QNASingapore

The visit of His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to Singapore has paved the

way for elevating bilateral relations to a higher level, with both sides agree-ing on a number of steps to foster co-operation.

His Highness the Emir attended yes-terday a dinner banquet hosted by Sin-gapore President Halimah Yacob.

The president welcomed the Emir and expressed her delight at his visit. She highlighted the many shared fac-tors between Singapore and Qatar starting with the developmental path and ending with the regional vital role both countries play, “which shows that the two countries’ success does not lie in their size”.

President Halimah Yacob also praised the historic friendly relations between the two countries since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1984, which was strengthened by forming the High-Level Joint Commit-tee and the Emir’s role in strengthening the partnership.

She referred to the level of co-ordi-nation between Qatar and Singapore in international arenas, based on the two countries’ active, responsible and con-structive role in the international com-munity.

She said the economies of Qatar and Singapore are business-friendly and they strongly encourage free trade, re-ferring to the free trade agreement be-tween Singapore and GCC countries, signed in Doha in 2008.

“The mutual agreement that con-cluded between both countries in the fi eld of investment will provide many opportunities in trade sectors, as well

as to the Singapore Business Coun-cil previously held in Doha which will deepen the trade and economic rela-tions between both countries.”

On Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup, the Singapore president said she was looking forward to this sporting event in Doha, saying that it would be a historic event and will be held for the fi rst time in the Middle East. She expressed her confi dence that Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup would be a resounding success.

His Highness the Emir expressed his

thanks to the Singapore president for supporting and consolidating the dis-tinguished relations of friendship and co-operation between the two coun-tries.

The Emir stressed the importance of the visit which witnessed the sign-ing of more co-operation agreements to promote and develop these relations, pointing out in this regard that the Qatari-Singaporean Economic Forum (currently being held in Singapore) will provide more investment opportunities that serve the common interests.

He praised the spirit of friendship and understanding that prevailed in the talks with President Halimah Yacob and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong which dealt with many issues of com-mon concern and means of boosting close co-operation in various fi elds, especially in economy and investment, noting that this growing co-operation was a matter of satisfaction.

The reception was attended by a number of Singaporean ministers, sen-ior offi cials and businessmen.

From Qatar’s side, it was attended by

businessmen participating in the eco-nomic forum.

His Highness the Emir and the Sin-gaporean prime minister held a session of offi cial talks at the Istana Presiden-tial Palace.

Speaking on the occasion, the prime minister welcomed the Emir and the accompanying delegation, stressing the depth of the relations between the two countries and his country’s keen-ness to strengthen and develop them in various fi elds. Continued on Page 2 (See also Page 24)

In brief

WEDNESDAY Vol. XXXVIII No. 10610

October 18, 2017Muharram 28, 1439 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals GULF TIMES

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Rampant Reds hit seven to silence Klopp critics

QATAR | Education

Minister opens mural ofacademic excellenceHE the Minister of Education and Higher Education Dr Mohamed Abdul Wahed Ali al-Hammadi stressed that the recognition of the academically distinguished students in Qatar is one of the fruits of the qualitative investment in the Qatari people. Speaking at the inauguration of the mural of academic excellence in the Katara Cultural Village, the minister said that the mural was another recognition of the academically distinguished students, which will inspire and motivate all components of the learning process including schools, students and teachers.

QATAR | Reaction

Afghanistan attackscondemnedQatar strongly condemned the attacks which took place in southeastern Afghanistan yesterday, killing and wounding several people. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry reiterated Qatar’s firm position rejecting violence and terrorism regardless of motives and reasons. The statement extended Qatar’s condolences to the families of the victims and the government and people of Afghanistan, wishing speedy recovery for the wounded.

QATAR | Aid plane

Medical team to treatSomalia blast victimsIn line with the directives of His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, a C-17 plane belonging to Emiri Air Force left for the Somalia capital Mogadishu, carrying medical equipment and first aid to help those injured in the terrorist explosions that recently took place in the capital, killing and injuring hundreds. The aid is accompanied by Qatar International Search and Rescue Group and a comprehensive medical team from the Qatar Armed Forces and Hamad Medical Corporation.

QATAR | Humanitarian crisis

Doha hosts meeting ofSyria donors todayThe 11th meeting of the major donors group for Syria will open in Doha today under the chairmanship of the UN Secretary-General’s Humanitarian Envoy HE Dr Ahmed bin Mohamed al-Muraikhi. The meeting, which is being hosted in Doha for the second time, aims to strengthen humanitarian dialogue among donors on the humanitarian crisis in Syria, assess eff orts in the humanitarian response and strengthen international eff orts in this regard

QATAR | Weather

‘Weak chance’ ofscattered rain todayThere is a weak chance of scattered rain in some parts of the country today and tomorrow, followed by a spell of strong winds during the weekend, the Qatar Met department has said. The weather off ice has also issued a marine warning, which will stay in eff ect until Saturday night. In a detailed forecast yesterday, the Met department said “local clouds are expected to form during the afternoon on Wednesday and Thursday” and there is also as “weak chance of scattered rain in some areas”.

BUSINESS | Economy

Threat to Qatari banks’liquidity fading: FitchThe threat to Qatari banks’ funding and liquidity, triggered by withdrawals of foreign deposits amid a Saudi-led blockade of Doha, appears to be fading, Fitch Ratings said yesterday. Qatari banks’ overall funding increased slightly in August, according to a report released by Fitch, the first upward movement since the boycott began in June, sparked by accusations of Doha’s ties to radical groups. Funding by the Qatar Central Bank, which rose sharply in June, slowed in August, suggesting that banks no longer needed the support.

Emir’s visit to Singapore raisesbilateral relations to higher level

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani being greeted by Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the Istana Presidential Palace.

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani with Singapore’s President Halimah Yacob at the Istana Presidential Palace yesterday.

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani arrived in Jakarta yesterday evening on a two-day state visit to Indonesia. The Emir and his accompanying delegation were greeted upon arrival at Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta International Airport by Minister of Trade of Indonesia Enggartiasto Lukita.

Al-Kuwari returns to warm welcome; thanks Emir for support

HE Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kuwari, who was Qatar’s candidate in the re-cent election to the post of United Na-

tions Educational, Scientifi c and Cultural Or-ganisation (Unesco) director-general, returned home to a warm welcome yesterday.

He was received in Doha by several citizens, dignitaries as well as mediapersons.

HE Dr al-Kuwari had lost narrowly to French candidate Audrey Azoulay in the fi nal round of the election, held last Friday in Paris.

Speaking to journalists upon his return to Doha, he thanked His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and all the people of Qatar for the “immense support” given to him throughout the election proc-ess and its run-up, helping him achieve such impressive results. He also stressed that Doha is a place not only for Arabs but for the whole world, and attributed his achievements to Qa-tar.

HE Dr al-Kuwari, Cultural Adviser to His Highness the Emir and former Minister of Cul-ture, Arts and Heritage, noted that his achieve-ment in the Unesco poll was the outcome of continuous work and communication carried out across diff erent continents two years ago in order to highlight Qatar’s stature in the fi elds of education, science and culture, with all coun-tries welcoming Qatar’s nomination.

“It was a great Arab dream since the foun-dation of Unesco for Arabs to head it. As and when an Arab attains this, it is the Arab culture that has reached the position and not the per-son,” he pointed out.

HE Dr al-Kuwari maintained that unfor-tunately Qatar stood alone in the race and the dream was shattered by Arabs themselves, despite the fact that it would not have been a victory for Qatar alone but for the entire Arab world and culture. “We are proud of what we have achieved and Qatar has a broad interna-

tional base of support,” he said. However, some African countries were un-

der immense pressure not to vote for the Qatari nominee, he added.

Meanwhile, HE Dr al-Kuwari recalled that he went through the campaign process for two years and never abused anybody. This was be-cause he respected all and “would not respond to abuse with abuse”.

“Let all countries live, let all civilisations live. We do not want anybody to fall, whether Arabs or non-Arabs. We want the whole world to rise with all its diff erent religions and cul-tures,” he said.

Further, he reiterated that Qatar wished for everyone’s well-being and this was clear from its response to ill-treatment by some others. Qatar has its supporters and a good number of Arab countries supported it, but were afraid to voice their support due to the fear of potential harm, he added.

HE Dr al-Kuwari being greeted upon his return to Doha yesterday. PICTURE: Ram Chand

Stress on making High-level Joint Committee more eff ective Five joint technical committees to be set up in ICT, security, business, law and sustainability sectors Qatar, Singapore sign four MoUs to enhance joint investment Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup will be a resounding success: Singapore

Emir arrives in Indonesia

QNADoha/Jakarta

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and his accompanying del-

egation arrived in Indonesia yesterday evening on a two-day state visit. They were greeted upon arrival at Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta International Air-port by Minister of Trade Enggartiasto Lukita, Qatar’s ambassador to Indone-sia Ahmed bin Jassim al-Hamar, Indo-nesia’s ambassador to Qatar Mohamed

Basri Sidehabi and staff of the Qatari embassy.

His Highness the Emir’s visit will signifi cantly contribute to the devel-opment of distinguished relations be-tween the two countries over the past 41 years, the Indonesian ambassador has said.

In a statement to Qatar News Agen-cy, the ambassador said the Emir and Indonesian President Joko Widodo will hold talks on regional and inter-national issues of mutual concern, including eff orts to increase trade and investment, as well as co-operation

in transport, industry, and capacity building.

The ambassador affi rmed that In-donesia and Qatar have long enjoyed excellent relations at the government and people levels. “Through 41 years of diplomatic relations between Indone-sian and Qatar, the two countries have developed strong partnerships through high-level political exchanges and co-operation in various fi elds.”

He noted that Qatar was one of the biggest investors in Indonesia with stakes in telecommunications, bank-ing, and energy fi elds.

Talks to focus on issues of mutual concern, interest

QATAR

Gulf Times Wednesday, October 18, 20172

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong witness the the signing of agreements and memoranda of understanding between the governments of Qatar and Singapore at the Istana Presidential Palace yesterday.

Emir and Singapore prime minister witness signing of agreements and MoUs

Qatar, Singapore business bodies sign four MoUs

HE the Minister of Economy and Commerce Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani

and Singapore’s Minister of Trade and Industry S Iswaran attended the signing of four memoranda of under-standing between Qatar Chamber, Singapore Business Federation and a number of companies specialised in training and consultancy services, ag-riculture, and construction.

The signing ceremony was held on the sidelines of the Qatar-Singapore Economic Forum organised by the Ministry of Economy and Commerce in co-operation with Singapore’s Min-istry of Trade and Industry yesterday.

The MoU between Qatar Chamber and the Singapore Business Federation aims at enhancing trade and investment between the business communities of both countries through the facilitation of the direct exchange of information, business delegations, and the promo-tion of business opportunities.

Qatar Chamber chairman Sheikh Khalifa bin Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani, and Singapore Business Feder-ation chairman Teo Siong Seng signed the memorandum.

Sheikh Ahmed also attended the signing of an MoU between Al Khaleejia Business Management, a member of the Taleb Group, and Educare International Consultancy Private Limited.

The MoU will explore the possibili-ties of collaboration with Taleb Group as a partner to bring Educare’s training and consultancy services to Qatar.

Both parties will also seek to organise workshops, seminars and conferences to promote the exchange of knowledge and scientifi c publications, implement joint professional development and leadership projects, in addition to es-tablishing educational institutions.

Mohamed Taleb al-Khauri, man-aging director, Al Khaleejia Busi-ness Management Company and Alex Shieh, director, Strategic Development at Educare International Consultancy

co-signed the MoU.

The MoUs target joint investment projects in agriculture, construction, training and consultancy

Sheikh Khalifa bin Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani and Teo Siong Seng sign an MoU as Qatar’s Minister of Economy and Commerce HE Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani and S Iswaran, Singapore’s Minister of Trade and Industry look on.

Technical panels planned for fi ve sectorsFrom Page 1

The Emir expressed hope that the visit will contribute to the develop-ment of relations between the two countries and elevate them to wider horizons to serve the common inter-ests of both countries and peoples.

The talks dealt with means to strengthen bilateral co-operation as the two sides reviewed the work of the Qatar-Singapore High-Level Joint Committee.

The two leaders stressed on the im-portance of the joint committee as the main pillar of bilateral co-operation which since its formation in 2006 has developed and deepened relations in various fi elds that have so far culmi-nated in the signing of 82 agreements and memorandums of understanding.

They agreed on the importance of strengthening the existing co-oper-ation and to establish a mechanism

for monitoring the implementation within the framework of the High-level Joint Committee between the two countries in order to ensure the peri-odic follow-up and implementation of the initiatives in an optimum manner.

It was agreed to set up fi ve techni-cal committees in the ICT, security, business, law and sustainability sec-tors which will be jointly supervised within the implementation moni-toring mechanism. These commit-tees will be chaired by HE Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and Singapore Minister of Foreign Aff airs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan.

The implementation monitoring mechanism will serve as a link between Qatari and Singaporean ministries and entities to work together eff ectively and closely. The two sides agreed to hold the fi rst meeting in Doha in 2018.

Talks during the session also dealt

with the current regional and international developments.The session was attended by members

of the offi cial delegation accompanying the Emir and a number of Singaporean ministers and senior offi cials.

The Emir attended an offi cial recep-tion held by the President in his honour at Istana Presidential Palace. The recep-tion was attended by a number of min-isters, senior offi cials and businessmen.

The Emir left Singapore last evening after a two-day state visit, heading to the Republic of Indonesia.

The Emir and the accompanying del-egation were seen off upon departure at Singapore Changi Airport by Singa-pore’s Minister of National Develop-ment Lawrence Wong, Qatar’s ambas-sador to Singapore Abdullah bin Ibrahim al-Hamer, Singapore’s ambassador to Qatar Jai Sohan Singh and staff of the Qatari embassy in Singapore.

A third memorandum of under-standing was signed between Al Adekhar Agricultural Company, a member of Taleb Group, and Cutech Group.

The MoU aims at collaborating on a feasibility study to assess joint part-nership opportunities in the areas of organic chicken farming, and eventu-ally establishing a company in Qatar.

Al-Khauri, also managing director of Al Adekhar Agricultural Company, and N Arunachalam, chairman, Cutech So-lutions and Services signed the MoU.

A fourth memorandum of under-standing was signed among Qatar Primary Materials Company (QMPC), EnGro Corporation, and Al Wattan In-ternational Trading and Contracting Company, a member of Taleb group. The MoU aims at establishing a joint venture for the export and supply of raw materials and cement.

QPMC chief executive offi cer Eisa al-Hammadi, EnGro Corporation chairman and CEO Tan Cheng Gay, and Mohamed Taleb Group managing di-rector Taleb al-Khauri signed the MoU.

“The memoranda of understanding will contribute to the development of trade and economic relations between Qatar and Singapore and enhance

communication and co-operation be-tween both nations’ private sectors,” MEC said in a statement yesterday.

The MoUs will also contribute to the development of mechanisms and measures for the establishment of joint investment projects.

The Qatar-Singapore Economic Fo-rum marks an important milestone in the development of economic, invest-ment and trade co-operation between the two countries. During the forum, the Ministry of Economy and Com-merce highlighted the advantages of investing in Qatar and how Singapore’s private sector can benefi t from the in-centives provided by the state to for-eign investors.

Participants also discussed the im-portance of developing long-term eco-nomic co-operation mechanisms, ena-bling Qatari companies to draw lessons from the success of their Singaporean counterparts.

Singapore ranks as Qatar’s seventh largest trade partner, with a total of $3.5bn worth of traded goods in 2016.

The value of Qatar’s exports to Singapore stood at about $3bn in 2016, while Singapore’s exports to Qatar reached more than $350mn

in 2016.

4 Gulf TimesWednesday, October 18, 2017

QATAR

HE the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi yesterday met with a high-level US House of Representatives delegation, currently visiting Qatar. The meeting discussed the current situation in the region and a number of issues of common concern.

Al-Muraikhi meets US delegationSwedish co-operation with Qatar-basedacademic institutions to deepen: envoyBy Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

Plans to further strengthen Swedish co-operation with Qatar-based aca-

demic institutions are under way, which will serve as a plat-form for exchanging views on regional and international af-fairs, Swedish ambassador Ewa Polano has said.

“We developed some interest-ing plans on how to deepen the Swedish co-operation with the Brookings Doha Centre on vari-ous knowledge sharing seminars in the coming year in Doha and Stockholm on subjects of mutual interest for both our countries,” the envoy told Gulf Times.

She was speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing visit to Qatar of Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) Mena Region director Bitte Hamma-

rgren, which concludes today. This was her fourth visit to the country.

UI, a highly recognised and independent think tank for re-

search, analysis, and information on international relations and foreign policy, conducts academ-ic and policy-focused research and is closely co-operating with

the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Aff airs. UI’s research is based on unbiased scientifi c analysis and fi eld visits to countries of inter-est.

Besides her visit to the Al Jazeera Research Centre, Ham-margren also met with several researchers from Qatar’s aca-demic institutions. Part of her three-day itinerary was a meet-ing with several public offi cials, including HE ambassador Dr Mutlaq al-Qahtani, Qatar’s For-eign Minister’s Special Envoy for Counter-terrorism and Confl ict Resolution.

“The outcome of today’s meet-ings is that the UI is planning early 2018 to organise some semi-nars on Gulf and regional issues in Stockholm and these meetings gave good inspiration for the top-ics and whom to invite,” stressed Polano, who described Hammar-gren’s visit as “fruitful and full of good discussions.”

Qatar National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) yesterday welcomed the selection of State of Qatar to the UN General Assembly for a second term as a member of the Human Rights Council. Jaber al-Huwail, director of the Legal Aff airs at the NHRC, said in a statement that this choice, which came through secret ballot, aff irms the commitment of Qatar to protect and promote human rights at the local, regional and international levels. He explained that this enhances Qatar’s approach to

the development of national legislation to promote human rights issues and aff irms its commitment to the protection of human rights at the local level and recognises its significant role and prestige at the regional and international levels. Al-Huwail noted that this selection places Qatar at the forefront of countries in the region in terms of adherence to international treaties, and human rights conventions and principles, congratulating all those involved in this achievement.

NHRC welcomes Qatar’s re-election for Human Rights Council membership

Winners of prayer rug design contest awardedThe libraries of Virginia

Commonwealth Univer-sity School of the Arts

in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) have announced the winners of the Modern Prayer Rug Design com-petition. Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Educa-tion, Science and Community Development, chose the grand prize winner Sidra Sohail, a student of VCUarts Qatar. The second prize was awarded to the design team of Ahmed al-Nowfal al-Tamimi, a student of Texas A&M University at Qatar and Masa Jamili, a student of VCUarts Qatar.

The third prize was awarded to May Makia, a graduate of Ha-mad Bin Khalifa University.

VCUarts Qatar dean Dr Akel I Kahera, announced the awards at the opening reception of the

Modern Prayer Rug exhibition at Company House, Msheireb

Museums on October 12. The Modern Prayer Rug Design competition, inspired by the creative vision of Her High-ness, challenged students from across Qatar to submit concept designs that reimagined the Islamic prayer rug using tradi-tional or unconventional mate-rials while honouring the rich-ness and the values of Islamic culture and heritage.

The competition was launched by the Materials Li-brary of VCUarts Qatar in May and was open to students and alumni aged 15 years and older from schools from across Qatar. Six fi nalists were selected on the overall strength of their con-cepts, the elements and prin-ciples of design, and the crea-tive use of materials. The rugs,

which represent the work of in-dividual and team entries, were prototyped during the summer of 2017 and put on exhibition at Company House on October 12.

The following fi nalists were awarded certifi cates of Distin-guished Achievement: Aaqifa Altaf, a student of VCUarts Qa-tar; Hossain Mohamed Yasin Arafat, a graduate of MES Indi-an School; Maryam al-Semaitt, a student at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar; Nawar al-Mutlaq, a graduate of VCUarts Qatar; Neihan Yaqoob, a grad-uate of VCUarts Qatar; and Sultana Jesmine, a student at VCUarts Qatar.

The Modern Prayer Rug exhi-bition will be open at Company House, Msheireb Downtown Doha until November 14.

Finalists of the Modern Prayer Rug Design competition, organised by VCUarts Qatar.Grand prize rug design.

Grand prize rug folded.

Oman eases visa rules to promote tourism

Oman’s Ministry of Tour-ism (MoT) has issued a circular to all tourism-

sector entities to facilitate the granting of unsponsored tour-ist visas to the nationals of a number of countries.

“Travellers from India, China and Russia, who reside in, or hold an entry visa to the US, Canada, Australia, the UK or Schengen states are allowed to obtain non-sponsored tourist visa,” engineer Mohamed Mah-moud al-Zadjali, director gener-al of Investor Services and Qual-ity Management at the Ministry of Tourism said.

“The MoT aims to attract more tourists to Oman through this step, which has been taken in collaboration with offi cials from the Ministry of Foreign Af-fairs and Royal Oman Police,” he explained in a statement re-ceived in Doha yesterday.

“We are keen on promoting the e-visa system, and providing sophisticated services in collab-oration with related governmen-tal bodies,” added al-Zadjali, who heads the visa-facilitation team.

As per the circular a number of terms and conditions have to be met for the issuance of a visa. The applicant should also have a return ticket and a hotel booking to be granted a one month’s visa, the price of which is Omani Riyal 20. The visa allows the applicant to be accompanied by a spouse and his/her children.

Mohamed Mahmoud al-Zadjali

Qatar outlets see ‘positive trend’ in jewellery industryBy Peter AlagosBusiness Reporter

Expansion plans are in the pipe-line for some of Qatar’s major jewellery outlets, which have

witnessed a “positive trend” in the jewellery business, according to in-dustry sources.

Malabar Gold & Diamonds regional head Santhosh T V told Gulf Times yesterday that while current market conditions “are unusual,” the gold sector has “performed better” in 2017 compared to last year. For this month alone, Santhosh said Malabar Gold & Diamonds opened seven new outlets in the Middle East and India, which, he said, “is an indication that the market is booming.”

“In the previous week, we have wit-nessed a surge in footfall as many cus-tomers had been visiting our shops to make inquiries or making advance se-lections related to the Diwali festival,” Santhosh said.

“Compared to last year, we expe-

rienced overall growth in business this 2017. Similarly, we are expecting growth during Diwali festival because since last week we have seen strong public acceptance,” he continued. Santhosh said new projects in Qatar also include plans to open the ‘Malabar Gold & Diamond Lifestyle Jewellery’ outlet in Lagoona Mall next month – Malabar’s seventh store in Qatar.

Similarly, Kalyan Jewellers chairman & managing director T S Kalyanaraman said the company has plans of setting up a manufacturing facility in Qatar. “We are hopeful that we will be able to do the same in this fi nancial year,” he said in a statement sent to Gulf Times.

He noted that Kalyan Jewellery shops in Qatar experienced an increase in footfall in the run-up to the Diwali festival.

“There is a positive trend in the pur-

chase of jewellery. While there is a ro-bust demand for gold jewellery, there is an increasing interest in customers for studded-stone jewellery and uncut diamond jewellery. Our expectation is that a signifi cant proportion of the de-mand will be converted into sales,” he stressed.

Since the festival is considered an auspicious time to buy gold, jewel-lery stores are expecting an uptick in sales. Kalyanaraman said: “The im-pending Dhanteras and Diwali season has begun on a promising note and we are expecting an 8% to 10% increase in sales compared to last year…while the reduction in the prices of gold (1% as compared to last month) could be contributing factors for the upswing, we believe that the festive seasons fol-lowed by the wedding season are also contributing to demand.”

Santhosh added: “From April to September 2017, we already recorded a 23% increase in sales but for Diwali festival, we are anticipating a 20% increase in business compared to last year.”

Ooredoo has announced that an updated version of the Ooredoo App is now available with enhanced Passport features. Since the launch of the Passport Companion feature on the Ooredoo App in 2016, there has seen a significant rise in the number of customers using the app for their roaming needs. “Almost 50% of Passport Card subscribers now prefer to use the Ooredoo App to subscribe, check their balance, and top-up their Ooredoo Passport allowances,” according to a statement from Ooredoo. With the new features, while overseas, the main screen of the users Ooredoo App will change to display their Passport balance only. To make things even simpler, Ooredoo has also introduced the Ooredoo Passport widgets for iOS and Android, which allow subscribers to check their Passport balance without having to open the Ooredoo App via their phone.The Passport Companion feature was designed to significantly improve the user experience for roaming customers, and Ooredoo App users can now easily view the standard roaming rates for calling and messaging in the country they are visiting beforehand via the ‘Travelling’ tab, as well as the networks that are compatible with the Ooredoo Passport. The Ooredoo App is available for free download on Google Play or iTunes for customers who have iOS 8 and above and Android 4.4.4 smartphones now.

Ooredoo App’s new Passport feature revamped

Kalyan Jewellers chairman & managing director T S Kalyanaraman.

Diwali festival is considered an auspicious time to buy gold and jewellery stores are expecting an uptick in sales

Bitte Hammargren (right), together with Swedish ambassador Ewa Polano (second, right), Palestinian ambassador Mounir Ghannam and his wife, Hanina Ghannam (left).

QATAR5Gulf Times

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Following the success of the fi rst edition in 2016, the Doha Film Institute (DFI)

has opened applications for its Producers Lab 2017 scheduled from November 12 to 18.

The six-day programme aims to strengthen the creative, fi nan-cial, and strategic skills of fi lm producers based in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) re-gion.

It includes intensive training exercises, group tutorials, one-to-one meetings and master-classes by industry experts.

Focusing on various aspects of producing a feature-length documentary and fi ction fi lm, the DFI Producers Lab also aims to strengthen co-productions in the Mena region by bringing to-gether intimate groups of serious and like-minded producers.

Promoting networking op-portunities along with skills-

building, the programme will also off er insights on fi lm mar-keting and distribution, with an in-depth focus on targeting the right audiences, understanding international markets and em-ploying eff ective sales tactics.

“Our year-round programmes focus on diverse aspects of fi lm-making – and one of the most crucial is the role of fi lm pro-ducers who support the voice of

the directors and have a greater responsibility in shaping an im-pressive project,” DFI chief ex-ecutive Fatma al-Remaihi said.

“It is important that produc-ers gain stronger insights on the fi lmmaking process, ena-bling them to develop even more creative ventures,” she said. “Through the Producers Lab, we aim to strengthen the skills of producers and in turn contribute

to building a strong homegrown fi lm industry for the Mena re-gion.”

The DFI Producers Lab is de-signed for producers, investors, fi nanciers, and directors as well as anyone interested in entering the fi lmmaking business in pro-duction.

Open to those with a project in development stage with a direc-tor/screenwriter associated to

the project, the workshop aims to be a small and intimate event with a maximum of 10 partici-pants, allowing room for atten-tion to be given to each project.

The deadline for receiving ap-plications and requirements is October 29 through DFi’s web-site: www.dohafi lminstitute.com

The DFI Producers Lab will highlight the responsibility of the diff erent types of produc-ers – such as creative producer, co-producer, associate producer, line producer, and executive pro-ducer – as well as highlight the producer’s approach to script and development, structural analysis and creative production.

Many case studies will be pre-sented throughout the sessions, enabling participants to address questions related to script devel-opment, executive production, fi nance and budget plans, mar-keting, pitching and distribution.

Industry standard technical documents and templates, such as the budget fi nancing plan, dis-tribution and sale strategy sam-ples, and treatment examples, will be shared with participants and discussed in detail.

Applications invited for DFI programmeLed by film experts, the programme will focus on the creative, financial and strategic aspects of producing feature-length documentary and fiction films

DFI Producers Lab wants to bring together intimate groups of serious and like-minded producers.

Recall announced for Mazda CX5 models of 2016 and 2017The Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC), in collaboration with the National Car Company, has announced the recall of Mazda CX5 models of 2016-2017 over the possibility of dust entry through the tail door damper dust boots.The MEC said the recall campaign comes within the framework of its

ongoing eff orts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicles’ defects and repair them.The MEC said that it would co-ordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works and will communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out.

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce has also urged consumers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department, through the following channels: Call centre: 16001, e-mail: info@mec.gov.qa, Twitter: @MEC_Qatar, Instagram: MEC_Qatar, MEC mobile app for Android and IOS: MEC_Qatar

The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) has an-nounced Qatar’s inaugural edu-

cation festival, “Doha Learning Week”.Set to take place from November 10-

16 across Doha, the event will culmi-nate with the 2017 WISE Summit.

“Doha Learning Week”, the fl agship education festival of WISE, is intended to celebrate as well as raise awareness of the various education and learning resources and initiatives in Doha.

Held in collaboration with the Su-preme Committee for Delivery & Leg-acy and other local partners, the event will feature a series of workshops, movie screenings, exhibitions, lec-tures, performances, tours, and hack-a-thons.

WISE, an initiative of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, has in-vited students, parents, teachers, and education enthusiasts to join them in exploring, debating, and connecting around the topic of education.

WISE marked the announcement of “Doha Learning Week” with a special launch event featuring remarks from

WISE chief executive Stavros N Yian-nouka, and Ameena A Hussain, the di-rector of Programmes and Community Development at WISE.

Hussain said: “’Doha Learning Week’ is designed to raise awareness among our local community about the great variety of education resources available for our young people and

learners of all ages. We welcome the entire community to join these excit-ing activities and opportunities hap-pening all over Doha.”

The 2017 WISE Summit, held un-der the theme, Co-Exist, Co-Create: Learning to Live and Work Together, will take place from November 14 to 16 in Doha.

WISE introduces‘Doha Learning Week’

WISE director of Programmes and Community Development Ameena A Hussain.

The Qatar Founda-tion (QF) Annual Re-search Conference 2018

(ARC’18) will focus on research and innovation that address Qatar’s greatest challenges and generate true economic and social benefi t for the nation, it was announced yesterday.

Members of Qatar’s research community are being invited to showcase their work at ARC’18, with a call for abstracts now open.

The deadline for submis-sions is October 25.

The latest edition of the Qatar Foundation Research and Development (QF R&D)’s fl agship event will be held at the Qatar National Conven-tion Centre from March 20-22, themed R&D: Focusing on Pri-orities, Delivering Impact.

It will bring together re-searchers, innovators, thought-leaders, and policy-makers from Qatar and around the world.

Expert-led panel sessions will highlight Qatar’s research and innovation accomplish-ments, challenges, and future goals, and discuss strategies for ensuring research and devel-opment eff orts are targeted to-ward areas that make a tangible diff erence to people’s lives and have the greatest potential for commercialisation.

“The theme of ARC’18 re-fl ects the mission-driven ethos of QF R&D, and the point our

nation has reached in the de-velopment of its research and innovation ecosystem,” said QF R&D executive vice-president Dr Hamadal-Ibrahim.

“Having built intellectual and physical capacity and cul-tivated a dynamic and con-stantly-evolving research cul-ture, we are now focusing on the next level – generating im-pact through innovation that targets our national priorities, makes Qatar a stronger and more sustainable nation, and is capable of disrupting the global marketplace,” he added.

All abstracts must comprise original research and focus on one of the four ARC’18 pil-lars: Energy and Environment; Computing and Information Technology; Health and Bio-medical; and, Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities.

Once submitted, they will be considered for paper or poster presentation at the conference.

“ARC’18 provides a channel for connections to be made, new and mutually-benefi cial networks of knowledge to be formed, and collaboration op-portunities within and beyond Qatar to be identifi ed,” said QF R&D executive director of op-erations Dr Nabeel al-Salem, who chairs the ARC’18 organ-ising committee. “It is also an opportunity to illustrate the progress and outcomes of re-search activity focused on ad-dressing Qatar’s priorities.”

QF ARC’18 to focus on the impact of research

The Hamad Medical Corpora-tion (HMC) will open a clinic in the Sealine area of Qatar next

month, ahead of the start of this year’s camping season.

The Sealine Medical Centre, which is set to open on November 2, will op-erate every weekend during the camp-ing season, opening each Thursday at 3pm and remaining open until Satur-day at 5pm.

HMC chief communications of-fi cer Ali Abdullah al-Khater, who also chairs the Healthcare Communica-tions Committee, said that this is the eighth consecutive year that HMC has operated the clinic.

He explained that the clinic is lo-cated close to the shore and popular camping areas to allow for easier ac-cess should healthcare services be re-quired by residents or visitors.

“The annual opening of the clinic in the Sealine area is in line with HMC’s commitment to providing the safest, most eff ective, and most compassion-ate care to all of Qatar’s residents and visitors,” said al-Khater.

The HMC offi cial, who is also the project manager for the Sealine Medi-cal Centre, said that the clinic will be staff ed by a doctor and nurse, and equipped to handle patients with mi-nor health concerns, as well as emer-gency cases.

The clinic is supported by HMC’s Ambulance Service, providing camp-ers with round-the-clock access to a team of paramedics and well-equipped ambulance vehicles.

The clinic also has a helipad to transfer patients from the beach to the clinic, and transfer acute cases to hos-pital.

HMC to open clinic at Sealine area ahead of camping season

Al-Khater: The annual opening of the clinic in the Sealine area is in line with HMC’s commitment to providing the safest, most eff ective, and most compassionate care to all of Qatar’s residents and visitors.

Qatar Post and Qatar National Convention Centre sign agreementA Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the Qatar Postal Services Company and the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC).It took place in the presence of Qatar Post chairman and managing director

Falah al-Naemi, and QNCC chief executive director Abdulaziz al-Emadi.The pact is intended to strengthen the relationship between the two parties and came within the strategic plan of Qatar Post after its new branding.

As per the terms of the MoU, Qatar Post and QNCC will exchange services that facilitate, expedite and enhance the importance of integrating national companies to strengthen the country’s economy.

QATAR

Gulf TimesWednesday, October 18, 20176

Safari Mall’s seventh anniversary was celebrated with a cake-cutting ceremony inaugurated by Safari Group chairman Hamad Dafar al-Ahbabi, managing director Aboobacker Madappatt and director and general manager Zainul Aabideen, in the presence of other management representatives.

Safari Mall celebrates seventh anniversary

Qatar Airways to launch direct fl ights to Penang

Qatar Airways will launch direct fl ights to Penang on February 6, 2018, its

second Malaysian destination, as part of its ambitious global expansion plans.

In addition to its beautiful sandy beaches and stunning natural scenery, Penang is con-sidered to be the gourmet capi-tal of Malaysia.

From street food to fi ne din-ing, visitors will be spoilt for choice with the variety of dish-es available, with infl uences ranging from Malay to Chinese; and Indian to European. “Ma-laysia has long been one of our

most sought-after destina-tions, and as such, we are de-lighted to launch a new direct service to Penang, off ering our passengers a second gateway into the country,” Qatar Air-ways Group chief executive Ak-bar al-Baker said.

“With three weekly fl ights between Doha and Penang, we are sure travellers to this exotic holiday destination will be en-chanted by both Penang’s mag-nifi cent natural scenery and our unrivalled fi ve-star onboard service,” he added.

Qatar Airways will fl y three times a week to Penang with its state-of-the-art Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which features 22 seats in Business Class and 232 seats in Economy Class, with spacious cabins and specially-designed interiors. The Boe-

ing 787 Dreamliner also of-fers lower altitude-equivalent pressure, improved air quality and optimal humidity, enabling passengers to arrive at their destination feeling refreshed.

Passengers will be also able to enjoy the airline’s superior in-fl ight entertainment sys-tem, off ering a multitude of en-tertainment options, according to Qatar Airways.

The award-winning airline fi rst launched service to Ma-laysia in December 2001, and currently operates a triple-daily service to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. As part of its continued expansion in Asia, the airline also recently announced the addition of ex-tra services to the Thai city of Krabi, as well as to the Viet-namese cities of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, to commence in December 2017 and January 2018, respectively.

In December, Qatar Airways will launch service to Thai-land’s Chiang Mai, its fourth destination in Thailand, to meet increased demand for Southeast Asian destinations from holiday-makers. The na-tional carrier of the State of Qa-tar is one of the fastest-grow-ing airlines operating one of the youngest fl eets in the world. Now celebrating its 20th year of operations, Qatar Airways has a modern fl eet of more than 200 aircraft fl ying to business and leisure destinations across six continents.

Award-winning airline continues robust expansion of its global route network with launch of second Malaysian destination

Qatar Airways will use its state-of-the-art Boeing 787 Dreamliner for the Penang route.

QNCC to be new venue for IELTS

British Council Qatar has joined hands with Qatar National Convention Cen-

tre (QNCC) as the new Interna-tional English Language Testing System (IELTS) test centre from November 1, 2017.

QNCC, located in Gharafat Al Rayyan, on the Dukhan Highway in Doha, is one of the largest and technologically advanced venues in the Middle East.

Dr Frank Fitzpatrick, country director at the British Council, Qatar said: “The introduction of this most sophisticated and comprehensive test venue will signifi cantly enrich the custom-er journey and experience for our IELTS candidates. We believe that the new venue will exceed all customer expectations and prove to become the best IELTS test centre in the region.”

IELTS is the International English Language Testing Sys-

tem, ‘the world’s most popular English language profi ciency test for higher education and

global migration,’ according to a statement from British Council.

“IELTS is the most widely

used test of English for migra-tion to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. It is recog-nised by more than 10,000 uni-versities, schools, employers and immigration bodies, including all universities in Australia and the UK and many of the leading institutions in the US.

“More than three million IELTS tests were taken in the past year. The success of IELTS rests on the high quality of the test, which measures the four key languages skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing. It is backed by dedicated research teams in the UK and Australia, and administered by centres in more than 140 countries around the world.

The British Council, the UK’s international organisation for education and cultural rela-tions, is represented in over 100 countries.

Qatar National Convention Centre is the new IELTS test centre.

Emiri Land Forces hold exercise

The Directorate of De-fence Communication at the Ministry of De-

fence has announced that the Emiri Land Forces conducted on Monday evening, the night exercises for the fourth stage of “Nasr (Victory) 2017” exer-cise at Al Qalayil Area.

Staged from Sunday, the two-day exercise was held under the patronage of HE the Minister of State for Defence Aff airs Dr Khalid bin Mo-hamed al-Attiyah in the pres-ence of Staff Major General (pilot) Ghanem bin Shaheen al-Ghanem, Chief of Staff of Qatar Armed Forces.

The Emiri Land Forces and Jassim bin Mohamed Brigade took part in the exercise along-side the Emiri Guard.

Staff Brigadier Shayiq Messfi r al-Hajiri, director of the exercise, said that Nasr 2017 comprised of six stages for training commanders on assessing the situation, plan-ning, command, control and the staff works and reconnais-sance between the Emiri Land Forces and the Joint Special Forces.

The exercise was aimed at improving co-ordination among the Emiri Land Forces, Jassim bin Mohamed Brigade, the Emiri Guard and units from the Qatari Armed Forc-

es, he added. Staff Lieutenant Colonel Nawaf Mubarak bin Saif al-Thani, director of the Directorate of Defence Com-munication, pointed out that Nasr 2017 was designed to achieve the task of the Emiri

Land Forces with the par-ticipation of Jassim bin Mo-hamed Brigade, and the Emiri Guard in defending the ter-ritories of the country and its economic, strategic and vital facilities.

Staff Major General (pilot) Ghanem bin Shaheen al-Ghanem, Chief of Staff of Qatar Armed Forces, and other off icials at the exercise.

Another group of off icials at the exercise venue.

Qatar-manufactured sportswear ‘by 2018’

Qatar is set to start pro-ducing sportswear in the country by 2018,

Doha-resident Harish Chandra Bhandari told Qatar Urdu Ra-dio’s live show Haqeeqat yester-day.

“The raw material has been imported and the production of goods will start in 2018. This will include all kinds of sportswear such as jerseys, socks and inner-wear,” Bhandari, who is a civil engineer by profession, said.

“The target is to supply these goods in the Middle East and European countries. But it also shows you how Qatar will

be self-sufficient in multiple sports related sectors before the 2022 FIFA World Cup,” he added.

Haqeeqat, which aims to engage and interact with the large South Asian expatriate community in Qatar, is a joint venture of Gulf Times and Qa-tar Media Corporation Urdu Radio.

It is broadcast from Sunday to Thursday on FM107. The show is hosted by Saif-ur-Rehman. Log on to Qatar Urdu Radio on Face-book and ‘@QatarUrduRadio’ on Twitter for feedback and com-ments about the show.

Harish Chandra Bhandari (left) was a guest on Qatar Urdu Radio’s live show Haqeeqat yesterday.

Al Ahli Hospital launched a breast cancer aware-ness campaign to mark

Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October) through a clinic for free examination, for breast cancer and to share bro-chures.

Dr Abdul Azim Abdul Wahab Hussain, chief of medical staff at Al Ahli Hospital said, “The breast cancer awareness cam-paign comes in response to the increasing numbers of cancer in the world. Early detection and prevention of breast cancer is of great importance and this cam-paign intends to get the message across to the community. Al Ahli

Hospital is keen on building a community that believes pre-vention is better than cure and to follow healthy lifestyles. Early detection of this disease can save lives.” “Mammogram screen-ings are so important, and we are thrilled to be one of the big hos-pitals to have three dimensional mammograms available,” Dr Ab-dul Azim noted.

Faten Jabnouni the regis-tered midwife at Al Ahli Hos-pital, said “Our single goal of this campaign is to ensure that women check themselves regu-larly so that they can stop can-cer early and go on to live long, healthy lives.”

The 2017 Qatar Leadership Conference (QLC), organised by THIMUN Qatar and Northwest-ern University in Qatar (NU-Q), will be held from October 19-21, at the Qatar National Convention Centre. Now in its sixth year, the annual event aims to provide individuals with training prior to the annual Model United Nations (MUN) conferences, as well as develop student leaders within schools. This year, nearly 690 students and teachers from around the world will participate in a range of interactive workshops and conference activities.Lisa Martin, head of THIMUN Qa-tar, said: “The Qatar Leadership Conference is one of the biggest professional development conferences in the Middle East. Every year we have a waiting list

for this event and this year is no different.”Additionally, as part of this year’s conference, a youth and social media survey will be conducted by Dr Rebecca Nee, a QLC presenter and media profes-sor from San Diego State Univer-sity. The research aims to look at how young people use both social media and mass media to get news and information. The THIMUN Qatar regional office was created as a joint part-nership between Qatar Acad-emy, a Qatar Foundation (QF) school, and the THIMUN Founda-tion. The office, under QF’s Pre-University Education, sup-ports efforts around the region to develop programmes and events for young people to seek solutions to global challenges through discussion, negotiation, debate, and personal action.

Al Ahli Hospital in breast cancer awareness drive

Qatar Leadership Conference from Oct 19

Al Ahli Hospital launches breast cancer awareness campaign.

QICDRC sponsors seminar in SydneyA delegation from the Qatar Interna-tional Court and Dispute Resolution Centre (QICDRC) travelled to Sydney, Australia, in order to sponsor the Annual Conference of the International Bar Association. The 2017 conference, which finished at the weekend, was attended by more than 4,000 judges, lawyers and other legal professionals who congregated to attend sessions on a wide variety of legal issues, including anti-corruption, arbitration, construction, crime, health, human rights, environment, financial services, insolvency, intellectual prop-erty, international trade and Customs, litigation, mediation, media, mining, oil and gas, technology, and transportation.

A highlight of the week was the Arab Regional Forum lunch, which also had - as its exclusive sponsor - the QICDRC. The lunch provided an opportunity for dialogue between legal professionals from various Middle Eastern countries as well as those from the international legal and business community who conduct business in the Middle East.QICDRC registrar Christopher Grout said, “Once again, the Arab Regional Forum lunch has provided an excellent opportunity for dialogue for those in the region as well as for those outside it.” During the conference, Grout spoke about litigation and arbitration in Qatar as well as about the importance of employment laws that strive to protect fundamental rights and freedoms. As to the latter, Grout talked about the improvements that had been made in Qatar following recent changes in the law and commented upon the employ-ment framework in the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC). Justice Frances Kirkham, a judge of the QICDRC, was also part of the delegation and she focused on sessions relating to arbitration and construction. The QICRDC delegation at the event.

REGION/ARAB WORLD7

Gulf Times Wednesday, October 18, 2017

IS loses emblematic Syria strongholdAFPRaqqa, Syria

US-backed forces took full control of Raqqa from the Islamic State

group yesterday, defeating the last militant holdouts in the de facto Syrian capital of their now-shattered “caliphate”.

The victory caps a battle of more than four months for Raqqa, and hammers another nail in the coffi n of the militant group’s experiment in state-hood, which has collapsed in the face of off ensives in Syria and Iraq.

Inside Raqqa, overjoyed fi ght-ers from the Kurdish-Arab Syri-an Democratic Forces celebrated and raised their yellow fl ag in the city’s Al-Naim traffi c circle, which became known as “Hell Roundabout” after militants used it for gruesome public ex-ecutions.

Raqqa had become a byword for atrocities carried out by the militants and it was from the city that IS organised devastating at-tacks it has claimed abroad like the Paris massacres in 2015 or August’s attacks in Barcelona.

“Hell Roundabout is now Al-Naim Roundabout again,” the

fi ghters in Raqqa cheered, sur-rounded by crushed buildings and charred cars damaged in the ferocious battle for the city.

Rojda Felat, the SDF’s com-mander for its Raqqa operation, fl ashed a wide grin as she waved a huge yellow fl ag emblazoned with the militia’s name, her rifl e hanging from her shoulder.

“God willing, joy will return to the whole city,” said fi ghter Sevger Himo, his eyes gleaming.

The defeat of IS in Raqa was a victory “the whole world was waiting for,” said Omar Alloush, a member of the Raqa Civil Council formed to run the city after its liberation.

Raqqa has been devastated by fi ghting and emptied of civil-ians, with the last few thousand departing under a deal imple-mented over the weekend.

For Umm Abdullah, a Raqqa native who fl ed the city three years ago, news of its capture was overwhelming.

“I can’t describe my happi-ness,” the 44-year-old said in the town of Kobane, 100 kilome-tres north of Raqqa.

“When my sister told me it had been freed, she started to cry, and then I started to cry. Thank God, thank God.”

The SDF broke into Raqqa in

June, after months of fi ghting to surround the city, and yesterday fl ushed the last few hundred IS fi ghters from their remaining positions in the main hospital and the municipal stadium.

“Everything is fi nished in Raqqa, our forces have taken full control of Raqqa,” the alliance’s spokesman Talal Sello said.

He said the SDF was combing the city for any remaining mili-tants who had not surrendered or been killed.

“The military operations in Raqqa have fi nished, but there are clearing operations now un-der way to uncover any sleeper cells there might be and remove mines,” he said.

The announcement came just days after the SDF launched the fi nal phase of its operation to re-take the city.

There had been fears that the force, backed by the US-led coalition battling IS in Syria and Iraq, could get bogged down in a protracted battle for the last 10% of the city.

But yesterday they captured the hospital and stadium in quick succession, eff ectively ending IS’ more than three-year presence in the city.

Sello said an offi cial statement announcing “the liberation of

the city” would be made soon.The US-led coalition backing

the operation made no state-ment on the city’s capture, but announced that IS had lost 87% of the territory it seized in 2014.

“ISIS is losing in every way,” coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon added in a tweet, us-ing an alternate acronym for the group. “We’ve devastated their networks and eliminated leaders at all levels.”

The breakthrough in the Raqqa operation, which was launched on June 6, came after a deal was struck allowing the evacuation in recent days of civilians who had been held as human shields.

Under the deal, a total of 275 Syrian IS fi ghters and relatives also surrendered to the SDF, though it was unclear whether they would be given safe passage elsewhere.

The battle for the city was fi erce, with the Syrian Observato-ry for Human Rights monitor say-ing yesterday at least 3,250 people had been killed, including 1,130 civilians, with hundreds more still missing.

Its capture leaves the group with little more than a “dwarf ter-ritory” in neighbouring Deir Ez-zor province, said Nicholas Heras, a fellow at the Centre for a New

American Security think tank. “IS will be mainly boxed into a strip of territory running along the Mid-dle Euphrates River Valley in the province of Deir Ezzor,” he said.

“This will be the centre of grav-ity for IS in Syria.”

The militants face two separate assaults in the province, which neighbours Iraq, including a cam-paign by the SDF.

A Russian-backed Syrian re-gime campaign has separately retaken swathes of territory in the province, further reducing a “caliphate” that three years ago was roughly the size of Britain.

The Britain-based Observatory said regime forces had brought the entire area between Deir Ez-zor city and Mayadeen, which was retaken on Saturday, under their control following a major military off ensive. “These are not desert areas, they are villages along the Euphrates that were IS strong-holds,” the monitor said.

“The Islamic State group is col-lapsing under pressure from the regime in Deir Ezzor province,” it said.

IS also controls territory in neighbouring regions on the Iraqi side of the border, where the militants are facing another US-backed off ensive by Iraqi pro-government forces.

Kurds abandon territory over Iraq govt advanceReutersBaghdad/Kirkuk

The Baghdad government recaptured territory from Kurds across the breadth

of northern Iraq yesterday, mak-ing startlingly rapid gains in a sudden campaign that has shift-ed the balance of power in the country almost overnight.

In the second day of a light-ning government advance to take back towns and country-side from forces of the Kurd-ish autonomous region, Kurd-ish troops known as Peshmerga pulled out of the long disputed Khanaqin area near the Iranian border.

Government troops took con-trol of the last two oilfi elds in the vicinity of Kirkuk, an oil city of 1mn people which the Pesh-merga abandoned the previous day in the face of the government forces’ advance.

A Yazidi group allied to Bagh-dad also took control of the town of Sinjar.

Baghdad’s military operation has redrawn the map of northern Iraq, rolling back gains by the Kurds who infuriated Baghdad last month by holding a referen-dum on independence.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said yesterday the ref-erendum “is fi nished and has be-come a thing of the past”.

Addressing a news conference in Baghdad, he called for a dia-logue with Kurdish leaders “un-der the constitution”.

Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Bar-zani said the vote for independ-ence “won’t be in vain”. He did not call for dialogue, but added, “Kurds have always been against waging wars and have worked in pursuit of peace.”

The KRG governs three moun-tainous northern provinces making up the autonomous re-gion.

It has also held a wide crescent of additional territory in north-ern Iraq, much of which they seized after helping drive out Is-

lamic State militants since 2014.Abadi ordered his troops on

Monday to raise their fl ag over all Kurdish-held territory outside the autonomous region itself.

They achieved a swift victory in Kirkuk, reaching the centre of the city in less than a day.

The fi ghting in one of Iraq’s main oil-producing areas has helped return a risk premium to oil prices.

After months of range-bound trading, benchmark Brent crude is now above $58 a barrel, up al-most a third from its mid-year levels.

Oil offi cials in Baghdad said all the fi elds near Kirkuk were working normally yesterday af-

ter the last came under central government control.

Kirkuk, situated just outside the KRG autonomous region, is the base of Iraq’s Northern Oil Company, one of the two giant state energy fi rms that provide nearly all government revenue.

Oil minister Jabar al-Luaibi said Baghdad would now try to nearly double the output of the Kirkuk oil fi elds to more than 1mn barrels per day.

The Iraqi army advances cre-ate a dilemma for Washington, which has armed and trained both sides in its successful cam-paign to drive Islamic State in-surgents out of Iraq.

“We don’t like the fact that they’re clashing,” US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday. “We’ve had for many years a very good relationship with the Kurds as you know, and we’ve also been on the side of Iraq.”

So far most of the advances appear to have come unopposed, with Kurds withdrawing before government forces move in.

There have been reports of just one serious battle, in the early hours of Monday on the outskirts of Kirkuk.

The US military said yesterday it had received mixed accounts of the death toll in that clash, with between three and 11 com-batants killed.

The International Committee

of the Red Cross said the trans-fer of control appeared to have taken place with a minimum of fi ghting, with the number of wounded no higher than in the dozens.

ICRC regional deputy direc-tor Patrick Hamilton told Reu-ters that he was concerned roads were closed, especially access to Mosul, the former Islamic State urban battlefi eld where hun-dreds of thousands of people still depend on aid.

In Kirkuk, one of Iraq’s most diverse cities, members of the Turkmen ethnic group who op-posed Kurdish rule celebrated on Monday, driving through the streets fi ring weapons in the air.

By yesterday, the once ubiqui-tous green, red and white Kurd-ish fl ag with a blazing yellow sun had vanished from the streets.

US-trained Iraqi special forc-es and local police patrolled to maintain order.

Markets, shops and schools were open as normal.

Some Kurdish families who had left the city on Monday were already returning home.

They said thousands of Kurd-ish fi ghters in convoys formed a long queue in eff orts to fl ee Kirkuk towards the Kurdish re-gional capital Erbil, clogging the road and making it diffi cult for civilians to leave.

For the Kurds, the loss of terri-tory, particularly Kirkuk, which

Kurdish folklore views as the heart of their homeland, is a se-vere blow just three weeks after they voted to declare the inde-pendent state that had been their goal for decades.

“Our leaders abandoned us in the middle of nowhere. Our fu-ture is dark,” said retired Kirkuk teacher Malla Bakhtiyar.

He said he tried to escape on Monday but returned with his wife and sons after an Arab neighbour phoned, begging him not to leave and assuring him the city was safe.

University lecturer Salar Oth-man Ameen blamed the Kurdish authorities for calling the inde-pendence referendum prema-turely.

“We feel broken now. The referendum was a catastrophic decision...Our Kurdish leader-ship was supposed to think of the consequences before moving along with independence vote. Now we have lost what we have achieved over three decades.”

The setbacks led to recrimina-tions among the two main Kurd-ish political parties — the KDP and PUK, which each control separate units of Peshmerga.

Barzani said political rivals had ordered the withdrawal of Kurdish forces from Kirkuk, and offi cials in his KDP accused the PUK of his long-time rival Jalal Talabani of “treason” for aban-doning the city.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters ride atop a military vehicle as they celebrate victory in Raqqa, yesterday.

Members of Iraqi federal forces are seen in Dibis area on the outskirts of Kirkuk, yesterday.

Hollande slams Trump’s ‘double fault’ over Iran nuclear dealAFP Seoul

Former French president Francois Hollande yes-terday slammed Donald

Trump’s hardline stance on the Iran nuclear deal — which Paris helped to negotiate — as a “double fault”, warning the US president’s “unpredict-ability” threatened global sta-bility.

Trump’s threat to ditch the landmark 2015 agreement, which saw Tehran dramati-cally scale back its nuclear ambitions in return for an end to punishing sanctions, has sparked a chorus of foreign support for the pact.

“Donald Trump’s deci-sion not to certify the accord and to demand that Congress strengthen sanctions is, to my eyes, a double fault,” Hollande told a conference in Seoul.

The former leader’s fi rst speech on international af-fairs since leaving the Elysee in May touched on global is-sues including climate change, economic protectionism and populist politics — and laid into the “confusion” appear-ing to emanate from the White House.

Trump has said the agree-ment was letting Iran off the

hook but left it up to the US Congress to decide whether to reimpose sanctions.

The former French leader said the US president’s actions showed a “deep misunder-standing of the negotiation’s purpose”, which was to “stop Iran from obtaining weapons, and not to make it change its politics”.

He also accused Trump of “damaging the credibility of any future negotiations with North Korea” with Washing-ton’s about-turns, a concern shared by European Union ministers.

“It has to be shown that agreements will be kept to in the long term,” Hollande said.

The EU said Monday it would send its chief diplomat Federica Mogherini to Wash-ington next month to fi ght for the nuclear deal.

Hollande said the world “has not been this polarised, in diff erent ways, since 1945”.

“And the role of the United States serves to further com-plicate the situation, espe-cially if confusion reigns at its top.”

In the face of nuclear pro-liferation, the world needed “certainty and stability”, he added. “The worst option is unpredictability, which can lead to irrationality.”

UN-backed Libya talks hit new snagAFPTunis

Talks between repre-sentatives of rival au-thorities in strife-torn

Libya have hit a new snag af-ter a parliamentary delegation suspended its participation in the UN-backed discussions hosted by Tunisia.

Years of political turmoil since the 2011 overthrow of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi have left Libya divid-ed between rival governments and beset by violence as mili-tia forces battle for power.

The UN-backed Govern-ment of National Accord (GNA), based in Tripoli since March 2016, has struggled to impose its authority across the country, particularly in

the far east, dominated by military strongman Kha-lifa Haftar who supports a rival parliament. On Mon-day night, the head of the delegation representing the parliament based in the east, Abdessalem Nssya, accused the rival authorities of back-tracking on several points.

Nssya said his team was suspending its participation in the talks which have been under way in Tunis since September 26, after UN en-voy Ghassan Salame present-ed a plan to end the chaos in Libya.

Representatives of the ri-val Libyan authorities have already held two rounds of talks in Tunisia aimed at amending a UN-backed political agreement struck in 2015.

Kuwait has dropped a con-troversial counterterrorism law mandating DNA testing for all citizens, residents and visitors which had been passed following a 2015 suicide attack, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. “The court’s decision to overturn the DNA law is a very positive step that ends this misguided and hastily passed invasion of privacy in Kuwait,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW. The law was passed by parliament in 2015 after a suicide bombing at a mosque in the capital which killed 26 people and wounded 227 others.

Israeli authorities advanced plans yesterday for 1,292 settler homes in a new push by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to expand settle-ments in the occupied West Bank, an NGO said. The approv-als came after government off icials pledged a major boost in settlement home approvals this year, with US President Donald Trump so far much less critical of such plans than his predecessor Barack Obama.

Kuwait scraps mandatory DNA testing law

Plans advanced for 1,292 settler homes

LEGAL

CONFLICT

AMERICA

Gulf Times Wednesday, October 18, 20178

Dozens missing in California wildfi res as more evacuees return homeReutersSanta Rosa, California

Search-and-rescue teams in Northern California will continue to comb through

burned homes for dozens of people still missing in the state’s deadliest wildfi res, which have killed at least 41 people and de-stroyed thousands of homes.

Light winds were expected, a condition that has helped 11,000 fi refi ghters control the fl ames which in the past week have con-sumed more than 245,000 acres in the state — an area more than fi ve times the size of Washington, DC.

The aff ected area includes Napa and Sonoma counties in California’s wine country.

“We’re in a far better posi-tion today than we were several days ago,” Calistoga Mayor Chris Canning told Reuters in a phone interview yesterday morning, re-ferring to the Napa Valley.

Tens of thousands of people who fl ed the fl ames in Sonoma County and elsewhere have been allowed to return home.

About 34,000 were still dis-placed.

More evacuees hoped to return

home yesterday, though offi cials said the death toll may rise with at least 80 people still missing.

The Tubbs fi re around Calis-toga was 82% contained and the Atlas fi re to the southeast was 77% contained yesterday morn-ing, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), the state’s fi refi ghting agency.

The Nuns Fire, located in Son-oma County and now the state’s largest fi re, was 68% contained.

Fire offi cials, employing more than 960 fi re engines, 30 air tankers and 73 helicopters, hoped the blazes would be fully con-tained by Friday.

Precipitation is also expected to arrive later in the week, bring-ing relief from dry conditions.

Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital, which had to evacuate last week, reopened yesterday morning, the Sonoma Sheriff ’s Department said.

Kevin Klotter, who owns Valley Quail Vineyard in Redwood Valley, about 24km north of Ukiah, said yesterday his house and two barns on the 6.5 acre property were de-stroyed but he had managed to harvest 22 tonnes of grapes from 4 acres of vineyard on Friday.

“Miraculously, the vineyard survived,” he said, adding that in-surance was paying for a motel in Ukiah for him and wife Bree and then will pay for a recreational vehicle to put on his property as a temporary residence while they rebuild at an estimated cost of $700,000.

Daniel Mufson, 74, a retired pharmaceutical executive and one of scores of Napa Valley resi-dents who lost their homes in the fi res, described his sense of be-wilderment.

“Now we’re just trying to fi g-ure out what the next steps are. We’re staying with friends, and dealing with the issues of deal-ing with insurance companies and getting things cleaned up,” Mufson, who is also president of the community-activist coali-tion Napa Vision 2050, said in an interview.

At least 5,700 homes and busi-nesses have been destroyed by the wildfi res that erupted a week ago.

Entire neighbourhoods in the city of Santa Rosa were reduced to ashes.

The wildfi res are California’s deadliest on record, surpassing the Griffi th Park fi re of 1933 in

Los Angeles, which had 29 fatali-ties.

Most of the 1,863 people listed in missing-persons reports have so far turned up safe, includ-

ing many evacuees who failed to alert authorities after fl eeing their homes.

As of yesterday, 65 people were listed as missing in Sonoma

County, the sheriff ’s offi ce said.Napa County said they had 15

people missing still.As each day passes, hope

dwindles for victims who were in

the direct path of the fl ames, said Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano.

About 30 vintners sustained some fi re damage to wine-mak-ing facilities, vineyards, tasting rooms or other assets, according to the industry group Napa Valley Vintners.

Only about a half-dozen win-emakers reported signifi cant losses, spokeswoman Patsy Mc-Gaughy said.

Vineyards, which mostly oc-cupy the valley fl oor, appear to have been largely unscathed as the fi res in Napa County burned mainly in the hillsides, Mc-Gaughy said.

About 90% of Napa’s grape harvest had been picked and es-caped exposure to smoke that could have tainted the fruit.

Still, the toll taken on the re-gion has thrown the wine indus-try into disarray, and McGaughy said the 2017 Napa vintage will likely be smaller than previously expected.

“This is a human tragedy, there are people who have lost their lives, lost their homes, lost their business,” McGaughy said, add-ing that Napa’s celebrated vini-culture would recover.

Ron Ekas stands yesterday at the front of his street to welcome returning residents after the mandatory evacuation order for Glen Ellen was lifted on Monday in Glen Ellen, California.

Trump faces backlash over servicemen claimAFPWashington

President Donald Trump was yesterday facing a backlash af-ter falsely claiming that Barack

Obama and other former US leaders did not call the families of fallen sol-diers.

“Stop the damn lying — you’re the president,” Obama’s former attorney general Eric Holder said in a tweet.

Holder added that he had person-ally accompanied Obama to Dover air force base in Delaware, where the bodies of US troops killed in action overseas are returned, and saw him “comfort the families”.

Retired general Martin Dempsey, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , said both Obama and George W Bush, “cared deeply, worked tire-lessly for the serving, the fallen, and their families.”

Trump’s remarks came on Mon-day when he was asked why he had not said anything so far about four US Special Forces soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger on October 4.

“I’ve written them personal let-ters,” Trump said.

“I will, at some point during the period of time, call the parents and the families — because I have done that, traditionally.

“So, the traditional way — if you look at president Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls, a lot of them didn’t make calls,” he said.

Trump said calling the families was “the toughest calls I have to make” and backtracked somewhat later when pressed about how he could as-sert that Obama did not do so.

“I don’t know if he did,” he said. “I was told that he didn’t often. And a lot of presidents don’t; they write letters.

“I do a combination of both,” he said.

“President Obama I think probably did sometimes, and maybe some-times he didn’t. I don’t know. That’s what I was told.”

“All I can do — all I can do is ask my generals,” he said.

“Other presidents did not call. They’d write letters. And some presi-dents didn’t do anything.”

Trump returned to the subject in an interview yesterday with Fox News radio and brought up his chief of staff , retired general John Kelly, whose son, a Marine Corps lieutenant, was killed by a landmine in Afghanistan in 2010.

“To the best of my knowledge I think I’ve called every family of somebody that’s died and it’s the

hardest call to make,” Trump said. “As far as other (presidents) I mean I don’t know.”

“You could ask General Kelly ‘Did he get a call from Obama?’” You could ask other people. I don’t know what Obama’s policy was,” he said.

“I write letters and I also call. I re-ally speak for myself. I don’t know what Bush did. I don’t know what Obama did.”

Other former Obama aides joined

Holder in condemning Trump’s re-marks. “This is an outrageous and disrespectful lie even by Trump standards,” Ben Rhodes, who served as Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said on Twitter.

Former defense secretary Leon Panetta told CNN that Obama “wrote letters, also made some calls as I re-call, but more importantly, actually visited with the family.”

Criticism of Trump’s remarks was not confi ned to former Obama aides.

Gregg Popovich, coach of the fi ve-time NBA champion San Antonio Spurs and an Air Force veteran, called Trump a “pathological liar.”

“His comments today about those who have lost loved ones in times of war and his lies that previous presi-dents Obama and Bush never con-tacted their families are so beyond the pale, I almost don’t have the words,” Popovich told The Nation.

“This man in the Oval Offi ce is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others,” Popovich said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was not calling out his predecessors.

“The president wasn’t criticis-ing predecessors, but stating a fact,” Sanders said.

“When American heroes make the ultimate sacrifi ce, presidents pay their respects.

“Sometimes they call, sometimes they send a letter, other times they have the opportunity to meet family members in person,” she said. “This president, like his predecessors, has done each of these,” she said. “Indi-viduals claiming former presidents, such as their bosses, called each fam-ily of the fallen, are mistaken.”

President Donald Trump looks at a reporter as he takes part in a series of radio interviews in the Eisenhower Execu-tive Off ice Building, next to the White House, in Washington, DC, yesterday.

Judge questions latest travel ban

ReutersGreenbelt, MD

A US judge on Monday questioned at-torneys defending the Trump admin-istration about a classifi ed report the

government is using to justify its latest ban on citizens of some countries from entering the United States.

US District Court Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland heard arguments for and against President Donald Trump’s new travel ban, set to take eff ect today.

It indefi nitely limits travel from Iran, Lib-ya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea.

Certain government offi cials from Ven-ezuela were also barred.

All those countries except Chad, North Korea and Venezuela were included in two earlier temporary versions of the travel ban, which Trump’s opponents called thinly veiled attempts to fulfi l his campaign pledge of a “total and complete shutdown of Mus-lims entering the United States.”

Lawyers for advocacy groups includ-ing the International Refugee Assistance Project, Iranian Alliances Across Borders and the Council on American-Islamic Rela-tions urged Chuang to block implementa-tion of what critics call Trump’s “Muslim ban.”

Opponents say the ban violates the US Constitution because it discriminates against Muslims while overstepping the bounds of US immigration law by discrimi-nating by nationality.

Trump has said the restrictions are need-ed to tighten security and prevent terrorist attacks.

The third ban came in a September 24 presidential proclamation that Trump is-sued after acting Homeland Security Sec-retary Elaine Duke provided him with a classifi ed report recommending the travel restrictions.

Chuang asked Hashim Mooppan, the at-torney representing the government, if there were inconsistencies between the homeland security report and Trump’s proclamation.

Mooppan declined to discuss details of the classifi ed report, and said the government does not have to explain whether Trump’s advisers disagreed about the ban.

“We stand by the factual representations in the proclamation,” Mooppan said.

Last Friday, in a separate case against the ban in Hawaii, the government said the judge can review the classifi ed report only in a secure setting.

Chuang struck down an earlier iteration of the ban, which was only partially restored by the US Supreme Court in June.

An attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union, Omar Jadwat, argued that the new version is a “a bigger, tougher ver-sion of the same ban” that Trump originally wanted.

Trump could have achieved the same national security goals with “far more tar-geted measures” similar to the restrictions on Venezuelan government offi cials, rather than broad bans against certain nationali-ties, argued Justin Cox, an attorney at the National Immigration Law Center.

Mooppan argued that because the new version of the ban went in place after a thor-ough review, it does not constitute a “Mus-lim ban.”

The third version of the ban omitted Iraq, which was included in the fi rst ban and Su-dan, which was in the second version.

“The proclamation dropped multiple Muslim countries and exempted multiple types of non-immigrant visas even from the Muslim countries,” he said.

“That is strong evidence that this is not some kind of Muslim ban in disguise.”

Chuang said he would rule later on whether to grant the challengers’ request for an injunction.

FCC chairman rejects Trump suggestion on broadcast licences

The US Federal Communications Com-

mission’s chairman said yesterday the

agency does not have authority to revoke

broadcast licences, despite suggestions

from President Donald Trump.

Ajit Pai, a Republican who was named

chairman of the telecommunications regu-

lator in January, broke days of silence by

rejecting Trump’s tweet that the FCC could

challenge the license of NBC after stories

Trump declared were not true.

“Under the law, the FCC does not have

the authority to revoke a licence of a

broadcast station based on the content,”

Pai said at a forum.

“The FCC under my leadership will stand

for the First Amendment.”

The First Amendment of the US Consti-

tution guarantees freedom of speech and

freedom of the press.

Democrats had been pushing Pai to de-

nounce Trump’s suggestion that broadcast

licences could be threatened following

reports by NBC News that his secretary of

state, Rex Tillerson, had called him a “moron”

after a discussion of the US nuclear arsenal.

“With all of the Fake News coming out of

NBC and the Networks, at what point is it ap-

propriate to challenge their licence? Bad for

country!” Trump tweeted last Wednesday.

Trump and his supporters have repeat-

edly used the term “fake news” to cast

doubt on media reports critical of his

administration, often without providing

any evidence to support their case that the

reports were untrue.

Any move to challenge media compa-

nies’ licenses, however, would likely face

significant hurdles.

The FCC, an independent federal agen-

cy, does not license broadcast networks,

but issues them to individual broadcast

stations that are renewed on a staggered

basis for eight-year periods.

Comcast Corp, which owns NBC

Universal, also owns 11 broadcast stations,

including outlets in New York, Washington,

Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas

and Chicago.

When reviewing licenses the FCC must

determine if a renewal is in the public

interest. Courts have held that a station ex-

ercising its First Amendment rights is not

adequate grounds to challenge a license.

The agency does not issue similar

licenses for cable networks such as CNN

and MSNBC, or regulate Internet news or

other websites.

In the early 1970s, then-president Rich-

ard Nixon and his top aides discussed us-

ing the FCC’s license renewal process as a

way of punishing The Washington Post for

its coverage of the Watergate burglary that

ultimately brought down his presidency.

Trucker pleads guilty in migrants case

AFPChicago

An American who drove an unventilated truck packed with undocumented mi-

grants across the US-Mexico border, resulting in 10 deaths, has pleaded guilty to human smug-gling charges.

James Matthew Bradley, 61, acknowledged Monday he had conspired to transport and had in fact transported “aliens result-ing in death,” — admitting to his role in the July drama in which as many as 200 Mexican and Gua-temalan migrants were crammed into a sweltering tractor trailer, prosecutors announced.

Bradley faces up to life in pris-on, after prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.

His sentencing has been scheduled for January 22.

Police, responding to an emer-gency call by an employee at a San Antonio Walmart — not far from

the border with Mexico — dis-covered 39 undocumented mi-grants in or near the truck parked in the store’s lot. The trailer’s air conditioning was broken and ventilation holes were clogged.

The migrants told police that they took turns breathing out of one usable ventilation hole, and some people passed out from the heat.

Of the 10 who perished, eight died inside the truck and two at area hospitals. Bradley was ar-rested at the scene.

“This case is a glaring remind-er that alien smugglers are driven by greed and have little regard for the health and well-being of their human cargo,” Homeland Secu-rity Investigations agent Shane Folden said in a statement.

A federal grand jury in Sep-tember indicted alleged co-con-spirator Pedro Silva Segura, 47, on smuggling and conspiracy charges. He was identifi ed as an undocumented immigrant living in the Texas border city of Laredo.

In court documents fi led ear-

lier in the case, migrants inter-viewed by police recounted a harrowing journey.

They described banging on the walls to get Bradley’s attention as they struggled to breathe while some succumbed to the heat and passed out. “The driver never stopped,” according to one of the migrants interviewed, identifi ed only as J.M.M-J.

“People had a hole in the trailer wall to provide some ventilation and they started taking turns breathing from the hole.”

J.M.M-J said he was a Mexican national and part of a group of 29 people who were smuggled into the United States, joining another 70 migrants already in the truck’s trailer at a rendezvous point.

According to the migrant’s recollection, his smuggler said “people linked to the Zetas” car-tel were off ering protection for the journey through Mexico to the US border, and that once ar-riving in the country, he was to pay $5,500.

AFRICA9Gulf Times

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Somalia seeks blood donorsReutersNairobi

Somalia is in desperate need for donat-ed blood to treat survivors of a truck bombing in the capital Mogadishu on

Saturday that killed more than 300 people and injured at least 400 others, a minister said.

Information Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman said Somalia does not have a blood bank and that the limitations of its health care system was impeding the medical response.

Countries including Turkey and Qatar are providing medical assistance.

“We are requesting blood, we are request-ing assistance for verifying the dead in order for their relatives to know,” Osman told Reu-ters by phone from Mogadishu.

Somalia has been mired in confl ict since 1991, when clan warlords overthrew a dicta-tor then turned on each other.

One of the poorest countries in Africa, it faces severe food insecurity and relies on foreign donors to support its institutions and basic services.

Osman said the bodies of more than 100 people buried on Monday “were blown be-yond recognition”, and that he hoped other bodies could still be identifi ed.

Turkish doctors — mainly surgeons and

specialists in spine injuries — arrived along with Turkey’s health minister on Monday.

“They are treating people in hospitals in Mogadishu,” the minister said.

Turkey evacuated 35 critically wounded Somalis to Ankara by plane on Monday, the country’s deputy prime minister Recep Akdag told reporters upon returning from Somalia.

An increasingly close ally of Somalia, Turkey opened a $50mn military base in the capital last month.

Medicine from neighbouring nations Dji-bouti and Kenya arrived by plane yesterday and “air ambulance” was en route from Qa-tar, the minister said.

Kenyan women from Somalia queue to donate blood at Eastleigh in Nairobi yesterday.

Odinga suspends Kenya protests after three deathsAFPNairobi

Opposition leader Raila Odinga said yesterday he was suspending a protest

campaign after three people were shot dead in demonstrations against Kenya’s election body.

The National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition had earlier said the protests would resume today after pausing for a day in a tribute to the victims.

“In honour of the innocent vic-tims of the state, our protests will stay suspended. On Friday, we will mark the memory of these victims as heroes of the struggle for electoral justice,” Odinga said in a statement.

Odinga said the party would communicate “our next course of action” on Friday. The announce-ment marks the latest twist in a drama that has plunged the east African nation into its biggest po-litical crisis in a decade. In 2007, a disputed election led to political-ly-motivated ethnic violence that left more than 1,100 dead.

Odinga launched a protest campaign three weeks ago against the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). He said the panel had failed to properly reform since the Su-preme Court annulled an August

8 presidential election over irreg-ularities in the counting process and mismanagement by the IEBC.

Last Friday, two protesters were shot dead by police in Od-inga’s rural home of Bondo, in the west of the country.

On Monday, an 18-year-old man was shot dead during a pro-test in Kisumu. His mother in-sisted he was not taking part and had merely gone to buy ice cream.

The protests, concentrated in Kisumu but with smaller crowds seen in Nairobi and coastal Mombasa, have seen opposition supporters setting tyres alight, lobbing stones at police and in some cases looting stores and destroying property.

Security Minister Fred Matian-gi banned protests in main cities last Thursday, citing lawlessness from opposition supporters.

However, the high court tem-porarily suspended this ban yes-terday, until it could fully hear a complaint from the opposition.

Despite the confusion over what Odinga’s withdrawal means, elec-tion offi cials appear to be pushing forward with plans to hold the vote as scheduled on October 26.

President Uhuru Kenyatta has yet to sign into law new election leg-islation that has been in front of him for fi ve days — despite declaring he would do so without hesitation.

Kenya’s Supreme Court yes-terday issued a ruling to clarify the role of the IEBC in the veri-fi cation and announcement of election results — after the com-mission was lambasted for an-nouncing an outcome that could not be properly verifi ed.

In Kenya, results from polling stations, compiled in a form 34A, are sent to 290 constituencies, where those results are then en-tered into a form 34B and tallied to determine the victor.

The court had berated the IEBC for declaring Kenyatta the winner on August 11 while all forms had not been provided, or were unsigned, lacked the req-uisite security features or con-tained irregularities.

The IEBC had asked the court what it should do if the constitu-ency results did not match the results from the forms 34A.

Supreme Court deputy chief justice Philomena Mwilu said that in such a case IEBC chief Wafula Chebukati “cannot correct er-rors” spotted on form 34Bs.

Instead he must report incon-sistencies to observers and elec-tion candidates, and allow the Supreme Court to resolve them if necessary. The decision is im-portant because it limits the po-tential for the falsifi cation of re-sults by IEBC offi cials.

Wanted: hangman in Zimbabwe; 50 apply

At least 50 people want to become Zimbabwe’s hangman,

a job that fell vacant over a decade ago, off icials said

yesterday, stressing that applicants were “very interested”

in the role. The country, which has an unemployment rate of

more than 90% by some measures, last executed a prisoner

in 2005, after which the serving hangman retired.

“The response has been overwhelming and the

applications have been from both men and women,” justice

ministry secretary Virginia Mabhiza told the NewsDay

newspaper.

“We have received over 50 applications in the past few

months. People are very interested.”

After a long search, a new hangman was reported to have

been appointed in 2012 but the chosen candidate was never

confirmed.

Rights groups including Amnesty International have

often called on Zimbabwe, which has 92 inmates on death

row, to abolish capital punishment.

Zimbabwe’s new 2013 constitution exempts women from

the hangman’s noose.

“All men between 18 and 69 years (who) have been

convicted of murder in aggravated circumstances can

receive capital punishment,” Mabhiza was quoted as saying.

She did not say when the hangman would be appointed

or if Zimbabwe intended to revive executions soon.

Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was

justice minister until a recent cabinet reshuff le, is a strong

opponent of the death penalty.

Zuma fi res critic in reshuffl eAFPJohannesburg

South African President Jacob Zuma yesterday sacked a vocal critic from his cabinet, a move set to deepen ten-

sions before the ANC chooses a new party leader in December.

In his second reshuffl e this year, Zuma dropped higher education minister Blade Nzimande, a veteran member of the South African Communist Party, which is a key political ally within the ruling ANC alliance.

The SACP hit back at the “authoritari-anism” of Zuma, who the SACP has re-peatedly called to resign over corruption scandals.

“This is an act of provocation,” the par-ty’s deputy secretary general Solly Mapaila told reporters.

“President Zuma should step down in-stead of making these factional decisions,” he said, describing him as “delusionary” and a “runaway president”.

The African National Congress relies heavily on the SACP and the COSATU trade union federation to drum up support in elections.

The “tripartite alliance” led the fi ght to end white-minority rule in South Africa.

Both the SACP and COSATU have en-dorsed Cyril Ramaphosa to be the ANC’s new head when Zuma steps down in De-cember.

Zuma, who will stay national president until the 2019 general elections, is backing his ex-wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to succeed him.

ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe said it was a “pity” that Nzimande had been fi red and that the cabinet shakeup “obviously will impact negatively on alli-ance relations which are at their lowest.”

The SACP said that the reshuffl e would place the alliance on the “brink of disin-tegration”.Zuma also moved state secu-rity minister David Mahlobo to the energy portfolio, reviving debate over controver-sial and costly plans for nuclear energy.

Forex crunch hits Zimbabwe fruit, vegetable importsReutersHarare

Zimbabwe yesterday banned fruit and veg-etable imports to preserve its dwindling re-serves of hard currency, drawing immediate

warnings of food shortages.The order, which followed a ban on maize im-

ports in June, alarmed retailers and street dealers in the capital Harare who get much of their pro-duce from neighbouring South Africa.

The shutdown, which Agriculture Minister Joseph Made said was immediate, underlined the scale of the economic crisis in what was once one of southern Africa’s agricultural heartlands, in the build-up to next year’s national elections.

Made told the Herald newspaper that veteran President Robert Mugabe had made the order himself to stop the imports because “they waste much needed foreign currency”.

“This means that the importation of fruit and vegetables will be stopped immediately. We are fi nalising on the exact list of foreign-produced fruits that are occupying shelves in shops,” Made said. The order would let local farmers increase output, he added. The minister declined to give further details when contacted by Reuters.

“It can’t be a blanket ban since we are not pro-ducing as much fruit and vegetables to adequately supply the local market,” said the head of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers, Denford Mutashu. “We would need to review this.”

Shopper Erica Juma said she doubted Zimbabwe would be able to satisfy local demand by itself. “If we can produce enough there is no problem with the ban. But I doubt we are able to,” Juma said, while picking up South African grapes in Pick n Pay supermarket for her lunch in central Harare.

At a busy road intersection, street hawker Sam Nyandima said the ban would hit his supplies.

“We survive on selling fruits to motorists. If they go ahead with this ban it will badly aff ect our livelihoods,” he said, as he sold pawpaw, mangoes and plums in the blazing sun.

The country dumped its currency for the US

dollar in 2009 because it was wrecked by hyper-infl ation but it is now running short of dollars as well as quasi-currency “bond note” introduced last year to ease cash shortages.

Zimbabwe’s latest currency crisis is blamed on low export earnings, increased government do-mestic borrowing that has increased money supply not matched by dollar infl ows and high govern-ment spending, 90 % which goes to salaries.

Commercial agriculture has not recovered from the hit it took after 2000 from Mugabe’s seizures of land from white farmers.

Last year Zimbabwe spent more than $80mn on fruit and vegetables imports, according to nation-al statistics agency Zimstat. Many Zimbabweans keep stashes of US dollars at home, or resort to buying hard currency on the black market when they want to travel or pay for imports.

Workers pack out avocados at a fruit and vegetable market store in Harare.

10 Gulf TimesWednesday, October 18, 2017

ASEAN

Former Vietnam MP jailed for stealing $16mn depositsAFPHanoi

A former Vietnamese law-maker has been sentenced to life in prison for fraud

after she pocketed $16mn in down-payments from would-be homeowners when she was a re-al-estate developer, a court clerk said yesterday. Chau Thi Thu

Nga is the latest to be punished as part of a government anti-corruption sweep targeting cur-rent and former offi cials, bankers and executives in the communist state.

As chairwoman of the private Housing Group company, Nga sold hundreds of apartments to prospective homeowners starting from 2009, though the project was not licensed and the

properties were never built. The 52-year-old, who later became a parliamentarian, was convicted of selling the apartments “on paper only”, according to the ver-dict reported by state-controlled VNExpress.

She was found guilty on Monday and sentenced to life in prison, a court clerk confi rmed to AFP yesterday. Nine accom-plices were also convicted and

given penalties ranging from a three years’ suspended sentence to seven years in jail. The court ordered Nga to repay the victims she scammed.

Nga was a member of Viet-nam’s rubber-stamp parlia-ment from 2011 until her arrest in 2015, when she was stripped of her post. Vietnam is one of the most corrupt countries in Southeast Asia, though its rank-

ing on Transparency Interna-tional’s Corruption Perceptions Index improved last year for the fi rst time since 2012. The current leadership has targeted high-fl y-ing executives and offi cials in an attempt to clean up business and party ranks and polish the coun-try’s image.

Last month, 51 bankers and businessmen were convicted in a massive fraud case involving

Ocean Bank, including former general director Nguyen Xuan Son who was sentenced to death for causing losses worth mil-lions of dollars. Several other senior offi cials from state oil gi-ant PetroVietnam are being in-vestigated in connection with the case. The communist nation brazenly cast its net overseas in August when Vietnamese secu-rity agents allegedly kidnapped

Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former state oil executive, from a Berlin park. Hanoi says he returned to the country and handed himself over to police voluntarily, but the case has sparked a diplomatic row with Berlin, which expelled Vietnamese diplomats.

Analysts say the current purge is as much about eliminating po-litical enemies as it is about tack-ling corruption.

582,000 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh: UNAFPCox’s Bazar

Some 582,000 Rohingya refugees have now fl ed Myanmar for Bangladesh

since late August, the United Nations said yesterday, warning that thousands more were still stranded at the border.

The UN said between 10,000 and 15,000 new refugees have arrived at the border in the last 48 hours alone, fl eeing violence in Myanmar, where Rohingya villages are being burned to the ground.

It expressed deep concern about newly arrived refugees including children and elderly people dehydrated and hungry from the long journey who are stranded near the border. One Bangladesh Border Guard (BGB) offi cial told AFP on condition of anonymity that the new arrivals were being held in an area of no

man’s land, although it was not immediately clear why.

Spokesman Andrej Mahecic said the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) was advocating with the Bangladesh authorities “to urgently admit these refugees fl eeing violence and increas-ingly diffi cult conditions back home”. He said UNHCR staff had spoken with people who described walking for a week to reach the Bangladesh border.

Most are still squatting in paddy fi elds in Bangladesh, and were waiting for permission to move away from the border, he said.

“Every minute counts given the fragile condition they’re ar-riving in,” said Mahecic.

Mahecic said many had cho-sen to remain in their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state de-spite repeated threats to leave or be killed.

“They fi nally fl ed when their

villages were set on fi re,” he said.

Many of the new arrivals were from Rakhine’s Buthidaung dis-trict, which lies relatively far from the border with Bangla-desh.

“The military killed my brother. We walked all the way to this land to save our lives,” said Mohammad Shoeb, who arrived at the border with his family on Monday evening. The UN said a jump of 45,000 in its estimated number of newly ar-rived refugees to 582,000 was due partly to improved access to some areas where many had previously gone uncounted.

That fi gure does not include the thousands currently in no man’s land. The Rohingya are fl eeing violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where the UN has accused troops of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against them.

The numbers have soared since August 25. Hundreds more have drowned making the perilous journey. On Mon-day, authorities said they had found the bodies of 10 Rohingya whose boat sank in the estuary of the Naf river that divides the two countries.

The UNHCR said it was working with the Bangladesh government to complete a new transit centre in Kutupalong, the largest of the refugee camps housing the Rohingya.

Bangladesh has announced plans to build a refugee camp that could accommodate around 800,000 Rohingya in Kutupalong.

The camp would be the larg-est in the world and has raised concerns about the risks of heavily concentrating such a large number of vulnerable people, such as the spread of disease.

A Bangladesh border guard walks amongst Rohingya refugees walking in an area near no man’s land on the Bangladesh side of the border with Myanmar after crossing the Naf River, near Ukhia, yesterday.

Rohingya refugees carry a woman after crossing the Naf River as they flee violence in Myanmar to reach Bangladesh in Palongkhali near Ukhia on Monday.

An Indonesian villager takes a picture of Mount Sinabung volcano as it spews thick smoke as seen from Tiga Pancur village in Karo, North Sumatra. Sinabung roared back to life in 2010 for the first time in 400 years. After another period of inactivity it erupted once more in 2013, and has remained highly active since.

Simmering volcano

New Jakarta governor criticised for ‘pribumi’ remarksReutersJakarta

The new governor of In-donesia’s capital faced a barrage of criticism

yesterday for remarks in his inauguration speech that some residents and politicians warned could stoke ethnic and religious tension in the South-east Asian country.

Anies Baswedan, a former education minister, said in a speech only hours after he was sworn in on Monday that “pribumi” (native or indige-nous Indonesians) should take back control of the country from “colonial” infl uences.

His comments came as tol-erance in the Muslim-major-ity country has been under scrutiny since bitterly fought city elections this year during which Islamist-led rallies tar-geted the former governor, an

ethnic Chinese Christian, in a controversial blasphemy case.

“We ‘pribumi’ people were oppressed and defeated. Now, after independence, it is time for us to be masters in our own country,” Baswedan said in a speech to supporters outside the Jakarta City Hall late on Monday. The word ‘pribumi’, which excludes ethnic groups like Chinese Indonesians or Indian Indonesians who have lived in the country for gen-erations, was the top trending topic on Twitter in Indonesia yesterday. Baswedan is a de-scendant of the Hadrami tribe of Yemen and comes from a family of respected moderate Islamic scholars. Some took Baswedan’s words to single out Chinese Indonesians — a minority that has faced long-running resentment for their control of trade and wealth in Indonesia.

There were also some sup-

porters. “Why are people making a racket about pribu-mi? If you’re born, raised and have Indonesian Id, you’re a pribumi. Those who are mad with (the word) pribumi are not Indonesians,” @febrin_navarro wrote.

A spokesman for the gover-nor did not immediately reply to a request for comment, but Baswedan was quoted by me-dia as saying the comments referred to the colonial era. “The point is that (the word) was used to explain the Dutch colonial era,” he was quoted as saying.

Baswedan and his deputy, Sandiaga Uno, won April’s governor election on the back of support from Islamists who have pushed, among other things, anti-Chinese rhetoric.

A prominent Islamist lead-er, Bachtiar Nasir, who backed Baswedan’s campaign, said the wealth of Chinese Indo-

nesians was a problem and ad-vocated an affi rmative action programme for native people.

Neighbouring Malaysia runs a controversial affi rma-tive action policy under which ethnic Malays and other in-digenous populations enjoy entitlements such as quotas in universities and companies and cheaper property rates. Indonesia’s 250mn people are predominantly Muslim, but it has sizeable Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities and hundreds of ethnic groups.

“Baswedan is ripping the national fabric...with the use of the word ‘pribumi’,” said Rian Ernest, an ethnic Chinese politician with the Solidar-ity Party of Indonesia. “We strongly condemn Baswedan’s statement, which does not re-fl ect the spirit of leadership or ‘unity in diversity’,” he added, referring to Indonesia’s na-tional motto.

Anies Baswedan greets his supporters during his inauguration at the Indonesian Presidential Palace in Jakarta.

Three companies off ering to search for MH370: MalaysiaAFPKuala Lumpur

Three companies have of-fered to resume the search for fl ight MH370 but no

decision has been reached on whether to take up any of the proposals, a Malaysian minister said yesterday.

US seabed exploration fi rm Ocean Infi nity, Dutch company Fugro — which was involved in the original hunt — and a Ma-laysian company have made of-fers, Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told AFP.

He did not disclose the name of the Malaysian company.

The Malaysia Airlines plane with 239 people on board disap-peared in March 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, sparking a massive underwater search in the remote southern Indian Ocean. No sign of the air-craft was found in a 120,000sq km zone based on satellite analy-sis of the jet’s likely trajectory af-ter it diverted from its fl ight path.

The Australian-led hunt — the largest in history — was suspend-ed in January, sparking criticism from families of those on board and some experts that it was called off too soon. “There are

three search companies coming up with their proposals to con-tinue the search, so we are look-ing into their proposals,” Liow said. “This is only at the proposal stage... there is no timeframe.”

He said the head of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation was negotiating with the com-panies and the off ers would also be discussed with Australia and China. The majority of passen-gers on the fl ight were Chinese and Beijing was also involved in the search eff ort.

His comments came after Australian media reported that the Malaysian government was poised to announce soon that it was accepting one of the off ers and the search would resume.

Ocean Infi nity, which has made a “no fi nd, no fee” off er, was said to be the favourite. The Australian Transport Safety Bu-reau said this month in its fi nal report into the disappearance that it was “inconceivable” for a large commercial aircraft to van-ish in the modern era, but they now had a better understanding of where it might be.

Only three fragments of MH370 have been found on western Indian Ocean shores, in-cluding a 2-m wing part known as a fl aperon.

Blackout of Thai businesses, nightlife for late king’s cremation

Many major businesses, including retail stores and nightlife venues, throughout Thailand will be closed during the cremation ceremony for the late king Bhumibol Adulyadej scheduled for late this month, operators said yesterday. Thailand is gearing up for an elaborate cremation ceremony scheduled for October 25-29 for Bhumibol, who died in October 2016 aged 88 after seven decades on the throne.The actual cremation will take place on October 26, which has been declared a public holiday by the government. Major retail chains in Thailand including 7-Eleven, Tesco Lotus, and Big C have announced their closure on October 26 from the afternoon until midnight, while all post off ices and major banks will also be closed. All nightclubs on Khaosan Road, Bangkok’s backpacking haven, will be closed from October 24 to 29, said Sa-nga Ruangwattanakul, an advisor to the Khaosan Road Business Association. Although the complete blackout is set for next week, entertainment venues have been asked by the government to “tone down” their activities since the beginning of the month, meaning no music or performances in public for a whole month.

Seven more bodies were recovered yesterday in the wake of Vietnam’s surge of recent flash floods, raising the death toll to 83, even as 21 remain missing, authorities said. Up to 700mm of rain have fallen in Vietnam’s central and northern regions in the past week, the result of a tropical depression, data from the Central Steering Committee on Natural Disaster Prevention shows. Authorities found two bodies yesterday in the aftermath of an October 12 landslide in Hoa Binh province. Five remain missing, Vietnam’s National Committee for Search and Rescue said in a report to the government. The newly found bodies bring the death toll in Hoa Binh province to 33, the highest number in the six aff ected provinces. Rescue forces on Monday also recovered a body, believed to be that of one of two border guards reported missing after they went to check on anti-flood measures in Thanh Hoa province a week ago.

Vietnam flood deaths riseto 83, more rain expected

AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA11Gulf Times

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Parts of the wrecked space laboratory Tiangong 1, over which China lost control in 2016, are likely to collide with planet Earth, according to space experts. It emerged in August 2016 that China could no longer steer the 8.5-ton vessel, and that after six years in space and numerous experiments it would crash down to Earth uncontrolled. According to Chinese space authorities, the laboratory is circling the planet with an orbit that is constantly decreasing in size. It will apparently begin its uncontrolled descent in April 2018 at the latest, although Australian space analyst Morris Jones says such calculations are “not an exact science”.

Hong Kong police are searching for a man who brought a knife to the city’s High Court yesterday, according to police and local media reports. The man interrupted a hearing at around 10am between a local construction company and an individual by shouting “lawless!”, according to the South China Morning Post. He shouted in Mandarin and is believed to be a Chinese national, the newspaper reported. A police spokeswoman told DPA that the man had not been apprehended by 1pm, although the courthouse had been swept by police off icers. It is still unclear why he interrupted court proceedings.

Fears were growing yesterday for six fisherman missing after their ship capsized in wild seas off Australia’s northeast coast, with severe weather hampering rescue eff orts. Authorities were alerted to the lost men out of “sheer luck” early yesterday, some 12 hours after the trawler overturned, when crew on a passing yacht heard the screams of a seventh crew member and plucked him out of the water. Air and sea rescue eff orts off the Bundaberg coast in Queensland state have been hampered by heavy rain and rough seas, with up to 4m swells. “We are still holding out a lot of hope,” rescue coordinator Sergeant Jeff Barnett told reporters.

Human remains were found yesterday in a large crocodile that police believe killed an elderly woman who wandered away from her aged-care home in northeast Australia. Clothing and a walking stick belonging to Anne Cameron, who suff ered from dementia, were discovered by a creek near the tourist town of Port Douglas in Queensland state last week. Police made the grisly find after a 4.3m animal was removed by wildlife off icers from the Mowbray River. “The estuarine crocodile, which is believed to be the one involved in the death of 79-year-old Anne Cameron, was examined by a specialist in Cairns today with human remains being located inside,” police said.

China yesterday confirmed an outbreak of bird flu at broiler chicken farms in a central province, the Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement. Flocks are particularly vulnerable to avian flu during the drier winter months, following which outbreaks usually die down. The outbreak in Hexian, a city of about 500,000 people in the province of Anhui, was caused by the H5N6 strain of virus, and has been brought under control, the ministry said on its website. The local government culled 30,196 fowl after the outbreak, which infected 28,650 broiler chickens and killed 15,066 of the birds, it added. The last bird flu outbreak killed 9,752 birds on quail farms in the southwestern province of Guizhou.

Wrecked space lab parts could hit earth in 2018

Knife-wielder interrupts Hong Kong court hearing

Fears grow for 6 missing Australian fishermen

Human remains found in large Australian crocodile

Bird flu hits poultry farms in central China province

SPACE DEBRIS MANHUNTCAPSIZED GORY FIND OUTBREAK

‘Vanishing village’ looks to Japan’s LDP for survivalReutersNanmoku, Japan

Chikara Imai, 73, is quick to dismiss the new parties in Sunday’s national elec-

tion in Japan, saying old ties with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party is what the country’s most elderly village needs for survival.

Nanmoku, 107km northwest of Tokyo, is at the forefront of Ja-pan’s battle against an ageing and shrinking population.

Its population has halved over the past 20 years to 1,963, and with a median age of 70.6, Nan-moku is now Japan’s oldest mu-nicipality.

Nanmoku and places like it across Japan are a key support base for the LDP, which has been in power for most of the past six decades.

“Rural Japan is no Tokyo. Those people may say something ideal in Tokyo, something like ‘Let’s change Japan’. But here, it won’t strike home,” Imai said.

Sunday’s lower house elec-tion pits Abe’s LDP-led coali-tion against two brand new par-ties: the Party of Hope headed by popular Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike; and the centre-left Con-stitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which emerged from a breakup of the traditional oppo-sition Democratic Party.

But Koike’s “reformist, con-

servative” challenge doesn’t res-onate much in Nanmoku.

Most municipalities are shrinking in Japan, so far the only important developed coun-try with a declining population. They look to Tokyo for a lifeline.

“For back country dwellers, strong ties with the central gov-ernment come in handy when we need to ask for help in such times as a natural disaster. This vil-lage has no option but to support them,” the 73-year-old Imai said.

Gunma prefecture, where Nanmoku is located, has long been an LDP stronghold and has produced four prime ministers, including Keizo Obuchi, premier from 1998-2000.

On Sunday, the Nanmoku mu-nicipality will provide transpor-tation to elderly villagers who would otherwise have diffi culty getting to the polls.

Mountains account for 90% of Nanmoku’s total land area, leav-ing little space for farming and housing.

Some of the houses, built along a river running through the vil-lage, look abandoned.

Few customers come by the several general shops that remain open.

The village’s sole remaining el-ementary school has just 24 stu-dents this year, down from a high of 1,632 in 1959, when Nanmoku operated three grade schools.

Farms that used to grow dev-il’s tongue, a starchy potato-like

plant, have yielded to large-scale operations in other municipalities blessed with ample farm land.

“Until this day, we have not found a substitute (industry),” Nanmoku Mayor Saijo Hasegawa told Reuters.

With independent revenue sources covering less than 20% of the village’s budget, Hasegawa sees a continuity in government support for Nanmoku as essen-tial, and is wary of a change in government.

“There’s no such thing as one-year plan to fi ght population de-cline. It takes 20, 30 years for any measures to take eff ect,” Haseg-awa said.

“In a change of government, politicians tend to deny every-thing about the former govern-ment, which is scary.”

Japan’s demographic challenge is one of the biggest facing the new government after Sunday’s elections.

People aged 65 or older ac-count for 27.2% of the total pop-ulation, the highest on record, while the population is forecast to fall by nearly a third by 2065 when almost 40% will be 65 or older.

Japan’s government has ear-marked a record 32.5tn yen ($29bn) this fi scal year to pay for social security services, the bulk of which is spent on the elderly.

Social security outlays ac-count for roughly a third of this year’s national budget.

As part of a drive to tackle Ja-pan’s demographic time-bomb, the government in 2009 started a programme to fi nancially help local municipalities recruit ur-banites to work in agriculture and other sectors for eventual settle-ment.

Yohka Tanaka, who grew up in Tokyo and went to college in the United States, moved to Nan-moku two years ago through the programme.

He is now working on natural farming, which uses no pesti-cides or fertilisers.

Tanaka, 26, aims to prove the viability of such farming so en-vironmentally-conscious young people will follow in his foot steps.

“This place is perfect for natu-ral farming...As long as I stick around, the village won’t disap-pear.”

For Shigeyuki Kaneta, a com-paratively young resident at 46 who owns a confectionary shop, escalating tensions over North Korea does raise that distinct possibility.

North Korea has launched two ballistic missiles that fl ew over Japan in recent months.

“It’s a dangerous world,” said Kaneta, who believes the LDP is better equipped to handle secu-rity matters. “Strange objects are fl ying around.

If they fell (on Japanese soil), we wouldn’t (just) be discussing population decline.”

A local resident looks at candidates’ posters for the October 22 lower house election in Nanmoku village, northwest of Tokyo.

US not ruling out eventual ‘direct talks’ with N KoreaReutersTokyo

The United States is not rul-ing out the eventual possi-bility of direct talks with

North Korea, Deputy Secretary of State John J Sullivan said yes-terday, hours after Pyongyang warned nuclear war might break out at any moment.

Talks between the adversaries have long been urged by China in particular, but Washington and its ally Japan have been reluc-tant to sit down at the table while Pyongyang continues to pursue a goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States.

“Eventually, we don’t rule out the possibility of course of direct talks,” Sullivan said in Tokyo after talks with his Japanese counterpart.

“Our focus is on diplomacy to solve this problem that is pre-sented by the DPRK. We must, however, with our allies, Japan and South Korea and elsewhere, be prepared for the worst should diplomacy fail,” he said.

Tensions have soared following a series of weapons tests by North Korea and a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Leafl ets apparently from North Korea calling Trump a “mad dog” and depicting grue-some images of him have turned up across central Seoul in recent

days, adding an unusually per-sonal element to North Korean propaganda.

“The situation on the Korean peninsula where the attention of the whole world is focused has reached the touch-and-go point and a nuclear war may break out any moment,” North Korea’s Deputy UN Ambassador Kim In Ryong told a UN General Assem-bly committee on Monday.

“As long as one does not take part in the US military actions against the DPRK (North Korea), we have no intention to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against any other country,” ac-cording to Kim’s prepared re-marks for the discussion on nu-clear weapons. Kim did not read that section out loud.

The UN Security Council has unanimously ratcheted up sanc-tions on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile pro-grammes since 2006.

The most recent UN sanctions banned exports of coal, iron ore and seafood, aimed at cutting off one-third of North Korea’s total annual exports of $3bn.

Experts say North Korea has been scrambling to fi nd alterna-tive sources of hard currency to keep its economy afl oat and to advance its weapons programme further. North Korea’s Lazarus hacking group was likely respon-sible for a recent cyber heist in Taiwan, cyber-security fi rm BAE Systems Plc said on Monday.

Taiwan’s Central News Agency

reported last week that while hackers sought to steal some $60mn from the Far Eastern Bank, all but $500,000 had been recovered by the bank.

BAE Systems and other cy-ber fi rms have previously linked Lazarus to last year’s $81mn cy-ber heist at Bangladesh’s central bank.

North Korea had also recently allowed citizens as young as 12 to bet on local horse races for the fi rst time, state news agency KCNA reported.

Punters had previously risked three years hard labour for gam-bling in the reclusive and tightly controlled state, but the growing importance of private markets meant more people had money to spend on leisure, experts said.

“You may have ridiculed Kim Jong Un for constructing lav-ish facilities while struggling to feed the people, but those things are to make foreign currency, not from foreigners but from the well-off s inside North Korea be-cause you have to pay in US dol-lars or Chinese renminbi there,” said Lee Sang-keun, a researcher at the Institute of Unifi cation Studies of Ewha Womans Uni-versity in Seoul.

“Many North Koreans make lots of money from the market, dine at hamburger restaurants and go shopping, all of which help fatten regime coff ers. That’s part of the reason why the regime still has some fi nancial latitude despite international sanctions.”

Fiji urges ‘absolute dedication’ to toughest climate target

Fiji yesterday called on Tuesday for “absolute

dedication” to the strictest limits on global

warming as it prepares to preside at UN talks

next month seeking to keep the Paris climate

agreement on track after a US pullout.

Fiji is hosting a preparatory meeting of

delegates before the November 6-17 talks in

Bonn, Germany, where environment ministers

from around the world will work on a set of

international guidelines for the Paris accord.

The 2015 agreement was dealt a major blow

in June when US President Donald Trump an-

nounced the withdrawal.

The United States is the world’s second

highest gas emitter after China and the only

country among the deal’s 195 signatories to

pull out.

“We can no longer ignore this (climate)

crisis,” Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama

said in an address to the delegates in Oslo.

“It’s hard to find any part of the world that

is unaff ected by these events,” he said, listing

Atlantic storms such as Ophelia battering Ire-

land, wildfires in California, Portugal and Spain

or floods in Nigeria, India and Bangladesh.

Some of Fiji’s islands are vulnerable to the

eff ects of rising seas, aggravated by storm

surges, but less so than low-lying states such

as the Maldives and Tuvalu.

The 2015 Paris Agreement set a target of

limiting a rise in average surface temperatures

to “well below” two degrees Celsius above pre-

industrial times, ideally 1.5C (2.7F).

Many scientists say that the 1.5 degree goal

is fast slipping out of reach because of insuf-

ficient action by all nations to cut greenhouse

gas emissions.

Bainimarama said “an absolute dedication

to meet the 1.5 degree target is what we need

and what we must take to Bonn.”

He did not refer to Trump, who has some-

times dismissed mainstream scientific findings

about rising temperatures as a hoax, saying

that he instead wants to bolster the US fossil

fuel industry.

Abe sends ritual off ering to Yasukuni shrineReutersTokyo

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has sent a ritual offering to the Yas-ukuni Shrine for war dead, seen in

China and the two Koreas as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism, to mark its an-nual autumn festival, the shrine said yes-terday.

Abe was expected to refrain from visiting the shrine during the festival, which will last until Friday, the Nikkei business daily and Kyodo news agency reported.

He is scheduled to visit northern Japan, Akita prefecture and Yamagata prefecture, for an election campaign stump, Kyodo news said.

His ruling coalition is on track for a big win in Sunday’s general election — even though almost half the country’s voters don’t want him to keep his job, a media sur-vey showed on Monday.

Abe’s snap election comes amid height-ened global tension following North Korea’s nuclear tests and missile launches, which prompted the UN Security Council to im-pose fresh sanctions.

Health Minister Katsunobu Kato also sent an ritual off ering to the shrine, a spokesper-son for the shrine said.

Past visits to Yasukuni by Japanese lead-ers have outraged Beijing and Seoul because it honours 14 Japanese leaders convicted by an Allied tribunal as war criminals, along with Japan’s war dead.

China’s position on the shrine was clear,

Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters in Beijing.

“We urge the Japanese side to earnestly, squarely and deeply refl ect on their history of aggression, appropriately handle the rel-evant issue and take actual steps to win the trust of their Asian neighbours and the in-ternational community,” Lu said.

Abe has only visited the shrine in person once, in December 2013, since becoming premier the previous year.

Rather than attend in person, Abe sends a ritual off ering on several occasions in an eff ort to improve ties with China and South Korea, which have been strained by territo-rial and other disputes.

Japan, China and South Korea are try-ing to hold a summit meeting this year, the Nikkei business paper said.

A priestess walks at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.

BRITAIN

Gulf Times Wednesday, October 18, 201712

School sorry forslave dress letterThe headteacher of a primary school has apologised after children were asked to come to school dressed as slaves in “dirty and worn out” clothes for Black History Month.Parents of six- and seven-year-olds at St Winefride’s Catholic Primary school, in Manor Park, were sent a letter asking them to dress their children for a special assembly. The letter suggested that the clothes could be left unwashed and stained with tea or coff ee to make them look more authentic. Girls were encouraged to wear straw hats or fabric head wraps and boys were asked to wear straw hats or berets. Locals discussing the incident on Facebook branded the idea “horrendous”. One parent told the Newham Recorder: “You wouldn’t ask Jewish children to come in and re-enact the Holocaust.” But she said the incident was probably because of an individual teacher rather than being representative of the school’s general approach. The mother pointed out that the school had put on a wide range of Black History Month activities, including inviting poet Benjamin Zephaniah to speak to children.Headteacher Paul Underwood apologised on behalf of the school, saying that the letter was unauthorised. He said it was not seen by senior members of staff before being sent out and that another letter has subsequently been sent to the same group of year two parents, apologising for the original letter. He also wrote to all parents at the school yesterday to explain the incident.

Prince Harry meets Erin Cross, winner of the Inspirational Child Award aged 4-6, and her mother Sarah, as he attends the WellChild Awards in London. The awards recognises the courage of seriously ill children, their families and carers.

Inspirational Child Award winner

BBC axesCrimewatchafter 33 yearsas ratings fallGuardian News and MediaLondon

It has been credited with helping solve some of the country’s most notorious

crimes. But, after 33 years, Crimewatch has served its time, the BBC has announced.

The programme was be-ing cancelled to make way for other programming, the cor-poration said, though it would broadcast more of the day-time sister edition, Crime-watch Roadshow.

Nick Ross, one of the pro-gramme’s original hosts, said he was “astonished” it had lasted as long as it had, given the changes in television viewing habits in recent years.

“It’s not a busted format, the format worked. But it worked of its age ... The world has changed beneath its feet,” he said after the decision was announced yesterday.

He referred to the “decay of old-fashioned, linear televi-sion” and the increasing trend of recording programmes and watching them later. “What is the point of a live appeal show? It has to be live, that’s the way it works. And, if you watch it the follow-ing day, there’s no one on the phones,” he said. Ross added that, when Crimewatch was launched in 1984, television was one-directional. “We spoke to the audience, the audience weren’t expected to speak back, and this was the fi rst we’d tried anything truly interactive.

“We were on tenterhooks, genuinely so. The fi rst live programme we did, we had no idea if anybody would ring at all. No one had ever tried this. We had no idea whether – if anybody did ring – it would be a hoax, whether anybody would recognise any clues, whether they’d be wast-ing police time, whether this thing could work at all.

“As I recall, the Guardian

thought we were a bunch of coppers’ narks and this was not a good thing at all to do. The cops thought we were all a bunch of leftwingers and didn’t trust us. Just one police chief constable was onside.”

The programme’s audience had declined from 5mn-6mn per episode in 2002 to about 1mn-2mn in recent years, the BBC said. “Part of the bigger picture is that it doesn’t reach the audience it once did,” a spokeswoman said.

She added that it was now felt the format was better suited to daytime television, where the sister programme, which currently goes out fi ve days a week, four weeks of the year, reaches about 5mn people per week. It will get an increased run of six weeks.

The show, which recon-structs unsolved crimes in an attempt to gather informa-tion from the public, was re-launched in September 2016 and was most recently pre-sented by Jeremy Vine and Tina Daheley.

Sue Cook and Ross hosted the fi rst edition, which fea-tured the murder of 16-year-old Colette Aram, who dis-appeared as she walked to her boyfriend’s house in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, in October 1983. Among the crimes its broadcasts are thought to have had a hand in solving are the murders of the toddler James Bulger and Ber-tram and Toni-Ann Byfi eld.

In 1993, Crimewatch broadcast the grainy CCTV footage of two 10-year-old boys at a shopping centre in Bootle. After the show, two witnesses rang in and con-fi rmed they had seen Robert Thompson and Jon Venables with James Bulger. They were later convicted over his ab-duction and murder.

Following another appeal on the programme, Joel Smith was turned in and is serving at least 40 years in prison for the murders of the Byfi elds.

Man found guilty of Kurdish asylum seeker’s murderA man diagnosed with paranoid

schizophrenia has been found guilty

of the murder of a vulnerable Kurd-

ish asylum seeker in Bristol whom

he had racially abused for years.

Jeff rey Barry was found guilty

at Bristol crown court of killing

and mutilating Kamil Ahmad just

hours after being released from a

psychiatric hospital. He stabbed him

repeatedly before calmly phoning

999 and telling the operator what he

had done.

Barry had denied murder but admit-

ted manslaughter by diminished

responsibility.

Prosecuting, Adam Vaitilingam QC

said Ahmad died in a “savage and

sustained” attack.

Senior investigating off icer detective

chief inspector Richard Ocone said:

“Barry may have a history of serious

mental illness but at the time he at-

tacked Kamil he knew exactly what

he was doing...

“It is clear in the 999 call he subse-

quently made that he was already

thinking of his defence and the

jury rightly recognised he was fully

responsible for his actions.”

He paid tribute to Ahmad’s family

saying that they had been “extreme-

ly dignified” throughout the case.

Ahmad’s family and friends said

he had been let down by several

agencies in the city, and that Ahmad

had made repeated warnings about

feeling threatened by Barry but was

ignored. Barry had been arrested

and sectioned the month before,

having made threats to kill Ahmad,

but was released from a psychiatric

hospital after promising not to con-

sume alcohol, which exacerbated

his condition. He immediately went

on a drinking binge, returned home,

armed himself with a knife and

attacked and killed Ahmad, who did

not know Barry had been freed.

In the three years before the attack,

Ahmad had complained to police

four times that Barry had assaulted

him. Ahmad’s interpreter, Adil Jaifar,

said he had worked with Ahmad

for several years and that at weekly

therapy meetings he attended with

Ahmad, he always talked about how

threatened he felt by Barry.

“He felt that the police and social

services didn’t take him seriously.

Ironically, the only time he said that

things were OK was the last time I

saw him before he died. I asked him

how things were with Barry and he

said that everything was ‘quiet and

pleasant’ because Barry had been

detained in a psychiatric hospital.

That was the last time I saw him

alive.”

The case has echoes of the death

of Bijan Ebrahimi, a disabled Iranian

refugee murdered by a neighbour

in Bristol in 2013 after years of racial

abuse and having been wrongly

branded a paedophile. Earlier this

year, Avon and Somerset police were

heavily criticised over their role in

the Ebrahimi case, and a review of

the city council’s handling of the

case is expected soon.

Police chief grilled as crime soars in capitalLondon Evening StandardLondon

A charity worker stabbed to death yesterday for his iPhone by a moped

gang became the latest victim of surging violent crime in Lon-don.

Abdul Samad, 28, was knifed in the heart on his doorstep. Hours earlier, a 20-year-old man was stabbed to death by a moped-riding thug outside Parsons Green station. Fig-ures yesterday revealed overall crime in London has risen by 5.6% in the 12 months to the end of September, with sig-nificant increases in cases of youth violence.

A total of 35 people under the age of 25 have been murdered in the capital in the past 12 months, an 84% rise on the same period last year. The number of cases of serious youth violence, a meas-ure of gang activity, also rose by 18%. There were 30% rises in

the categories of robbery, theft and knife crime as well as a 16% increase in the number of rapes.

The number of murders in London in the past 12 months has risen to 133, compared with 106 in the previous period. It is one of the highest totals in the past 10 years.

The police figures were re-vealed at a meeting of the London Assembly police and crime committee yesterday. Met Commissioner Cressida Dick was facing questions at the committee about how she will tackle the rises. The force is facing a further £400mn budget cut.

Scotland Yard on Monday announced it will stop inves-tigating thousands of minor crimes, including low-level burglaries and assaults, to save money.

Sophie Linden, the deputy mayor for policing and crime, said the Met faced unprece-dented pressure, with govern-ment cuts forcing it to make

£1bn of savings between 2010 and 2021.

Linden said: “It is more im-portant than ever that the gov-ernment does the right thing in the Budget, and gives our police and security services the fund-ing they need to keep us safe.”

Tory London Assembly member Susan Hall backed calls for extra funding but ac-cused mayor Sadiq Khan of “taking his eye off the ball” in tackling crime.

She said: “In reality the Met is facing no greater fund-ing pressure than it was under Boris.”

Martin Hewitt, the Met’s as-sistant commissioner for terri-torial policing, said: “On Mon-day night we saw two murder inquiries launched after two men were killed in separate in-cidents on our streets. We will bring those responsible to jus-tice, and our detectives have already made arrests, and we will continue to pursue those who choose to bring violence

to our streets with the utmost vigour.”

He said officers were tack-ling moped gangs, seizing hundreds of weapons and tak-ing a record number of guns off the streets, but added: “We ask everyone, from parents and teachers to the wider com-munity and criminal justice system and other agencies, to join us in this fight.”

The figures show there were a total of 805,173 offences in the past 12 months. Violent muggings rose from 20,386 cases to 26,767.

Thefts from persons, which include moped snatches, were up from 34,552 to 45,175. Break-ins rose by 13.4% to 49,914. There was also a 22% increase in the number of knife crime with injury offences. Gun crime rose by almost 19%. The number of shootings was up by 11% to 338. Hate crimes also rose, with increases across all categories and Islamopho-bic offences up 23%.

BRITAIN13Gulf Times

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

EU trying todrag Brexittalks for morecash: ministerGuardian News and MediaLondon

David Davis has accused the EU of trying to drag out the Brexit talks to try to

get more money out of the UK, as he urged other countries to allow negotiations to move on to discus-sions about trade.

The Brexit secretary said the UK was ready to start discussions on the future relationship, as a deal must be struck before exit day in March 2019.

But he suggested the EU was deliberately refusing to move on to talk about trade and transition in order to get the UK to concede it will pay more money as part of its fi nancial settlement.

“They are using time pressure to get more money out of us. Bluntly, that is what’s going on. It’s obvious to anybody,” he told MPs.

The UK is lobbying hard for EU leaders to widen the scope of talks when they meet for a summit in Brussels tomorrow, as discus-sions are currently limited to EU citizens, Northern Ireland and the fi nancial settlement.

However, the issue of money appears to be causing the biggest deadlock between the UK and EU, which led Theresa May to make a last-minute trip to Brussels on Monday for dinner with Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission.

Arriving in Luxembourg yes-terday for a Brexit meeting with 27 EU ministers, excluding the UK, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said it “takes two” to speed up Brexit talks.

Barnier repeated his warning

that time was slipping away. “It is very important to understand that time is passing very quickly. The clock is ticking very fast.”

Asked whether Monday night’s Brussels dinner had changed anything, he implied the talks re-mained at an impasse.

“I said three weeks ago I am ready to accelerate the rhythm, but to accelerate it takes two. It was a good working dinner and what we told Prime Minister May is that it is very important to maintain this constructive dynamic in the com-ing two months.”

Davis claimed that a large number of EU leaders were keen to give Barnier permission to open up talks to trade and a transition period but some were holding out.

“We must be able to talk about the future. We all must recognise that we are reaching the limits of what we can achieve without con-sideration of the future relation-ship,” he told MPs. “At the Europe-an summit later this week, I hope the leaders of the 27 will recognise the progress made and provide Michel Barnier with a mandate to build on the momentum and spirit of co-operation we now have. Do-ing so will allow us to best achieve our joint objectives and move to-wards a deal.”

Speaking in the House of Com-mons, Davis suggested he was confi dent of some progress on the issue soon, saying: “Let’s just see what the European council comes up with on Friday, shall we?”

He also set out what had been achieved in fi ve rounds of talks so far, but said it was diffi cult to talk further about Northern Ireland without discussing trade.

On the rights of EU citizens,

he said there was agreement on a large number of areas but there were outstanding issues with pro-fessional qualifi cations, the right to vote in local elections, the right to onward movement, the right to return, the right to export a range of benefi ts and the right to bring in future family members.

Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said Davis was failing to acknowledge the “seriousness of the situation we fi nd ourselves in” and called on both sides to show more fl exibility to break the dead-lock.

“Every passing week without progress on transitional arrange-ments make things worse, not bet-ter,” he said.

Starmer accused the govern-ment of sounding too enthusiastic about failing to strike an agree-ment with the EU, saying “only fantastists and fanatics talk up no deal”.

Davis responded by saying Starmer had no strategy of his own and denied accusations that he was talking up the prospect of not achieving a deal. But he also said it was “scaremongering” for the Resolution Foundation think-tank to say no deal would lead to a sharp increase in prices for food and other goods.

May’s spokesman said the prime minister had updated her Cabinet earlier yesterday before the Euro-pean council summit, explaining that she believed her speech in Florence last month “had created momentum”.

There would be a time during the summit “where she would set out the UK’s position in relation to the UK leaving the European Un-ion”, the spokesman said.

Union plans Tube strike in jobs rowLondon Evening StandardLondon

Travellers and revellers yes-terday faced the prospect of Christmas strikes on the

Night Tube in a long-running row over working conditions.

Unions have threatened disrup-tion on the 24-hour service as it gears up for the busiest time of the year. The RMT yesterday declared an offi cial dispute with London Underground (LU) and said it was preparing to launch a strike bal-lot. Tube bosses condemned the threat as “disproportionate” and “unnecessary.”

Nigel Holness, LU operations director, said: “Successful Night Tube services have been running for over a year with agreements reached with the unions. We have already met them on this issue, acknowledged their concerns and have agreed swift action is needed. The threat of a ballot is wholly dis-proportionate and unnecessary.”

But the union accused LU of reneging on an agreement that Night Tube drivers working on Friday and Saturday nights could move onto fi ve day a week daytime employment.

Mick Cash, the RMT leader, said: “Staff are rightly angry and frustrated that an agreement that would have allowed Night Tube drivers to progress to full-time driver jobs is being fl outed by the company.

“That is wholly unacceptable and has left RMT with no alterna-tive but to declare a dispute and begin preparations for a ballot. RMT remains available for talks but we will not sit back while our members are denied the career op-portunities they deserve.”

Conducting the ballot and for-mal notice of any industrial action means walkouts could take place from early December.

The union controls about 40% of drivers on the 24-hour service operating on the Victoria, Central, Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines. But the dispute aff ects all drivers and members of the rival Aslef union could refuse to cross RMT picket lines.

The launch of Night Tube in August last year was 12 months late, mainly due to union issues.

The unions said many new driv-ers took up the job saying LU had given “assurances” they would have the opportunity to progress to full-time day jobs.

Ex-bishop being probed over abuse allegationsGuardian News and MediaLondon

The former bishop of Ches-ter, Victor Whitsey, is be-ing investigated 30 years

after his death over allegations of sexual abuse in the latest scandal involving high-profi le fi gures in the Church of England.

A lawyer representing four of the alleged victims has claimed the abuse was covered up by the Church of England and has called for an independent review.

The allegations date from the late 1970s when Whitsey was bishop of Chester, and in the 1980s after he had retired and was living in the diocese of Blackburn.

The church said it had sup-ported a police investigation into allegations of sexual off ences against children and adults. The police told the church that, had Whitsey still been alive, he would have been interviewed in relation to 10 allegations. Whitsey died in 1987.

In a statement, the archbishop

of York, Dr John Sentamu, and the bishop of Chester, Dr Pe-ter Forster, said: “We are deeply sorry and apologise to those in-dividuals who have come for-ward to share their account of abuse by a bishop in the Church of England who was in a position of power and authority. We ap-preciate that it is very diffi cult for individuals to come forward and to give their account.

“Sexual abuse is a heinous crime – and is an absolute and shameful breach of trust. We acknowledge that for survivors the eff ects of sexual abuse are lifelong. We are off ering pasto-ral support to all those who have come forward and continue to hold them all in our prayers.”

It added: “The church will consider what lessons can be learned from this case and whether any action needs to be taken as a result of what these in-quiries have shown.”

Cheshire police said the alle-gations related to 13 people, fi ve males and eight females. “The abuse is alleged to have taken place whilst the bishop was liv-

ing and working in Chester and one incident is reported to have taken place outside the county,” a statement said. The police inves-tigation had spanned 13 months, it added.

Richard Scorer, a specialist abuse lawyer from Slater and Gordon, which represents four of Whitsey’s victims, said: “The abhorrent and disgusting abuse perpetrated by Bishop Whitsey destroyed many lives, driving some to attempt suicide. What is equally abhorrent is that the church knew of his abuse, did nothing to stop it and covered it up. It is crucial that there is now an independent review into Whitsey abuse and who failed to act when they learnt of his heinous behaviour.”

The law fi rm understands that a complaint was made to the church while Whitsey was still serving as bishop of Chester, but it was not passed to police. The church was believed to have been made aware of further al-legations following Whitsey’s retirement, but no action was taken.

Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Brexit Minister) David Davis (right) and Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell arrive at Downing Street, London, for the weekly Cabinet meeting.

Prince William and his wife Kate confirmed yesterday that their third child will be born next April. The couple, whose official title is Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, announced last month that Kate was pregnant and that she was suffering from severe morning sickness, but the date of the baby’s arrival was not disclosed. In a short statement, the royals’ said the baby, who will be fifth-in-line to the British throne, was due in April. On Monday, Kate made only her second appearance since news broke that she was pregnant, attending a charity event at London’s Paddington rail station.

A new survey yesterday demanded tougher penalties against law-breaking and aggressive cyclists. Nearly nine out of 10 (86%) people want tougher penalties for cyclists who ignore the Highway Code, while 81% want more action against those who ride “aggressively”. The survey, by Halfords, comes weeks after the government announced a review into a new law to tackle dangerous cycling, triggered by cases including that of Charlie Alliston, who killed Kim Briggs on Old Street while riding a bike on Old Street with no front brake, and convicted under a Victorian law. The Share The Road Report said 59% of the 2,042 respondents supported number plates for cyclists.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is to appear on a celebrity episode of The Great British Bake Off . Davidson, beloved by the party faithful for overseeing a revival in Conservative fortunes in Scotland, will take part in a charity special of the Channel 4 programme later this year to raise money for Stand Up to Cancer. The 38-year-old former journalist is no stranger to the baking show, having previously been a guest on the spinoff , An Extra Slice, when it aired on the BBC. She appeared alongside former Bake Off champion Nadiya Hussain, comedian Tom Allen and presenter Jo Brand last October, when she critiqued the 2016 contestants’ semi-final performances.

Londoners could end up paying an extra £90mn a year in black cab fares if Uber’s appeal is unsuccessful, it was claimed yesterday. The taxi-hailing app is appealing against Transport for London’s decision to strip it of its licence and is also involved in talks with the mayor’s transport body. However, the London Assembly Tories claimed that if a deal was not reached, the consequences for the app’s users could be far-reaching. It added that a permanent ban could also aff ect Uber’s 40,000 drivers, who face lost earnings of £864mn a year. The Tory analysis shows that, excluding surge charging, the cost of an average journey by Uber is 40% cheaper that a black cab.

Firefighters at the Sellafield nuclear facility yesterday staged the first of two 12-and-a-half-hour strikes planned for this week in a protest over wages and work conditions, the GMB union said. “The management have broken their promises to the firefighters and have failed to make a fair off er that would put an end to this dispute,” a union representative said in a statement. The firefighters’ strike began at 0600GMT and ended at 1830GMT. The next strike will be tomorrow. Sellafield’s management was not available for immediate comment. An automated message said the site operations had not been aff ected.

William and Kateexpecting baby in April

Aggressive cyclists mustface penalties: survey

Ruth Davidson to appearon Great British Bake Off

Loss of Uber ‘would cost cab users £90mn a year’

Firefighters stage protest at nuclear processing site

ROYALTY TRENDPEOPLE CLAIM INDUSTRIAL ACTION

Registrationof 3mn EUnationals byend of nextyear: Rudd

AgenciesLondon

The registration of 3mn EU nationals in Britain will begin by the end of next

year with the “default position” of the Home Offi ce to accept ap-plications, the home secretary has told MPs.

Amber Rudd said that 1,200 extra staff were to be recruit-ed by next April to provide an “easy access” registration proc-ess that she promised would be “completely diff erent” from the troubled permanent residency application system that has undermined confi dence in the Home Offi ce.

The home secretary also fuelled the Brexit debate within the Cabinet by telling the Com-mons home aff airs committee that leaving the EU without a deal would be “unthinkable” for Britain and the EU after being asked a series of questions about the implications of the lack of any agreement for security and immigration.

The Home Offi ce’s permanent secretary, Philip Rutnam, told MPs that it would be unwise to rule out using troops to police the borders in a no-deal Brexit but stressed that the use of the army would be an “absolute last resort”.

Rudd tried to reassure MPs in the face of recent scepticism of the capacity of the Home Of-fi ce to deliver the registration of 3mn EU nationals by insisting that it would be an “easy access” online process for those who opt to apply that way and would not involve 80 pages plus, as is the case with existing permanent residence applications.

The home secretary said the “default position” would be to accept EU nationals’ applica-tions for “settled status” if they qualifi ed, with online checks with HMRC/DWP with their consent and identity and crimi-nal background inquiries also made.

Retired ballet dancer, Dame Beryl Grey poses after she was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) for her contribution to dance by Princess Anne, Princess Royal at an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London yesterday.

Honoured

EUROPE

Gulf Times Wednesday, October 18, 201714

Overnight rain and calmer winds yesterday helped fi refi ghters tame a spate

of deadly wildfi res that broke out over the weekend, devour-ing homes and killing 37 people in Portugal and another four in northern Spain.

Portugal’s civil protection agency said the 15 biggest fi res, which had raged through the centre and the north of the country, had been brought un-der control.

As the country began three days of mourning for the vic-tims, the agency said 71 people had been injured in the fi res, 16 of them seriously.

And one person was still missing.

Among the dead was a one-month-old baby.

“Most of the victims were killed in their cars, but we also found them inside their houses,” said Jose Carlos Alexandrino, mayor of Oliveira do Hospi-tal near Coimbra, speaking to broadcaster RTP. “The whole city looked like a ball of fi re, sur-rounded by fl ames on all sides.”

Across the border in Galicia, Spain’s westernmost province which fl anks northern Portu-gal, the death toll rose to four from fi res which also broke out on Sunday and were stoked by warm winds as Hurricane Ophe-lia passed the Iberian Peninsula.

The latest victim was a 70-year-old man who died on Monday in Vigo, a city on the coast.

However, by afternoon yes-terday, offi cials said they had lowered the alert level after early-morning rain and calmer winds halted the progression of the fl ames.

It is the second time in four months that Portugal has been hit by deadly wildfi res after huge blazes in June killed 64 people in the worst fi res in Portugal’s his-tory.

“We went through absolute hell, it was horrible. There was fi re everywhere,” a resident of the central town of Penacova told RTP television.

Further north, villagers from the Vouzela area spoke of how fast the fi re spread.

“Everything happened in 45 minutes, the fi re came to the foot of the village and spread at an incredible rate,” resident Jose Morais told AFP.

“I had never seen anything like that before. It felt like the end of the world. Everyone fl ed,” he added.

Despite the rain, the civil pro-tection agency said that around 3,000 fi refi ghters remained de-ployed to tackle any resumption of the blaze, but that there had been no major active fi res burn-ing since dawn.

By morning yesterday, rail services had resumed in the north after being suspended on Sunday.

In the villages near Penacova, about 230km (140 miles) north of Lisbon, life began to resume some semblance of normal-ity with residents hosing down their land to prevent further blazes.

Others were examining their

crops and olive trees to gauge the extent of the damage.

In the forests around Coim-bra, a city on the banks of the Mondego River, plumes of white smoke fi lled the air as fi refi ght-ers continued working to douse the fl ames on a hillside covered with blackened ash.

“There was a lot of rain dur-ing the night but not enough to completely put out the fi re,” a senior fi re offi cer told RTP, say-ing the main diffi culty for fi re-fi ghters was the sense of fatigue and the scope of the area they had to work on.

The blazes which broke out on Sunday were blamed on arson-ists and fanned by the passing of Ophelia.

Lisbon declared a state of emergency in areas north of the Tagus river, the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula which ef-fectively cuts Portugal in half and also runs through Spain.

For the second time in four months, Portugal held a three-day mourning period, while in Brussels, the European Com-mission’s fl ags were lowered to half-mast as a sign of respect for victims in both countries.

Speaking on Monday night, Prime Minister Antonio Costa reaffi rmed his pledges to prevent new tragedies by carrying out “fundamental reforms” in forest management and fi refi ghting.

“After this year, nothing should remain as it was before,” he said.

Since the start of the year, more than 350,000 hectares (865,000 acres) of vegetation have been consumed by wild-fi res across Portugal – four times

the annual average over the past decade – according to an esti-mate from the European Forest Fire Information System (EF-FIS).

Portugal is covered with fast-burning eucalyptus trees which are used to supply the country’s paper industry, and it is also vul-nerable to strong winds coming off the Atlantic.

Scientists also say climate change has extended the “wild-fi re season”.

In Spain, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy blamed arsonists for most of the deadly wildfi res, saying: “What we are experi-encing here does not happen by chance.”

Rain helps tame forestfi res in Portugal, SpainAFPPenacova, Portugal

Farmers walk their livestock on a mountain road, past vegetation burnt by forest fire in Galicia, northern Spain.

Govt faces no-confi dence vote over forest fi res

A Portuguese opposition party has launched a motion of no-confidence

in the government over its failure to prevent the loss of human lives in

this week’s lethal wildfires, the second such disaster in four months.

Hundreds of fires have raged across northern and central Portugal since

Sunday after the driest summer in nearly 90 years, killing at least 41

people and overwhelming fire-fighting and rescue services.

The no-confidence motion proposed by the small centre-right CDS-PP

party is largely symbolic as the minority Socialist government is backed

in parliament by two left-wing parties.

They have only to abstain for such a vote to fail.

But it comes amid growing public criticism of Socialist Prime Minister

Antonio Costa’s government over the perceived slowness of its response

to the disaster.

“There has been a grave failure to fulfill the most basic duty of the state

– to protect the lives of the people,” CDS-PP leader Assuncao Cristas told

reporters in proposing the no-confidence vote.

A date for the vote of no-confidence can only be set after Cristas has

formally submitted the motion to parliament.

A bomb blast wrecked a bus carrying police offi cers yesterday in the south-

ern Turkish province of Mersin, injuring 18 people in an attack that security sources blamed on Kurdish militants.

Seventeen of those hurt were police offi cers, Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesman Bekir Bozdag told parliament, branding it a terror-ist attack.

“Turkey’s battle against ter-ror will continue under any cir-cumstances in a strong and de-termined way,” Bozdag said.

Security sources said mili-tants of the outlawed Kurdis-tan Workers Party (PKK) were believed to have carried out the attack.

They also said that none of those wounded were in a critical condition.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Local mayor Burhanettin Ko-camaz told broadcaster Haber-turk that the attack took place on a street where the local gov-ernor’s offi ce was located and had hit the police vehicle as it passed.

Images from NTV showed

smoke billowing from the area, in Mersin’s Yenisehir district.

Ambulances, police and fi re trucks were sent to the site of the attack, security sources said.

Turkey is battling a three-decade insurgency in its mainly Kurdish southeast.

The PKK frequently carries

out bombings on security forces in the southeast and elsewhere.

The PKK is considered a ter-rorist organisation by the Unit-ed States and the European Un-ion as well as by Turkey.

More than 40,000 peo-ple, most of them Kurds, have died since it fi rst took up arms against the state in 1984.

18 hurt in bomb attack on police vehicleAFPAnkara

Plainclothes police off icers are seen near the bomb-hit bus carrying police off icers in Mersin.

Dutch offi cials toasted yesterday the opening of what is being called the

world’s fi rst 3D-printed con-crete bridge, which is primarily meant to be used by cyclists.

There was applause as of-fi cials wearing hard hats and workmen’s jackets rode over the bridge on their bikes at the in-auguration in the southeastern town of Gemert.

“The bridge is not very big, but it was rolled out by a printer which makes it unique,” Theo Salet, from the Eindhoven University of Technology, told

Dutch broadcaster NOS.Work on printing the bridge,

which has some 800 layers, took about three months after start-ing in June.

The bridge is made of rein-forced, pre-stressed concrete, according to the university.

“One of the advantages of printing a bridge is that much less concrete is needed than in the conventional technique in which a mould is fi lled,” it said on its website, adding “a print-er deposits the concrete only where it is needed”.

The 8m (26’) bridge spans a water-fi lled ditch to connect two roads, and in conjunction with the BAM Infra construc-tion company was tested for

safety to bear loads of up to two tonnes.

Although designed for bikes, it could take up to 40 trucks, the designers said.

“We are looking to the fu-ture,” said the head of BAM, Marinus Schimmel, adding in a statement that his company was constantly “searching for a newer, smarter approach to ad-dressing infrastructure issues and making a signifi cant con-tribution to improving the mo-bility and sustainability of our society”.

3D printing meant “fewer scarce resources were needed and there was signifi cantly less waste”, he added.

The Netherlands is among

countries, with the United States and China, taking a lead in the cutting-edge technology of 3D printing, using comput-ers and robotics to construct objects and structures from scratch without using tradition-al manpower.

Last year a Dutch architect unveiled a unique 3D printer with which he hopes to con-struct an “endless loop” build-ing.

And a Dutch start-up called MX3D has begun printing a stainless-steel bridge, of which a third is already completed.

The objective is to fi nish printing by March and lay the bridge over an Amsterdam canal in June.

Dutch open ‘fi rst 3D-printed bridge’AFPThe Hague

A cyclist rides over the 3D-printed concrete bridge.

Vladimir Putin’s top critic Alexei Navalny will only be able to run for presi-

dent after 2028, the head of the Russian Central Election Com-mission said yesterday.

In a separate announcement, Europe’s top rights court ruled Navalny’s 2014 conviction for fraud was “arbitrary and unrea-sonable” and ordered Russia to pay him and his jailed brother €83,000 ($98,000) in damages and costs.

Russians are scheduled to go to polls to elect a president next March and Navalny, 41, has de-clared his intention to stand against Putin.

Navalny has long said that the multiple court cases against him were politically motivated and designed to sabotage his presi-dential ambitions.

In the 2014 trial, Navalny re-ceived a suspended three-and-a-half-year sentence while his brother Oleg was sent to prison in a case related to their work for French cosmetics company Yves Rocher.

In February 2017, a court found Navalny guilty of embezzlement in connection with a timber fi rm and handed him a fi ve-year sus-

pended sentence.Offi cials say the ruling makes

him ineligible to stand for presi-dent.

The case dates back to 2013 and a retrial came after the Eu-ropean Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said the fi rst trial was unfair.

Ella Pamfi lova, the head of the Central Election Commission, said that Navalny would be able to put his name on the ballot once his criminal record has been ex-punged – “after 2028”.

Speaking at a forum in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Pam-fi lova said Navalny would be able to run in just over 10 years.

“He’s got his whole life ahead of him,” she was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

“So he should proceed from

that. And good luck to him!” she added, calling him a “young, promising politician”.

On the same day, the ECHR ruled that the Russian courts had inappropriately applied com-mercial law in order to convict Navalny and his younger brother in the Yves Rocher case.

Last year, the European court declared his 2013 conviction for alleged embezzlement of funds from the regional Kirov govern-ment was also unfair.

Navalny’s lawyer said she would lodge a demand with Rus-sia’s top court to close the case against him following the Euro-pean ruling.

“The most important thing for us is that the ECHR acknowl-edged that article seven of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamen-tal Freedoms had been broken which happens extremely rarely,” Olga Mikhailova told the Interfax news agency. “According to the decision, the Navalny brothers were convicted illegally, in that the act for which they were tried was not a criminal off ence.”

His defence team would “ask the Russian Supreme Court not just to review but to terminate the case”, she said.

Russia’s justice ministry said it disagreed with the ECHR ruling and would consider appealing.

Election authority says Navalny can run for president ‘after 2028’AFPMoscow

Navalny

France arrests 10 over suspected plot to target mosques and politiciansTen people were arrested in France yesterday over a suspected plot to target mosques and politicians, including a government spokesman, a source close to the investigation told AFP.The arrests by anti-terror police of suspects aged 17-25 were part of an investigation into far-right activists, the source said.The nine men and one woman are suspected

of links to Logan Alexandre Nisin, a former militant of the far-right group Action Francaise Provence who was arrested in June, the source said.Another source named the targeted politicians as government spokesman Christophe Castaner and radical left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon.The suspects, taken into custody for

“association with terrorist wrongdoers”, were also thought to be plotting to target migrants as well as mosques.“They were only in the earliest planning stages,” one source said.A 21-year-old former Action Francaise member was charged in July after making threatening posts on social networks against migrants and religious extremists.

Uzbekpolitical prisoner freed after 8 yearsAFPBishkek

Uzbekistan has released a human rights activ-ist who spent eight years

in jail, on charges which rights groups called trumped up, one of several prominent political prisoners released since Presi-dent Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power.

Ganikhon Mamatkhonov re-ceived a fi ve-year sentence on fraud and bribery charges in 2009 but saw it extended on two occasions by two years each time, a common practice in the authoritarian country.

Global rights watchdog Hu-man Rights Watch described his arrest at the time as “clearly a set up” while calling for his release.

International rights groups monitoring the release of po-litical prisoners in the country hailed Mamatkhonov’s release on Monday after just over eight years in jail.

“This is long awaited and good news,” Nadejda Atayeva, head of the France-based As-sociation for Human Rights in Central Asia, told AFP in written comments yesterday, adding: “Mamatkhonov was released slightly ahead of schedule on humanitarian grounds.”

Mamatkhonov is the 10th ac-tivist to be released since Mir-ziyoyev came to power after dictator Islam Karimov died of a stroke in 2016, Atayeva said.

Uzbekistan surprised many by inviting Human Rights Watch back into the country earlier this year, seven years after co-oper-ation between the government and the group broke down.

Nevertheless, Atayeva said that at least 10 political prisoners – rights activists and journalists – are known to be still behind bars in the country, while around 10,000 people remain impris-oned on fabricated charges.

Prominent rights activists freed under Mirziyoyev include former United Nations staff er Erkin Musaev, whose release after 11 years in prison was con-fi rmed in August, and former lawmaker Samandar Kukanov, released after more than two decades behind bars last year.

All of the released political prisoners were imprisoned dur-ing the 27-year reign of the late Karimov, who took charge of the country before its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Mirziyoyev, who served as Karimov’s prime minister for 13 years, has made several moves to distance himself from his pred-ecessor’s hardline policies.

EUROPE15Gulf Times

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Austria’s president has warned conservative elec-tion victor Sebastian Kurz

that European values must un-derpin the next government and he would scrutinise develop-ments as Kurz considers bringing the far right back into power.

Kurz’s People’s Party (OeVP) won Sunday’s parliamentary election with a hard line on im-migration that left little daylight between it and the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), two years after Austria was swept up in Eu-rope’s migration crisis.

The OeVP secured about 31.5% of the vote, well short of a major-ity.

A coalition with the FPOe is far from certain but appears the most likely outcome after Kurz called an end to the OeVP’s pre-vious coalition with the Social Democrats.

Kurz, 31, has given little away about what he plans to do.

The FPOe was founded by ex-Nazis in the 1950s and fi rst be-came a major political force in the 1990s under the charismatic Jo-erg Haider, who praised Hitler’s employment policies.

Haider led the party to a record parliamentary election score in 1999 that it came close to match-

ing in Sunday’s election.The FPOe says that it has put

its Nazi past behind it and purged its ranks of anti-Semitism, but still frequently has to expel members for anti-Semitic com-ments.

It has, however, stopped call-

ing for Austria to leave the Euro-pean Union.

“I will ensure that the fun-damental European values in-scribed in our constitution re-main the compass for Austria’s future,” President Alexander Van der Bellen said yesterday as he

received the outgoing coalition government, which will stay on in a caretaker role until a succes-sor is formed.

Austria’s president holds a largely ceremonial post but has the power to appoint and dismiss governments, and can be an in-fl uential fi gure in forming coali-tions.

“I will check policy objectives but also staffi ng proposals very closely,” Van der Bellen added.

What that means for a poten-tial tie-up between Kurz and the FPOe is unclear but Van der Bel-len, a former leader of the leftist Greens, is known to have reser-vations about the far-right party.

Van der Bellen narrowly beat

an FPOe candidate in a presi-dential election run-off last year, campaigning on a pro-European platform.

During his campaign, he said that as president he would seek to prevent FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache from becom-ing chancellor if the FPOe won an election, but since taking of-fi ce he has said only that the next government must be pro-Euro-pean.

The FPOe cheered Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the EU and even sketched out a case in which Austria might hold its own “Oex-it” referendum on leaving the bloc.

But the anti-immigrant party

has since backed away from that position given that a clear ma-jority of Austrians support EU membership.

It now describes itself as “pro-European” but still criticises the EU, calling for Brussels to hand back more powers to member states.

That stance overlaps with Kurz’s, since the OeVP has called for a streamlined EU that focuses on “core competencies” like in-ternal trade and securing exter-nal borders.

Kurz has also said that any coalition partner must be pro-European, although whether he and Van der Bellen agree on what that means is unclear.

Austrian president tells Kurz to heed ‘European values’ on coalitionReutersVienna

Van der Bellen with Kurz.

Catalonia refused yester-day to bow to the Span-ish government’s demand

that it renounce a symbolic dec-laration of independence, setting it on a political collision course with Madrid later this week.

The Spanish government has threatened to put Catalonia, which accounts for a fi fth of the economy, under direct central rule if its government does not abandon independence by to-morrow.

But Catalonia’s government rejected Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s deadline.

“Giving in forms no part of this government’s scenarios,” Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turull said. “On Thursday, we won’t give anything diff erent than what we gave on Monday.”

Spain’s biggest political crisis in decades worsened on Mon-day night when Madrid’s High Court jailed the heads of Catalo-nia’s two main separatist groups pending an investigation for al-leged sedition.

The Catalan government ac-cused Madrid of taking “political prisoners”.

Thousands of workers in Bar-celona and other cities staged a brief walkout at noon in protest at court decision to keep Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez behind bars pending investigations into sedition charges.

“Repression is not the solu-tion,” protesters shouted as hun-dreds gathered outside the Cata-lan regional government offi ces in central Barcelona.

“Now anyone can be put in jail,” said Carme Guell, a 62-year-old beautician who joined the walk-out as civil servants from nearby regional ministries blocked the street.

Like many who back inde-pendence for Catalonia – which is profoundly divided on the is-sue – Guell said the wealthy northeastern region was “treated like a colony. All our money is taken away, nothing is reinvested here”.

Catalan leader Carles Puigde-

mont, in a tweet following the detentions, said: “Sadly, we have political prisoners again.”

The phrase was an allusion to the military dictatorship under Francisco Franco, when Catalan culture and language were sys-tematically suppressed.

It carries an emotional reso-nance given fascism is still a liv-ing memory for many Spaniards.

Justice Minister Rafael Catala hit back, saying that the jailing of the leaders of the Catalan Na-tional Assembly (ANC) and Om-nium Cultural was a judicial, not a political, decision.

The two pro-independence citizens’ groups count tens of thousands of members and have emerged as infl uential players in the crisis.

“We can talk of politicians in prison but not political prison-ers,” he said. “These are not po-litical prisoners because yester-day’s prison ruling was due to a (suspected) crime.”

The crisis has deepened di-visions at the heart of Spain’s young democracy, underlining the complex sense of nationhood in the eurozone’s fourth largest economy.

In Madrid, unionists drape their homes in the national fl ag, while Barcelona buildings are festooned with Catalan fl ags.

Street protests of hundreds of thousands of people have been held on both sides of the divide, including in Catalonia.

“They’ve crossed a line,” said Eulalia López, a 54-year-old of-fi ce worker in Barcelona.

She said she and her colleagues would come out onto the streets if Madrid went ahead and took control of the region.

European capitals and fi nan-cial markets have looked on with mounting alarm since October 1, when Catalan authorities held a referendum on independence in defi ance of a Spanish court ban.

ANC leader Jordi Sanchez and Omnium Cultural chief Jordi Cuixart – nicknamed the “two Jordis” – are accused by pros-ecutors of helping to orchestrate pro-independence protests that last month trapped national po-lice inside a Barcelona building and destroyed their vehicles.

That same incident also led to Catalonia’s police chief, Josep Lluis Trapero, being investigated for sedition.

He is accused of failing to order his force to rescue them from the building.

He has not been detained but the High Court banned him from leaving Spain and seized his passport.

A string of companies, includ-

ing two major lenders, have de-cided to move their headquarters outside Catalonia since the refer-endum.

Spanish police launched a vio-lent crackdown in an eff ort to thwart it, using rubber bullets and batons on voters in scenes that shocked Spain’s European neighbours.

Catalan offi cials say 43% of voters still managed to cast bal-lots with 90% in favour of break-ing away.

Many unionists, however, obeyed Madrid and did not take part in the vote.

One of Catalonia’s major for-eign investors, Volkswagen, said yesterday that its Spanish divi-sion, Seat, had decided to de-lay announcing the name of its forthcoming model.

Seat, based in Martorell in Catalonia, had planned to an-nounce the name of its 2018 sport-utility vehicle this month, about a year ahead of the seven-seat model’s launch.

“With the entire Spanish me-dia focused on politics at the mo-ment, we have decided to fi nd a better time,” a Seat spokesman said, adding the division had also delayed the announcement of an innovation and digitisation agreement.

He did not elaborate.

Catalans rally against ‘political imprisonment’Reuters/AFPMadrid/Barcelona

Students block a street in Barcelona during a gathering to protest the imprisonment of leaders of two of the largest Catalan separatist organisations, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Onmium Cultural.

Hundreds gathered in Malta yesterday de-manding justice, a day

after the car bomb assassina-tion of acclaimed and contro-versial journalist Daphne Caru-ana Galizia.

Caruana Galizia, a 53-year-old blogger, newspaper col-umnist and vocal government critic, was killed in a Monday car bombing, just metres from her home.

Crowds gathered outside Valletta’s main courts yester-day, demanding that those re-sponsible for the murder be brought to justice.

“I’m here out of fear, shame and anger. This country got to a place we never imagined. We have lost our moral compass. We have adopted a culture of greed, inspired by a political class which chased it. Daphne was the last woman standing trying to remind us between right and wrong,” blogger Manuel Delia told DPA.

Michael Briguglio, former chairman of the Greens party, said he was in a state of shock.

“The fact that nobody has resigned is incredible. The fact that the police didn’t provide protection to a woman in dan-ger, the fact that the police commissioner hasn’t given a comment, is incredible,” he said.

Dutch forensic experts ar-rived in Malta to investigate the scene of the bombing.

They will be joined later by investigators from the US Fed-eral Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Meanwhile, reacting to a news report on the state broad-caster, the police said no reports of threats against Caruana Gal-izia were lodged at the police station in the past two weeks.

Earlier, the son of Caruana Galizia attacked the Maltese government for allowing “a culture of impunity” to fl our-ish, one day after she died in a car bombing.

“My mother was assassinat-ed because she stood between the rule of law and those who sought to violate it, like many strong journalists,” Matthew Caruana Galizia wrote on Face-book.

Caruana Galizia’s reporting in the wake of a massive docu-ment leak known as the Panama Papers – in which two Maltese cabinet members were em-broiled – forced an early general election last June.

“I am never going to forget, running around the inferno in the fi eld, trying to fi gure out a

way to open the door, the horn of the car still blaring,” he said. “I looked down and there were my mother’s body parts all around me.”

“This was no ordinary mur-der,” Matthew Caruana Galizia wrote. “We are a people at war against the state and organised crime, which have become in-distinguishable.”

Matti Maasikas, Estonian deputy minister for EU aff airs, whose country holds the rotat-ing EU presidency, called the killing “an unacceptable assault on the freedom of speech and democracy”.

“The perpetrators must be brought to justice,” he said after a meeting of EU European af-fairs ministers.

In Brussels, the European Commission said it was hor-rifi ed by the death of Caruana Galizia in “what was seem-ingly a targeted attack” and condemned it in the “strongest possible terms”.

Margaritis Schinas, the chief spokesperson for the Commis-sion, described Caruana Galizia as “a pioneer of investigative journalism in Malta”.

“Her ability to trigger debate is a testament to the success of her reporting and her dedica-tion to the pursuit of truth. The

right of a journalist to investi-gate, ask uncomfortable ques-tions, and report eff ectively is at the heart of our values and needs to be guaranteed at all times, Schinas said. “We trust now that justice will be brought even if this will not be enough to write this wrong.”

Earlier yesterday, journalist groups demanded a thorough probe into the “assassination”, calling it a “clear attack against press freedom”.

“The murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia leaves the jour-nalism community in shock,” Philippe Leruth, president of the International Federation of Journalists, said. “We demand immediate investigation into her killing as this brutal assas-sination is a clear attack against press freedom.”

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) said it was “appalled” by the murder.

“This killing and its circum-stances must be swiftly and thoroughly investigated,” the organisation’s head, Mogens Blicher Bjerregard, urged.

In February, the EFJ de-nounced the freeze of Caruana Galizia’s bank accounts, while also condemning various libel suits fi led against her by gov-ernment offi cials.

Hundreds demand justice for slain Malta journalistDPAValletta

A poster is left at the entrance to the law courts in Valletta after a protest over the death of Caruana Galizia.

Italy’s former prime minister Matteo Renzi chuff ed off on a whistle-stop train tour of the

country yesterday as the nation’s main political contenders began campaigning in earnest for the upcoming general election.

Renzi, 42, who rode away on a centre-left Democratic Party (PD) train marked “Destination Italy”, told journalists that his objective was to “listen to and learn from” ordinary Italians as the left tries to fend off right-

wing and populist gains.But he may have to do more

than catch a train to bump cen-tre-right rival Silvio Berlusconi from the spotlight.

The former media mogul made a typically outrageous return to front-line politics this weekend, regaling supporters with a joke about sex.

Berlusconi, who had dropped out of the public eye following heart surgery last year, has said he wants the PM job.

With a nod to his friendship with the slain Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi , the 81-year old shrugged off his age, reviv-ing and revelling in his reputation

as the host of “bunga bunga” sex parties with young starlets.

The four-time former prime minister is banned from running for offi ce due to a 2013 tax fraud conviction, but has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn it.

While a hearing is scheduled for November, a verdict is doubt-ful before the general election, which must be held by May at the latest.

A date for the polls has yet to be set, but could come as early as March.

If Berlusconi is unlikely to run, he will play a key role in rustling up votes for the centre-right,

which is celebrating strong poll numbers and could seize power from the centre-left if it forms a coalition.

A poll on Monday taken by the Demos institute showed the an-ti-establishment 5-Star Move-ment (M5S) leading the pack with 27% of the vote, and the ruling centre-left PD snapping at its heels with 26%.

Berlusconi’s Go Italy party and the anti-immigrant Northern League had around 14% to 15% of the vote each.

But should Go Italy and the Northern League band togeth-er with the small, nationalist Brothers of Italy party, together

they would take home over 34% of the vote.

The parties would need to agree on a PM candidate that would appeal to voters from both the centre and far right.

The Northern League’s head Matteo Salvini on Monday rub-bished Berlusconi’s suggestion that a popular candidate could be chosen by polling, saying “this is not X-Factor” and insisting “I’ll be prime minister by March”.

The current electoral system means no party looks likely to win enough seats to govern alone – a fact which may exclude the populist M5S from power as it refuses to join forces with tradi-

tional political parties.Renzi’s tour will take him fi rst

to towns in central Umbria dev-astated by earthquakes last year, before heading south.

Walter Veltroni, who served as the PD’s fi rst secretary when it was founded in 2007, warned the

Florentine that he would have to work hard to reunite a divided left which spends more energy on infi ghting than challenging the centre-right.

“I hope there is a needle and thread on the train to sow (the left) back together,” he said.

All aboard as Italy electoral campaign gathers steamBy Olivier Baube and Ella Ide, AFPRome

Renzi arrives to board a train during his ‘Destinazione Italia’ (Destination Italy) electoral tour at the Tiburtina train station in Rome.

One nation, one poll — an idea whose time has comeThe Election Commission of

India (ECI) last week said it would be in a position

to hold uniform or simultaneous elections all across the country by the end of 2018. If it eventually happens, in 2018 or whenever, the world can sit up and watch wide-eyed because it will be the biggest democratic exercise ever con-ceived by man!

For the 2014 parliamentary elections, the total electorate count was 814.5mn which itself was 101mn more than the 2009 polls. By that token we are look-ing at the possibility of close to a billion people making their way to polling stations to elect as many as 6,000 representatives for par-liament and state assemblies. Of course, the actual number of votes polled will be around 600mn if statistics of the previous elections are anything to go by.

The ECI expressed its opinion on a reference by the Narendra Modi government whether it will have the wherewithal to under-take such a gigantic eff ort if the government were to ask it so. And for the government to make that request it will fi rst have to get ap-proval from both houses of parlia-ment where parties have varying degrees of diff erences on the is-sue. And even if parliament were

to decide on simultaneous elec-tions, rest assured that the matter will end up in the Supreme Court which can take its sweet time to decide one way or the other.

So, all that is being debated hotly on the pros and cons of si-multaneous elections is, simply put, just hot air. Nevertheless a debate is highly desirable because democracy thrives on it.

Opinions on the subject are split down the middle. Those who oppose it, apart from highlighting the impracticality of the exercise, say it will be the death-knell of democracy because given India’s diversity, a one-size-fi ts-all elec-tion will be unjust and illogical. Democracy, they content, can-not be straightjacketed into fi xed tenures for legislatures because it goes against the grain of the free will of the people that is expressed through elections. Alright that every time a parliament or state assembly is elected, it is suppos-edly for fi ve years. But opinions, of parties and politicians, can change and so the people should have the choice to elect another government.

With the exception of a couple of states, the fi rst four elections af-ter independence were held simul-taneously. But with parties split-ting and splintering, mainly the

Congress Party under Indira Gan-dhi, and coalitions becoming the order of the day, it soon became a multi-poll exercise. As The Indian Express said in a recent editorial, “the parliamentary, federal system has worked well for a country of diverse voices and many minori-ties. The idea of simultaneous polls – one nation, one polls – threatens to re-arrange, curb and fl atten out this plural and layered federal sys-tem by giving it a more presidential and unitary character. It must be resisted.”

Those, like The Indian Express, who oppose the idea also wonder what would happen if state gov-ernments are not able to com-plete their full terms. And for that matter, there is no guarantee that even the government at the centre could run the full fi ve years, espe-cially in a coalition scenario.

On the other hand, those who advocate simultaneous polls – Prime Minister Modi foremost

among them – feel that a country on perennial election mode does not make a good example either of democracy or good governance. The state assemblies and the Lok Sabha are elected for a fi ve-year tenure but as governments in the state fall with increasing regulari-ties, India is forever holding one election or the other.

The disadvantages here are many and perhaps outweigh the reasons put forward by the ‘nay-sayers’. The cost of holding an as-sembly election is not small. And with each passing year it is mount-ing. (The fi gure mentioned for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls is Rs400bn. The combined expenditure for polls to the 29 state assemblies could be three times larger). Yes, a large number of people fi nd work as campaign volunteers, poster makers and stage managers for ral-lies but these are basically unpro-ductive and temporary jobs that contribute little to the GDP and,

therefore, a major part of all that money is simply wasted.

In the run-up to the announce-ment of the election dates the rul-ing party goes on a spree of popu-list measures in order to “bribe” the people into voting for it. While the results of the election may not be impacted by such gimmicks, such dole eventually takes a toll on the state exchequer leaving the subsequent government to carry the burden. If polls are held simultaneously, political parties would be more careful about de-claring such sops because they will have to replicate them in oth-er in other states.

But perhaps the worst impact of variable election dates is on governance itself. Once the ECI announces the dates, the ‘moral code of conduct’ takes eff ect. From then on virtually no govern-ment work gets done as all offi ces go into a sort of suspended ani-mation. In fact, it is well known that offi cers and clerks take elec-tion time as a sort of paid vaca-tion. Schemes that had been an-nounced even before the model code of conduct came into eff ect will have to be put on hold until the election process is completed. Roads and bridges or factories or educational institutions cannot be opened during this period. In

short nothing moves. Multiply this 29 times and imagine the cu-mulative eff ect on the country.

As for the fall of a state govern-ment, or even the federal govern-ment, before the end of its stipu-lated fi ve years, the eff ective way is to elect another government for the remaining period and then join the mainstream for simulta-neous polls. After all, a by-elec-tion for a vacant seat in the Lok Sabha or the assemblies entitles the winner to be a member of the house only for the duration of that house. This may be as short as six months. And if a government falls within handshaking distance of the next general elections, the intervening period can automati-cally be brought under President’s Rule.

Most advocates of status quo see the move towards simulta-neous polls as Modi’s attempt to convert India into a presidential democracy. But they are probably unaware that the Law Commis-sion of India headed by J P Jeevan Reddy had recommended simul-taneous polls as early as 1999. In 2012 veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Lal Krishna Ad-vani wrote to the president sug-gesting that the country should move towards the ‘one nation, one poll’ concept.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice had in December 2015 recommended holding simultaneous assembly and Lok Sabha elections to reduce expenditure and frequent disrup-tion of normal life. Interestingly, the committee was headed by E M Sudarsana Natchiappan, Rajya Sabha member belonging to the Congress Party.

Speaking on the occasion of the National Voters Day in January this year, then president Pranab Mukherjee told Indians: “I do be-lieve that if political parties seri-ously agree on this (simultaneous polls) issue with the help of EC, it may be possible…. It will remove lot of inconvenience both in terms of expenditure and management”.

The ECI may have said it is ready for simultaneous polls. But the commission is only one cog in the giant wheel that is Indian democracy. Naturally a wide-ranging debate is called for. Modi has set the ball rolling. And go-ing by his record, especially on matters like demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax, the prime minister is no respecter of status quo. He is fast earning a reputation as a ‘disrupter’. In that sense one nation, one poll may not be all that far away.

Delhi DiaryBy A K B Krishnan

Gulf Times Correspondent

Govt orders power plant,generator shutdownMove comes as Delhi’s air worsens

AgenciesNew Delhi

The government ordered diesel generators and a power plant in Delhi to be

shut down today as air quality in the capital deteriorated ahead of Diwali, the festival of lights, when a night of fi recrackers sends pol-lution levels rocketing.

Under a plan that imposes anti-pollution measures when air quality drops below a certain level, the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Au-thority (EPCA) also ordered some brick kilns to close and the burn-ing of rubbish to stop.

With Delhi’s air already in the “very poor and severe” category, the measures will stay in place until March to prevent pollution levels from rising.

Many richer residents of Delhi have diesel generators as a back-up during regular power supply disruptions.

Emergency services like hos-pitals will not be forced to shut down their generators.

“Delhi has a long way to go be-fore it can lay claim to having rea-sonably clean and breathable air,” Sunita Narain, an EPCA member and director general of the Cen-tre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based thinktank, said in a statement.

Air pollution in Delhi has be-come a major public policy issue

in recent years as residents wake up to the life-threatening impli-cations of breathing air frequently ranked among the world’s most toxic.

Courts have taken up much of the role in trying to clean the air, although enforcement of the various bans and restrictions has proven diffi cult.

Last week the Supreme Court temporarily banned the sale of fi recrackers in and around Delhi ahead of Diwali, as it looks to pre-vent a repeat of severe air pollu-tion that forced school closures last year.

Diwali falls tomorrow.Last November, about a mil-

lion children were forced to stay home from school and thousands of workers reported sick as New Delhi struggled with its worst pollution for nearly 20 years.

Vehicle emissions and dust from construction sites were the factors blamed for that spike, besides fi re-crackers and crop burnings.

EPCA chairman Bhure Lal said “diffi cult situations demand tough responses and solutions and the Delhi-NCR region is faced with a really diffi cult situ-ation each winter when air pol-lution levels spiral out of control. The EPCA and all other agencies of the government are prepared to take those tough decisions which we believe will help clear the air.”

According to the Central Pol-lution Control Board, air quality index yesterday crossed the “very poor” 300 mark at a dozen places and was above the “severe” 400 level at two places in Delhi.

The “very poor” 300-400 level can cause respiratory illness on prolonged exposure and the 401-500 severe level can aff ect even healthy people and seriously im-pact those with existing diseases.

The worsening air quality in Delhi may also trigger an increase in car parking fee by up to four times across the city in the next few days. But a decision on that has not been taken as yet.

Narain said a parking policy was still being worked out and if air pol-lution worsens further and touches more alarming proportions, “cars will have to be off the roads”.

The environment body has fur-ther advised the residents of Del-hi-NCR to use face masks when-ever possible.

Based on its assessment, EPCA said it had predicted that the day after Diwali will be a very bad day for the residents of the capital in terms of air quality.

The wind, according to EPCA, would be south-easterly, which would add moisture to Delhi’s air and thereby increase the concen-tration of pollutants by not letting them disperse.

India and China together ac-counted for more than half of the 4.2mn deaths attributable to air pollution worldwide in 2015, a study by the US-based Health Ef-fects Institute showed.

The closure of Delhi’s Badar-pur thermal power plant is one of the actions required when the air quality turns very poor by the government’s Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), which came into force in January.

INDIA

Gulf Times Wednesday, October 18, 201716

Dubbing Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu’s comments at a book-release function as “shocking”, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader M K Stalin yesterday urged him to stay non-partisan and not use the Raj Bhavan for political propaganda in future. Stalin said Naidu’s speech on Monday at the release of Those Eventful Days written by former Tamil Nadu acting Governor C Vidyasagar Rao raised a series of questions in public mind. “While I would like to thank the hon’ble vice president for the love and respect he has for Tamil Nadu, I expect him to stay true to his words that he is non-partisan and thereby not use the Raj Bhavan for political propaganda in coming times,” Stalin said in a statement here. He said it was “disconcerting” to hear Naidu say that it was Tamil Nadu government’s responsibility to fulfil promises made by Amma (then chief minister late J Jayalalithaa).

The State Bank of India will help restore and conserve the world heritage site of Central Railway headquarters, the iconic Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) in Mumbai, off icials said yesterday. Central Railway’s divisional railway manager S K Jain and SBI managing director P K Gupta signed a memorandum of understanding, under which the SBI Foundation will provide Rs100mn towards the project under the “SBI-Project Swachh Iconic CSMT”. The Shivaji Terminus has been identified as one of the top 10 Swachh Iconic Places by the Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation under the Swachh Bharat Mission programme of the central government. The SBI Foundation will provide the amount to the Central Railway over a period of three-to-five years for renovation of the building.

The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) is a perfect example of Indian nationalism and ethos, former president Pranab Mukherjee said yesterday. Students from diff erent religions, ethnicity, linguistic backgrounds and culture integrate and work together in productive ways at the university, Mukherjee said in an address on the bicentennial birth celebrations of AMU founder Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Speaking at the AMU’s Athletics Ground, Mukherjee said: “It is a privilege to be in AMU on the occasion of 200th birth anniversary of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the visionary leader of India.” He said Sir Syed was far ahead of his time as he thought of empowering common people with modern scientific education at a time when India was a newly colonised society and ignorance prevailed.

From November, if you have just hopped off a flight at Goa airport, instead of hiring over-charging cabs, try opting for a luxury coastal ferry for a ride to your destination. The new ferry service will be one of the first public-private partnerships in the state started by Drishti Marine, a private agency specialising in marine tourism, and the Mormugao Port Trust, a central government agency. “The luxurious ferries will have trained lifeguards on board,” G Ravi Shankar, Drishti Marine CEO, told reporters in Panaji. The daily ferry service will function with the help of two 40-seater catamarans which will ferry commuters between designated pick-up points like the state capital Panaji, heritage centres like Old Goa, beaches like Baga, Aguada and Sinquerim and the Dabolim airport.

Unidentified assailants shot dead Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader Ravinder Gosain yesterday in Punjab’s Ludhiana, police said. Eyewitnesses told police that Gosain was shot from close range by two motorcycle-riding assailants in Kailash Nagar area. He was rushed to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. Gosain was returning from an RSS shakha (daily training in the early morning) and was near his house when he was attacked. He was the Sangh Pracharak (regional missionary) at the RSS shakha in Ludhiana. The killing is the fifth of a right-wing leader in Punjab in the last three years. The Punjab police have failed to nab those behind most of the murderous attacks.

Stalin urges Naidu to remain non-partisan

SBI to help restore Mumbai’s Shivaji Terminus

AMU a good example of nationalism: Pranab

Goa’s first private ferry service to begin in Nov

RSS leader shot dead in Punjab

POLITICSHERITAGECELEBRATIONS TRAVEL CRIME

Sreesanthlife ban to stay as HC upholdsBCCI appeal

IANSKochi

In a blow to former Indian pacer S Sreesanth, a divi-sion bench of the Kerala High

Court yesterday upheld a life ban on the bowler.

The division bench ruling came on an appeal made by the Board of Control for Cricket in India against a single bench ver-dict that lifted the ban in August.

The division bench of Chief Justice Navniti Prasad Singh ruled that the court cannot con-duct a judicial review on the life ban imposed by the cricket board and hence upheld the appeal.

The court heard the petition for the past two days and deliv-ered its verdict, which for now has ended Sreesanth’s hopes of not just playing for the Kerala Ranji side but also to take part in practice sessions at any place that comes under the BCCI or any state cricket association.

A furious Sreesanth wrote on Twitter: “This is the worst deci-sion ever... Special rule for me? What about real culprits? What about Chennai Super Kings? And what about Rajasthan?”

Speaking to reporters, Kerala Cricket Association secretary Jayesh George said it was sup-porting Sreesanth ever since the ban was lifted.

“We had made arrangements for him to undergo a full fi tness test to make him match fi t. Now with this verdict, we will have to respect it,” said George.

The only option before Sree-santh is to approach the Supreme Court. In 2015, the now 34-year-old pacer along with two other players were exonerated by a Delhi court in the case registered by the Delhi police. But the BCCI Disciplinary Committee headed by present Finance Minister Arun Jaitley slapped a life ban on Sreesanth.

After this, he approached the Kerala High Court, which on Au-gust 7 lifted the life ban.

Boys play next to a field of burning leaves and agricultural waste in Jalandhar, Punjab. The burning of waste agricultural products is major factor in the air pollution crisis in Delhi and neighbouring states.

17Gulf TimesWednesday, October 18, 2017

INDIA

Order any probe against

Vadra, Congress dares BJP

IANSBengaluru/New Delhi

The Congress Party yester-day challenged the gov-ernment to order a probe

after the Bharatiya Janata Party alleged links of party president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Rob-ert Vadra with arms dealer San-jay Bhandari.

“Modiji has been in power for 41 months. They (BJP) have governments in Haryana and Rajasthan, and can conduct any investigation into allegations against Vadra to come to a con-clusion through a free and fair process of law of any wrong-doing,” Congress spokesman Randeep Singh said Surjewala at a news conference in Ben-galuru.

“What prevents them from initiating an inquiry against Vadra if they have proof of any wrongdoing,” Surjewala asked.

Vadra put out a philosophical message on Facebook, saying: “I am capable, I am strong. If I believe in myself, I can turn my dreams into a plan, and my plan into my reality.”

On Tuesday, Defence Minis-ter Nirmala Sitharaman ques-tioned the “silence” of the Congress leadership on the Vadra issue.

She was referring to media reports about reported links be-tween Vadra and Bhandari, who has fl ed to the UK.

Times Now news channel had claimed to have accessed e-mails to establish that Vadra was in touch with Bhandari.

Jharkhand to probe deathof schoolgirl by starvationAgenciesRanchi

The Jharkhand government yesterday ordered an inves-tigation into whether the

death of a young girl was caused by a government error that saw her family denied food rations.

The girl’s mother and social welfare activists said the 11-year-old died of starvation last month after offi cials refused to give the family food because their personal documentation was not in order.

More than 360mn Indians - nearly one-third of its 1.25bn peo-ple - live below the poverty line and are entitled to access food ra-tions under government schemes.

Jharkhand Chief Minister Ra-

ghubar Das said he was deeply pained by the girl’s death and or-dered an immediate inquiry into the incident.

“Strict action will be taken if anyone is found guilty,” he posted on social media, as public outrage grew over the tragedy.

The family from Simdega dis-trict held a ration card for low-income families and an Aadhaar card, a unique ID connected to a government biometric pro-gramme, according to the girl’s mother Koyli Devi. But she said offi cials insisted the two IDs needed to be linked before she could receive the handouts, citing a government order to that eff ect.

Activists have accused the government offi cials of breach-ing a Supreme Court ruling that

all low-income people were en-titled to rations with or without the Aadhaar card.

“The government is trying to shift blame, but the fact is the family was forced to eat leaves as they had no food at all for days,” said Balram, a local activist.

“The autopsy (done on the girl) also shows she died of star-vation. The mother is severely malnourished herself and is hos-pitalised,” he said.

Devi, the girl’s illiterate moth-er, said nobody in her family had eaten for days and the young girl simply could not go on.

“She used to get a free midday meal in school, but since it was also closed for (the Durga Puja) festival, she missed out on that too,” Devi told NDTV.

Taj Mahal is part of Indian heritage, says AdityanathIANSLucknow

Uttar Pradesh Chief Min-ister Yogi Adityanath yesterday said the Taj

Mahal in Agra was a part of In-dian heritage.

The chief minister was speak-ing a day after a legislator of his Bharatiya Janata Party sparked outrage with his comments on the famed monument.

Adityanath also told report-ers that the 17th century mar-ble monument, built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, was constructed “by the blood and sweat of In-dian labourers”.

An offi cial said the chief min-ister will also visit the Taj.

“It does not matter who built it and for what reason. It was built by the blood and sweat of Indian labourers,” Adityanath said of the Taj, India’s biggest tourist draw.

“Taj Mahal is a part of India’s heritage,” he added. “Taj Mahal, Red Fort are all part of India’s heritage.”

The statement came after Uttar Pradesh BJP legislator Sangeet Som called the Taj Ma-hal a blot on Indian culture and said it was built by an emperor who wanted to finish off Hin-dus.

“We should not focus on Som’s statement,” the chief minister said, in the clearest sign that his government in Ut-tar Pradesh was distancing itself from the MLA’s controversial re-marks.

Adityanath said the Taj was important for the Uttar Pradesh government, specially “from the tourism perspec-tive” and “it is our priority to provide facilities and safety to tourists there”.

The chief minister is sched-uled to visit the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri and other important monuments in Agra on October 26, an of-ficial said.

Taking a dig at Som, Sama-jawadi Party MLA Azam Khan said all “symbols of slavery” like Parliament House and Rashtra-pati Bhavan in Delhi should be demolished.

“I won’t respond to him (Som). But I have always been

saying that all symbols of slav-ery in India should be demol-ished. It is true that Mughals conquered India. But I won’t get into how they came and who brought them to India be-cause it will create a bitter de-bate. Some people will mind my opinion about that because they don’t like the truth,” Khan told a TV channel.

“Why only the Taj Mahal? Why not the parliament? Why not the Rashtrapati Bhavan? Why not the Qutub Minar? Why not the Red Fort in Delhi? Why not the Agra Fort? These are the signs of traitors.”

Without naming Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi and Adity-anath, Khan, known for his sharp comments aimed at his political rivals, said he had already made an appeal to the “Baadshah” and to the “younger Baadshah” that they should move forward in razing these monuments “built by traitors and we will follow them”.

“Let theirs be the first blow (to demolish these monu-ments) and mine will be the second,” he said.

Considered one of the Seven Wonders of the world, the Taj attracts millions of Indian and foreign tourists every year.

Last month, the Uttar Pradesh government had omit-ted references to the Taj in a booklet published to mark six months of the Adityanath gov-ernment.

This drew sharp criticism, prompting Tourism Minister Rita Bahuguna Joshi to say that that Taj Mahal was of great im-portance to the state govern-ment and to the nation.

Vendors show lanterns to customers at a roadside market ahead of Diwali in Mumbai yesterday.

This is the worst Diwali in a decade, say tradersGrim store sales cast shadow ahead of the festival of lights

AFPNew Delhi

This close to India’s glit-tering festive season, the cash register at Neha

Tandon’s clothes store should be working overtime as revel-lers snap up elegant sarees for Diwali celebrations and lavish wedding parties.

But the traditional spending sprees have not transpired this festival season, the fi rst since a sudden recall of s high-value banknotes sent shockwaves through Asia’s third-largest economy.

Demonetisation caused months of crippling cash short-ages that hit businesses hard and economists concede it con-tributed to dragging on India’s growth, which hit a three-year low of 5.7% in the fi rst quarter of the fi nancial year.

Retailers say consumers re-main scared of parting with

their cash and blame that up-heaval, and the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax, for their festive sales woes.

“Since demonetisation, there has been less cash around. But even that aside, the Modi gov-ernment is so volatile people are afraid to spend,” said Tandon at her boutique in Delhi, where just one woman was browsing the racks of sarees just two days from Diwali.

The Confederation of All India Traders, the body rep-resenting 60mn retailers, says pre-festival sales are down 40% compared to last year’s $4bn Diwali bonanza.

Since then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has overhauled India’s tax system and cracked down on corruption, fl agship reforms many argued were nec-essary but slowed the economy.

The timing could not be worse for traders, who rely on consumers spending big on clothes, jewellery and gifts to lavish on friends and family ahead of Diwali, the biggest cel-ebration of the year.

“I’ve never seen it this bad. We’ve been here 40 years and trust me, this is not normal,” Tandon said.

Some fl ashier shopping malls reported stronger sales over the weekend, but smaller outlets say the damage has been done.

Praveen Khandelwal, the general secretary of the traders confederation, said there was no hope of a last-minute re-bound with some marketplaces “absolutely deserted”.

“Usually at this time, it’s im-possible to move in the markets. But this year it’s certainly not like that. This is the worst Di-wali in a decade for traders,” he said.

Luxury items have borne the brunt of the austerity this sea-son, with sales of wristwatch-es, formal wear and jewellery plunging.

But the penny pinching is also being felt in other indus-tries usually booming during the festive season.

In a normal year Bengali Sweet Centre, a traditional con-fectioner, might prepare up to

5,000 boxes of Indian sweets for corporate clients preparing gifts.

This year, those orders have nosedived to just 60 boxes, said owner Sriyansh Jain.

Fireworks vendors, who sell more during Diwali than any other time, are also facing a dis-mal year with crackers banned in Delhi to curb the capital’s horrendous air pollution.

The depressing holiday sales cap off a tough year for retailers, who have been buff ered in the wake of Modi’s economic re-forms and attribute the disrup-tion with the glum consumer climate.

The cancellation of more than 80% of banknotes, a move designed to undercut the black market, wiped out cash reserves and threw businesses into cha-os.

Eight months later Modi fol-lowed up with the biggest tax overhaul in a generation - re-placing more than a dozen state and national levies with four diff erent rates of between 5 and 28%.

Retailers complained they were not ready for the massive shakeup, with some sectors striking as others scrambled to work out what to charge under the new tax regime.

Economists had long ar-gued such steps were vital if the country of 1.25bn people is to continue creating jobs for its ever-growing population.

These two policies were sin-gled out last month when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development downgraded India’s growth forecast for the year to 6.7%, down 0.6 point from their June outlook.

The Modi government has promised the short-term pain would bear fruit down the line.

But such overtures off er lit-tle comfort for retailers staring down the barrel of a record-bad year.

“The mood is really down. People are more cautious about spending,” said fashion retailer Sunit Nanda, nerv-ously looking around his quiet shop in Delhi.

Congress leader Randeep Surjewala addresses a press conference in Bengaluru yesterday.

New policy could give domestic workers minimum wage, benefi tsReutersMumbai

Domestic workers in India will soon be entitled to a minimum wage and so-

cial security benefi ts, according to a draft proposal that activists say does not go far enough to protect these workers and lets employers off the hook.

The policy proposes to give domestic workers the right to register themselves as employ-ees, guarantees a minimum wage, protection from abuse, and ac-cess to health insurance, mater-nity benefi ts and pension, as well as an opportunity to add skills.

The policy will “explicitly and eff ectively expand the scope of applicable legislations, policies and schemes to grant domestic

workers rights that are enshrined in laws,” a labour ministry state-ment said late Monday, without specifying a timeline.

There are at least 67mn do-mestic workers globally, and this number is rising quickly, ac-cording to the International La-bour Organisation.

About 80% are women.India’s rising affl uence, ur-

banisation and growing numbers

of working women have spurred increasing demand for domestic workers in the country.

Rights activists estimate there are tens of millions of such workers, most of them women who are often underpaid, ex-ploited and abused.

Many are young, largely un-educated women from poor, rural areas, who live apart from their families.

In July, a police complaint by a maid saying she was beaten up and locked up by her employers in an upscale neighbourhood near New Delhi triggered days of violence.

Activists have been cam-paigning for years for the pas-sage of a separate bill to provide domestic workers with a mini-mum monthly salary of Rs9,000 ($140) and benefi ts including

social security cover and man-datory time off .

The proposed policy does not go far enough to protect do-mestic workers and there is lit-tle clarity on how the objectives will be met, said Geeta Menon of non-profi t Stree Jagruti Samiti that focuses on domestic work-ers’ rights.

“Neither the government nor the employers are convinced

that these workers should have rights and benefi ts; in fact, they do not even recognise them as workers,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“The policy itself is weak, there is no onus on employers, and we see little chance of it being eff ec-tively implemented. Unless our attitudes towards domestic work-ers changes, their situation will not improve,” she said.

Adityanath: damage control

18 Gulf TimesWednesday, October 18, 2017

LATIN AMERICA

UN mission aims toboost Haiti rule of lawAFPPort-au-Prince

A new United Nations mission dedicated to supporting the rule of

law in Haiti has been deployed after the end of a 13-year peacekeeping mission in the deeply impoverished Carib-bean nation rocked by political instability.

The UN Mission for Jus-tice Support in Haiti (MINU-JUSTH), composed of 1,275 police offi cers and 350 civilians, will also train national police and advance human rights.

“I am still convinced that Haiti will be able to seize the opportunity off ered by this MINUJUSTH deployment to strengthen the political stabil-ity of recent years in order to pave the way toward a demo-cratic, stable and prosperous future for all Haitians,” said UN humanitarian co-ordina-tor Mamadou Diallo.

The Guinean diplomat is tem-porarily leading MINUJUSTH ahead of a UN nomination of the permanent chief of mission.

“MINUJUSTH refl ects the commitment of the United Nations to continue support-ing the consolidation of peace and promotion of stability in Haiti,” said a statement by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres’s offi ce.

Haitian Foreign Minister Antonio Rodrigue hailed the advances made possible by the previous UN mission, MINUS-TAH, while pointing to the negative consequences of the peacekeepers’ lengthy pres-ence in Haiti.

“Strict rules must be set in order to favour zero tolerance,” he said, referring to sex crimes committed by the foreign sol-diers against Haitian women and children. “The cholera is-sue cannot be kept quiet either.”

A cholera epidemic that began in October 2010 that has killed more than 10,000 Haitians was traced back to Nepalese soldiers working for MINUSTAH.

At the time of the outbreak, Haiti’s health care and sanita-tion infrastructure was badly hampered by a devastating earthquake early that year.

Brazil revives Africa ties,eyes expanding marketReutersBrasilia

Agricultural powerhouse Brazil aims to revive ties with Africa after a lull

and sees a vast export mar-ket for food and manufactured goods in a continent whose population is surging, its for-eign minister said.

Brazil’s presence in Africa surged during the government of former president Luiz Ina-cio Lula da Silva, who opened embassies in 35 of 54 Afri-can nations and led a fl urry of trade and investment missions. His successor Dilma Rousseff showed little interest in foreign aff airs and practically ignored Africa.

“We want to take up relations with Africa again and reaffi rm its importance for Brazil,” For-eign Minister Aloysio Nunes said in an interview before he set off to visit Morocco, Ghana, Ni-geria, Botswana, Ivory Coast and South Africa.

The African population of

1.2bn people is expected to double by 2050, adding to a re-liance on food imports. Nunes noted that the continent’s mid-dle class is expanding, while its conflicts are diminishing and institutions are gaining strength.

Two-way trade between Brazil and Africa peaked in 2013 at $28.3bn before plum-meting to $12.4bn last year, mainly due to the drop in prices for the oil that Brazil imports from Nigeria, Angola and Algeria.

Brazil sells cars, tractors and other manufactured goods to Africa, along with food such as beef and chicken.

Trade is picking up after eco-nomic crises on both sides of the Atlantic, with chicken ex-ports rising 27% in the fi rst eight months of this year, mostly go-

ing to South Africa, Egypt and Angola.

“The potential for trade is great. Africa is not self-suffi -cient and needs to import food such as poultry,” said Any Frei-tas, an expert on Brazilian for-eign policy and visiting fellow at King’s College, London.

Nunes also highlighted de-mand for Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA’s E-Jet commercial planes and Super Tucano light attack aircraft in countries such as Nigeria, Mozambique and Kenya.

Brazil has also helped Namibia build up its navy with patrol ships and training for its Marine Corps.

Nunes said Brazil cannot compete in Africa with China, whose raw materials projects come with plenty of state fi-nancing and Chinese person-nel.

Brazil’s co-operation is well received because of its Afro-Brazilian cultural roots and the Portuguese language it shares with several African nations, he said.

“The potential for trade is great. Africa is not self-sufficient and needs to import food such as poultry”

Brazilian govtaccused ofeasing rules on anti-slaveryGuardian News and MediaBrasilia

The Brazilian government has been accused of re-ducing its ability to pro-

tect workers from slave-like la-bour conditions after abruptly changing the rules.

Campaigners, commentators and prosecutors said the move was a “social regression” aimed at buying the support of a pow-erful agribusiness lobby ahead of a crucial vote in congress that could cost President Michel Te-mer his mandate.

A government directive by the ministry of labour published yesterday redefi ned what the government states as “slave-like work” – even though Brazil’s ef-forts to stop abusive labour con-ditions were praised as recently as last year by the United Nations.

The ministry will no longer automatically publish its “dirty list” of employers whose workers were kept under abusive condi-tions. Instead it will only appear if the current minister decides to make it public. Many of the em-ployers on the list are farmers.

“For us it will be a real regres-sion in the battle against slave labour. It will make the defi ni-tion harder and make inclusion on the ‘dirty list’ harder,” Mau-rício Brito, vice-co-ordinator for the eradication of slave la-bour for public prosecutors in Brasília, told the Guardian. “It will be good for those who use slave labour.”

Brito also attacked the deci-sion to let the serving labour minister decide whether or not to publish the “dirty list”. “It stops being a juridical act and becomes a political act,” he said. Prosecutors plan to mount a le-gal challenge to the new rules.

In January the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered Brazil to pay $5mn to 128 former farm workers who were enslaved on a farm between 1988 and 2000. In 2003, Brazil started

publishing the list of employers who kept workers in inhumane conditions.

Before the new decree, four conditions were used to catego-rise “slave-like labour” – being forced to work; being obliged to work to pay off debts; degrad-ing conditions that put workers’ health or dignity at risk; an ex-cessive workload that threatened workers’ health.

Now the last two conditions only apply if workers are also forcibly kept in place – and in-spections will also need a com-pleted police report to be ac-cepted as evidence.

Critics said the changes and increase in bureaucracy would make it harder to rescue workers from inhumane workplaces.

“The practical result is that fewer workers can be freed. There are workers in slave-labour con-ditions who will not be rescued,” said Leonardo Sakamoto, found-er of the independent report-ing group Reporter Brasil and a member of the board of trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery.

Miriam Leitao, a leading col-umnist on the economy, at-tacked the move in her blog for Rio’s O Globo newspaper. “Is this really agribusiness’s agenda, at the end of the second decade of the 21st century?” she wrote. “Is it going to continue to let itself be represented as backward?”

In a statement on its website, the labour ministry said the changes aimed to “improve and give legal security” to the Brazil-ian state when it came to giving unemployment benefi t to work-ers rescued from inhumane con-ditions and including employers on the “dirty list”. Publication of the list was suspended by the supreme court in 2014, but the government began publishing it again in March.

“Combating slave labour is a permanent public policy of the state,” the ministry’s statement said.

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro talks to the media during a news conference at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, yesterday.

Election results a strongmessage to US: MaduroAgenciesCaracas

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro yes-terday said his social-

ist party’s landslide victory in disputed regional elections had delivered a “strong message” to the US and its allies.

“Our people have given a strong message to imperial-ism, to (US President Donald) Trump, to its regional allies and to the local right-wing,” Maduro told a news conference after the opposition rejected the results and the US and EU said they were deeply fl awed.

He accused the “imperial forces of the north” of launch-ing “a psychological, political and economic war” against his government.

“It is not going to be an eco-

nomic war or an induced infl a-tion that makes this people give up,” said Maduro, who accord-ing to opinion polls has an 80% dissatisfaction rating among Venezuelans who are struggling with serious food and medicine shortages and record infl ation.

Washington condemned “the lack of free and fair elections” while the European Union called the results of Sunday’s vote “surprising” and said it was necessary “to fi nd out what really happened.”

The president of neighbour-ing Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, said yesterday that Ven-ezuela needed to hold general elections under an “independ-ent” electoral authority.

The opposition Democrat-ic Union Roundtable (MUD), which accuses the National Electoral Council of being a vehicle of the government, re-

jected the result and called for a full audit of the electoral proc-ess saying it was riddled with “irregularities.”

The government claimed vic-tory in 17 of the 23 regional gov-ernorships in Sunday’s poll.

Several opinion polls had in-dicated the MUD would win the vast majority of the governor-ships.

Stunned by the crushing de-feat that undermines their aim to win the presidency in 2018, the opposition Democratic Uni-ty coalition refused to acknowl-edge the results.

Though the coalition has complained of an unfair play-ing fi eld — from abuse of state resources to last-minute mov-ing of vote centres away from opposition strongholds — it has not given detailed evidence of ballot-tampering.

Some opposition fi gures

have acknowledged that ab-stention by their supporters, disillusioned by the failure of street protests to dislodge Ma-duro earlier this year, was a big factor.

One losing opposition can-didate even conceded defeat, breaking with the offi cial coa-lition position as he acknowl-edged a fl awed re-election campaign.

“We lost, I say it responsi-bly,” said Henri Falcon, outgo-ing governor of Lara. “We need courage to recognise truth in adversity.”

Government leaders have smarted at fraud accusations. “Our electoral process is recog-nised globally as one of the most secure,” Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza told foreign diplomats in a meeting yesterday.

Despite widespread food shortages, runaway infl ation

and a tanking currency, Ven-ezuela’s government retains signifi cant bastions of support, especially in poorer, rural parts of the country.

With the opposition coali-tion’s dozens of parties arguing over whether there was fraud, what went wrong, and where to go next, it will need to regroup and map strategy quickly head-ing into the 2018 presidential campaign.

Its very future may even be in doubt, since many young activ-ists who took to the streets for four straight months of protests and pitched battles with secu-rity forces earlier this year feel disillusioned and betrayed by their leaders.

The unrest killed at least 125 people, left thousands injured and arrested and prompted a growing number of Venezue-lans to seek refuge abroad.

Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri speaks during a campaign rally ahead of mid-term elections in Buenos Aires, Argentina, yesterday.

Election campaign

President Donald Trump said he believes Havana is responsible for a series of incidents that Washington thinks hurt at least 22 US diplomats over a period of months in Cuba, prompting Washington to scale back its presence there. “I do believe Cuba is responsible,” Trump told reporters at a news conference. “I do believe that. And it’s a very unusual attack, as you know. But I do believe Cuba is responsible.” The US has not formally concluded Cuba carried out the attacks, some of which involved high-pitched sounds, but it has said Havana is responsible for ensuring the safety and security of US diplomatic personnel and failed to do so.

Renuka do Brasil, a subsidiary of India’s sugar maker Shree Renuka Sugars, has fired around 900 people from its two cane mills in Brazil and returned to owners most of the land it used to lease to plant cane, three sources close to the situation said yesterday. The sources, who asked to not be named because they are not authorised to discuss the issue, said the company is struggling to keep operations after a failed attempt to auction off one of its mills in September. Renuka do Brasil, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2015, declined to comment. Shree Renuka Sugars entered Brazil’s sugar sector between 2009 and 2010.

Three Argentine judges yesterday ordered that a key off icial in former president Cristina Fernandez’s government be detained as part of a probe into an alleged case of fraud. The request to detain former planning minister and current lawmaker Julio De Vido comes five days before the country’s parliamentary elections in which Fernandez is seeking a Senate seat. De Vido, who as planning minister was in charge of running energy infrastructure projects, is under investigation in a case involving the Patagonian coal mine Rio Turbio, which prosecutors say is underproducing despite receiving multi-million dollar investments from the state.

State Grid Corporation of China and Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA will start commercial operation of a key power transmission line for Brazil’s Belo Monte dam in December, two months ahead of schedule, an off icial said. “We are looking to complete the work in October, run tests through November and start commercial operation in December,” said Newton Zerbini, head of a joint venture named BMTE, created by State Grid and Eletrobras to build the line. This is the first of two high-capacity lines expected to bring electricity from Belo Monte, built in the northern Para state in the Amazonian Xingu river, to Brazil’s southeast, the country’s leading power consuming region.

JBS SA has pulled a planned $500mn US initial public off ering of processed food subsidiary JBS Foods International BV, almost six months after a spree of corruption and food safety scandals in Brazil hurt investor demand for the deal. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, JBS Foods International requested a withdrawal of the IPO. While neither company gave a new timetable for the IPO, JBS said in a statement that a US listing of JBS Foods “is the best way possible to maximise shareholder value.” Parent JBS and the processed food subsidiary first announced plans for a US off ering on December 5.

Trump blames Cuba for attacks on US diplomats

900 workers sackedat Brazil sugar mills

Judges seek detentionof Fernandez ally

State Grid-Eletrobras venture begins operation

JBS withdraws plan for processed food unit IPO

CLAIM DISMISSALLEGAL CORPORATE DECISION

PAKISTAN19Gulf Times

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

US drone strikes kill 26 people

A second suspected US drone strike yesterday killed six people on the

mountainous Pakistan-Afghan-istan border, after a strike a day earlier that killed 20, govern-ment and militant sources said.

The attacks came days after a Canadian-American couple held hostage by the Taliban were freed from the area in Pakistan’s northwest, striking a rare posi-tive note in the country’s often-fraught relations with the United States.

On Friday, US drones were seen hovering near where American Caitlan Coleman, her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, and their three children, all born in captivity, were freed, after having been kidnapped by the Haqqani network while backpacking in Afghanistan in 2012.

“Four unmanned drones fi red

six missiles in Monday’s attack and two more were dropped on Tuesday,” said Baseer Khan Wazir, the top administrative of-fi cial in the Kurram Agency, part of Pakistan’s restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

The drones fi red missiles on Taliban hideouts, killing at least 26 people over two days, he added, with both attacks taking place on the Afghan side within 300 metres of the frontier.

“Twenty people were killed yesterday, mostly from the Af-ghan Taliban, and six more were killed in today’s attack,” Wazir told Reuters.

Taliban sources said 18 mem-bers of the Pakistan-based Haqqani militants, allied to the Taliban, were killed in Monday’s strike and six more yesterday.

“There were some mud-built houses which were being used by the mujahideen (Afghan Taliban fi ghters),” said a member of the Afghan Taliban, who asked not to be identifi ed.

“The drones fi red six missiles

on Monday and two more today, targeting two, three diff erent compounds.”

No prominent militants were in the area, he said.

Another Taliban source said two commanders were killed in the attack, however.

Witnesses said they heard the drones and saw plumes of smoke before seeing 20 makeshift cof-fi ns moved out of the area.

“There are always drones hovering over this border area, but this was the fi rst time four drones were noticed at the same time,” said Kurram resident Gu-lab Sher.

The Haqqanis are one of the strongest factions in the Afghan Taliban insurgency and have earned a fearsome reputation for their vicious attacks on Nato troops and Afghan installations over the years.

The group has long been sus-pected of having ties to Paki-stan’s shadowy security estab-lishment, souring relations with Washington.

Islamabad has repeatedly de-nied the accusations of turning a blind eye to militancy, lambast-ing the United States for ignor-ing the thousands who have been killed on its soil and the billions spent fi ghting extremists.

ReutersParachinar/ Peshawar

Strikes come days after American-Canadian hostage family freed

Unmanned aircraft fired missiles on Taliban hideouts near border

“There are always drones hovering over this border area, but this was the fi rst time four drones were noticed at the same time”

A boy smiles while eating food at a slum on the outskirts of Islamabad yesterday. The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty has been observed every year since 1993, when the United Nations General Assembly designated October 17 to promote awareness of the need to eradicate poverty and destitution in all countries.

Smiling in the face of adversity

SC notes inconsistencies in Imran’s money trail

The Supreme Court yes-terday noted that the money trail submitted by

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan regard-ing a sum of nearly 100,000 pounds was inconsistent.

A three-member bench of the apex court headed by Chief Jus-tice Saqib Nisar and comprising Justice Umar Atta Bandial and Justice Faisal Arab was hearing a petition fi led by PML-N lead-er Hanif Abbasi which seeks the disqualifi cation of PTI Secre-tary General Jahangir Tareen and Imran over the alleged non-disclosure of assets, existence of off shore companies, as well as receiving foreign funding for PTI.

A day before, Imran had sub-mitted additional documents before the apex court, seeking to provide a money trail of near-

ly 100,000 pounds that the SC had raised questions over.

As he submitted the docu-ments before the court, Imran had backtracked on his ear-lier position that approximately 99,000 pounds had been spent on legal fees and associated costs. Instead, he had claimed that the amount had only ini-tially been retained in the bank account of Niazi Services Ltd but parts of it were later remit-ted to him by the company.

During yesterday’s hearing, the chief justice remarked that the record of the sum is being submitted before the court in pieces and is inconsistent.

The chief justice noted that Imran had not yet submitted any record before the court to help determine whether or not the amount had been spent on legal fees.

Furthermore, Justice Ban-dial added that no record had been provided regarding 27,000 pounds out of the total sum.

Imran’s counsel, Advocate Naeem Bukhari, told the court that on May 26, 2003, the PTI chief’s former wife, Jemima Khan, had transferred 93,000 pounds to Imran for the pur-chase of the Bani Gala property.

He added that the amount was received by Imran in pieces; he fi rst received 40,000 pounds and then 42,000 pounds.

The court ordered the peti-tioner to fi le his response before the bench.

During yesterday’s proceed-ings, the counsel represent-ing Tareen told the apex bench that his client had submitted all the records pertaining to 18,566 acres of land which, he

maintained, Tareen acquired through a lease.

However, the court reminded the lawyer, Advocate Sikander Mohmand, that his client has yet to submit khusrabandi and ma-lia records which the bench had sought during a hearing on Oc-tober 5 along with other relevant revenue records showing how much money Tareen had paid to the lessor to get lease of 18,566 acres of land in 2010 as well as evidence proving that he had earned around Rs1.6bn agricul-ture income from the said land.

The lawyer told the court that records of the tax paid by Tareen on water and electricity have been furnished before the court. He maintained that the owner of the land — and not his client — was liable to pay taxes on the land.

The court, however, again or-dered the lawyer to submit the revenue records.

The hearing has been ad-journed until today.

AgenciesIslamabad

During yesterday’s hearing, the chief justice remarked that the record of the sum is being submitted before the court in pieces and is inconsistent

Army chief can comment on country’s economy: PM

Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Ab-basi has said a military

chief has the right to discuss or comment on the econom-ic condition of the country.

He was making comment on the recent controversy which started following Gen Qamar Bajwa’s remarks dur-ing a seminar on economy.

Abbasi, while giving an in-terview to Aaj TV, clarifi ed that there was no tension in the civil-military relation-ship.

“The army chief has ex-pressed his opinion. He went to address an economic fo-rum, everyone does that,” the

prime minister said.Last week, army chief Gen

Bajwa has said that the army was keenly watching develop-ments in the country’s econ-omy and shares some of the apprehensions being voiced about it.

“Growth has picked up but the debts are sky high. (The situation regarding) infrastructure and energy have improved considerably but the current account bal-ance is not in our favour,” the army chief was quoted as saying by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR). The ISPR chief Asif Ghafoor later said that “the country’s eco-nomic health, if not worse, was not good either”.

This drew a strong re-sponse from Interior Min-

ister Ahsan Iqbal who urged Ghafoor to refrain from mak-ing comments on the nation-al economy.

“Such irresponsible state-ments can dent Pakistan’s global image,” the minister had said.

Responding to criticism of Gen Bajwa’s comment on the economy, the Federation of Pa-kistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) also jumped in and said that the military could not remain in-different to deteriorating eco-nomic situation of the country.

The prime minister said, “The economic indicators are very transparent. World Bank’s report is not too fa-vourable but The Economist has placed Pakistan in world’s fi ve growing economies.”

AgenciesIslamabad

Petition fi led against govt for deporting Turkish couple

The Lahore High Court yesterday accepted a contempt of court peti-

tion against the federal govern-ment for deporting a Turkish couple which had gone ‘miss-ing’ late last month in violation of the court’s previous orders.

The high court had previously ordered the government not to deport the Turkish family which

was associated with the Pak-Turk International Schools and Colleges system in Pakistan and to place their names on the Exit Control List.

However, Mesut Kacmaz and his wife, who were picked up along with their two daughters from their Wapda Town residence on Sept 27, allegedly by a law en-forcement agency, were deported back to Turkey on Saturday.

The couple’s daughers Huda Nur (17) and Fatima Huma had informed a former regional di-

rector of the Pak-Turk schools of the deportation.

They had said that their parents were handed over to a Turkish police team which came to Islamabad by a special plane. Later, the girls had left for Tur-key by a regular fl ight via Kara-chi.

During yesterday’s hearing, the petitioner’s lead counsel, Asma Jahangir, argued before the court that because de-portation had taken place in violation of the court’s orders,

it amounted to contempt of court.

Subsequently, the court is-sued notices to the secretary of the Interior Ministry and took up the contempt of court peti-tion.

The court also asked the Civil Aviation Authority to submit details regarding the transfer of the Turkish couple from Islam-abad to Turkey.

Speaking to the media after the hearing, Jahangir said that the couple was deported to Tur-

key without their passports.“The law of the jungle has

prevailed in Pakistan,” Jahangir said,.

After the failed coup in July last year, the Turkish govern-ment had sought the closure of Pak-Turk International Schools & Colleges for being associated with Fethullah Gulen’s move-ment called Hizmet.

As many as 32 Pak-Turk schools and colleges were run-ning in Pakistan. After the Turk-ish government had demanded

the closure of the schools, an NGO of Pakistan had started operating these schools and colleges.

As many as 115 Turk nation-als were performing at diff erent positions in these educational institutions and more than 11,000 Pakistanis were studying in the school chain.

So far, 30 Turk families have been deported from Pakistan and more than 70 are still here on the UNHCR asylum certifi -cate.

AgenciesIslamabad

Models present creations by designer Nomi Ansari on the last day of the Pakistan Fashion Design Council (PFDC) Bridal Fashion Week in Lahore on Oct 16, 2017.

Bridal fashion

A woman in Raiwind gave birth outside the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital (THQ), Raiwind early Monday morning after staff at the hospital refused to treat her.Initial investigation conducted by the hospital suggests that a lady health worker refused Sameera Bibi — who was experiencing severe labour pains — any medical help because “there were no doc-tors available at the hospital in the early hours of the morning.”Bystanders at the scene told DawnNews that no Rescue 1122 ambulances were available at the hospital, and one had to be called to the scene. By the time it arrived, however, the child had already been born.When contacted, Punjab Minister for Health Khawaja Imran Nazir told DawnNews that the provincial ministry had ordered an inquiry into the matter.“No doctor or staff member involved in the incident will be spared and a committee has been formed to look into this matter,” Nazir said.

An anti-terrorism court in Multan yesterday sentenced a woman to death on two counts after find-ing her guilty of murdering her husband.A first information report had been registered against the ac-cused, Yasmeen, at Ludden Vehari Police Station in Multan on June 23, Dawn reported.Judge Malik Khalid Mehmood, in his verdict said that Yasmeen has been found guilty of “the brutal and gruesome murder of her hus-band,” Mohamed Imran Ashraf.

Woman gives birth outside hospital after being refused entry by staff

Woman sentenced to death for killing husband

PHILIPPINES

Gulf TimesWednesday, October 18, 201720

President declares Marawi liberated as battle goes onReutersManila

Philippine President Ro-drigo Duterte declared the southern city of Ma-

rawi liberated from pro-Islamic State militants yesterday, al-though the military said 20-30 rebels were holding about 20 hostages and still fi ghting it out.

In a rousing address to sol-diers a day after the killing of two commanders of the rebel alliance, Duterte said he would never again allow militants to stockpile so many weapons, but Marawi was now free and it was time to heal wounds and rebuild.

“I hereby declare Marawi City liberated from terrorist in-fl uence, that marks the begin-ning of rehabilitation,” Duterte, wearing a camoufl age cap and dark sunglasses, said during his unannounced visit.

Isnilon Hapilon, who was wanted by the United States and was Islamic State’s Southeast

Asian “chief”, and Omarkhayam Maute, one of two brothers cen-tral to the alliance, were killed in a targeted operation on Monday. Their bodies were recovered and identifi ed, authorities said.

The 148-day occupation

marked the Roman Catholic-majority Philippines’ biggest security crisis in years and trig-gered concerns that with its mountains, jungles and porous borders, the island of Mind-anao could become a magnet

for Islamic State fi ghters driven out of Iraq and Syria. More than 1,000 people, mostly rebels, were killed in the battle and the heart of the city of 200,000 has been levelled by air strikes.

Duterte said the libera-

tion was not a cause for cel-ebration and later apologised to the people of Marawi for the destruction.“We had to do it,” he said. “There was no alterna-tive.”

Armed forces chief Eduardo Ano said the remaining gunmen were now a “law enforcement matter”, while military spokes-man Restituto Padilla described them as “stragglers”.

“There is no way that they can get out anymore, there is no way for anyone to get in,” Padilla told news channel ANC.

Padilla said the military be-lieved Malaysian operative Mahmud Ahmad was in Ma-rawi, but it could not be certain. He said Mahmud was no threat.

“Dr Mahmud is an academic, he’s not a fi ghter,” Padilla said. “We don’t feel he is a problem.”

But some security experts say otherwise and believe Mahmud, 39, a recruiter and fundraiser who trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, could re-place Hapilon as Islamic State’s point-man in Southeast Asia.

Another leader, Abdullah Maute, has yet to be accounted for. Intelligence indicated he died in an August air strike, though no body was found.

Defence offi cials say the core leadership was key to recruiting young fi ghters and arranging for extremists from Indonesia, Ma-laysia, Singapore and beyond to join the push to carve out an East Asian Islamic State prov-ince.

Hapilon had teamed up with the moneyed Maute clan in their stronghold of Lanao del Sur, one of the Philippines’ poorest provinces, and brought with him fi ghters from his radical faction of Abu Sayyaf, a group better known for banditry.

Defence Secretary Delfi n Lorenzana, who estimated Ma-rawi operations to have cost 5bn pesos ($97.5mn), said recon-struction could start in January.

“There are still stragglers and the structures are still unsafe because of unexploded ord-nance and improvised explosive devices,” he said on radio.

The Marawi occupation set alarm bells ringing in the Phil-ippines, with militants surpris-ing security forces with their combat prowess, the volume of arms and ammunition they stockpiled and their ability to withstand intensive air strikes aided by US surveillance drones and technical support.

Dozens of rebels, hostages remain in city; Defence minister eyes January start to rebuilding

President Rodrigo Duterte raises a clenched fist, as he shouts declaring Marawi “liberated” during a ceremony inside the battle area of Bangolo district in Marawi yesterday.

Duterte threatens to scrap iconic ‘jeepney’ by next yearAFP Manila

Firebrand Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened yesterday to scrap by next year the “jeepneys” that have

become a national symbol, as he became em-broiled in a showdown with the mass trans-port industry.

The fl amboyantly-decorated but smoke-belching vehicles were originally converted from surplus World War II US army jeeps but now largely use reconditioned diesel engines from Japan. Citing pollution and health con-cerns, Duterte said yesterday the old jeepneys would have to be switched for modern and less-polluting versions by 2018.

His threat came after a two-day strike by jeepney operators led by the transport group PISTON, which had previously rejected the modernisation scheme.

“You know, you are poisoning the peo-ple...one third of Filipinos are poor and they will die from lung cancer because you do not want to fi x your used engines,” Duterte said in a speech to military men, referring to the jeepney operators.

“This is what I will do: either you must modernise next year those jeeps of yours, you must sell them to the junkyard. Next year I do not want to see any single PUJ (public util-ity jeepney.) All those still operating will be towed off the streets,” he added.

For decades the colourfully decorated jeepney has served as the main form of public transport and a symbol of Filipino creativity.

The government wants them replaced with less polluting vehicles, either with better en-gines or electrical power and with modern safety measures.

PISTON president George Mateo said Du-terte’s threat was unrealistic as it would take more time to replace the 240,000 jeepneys across the archipelago.

While the government had off ered pro-grammes to help the jeepney owners replace their old vehicles with new ones, Mateo said the new versions were too expensive and the

ownership schemes would displace small op-erators. He charged that it was Duterte who had previously challenged them to stage a transport strike, resulting in their protest on Monday and yesterday which forced the gov-ernment to call off school classes and shut government offi ces.

“He is arrogant, anti-poor,” said Mateo. Despite threats to arrest jeepney operators, Mateo warned of an bigger transport strike if Duterte pushed through with his plan. “We have no choice but to fi ght back.”

Soldiers aboard their armoured personnel carrier celebrate after President Rodrigo Duterte declared Marawi City “liberated”, inside the battle area of Bangolo in Marawi yesterday.

Government troops guard in front of destructed houses and buildings in Bangolo town, Marawi city.

Passengers sit on the sidewalk as jeepneys pass them in Manila yesterday.

Military wants stronger laws to prevent IS returnBy Bernadette E TamayoManila Times

The government has yet to offi cially declare the de-feat of IS-inspired Mau-

te extremist group with the death of Isnilon Hapilon, the designated emir of the Islamic State (IS) in Southeast Asia, and Omarkhayam Maute dur-ing a daring military operation, but the military has stressed the need to strengthen security laws to “inoculate the country from terrorists.”

The military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Restituto Padilla Jr, said the government should strengthen the Human Secu-rity Act or Republic Act (RA) 9372, which took eff ect on March 6, 2007.

He said while RA 9372 allows the examination of fi nancial transactions, the Bangko Sen-tral ng Pilipinas said the law did not cover foreign currency de-posit units (FCDU).

Local terror groups alleg-edly receive funding from their supporters overseas through the banking system, specifi -cally FCDU accounts, which are mostly US dollar deposits kept in the country’s thrift and commercial banks.

“So, it’s up to our lawmak-ers and security offi cials here at the Department of National Defence (DND) to do what has to be done. And then the BI (Bureau of Immigration) must also be strengthened to prevent the entry of foreign terrorists,” Padilla said.

Weeks after the Maute group seized the Islamic City of Ma-rawi, security offi cials from neighbouring countries ex-pressed concern that the Maute group had become a new se-curity “threat” to the entire southeast Asian region.

Security expert Richard Heydarian came up with the observation after attending a major security conference in Singapore attended by US Pa-cifi c Commander Admiral Har-ry B Harris and the Australian prime minister.

“I talked to many people. All of them, their concern was ISIS in Marawi. They are very worried about ISIS,” Heydarian said, us-ing another acronym for IS.

“All the discussion about hu-man rights, war on drugs, Du-terte’s ascerbic remarks, sud-denly, were set aside,” he said.

Heydarian said Malaysia and Indonesia were apprehensive about the possibility that the radical Maute group might in-

fl uence a portion of their re-spective populations.

“They’re large. I mean, two years ago the police chief of Malaysia said there could be up 50,000 sympathisers of ISIS. Now, Malaysia is very eff ective in internal security apparatus, not to mention, they are not democratic,” he said.

“They could just put in jail and torture you any moment. So they could contain it. But their fear is what if the fi ghters go to Mindanao, build the base there and then strike back? That’s a big problem for them,” he added.

Heydarian said Indonesia and Malaysia now regard the Philippines as the “weak link” in the fi ght against terrorism in Southeast Asia. “So, they said, ‘Let’s help this weak link before we get burned, dragged into this.’ They really see the Philip-pines as the weak link.”

“Everyone is going to be on alert because you know in the same vein that the crisis in Marawi is a refl ection of the defeat of the ISIS command in the Middle East. You could say the same way that the defeat of Maute in Marawi could spur other attacks in other places of the Philippines including Mindanao,” he said.

Overseas workers’ remittance hits $2.8bn in August

Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs)

sent home $2.8bn in August, the

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas re-

ported on Monday, with year-on-

year growth of 9.4% the fastest

pace seen in five months, Manila

Times reported. The personal

remittances — also higher com-

pared to July’s $2.55bn — pushed

the year to date tally to $20.72bn,

up 6.4% from a year earlier.

“The increase in personal remit-

tances was driven largely by the

sustained inflow of transfers from

land-based workers with work

contracts of one year or more

(at $16.0bn) and remittances

from sea-based and land-based

workers with work contracts of

less than one year (at $4.2bn),”

the BSP said in a statement.

Personal remittances sum up

the net compensation of OFWs,

personal transfers whether in

cash or in kind and also capital

transfers between households.

Cash remittances, which only

count money sent home via

banks, totalled $2.49bn in August,

up 7.8% year-on-year. “By country

source, the primary contributors

to the rise in cash remittances

during the month are the United

Arab Emirates (UAE), United

States, Singapore and Qatar,” the

central bank said. Year-to-date,

cash remittances grew by 5.4%

to $18.59bn. The Bangko Sentral

said the continued remittance

influx was observed from both

land-based workers ($14.7bn)

and sea-based workers ($3.9bn),

which saw 6% and 3.2% growth,

respectively. The bulk of cash

remittances came from the US,

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Singapore,

Japan, the United Kingdom, Qa-

tar, Kuwait, Germany and Hong

Kong. An ING Manila economist

said the latest remittances

results boded well for domestic

spending and the peso, which

is currently trading above P51 to

a dollar.

A 27-year-old lady gas station attendant is in critical condition after she was run over by a sedan while crossing a pedestrian lane early morning in Santa Cruz, Manila yesterday. Dianne Viesca was uncon-scious when she was rushed to the Metropolitan Hospital while Jeremy Ayat, 41, the driver of a black Hyundai surrendered to the Manila Traff ic Bureau, Manila Times reported. The incident was captured by a closed-circuit television being operated by Barangay 334, Zone 33. The footage showed Ayat hit Viesca as she was crossing the Rizal Avenue. The victim sustained bruises in her head and body after she hit the windshield. According to Viesca’s co-worker, Elizabeth Barnachea, the victim had just finished her duty and was on her way home. Ayat admitted he was under the influence of liquor. Police is preparing to file the appropriate charges against the suspect.

Gas station worker critical after accident

CRIME

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL21

Gulf Times Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Nepal ruling ally decides against pulling out of govtThe CPN (Maoist Centre),

a key partner in Nepal’s ruling coalition, yester-

day decided against pulling out support to the Sher Bahadur Deuba government hours after announcing that it was going to withdraw.

The CPN (Maoist Centre), led by former premier Pushpa Kamal Dahal, last month joined a leftist alliance led by main op-position CPN-UML, leaving the Nepali Congress led by Deuba unsure of its future moves.

Speaking at a press confer-ence organised at the home

ministry yesterday afternoon, CPN (Maoist Centre) leader and Home Minister Janardan Sharma claimed that the party cancelled its earlier decision to pull out of the government after receiving a tip that the government is considering de-ferring the election dates, the Kathmandu Post reported.

The federal and provincial elections have been sched-uled for November 26 and December 7.

A parliamentary party meet-ing of the Maoist Centre was convened at the party central offi ce in Paris Danda to decide on quitting the government.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Deuba said that democracy is

being challenged by the leftist alliance.

Deuba, who is Nepali Con-gress president, said it was nec-essary to make the Congress victorious in the election to safeguard democracy.

“The communists are trying to establish communism by us-ing the democratic system and fooling the people. It is neces-sary for all the democrats to be alert about this,” said the prime minister.

He said the country would be in peril if democracy is threat-ened, and called on all the Nepali Congress people to be united to defend democracy. “Finishing off democracy means the end of the Nepali Congress,” he added,

the Himalayan Times reported.Minister Sharma told the

media that they received in-formation from the Election Commission (EC) about the government’s plan to postpone the elections when the Maoist ministers were preparing to sign the mass resignation.

“We joined the government to ensure the timely elections. Why would we quit the govern-ment, if the elections are to be deferred. We have called off the issue of quitting government for the time being,” said minister.

During the parliamentary party meeting, CPN (MC) lead-ers reportedly argued that quit-ting the government when there is information regarding the

postponement of the elections, would put the nation in peril.

The CPN (Maoist Centre) came under moral pressure to quit after Deuba expanded his cabinet inducting eight minis-ters from Rastriya Prajatantra Party. It has been learnt that Deuba is preparing to convert the CPN (MC) cabinet members as ministers without portfo-lio if the party stays put in the government.

Prime Minister Deuba dur-ing the fi nal parliament meet-ing on October 14 had hinted at removing CPN (MC) ministers from the government.

The communist parties – CPN-UML led by former prime minister K P Sharma Oli, CPN

(Maoist Centre) and Naya Shak-ti Party-Nepal of former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai – formed an alliance last month.

IANSKathmandu

Home Minister Janardan Sharma: “The CPN (Maoist Centre) can-celled its earlier decision after receiving a tip that the govern-ment is considering deferring the election dates.”

Five of family killed in blast

Five members of a fam-ily belonging to eastern Moulvibazar district of

Bangladesh were killed in a fi re that erupted from explosion of an air-conditioner at a residen-tial building in Salmiya area of Kuwait city on Monday.

The deceased were identi-fi ed as Rokeya Begum, 50, wife of Juned Miah, their two sons – Fahad, 18, and Emad, 5, – and two daughters – Jamila, 14, and Namila, 6.

Family sources said the fi re broke out when the compressor of the air-conditioner explod-ed at their residential building around 5pm (Bangladesh time), leaving fi ve of them dead on the spot.

However, Juned Miah was out of the home during the blast.

Juned along with his wife and four children had been living in Kuwait for 15 years, said Jainal Abedin, a neighbour of his native village.

The bodies were kept at mor-tuary of Mubarak Al-Kabeer Hospital of Kuwait city.

Bangladesh ambassador to Kuwait S M Abul Kamal visited the hospital and expressed his deep condolence on their deaths.

By Mizan RahmanDhaka

Lanka mulls new laws against poachingSri Lanka will soon introduce stringent laws against poaching in the island’s territorial waters, Minister of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Mahinda Amaraweera has said. He said the decision was taken at the ministerial level discussions held with the Indian fisheries minister in New Delhi recently. He said that Indian fishermen’s practice of using illegal fishing methods such as bottom trawling to catch fish in Sri Lankan waters has caused severe harm to fish while damaging the marine system. Measures have been taken to create awareness on this matter among authorities of the Indian government, Minister said, adding that the number of Indian fishermen in Sri Lankan waters has come down by about 50%. The government has already taken measures to devises stringent laws against the invading fishermen. The cabinet has approved foreign fishing trawlers draft bill aimed at tackling this issue. After the enactment of this bill provisions will be provided to apprehend and detain fishermen entering into the island’s waters as well imposing prison sentences and fines. The two countries during their discussions have agreed on proposals aimed at releasing fishermen while in detention in the two countries and install equipment to identify fishing trawlers.

A woman picks marigold flowers used to make garlands and off er prayers, before selling them to the market for the Tihar festival, also called Diwali, in Kathmandu yesterday.

Flower harvesting Myanmar journalists allowed to leave Bangladesh

Bangladesh allowed two journalists from Myanmar detained

while reporting about fl ee-ing Rohingya Muslims to fl y home yesterday and was dropping charges against them, their lawyer said.

Minzayar Oo and Hkun Lat were picked up from the Cox Bazar’s region in early September because they were working as journalists on tourist visas, police said.

They were released on bail after calls from Germany’s GEO magazine, which had assigned Minzayar Oo to cover the infl ux of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, as well as rights groups.

“It’s so good to be free again,” Minzayar Oo, one of

Myanmar’s most prominent photographers, said soon after his plane landed in the Thai capital of Bangkok.

Bangladesh authorities had begun the process to drop the charges against the pair, their lawyer, Jyotirmoy Barua, said.

Minzayar Oo has worked for various media outlets, covering Myanmar’s emer-gence from military rule. He had previously worked as a contractor with Reuters.

Hkun Lat is also a well-known photographer in My-anmar and has won prizes for his coverage of confl ict in frontier regions.

About 582,000 refugees from Myanmar have poured into Bangladesh since Au-gust 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants on secu-rity posts triggered an army crackdown in response.

ReutersDhaka

Lankan rupee ends down on mild dollar demandThe Sri Lankan rupee ended slightly weaker in dull trade yesterday as importer dollar demand surpassed mild exporter greenback sales, dealers said. Dealers said the rupee was under pressure last week due to dollar demand from state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corp (CPC), which stocked up crude ahead of an expected fuel price hike. The spot rupee ended at 153.60/65 per dollar, slightly weaker from Monday’s close of 153.55/65. “It was a dull day. There was not much of activity. But the rupee ended a tad weaker on mild importer (dollar) demand,” said a currency dealer, who requested anonymity. “There was not much exporter dollar sales as well.” Crude prices are expected to rise in the country after private fuel retailer Lanka IOC informed local media it is likely to increase rates as they have been selling at a loss. The rupee has been under pressure since January after the central bank stopped defending the currency and started buying the dollar to build the country’s depleted foreign currency reserves.

European dream becomes nightmare mirage for many Bangladeshis

Tortured, sold as a slave three times and haunted with guilt after watching

his cousin drown, Bangladeshi teenager Khaled Hossain fears he will never recover from the trauma of his failed attempt to reach Europe.

Even as hundreds of thou-sands surge into Bangladesh fl eeing violence in Myanmar hoping for a better life, there is an exodus of those who feel the country is at breaking point and salvation lies elsewhere.

Experts warn the Rohingya refugee crisis and the strain on resources will push more disaf-fected Bangladeshis to attempt risky journeys in a bid to make their fortunes elsewhere.

Like Hossain, tens of thou-sands are travelling from the South Asian nation to Libya to make the perilous boat trip to Italy.

“I was excited that within hours we would be in Italy. All my family’s fi nancial troubles will be over. I thought I could now prove myself worthy to my paralysed father,” the 18-year-old said.

Instead many are sold as slaves before they even reach port, and those that do secure a boat – like Hossain’s young cousin – may not survive the journey.

“I am consumed by guilt,” said Hossain, who has re-

turned, broken, to Bangladesh. “I will have to live with his

death for the rest of my life,” he added.

More than 100 people were squeezed into the tiny boat he and his cousin Farid took from Libya to Italy, many were Af-ricans, but there were dozens from Hossain’s hometown of Beanibazar as well as elsewhere across the country.

Three hours after the 30ft (10m) plastic vessel had set off from Libya, it broke down and started to sink.

There was “panic”, Hossain recounted. One Bangladeshi youth was crushed to death in the rush and other passengers jumped into the sea, never to be seen again.

Several emptied cans of pet-rol on the boat fl oor so they could use the containers to fl oat in the water.

“Our feet burned when they dipped in the petrol,” he ex-plained, adding that Farid jumped into the sea to escape the burning.

The teenager saw a ship on the horizon and attempted to swim for help, but did not

survive.“I saw his lifeless body fl oat-

ing,” Hossain recalled. More than 2,700 people

have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean so far this year, according to the UN, with Bangladeshis top of the list of people rescued.

Hossain was plucked from the sea by a Libyan gang and

spent three months in the war-torn nation working as a slave on construction sites.

He says he was sold at least three times. His father, severely debilitated after a stroke, paid $12,000 in total to secure his release.

Hossain recalled: “We were tortured. Many were raped and sodomised at gunpoint.”

Bangladesh’s population has soared in recent years and de-spite reasonable growth over the past decade, opportunities for work are limited.

The number of Bangladeshis on the Libya-to-Italy route has risen from a few dozen in 2014 to about 11,000 from June 2016 to March this year, according to offi cial fi gures, though some estimates put the fi gure as high as 30,000.

In Beanibazar alone, an es-timated 1,000 young men have made the $10,000 journey in the past year, council chairman Ataur Rahman Khan said.

“Young men are desperate to go to Italy via Libya. Fathers are borrowing money and mothers are selling heirlooms to pay the traffi ckers,” Khan said.

The situation may worsen as the arrival of more than half a million Rohingya refugees who have fl ed an army crackdown in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state since puts an immense strain on Bangladesh’s

resources. Authorities have allocated

a huge swathe of land in the country’s southeast in an ef-

fort to confi ne some 800,000 Rohingya into a settlement set to be the world’s largest refugee camp.

Migration expert Jalal Uddin Sikder said that if authorities “failed to fi nd a solution” to the

refugee crisis, then the situa-tion would “fuel” the exodus out if Bangladesh.

Sikder added traffi ckers use rare success stories of migrants who have reached Europe to lure tens of thou-

sands of others to follow suit.He explained: “They sell sto-

ries of success to jobless youths, causing enormous peer pressure in families. One or two deaths at sea or reports of kidnappings just don’t matter anymore.”

By Shafiqul Alam, AFPBeanibazar

Khaled Hossain posing for a photo during an interview with AFP at his house in Beanibazer in northeastern Bangladesh’s Sylhet district.

An investment of $1,000 in bitcoin in 2012 would now be worth about $4.9mn, while the number of transactions continues to increase. Globally, investors have poured more than $2bn into initial coin off erings (ICOs) despite warnings from regulators including the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

There’s now a new area of excitement about an aspect of bitcoin since it broke into the fi nancial world in 2013. Blockchain – the technology used for verifying and recording transactions that’s at the heart of bitcoin – is seen as having the potential to reshape the global fi nancial system and possibly other industries. More than 100 banks including Barclays Bank and JPMorgan Chase & Co have joined the R3 consortium, created to fi nd ways to use blockchain as a decentralised ledger to track money transfers and other transactions. Nasdaq is already using blockchain for trading securities in private companies; it is also being tested by retailers like Wal-Mart Stores for ensuring food safety.

For all the brighter scope, there is an undeniable dark side. Bitcoin rose to prominence with Silk Road, a marketplace for weapons, drugs and other illicit goods, and it’s still used for such sales even after Silk Road was shut down. It’s also the currency of choice for ransomware hackers, who have invaded millions

of computers across the world.

Even the North Korean government is accumulating bitcoin as a means to dodge international sanctions.

That’s prompted Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co, to term bitcoin as a “fraud” that’s destined to unravel gradually.

For sure, global regulatory eff orts are growing. Russian President Vladimir Putin is the latest to call for regulation of cryptocurrencies. China last month banned ICOs and ordered all cryptocurrency exchanges to close. At least 13 other countries have imposed new rules or announced plans to tighten regulations, including South Korea, which also banned ICOs.

The European Central Bank is discussing “concrete legal restrictions” on digital coin sales.

By contrast, the UK has exempted bitcoin from value-added taxes, and says it should be considered a foreign currency for corporate tax purposes, while Japan this year began enforcing a law that recognises bitcoin as a legal method of payment. The US Commodities Futures Trading Commission classifi ed bitcoin as a commodity in September 2015 and this year approved the fi rst cryptocurrency options trading, clearing and settlement fi rm. The Securities and Exchange Commission in July said some coins issued in ICOs would be considered securities and regulated.

Make no mistake; the fi nancial world is divided on bitcoin. Some see it as a revolutionary use of technology with growing number of money managers looking at cryptocurrencies as an asset class for investment. Others like Dimon see bitcoin as a “fraud” that’s destined to come crashing down even as authorities are searching to fi nd a viable way to tame it.

Amid concerns over transparency, the jury is still out on whether bitcoin is a growing bubble, or a sustainable investment bet. “In the long run, the technology will thrive, but the price of bitcoin will collapse,” says Kenneth Rogoff , former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, who’s now a Harvard University professor.

Asset or bubble?Bitcoin dividesfi nancial world

COMMENT

GULF TIMES

A $1,000 bitcoin investment in 2012 would now be worth about $4.9mn

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Over the last two decades, there has been serious pushback from the developing world against the current intellectual property regime

By Joseph E. Stiglitz, Dean Baker, and Arjun JayadevNew York

When the South African government attempted to amend its laws in 1997 to avail itself of

aff ordable generic medicines for the treatment of HIV/Aids, the full legal might of the global pharmaceutical industry bore down on the country, delaying implementation and extracting a high human cost. South Africa eventually won its case, but the government learned its lesson: it did not try again to put its citizens’ health and well-being into its own hands by challenging the conventional global intellectual property (IP) regime.

Until now. The South African cabinet is preparing to fi nalise an IP policy that promises to expand access to medicines substantially. South Africa will now undoubtedly face all manner of bilateral and multilateral pressure from wealthy countries. But the government is right, and other developing and emerging economies should follow in its footsteps.

Over the last two decades, there has been serious pushback from the developing world against the current IP regime. In large part, this is because wealthy countries have sought to impose a one-size-fi ts-all model on the world, by infl uencing the rulemaking process at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and forcing their will via trade agreements.

The IP standards advanced countries favour typically are designed not to maximise innovation and scientifi c progress, but to maximise the profi ts of big pharmaceutical companies and others able to sway trade negotiations. No surprise, then, that large developing countries with substantial industrial bases – such as South Africa, India, and Brazil – are leading the counterattack.

These countries are mainly taking aim at the most visible manifestation of IP injustice: the accessibility of essential medicines. In India, a 2005 amendment created a unique mechanism to restore balance and fairness to patenting standards, thereby safeguarding access. Overcoming several challenges in domestic and international proceedings, the law has been found to comply with WTO standards. In Brazil, early action by the government to treat people with HIV/Aids resulted in several successful negotiations, lowering drug prices considerably.

These countries are fully justifi ed in opposing an IP regime that is neither equitable nor effi cient. In a new paper, we review the arguments about the role of intellectual property in the process of development. We show that the preponderance of theoretical and empirical evidence indicates that the economic institutions and laws protecting knowledge in today’s advanced economies are increasingly inadequate to govern global economic activity, and are poorly suited to meet the needs of developing countries and emerging markets. Indeed, they are inimical to providing for basic human needs such as adequate healthcare.

The central problem is that knowledge is a (global) public good, both in the technical sense that the marginal cost of someone using it is zero, and in the more general sense that an increase in knowledge can improve well-being globally. Given this, the worry has been that the market will undersupply knowledge, and research will not be adequately incentivised.

Throughout the late twentieth century, the conventional wisdom was that this market failure could best be rectifi ed by introducing another one: private monopolies, created through stringent patents strictly enforced. But private IP protection is just one route to solving the problem of encouraging and fi nancing research, and it has been more problematic than had been anticipated, even for advanced countries.

An increasingly dense “patent thicket” in a world of products requiring thousands of patents has sometimes stifl ed innovation, with more spent on lawyers than on researchers in some cases. And research often is directed not at producing new products but at extending, broadening, and leveraging the monopoly power

granted through the patent.The US Supreme Court’s 2013

decision that naturally occurring genes cannot be patented has provided a test of whether patents stimulate research and innovation, as advocates claim, or impede it, by restricting access to knowledge. The results are unambiguous: innovation has been accelerated, leading to better diagnostic tests (for the presence of, say, the BRCA genes related to breast cancer) at much lower costs.

There are at least three alternatives for fi nancing and incentivising research. One is to rely on centralised mechanisms of direct support for research, such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation in the United States. Another is to decentralise direct funding through, say, tax credits. Or a governmental body, private foundation, or research institution can award prizes for successful innovations (or other creative activity).

The patent system can be thought of as awarding a prize. But the prize impedes the fl ow of knowledge, reduces the benefi ts derived from it, and distorts the economy. By contrast, the fi nal alternative to this system maximises the fl ow of knowledge, by maintaining a creative commons, exemplifi ed by open-source software.

Developing economies should use all of these approaches to promote learning and innovation. After all, economists have recognised for decades that the most important determinant of growth – and thus of gains in human development and welfare – is technological change and the knowledge it embodies. What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources. To maximise global social welfare,

policymakers should strongly encourage the diff usion of knowledge from developed to developing countries.

But while the theoretical case for a more open system is robust, the world has been moving in the opposite direction. Over the last 30 years, the prevailing IP regime has erected more barriers to the use of knowledge, often causing the gap between the social returns to innovation and the private returns to widen. The powerful advanced-economy lobbies that have shaped that regime clearly put the latter fi rst, refl ected in their opposition to provisions recognising intellectual property rights associated with traditional knowledge or biodiversity.

The widespread adoption of today’s stringent IP protection is also historically unprecedented. Even among the early industrialisers, IP protection came very late and often was deliberately eschewed to enable for quicker industrialisation and growth.

The current IP regime is not sustainable. The 21st-century global economy will diff er from that of the twentieth in at least two critical ways. First, the economic weight of the economies such as South Africa, India, and Brazil will be substantially higher. Second, the “weightless economy” – the economy of ideas, knowledge, and information – will account for a growing share of output, in developed and developing economies alike.

The rules relating to the “governance” of global knowledge must change to refl ect these new realities. An IP regime dictated by the advanced countries more than a quarter-century ago, in response to political pressure by a few of their sectors, makes little sense in today’s world. Maximising profi ts for a few, rather than global development and welfare for the many, didn’t make much sense then, either – except in terms of the power dynamics at the time.

Those dynamics are changing, and emerging economies should take the lead in creating a balanced IP system that recognises the importance of knowledge for development, growth, and well-being. What matters is not only the production of knowledge, but also that it is used in ways that put people’s health and welfare ahead of corporate profi ts. South Africa’s potential decision to enable access to medicine may be an important milestone on the road toward that goal. – Project Syndicate

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University and Chief Economist at the Roosevelt Institute. Dean Baker is Co-Founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Arjun Jayadev, Director of the Research Centre at Azim Premji University, is a professor of economics at Azim Premji University and the University of Massachusetts.

Intellectual property for21st-century economy

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Qatar-Indonesia...historicties and common aspirationsQNADoha

The State of Qatar and the Republic of Indonesia are linked by strong historic relations, unity of position,

harmony of vision and common aspiration for greater development, freedom.

The state visit of His Highness the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to Indonesia, in the course of an Asian tour that also included Malaysia and Singapore, refl ects the keenness of the two countries and leaderships to deepen and consolidate the historic relations between Qatar and Indonesia, building a promising future for the two friendly peoples, and further political, economic and cultural rapprochement between the two countries.

Since the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955, which was an important step toward the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement and came out with important resolutions in favour of the Arab issues, Doha and Jakarta have been moving in one direction and one track aimed at enhancing international security and peace, and serving just the Arab, Islamic and humanitarian issues.

This is His Highness the Emir’s fi rst visit to Indonesia at the invitation of the Indonesia leadership.

The Emir will hold talks with senior offi cials on bilateral relations and ways

to develop co-operation between Qatar and Indonesia, in addition to a number of issues of common interest.

A number of agreements and memorandums of understanding will be signed in various fi elds during the visit.

Diplomatic relations between Qatar and Indonesia were established 40 years ago, in 1976.

Qatar’s embassy was opened in Jakarta in 1996, while the Indonesian embassy in Doha was opened in 1999.

Qatar and Indonesia were keen on exchanging offi cial visit and participate in various events of interest in both countries, such as Qatar’s participations in the 6th Conference of Ministers of Awqaf and Islamic Aff airs in Jakarta in 1997, the activities of the United Nations Group of 77 on economic co-operation in Bali in 1998, and the Investment Conference in Indonesia in 2000.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry directed its permanent representative in New York to vote for Indonesia in case of any draft resolution aimed at the unity and territorial integrity of Indonesia, affi rming Qatar’s support to Indonesia on the basis of the meeting held between the foreign minister of Indonesia and the Arab ambassadors in addition to Iran and Turkey in June 2000 on Indonesia’s rejection of the declaration issued by the West Papua Conference on the separation from Indonesia.

In 2000, Qatar participated in Bali Ministerial Meeting to complement the Ministerial Meeting on Investment

Support in Indonesia and the 4th preparatory meeting of the World Summit on Development Support held in Bali in June 2002.

Qatar also participated in the Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in 2014, the meeting of the central banks and monetary authorities of the OIC member countries in Surabaya in 2014, the Asia-Africa Summit in Jakarta in 2015, the Second Conference of Ministers of Labour of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation in 2015, and the World Islamic Economic Forum in 2016.

In May 2009, His Highness the Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani paid a visit to Indonesia.

Meanwhile, Qatar has received many Indonesian offi cials over 20 years.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo paid a visit to Qatar in 2015.

Former presidents Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Abdurrahman Wahid also visited Qatar in 2006 and 1999, respectively. Abdurrahman Wahid also visited Doha on 2000 to take part in the OIC Summit.

Over the past years, as part of the development of relations, several agreements and memorandums of understanding have been signed, including a joint report between the foreign ministers of Qatar and Indonesia on the development of bilateral relations; an agreement between the governments of Qatar and Indonesia on the promotion and protection of mutual investments; a memorandum of understanding between the foreign

ministries of the two countries; news co-operation agreement between Qatar News Agency (QNA) and Indonesian News Agency (Antara); a convention on the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fi nancial evasion on income taxes; a memorandum of understanding between the two governments on the establishment of a joint fund or investment company; an agreement on economic and technical co-operation, an agreement on the regulation of employing Indonesian workforce in Qatar, a bilateral agreement on the abolition of visa requirements for holders of diplomatic passports, service and private between the two countries; and a memorandum of understanding between the Government of Indonesia and the Qatar Investment Authority on investment.

The economic fi gures refl ect the importance of trade relations between the two countries, which rose recently by 260% to $1.688bn.

Qatar’s exports to Indonesia reached $1.231bn, while Qatar’s non-oil imports increased to $92.8mn.

Indonesia is Qatar’s third importer among Southeast Asian countries, after Singapore and Thailand.

The Indonesian labour constitutes a constructive co-operation between the two countries and has positive contributions to the country’s development.

The country’s investments in Indonesia range from telecommunications to banking and others.

Gulf Times Wednesday, October 18, 2017 23

COMMENT

By Michael Martina and Kevin YaoBeijing

President Xi Jinping’s rule in China has been marked by a muscular stance in many areas — from corruption to foreign

policy — but investors and business leaders hoping that the nation’s most powerful leader in decades will drive market reforms are girding for disappointment.

As he gears up for his second term, hoped-for market liberalisation is increasingly being viewed as secondary to Xi’s state-centred approach to economic policy and his focus on stability.

The Communist Party Congress beginning today in Beijing is expected to see Xi consolidate his power and is unlikely to see a change in his priorities.

Party spokesman Tuo Zhen told reporters at a briefi ng yesterday that China will persist with opening up and expanding market access.

But foreign executives and analysts question whether these kinds of comments will mean a lot on the ground.

“I don’t see market opening coming. It’s all about discipline and control,” said one senior China-based American executive, who declined to be identifi ed.

China’s State Council Information Offi ce referred questions on market reforms to the country’s economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, which did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

Some Chinese policy insiders said that they don’t expect any signifi cant speeding up. “We will not rush on reforms. The pace of changes will not change dramatically,” said one adviser to the Chinese government who was speaking on condition of anonymity.

Xi’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign and his move to personally take charge of economic policymaking had initially been seen by China analysts as early signs that he would use his consolidated power to push tough reforms through entrenched bureaucracies.

The party’s 2013 pledge under Xi’s then-new administration to let the market play a decisive role in the economy had also given hope to those pushing for reform.

But many analysts and business leaders now see Xi’s faith in markets as tenuous, and that 2013 reform pledge as a mere holdover from his predecessors.

A lack of follow-through over the past several years on repeated state council vows to open markets to the world have left foreign businesses with “promise fatigue”, as the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China put it last month.

Those delays coincide with the passage of a raft of new national security and cyber security laws and regulations that China’s trading partners complain will put them at a disadvantage.

“For the past 20 or 30 years it was economic development at all costs, and I think we are seeing a new paradigm now where national security is dominant and economic issues are channelled through that lens,” said Jude Blanchette, who studies the party at The Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing.

Blanchette said true market reforms in Xi’s second term would mean walking back much of the control he has fought to acquire, an unlikely prospect.

Other painful reforms that many economists say are needed have also moved slowly under Xi.

They include overhauling China’s debt-laden state sector, fi xing the fi scal system to tackle local government

debt, bringing in new property taxes to ward off housing bubbles, and allowing farmers to sell their land more freely.

Capital controls, including restrictions on some outbound investment deals, have helped stabilise the yuan, but at the cost of hampering China’s ambition to internationalise the currency.

Chinese reform advocates say the government has been avoiding potentially disruptive changes due to

concerns over economic and social stability and resistance from vested interests, such as powerful state-run companies.

“If there are no such reforms, the confl icts will keep accumulating while risks will be even higher, which could destroy our prospects to move forward,” said Jia Kang, director of the China Academy of New Supply-Side Economics, a Beijing-based think tank.

In 2015, Xi espoused his own state-

led “supply side structural reform” doctrine, an eff ort in part to tame an explosion of debt by cutting capacity in heavy industries, and reduce risk from bad bank loans.

While Xi can tout continued robust economic growth — the government had set a 2017 GDP growth target of around 6.5% but it now looks like it will be closer to 7% — it is still reliant on credit and investment as opposed to more sustainable consumption.

And expanded state control over the economy is at the centre of key Xi initiatives, including the “Made in China 2025” plan, which funnels billions of dollars into robotics, semiconductors, and other industries deemed strategic.

Despite government talk this year about opening some restricted sectors to overseas investment, some foreign business groups express scepticism, even as US President Donald Trump is expected to seek some concessions for American businesses during his planned visit to Beijing in early November.

“Until we see the equity cap lifted from 49% to 50% or higher with foreign banks, or until we see foreign insurance companies able to fully access the market, we’re just having the same conversation we had fi ve years ago,” said Jacob Parker, vice-president of China operations at the US-China Business Council.

Xi has also reasserted that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) should be the commanding heights of the economy.

Foreign experts on Chinese markets point to government eff orts to merge state companies into even larger champions as proof of how the state’s vision of reform does not necessarily mean increased use of free markets.

In recent years, Beijing has required state fi rms to reassert their Communist Party committees’ hold on corporate decision-making.

A 2015 blueprint for SOE reform made no mention of the 2013 pledge for the decisive role of the market.

One senior western diplomat in Beijing said it has become increasingly clear that the top priority for Xi remains strengthening the primacy of the party and stability.

“When further opening up comes into confl ict with that priority, the argument for stability tends to win,” the diplomat said. – Reuters

China’s market reform hopes fade

A poster with a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping overlooks a street in Huangshan, Anhui province, China. The slogan reads: “Core Socialist Values: prosperity, democracy, civility, and harmony; freedom, equality, justice, rule of law; patriotism, dedication, integrity and friendship.”

Live issuesResistance training safe for women with osteoporosis

Trump’s disastrous war on the ACA

By Cheryl Platzman WeinstockReuters Health

High-intensity resistance and impact training (HiRIT) may improve bone and muscle strength in

select postmenopausal women with osteoporosis, according to a small study in Australia.

Some researchers and clinicians specialising in bone health caution, however, that the evidence for patients with osteoporosis to engage in these types of exercises is insuffi cient to go against the current osteoporosis exercise guidelines, which recommend only moderate-intensity exercises because heavy training might be hazardous to fragile osteoporotic bones.

“Certainly, this study demonstrated some signal for bone that HiRIT may well make a diff erence, but this study was not rigorous enough (nor) had a suffi cient number of participants to alter in any way the current guidelines,” said D Lee Alekel, director of the Osteoporosis and Metabolic Disorders of Bone Programme at the US National Institute

of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, in an e-mail.

For the new study, researchers analysed data from the larger Lifting Intervention for Training Muscle and Osteoporosis Rehabilitation (LIFTMOR) Trial on 101 postmenopausal women age 58 or older. For eight months, half of the women did twice-weekly 30-minute sessions of supervised HiRIT that included deadlifts, overhead presses, squats and jumping chin ups with drop landings.

The other half formed a comparison group, and for eight months they did unsupervised, twice-weekly 30-minute low-intensity exercise at home.

All the participants had bone mineral density testing with a special type of X-ray called a DXA scan before and after the eight-month training program to assess changes in their bone mineral density (BMD), or bone health, at the spine and the femoral head at the very top of the thigh bone that meets the hip.

“I was very pleasantly surprised by our novel and very positive outcomes,” senior study author Belinda Beck told Reuters Health in an e-mail. “I had

concerns that heavy loading might be hazardous to an osteoporotic spine, but it wasn’t,” said Beck, who directs The Bone Clinic at Griffi th University’s Menzies Health Institute in Queensland, Australia.

By the end of the study, the HiRIT participants increased BMD in their spines by an average of about 3% and increased hip BMD by 2.2%. In the comparison group, women lost an average 1.2% of spinal BMD and lost more than 2% at the hip, researchers report in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

The benefi ts of bone density improvements at the femoral neck translate into stronger hips, Beck said. Women in the resistance group also had a 40% improvement in back and leg extensor strength, which Beck said helped improve their posture and reduce their risk of falls.

Ethel Siris, director of the Toni Stabile Osteoporosis Center of Columbia University Medical Centre and New York Presbyterian Hospital, who was not involved in the research, said the benefi t of exercise is that it makes people physically stronger so

they can prevent falls.She cautioned that patients with

osteoporosis or osteopenia should do highly individualised exercise based upon their overall condition that is safe.

“You don’t want someone with poor bone health to overdo repetitions because they can get a stress fracture,” Siris said in a phone interview.

Bones naturally deteriorate with age, but 10mn Americans, 80 percent of whom are women, have osteoporosis, a debilitating condition in which their BMD is signifi cantly lower than normal. Their bones become so weak and brittle they can break during a fall, or in extreme cases, from even a sneeze or minor jolt. People with osteopenia have thinning bones and are at risk for osteoporosis.

HiRIT training should be supervised by adequately trained professionals to ensure correct technique and appropriate progressions, as well as to minimise injuries, Beck said.

“I think this study warrants follow-up using HiRIT because it may well provide suffi cient stimulus to evoke a bone response, but this would need to be tested in a larger sample with more rigorous study design,” Alekel said.

By Nicholas BagleyLos Angeles Times

The Trump administration has declared war on the Aff ordable Care Act. With its decision to end critical subsidies, it

has thrown the exchanges into chaos on the eve of open enrolment; it has imperilled the full faith and credit of the United States; and it will cause a massive increase in federal spending.

This is no way to run a healthcare system, and no way to run a government.

The subsidies in question – known as cost-sharing payments – have been mired in controversy for years. The ACA requires insurers in the individual market to limit what they can ask their poorer enrollees to pay out of pocket for medical care. Otherwise, deductibles and co-pays would be unmanageable for the low-income population. In exchange, the ACA says that the federal government “shall” reimburse insurers for the money they lose from cutting their low-income customers a break.

But there’s a glitch. The Constitution says that money can’t be drawn from the Treasury unless Congress has appropriated the money. And by law, an appropriation law has to “specifi cally state that an appropriation has been made.” A promise to pay, by itself, doesn’t cut it.

Therein lies the problem. The ACA doesn’t appropriate the money to make the payments. It’s silent on the matter.

Back in 2013, the Obama administration asked Congress to appropriate the money for the cost-sharing payments. The Republican-controlled Congress refused. Concerned for the fate of its healthcare bill, the Obama administration then adopted a dubious legal theory that allowed it to make the payments even in the absence of a clear appropriation from Congress.

Incensed, the House sued the administration. A federal court ruled in the House’s favour, but put its opinion on hold to allow the Obama administration to appeal.

That’s where matters stood when President Donald Trump took offi ce. At that point, he decided that the threat of withholding the payments would give him leverage in negotiations over repealing and replacing Obamacare. “You’ve got a lot of nice people with insurance there, Democrats,” he might as well have said. “It’d be a shame if something happened to them.”

Ten months later, Trump has followed through on his threat, claiming to fi nally appreciate that the payments cannot lawfully be made. But the constitutional rhetoric is pure pretext. Ending the cost-sharing payments is only the most visible manifestation of a systematic campaign to sabotage the ACA.

The administration has slashed funding for groups that help people enrol. It has gutted the ad budget for HealthCare.gov. And it has signalled that it won’t vigorously enforce the mandate requiring Americans to purchase insurance.

More alarming, Trump on Thursday ordered agency offi cials to create loopholes for insurers to evade the ACA’s regulations. The president, for example, wants to allow insurers to sell more short-term plans that off er cheap but threadbare coverage. That move would siphon healthy people from the exchanges, driving up premiums for those who are left behind.

Ending the cost-sharing payments will exacerbate the problem. Insurers across the country, moreover, may decide they’ve had enough and that it’s not worth doing business with a feckless federal partner. As insurers withdraw, competitive pressures will ease and prices will rise. In some areas, it’s possible that no insurers at all will remain in the market.

If you think the federal government will at least save some money – well, it won’t.

To compensate for the loss of cost-sharing payments, insurers that continue to sell on the exchanges will have to increase premiums for their mid-tier “silver” plans. Because Obamacare subsidies that help customers aff ord their premiums – which are not part of the

appropriations battle – are tied to the price of silver plans, their size will increase in lockstep with the rise in premiums.

The end result will be a big uptick in federal spending. In fact, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that cutting the cost-sharing payments will lead federal outlays to increase by $2.3bn in 2018.

At the same time, insurers will sue the federal government to recover the cost-sharing payments that they’re owed. Those lawsuits are almost certainly viable – and they’ll be huge. This year, cost-sharing will amount to about $7bn; obligations of similar size will accrue through 2018 and beyond. The question isn’t whether the insurers will be paid. It’s when.

If Congress wanted to, it could immediately appropriate the money for the cost-sharing payments. That would stanch the bleeding and restore confi dence to insurance markets. Trump, however, has undermined congressional negotiations by signalling that he wants to extract concessions from Democrats on health reform or maybe on the border wall.

And so the likeliest result is that the United States will default on its fi nancial obligations, harming taxpayers and consumers alike. What a stupid and unnecessary mess.

Nicholas Bagley is a professor of law at the University of Michigan. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.

Three-day forecast

TODAY

FRIDAY

High: 38 C

Low : 28 C

High: 36 C

Low: 27 C

Weather report

Around the region

Abu DhabiBaghdadDubaiKuwait CityManamaMuscatRiyadhTehran

Weather todaySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunny

Around the world

Athens BeirutBangkok BerlinCairoCape Town ColomboDhakaHong KongIstanbulJakartaKarachiLondonManilaMoscowNew DelhiNew York ParisSao PauloSeoulSingaporeSydney Tokyo Clear

Max/min27/1428/2328/2419/0932/1918/1229/2632/2630/2424/1332/2534/2318/1333/2513/0434/2123/1322/1332/1918/1132/2622/1619/12

Weather todayP CloudySunnyRainP CloudySunnySunnyShowersS T StormsM SunnySunnyS T StormsSunnyShowersS T StormsCloudySunnySunnyP CloudySunnyCloudyI T StormsCloudy

Fishermen’s forecast

OFFSHORE DOHAWind: NW 08-18/22 KTWaves: 2-4/7 Feet

INSHORE DOHAWind: NW-NE 05-15/18 KTWaves: 1-3 Feet

High: 35 C

Low: 28 C

THURSDAY

Inshore: Poor visibility expected at places by early morning.

Sunny

Sunny

Max/min34/2831/1436/2635/2235/2934/2737/2120/11

Weather tomorrowSunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunny

Max/min36/2832/1537/2636/2235/2833/2535/21

Max/min26/1629/2332/2519/1132/1918/1029/2631/2630/2323/1232/2436/2318/1232/2608/0235/2323/1322/1334/1921/0931/2624/1814/11

Weather tomorrowSunnySunnyS T StormsP CloudySunnyShowersRainT StormsP CloudySunnyS T StormsP CloudyCloudyP CloudyP CloudySunnySunnyM CloudyM SunnyM SunnyS T StormsCloudyRain

21/12

QATAR

Gulf Times Wednesday, October 18, 201724

Grand welcome for Emir in Singapore

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani holding talks with Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong at the Istana Presidential Palace yesterday.

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani holding talks with Singapore’s President Halimah Yacob at the Istana Presidential Palace yesterday.

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani inspecting a guard of honour at the off icial reception ceremony hosted in his honour at the Istana Presidential Palace in Singapore yesterday.

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani addressing dignitaries at a dinner banquet hosted by Singapore’s President Halimah Yacob (seated left) in honour of the Emir and the accompanying delegation at the Istana Presidential Palace yesterday.

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani listening to the address delivered by the President of Singapore Halimah Yacob, at a dinner banquet hosted by her in honour of the Emir and the accompanying delegation at the Istana Presidential Palace yesterday.

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani with Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean at the Istana Presidential Palace yesterday.

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani meeting Singaporean government off icials at the Istana Presidential Palace yesterday.

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and President of Singapore Halimah Yacob presiding over the talks between Qatari and Singaporean off icials at the Istana Presidential Palace yesterday.