-

doners could be forced to shut if Crossrail 2 plans are realised, it was claimed yesterday.

Bosses at Tooting Market say the site is under threat of dem-olition if Tooting Broadway sta-tion is upgraded as part of the ambitious £27bn project.

Tooting, dubbed south Lon-don’s original indoor market, opened in 1930 and has become a popular hangout crammed with bars, restaurants, fashion stalls and hair salons.

But fears emerged for its future last month following a meeting between bosses and Transport for London engi-neers.

Market manager Roi Mengel-grein told the Standard he learned the majority of the space would be subject to a compul-sory purchase order if Crossrail 2 is brought to the area.

He added it would be forced to close if any plans were ap-proved.

A “Save Tooting Market” petition has attracted more than 1,300 signatures since it was launched.

It claims initial support for Crossrail in Tooting has waned after people learned of its po-tential impact.

Roi Mengelgrein said: “Eve-ryone loves the market.

“It has become a Makkah for local artists and has a fantastic mix of bars and restaurants.

It has become a trendy des-tination in Tooting.

People who come often say they feel like they are in east London.

“We feel there has been some false information spread and as the truth begins to surface people are telling us they wouldn’t have supported Crossrail 2 coming to Tooting Broadway if the market has to close.”

Tooting MP Rosena Allin-Khan said on her website Toot-ing could be enhanced by huge regeneration benefi ts if the rail link was brought to her con-stituency but added it could not aff ord to lose the market.

Allin-Khan could not be reached for further com-ment when approached by the Standard.

Crossrail bosses said they had met with Tooting Market bosses about the concerns but added no fi nal decision had been made on what stations are in line for an upgrade.

Historic market under threat from Crossrail 2: Traders

BRITAIN/IRELAND21Gulf Times



Cycling campaigners demanded changes to a busy road where an

Italian waitress was killed by a lorry months before her death, it emerged yesterday.

Lucia Ciccioli, 32, was knocked down on Lavender Hill in Battersea at around 8am on October 24.

She was pronounced dead at the scene.

A lorry driver stopped at the scene and was not arrested.

Well-known cycling cam-paigner Jon Irwin today revealed to the Standard that he con-tacted Wandsworth Council in August in a bid to change “grim” road safety policies on Lavender Hill and a nearby road.

However he was told by council bosses that rules on safety procedures on the road, and nearby Queenstown Road, will only be reviewed if three people are killed or 12 seriously injured within a certain dis-tance of each other.

The council said Lavender Hill is managed by Transport for London and that it was not a matter for them.

They told Irwin that Lon-don-wide accident reduction targets relate to the number of people killed or seriously in-jured but said their investiga-tions are “triggered by all road traffi c accidents”. Road safety policy set out for local govern-ment in the London Imple-mentation Plan states that ac-cident reduction targets – used

to improve safety measures on certain roads – are based on the number of people killed or seriously injured in one area.

According to Wandsworth Council guidelines, an investi-gation into improving road safe-ty would be triggered by three fatal road traffi c accidents with-in a 50m radius of a junction.

Investigations could also be launched if 12 accidents hap-pen within a year on a 1km stretch of road. The 36-year-old, from Tooting, said: “What I want to see done is have these guidelines changed.

“I’m lucky that I’m not cam-paigning burdened with the trauma of having lost some-body on the roads.

“Every time you see this happen you think, ‘it could have been me or it could have been one of my mates.

To have that happen and get told, ‘your statistic isn’t enough’ – this needs to stop.

“Every tragedy needs to be reviewed in itself; no one should have to lose their life to have things changed.”

Simon Monk, infrastruc-ture campaigner at the London Cycling Campaign, said ac-tion needed to be taken more quickly to prevent deaths on the roads.

The facade of the Royal Clarence Hotel has started to fall away.

England’s ‘oldest hotel’ destroyed by blaze

AFP London

An informer who infi ltrated the IRA for the British intelligence agency MI5 has been found dead in his fl at

in England, a report said yesterday.Raymond Gilmour, 55, was a “super-

grass” witness in a 1984 case in which more than 30 members of the Irish Re-publican Army (IRA) paramilitary group were arrested in his native Londonderry, Northern Ireland’s second city.

The 55-year-old’s badly decomposed body was found at his home up to a week after he apparently died of natural causes, according to the Belfast Telegraph.

The 1984 case collapsed and Gilmour was resettled in England and given a new identity.

But he broke cover in 2012 to complain that he had been abandoned by his secu-rity services handlers.

He told BBC television they had prom-ised him a cash sum, a new home, a pen-sion and psychiatric support, but said he only received modest accommodation and a small monthly allowance for three years.

Gilmour’s friend and fellow agent, Mar-tin McGartland, told the Belfast Telegraph:

“It is disgraceful that Ray died in these cir-cumstances.

“He spent years begging MI5 for fi nan-cial and psychological help.

Instead, they turned their back on him.“He was a broken man, a wreck of a hu-

man being, and they left him to die in the gutter.”

The newspaper reported that Gilmour was found in his fl at in Kent, southeast England, by his 18-year-old son.

The funeral will take place next week.Kent police did not immediately re-

spond to a request for comment.The IRA waged a violent struggle to end

British control of Northern Ireland that endured for three decades. Northern Ireland could have a

diff erent relationship to the European Un-ion’s single market or customs union from the rest of the United Kingdom following

its exit from the EU, the leader of the Brit-ish province said yesterday.

The head of Scotland’s devolved gov-ernment Nicola Sturgeon this week said she would make specifi c proposals over the next few weeks to keep Scotland in the single market even if the rest of the UK left, and that British prime minister Theresa May had said she was prepared to listen to options.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom with a land border with the European Union and fi rst minister Arlene Foster has repeatedly said she wants to avoid a “hard border” with border posts and cus-toms checks with the Republic of Ireland.

Asked by Reuters if Northern Ireland might have a special status in relation to either the customs union or the EU’s sin-gle market Foster said “those are all mat-ters, of course, for negotiation”.

“Because of our history and our geog-raphy that things will be slightly diff er-ent here in Northern Ireland,” said Foster, speaking on the sidelines of her party’s an-nual conference.

“We have to recognise that we are the only part of the kingdom with a land bor-der with the European Union so all of those issues have to be sorted through in the ne-gotiation.”

She declined to give any further details of how a settlement might look.

The EU has said Britain’s exporters can

have access to its single, tariff -free market of 500mn consumers only if it maintains the freedom of movement of people with the rest of the EU, which many supporters of Brexit oppose.

Remaining part of the customs union would allow Britain to trade freely with the bloc but would require it to share its com-mon external tariff s, which could com-plicate attempts to strike free trade deals with other countries.

Fifty-six % of Northern Ireland voters rejected Brexit at the referendum in June.

But Foster, who campaigned for Brit-ain to leave said those opposed to Brexit should accept the will of the 52% of Brit-ons who voted to leave.

Foster has mocked the “remoaners” who refuse to accept the vote and wel-comed the rejection by a court on Friday of a legal challenge to Britain’s moves to exit the union.

“All of this niceties around who voted what way is over. The vote has been had.We now need to get on and make it a suc-cess for everyone and that includes those people who didn’t want to leave.”

“I have no time for those who want to refi ght the referendum,” she said.

Foster said she had good relations with the government of the Republic of Ire-land, but criticised it for attempting to use Brexit to poach foreign direct investment jobs from Northern Ireland.

IRA ‘supergrass’ Gilmour is found dead in Britain


A police helicopter was scram-bled in a hunt for a missing child last night after two peo-

ple were stabbed in a south London attack.

Police were called to Tooting at around 8.30pm on Friday to reports of a woman punched in the face and a man, 41, with stab injuries.

Another person was also found with stab wounds.

The assault happened on residential street Pevensey Road, near to the junc-tion of Rostella Road.

A helicopter search was quickly launched to hunt for a child, believed to have been in the care of a couple involved in the assault, who had gone missing.

Witnesses described hearing the

helicopter circling overhead and seeing a light shining down.

Adam Callinan said on Twitter: “What’s happening in Tooting with the helicopter?”

Rosie Percy tweeted: “What’s hap-pening with helicopter activity over Tooting? Trying to sleep and it’s been circling overhead for an hour”. Nicholas Willmore said: “Looks like they were searching Tooting Garden and the back of St George’s.”

The National Police Air Service said they had found the missing person “safe and well”. The three injured peo-ple were taken to hospital and treated for their injuries.

The stab wounds were believed to be minor, police said.

Three people – including the woman who was punched – have been arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm and are at police stations in south Lon-don.

The Met Police said they are not seeking anyone else in connection with the incident.

Pevensey Road and Rostella Road re-mained closed overnight.

A man is fi ghting for his life after he was stabbed in the torso in an east Lon-don cul-de-sac last night.

Police and ambulances rushed to a residential street in Barking at just be-fore 10pm on Friday night following re-ports of the knife attack.

The victim — a man in his 50s — had been stabbed and left in Pelham Av-enue.

Paramedics took him to a nearby hospital where he today remains in a critical condition.

Police said they are keeping an “open mind” as to the motive of the attack, but believe the victim was stabbed by a “lone male”. De-tectives believe the solo attacker made off from the scene on foot and

headed north along Sterry Road.They said they do not yet have a fur-

ther description of the man.No one has yet been arrested and en-

quiries continue, the Met said. A “humble” and “caring” teen-

ager has been stabbed to death on a night out as he tried to break up a fight.

Ziggy Owusu, 19, was knifed a number of times in the early hours yes-terday while out with friends in Good-mayes, east London.

He was the 10th teenager to be stabbed to death in London this year.

Police were called to Goodmayes Road where witnesses saw Owusu be-ing carried out of the Basement Shisha Lounge on a stretcher by paramedics.

It is unclear whether the brawl erupted inside or on the street, with witnesses describing up to 60 people crowded outside amid arguing and girls screaming.

The teenager, who lived on the Jack Dunning Estate in Hackney, was found at 12.40am and taken to an east London hospital where he underwent emergen-cy surgery.

He was pronounced dead an hour later.

Detectives from Scotland Yard’s Homicide and Major Crime Command have launched a murder hunt but are yet to arrest anyone.

Josh Apple, a friend who attended the Royal Alexandra and Albert School with Owusu, said: “He was a funny and caring person.

He was always making me laugh.He was very caring and will be deeply

missed.”Another friend told the Standard: “It

was just a night out.”He was a humble and calm guy, he

never went out looking for trouble.“Everyone is in so much pain because

of how humble he was and also because

he tried to help and solve a problem and in return suff ered.

He was an innocent guy that just tried to stop a fi ght.

I’m not sure who the fi ght was be-tween.”

His family were yesterday too dis-traught to speak, with one relative saying they were “still trying to under-stand” what had happened.

Another friend added: “He was just trying to break up a fi ght.

He was a good guy.“He was one of the funniest guys I

ever met.I always loved seeing him.I’m so shocked this has even hap-

pened to him.I’m so heartbroken.”Police and forensic offi cers yesterday

overturned bins and combed the street outside the shisha bar for weapons and evidence as it remained closed off throughout the day.

Police copter hunts for child after two stabbed

Activists sought road change months prior to death of Italian

Lucia Ciccioli, 32, from Italy.

Raymond Gilmour infiltrated the IRA at the height of The Troubles

It has been claimed that the informer was abandoned by MI5

DPA London

Firefi ghters battled a huge fi re at a 250-year-old hotel in south-western England

for a second day yesterday after part of the building collapsed and the interior was destroyed.

The fi re at the Royal Clarence Hotel in Exeter, which dates back to 1769 and claims to be the oldest hotel in England, began in early hours of Friday after spreading from a neighbouring building.

“Fire crews are still at the scene working hard to get the fi re under control,” Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Serv-ice said in a statement yesterday.

The fi re service said it had sent eight additional fi re en-gines to the hotel, where “steady progress” was being made after a partial collapse of the front fa-cade of the building. Firefi ghters have confi rmed that a gas main ruptured inside the hotel. Gas engineers are trying to isolate the gas supply. No casualties were reported in the fi re.

EUROPE


French President Francois Hollande has urged Britain to take in 1,500 unaccom-

panied minors from the “Jungle” as offi cials stepped up eff orts to fi nish demolishing the almost-deserted Calais migrant camp.

Hailing the evacuation of the sprawling encampment, Hol-lande vowed that France would not accept the emergence of any more makeshift camps, which have become a glaring symbol of Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War II.

He pledged youngsters left at a container camp near the site would be dispersed around the country with the hope that they would eventually be taken in by Britain.

“We had to rise to the chal-lenge of the refugee issue. We could not tolerate the camp and we will not tolerate any others,” he said while visiting a reception centre in Doue-la-Fontaine in western France.

“There are 1,500 unaccom-panied minors left in Calais and they will be very quickly dis-patched to other (reception) cen-tres,” he added.

Hollande said that he had spo-ken to British Prime Minister Theresa May to ensure that Brit-ish offi cials would “accompany these minors to these centres and would play their part in subse-quently welcoming them to the United Kingdom”.

Meanwhile on the ground, three huge diggers moved in to clear the debris of makeshift dwellings in the northern section of the camp which until Tuesday had been home to between 6,000 and 8,000 migrants.

Many tents and shacks had been ravaged as huge fi res ripped through the camp on Wednesday.

Around a dozen riot police trucks were posted at the camp’s entrance, where skips were in place to take away piles of debris.

Offi cials hope to complete the clearance by Monday night and yesterday morning there was lit-tle sign of life save for workmen and police.

In Paris, more than 100 left-wing lawmakers sent a letter to

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd, calling on her government to “immediately” take in unac-companied minors from the Jun-gle who want to rejoin relatives in the UK.

The letter, a copy of which was sent to AFP by the deputy president of the National Assem-bly, Sandrine Mazetier, said that 1,500 unaccompanied minors had been placed in safety in the provisional reception centre – a container camp – in Calais.

“(They) are not seeking any favours: they have the right, in line with current international regulations and British law, to go to Britain.

“Their transfer to Britain is urgent. We ask you to take your responsibilities and assume your moral duty by immediately or-ganising their arrival.”

Britain’s Help Refugees charity estimated that as of late Friday there remained more than 1,000 unaccompanied children living in the container camp.

Since mid-October, Britain has taken in 274 children from the Jungle, mostly youngsters with relatives already living in the country.

Children who had been told they were headed for Britain to join family there were getting ready yesterday, hoping to be on their way later in the day.

Migrants, mainly from Af-ghanistan, Sudan and Eritrea had fl ocked to the camp near the northern port of Calais in the hope of making it across the Channel to Britain.

Clare Moseley, founder of British charity Care4Calais, ex-pressed concern for those who had been evacuated.

“We are worried about what happens next – there will be a multitude of small camps where conditions are even worse than in the Jungle,” she said.

Many Calais locals also fear the Jungle will simply spring back up once the current clearance op-eration is over.

In an illustration of the ongo-ing nature of the problem, more than 2,000 newly-arrived mi-grants have set up camp in north-eastern Paris where hundreds of igloo tents have popped up along a 700m stretch of Avenue de Flandres, a tree-lined boulevard

leading towards the city centre.But Hollande said they too

would be evacuated.“Those who have gone to Paris

are not people who have come from Calais. There are perhaps a few,” he said, describing them as part of “a new migration wave of people coming from Libya in re-cent weeks and months”.

“We are going to do the same as we did in Calais,” the French leader said, meaning makeshift camps in Paris would also be cleared.

“I have been perfectly clear:

those who have a right to claim asylum will go to welcome and orientation centres, and those who don’t will be shown the

door,” he said, referring to their imminent deportation.

French Interior Minister Ber-nard Cazeneuve had on Friday

said that he believed that “85% of those who had been living in (the camp in) Calais were eligible to win refugee status in France”.

France urges UK to take in 1,500 ‘Jungle’ minorsAFPDoué-la-Fontaine, France

People attend a rally in Digoin in support to the arrival of asylum-seekers, next to a placard reading ‘Welcome to the migrants in Digoin’.

Debris of burned makeshift shelters are seen in the Calais ‘Jungle’ migrant camp yesterday during an operation to clear the squalid settlement. Work started again yesterday to tear down the remaining makeshift shelters. Mechanical diggers and other machines tore the structures in the camp, which was ravaged by fires after authorities moved in to clear the settlement.

Record migrant arrivals in ItalyAFPRome

October marked a record monthly high in the number of migrants ar-

riving in Italy in recent years, with more than 27,000 people reaching its shores.

Italy’s interior ministry re-leased fi gures on Thursday showing that 26,161 people – almost all from West Africa and the Horn of Africa – arrived here this month.

Almost another 1,000 were pulled from their dinghies later that day.

Even at the height of recent summers, arrivals have only ever once exceeded 25,000 a month.

The new record brings the to-tal number this year to 159,000, outstripping the 2015 total of 153,000 and approaching the record of 170,000 arrivals in 2014.

“The smugglers are certainly better organised, since they have been able to send off up to 11,000 people in two days,” Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for the In-ternational Organisation for Mi-gration (IOM) in Italy, told AFP.

“But the migrants tell us they are afraid that the route will close in a few months,” particu-larly with a new European pro-gramme launching this week to train the Libyan coast guard.

“And if there is one thing that migrants do not want, it is to be rescued by Libyan coastguards, who take them to detention cen-tres and plunge them back into the cycle of abuse and violence,” he added.

The IOM, which speaks to the arriving migrants, heard “stag-gering” stories of torture, rape, starvation and murder in the crisis-hit country, he said.

Many were squeezing onto the overcrowded smuggler dinghies and increasingly unseaworthy boats, with more than 200 peo-ple dying in the last ten days and fears of greater tragedies to come in the coming weeks if the mass departures continue.

Italy fi nds itself in a particu-larly challenging position with most of the new arrivals forced to remain in the country due to border blocks imposed by its neighbours.

Centres for asylum-seekers – now overwhelmingly located in former hotels – housed 66,000 people in 2014 and 103,000 by the end of 2015.

That fi gure has now hit 171,000, and local authorities are struggling to fi nd new places.

Despite the government’s plan to spread migrants throughout the country, with an average of three migrants per 1,000 inhab-itants, many mayors are resist-ing, backed sometimes by pro-testing locals.

On Monday, people in Gorino, a village of some 700 people in the Delta del Po, erected barri-cades to prevent the arrival of 12 women in a hotel that had been requisitioned.

“This is not how Italians do things,” raged the Interior Min-ister Angelino Alfano, though he was forced to allow the project to be abandoned and the women settled in elsewhere.

But Italy’s anti-migrant Northern League party praised “the new heroes of the resist-ance against the dictatorship of hospitality”.

And during a protest late on Thursday outside a barracks in Milan set to soon house 300 mi-grants, the party’s leader Matteo Salvini called on security forces to rebel.

“It is right to obey, but so is it right to disobey bad orders,” he added.

President Francois Hol-lande has acknowledged France’s “broad respon-

sibility” for the internment of thousands of Roma by the World War II Vichy regime and in the early months of the post-war government.

“The day has come, and this truth must be told,” Hollande said on the fi rst presidential visit to the main internment camp for Roma, located in Montreuil-Bellay, central France. “The (French) Republic acknowledges the suff ering of travelling people who were interned and admits that it bears broad responsibil-ity.”

Roma, also known as gypsies, were brutally persecuted in the Holocaust, in parallel with the systematic murder of Jews.

Estimates of how many died vary widely, between 220,000 and half a million.

Between 6,000 and 6,500

Roma were interned in 31 camps in France under the Vichy re-gime, the government set up in France – but under de-facto Nazi control – after France sur-rendered to Germany in 1940.

The regime fell in the wake of the June 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy.

The biggest of the Roma in-

ternment camps was Montreuil-Bellay, where more than 2,000 were confi ned between Novem-ber 1941 and January 1945.

About a hundred of them died.The camp was also used to in-

tern a number of homeless peo-ple from the city of Nantes.

Some Roma remained in-terned until 1946.

“Nearly all families of travel-ling people have at least one rel-ative who passed through Mon-treuil-Bellay,” Hollande said. “A country, in this case ours, is always bigger for recognising its own history.”

Survivors and descendants of the victims were among a crowd of more than 500 people who at-tended yesterday’s ceremonies, held some seven decades after the last interned Roma were freed.

“It was important for us to have this recognition. It aff ects thousands and thousands” of Roma families, said Fernande Delage, head of the France Lib-erte Voyage NGO. “It’s late, but better late than never.”

Lucien Violet, a 69-year-old whose parents were held in Montreuil-Bellay, also attended the ceremony.

“This is the fi rst president to pay homage to travelling peo-ple. We feel genuinely moved by his presence,” he said, add-ing: “Our families have suff ered enormously and we will never

forget, even though there is for-giveness.”

For many, returning to the site of the camp threw up diffi cult memories.

“It hurts, it really hurts to come back here,” admitted an-other survivor called Henriette Deschelotte. “We did what we could but we were very unhap-py.”

Sandrine Renaire, who heads the Friends of Montreuil-Bellay gypsy camp (AMCT), said that her family was terrifi ed of leav-ing the nearby town of Saumur for fear of being rounded up.

They “never left Saumur out of fear of being caught on the roads and locked up”, she said. “They were deprived of their freedom, which is the worst thing that could have happened to them.”

At the site, a commemorative installation has been set up.

Created by ceramics artist Armelle Benoit, it consists of a portico of eight columns en-graved with the names of the 473 aff ected families.

At the ceremony, Hollande threw his weight behind parlia-mentary moves to scrap a 1969 law that defenders of minorities say is discriminatory.

The legislation traces its roots to a 1912 regulation which sought to push Roma to settle down by requiring “nomads” to have special ID cards.

In 1940, the law was changed, ostensibly as a result of the war, requiring travellers to have a fi xed address in a move which Hollande said was “the result of distrust fed by ancestral fears, prejudices and ignorance”.

Three decades later, it was replaced in 1969 by the require-ment for “travelling people” to have a specifi c set of papers and name a district as their home base – legislation which the French parliament is now likely to repeal.

“It will be, I hope, settled by the parliament so that travelling people no longer have to carry this booklet, so that they can be citizens just like everyone else,” Hollande said.

Hollande admits France’s WWII role in Roma internmentAFPMontreuil-Bellay, France

Hollande and dignitaries stand in line with war veterans during a ceremony to pay tribute to the memory of Roma and travelling people interned by World War II Vichy regime and in the early months of the post-war government.

Hundreds of people braved the cold in Moscow yes-terday to remember vic-

tims of the Stalin era, reading out names of people murdered at the height of the Terror.

Some 200 people congregated opposite the former headquar-ters of Joseph Stalin’s secret

service, home to the FSB and its KGB predecessor, for a ceremony organised by the Memorial NGO in memory of victims killed in the peak of Soviet repression.

“Jiganin, Ivan Georgievich, 59, roads and waterways employer, shot dead on December 31, 1937; Eromenko, Grigori Mitrofanov-ich, 22, worker, shot dead March 16, 1938; Gerassimov Nikolai Grigorievich, 33, PE teacher, shot dead April 13, 1937...”

Just three names on a long list underscoring the apparent arbi-trary nature of those selected for the fi ring squad.

Victims, ranging from teenag-ers to pensioners, came from all walks of life.

Some were Russians, others Jews, Tatars, Poles.

Some were soldiers, others ci-vilians.

Victims were anything from priests or nuns, to simple work-

ers, engineers, bakers, civil serv-ants or tram drivers.

Some emotional participants added their own personal trib-utes to yesterday’s proceedings.

“And my father, shot in 1938,” said one.

“My grandfather, starved to death in a camp,” added another.

“I have come to honour the memory of all these victims of terror,” said Nikolai Borissov, a 36-year-old restaurateur. “Sev-

eral members of my family were shot and my grandmother spent years in a gulag.”

Historians estimate about 1mn people perished in Stalin’s Terror or Great Purge in the mid-1930s, out of around 20mn who died under his three-decade rule be-fore his death in 1953.

Yesterday’s ceremony came ahead of Sunday’s Day of Re-membrance for victims of po-litical repression which former

president Boris Yeltsin set up in 1991, though the Russian au-thorities are not offi cially com-memorating the date.

Some 20 diplomats from the United States, Europe and Can-ada attended yesterday’s gather-ing to place wreathes on a rock memorial set in a Moscow park near Red Square from Solovki in Russia’s far North, the site of one of the fi rst gulags.

Stalin’s grave is barely a stone’s

throw away at a necropolis out-side the Kremlin walls.

Dozens of towns were mean-while holding masses to mark the Stalin era victims.

Commemorating victims of repression remains controversial to the point of being deemed un-patriotic 25 years after the Soviet Union’s demise as Russia today witnesses increased rehabilita-tion of Stalin and nostalgia for his era.

Moscow tribute to victims of Stalin’s Great PurgeAFPMoscow

EUROPE23Gulf Times


Spanish conservative lead-er Mariano Rajoy won a parliamentary vote to be

prime minister yesterday, ending 10 months of political gridlock that had left the country without a fully-functioning government.

Rajoy’s centre-right People’s Party is set to form a minor-ity government, after gaining support from the smaller Ciu-dadanos (“Citizens”) party and the tacit backing of many Social-ist lawmakers who abstained in the confi dence vote.

Rajoy needed to win a simple majority in parliament to cement his return to power.

He got 170 “yes” votes while 111 lawmakers voted against him and 68 legislators abstained.

Later, Rajoy said he would name his new cabinet on Thurs-day.

“I will announce the govern-ment on Thursday afternoon and

they will be sworn in on Friday. I have already spoken with His Majesty the King (Felipe),” he told reporters after the vote.

Yesterday’s vote drew a line under two inconclusive elections and fruitless attempts at coali-tion-building between bickering parties, but it won’t guarantee political instability.

After winning a 2011 election, Rajoy slashed public spending to tackle rising debt as Spain en-dured a severe recession.

Unemployment soared to 27% and the country’s banks needed a €41bn ($45bn) European bailout.

Voters punished Rajoy’s Peo-ple’s Party (PP) even as the econ-omy later recovered, stripping it of its absolute majority.

But the PP still won the most votes in elections last December and in June, and Rajoy resisted calls from rival parties to step aside and let another PP leader try and form a coalition.

He will now have to negotiate with his political opponents to pass any legislation, including

the budget, given his PP has only 137 seats in the 350-seat parlia-ment.

“This is going to require an ef-fort from everyone, on our part too, in terms of trying to pass legislative initiatives,” senior PP lawmaker Rafael Hernando said in a radio interview earlier yes-terday.

Rajoy struck a conciliatory tone this week, off ering to work with opponents on issues like pension and education reform, and opening the door to fur-ther dialogue with Catalonia, a northeastern region in the grip of a strong independence drive.

But his political foes are scep-tical he can change his style.

Thousands of demonstrators were expected to march yester-day in protest against a new Ra-joy government in Madrid.

The Socialists, the second largest force in parliament, are deeply divided over the party’s decision to allow Rajoy to gov-ern.

Former Socialist leader Pedro

Sanchez, ousted in early October over his refusal to enable a Ra-joy government, quit his seat in parliament rather than abstain in yesterday’s vote (see accompa-nying report).

Rajoy, who may need to pass fresh spending cuts to meet defi -cit targets next year, will be able to count on support on some is-sues from the liberal Ciudadanos or “Citizens” party, which came fourth in June’s elections.

However others, including the Socialists and anti-austerity Podemos (“We Can”), have said they will fi ght Rajoy’s policies and will not approve his budgets.

Antonio Barroso, a senior analyst at risk consultancy Te-neo Intelligence, said that Rajoy would head a minority govern-ment with the weakest parlia-mentary support since democ-racy was restored in Spain after General Francisco Franco’s death in 1975.

“It is unlikely that the new government will last four years,” he said in a note.

Rajoy wins vote to be PMAFP/ReutersMadrid

Protesters demonstrate yesterday in Madrid against Rajoy.

Socialist spokesman Antonio Hernando congratulates Rajoy after the vote in parliament.

Spain’s former Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez, who was ousted in a party re-

bellion this month, announced yesterday that he had quit as lawmaker, just hours before his conservative rival was voted back in power.

“I am appearing here in this press room to announce my res-ignation as MP,” the 44-year-old said in an emotional declaration during which he emphasised “how painful the decision was” before breaking down and chok-ing back tears.

But he maintained he was not quitting politics altogether, leav-ing his options open for an up-coming leadership contest that promises to be acrimonious as the Socialist party remains in disarray.

At the head of the Socialists since July 2014 when he won the fi rst ever primaries organised by

the party, Sanchez was a staunch opponent of conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, blast-ing the corruption scandals and spending cuts that marked his fi rst term.

Throughout Spain’s protracted political crisis, which saw parties unable to reach any viable coali-tion deal following two incon-clusive elections, he steadfastly refused to back Rajoy’s Popular Party, which came fi rst in both polls but without enough seats to govern alone.

But as election-weary Spain faced the prospect of yet more polls, the Socialists grew divid-ed among those who wanted to break the deadlock and let Rajoy rule, and others like Sanchez who refused.

Sanchez eventually lost the fi ght and was forced out on Oc-tober 1.

With him out of the way, the Socialists opted to abstain in a crux parliamentary confi dence vote yesterday, which gave Ra-joy enough traction to see him

through and once again lead Spain, if at the head of a minority government.

As a lawmaker, Sanchez had the choice between going against his principles and abstaining, or going against his party and vot-ing no to Rajoy.

So he decided to opt out en-tirely.

“I am convinced that the ma-jority of voters and militants don’t elect the Socialist party to then support what they want to change,” he told reporters.

“Spain needs a credible alter-native to the Popular Party’s pol-icies,” he said, adding he believed Rajoy’s new government would be more of the same.

From tomorrow, he said, the Socialists’ interim executive should set a date and place for an extraordinary congress to re-elect a party chief.

And while he remained mum on whether he would present himself again, he stressed he would be attending the prima-ries.

Spain’s tearful, ex-Socialist leader quits as lawmaker

AFPMadrid

Sanchez (left): Spain needs a credible alternative to the Popular Party’s policies.

Turkish President Re-cep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that his gov-

ernment would ask parliament to consider reintroducing the death penalty as a punishment for the plotters behind the July coup bid.

“Our government will take this (proposal on capital pun-ishment) to parliament. I am convinced that parliament will approve it, and when it comes back to me, I will ratify it,” Er-dogan said at an inauguration ceremony in Ankara.

“Soon, soon, don’t worry. It’s

happening soon, God willing,” he said, as crowds chanted: “We want the death penalty!”

Capital punishment was abolished in Turkey in 2004 as the nation sought accession to the European Union.

After the failed bid to unseat Erdogan on July 15, the leader had threatened to bring the death penalty back for the coup plotters.

Relations between Brussels and Ankara have been strained since Turkey responded to the coup by launching a relentless crackdown against alleged plot-ters in state institutions, amid calls from the EU to act within the rule of law.

Tens of thousands of staff

within the military, judiciary, civil service and education have been dismissed or detained in a crackdown.

Yesterday, Erdogan scoff ed at the West’s warnings on the re-introduction of the death pen-alty.

“The West says this, the West says that. Excuse me, but what counts is not what the West says. What counts is what my people say,” he said, during a ceremony to inaugurate a high-speed train station in the Turk-ish capital.

Ankara accuses Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen who lives in exile in the United States of masterminding the attempt to oust the Turkish president – a

claim that he denies.“What are you doing in Penn-

sylvania, Go on, come here! Why don’t you come home?” Erdogan added.

Erdogan’s government has also repeatedly called on the US to extradite Gulen.

In the event of him not being extradited, “nothing would ever be the same again” in US-Turk-ish relations, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag warned yester-day, according to a report by the Anadolu news agency.

The prospect of the death penalty’s reintroduction has stunned the EU, which makes the abolition of capital punish-ment an non-negotiable condi-tion for joining the bloc.

Turkey parliament to consider death penalty for coup plotters: ErdoganAFPIstanbul

Erdogan visits Ankara’s Anitkabir, the mausoleum of the late founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, during a ceremony marking the 93rd anniversary of Republic Day.

Icelanders voted yesterday in a snap election that could see the anti-establishment Pirate

Party form the next government in the wake of the Panama Papers tax-dodging scandal and linger-ing anger over the 2008 fi nancial meltdown.

Voters are expected to punish the incumbent coalition after the Panama Papers revealed a glo-bal tax evasion scandal that en-snared several senior politicians and forced former prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to resign.

Although the current govern-ment of the conservative Inde-pendence Party and the centrist Progressive Party survived the scandal, it promised a snap elec-tion six months before the end of its term in spring 2017.

Prime Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, who is also the chairman of the Progressive Party, was one of the fi rst people to vote when the polling station opened in the small Icelandic vil-lage of Fludir.

“I’m optimistic. We have found for the last days that many people are coming to us,” Johan-nsson told AFP.

But three separate polls re-leased a day before the vote

showed that the Pirate Party, founded in 2012 by activists, anarchists and former hackers, could win up to 21% of the vote and the Left-Green movement up to 16.8%.

Each of the polls, conducted by the University of Iceland, re-search company MMR and Gal-lup, indicate the incumbent con-servative coalition government would most likely be voted out.

“We’re losing support (be-cause of the) big anti-establish-ment (feeling),” Independence Party MP Birgir Armannsson said.

Final election results will be released shortly after polling sta-tions close, but because no party

is expected to win a majority, Iceland’s fate will only be known after coalition negotiations.

The latest wave of a global movement against establish-ment politics, seen in the US with one-time presidential can-didate Bernie Sanders, the Five-Star Movement in Italy, and the upstart Podemos party in Spain, the Pirate Party could become the parliament’s second largest group.

“I’m looking for some chang-es. The system ... is not all bad,” said Helgi Mar Gunnarsson, a 54-year-old designer, adding that decision-making should be more transparent.

The people of Iceland should

be “more involved”, he told AFP.The Pirates, who campaign

for transparency and the fi ght against corruption, could form the nation’s second centre-left government since Iceland’s inde-pendence from Denmark in 1944.

The Social Democrats and Greens ruled in a coalition be-tween 2009-2013.

The Pirate Party reached a pre-election agreement with three other leftist and centrist opposi-tion parties, including the Left-Greens, the Social Democrats and the Bright Future Movement, to form a coalition government.

Iceland, a volcanic island with a population of 332,000, has re-turned to prosperity since its

2008 fi nancial meltdown.Gross domestic product (GDP)

growth is expected to be above 4% this year thanks to tourism revenues and a recovering fi nan-cial system.

Still, young people do not trust the nation’s traditional parties.

The crisis eight years ago saw Iceland’s three biggest banks and its oversized fi nancial sector collapse, while the country was forced to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

A string of bankers were jailed, the failed banks were temporarily nationalised and then sold, and foreign investors had to accept write-downs on their debt hold-ings.

Olafur Hardarson, professor of political science at the University of Iceland, attributed the Pirates’ rise in popularity to voters’ anger at the 2008 meltdown.

“They have managed to focus on the anti-politics and anti-establishment feelings of a lot of voters (who) have been frustrated in Iceland since the bank crash,” Hardarson told AFP.

But several months ago, the Pirates had almost twice the sup-port the latest polls have shown, according to Icelandic newspaper Morgundbladid.

The fall in popularity may have been caused by internal disputes within the party, the paper add-ed.

Pirate Party eyes power in Iceland snap electionAFPReykjavik

Italian red tape proves fatalAFPRome

Italy’s notorious bureaucracy was blamed yesterday for the death of a pensioner who was

killed when a road bridge col-lapsed hours after the highway agency asked for its closure on safety grounds.

ANAS, the company which runs the country’s main roads, said it had “repeatedly requested the immediate closure” of the bridge over the SS36 dual car-riageway between Milan and Lecco from 2pm onwards on Friday afternoon, after one of its staff reported it to be crumbling in parts.

The bridge collapsed just over three hours later under the weight of an articulated lorry that had been given special au-thorisation to carry an excep-tionally heavy load.

Claudio Bertini, 68, who was travelling on the road below, died when his car was crushed by the collapsing bridge.

Ten others were injured in the resulting crashes and police said it was remarkable the rush hour accident had not caused more fatalities.

ANAS said the road had not been closed immediately be-cause the provincial authorities had asked for the request to be put in writing, a step that re-quired a formal inspection of the site.

An inspector was on his way to the bridge when it collapsed, ANAS said in a statement.

The province of Lecco denied that it had allowed an obsession with paperwork to compromise public safety.

“ANAS’s account of what happened does not accord with the information we have about what happened,” it said in a statement.

Italy is famed for its bureauc-racy with even the most basic services requiring extensive form fi lling and red tape regu-larly cited as a signifi cant barrier to investment and growth.

Employers organisation Con-fi ndustria complains that en-trepreneurs have to deal with at least ten diff erent authorities and frequently spend as much time on administration as on building their companies.

24 Gulf TimesSunday, October 30, 2016

INDIA

Veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader V S Achuthanandan yesterday applauded the Kerala government’s battle against corruption. “Corruption is being dealt with very sternly and I hope it will be taken forward,” Achuthanandan said in Thiruvananthapuram. He was responding to the actions of the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau led by Director General of Police Jacob Thomas, who in the past two days raided the homes of two top IAS off icers holding the rank of additional chief secretary. Both Finance Secretary K M Abraham and Labour Secretary Tom Jose are being probed on the directives of a vigilance court following complaints that they possess assets more than their known sources of income.

Murder accused Rakesh Ranjan alias Rocky Yadav yesterday surrendered in a Bihar court over killing a class 12 student, police said. “Rocky, who arrived in Patna from Delhi on Saturday morning, surrendered in the Gaya Civil Court,” a district police off icial said. Rocky’s parents were also present in the court. A district off icial in Gaya said Rocky was absconding soon after the Supreme Court cancelled his bail on Friday. Rocky’s mother Manorma Devi, a suspended Janata Dal-United lawmaker, told a police team that visited her house to arrest her son that he will surrender in the court soon. Rocky was accused of fatally shooting student Aditya Sachdeva after his car overtook Rocky’s Land Rover on May 7.

Air India yesterday apologised for publishing an article in its in-flight magazine that said that non-vegetarian dishes were served at the Jagannath temple in Puri. “AI apologises for the error. Our intention was not to hurt sentiments. #ShubhYatra magazine copies have been removed with immediate eff ect,” the airline tweeted. Shubh Yatra, the in-flight monthly magazine, published the wrong information in an article titled ‘Devotion Can Be Delicious’. Various organisations and people in Odisha criticised Air India for publishing the article. “This is an unfortunate incident. We will take it up strongly with the appropriate authorities,” Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said.

The post office at Kedarnath shrine which was washed away in the 2013 flash floods, has been restored and started operations, an official said yesterday. The post office’s new building has begun operations from the Punjab and Sind dharmsala, the official said, adding the main priest of the Kedarnath shrine inaugurated the post office. The post office was washed away in the June 2013 flash floods that killed over 5,700 people and permission for restoration took three years. “But we are happy that it has become functional once again,” the official said. The post office was used as a ‘delivery point’ while its head office was in Gopeshwar, Rudraprayag.

A man, infuriated over marital dispute, stabbed his mother-in-law and father-in-law to death and critically injured three others including his wife here, police said in New Delhi. The incident took place around 7.30pm on Friday, when Chintu came to meet his wife, Renu, at his in-laws’ house to give them sweets for Diwali. “The couple had a dispute last year and Renu had been living with her parents in Chirag Delhi since then,” said Nupur Prasad, additional deputy commissioner of police. Chintu, who works as a driver, killed Renu’s mother Roshan, 54, and her father Trilok Chand, 54. The injured - Neha, Renu and her brother Lalit - have been admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) in critical condition.

Achuthanandan praisesgovt over corruption fight

Suspect in road rage murder surrenders

AI ‘sorry’ for wrong article on temple

Post off ice washed away in floods functional again

Man kills mother-in-lawand father-in-law

INVESTIGATION JUDICIARYAPLOLOGY RESTORATION DISPUTE

People light lamps arranged to form a tribute to fallen soldiers of the Indian Army, on the eve of Diwali, the festival of lights, in Chandigarh, yesterday.

Diwali tributes to soldiers

Fireworks marketdestroyed in blaze

A major fire broke out in a temporary fireworks market here yesterday morning, destroying over 200 big and small shops and over 50 vehicles, off icials said.No casualties were initially reported in the incident as almost shopkeepers and customers managed to escape to safety. However, several hours later, at least two men are reported missing and eff orts are on to trace them, off icials said.At least a dozen vans, 10 auto-rickshaws and more than two dozen two-wheelers parked in the vicinity were destroyed.The blaze occurred in the Aurangpura annual Diwali fireworks market at the Zilla Parishad ground, due to a suspected short circuit in some stalls in the centre, according to preliminary investigations.With loud booming sounds, rockets taking off in all directions and other fireworks getting lit, the blaze quickly spread and engulfed the entire market where the stalls were erected close to each other.Eyewitnesses said thick black, toxic smoke billowed in the skies which could be seen several kilometres away while panicky shopkeepers and customers ran to safety.Hundreds of scared people living in the vicinity of the ground ran out of their homes to safety even as firemen battled the blaze.Locals estimate the losses to firecrackers stocks and other materials in excess of several millions of rupees.

Children of bonded labourers use memories to rescue othersReuters Bengaluru

They are not easy to spot. Working in vegetable patches and on millet

fi elds in Karnataka, farm labour-ers caught in debt bondage suff er mainly in silence.

But Gopal V has lived with this silence for long enough.

Now 44, the son of bonded la-bourers is on a mission to iden-tify workers trapped in debt bondage - and to make sure they get justice.

“My parents worked endless hours not for money, just food,” Gopal said. “They worked for a landlord in my village, whose

house I still can’t enter. He paid them back with a little food, and my father died in bondage.”

Now, he travels across villages around Anekal, near Bengaluru, looking for people like his par-ents.

There is an urgency to his search, he says, because he wants to “get them out before they die.”

India banned the practice of bonded labour in 1976, but the country is still home to 11.7mn bonded labourers, according to the International Labour Organ-isation (ILO). The labourers may be working to pay off a loan from their employer, or a debt inher-ited from a relative.

Jeevika, a non-profi t organi-sation that works to eradicate

bonded labour in the southern state, said it identifi ed 12,811 bonded labourers in Karnataka between 2012 and 2015.

Most of them are still waiting for state authorities to give them release certifi cates and compen-sation money, it said.

Its founder, Kiran Kamal Prasad, estimates that there are up to 200,000 bonded labourers across Karnataka.

“It is a perennial problem that persists in the agriculture sec-tor,” said Druthi Lakshmi of the state’s rural development de-partment.

“We know they are really poor, illiterate people who often go back to the same landlord for work after they are rescued be-

cause the rehabilitation money is not enough.”

The government is in the process of undertaking a more comprehensive survey to identi-fy people in bondage, she added.

Gopal and others like him who work in partnership with Jeevika use their childhood memories of suff ering and debt bondage to encourage others to fi nd a way out of it.

“The fear of the landlord still exists in our Dalit communities and people refuse to acknowl-edge they are in bondage,” said Ramakrishna V, also the son of a bonded labourer.

“It takes a lot of talking before they break down and admit they are paying off a loan they took

many, many years ago,” said Ra-makrisha, now a lawyer fi ghting for workers’ rights in court.

Activists say most people trapped in bonded labour are unaware of the fact they might have paid off their initial loan 10 times over.

In addition, the 1976 Aboli-tion of Bonded Labour Act can-cels any dues that may be pend-ing when a worker is rescued from bondage, they said.

Jayaboraiah, 47, recalled how he was studying in his room when the landlord of his hostel came knocking.

“He said my father had dis-appeared without repaying the Rs800 ($12) loan he had taken to start a sericulture (silk production)

business. I dropped out of school and spent eight years working in his home and fi eld to pay off that loan,” Jayaboraiah said.

But a glance at a report on bonded labour in a newspaper one morning led him to a gov-ernment offi ce to ask for help.

“Now I know the law and am able to explain to families in debt bondage that they have repaid their dues and should now be demanding minimum wages,” he said.

All three men said their per-sonal experience of growing up in the shadow of debt bondage helps them to start a conversa-tion about the issue in villages where traditionally lower-caste people still fi nd it “almost im-

possible to leave the clutches of a landlord.”

Gopal said: “We are constant-ly threatened and so are workers, but we keep going to villages and areas where Dalits live and we lived until recently.

“It takes a lot of probing be-fore anyone admits to having taken a loan and working to re-pay it. It takes us months to build trust,” he said.

Gopal’s three daughters have documented the lives of their grandfather and uncles who worked as bonded labourers.

“I tell them about it because it is the reality from which they have emerged, and it makes them sensitive to the fact that many more still need help,” Gopal said.

Armed forces pained bygovt decisions: RahulIANSNew Delhi

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has told Prime Minister Naren-

dra Modi that decisions taken by the government over the past few weeks had adversely aff ected the morale of the armed forces and caused them “pain and hurt.”

Gandhi sent a letter to the prime minister a few days af-ter Modi started a campaign #Sandesh2Soldiers to invite people to send letters and messages to the armed forces on the occasion Diwali.

In the letter, written on Friday and released to media yesterday, Gandhi said he was saddened by the actions taken by the government in the last few weeks and urged that sol-diers should be shown care not only through words but actions.

“As we celebrate Diwali, and rejoice in the victory of light over darkness, let us send this message to our sol-diers that our gratitude is ex-pressed both in words and in deed. This is the very least we

owe to those who give up their today to secure our tomor-row,” he said.

Gandhi called upon Modi to address “anomalies” in the 7th Pay Commission with re-gard to the armed forces and implement the One Rank One Pension (OROP) in a mean-ingful way.

“I am writing to bring to your attention several reports emerging in the media about decisions taken over the last few weeks by the government, that I believe adversely af-fect the morale of our armed forces.

“I am saddened that in the last few weeks actions taken by the government, far from reassuring the soldiers, have indeed caused them pain and hurt,” he said in the letter.

Gandhi noted that just days after the Indian Army con-ducted ‘surgical strikes’ on militant launch pads across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, “the disability pension system was convert-ed to a new slab system, that in many instances drastically reduces the pension received by these brave men in case of a disability.”

He said the rollout of the 7th Pay Commission contin-ues to keep our defence forces at a disadvantage and “further exacerbates the disparity be-tween them and civil employ-ees.”

“And fi nally, contrary to what was promised, OROP as implemented by your gov-ernment, does not fully meet the genuine demands of our ex-servicemen and they have been forced to come out on the streets to make their voice heard on this vital issue,” Gandhi said.

The Congress leader also pointed to media reports claiming that the government has “downgraded the status of military offi cers vis-a-vis their civilian counterparts in a letter dated October 18.”

“I therefore urge you to ensure that our soldiers get their due whether it is regard-ing compensation, disability pension or parity with civil employees.”

He said that their demands must be met “because soldiers should not have to struggle to claim what is surely due to them on behalf of a grateful nation.”

Govt off ers tobuy foreignfi ghter jets ifmade in IndiaA deal for 200 single-engine planes produced in India could be worth anything from $13-$15bn, experts say

ReutersNew Delhi

India is off ering to buy hun-dreds of fi ghter planes from foreign manufacturers - as

long as the jets are made in India and with a local partner, air force offi cials say.

A deal for 200 single-engine planes produced in India - which the air force says could rise to 300 as it fully phases out age-ing Soviet-era aircraft - could be worth anything from $13-$15bn, experts say, potentially one of the country’s biggest military aircraft deals.

After a deal to buy high-end Rafale planes from France’s Das-sault was scaled back to just 36 jets last month, the Indian Air Force is desperately trying to speed up other acquisitions and arrest a fall in operational strength, now a third less than required to face both China and Pakistan.

But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration wants any further military planes to be built in India with an Indian partner to kickstart a domestic aircraft industry, and end an ex-pensive addiction to imports.

Lockheed Martin said it is interested in setting up a pro-duction line for its F-16 plane in India for not just the Indian military, but also for export.

And Sweden’s Saab has of-fered a rival production line for its Gripen aircraft, setting up an early contest for one of the biggest military plane deals in play.

“The immediate shortfall is 200. That would be the mini-mum we would be looking at,” said an air offi cer briefed on the Make-in-India plans under which a foreign manufacturer will partner local fi rms to build the aircraft with technology transfer.

India’s defence ministry has written to several companies

asking if they would be willing to set up an assembly line for sin-gle-engine fi ghter planes in In-dia and the amount of technol-ogy transfer that would happen, another government source said.

“We are testing the waters, testing the foreign fi rms’ will-ingness to move production here and to fi nd out their expecta-tions,” the person said.

The IAF originally planned for 126 Rafale twin-engine fi ghters from Dassault, but the two sides could not agree on the terms of local production with a state-run Indian fi rm and settled for 36 planes in a fl y-away condi-tion.

Adding to the military’s prob-lems is India’s three-decade eff ort to build a single-engine fi ghter of its own which was meant to be the backbone of the air force.

Only two of those Light Combat Aircraft, called Tejas, have been delivered to the air force which has ordered 140 of them.

The IAF is down to 32 op-erational squadrons compared with the 45 it has said are nec-essary, and in March the vice chief Air Marshal B S Dhanoa told parliament’s defence com-mittee that it didn’t have the operational strength to fi ght a two-front war against China and Pakistan.

Saab said it was ready to not only produce its frontline Gripen fi ghter in India, but help build a local aviation industry base.

“We are very experienced in transfer of technology - our way of working involves extensive co-operation with our partners to establish a complete ecosys-tem, not just an assembly line,” said Jan Widerström, chairman and managing director, Saab In-dia Technologies.

He confi rmed Saab had re-ceived the letter from the Indian government seeking a fourth generation fi ghter.

A source close to the com-pany said that while there was no minimum order set in stone for it to lay down a production line, they would expect to build at least 100 planes at the facility.

Lockheed Martin said it had responded to the defence minis-try’s letter with an off er to trans-fer the entire production of its F-16 fi ghter to India.

“Exclusive F-16 production in India would make India home to the world’s only F-16 production facility, a leading exporter of ad-vanced fi ghter aircraft, and off er Indian industry the opportunity to become an integral part of the world’s largest fi ghter aircraft supply chain,” Abhay Paranjape, National Executive for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Business Development in India said in an e-mail.

Lockheed’s off er comes on the back of expanding US-India military ties in which Washing-ton has emerged as India’s top arms supplier in recent years, ousting old ally Russia.

Earlier this year Boeing also off ered India its twin-engine F/A-18 Hornets, but the level of technology transfer was not clear.

India has never previously at-tempted to build a modern air-craft production line, whether military or civilian.

State-run Hindustan Aero-nautics (HAL) has assembled Russian combat jets including the Su-30, but these are under licensed production.

“We have never had control over technology. This represents the most serious attempt to build a domestic base. A full or a near-full tech transfer lays the ground for further development,” said retired Indian air marshal M Matheswaran, a former adviser at HAL.

He said the Indian govern-ment would be looking at pro-ducing at least 200 fi ghters, and then probably some more, to make up for the decades of delay in modernising the air force.

“We are very experienced in transfer of technology - our way of working involves extensive co-operation with our partners to establish a complete ecosystem, not just an assembly line”

INDIA


25

Paddy pollution

A farmer burns paddy stubble in a field near the Wagah border, about 35km from Amritsar yesterday. Every year around this time, farmers in Haryana and Punjab set paddy stubble ablaze to prepare ground for the next crop. In the process, the fires damage soil quality and cause heavy pollution but the farmers say they have no alternative.

Kerala govtwithdrawsapproval fornew airportChief minister launches paddy cultivation in land set apart for Aranmula airport

By Ashraf PadannaThiruvananthapuram

Kerala Chief Minister Pi-narayi Vijayan yesterday sent out a clear message to

promoters of India’s fi rst private airport by deciding to restart cul-tivation in the nearby 56 acres of paddy fi elds lying unused for the past two decades.

The state’s fi fth international airport project in the temple town of Aranmula was hanging fi re since an earlier government of Vijayan’s Left Democratic Front (LDF) alliance gave in-principle clearance and notifi ed some 2,500 acres as industrial land, practically lifting the ceil-ing on the landholding.

Last month, the government informed the Kerala High Court that it was withdrawing the no-tifi cation and in-principle clear-ance to the project, which its opponents say would destroy the environment and defi le the nearby Parthasarathy Temple.

Vijayan, who also holds the in-dustries portfolio, said he would

soon initiate proceedings to de-notify the land the airport com-pany holds as an industrial area. The government is spending Rs15.3mn to restore paddy fi elds of Aranmula.

“We are not against airports and other infrastructure projects. But they should not be at the cost of environment,” Vijayan said af-ter launching cultivation, throw-ing paddy seeds into the fi elds from a podium, along with min-isters and LDF legislators, 1.5km away from the project site.

“The promoters had come to me twice (seeking support). I told them this is our position and we are not against any airport. The issue is now before the court. That doesn’t mean we are for the airport building here.”

The previous government, which restricted the industrial area to 500 acres, had off ered a few acres of land to the KGS Aranmula International Airport for a 10% stake in the Rs20bn project which targets huge NRI population here, besides tourists and pilgrims to the Sabarimala hill shrine.

Its promoters insist that they did not fi ll fi elds or wetlands and it was all done by the previous owners. They say they are pre-

pared to build the airport, though on a lesser scale than the original plan, in the existing land in their position.

Supporters, largely NRIs and opposition Congress Party lead-ers, cite large-scale destruction of mountains and paddy fi elds for the upcoming Kannur airport and the highly successful Cochin airport to emphasise their point.

“We only said the airport can-not be allowed here as it will mean destroying nature and the envi-ronment. We do not want an air-port here. There will be no change in this decision,” Vijayan said.

A federal expert appraisal committee on infrastructure has given its nod to the KGS Aran-mula International Airport Lim-ited to go ahead with a new en-vironment impact assessment (EIA).

The National Green Tribu-nal had in May last year ordered stopping all construction ac-tivities at the airport site, in the Pathanamthitta district, on technical grounds.

The Supreme Court later up-held the verdict questioning the competence of Enviro Care India Pvt Ltd, the agency that prepared the EIA, as it has no government accreditation.

Jayalalithaa puts thump printon poll paper of candidateIANSChennai

Tamil Nadu Chief Minis-ter J Jayalalithaa, in hos-pital since last month,

has an infl amed right hand as she had undergone a tracheos-tomy and had to affi x her left thumb impression in the poll documents submitted by an All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam candidate.

Polling in Aravakurichi, Thanjavur and Thiruparankun-dram assembly constituencies is to be held on November 19 and the ruling AIADMK candi-dates have fi led their papers.

Under the Representation of People Act, a candidate con-testing on behalf of a political party has to submit Form B, where their party’s leader has to authorise the candidate to contest under the party’s elec-tion symbol.

The three AIADMK candi-dates submitted their papers on October 28 to the Returning Offi cers.

It has come to light that Jay-alalithaa has affi xed her left thumb impression on the form submitted by AIADMK candi-date Thiruparankundram can-didate A K Bose.

The thumb impression was attested by a government doc-

tor – P Balaji, professor of Min-imal Access Surgery in Madras Medical College.

In his comments, Balaji said: “Since the signatory has under-gone tracheostomy recently and has an infl amed right hand, she is temporarily unable to affi x her signature. Hence she has affi xed her left thumb impression on her own in my presence.”

Dr Babu K Abraham of Apollo Hospitals, where she is admit-ted, signed as a witness.

Tracheostomy is a medical procedure whereby a direct air-way is created by an incision in the windpipe enabling a person to breathe directly without the use of nose or mouth.

MP’s aide heldover spy racket

An aide to a Samajawadi Party MP

was arrested in connection with an

espionage case that led to the expul-

sion of Pakistan High Commission

off icial Mehboob Akhtar from India,

police said yesterday. Farhat, person-

al assistant to Rajya Sabha member

Munavvar Saleem, was arrested

from Uttar Pradesh on Friday night.

Police said Farhat had “direct in-

volvement” with three men arrested

as part of a ‘spy ring’ allegedly being

run by Akhtar. The three - Sohaib

Nagaur, Maulana Ramzan and Sub-

hash Jangir - hailed from Rajasthan.

According to the police, Farhat used

to hand over off icial documents

to Akhtar for money. Farhat, along

with Ramzan and Jangir, had come

in contact with the Pakistan High

Commission off icial, who allegedly

was an Inter Services Intelligence

(ISI) agent, some years ago. The MP

sacked Farhat yesterday and said he

regretted employing him.

LATIN AMERICA


Venezuela and Colombia dominate LatAm summit

ReutersCartagena, Colombia

Venezuela’s political crisis and Colombia’s stuttering peace process looked certain to dom-

inate the Ibero-American Summit today rather than an offi cial agenda about youth, entrepreneurship and education.

Amid a swing to the political right around the region, Peru’s president and former investment banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was leading calls to put Venezuela at the top of the agen-da.

The oil-rich country’s socialist government is facing an escalation of opposition protests after electoral au-thorities suspended a referendum on President Nicolas Maduro’s rule.

Maduro, 53, who narrowly won election to succeed Hugo Chavez in 2013, has been facing political chal-lenges because of the deep economic crisis.

He was due to attend the summit briefl y on Saturday, organisers and a Venezuelan government source said.

Heads of state and offi cials from around Latin America, as well as Por-tugal and Spain, were attending the meeting in the coastal humidity of colonial Cartagena and were due to re-lease a statement later yesterday.

Venezuela, despite having the world’s largest oil reserves, is mired in a prolonged recession worsened by currency depreciation and low oil prices.

Critics say Maduro has kept a grip on power by side-lining the legisla-ture. But he says foes are seeking to topple him illegally.

The summit’s host Colombia, meanwhile, is scrambling to save a hard-won peace deal with the Revo-lutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc.

The deal, hammered out over al-most four years of diffi cult negotia-tions, was rejected in a plebiscite vote this month by less than half a percent-age point.

The regional leaders met at the same conference centre where the deal was signed just over a month ago.

President Juan Manuel Santos, who was re-elected in 2014 on a platform focused on achieving peace, has held meetings with the opposition in a bid to modify the deal enough to satisfy critics.

“Peace for Colombia will be a real-ity,” Santos said in opening remarks at the conference.

“We will not betray the hopes of Colombians or the international com-munity, which has accompanied us with such generosity.”

Government negotiators have re-turned to Havana, Cuba, where the original talks took place, to discuss opposition suggestions with Farc leadership and make changes to the accord.

Leaders at the summit have repeat-edly expressed their support for the peace process, which would end 52 years of war that have killed nearly a quarter of a million people.

Panama’s President Juan Carlos Varela and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos wave as Colombian first lady Maria Clemencia Rodriguez looks on during a welcome ceremony during the XXV Ibero-American Summit in Cartagena, Colombia.

Colombia grapples with setbacks in peace eff ortsBy Alina Dieste, ReutersBogota

Colombia’s government claimed progress Friday toward saving a peace deal with Farc rebels,

but eff orts to open talks with another guerrilla group, the ELN, remained sus-pended over a hostage dispute.

President Juan Manuel Santos said recently he aimed for a “complete peace” through deals with both groups after half a century of war.

Now he is fi ghting to salvage the peace eff ort on two fronts.

An accord with the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) was meant to crown a historic agreement signed last month with Colombia’s biggest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). That was until vot-

ers surprised the government by reject-ing the Farc accord in an October 2 ref-erendum. Critics said the deal was too soft on the Farc.

Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize this month for his eff orts. But he admit-ted there was still work to be done.

After the referendum, Santos’s team went back to the drawing board with Farc negotiators in Havana.

They said Friday they had begun drafting a new deal, taking into account the demands of opponents of the earlier accord.

“The proposals are being discussed carefully. Many of them are being incor-porated into the text of a new accord,” both sides said in a joint statement.

They said they would resume work next week “with the aim of securing a new defi nitive accord quickly and effi -ciently.”

Santos said his negotiators, mean-while, would meet again with their po-litical opponents on Saturday to discuss their demands for the new accord.

“Time is pressing, because the cease-fi re we agreed is fragile,” he said.

“It is a question of goodwill and tak-ing decisions. This can be achieved in days.”

Meanwhile, the peace drive suff ered another setback this week.

The government on Thursday post-poned the offi cial start of talks with the ELN.

Santos complained the ELN had not yet released a hostage, former con-gressman Odin Sanchez.

ELN negotiator Pablo Beltran said the group had agreed to release Sanchez but had not promised to do so before the dialogue is launched.

The talks were to have been formally

inaugurated on Thursday with the fi rst proper sessions of negotiations sched-uled for November 3.

Analysts said Thursday’s postpone-ment was likely just a hiccup.

“It can’t be called a failure yet,” said Carlos Alfonso Velasquez, a specialist in confl ict analysis.

“But it will be if the talks do not start on November 3, and the ELN knows it.”

Colombian authorities estimate the ELN currently has 1,500 members.

That makes it smaller than the Farc, which has some 5,765 members.

Analysts said the ELN also has a dif-ferent approach to peace talks.

The Farc freed its hostages before peace talks and later declared a cease-fi re.

In a reminder of the stakes of the peace bid, deadly violence struck after the ELN talks were postponed.

Two truck drivers were killed in the country’s northeast in what the military said was a “terrorist act” committed by the ELN.

“The ELN guerrilla group comes strengthened to the negotiations with the government,” Colombia’s Confl ict Analysis Resource Center (CERAC) said in a report this month.

“Over the past three years this group has increased its level of violence.”

Colombia’s ideological and territo-rial confl ict broke out in 1964, when the Farc and ELN were formed.

It has drawn in various groups and killed more than 260,000 people, ac-cording to Colombian authorities.

“These negotiations will not be easy,” said Ariel Avila, an analyst at Colombia’s Peace and Reconciliation Foundation.

“Getting them started will be even harder.”

Evangelical bishop leads Rio mayoral election race

By Carola Sole, AFPRio de Janeiro

A gospel-singing evangeli-cal bishop with a contro-versial past is favoured to

be elected the new mayor of Rio de Janeiro today.

Various towns and cities across Brazil are holding runoff votes after a fi rst round on Oc-tober 2 saw the country’s former governing party (PT) humiliated.

The municipal polls are a gauge of how Brazil is shifting to the right ahead of presidential elections in 2018.

The most closely-watched race is in Rio, host of last month’s Olympic Games.

Its outgoing mayor Eduardo Paes is a member of the center-right PMDB party of Brazil’s un-popular President Michel Temer.

Now Marcelo Crivella, 59, from the conservative Brazilian Republican Party (PRB), is ex-pected to win the vote.

A senator and former mis-sionary in Africa, Crivella once wrote that homosexuality was a “terrible evil.”

His party is considered the political wing of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, founded by Crivella’s billionaire uncle.

Crivella has promised a tough crackdown on violent crime in the troubled metropolis.

Opinion polls have given him a lead of up to 20 points over his leftist rival Marcelo Freixo.

Freixo, 49, of the Socialism and Freedom Party, proposes so-cially liberal policies.

The Workers’ Party was once a strong force in Brazilian politics, but has fallen low.

Dilma Rousseff lost the presi-dency in August after being im-peached for allegedly fi ddling state accounts.

That ended 13 years of PT gov-ernment in Brazil.

Under the PT, Latin America’s biggest economy soared before plunging into recession.

Rousseff ’s predecessor, party founder Luiz Inacio Lula da Sil-va, faces charges linked to a huge corruption probe into state oil fi rm Petrobras.

In the economic capital Sao Paulo, the PT lost control of city hall outright in the fi rst round on October 2.

Rousseff was replaced by Te-mer after her impeachment. Temer is deeply unpopular, ac-cording to opinion polls. He is pushing a public spending cap through congress.

But voters are apparently even more fed up with recession and corruption scandals.

The PMDB won more city halls than any other party in the fi rst round.

Crivella is eyeing victory de-spite suff ering some shock rev-elations during the election campaigns.

He was forced to deny a re-port in Veja magazine on Oc-tober 22 that he was arrested in 1990 for making armed threats when evicting a family from land owned by his church.

“He simply represents infl u-ence and the introduction of religion into politics,” said Ivar Hartmann, a law professor at Rio’s Getulio Vargas Foundation.

Crivella has risen thanks to “the evangelists’ growing indoc-trination of middle and lower-class communities,” Hartmann said.

Brazil’s evangelical movement was seen as one of the drivers of Rousseff ’s impeachment.

One of the leaders of the proc-ess was prominent evangelist Eduardo Cunha, the former speaker of congress.

Cunha has since been arrest-ed for alleged corruption in the Petrobras case.

Authorities have boosted se-curity in Rio and other cities for today’s vote.

Brazil’s mutant mosquitoes to help in breeding out deadly diseasesBy Natalia Ramos, AFP Piracicaba, Brazil

Scientists in Brazil are preparing to release millions of factory-bred mosquitoes in an attempt

to wipe out their distant cousins that carry tropical diseases.

The insects’ method: have sex and then die.

British fi rm Oxitec says its geneti-cally modifi ed mosquitoes will swarm in among ordinary species such as Aedes aegypti, the insect that carries feared diseases such as Zika, dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya.

They will mate with the females of the ordinary mosquitoes, spawning babies with a genetically inbuilt fl aw that causes them to die quickly.

With their work done, the modi-fi ed father mosquitoes will then give up the ghost themselves — as they are genetically programmed to do.

Oxitec says its factory in the town of Piracicaba, northwest of Sao Pau-lo, can produce 60mn mutant mos-quitoes a week.

Piracicaba is the world’s “fi rst and biggest factory” of genetically modi-fi ed mosquitoes, said Oxitec presi-dent Hadyn Parry.

“This is the only place where we have a factory like this.

We can use this as a hub for Brazil,” said Parry, who travelled to Piraci-caba for the plant opening.

Currently their only Brazilian cus-tomer is the city of Piracicaba, “but we are having conversations with several municipalities and states,” Parry said.

According to the fi rm, fi ve fi eld

tests that they conducted between 2011 and 2014 — in Panama and the Cayman Islands, as well as the north-eastern Brazilian state of Bahia — showed the population of wild Aedes aegypti insects dropped by 90% af-ter the mutant mosquitoes were re-leased.

Oxitec does not yet have a sales permit from Brazil’s Anvisa health authorities, and there are no epide-miological studies showing whether mosquito-carried diseases drop after the factory-bred insects are released.

Parry is not concerned.“We are still waiting for Anvisa ap-

proval — we have no date for it, but we expect it for 2017,” he said.

And none of this has stopped the mayor of Piracicaba from signing a four-year, $1.1mn deal with Oxitec.

In its fi rst wave, the company will release 10mn factory-bred mos-quitoes each week into this city of 360,000 people.

The need for insect control is pressing, as the summer in the south-ern hemisphere approaches and the mosquito population — and cases of the diseases that they carry — is likely to boom.

As of July nearly 1.4mn cases of dengue were recorded in Brazil, fol-lowing the record 1.6mn cases in 2015, according to health ministry fi gures.

In the same period 174,000 cases of Zika were reported.

The Zika virus outbreak began in late 2015 in Brazil and has since spread across the Americas.

Zika is particularly dangerous to pregnant women because it can cause birth defects such as microcephaly, in

which babies are born with unusually small heads and brain deformities.

Zika infection has also been linked to a nerve and immune disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Scientists keep the spacious rooms at the Piracicaba factory at tempera-ture and humidity levels ideal for mosquito breeding.

While female mosquitoes are kept for breeding, male mosquitoes of the OX513A breed — especially developed by Oxitec in 2002 — are released to mate with females in the wild, pro-duce short-lived off spring, then die.

Oxitec biologist Karla Tepedino dismisses environmentalists’ con-cerns about the lack of long-term impact studies.

“There are three essential factors for the transmission of these diseas-es: the mosquitoes, the virus and hu-mans. What we do here is eliminate the mosquitoes, which transmit the virus,” Tepedino told AFP.

“Eliminating the vector, we elimi-nate the disease,” she said.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito is well-adapted to city life as it can breed in even tiny amounts of water, such as a puddle of rainwater or water pooled in fl owerpots.

Experts have pointed to poor sani-tation and the practice of storing open water containers in poor neigh-bourhoods as contributing factors in the explosive growth of the mosquito population.

Separately, Rio de Janeiro authori-ties are attempting to control their mosquito population by releasing in-sects inoculated with the Wolbachia bacteria, which makes them resistant to Zika, dengue and other viruses.

Daughter of slain Chile leader says won’t run for president

Isabel Allende, daughter of Chile’s martyred leader Salvador Allende, said she has decided not to stand for

her nation’s presidency, just weeks after announcing she was mulling a run.

“After deep refl ection, I have decided not to go forward” with a presidential campaign, Allende told the Mediabanco news agency on Friday.

Allende is a senator and the daughter of former president Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by late dictator Augusto Pinochet in a 1973 coup.

Isabel Allende — the leading name from the left who was considering a presidential run — is not to be confused with her distant relative of the same name who is a best-selling novelist.

Allende said she will focus her eff orts on “ensuring unity within the Socialist Party” her late father founded decades ago, alongside other leftist leaders.

The socialist party was in deep cri-sis after last week’s local elections that gave conservatives with the Chile Va-mos group a narrow victory over the

ruling coalition of Bachelet’s left-lean-ing New Majority. General elections in 2017 will pick a successor for Chile’s socialist President Michelle Bachelet, at a time when the left here is struggling.

Michelle Bachelet, the nation’s fi rst woman president, has been besieged by a corruption scandal involving her son and is struggling to deliver on the reform agenda that got her elected by a landslide in 2013. She served a fi rst term from 2006 to 2010, and — constitutionally barred from imme-diate re-election — returned in 2014.

Children perform during the opening of an international ballet festival in Havana.

Ballet students

PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN27Gulf Times


Pakistan’s online seminaries teach Qur’an to a global classroom

A pin-drop silence engulfs Chandni Chowk square in the Pakistani garrison

city of Rawalpindi around mid-night.

Only the sounds of passing cars and howling stray dogs still punctuate the air as shopkeepers and vendors wrap up business following a long day.

A few dozen motorbikes roar past as young, bearded men ride to their overnight jobs.

The men are teachers at online seminaries established in recent years which teach Islam to peo-ple in the US and Europe through web-based platforms like Skype.

“This is a source of income for me as well as a holy duty of spreading Islam,” says Yasir Ha-roon, walking up a dark stairway of a multi-storey building to reach his offi ce.

Haroon has been running a Skype seminary, also known as a madrasa, for three years from a small apartment.

Students from the US, Brit-ain, France and the Netherlands study with him.

He has hired seven teachers, all graduates of Pakistani ma-drasas, to teach students how to read the Qur’an in Arabic and to explain its meaning along with basic Islamic principles.

“People in the West are inter-ested in Islam,” Haroon explains, as the other teachers begin their daily lessons on Skype. “We have experienced an increase in de-mand.”

“This is how you should read this,” a teacher instructs his stu-dent, reciting a Qur’an verse af-ter asking the young man on the other end to follow him.

Islamic centres in Western countries help madrasas en-roll students, or simple online searches can also be used to make the connection, Haroon adds.

Students, mostly children from expat families from Paki-stan, India and Bangladesh, take lessons individually or in small groups for up to half an hour a day.

Neither the government nor the federations which control

conventional madrasas know exactly how many online semi-

naries there are in Pakistan.“You can’t keep a tab on them,”

says Amir Tuaseen, the head of the Pakistan Madrasa Education Board (PMEB). “All that you need is a computer and a Skype ID.”

“The number is very high...in the thousands,” guesses Imran Jamshed, who runs a seminary in the same city.

Online seminaries are operat-ing not only in Pakistan but also in India and Bangladesh, Jam-shed says.

Apart from markets like the US, Canada and Europe, the ma-drasas are also venturing into places like China and South Af-rica, says Maulana Rehmat Niaz, the owner of another seminary.

Niaz runs a seminary in the north-western town of Manse-hra, and a number of Chinese Uighur Muslims have enrolled.

The Chinese government sus-pects that the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group of Uighur Muslims from the north-western province of Xinjiang, is involved in terror-ism and that its members have trained with Al Qaeda in the tribal regions of Pakistan.

However, there is no evidence of links between ETIM and stu-dents enrolled at Pakistan’s on-line madrasas.

Western citizens who convert

to Islam also study the Qur’an and Islam at these madrasas, Jamshed adds, but those scenar-ios were rare.

A German mother and two of her teenage daughters recently enrolled with a seminary in Rawalpindi after they converted to Islam, Jamshed recalls.

“There aren’t enough mosques or Islamic centres in the US and Europe,” he says. “Muslims want their kids to learn the Qur’an and understand Islam and we provide what they need.”

There are around 20,000 con-ventional Islamic seminaries in Pakistan, teaching nearly two-and-a-half million students, ac-cording to PMEB.

Some of the madrasas have been linked to insurgent Taliban militants, according to the gov-ernment.

Offi cials launched a push to streamline the seminaries un-der a programme called the Na-tional Action Plan, after Taliban militants killed nearly 150 school children in December 2014.

But these eff orts met with failure, Tuaseen said.

“We haven’t been able to con-trol regular madrassas so far,” Tuaseen says. “Forget about the ones that operate online.”

DPA Rawalpindi

Thousands of online Islamic seminaries have sprung up in Pakistan in recent years, teaching Islam to people as far away as the US and Europe through platforms like Skype

A teacher at an online Islamic teaching centre in Islamabad helps a student from United States read the Qur’an over Skype last month. Photo courtesy: Washington Post

Pakistan information minister resigns over security breach

Pakistan federal Informa-tion Minister Parvaiz Rasheed has resigned from

his position as Minister for In-formation, Broadcasting and National Heritage.

News channels quoted sourc-es as saying that Prime Minis-ter Nawaz Sharif asked Pervaiz Rasheed to resign from his post.

The development comes after the publication of daily Dawn’s story “Act against militants or face international isolation, civil-ians tell military”, which reported details of a high level civil-mili-tary meeting discussing the issue of Pakistan’s banned outfi ts.

The report of the high-profi le security meeting has forced the government to initiate an in-quiry to identify the person re-sponsible for its leak.

Sources also said Rasheed’s portfolio was taken away af-ter a preliminary inquiry was launched by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.

They added that the premier has ordered a formal inquiry as to whether Rasheed was involved in the leak from the meeting.

PM spokesperson Musadiq Malik said, “A committee has been formed for the investiga-tion of Dawn’s story and inves-tigations have entered the fi nal phase.”

“Pervaiz Rasheed was respon-sible for the Information De-

partment and he is temporarily suspended from his post until investigations conclude,” Malik added.

“The committee was formed because no conclusive evidence has come forth. The details are with the committee Ch Nisar was heading,” he said, adding that a press conference will be held by the interior minister to-day (Sunday).

“The investigation report will only come when the investiga-tion is over. The investigation is being done with all sobriety, all responsible will be punished.”

A statement issued yesterday by the PM House contains de-tails of the inquiry committee: “An inquiry committee includ-ing senior offi cers of ISI, MI and

IB is being formed by the gov-ernment to apportion the blame, identify interests and motives and expose all those responsible for this episode of stern action in the national interest.”

The Inter Services Public Re-lations (ISPR) said earlier this

week that Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Interior Minister Ch Nisar and Chief Minister Pun-jab Shahbaz Sharif called on the army chief to brief him on the progress of the investigation and recommendations related to the story.

The meeting was also attend-ed by DG ISI General Rizwan Akhtar.

The Prime Minister’s Offi ce had rejected the story, but the military maintained the story had been “leaked” and demand-ed a probe into the matter as it viewed the leak as a breach of national security.

Journalist Cyril Almeida’s name was also placed on the Exit Control List (ECL) after the pub-lication of the story but his name

was later removed by the Interior Ministry as a “goodwill gesture”.

In an Editor’s note, Dawn clarifi ed its position and stated on the record that the story “was verifi ed, cross-checked and fact-checked.”

Earlier this month, partici-pants of a corps commander meeting expressed serious con-cern over what they said was “feeding of false and fabricated story of an important security meeting held at PM House and viewed it as breach of national security.

Media reports also stated yes-terday that Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has left for Dubai with his family.

However, Musadiq Malik said Asif’s departure was not connect-

ed to the probe into the story.In a tweet, Asif said he is in

Dubai to attend a wedding and will return today.

The prime minister’s Principal Information Offi cer Rao Tehseen has been suspended from his post and made an offi cer on spe-cial duty (OSD).

Earlier he had been barred from leaving the federal capital for the past eight days by the in-terior ministry.

Tehseen will remain suspend-ed till the completion of inquiry into the matter.

PTI chief Imran Khan con-gratulated the nation for sacking of Information Minister for his alleged involvement in story leak and departure of Defence Minis-ter from Pakistan.

InternewsIslamabad

Parvaiz Rasheed

Imran vows to go ahead with protestPakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf

(PTI) chief Imran Khan yesterday vowed to go

ahead with his plans of a ‘lock-down’ of Islamabad on Novem-ber 2 to demand “accountabil-ity” of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif over alleged corruption.

Talking to reporters near his Bani Gala residence, Khan ad-vised PTI supporters to travel in groups, saying when they ar-rive in small numbers the police “puts them in jail”.

“We are telling everyone to come in big groups.” He asked the party supporters to make sure to avoid arrests.

“No one can now stop the massive sea of people that will

sweep Islamabad,” Khan de-clared.

He said the Sharif family is the quintessence of corruption in Pakistan.

Reiterating his plans to put up a grand show in Islamabad on November 2, Khan said: “This is Nawaz Sharif’s dictatorship, not a democracy... we will show Nawaz Sharif on Nov 2 what de-mocracy is.”

He asked the supporters, many of whom set up camps and spent the night near his resi-dence, about their comfort and directed his party managers to ensure their well being.

Municipal workers used ship-ping containers to block major roads leading from Rawalpindi to Islamabad.

Khan has vowed to lead a demonstration in Islamabad on

November 2 to demand Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif step down over revelations in the Panama Papers that his family has off shore bank accounts.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the Vice-Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), claimed that the authorities have cut off Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from Pun-jab.

Khan was under virtual house arrest with a heavy contingent of police surrounding his house in Banni Gala, a leafy suburb of Islamabad, preventing him from leaving -- though he has not been formally arrested.

On Friday, clashes took place between police and opposition party supporters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, with dozens arrested ahead of the planned protest by cricketer-turned-

politician Imran Khan aimed at unseating the government.

“Wait for November 2, a PTI tsunami will sweep even a con-tingent of 50,000 policemen to D-Chowk,” Khan was quoted as saying on Friday, apparently in the fi rst indication that the PTI might reach the place located in front of Parliament House where it had staged a sit-in for three months in 2014.

PTI and Pakistan govern-ment have locked horns since the names of members of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s family appeared in the Panama Papers leaks.

After months of verbal duels between the parties, Imran Khan announced plans to lay siege on the capital on Nov 2, and vowed to stay put until the Prime Min-ister resigns or presents himself

for accountability in the back-drop of the Panama Papers scan-dal.

The government remains ada-mant that it will not allow the PTI to shut down Islamabad and action will be taken against the party according to law if it chal-lenges the writ of the state.

The Pakistan government also banned political rallies in the capital for two months.

The administration in the capital imposed section 144, which prohibits gathering of fi ve or more people at a location.

A PTI offi cial said yesterday that Pakistani police have ar-rested 30 party workers ahead of a planned protests to shut down the capital on Wednesday, as the party cancelled a rally in the capital.

On Friday, supporters of PTI

leader Imran Khan, a former Pakistani cricket hero, clashed with police in Rawalpindi, 20km from Islamabad, and Khan ac-cused the government of placing him under virtual house arrest.

Police on Thursday arrested 38 PTI workers at a youth rally, hours after local authorities im-posed a two-month ban on all public gatherings in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

The police and local authori-ties did not respond to requests for comment.

Chaudhry Rizwan, a senior PTI offi cial for Islamabad, said 30 people were arrested over-night from outside Khan’s home, where some supporters slept.

A Reuters reporter saw more than 100 police offi cers, some in riot gear, posted near Khan’s residence.

AgenciesIslamabad

Imran Khan talks to media outside his house in Islamabad.

At least 11 people from a minority Christian community in Pakistan’s central Punjab province died after consuming toxic liquor, police said yesterday. Three other people who consumed the alcohol at a party on Friday night in Jhelum district, are in hospital in critical condition, police said. “The dead bodies of 11 victims have been handed over to their relatives after completing the postmortem, the condition of the three others is still critical,” Asif Nawaz, a senior police off icial in Jhelum said.

The Pakistan National Shipping Corporation (PNSC) is planning to launch a ferry service from the Marina Club, DHA, to Port Qasim in Karachi to facilitate the daily commuters looking to avoid the city’s traff ic jams.The corporation also planned to buy two oil tankers by the end of the current financial year which would take the number of its tank-ers to six, said PNSC chairman Arif Elahi at the organisation’s annual general body meeting yesterday.He said that arrangements to launch a ferry service from Kara-chi to Pasni, Gwadar and Chaba-har, Iran, were in final stages.

Armed men have burned down a girls’ school in northern Afghani-stan, off icials said yesterday, with police blaming the Taliban for the assault as the militants expand their foothold across the country. The attackers burst into the school in northern Jawzjan province on Friday night, beat up the security guards and set the building on fire, a local government off icial said. “The armed men entered the school at around 10pm, beat the guards and set chairs, books and classes ablaze,” governor’s spokes-man, Reza Ghafoori, said.

Toxic liquor kills 11 in Pakistan

Ferry servicefor commuters in Karachi

Armed men burn down girls’ school

TRAGEDY

TRANSPORTATION

CRIME

Expelled Indian high commission offi cial leaves for home

Indian High Commission of-fi cial Surjeet Singh, who was declared persona non grata

by Pakistan in a retaliatory ac-tion two days ago, left the coun-try with his family yesterday, a media report said.

Surjeet Singh was declared per-sona non grata on October 27 and told to leave Pakistan in 48 hours by the Foreign Offi ce, Geo News reported. Singh’s expulsion orders came within hours of India asking that a Pakistani High Commission offi cial leave India for allegedly running a spy ring.

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry had

summoned Indian High Com-missioner Gautam Bambawale in Islamabad on Thursday and de-clared Surjeet Singh as persona non grata and asked that he leave the country by Saturday.

The Pakistani Foreign Offi ce in a statement said: “The Foreign Secretary expressed deep concern over the activities of the Indian of-fi cial that were in violation of the

Vienna Convention and the es-tablished diplomatic norms.”

The action came hours after Indian Foreign Secretary S Jais-hankar summoned Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit in New Delhi that day to protest against Mehmood Akhtar, a visa offi cer at the Pakistan High Commission, who India accused of spying. Ba-sit was told that Akhtar had been

declared persona non grata and should leave India by October 29.

Pakistan has denied the es-pionage charges levelled against Akhtar as “false and unsubstan-tiated”, and alleged that Indian police “manhandled” him.

Akhtar was accused of obtain-ing Indian defence documents.

He was released as he is enti-tled to diplomatic immunity.

India asked him to leave the country in 48 hours. India said that Akhtar was the “kingpin” of a spying network that was active for 18 months.

The Pakistan Foreign Ministry said the Akhtar was detained for three hours on “false and unsub-stantiated” charges of espionage before he was returned to the mission.

AgenciesIslamabad

PHILIPPINES

Gulf TimesSunday, October 30, 201628

Group fi les disbarment case against de LimaBy Jeff erson Antiporda & Jaime PilapilManila Times

She tried to reprise the role of the late Whitney Hou-ston in The Bodyguard.

Thus claimed the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) in a disbarment case fi led against Sen. Leila de Lima before the Supreme Court on Friday, citing her alleged aff air with a married man and sup-posed involvement in the illegal drug trade when she was Justice chief.

The VACC also called on the senator to resign.

De Lima, the anti-crime group claimed, “used her power and moral ascendancy to por-tray the role of Whitney Hou-ston in the movie The Body-guard.”

“Unfortunately, the closest that she can relate to Whitney Houston is the death of her le-gal profession through illegal drugs,” the complaint said in its opening salvo.

The 50-page complaint listed Dante Jimenez, former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) offi cials Reynaldo Esmeralda and Ruel Lasala, and Sandra Cam as representatives of the VACC.

Sought for comment, de Lima

accused the VACC of running after her to gain the favour of her arch-nemesis, President Rodrigo Duterte.

In a text message, de Lima called Jimenez a “creepy clown with a horrible dark mask” who

was “obsessed at being in the headlines,” and compared Es-meralda, Lasala and Cam with “monkeys” performing in a cir-cus.

“This is all part of a circus. And just like in all circuses,

clowns are part of the amuse-ment,” de Lima said.

“For the part of Dante Jimen-ez, I could only shrug my shoul-ders in utter dismay at how he brings down with him the in-tegrity and credibility of the

anti-crime group he heads,” she added.

The VACC claimed de Lima had turned her back on the Lawyer’s Oath as well as the Code of Professional Responsi-bility of the legal profession.

The code states that “a law-yer shall not engage in unlawful, dishonest, immoral or deceit-ful conduct,” and that “a law-yer shall not engage in conduct that adversely refl ects on his fi t-ness to practice law, nor shall he whether in public or private life, behave in a scandalous manner to the discredit of the legal pro-fession.”

Esmeralda said they have enough evidence to prove that de Lima had a sexual relation-ship with her former body-guard-driver Ronnie Dayan, for whom she allegedly built a house in Pozorrubio, Pangasi-nan province.

Dayan, the complaint said, was married to Norlie Magal-lanes on April 30, 1991 based on a copy of their marriage certifi -cate obtained from the Philip-pine Statistics Authority.

The complaint named in-mates of the New Bilibid Prison as witnesses to the alleged rela-tionship between de Lima and Dayan.

The VACC also presented as evidence a sex video with de Lima allegedly in it.

The group earlier fi led a com-plaint against de Lima, former Justice offi cials and prison inmates for violations of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act, calling the senator the “Mother of All Drug Lords” who “utilised her power and au-thority as then secretary of Jus-tice to abet and even promote the proliferation of massive drug trade inside the Bilibid.”

De Lima on Friday said she dismissed Esmeralda and Lasala as deputy directors of the NBI when she was secretary of Jus-tice during the previous Aquino administration, because of their “questionable practices.”

This is not the fi rst disbar-ment case against the former Cabinet offi cial. In 2011, a law-yer petitioned the Supreme Court to disbar de Lima for pre-venting former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from leaving the country, in defi ance of an order from the high tribunal.

That same year, another law-yer sought to disbar de Lima for calling then Chief Justice Ren-ato Corona “a tyrant who holds himself above justice and ac-countability.”

The complaints, which com-promised de Lima’s bid to be nominated to the Supreme Court, were tossed to the Inte-grated Bar of the Philippines for investigation.

Members of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption call on Senator Leila de Lima to resign following a news conference in Manila.

Duterte claims divine message to stop cursingBy Catherine S ValenteManila Times

Saying he had heard the voice of God, Presi-dent Rodrigo Duterte on

Thursday night promised to stop cussing in his speeches, after weeks of expletive-laden rants against critics of his an-ti-drug war.

Speaking to reporters shortly after giving an arrival speech at the Davao Interna-tional Airport, Duterte said God himself spoke to him while on his way home from a three-day offi cial visit to Ja-pan.

“I was looking at the skies while I was coming over here and I just…Everybody was asleep, snoring. But a voice said that, you know, ‘If you don’t stop epithets, I will bring this plane down now,’” the president said.

“And I said, ‘Who is this?’ So, of course, it’s God. Okay. So, I promise God to – not to

express slang, cuss words and everything. So you guys hear me right … a promise to God is a promise to the Filipino people,” he added. His pronouncement was greeted with applause, which he waved away, seem-ingly unsure that he would live up to the promise.

“Don’t clap too much be-cause I might fail,” the presi-dent said.

Asked later if he would no longer curse when talking about the United States, the European Union, and even his arch-critic Senator Leila de Lima, Duterte said that would depend on the timing.

The president said he had not always been foul-mouthed.

“There is always a timing, a time for everything, a time to be foul-mouthed. I do not want anybody reading my mind because I don’t want to telegraph my punches,” Du-terte said.

“But it’s all calibrated, it’s all about timing,” he added. Rodrigo Duterte: new path?

Transport agencies get ready for festive rushBy James Konstantin GalvezManila Times

In preparation for the infl ux of passengers on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, the

Department of Transportation (DOTr) has activated “Oplan Ligtas Biyahe: Undas 2016” to ensure the safety and reliability of various modes of transporta-tion.

The DOTr has directed all its attached agencies to be on heightened alert and make sure public hotlines are operational and properly manned.

The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) will conduct an inspection of buses, it said. Help Desks will be placed in termi-nals to ensure that queries and concerns of commuters will be swiftly and effi ciently attended.

The LTFRB will issue special permits to bus operators valid from October 29 to November 3, as more buses will be needed to transport those who will be trav-elling to their respective prov-inces.

The Land Transportation Of-fi ce (LTO) will enhance its public assistance programmes by pri-oritising tasks in line with guid-ing motorists.

The Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) will deploy additional personnel at toll plazas where traffi c build-up is expected.

The Manila International

Airport Authority (MIAA) has formed a management team consisting of airport managers to oversee operations during the peak days. Passengers can ask for

assistance and information from help desks manned by the MIAA operations group, the airport police and medical teams.

The Philippine National Rail-ways will maintain the exist-ing number of train trips in the Metro Manila South Commuter and Bicol Commuter Services. There will be 36 daily trips from Tutuban to Alabang/Mamatid and four to Naga-Sipocot. One-stop help desks will be set up in terminals and stations, aided by quick response teams.

The Inter-Agency Council on Traffi c (i-ACT) will deploy around 2,900 personnel to man the roads of the metropolis.

|The number-coding scheme in Metro Manila will be lifted from October 31 to November 1. However, to further assist com-muters going to and from their provinces, Number coding will be lifted only for provincial bus-es on November 2 and 3.

The Maritime Industry Au-thority will monitor all domestic passenger ships prior to depar-ture to ensure that applicable rules and regulations are com-plied with, particularly the “no

overloading of passengers and cargoes” policy.

For its part, the Metropolitan Manila Development Author-ity (MMDA) reiterated the traf-fi c regulations that the i-ACT would be implementing starting next week to reduce traffi c con-gestion during the Christmas season.

This includes the moratorium on all excavations or diggings on all national and city roads start-ing midnight of November 1 up to midnight of January 9, 2017, the Expanded Unifi ed Vehicular Volume Reduction Programme or number-coding scheme, and “no window hours” starting No-vember 2.

There will also be a ban on week day mall sales starting No-vember 1 up to January 9, 2017. Shopping malls will adjust their operating hours to 11:00am to 11:00pm during the same period. Mall deliveries will only be from 11pm to 5am starting November 1 to January 9, 2017. Deliveries of perishable goods such as food and ice cream are exempted, however.

“These traffi c-alleviating

measures are intended to facili-tate the free fl ow of motorists and Christmas shoppers even before December,” MMDA of-fi cer in charge Tim Orbos said.

I-ACT said the early imple-mentation of these measures would off set the usual 20% in-crease in traffi c volume during Christmas season, when Metro Manila sees an infl ux of people and vehicles from nearby prov-inces such as Cavite, Laguna and Bulacan.

The MMDA has partnered with Waze through the latter’s Connected Citizens Programme, a two-way data exchange pro-gramme with governments worldwide. MMDA is the fi rst Philippine government agency to partner with Waze.

Orbos said the MMDA would share with Waze data on traffi c-congested areas, road accidents, fl ooding and road closures, so the public would be given the best possible route real-time.

“They can now better decide on what roads to traverse to get to their destination, as they can avoid areas that are heavily con-gested,” he said.

Metro Manila police chief Oscar Albayalde (right) and Quezon City police director Guillermo Eleazar check passenger luggage at the Araneta Centre bus terminal in Quezon City.

Cayetano says nothing fi shy in China visitSenator Alan Peter Cayetano on

Friday laughed off the claim of

outgoing US ambassador to the

Philippines Philip Goldberg that

he and Transportation Secretary

Arthur Tugade made an unpubli-

cised trip to China in June, Manila

Times reported. Speaking to re-

porters in Malacanang, Cayetano

said there was nothing “fishy”

or “malicious” about the trip he

made to China. “Is this an admis-

sion now that they are spying on

us, on a Cabinet member and on

a member of the Senate? Is

there anything wrong, malicious

of me going to anywhere, to

China?” Cayetano said at a news

conference. Cayetano, however,

did not explain why he was in

China last June. He said he would

make a report to the Senate “at

the right time.” “The president

does not tell people to go. And as

I said I report at the Senate at the

right time. I went to the US the

year before. As all of you know I

aspired for higher off ice before.

And for me to fully understand

international relations I went to the

US last June also,” he said.

“As a senator, I can meet my

counterparts, I can travel. There is

such a thing as inter-parliamentary

relations,” Cayetano added.

Cayetano was President Rodrigo

Duterte’s running mate in the May

9 elections. He lost to Vice Presi-

dent Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo.

Duterte had said Cayetano would

be appointed secretary of Foreign

Aff airs when the one-year ban on

appointing losing election candi-

dates expires. Goldberg, who is set

to end his three-year stint as US

ambassador to Manila, earlier told

the ABS-CBN News Channel he

was not surprised that the Philip-

pines secured an estimated $24bn

in investment and loan pledges

after Duterte’s state visit to China.

Two new Zika cases detected in CaviteManila TimesManila

The Department of Health (DOH) confi rmed on Friday two more locally transmitted Zika infections, bringing to 19 the total number of

such cases in the country since September.The DOH said the two new cases, a young boy

and a woman, were at home in Cavite.To date, four regions of the country have been

aff ected by Zika—Western Visayas, the National Capital Region or Metro Manila, Calabarzon (Cav-ite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) and Cen-tral Visayas.

The breakdown of the cases is as follows: 12 in Iloilo, two in Mandaluyong, two in Cavite, one in Muntinlupa, one in Antipolo and one in Cebu.

In a news conference held in conjunction with the First National Summit on the Zika virus at Conrad Hotel in Pasay City, Health Undersecretary Gerardo Bayugo said they were still unsure if one of the two new cases, a woman in her mid-40s, was pregnant or not.

All 19 cases were the result of local transmission since they have no history of travel to Zika-endem-ic areas prior to the onset of their illness, the DOH said. These cases further support the earlier con-clusion that Zika-causing mosquitoes are present in the country.

The DOH said laboratory tests at the govern-

ment-run Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) confi rmed this.

The tests were done through the use of polymer-ase chain reaction test kits that detect the presence of the virus in the blood and urine samples of pa-tients.

In the same news conference, Philippine Medical Association president Dr Ireneo Bernardo raised the need for medical practitioners’ guidelines in the correct diagnosis of Zika.

Aedes aegypti is the endemic mosquito species responsible for the transmission of the Zika virus. It also transmits dengue and chikungunya.

Dr Rajendra Prasad Hubraj Yadav, medical of-fi cer of World Health Organisation, said the pub-lic should not just focus on Zika because the same mosquito causes three viral diseases.

The RITM’s Dr Socorro Lupisan said 7,000 test kits had been purchased to test patients with symp-toms of Zika as well as dengue and chikungunya.

However, two samples are tested for each per-son—urine and blood—allowing only around 3,500 people to be tested.

The DOH had provided RITM with P16.5mn for the test kits and for materials and supply for ento-mology, said Lupisan.

But testing is insuffi cient because studies show that 80% of Zika cases worldwide do not show symptoms.

The limited budget permits only a fi fth of all Zika cases to be tested, offi cials said.

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL29


Minister says Dhaka ready to meet UN demand for troopsBangladesh has reiter-

ated its commitment to remain one of the fi rst

responders to the UN’s call for troops and police.

Foreign Minister A H Mah-mood Ali, now in Paris, has conveyed the message at the ministerial conference on ‘Peacekeeping in Francoph-one Environment’ held at the International Convention Centre there, said the foreign ministry in Dhaka quoting a message from Paris.

He highlighted the eff orts of Bangladeshi peacekeepers in ensuring sustained peace in the confl ict-aff ected areas.

The foreign minister un-derscored the need for intelli-

gence, modern technologies, and advanced equipment to serve the peacekeepers’ vital interest on the ground, par-ticularly to enhance their ca-pacity for maintaining peace, protecting civilians and en-suring their own safety and security.

He also highlighted Bangla-desh’s commitment to increase women’s participation in the UN peacekeeping missions in the coming days.

Mahmood took part at the conference at the invitation of Jean-Marc Ayrault, Min-ister for Foreign Aff airs and International Development of France.

The conference, organised by France, aimed at strengthen-ing the peacekeeping mecha-nism in the French-speaking environment.

France, Bangladesh, Canada, Germany and Senegal

co-chaired the conference.Harvey Ladsus, UN Under-

Secretary General (USG) for Peacekeeping, French and Canadian Foreign Ministers, among others, highly praised the Bangladeshi peacekeepers deployed in the Francophone Missions.

UN USG Ladsus particularly applauded Bangladesh’s eff orts to learn French language to bet-ter perform their duties in the Francophone areas.

Meanwhile, the Bangla-desh foreign minister held a bilateral meeting with his French counterpart on the same day.

They expressed satisfaction over the existing level of co-op-eration between the two coun-tries and assured each other of

further engagement on the issues of mutual interests.Baroness Joice Anelay, British

Minister of State for the Com-monwealth and the UN at the Foreign and Commonwealth Offi ce, also met Mahmood.

As many as 60 countries and international organisa-tions, including 20 ministe-rial delegations, took part in the conference.

The ministerial conference was preceded by four thematic roundtables held on Wednesday where Bangladesh co-chaired the roundtable-1 on Force Generation.

Lieutenant General Sabbir Ahmed, Chief of General Staff , Bangladesh Army, and Sadia Faizunnesa, Director General of the Foreign Aff airs Minis-try, also participated in the conference.

By Mizan RahmanDhaka

Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali.

Lankan national carrying forged Indian passport arrested

A Sri Lankan national has been arrested in Ma-durai town of Tamil

Nadu while trying to fl y to Co-lombo using an Indian pass-port, which he managed to get by forging documents, a media report said.

Immigration offi cials, who became suspicious about him, handed him over to the police. Inquiries revealed that the man had stayed in Karnataka for sev-eral years. He was arrested the fi rst time he tried to fl y using the passport. Based on a complaint from immigration offi cials, a case was registered under Passport Act and Foreigner Act.

The man was identifi ed as Sreedhaya, 38, son of Ammasi, who had been residing in Sul-lia Taluk in Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka state. He is a Sri Lankan Tamil. His sister Kamalavathi works there in a rubber farm. He came to India in 2008 to live with his sister, af-ter his parents passed away. On Thursday, he was trying to go to Sri Lanka on a Mihin Lanka fl ight scheduled at 1.45pm.

Police said he was stopped by an immigration team after they became suspicious about him. When the offi cials asked a few questions, he spoke in Sri Lankan Tamil dialect. His passport was checked. It was an original In-dian passport. When he was grilled, he revealed the truth. He had married an Indian relative in Karnataka. He was taken to Perungudi police station, where a case was registered based on a complaint from immigration inspector Victor at Madurai airport.

He had travelled by road to Karur in Tamil Nadu, where he stayed with a relative. He decided to visit Sri Lanka for a few days. A police offi cer from Perungudi said, “This is the fi rst time he used the fake passport.”

AgenciesChennai, India

Biman set to induct two Boeing 737-800s on dry lease

Bangladesh’s national airliner Biman has de-cided to induct two Boe-

ing 737-800s from GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS) to its fl eet for 60 months on dry lease.

Biman took the move to include the aircraft to tackle any immediate problem in its fl ight operation after phasing out two decades-old Airbus A310-300s.

“We’ve decided to take two 737-800s on dry lease as the airliner has decided to phase out its two Airbus aircraft after September this year,” a senior Biman offi cial said yesterday.

He also said that the board of Biman gave the green signal to induct the two aircraft.

“We will now start the ne-gotiation with the company for fi nishing the fi nal tasks,” the Biman offi cial said.

He also mentioned that Bi-man is very much optimistic to induct the aircraft by this year completing all procedures.

A board member of Biman said that they have given con-ditional approval to start fi nal negotiation with the lesser company.

The conditions include im-proving the in-fl ight enter-tainment system and recon-fi guring the seat arrangement as per the desire of Biman with re-registration.

The seating capacity of the two aircraft will be of 162 each, with 12 in business class and 150 in economy class, ac-cording to Biman’s tender documents.

It also said the age of the two aircraft will be not be more than 10 years. “We are planning to press the aircraft into service by this year,” the offi cial added.

The national fl ag carrier has, meanwhile, scrapped its previous move to induct two 777-200 or 777-200ER and one 777-300ER or one 737-800 along with one 777-300ER in its fl eet under dry lease (only aircraft) system for 60 months.

“We are thinking of re-suming and introducing some new regional routes in the coming days, and that’s why we are choosing the mid-haul aircraft,” the Biman offi cial said.

Biman is currently operat-

ing fl ights on seven domestic and 15 international routes of the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

Biman has four Boeing 777-300 ERs, two Boeing 777-200 ERs, two Airbus A310-300s, four Boeing 737-800s and two Dash-8 in its fl eet.

According to sources at the Civil Aviation and Tourism Ministry and Biman, the na-tional fl ag carrier has decided to resume its operations on Dhaka-Delhi-Dhaka and Dhaka-Hong Kong-Dhaka routes.

It also decided to start its operation on Dhaka-Guangzhou (China)-Dha-ka, Dhaka-Colombo (Sri Lanka)-Dhaka and Dhaka-Male (the Maldives)-Dhaka routes.

Biman also has the plan to start its fl ight operations on Dhaka-Narita (Japan)-Dha-ka route after having suit-able aircraft and completion of a commercial feasibility study.

The airliner is in a proc-ess to resume its much-awaited Dhaka-New York-Dhaka route in the summer season in 2017 if the Civil Aviation Authority, Bangla-desh (CAAB) is upgraded to category-1.

As per its fl eet plan, the sources said, Biman has a plan to operate its fl ights to Sydney, Jakarta, Toronto and Madras in phases, the sources said.

Biman is currently operat-ing fl ights on seven domestic and 15 international routes of the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

The national fl ag car-rier went into an agree-ment with the US com-pany for procuring 10 new generation aircraft – four Boeing 777-300ERs, two Boeing 737-800 and four Boeing 787 Dreamliners.Boeing has already delivered four 777-300ER and two 737-800 aircraft to the Biman.

As per agreement, Boeing is scheduled to deliver four Boeing 787 Dreamliners by 2018-2019.


‘Eco warriors’ chart out strategy for climate fi ght

The government, Unicef and Bangladesh Rural Advancement Commit-

tee (Brac) yesterday launched Bangladesh’s fi rst youth-driven national disaster risk reduc-tion strategy and held the fi nal round of national summit of 400 adolescent boys and girls called ‘eco warriors’ in Savar, near Dhaka.

The three previous summits were held in Comilla, Barisal and Bogra.

Declarations from all the four regions were compiled to create a national strategy for youths against climate change and its consequences.

Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to the eff ects of climate change, suff ering fi nancial losses worth more than 180bn taka from dis-asters, Brac said quoting 2009-

2014 data of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

Bibi Rohima Kochi from Bho-la said, “I had never met people from other districts. I was only aware of disasters in Bhola. Through this convention, I was able to learn about disasters from other districts and how we can all work together to stop climate change.”

The experts who attended at the summit discussed additional topics, including barriers to the growth of adolescents and ways to overcome them, child marriage and sexual harassment during disasters, the recent rise in ter-rorism, and the eff ect of disasters on education and health.

The activities included par-ticipatory problem solving for disaster risk reduction, inspir-ing storytelling to fi nd innovative solutions, and preparing a yearly action plan to combat disasters.

The experts present at the summit included director of Brac’s disaster management

and climate change programme Gawher Nayeem Wahra, direc-tor of Brac’s education pro-gramme Safi qul Islam, UM Habibunnesa Habiba from Narpakkha, Unicef representa-tive Jamil Hasan, Palki Ahmed from UNDP and Gender Spe-cialist Sheepa Hafi za.

Frequent disasters, scarcity of drinking water and water-borne diseases have become part of every young person’s life, said Brac.

While young people are of-ten the most aff ected by climate change, they are often not in-cluded in discussions regarding the issue. Brac’s unorthodox method chose 400 young peo-ple from their 9,000 adolescent development clubs across the country, to respond to the chal-lenge from the ground up.

For the fi rst time in Bangla-desh, participants will create annual disaster risk reduction action plans for their respective club members to follow, and

their combined eff orts will give birth to a youth climate combat force across the country.

The 400 young people, dubbed the new eco warriors of Bangladesh, discussed the role they can play in climate change and natural disasters, exchanged seeds from their re-spective districts and identifi ed local plants and discussed their connection to climate change.

The focus on biodiversity is in line with this year’s world environment day theme ‘go wild for life’ promoted by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Teenagers living in the coast-al area have experienced at least three devastating cyclone emergency periods in their life-time so far. Those in fl ood prone districts have faced four major fl oods in their early years.

Flooding is becoming an an-nual phenomenon, with many living with water logging for months.


“We are thinking of resuming and introducing some new regional routes in the coming days, and that’s why we are choosing the mid-haul aircraft ”

Nepalese women collect marigold flowers for the festival of Tihar in Ichangu Narayan village, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, yesterday. Tihar (Diwali), known as the festival of lights, is a five-day festival celebrated in late autumn.

Marigold in full bloomEU delegation to visit Lanka over GSP plusA four-member delegation from the European Parliament will visit Sri Lanka tomorrow to discuss the groundwork laid for a successful generalised scheme of preferences (GSP) plus application, authorities said yesterday.According to a European Union (EU) statement, progress on national reconciliation and ways to empower Sri Lankan women politically and economically will also be discussed, Xinhua news agency reported.The delegation will visit Colombo and Trincomalee, and Batticaloa in the east, to meet government, local government, parliamentary and civil society representatives.During his recent visit to Brussels, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe met the European Parliament’s foreign aff airs committee to discuss issues including Sri Lanka’s application for GSP plus, the role of Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation), accountability and justice, minority rights and poverty alleviation.The EU has nearly doubled its development assistance to Sri Lanka for the years up to 2020 to $229mn. The EU will also provide support under the government’s Peacebuilding Priority Plan, the statement added.

India and Nepal agree to expedite pending projects

India and Nepal have agreed to expedite implementation of the seven projects on infrastruc-

ture, cross-border connectivity and utilisation of Indian funds for Nepal’s reconstruction following the April 2015 earthquake.

An agreement in this regard was reached during the fourth meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Commission meeting held at the foreign minister-level in New Delhi on Thursday.

According to the Indian external aff airs ministry, a comprehensive review of all aspects of India-Nepal relations under fi ve broad clusters was undertaken at the meeting.

These clusters are political, security and boundary, econom-ic co-operation and infrastruc-ture, trade and transit, power and water resources and culture and education.

The joint commission decided to convene within a month the fi rst meeting of the ‘joint over-sight mechanism’ comprising offi cials of both the countries to

expedite the implementation of all ongoing bilateral cooperation projects, an offi cial statement said.

Both countries had agreed to set up such a mechanism to clear the bottlenecks in India-fund-ed projects in the Himalayan country.

The foreign secretary of Nepal and the Indian ambassador to

Nepal will lead their respective sides to help clear glitches in the projects funded by India.

The statement said the two sides agreed to clear detailed project reports on roads, Ma-hakali Bridge and irrigation projects to be implemented through concessional loans provided by the Government of India in 2014.

IANSNew Delhi/Kathmandu

It took a long time for widening inequality to have an impact on politics, as it suddenly has done in recent years. Now that it is a central

issue, national economic priorities will need to shift substantially to create more equitable, inclusive economies and societies. If they do not, people could embrace explosive alternatives to their current governments, such as the populist movements now sweeping many countries.

Political leaders often speak of growth patterns that unfairly distribute the benefi ts of growth; but then they do relatively little about it when they are in power.

When countries go down the path of non-inclusive growth patterns, it usu-ally results in disrespect for expertise, disillusionment with the political system and shared cultural values, and even greater social fragmentation and polarisation.

Acknowledging the importance of how economic benefi ts are distributed is of course not new. In developing coun-tries, economic exclusion and extreme inequality have always been uncondu-cive to long-term high-growth patterns. Under these conditions, pro-growth policies are politically unsustainable, and they are ultimately disrupted by political dislocations, social unrest, or even violence.

In the United States, rising inequal-

ity has been a fact of life at least since the 1970s, when the relatively equita-ble distribution of economic benefi ts from the early post-World War II era started to become skewed. In the late 1990s, when digital technologies began to automate and disintermedi-ate more routine jobs, the shift toward higher wealth and income inequality became turbocharged.

Globalisation played a role. In the 20 years before the 2008 fi nancial crisis, manufacturing employment in the US rapidly declined in every sector except pharmaceuticals, even as added value in manufacturing rose. Net jobs loss was kept roughly at zero only because employment in services increased.

In fact, much of the added value in manufacturing actually comes from services such as product design, research and development, and marketing. So, if we account for this value-chain com-position, the decline in manufacturing – the production of tangible goods – is even more pronounced.

Economists have been tracking these trends for some time. Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist David Autor and his colleagues have carefully documented the impact of globalisation and labour-saving digital technologies on routine jobs.

More recently, French economist Thomas Piketty’s international bestsell-er, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, dramatically widened our awareness of wealth inequality and described possible underlying forces driving it. The bril-liant, award-winning young economists Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez have enriched the discussion with new re-search. And I have written about some of the structural economic shifts associated with these problems.

Eventually, journalists picked up on these trends, too, and it would now be hard to fi nd anyone who has not heard of the “1%” – shorthand for those at the top of the global wealth and income

scales. Many people now worry about a bifurcated society: a thriving global class of elites at the top and a stressed-out class comprising everyone else. Still, despite these long trends, the political and policy status quo remained largely unchallenged until 2008.

To understand why it took politics so long to catch up to economic realities, we should look at incentives and ideology. With respect to incentives, politicians have not been given a good enough reason to address unequal distribution patterns.

The US has relatively weak campaign-fi nance limits, so corporations and wealthy individuals – neither of which generally prioritises income redistribu-tion – have contributed a disproportion-ate share to politicians’ campaign war chests.

Ideologically, many people are simply suspicious of expansive government. They recognise inequality as a problem, and in principle they support govern-ment policies that provide high-quality education and health-care services, but they do not trust politicians or bureau-crats. In their eyes, governments are ineffi cient and self-interested at best, and dictatorial and oppressive at worst.

All of this began to change with the rise of digital technologies and the Internet, but especially with the advent of social media. As US President Barack Obama showed in the 2008 election cycle – followed by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the current cycle – it is now possible to fi nance a very expensive campaign without “big money”.

As a result, there is a growing discon-

nect between big money and political incentives; and while money is still a part of the political process, infl uence itself no longer belongs exclusively to corporations and wealthy individuals. Social-media platforms now enable large groups of people to mobilise in ways reminiscent of mass political movements in earlier eras.

Such platforms may have reduced the cost of political organising, and thus candidates’ overall dependence on money, while providing an effi cient alternative fund-raising channel.

This new reality is here to stay, and, regardless of who wins the US election this year, anyone who is unhappy with high inequality will have a voice, the ability to fi nance it, and the power to aff ect policymaking. So, too, will other groups that focus on similar issues, such as environmental sustainability, which has not been a major focus in the current US presidential campaign (the three de-bates between the candidates included no discussion of climate change, for example), but surely will be in the future.

All told, digital technology is shuffl ing economic structures and rebalanc-ing power relationships in the world’s democracies – even in institutions once thought to be dominated by money and wealth.

A large, newly infl uential constitu-ency should be welcomed. But it cannot be a substitute for wise leadership, and its existence does not guarantee prudent policies.

As political priorities continue to rebalance, we will need to devise creative solutions to solve our hardest problems, and to prevent populist misrule. One hopes that this is the course we are on now. - Project Syndicate

Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate in economics, is professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Collectors and music fans wearing the t-shirts of obscure rock bands brave the tropical heat outside a record

store near Malaysia’s capital, wait-ing to get their hands on new cassette tapes.

No, this isn’t a fl ashback to the 1980s, but an event marking recent International Cassette Store Day, an annual celebration of a music format once thought headed for extinction but now enjoying a rebirth.

Vinyl’s renaissance is well-docu-mented and now it seems cassettes are rising from the grave, with artists such as Kanye West and Justin Bieber releasing songs on tape.

In Southeast Asia low production costs and a retro-cool image have made cassettes an underground-music fi xture, especially for struggling bands getting their name out.

“Cassettes are our best sellers,” Mohamed Radzi Jasni, owner of the store, Teenage Head Records, said after shoving one by Singaporean surf-punk

band Force Vomit into a bulky tape player.

“They are still the best way to discover new bands here. It’s very af-fordable for the guys releasing it and the fans buying them,” he added.

Manufacturing costs can be as low as four ringgit ($1) per tape in Malaysia, compared to 60 to 80 ringgit for a vinyl record.

Vinyl’s cost is a hurdle for young bands and DIY labels in Malaysia, In-donesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

There are no vinyl-pressing plants in Southeast Asia, cassette lovers say, while cassette plants still dot the region.

To mark International Cassette Store Day, Teenage Head Records released 200 cassettes featuring Malaysian rock band Bittersweet.

Almost all were sold out by the day’s end.

Bittersweet has released three CD albums but keyboardist Fadhilul Iqmal said pressing a few more songs on cassette helps pump up the band’s discography at low cost, while the format’s compact size makes it more mobile than vinyl.

Such thinking has helped fuel a

burgeoning DIY cassette label industry in the region.

In Indonesia, they have a newfound novelty appeal among youths who grew up with digital music.

As with vinyl, fans also appreci-ate the tangible nature of tapes and the artwork that comes with the inlays.

“It’s trendy right now with a gen-eration of 20-somethings not used to buying physical music,” explained Marcel Thee, vocalist of Indonesian band Sajama Cut, which issued a two-song cassette recently.

“Tapes provide a platform for releasing singles. If it wasn’t on tape, it would have garnered less attention,” Thee said.

Notorious for getting jammed, unspooled, and for their hiss-heavy sound - cassettes were eclipsed worldwide by CDs in the early 1990s, though they held their

ground in Southeast Asia until the early 2000s.

For older music fans, the cassettes bring back fond memories of home-made mix tapes.

Sound is another issue - the vinyl and cassette cognoscenti dismiss digital music as too compressed and lacking the warmth of analog sound.

“Vinyl has a warmer sound but it is more expensive. If you have money you can buy vinyl, if you don’t have money, you can buy cassette,” says Mohamed Nor Yaacob, co-founder of Malaysia’s Basement Records, which focuses on hardcore punk and metal.

For struggling young bands, cas-settes are a potential entry ticket into the industry.

“First you release on cassette, like 100 pieces. When people know your band, you can make vinyl if you have money,” says Nor.

Later, exports of cheaply made cas-settes can help labels and bands reach a larger fanbase overseas, opening up touring possibilities.

“The underground scene here has actually been pressing cassettes long before it got hip again so I don’t see why it cannot stay,” says Radzi.

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COMMENT30

GULF TIMES

High-level parleys over the next few weeks will be crucial to restoring stability in the global oil market even as major exporters led by Opec are meeting in Vienna in late November to discuss and fi nalise a production-cut agreement.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries had agreed last month in Algiers to reduce their production of crude oil to a range of 32.5mn to 33mn barrels per day, Opec’s fi rst output cut since 2008, in an eff ort to prop up prices.

A high-level technical committee had already been tasked with establishing quotas for individual countries, which will come up before the Opec ministerial meeting in Vienna on November 30.

The meeting of the high-level committee includes Opec governors and national representatives - offi cials who report to their respective ministers.

Under this, Opec offi cials and counterparts from non-member producers such as Russia started two-day negotiations in Vienna on Friday on limiting output to curb a global glut that has weighed on markets for two years.

Opec Secretary-General Mohamed Barkindo said the producer group was facing its biggest test yet, but expressed optimism that a fi nal agreement would be reached and ratifi ed during the planned

November 30 biannual summit in Vienna.Since September, oil prices have been buoyed by a tentative

deal by the Opec to cut production and pull prices out of a two-year slump. But rising uncertainty over the execution of the plan has, however, seen oil prices fall 2% so far this week.

According to HE the Minister of Energy and Industry, Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada, also the current Opec Conferencepresident, the global oil market was “currently closest to rebalancing”.

He noted that “continuous downward pressure” on the prices in the last two years had dried-up the liquidity for investment in projects that would secure the required oil supplies. Al-Sada also saw a “pressing need for attracting huge investments” in such projects.”

Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih said: “Oil markets started moving into balance recently, but we in Opec, along with producers from outside the group, started intense consultations to take the right action to quicken the re-balancing and market recovery.”

Meanwhile, reports from the US suggest there has been a fall in oil inventories in the last two months.

US crude stockpiles at the Cushing (Oklahoma) Delivery Base showed a weekly decrease of 650,000 barrels, traders said, citing data from energy monitoring service Genscape.

Last week, the US Energy Department said domestic crude stocks fell 553,000 barrels, the seventh such decline in the last eight weeks, adding to hopes that a long-awaited market rebalancing is taking place.

Data showed some US oil drillers removed rigs from production for the fi rst time since June this year. Oil services company Baker Hughes said two rigs were cut last week, ending a 17-week recovery in the number supplying the market.

Ongoing high-level parleys crucial to oil market stability

Since September, oil prices have been buoyed by a tentative deal by the Opec to cut production

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2016 Gulf Times. All rights reserved

Cassette tapes fast-forward to new following in Asia

How widening inequality found a political voice

In the United States, rising inequality has been a fact of life at least since the 1970s

“Tapes provide a platform for releasing singles”

When countries go down the path of non-inclusive growth patterns, it usually results in disrespect for expertise, disillusionment with the political system and social fragmentation

By Satish Cheney AFP/ Subang Jaya, Malaysia

By Michael SpenceMilan

Gulf Times Sunday, October 30, 2016 31

COMMENT

A hard-earned nod from the IMF

Anyone coming to Pakistan can be taken by surprise at the resilience on off er. For instance, the government

of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif faces an impending lockdown in the federal capital Islamabad this week.

The showdown is on account of the vociferous demands made by Imran Khan, the fi rebrand opposition leader and chairman of his Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf party (PTI), for Sharif to either resign or make himself accountable after names of his children appeared in the so-called Panama Papers purporting them to have unaccounted off shore wealth.

Sharif denies any wrongdoing, but weeks of aborted talks later, with no headway in sight, the Supreme Court fi nally, admitted Khan’s petitions for a hearing that is, in fact, starting on Tuesday.

However, this hanging uncertainty does not appear to have diminished a positive economic outlook - endorsed by none other than the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose chief Christine Lagarde visited Pakistan last week in a sign of growing confi dence that the country’s economy was back on the rails.

And yet this is some distance removed from what had seemed possible back in 2014 when Khan had fi rst taken to the roads - then, to force the Sharif government to probe into allegations that his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz

(PML-N) had conspired to return to power at the expense of denying Khan’s PTI.

A subsequent Judicial Commission inquiry dismissed the PTI’s charges that there was any organised large-scale rigging that made it possible for PML-N to win back power.

A lot has happened since then to help Sharif haul the economy back.

For starters, a devastating attack on a school in Peshawar in late 2014 that saw hundreds of students massacred, shocked the state - all pillars included - into swift action.

An All Party Conference brought the entire civil and military leadership together to forge consensus on a National Action Plan that was subsequently, constitutionally approved to hand sweeping powers to anti-terror courts to bring the culprits to book.

The obtaining success of the plan and the Judicial Commission’s verdict at the end of PTI’s fi rst street agitation gave way to political and economic stability, especially with the launching of a $46bn China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that, in due course, sent the positive sentiment soaring.

The measure of stability and calm is evident in how Pakistan concluded the 12th and fi nal review of a three-year $6.4bn programme in August, leading Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to suggest bidding adieu to the Fund and have Islamabad stand on its feet.

It was an outlook endorsed by IMF mission chief Harald Finger, who said Pakistan’s economy had made “signifi cant progress toward strengthening macroeconomic and fi nancial stability and resilience, and laying the foundations for higher, more sustainable, and inclusive growth.”

But the big nod came last week when IMF chief Christine Lagarde declared on a rare visit to Islamabad that Pakistan was now out of economic crisis and could build on the gains by continuing with structural reforms and widening the tax base.

In a seminar following a meeting with the prime minister, Lagarde predicted that improved macroeconomic stability as well as strengthened external buff ers and public fi nances will provide a solid foundation for (Pakistan’s) economy.

As a result of the programme, the Fund chief acknowledged that several tax exemptions had been removed, and higher tax revenue paved for greater public investment and social spending.

“About 1.5mn more poor households are benefi ting from targeted social assistance than three years ago.

Power outages have gradually

decreased and the fi nancial performance of the power sector is strengthening,” she noted.

Following the course correction, she noted Pakistan now has its “moment of opportunity” to address the remaining economic challenges and work towards creating mo re private sector jobs and higher living standards for all segments of society.

For this, the need to continue strengthening resilience by building fi scal and external cushions to be adequately prepared for future economic shocks is instructive.

The Fund chief felt that higher

and sustainable growth will require completing important structural reforms in the energy sector as well as tax policy and administration; ending losses in public enterprises; and making a sustained eff ort to improve governance and foster a dynamic and export-oriented private sector.

In yet another confi dence boost, the World Bank in its annual “Doing Business 2017” report out last week drove home that Pakistan was among the 10 most-improved economies out of 190 reviewed.

The World Bank report tracks regulatory changes in 190 countries

for businesses throughout their life cycle - from the ease of business start-up regulations and getting credit to property rights.

It noted that Pakistan had implemented 11 key reforms this past year to make the environment conducive for doing business.

But Dawn, the country’s leading English daily, cautioned that not only was there a need to take a more hard-knuckle appraisal of the three-year record, but do so much more for the economy to stay ashore.

“At the end of the day, it is important to realise that the IMF cannot want reform in Pakistan more than the authorities themselves do.

If there is a deep and widespread inability and unwillingness to reform the state and its relationship with the institutions and stakeholders of the economy, then that stasis cannot change from external inducement, the paper said in an editorial entitled Farewell to the IMF?

Indeed, the IMF boss herself outlined four points in urging Islamabad to seize the moment.

“Pakistan has embarked on an important economic transformation to join the ranks of emerging market economies,” Lagarde acknowledged, before asserting that it cannot rely exclusively on its trading partners to support growth.

This, she pointed out, means that the country will have to lean on the strength of its own policies.

The four priorities Lagarde emphasised as central are: making the economy more resilient; raising growth; improving the quality of growth; and fi nally, believing in the global system.

All things considered, the Fund chief remained confi dent that Pakistan can seize this moment of opportunity and transform itself into a dynamic, vibrant, and integrated emerging market country.

The writer is Community Editor.

It all comes down to relationships

The girl who was behind Pottermania

My best friend, who is 10 years

younger than me, recently showed me the scar from the quadruple bypass that he had a few weeks ago. He almost didn’t make it, but now he’s up and doing business, maybe just a little slower.

Very shortly thereafter, I started having chest pains. I hoped they were in sympathy for him, but I saw my cardiologist anyway. He has been my heart doctor for two decades. We have spoken at the same events, and he was a guest on my radio show a couple of times.

We like each other, and I believe that we are, at the very least, professional friends.

Turns out, the relationship goes much deeper. His medical group no longer accepts my overpriced medical insurance, but as a professional

courtesy, he saw me anyway. I’m sure he did it because we have a relationship and certain things in common (we both hate the insurance companies). He could have told me to see someone else, but I don’t want to change doctors at this point in my life.

I did have to pay out of pocket for the nuclear stress test (just to cover his costs, but ouch), but he will continue to see me while I get this insurance thing worked out. I’d rather stick with the physicians who know me and my body best. I am, however, changing insurance companies. I guess we don’t have a relationship.

A very similar thing happened with another specialist I’ve been seeing for over 20 years, and he just told me not to worry about the bill. I really don’t want a new urologist. He is a totally brilliant doctor, and besides, when you are having invasive exams done, you want to be with someone who you know is going to take care of you and make the process as easy as possible. Yes, we also have a relationship.

So until open enrollment comes around next month, I am going to be a

cash patient, and I don’t think that’s how it should work.

If you are going through the dilemma of whether you should change doctors or change insurance companies, that kind of stress is not going to help you heal. In fact, it is widely known that long-term stress can kill you, so it is very important to reduce it wherever and whenever you can.

In my case, the added financial stress is for the short term only, and I’m doing what I can to keep

it from bothering me. I have to keep my mind on staying healthy and reinforcing my relationships - and not only with my doctors but also with the people who are most important in my life.

In the past, I have often put my work first, and I hope you won’t make that same mistake. Work and money come and go, but our relationships help us stay emotionally balanced and physically healthy. Yes, I want to keep progressing with my work, but not at the expense of my personal and professional relationships. So I have begun consciously taking more time with the people in my life, and the funny thing is I haven’t had any chest pain since.

Dr Barton Goldsmith, a psychotherapist in Westlake Village, California, is the author of The Happy Couple: How to Make Happiness a Habit One Little Loving Thing at a Time. Follow his daily insights on Twitter at @BartonGoldsmith, or e-mail him at [email protected]

Alice Newton was just eight years old when she gave Harry Potter his big break. Her publisher father asked

her to read the fi rst book in J KRowling’s Hogwarts series, Harry

Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, to test its appeal.

“I let Alice read for me and she came down in an hour later glowing about how wonderful this book was,” recollects Nigel Newton, who is also chief executive of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

“I think it is now a classic like Winnie the Pooh or (the books of) Roald Dahl or C S Lewis, and it will go on,” he told Reuters.

The franchise accounted for over 7 % of Bloomsbury’s first-half sales.

With a new play, a book of the script and a spin-off film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opening in November, Bloomsbury expects Pottermania to be a “big contributor” in the second half of its

year ending February 2017.Newton said an illustrated

version of the second Potter book,

released on October 4, had sold more copies in its first week than the illustrated version of the first

book had in its first week on the stands a year ago.

In-house broker Investec forecasts full-year sales of £133.7mn and pretax profit of £11.8mn for Bloomsbury.

Bloomsbury plans to mark the franchise’s 20-year anniversary next July with four special editions of the first Potter book with artwork from each of the houses in Hogwarts, Newton said.

It also plans an illustrated version of the Fantastic Beasts book in 2017.

He added that Bloomsbury was in talks with Rowling over potential future books, but declined to say when and if any future work would materialise.

Newton said Bloomsbury had increased prices of some of its academic titles in August as the pound slid after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, but did not specify whether the price of the recently-released Potter book had been raised too.

He said Bloomsbury could absorb any sterling impact over the short term because more than quarter of its sales are in the United States.

Live issues

Work and money come and go, but our relationships help us stay emotionally balanced and physically healthy

By Barton GoldsmithTribune News Service

BOOST: IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde speaks during an emerging markets conference in Islamabad.

By Kamran Rehmat Doha

On a rare visit, IMF chief Christine Lagarde says Pakistan now has its “moment of opportunity” to address the remaining economic challenges

By Noor Zainab Hussain and Esha Vaish Reuters

Copies of the book of the play of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child parts One and Two are displayed at a bookstore in London.

Three-day forecast

TODAY

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Low : 24 C

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Qatar economic growth 'poised for a rebound' - Gulf Times

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