Private sector dissatisfied with national budget bill

On December 8, President Hassan Rouhani submitted the administra-tion’s draft of the national budget

bill for the next Iranian calendar year 1399 to the Majlis.

The proposed budget amounted to about 1.988 quadrillion rials (about $473.5 billion at the official rate of 42,000 rials), with a 14-percent rise from the current year’s ap-proved budget. The budget bill was submit-ted under a condition that the next year is predicted to be one of the toughest years in terms of economy for the government and country, as the U.S. intensified sanctions are limiting Iran’s sources of revenue.

Although Planning and Budget Organi-zation (PBO) has announced that the budget bill has been prepared based on the eco-nomic realities of the country, and its main characteristic is considering the impact of the U.S. sanctions on Iran’s economy, the bill has drawn many criticisms specially by the private sector, as the Head of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA) Gholam-Hossein Shafe’i believes that there will be the risk of budget deficit in the next year.

While the private sector criticizes several parts of the budget bill, its dis-satisfaction is caused mainly by two ap-proaches of the government. One is that the private sector’s ideas have not been asked when preparing the bill and the other one is about the government’s high budget predicted in the bill.

The bill has estimated the government’s budget at 5.63 quadrillion rials (about $134.04 billion), 8.2 percent higher than the figure in the present year’s budget. A 15-percent rise has been also envisaged in the salary of the governmental employees.

During a meeting of ICCIMA’s board of representatives on November 15, the chamber’s head complained about the government’s budget in the next year’s budget bill saying, “The bill has allocated about two third of the budget to the state-run organizations, companies, and institutes with a nearly 16-percent rise compared to the figure envisaged in the current year’s budget, and it is while many of the state-run entities have a very low efficiency and productivity, but there is no supervision on their performance.” 4

From Nuclear to NewClear

In the course of many visits to Iran over the years I have come to real-ise that no country is the subject

of such fascination and mistrust in Iran as the United Kingdom. So my friends at ‘Tehran Times’ are inter-ested to hear my thoughts in relation to Anglo-Iranian relations following the recent UK election.

This election was fought and won by Johnson’s Conservative party in order to “Get Brexit Done” so that the UK will now definitively – after three years of political paralysis - leave the European Union. I believe this result to be positive for Iran for two reasons, the first being Prime Minister John-son as a person, and the second being the new role and responsibilities of Johnson’s office as UK Prime Min-ister in international diplomacy and commerce for an independent UK.

Johnson as a Person“Those are my principles, and if

you don’t like them....well, I have others.....” Groucho Marx.

As with President Trump it is a mis-take to view Prime Minister Johnson through the lens of rational statecraft. Johnson combines intelligence, idle-ness and pure expedience in equal measure. He owes his success to his capacity to delegate strategy and re-sponsibility to capable and diligent subordinates such as Dominic Cum-mings, the Grand Vizier to Johnson’s Byzantine Caliph.

Perhaps the most important point for Iran’s decision-makers to bear in mind with PM Johnson is that, like his father Stanley before him, he genuinely likes and respects Iran and Iranians, and the country’s great culture, history and heritage. So, all things being equal, the accession to power of Johnson as a person is positive for Iran.

Johnson as UK Prime Minister

Unfortunately, all things are very far from equal for Iran in terms of access to the global economy, and the question is to what extent Iran’s access may improve after UK’s im-minent Brexit departure from the European Union under Johnson’s leadership. 3

W W W . T E H R A N T I M E S . C O M I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

16 Pages Price 40,000 Rials 1.00 EURO 4.00 AED 39th year No.13563 Wednesday DECEMBER 25, 2019 Dey 4, 1398 Rabi’ Al thani 28, 1441

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Stramaccioni, Esteghlal; an unsolved problem 15

Iran, India to expand transit co-op through Chabahar port

Tehran rejects Reuters’ claim on unrest death toll

‘Antithesis of justice’: Khashoggi verdict roundly condemned

TEHRAN – Iranian Transport and Urban Development Minister Mohammad Esla-mi and Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met on Monday in Tehran to discuss expansion of transport and transit cooperation between the two countries, especially through Chabahar port.

Speaking to the press after the meet-ing, the Iranian minister noted that the development of economic cooperation

between Iran and India has been followed in a variety of aspects and a number of new agreements have been reached, the most important of which were in transportation and transit with Chabahar in focus.

In the past few years, the development of Chabahar port has been pursued very seriously, so that trade activities in the port have more than tripled in the past two years, according to Eslami. 4

TEHRAN — An official at Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) has denied a claim by Reuters that said the death toll of the recent Iran unrest was 1,500 people. Alireza Zarifian Yeganeh, head of the SNSC Information and Com-munications Secretariat, said such claims were part of the anti-Iran disinformation campaign, Mehr reported.

“Such news producing and leveling

accusations is basically very easy,” he said, describing the act as a psychological operation against the Islamic Republic.

“When asked to offer sources or docu-ments, the media outlet would refer you to invisible creatures,” he added.

In a report on Monday, Reuters claimed that about 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest across Iran that started on November 15. 3

A Saudi court ruling over the state-spon-sored killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi has drawn outrage across the political spectrum, including from a number of states, the United Nations, several rights groups and even some American lawmakers. They have unanimouslydenounced the ruling that dismissed charges against top Saudi officials, saying it failed to deliver justice.

In a televised press conference in Riyadh on Monday, Saudi Deputy Public Prosecutor

Shaalan al-Shaalan announced the conclu-sion of the so-called trial in the Khashoggi case that had been closed to the public.

He said that out of the 31 suspects in-vestigated in connection with the killing, 21 had been arrested and 11 put on trial.

Death sentences were eventually issued for five people and jail terms totaling 24 years were handed down to three others, he added, without naming any of those sentenced. 1 3

Chris CookUCL Senior Research Fellow

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By Zahra Mirzafarjouyan

By Reza Amouei

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Top commander felicitates birth anniversary of Jesus Christ

Mahnaz Abdi Head of the TehranTimesEconomy Desk

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TEHRAN (MNA) — Alongside the announce-ment of the Saudi court verdict over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Turkey, UK, and international rights groups and bodies condemned and criticized the court’s conclusion.

Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for the Wash-ington Post and a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mo-hammed bin Salman, was living in a self-imposed exile in the United States where had been granted residency status. He had been sharply critical of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, and the country’s king, Salman of Saudi Arabia. He also opposed the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.

Khashoggi went missing on October 2 after en-tering the consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents needed to marry his Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz. Agents of the Saudi government killed Khashoggi inside the consulate and apparently dismembered his body, which has never been found.

Audio recordings, CCTV footage, and forensic evidence all point to his murder. According to Turkish officials, Khashoggi was killed by a hit squad of 15 men who arrived from Saudi Arabia on 29 September and were present in the building on the day of Khashoggi’s disappearance, leaving shortly afterward.

US President Donald Trump announced an investigation, but he insisted that the US will

not waive trade or diplomatic ties with Riyadh, regardless of the outcome.

The disappearance of Khashoggi received a fair amount of attention internationally in the past year. Turkey, in particular, believes it was premeditated murder, and after denials, Saudi Arabia ultimately admitted to the murder of the journalist.

The CIA found that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman probably ordered the operation. But Riyadh has consistently denied that the crown prince was involved. Saudi Crown Prince denied allegations that he had ordered Khashoggi’s murder but said he took full respon-sibility for it since it was committed by people working for the Saudi government. 1 1

TEHRAN — Some Indian ethnic and religious minorities, especially Muslims, are not happy with the bill giving citizenship to non-Muslim migrants.

The Indian citizenship law has stirred protests over the past few weeks, many calling them the largest demonstrations in the government of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The protests have also been very violent and inflammatory. Indian police said at least 23 pro-testers have been killed in the protests.

The government stated in its justification for the law that it will grant Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

By the legislation, a great number of non-Mus-lim immigrants will stream into India from

neighboring countries and the region. Besides Muslims, non-Muslims also opposed and protested the new citizenship law, as they are concerned about the huge number of immigrants that will come to India due to the law. A significant part of the recent protests was demonstrated in the northeast of the country.

In other words, people in the northeastern states of India, where a large number of Bang-ladeshi immigrants live, believe that the bill will undermine local culture and increase the immigrants’ influence in these areas.

What is wrong with the citizen-ship law?

The most important disadvantage of the law is that it creates a hierarchy among citizens based on their religion. In fact, the bill seeks to intro-

duce a citizen hierarchy. Accordingly, some illegal Indian immigrants are given priority to others because of their religion. While non-Muslim immigrants will be able to obtain Indian citi-zenship, such opportunity is not provided for Muslim immigrants. Based to statistics, about 20 million Muslim Immigrants in India do not have identification document and are regarded as non-citizen and illegal immigrants, despite living in the country for decades.

The Indian critics say the law undermines the country’s secular constitution.

Old-line ethnic acts by the Indian government

The citizenship law had already been stated earlier in 2016, but the protests at that time rolled back the law. 1 3

Intl. reactions to Saudi scandalous verdict on Khashoggi murder

Indian citizenship law and discrimination against Muslims

See page 2

Zarif, Ansarullah official hold talks in Oman

Vocalist Shahram Nazeri to record videos

to promote tamboura

TEHRAN — Vocalist Shahram Nazeri plans to record three music videos to promote tamboura, a string instrument native to Kermanshah that is the homeland of the world-renowned artist.

About 600 tamboura players from the western Iranian city will perform with Nazeri in the videos, which will be recorded in the Bistun ancient site, the Kermanshah Music Society announced in a press release on Monday.

“The music video project aims to promote tamboura, which was first made and performed in the Kermanshah region,” the director of the society, Farzad Shahsavari, said. 1 6

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Congratulations on the birth anniversary

of Jesus Christ to allmonotheists in the world

DECEMBER 25, 2019

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TEHRAN — Parviz Fattah, the head of

Mostazafan Foundation, on Tuesday re-jected speculation that he may contest the presidential election in 2021.

“I have no intention to announce can-didacy for the next presidential election,” Fattah said on the sidelines of a news conference arranged to elaborate on the performance of his foundation.

“I am going to remain in the Mostaza-fan Foundation. My trips to provinces are carried out according to the Foundation’s program and have nothing to do with the mentioned election,” he added.

Fatah, a principlist politician, was a member of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) and energy minister in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s first term from 2005 to 2009.

He was also head of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation from 2015 until July 22 in the current year.

Born in Urmia in 1961, he has license of civil engineering from Sharif University of Technology, a master’s degree in systems engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology and a PhD from Imam Hossein University.

After 2009, he became the executive director of the Bonyad Taavon Sepah, which is the IRGC’s cooperative foundation. He was also named deputy commander of the IRGC construction body, Khatam ol Anbia.

The U.S. Treasury Department put sanc-tions on Fattah in December 2010 due to his activities in the Bonyad Taavon Sepah.

TEHRAN — Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on his

Twitter account on Tuesday that his country will stay with the friendly nation of Oman Sultanate.

Zarif made a two-day trip to Oman, starting on Monday. “Yesterday and today, I visited Muscat to consult with

high-ranking officials of Oman Sultanate over bilateral re-lations and regional and international issues,” Zarif said.

He further touched upon long-term warm relations be-tween Iran and Oman and wrote, “We will stay with Oman Sultanate, a strong government with powerful nation.”

Iranian, Omani chief diplomats hold talks in Muscat

In two separate meetings in Muscat on Monday and Tues-day, the Iranian and Omani foreign ministers exchanged views over a number of key regional issues.

Zarif was leading a high-ranking delegation to Muscat. On Monday afternoon, Zarif and his Omani counterpart

Yosef bin Alawi held their first round of meeting.The two top diplomats also held their second meeting on

Tuesday morning during which they explored new avenues to promote mutual cooperation in trade and economic fields.

Oman is the tenth largest importer of Iranian goods.The Iranian foreign minister also held a meeting with

Minister of the Royal Office Sultan bin Mohammed Al Namani on Tuesday, exchanging views over the latest political and regional developments.

Also on Tuesday morning, Zarif held a meeting with Mohammad Abdolsalam, the spokesman for the Yemeni Ansarullah, in Muscat over the latest field developments in the war-hit Yemen.

Meanwhile on Tuesday afternoon, the Iranian foreign minister attended a meeting with Fahd bin Mahmoud al Said, the deputy to Sultan Qaboos.

Both officials voiced their countries’ enthusiasm to en-hance ties.

Iran and Oman have been enjoying good economic and political ties over the past several decades.

Oman acted as an intermediary between Iran and the United States during the Obama administration. The first

unofficial meeting between Iran and the U.S. over Tehran’s nuclear program, which finally led to the conclusion of the JCPOA, took place in Oman.

In 2011, Oman also helped release three U.S. nationals, who had illegally entered the Iranian territory from Iraq.

Oman has taken the title of the Switzerland of the Middle East. The Iranian media refer to the Omani foreign minister as the “ambassador of peace”.

Now the country is mediating between Yemen and Saudi Arabia which have been at war since March 2015.

Fattah says has no intention to contestthe 2021 presidential election

TEHRAN — Iranian First Vice President

Es’haq Jahangiri said on Tuesday that the United States’ policies against Iran to collapse its economy have failed.

“Iran has stood on its feet despite the United States’ animosities, and policies to collapse Iran’s economy have ended in failure,” Jahangiri said.

The vice president noted that the U.S. failure shows Iran’s economic capacities.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday that the White House has no way out of standoff with Iran except putting an end to its policy of “maximum pressure” on the Islamic Republic.

“The current situation will pass. Soon or late, the United States has to refrain from adopting the policy of maximum pressure on Iran before or after 2020 presidential election,” he said during a meeting with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

Donald Trump, who unilaterally with-drew the U.S. from the multilateral 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018 and introduced the harshest ever sanctions against Iran under his officially stated “maximum pres-sure” strategy, has been trying to reach the Islamic republic for dialogue.

Government spokesman Ali Rabiei said on Monday that the U.S. has gained nothing by adopting the policy of max-imum pressure against Tehran, noting such approaches are unable to bring the Iranian people to their knees.

Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani said on December 1 that maximum pressure is a “wrong policy” and the U.S. must stop it.

Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has called policy of “maximum pressure” on Tehran bankrupt.

“We have been pressuring them. Maxi-mum pressure… we’re seeing the unfolding of really a bankruptcy of approach,” he told CBS News.

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TEHRAN — The sec-retary of the Guardian

Council announced on Tuesday that Paler-mo and CFT bills are still under assessment in the council.

“The FATF-related bills (Palermo and CFT) are still under evaluation in the Expediency Council, so, I can’t say anything now (about the outcome of assessment),” Rezaee said, Fars reported.

In response to a question about the date when the council can announce its decision, Rezaee said, “It is unclear yet. We can’t specify the exact date. We will talk after evaluations.”

In mid-October, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said that it had given Iran a final deadline of February 2020 to tighten its laws against money laundering in compliance with the global watchdog’s fi-nancial standards.

“If before February 2020, Iran does not enact the Palermo and Terrorist Financing Conventions in line with the FATF Standards, then the FATF will fully lift the suspension of counter-measures and call on its members and urge all jurisdictions to apply effective counter-measures, in line with recommen-dation 19,” the FATF said in a statement at the time.

“The FATF expects Iran to proceed swiftly in the reform path to ensure that it address-es all of the remaining items by completing and implementing the necessary Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing reforms.”

One of the actions Iran is required to take to appease the FATF is joining the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), which is also called the Palermo Convention, a 2000 United Nations-sponsored multilateral treaty against transnational organized crime.

The other action is to ratify the CFT, the convention combating financing of terrorism.

On October 7, 2018, the parliament voted in favor of the CFT. However, the oversight Guardian Council rejected the bill by finding 22 faults with it, which put the fate of the

bill at the hands of the Expediency Council.In October, Rezaee said the government was

not permitted to join the Palermo Convention.“The bill to join the Palermo Convention

was rejected in the Supreme Supervisory Board because it contradicted with the establish-ment’s general policies,” said Rezaee.

Also, a member of the Expediency Council said on October 14 that the council had set aside studies to approve the Palermo bill.

“Palermo and CFT will help the United States identify the ways we circumvent the sanctions. We will not tighten sanctions

with our own hands,” Gholamreza Mesba-hi-Moghadam said.

He added, “We are managing the country through circumventing the sanctions. Approval of these two bills is not wise.”

The opposition to join the FATF rose after the Trump administration revoked the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018 and started impos-ing sanctions on Iran. Since that date, it has slapped multiple rounds of sanctions on Iran.

On Monday, ISNA quoted MP Shahabodin Bimeqdar as saying that a group of parlia-mentarians were planning to write a letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, over consequences of the possible rejection of the FATA.

“Most of the country’s economic experts have emphasized that if we do not join the FATF the country will be put on the black list, our banks’ branches abroad will face a boycott,...” Bimeqdar remarked.

Refusing to join the FATF, he added, bank accounts of Iranian traders abroad will be blocked.

“I have heard that the Russian Foreign Ministry, in a letter, has announced to the Iranian Foreign Ministry that if Iran does not join the FATF, Moscow will not be able to continue cooperation with Tehran. Certainly exports and imports will face difficulties,” he claimed.

“In case of disapproval of the FATF, value of the country’s currency will decrease against dollar which in turn will negatively affect the prices of goods,” the MP added.

By staff and agencyAmbassador of the United Kingdom to Russia Laurie Bristow, who is leaving his post, has said that the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, “is in trouble”.

“I had in Moscow last week our political director, Richard Moore. Richard is the foreign secretary’s top advisor on matters of international security. He was here with his European colleagues, French and German colleagues, to talk with their Russian colleague, Sergei Ryabkov, about the Iran nuclear deal. The reasons you well know. The Iran nuclear deal is in trouble,” he told Interfax in an interview published on Monday.

“As the leading members of the international community – we [Russian and the UK] are both permanent members of the UN Security Council – we have a special responsibility here to work together to strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation arrangements,” he said.

During a meeting with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev on the sidelines of the Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan in Tehran on December 18, Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), said that if the Europeans fail to fulfil their commitments under the nuclear deal, Iran will have no choice but to continue reducing its commitments to the pact in order to create a balance.

For his part, Patrushev said that the JCPOA must be implemented and that Iran must enjoy its benefits.

Josep Borrell, the new EU foreign policy chief, has said the nuclear deal has benefits for Europe and efforts must be made to preserve it, IRNA reported on December 16.

“The JCPOA is still alive and we make efforts to keep it alive,” Borrell said, according to a translation of his remarks.

He noted that the European Union supports the JCPOA and seeks to preserve it.

He also said on December 7 that “collective responsibility” is needed to stop the JCPOA from breaking apart.

“We have a collective responsibility to preserve #IranDeal,” Borrell tweeted.

U.S. President Donald Trump quit the nuclear deal in May 2018 and introduced the harshest ever sanctions on Iran as part of his administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

Under the JCPOA, Iran promised to put limits on its nuclear activities in exchange for the termination of economic and financial sanctions.

Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran have been trying to salvage the pact. However, Europeans’ efforts to protect trade with Iran against the U.S. sanctions have yielded nothing concrete so far.

On May 8, exactly one year after the U.S. abandoned the deal, Tehran announced that its “strategic patience”

is over and began to partially reduce its commitments to the agreement at bi-monthly intervals.

Iran’s moves are based on paragraph 36 of the JCPOA which “allows one side, under certain circumstances, to stop complying with the deal if the other side is out of compliance.”

In the first stage, Iran announced that it will not limit its stockpile of the nuclear fuel to 300 kilograms allowed under the deal. On that date (May 8) Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) said if the remaining parties to the JCPOA, especially Europeans, devise a mechanism to protect Iran from the sanctions’ effect in the two-month deadline it will reverse its decision.

But since European parties missed the deadline, on July 7 Iran announced that it has started enriching uranium to a higher purity than the 3.67%, thereby starting the second step.

Again, as Europe missed the second 60-day deadline, Iran moved to take the third step, removing a ban on nuclear research and development (R&D).

In the latest step, which started on November 6, Iran began injecting uranium gas into 1,044 centrifuges at the Fordow nuclear site. It was done at the presence of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran has said it will reverse its decision if its economic interests are guaranteed.

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Tehran says won’t forget its friends in tough times

TEHRAN — Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi has said that Iran will never

forget its friends in tough times.In an interview with IRNA published on Tuesday, he said,

“Iran and Russia have special and historical ties which has been continuing in the past two centuries despite ups and downs.

We have witnessed special ties with Russia after the Islamic Revolution especially in the past recent years.”

He noted that as two powers in the region, Iran and Russia have stood and will stand beside each other.

“In bilateral issues, Russia has also stood beside the Islamic Republic of Iran and it has also been beside Iran, as far as possible, despite the Westerners’ pressure and economic sanctions,” Mousavi stated.

He noted, “Iran considers Russia and China apart from other countries in the JCPOA [the 2015 nuclear deal] especially Germany and England.”

Iran’s top commander felicitates birth anniversary of Jesus Christ, new Christian year

TEHRAN — Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces has congratulated his Christian

counterparts on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Jesus Christ and advent of the new Christian year.

In his message issued on Tuesday, Major General Moham-mad Baqeri wrote, “I felicitate the birth anniversary of Jesus Christ, the messenger of peace and friendship, and advent of the new Christian year to the armed forces and the entire Christians.”

Iran welcomes any step to settle regional wrangling: Kharrazi

TEHRAN — Kamal Kharrazi, chairman of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations,

said on Tuesday that Iran welcomes any step in settling disputes in the region.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has always sought to have peaceful relations with the regional countries and welcomes any step in settling regional wrangling disputes,” he said dur-ing a meeting with Chinese Ambassador to Iran Chang Hua.

Kharrazi noted that the regional quarreling is rooted in certain countries’ dependence on Western powers, especially the United States.

“The United States’ abuse of resources in the regional coun-tries is totally obvious. Even the United States’ president has addressed Saudi Arabia as milk cow and this kind of dependence and humiliation is source of regret,” noted Kharrazi, who was foreign minister from 1997-2005 under the Khatami admin-istration.

He noted that in Iran’s view, it is the regional countries who must maintain security in the region.

Chairman of the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations added that Iran’s Hormuz peace initiative is based on this view.

At the United Nations summit in New York in late Septem-ber, Iran officially unveiled the proposal for regional security.

‘Iran and China have strategic ties’Chang, for his part, said that Iran and China have strategic

ties, noting that the relations are on the right track.He added that efforts are being made in line with expanding ties.

Noor Ali Tabandeh dies in hospital in Tehran

TEHRAN — Noor Ali Tabandeh, the spiritual leader of the Gonabadi Dervishes in Iran,

died of old age in a hospital in Tehran on Tuesday morning.Tabandeh, 92, was admitted to Mehr Hospital in Tehran on

Thursday due to critical health condition and physical weakness. Tabandeh, also known by

the title “Majzoub Ali Shah”, was the spiritual leader or Qutb of the Ni’matullahi (Sultan Ali Shahi) Gonabadi Order in Iran, which is the largest Sufi sect in Iran.

He was born in 1927 in Bey-dokht of Gonabad, Khorasan Razavi province.

He finished his BA in law at the University of Tehran in 1948 and moved to Franc where he received his PhD in law in Paris.

After victory of Iran’s rev-olution in 1979, he became

deputy minister of culture and Islamic guidance, deputy jus-tice minister and director of Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization when Mahdi Bazargan was the prime minister of the interim government.

He had requested to be buried in Beydokht, where he was born.

Zarif, Ansarullah official hold talks in Oman

Nuclear deal is in trouble: British diplomat

Iran considers Russia and China apart from other JCPOA parties, Mousavi says

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I R A N I N F O C U SDECEMBER 25, 2019

1 While much is made of the UK›s special relation-ship with the US, this has been poisoned by a unilateralist Trump administration which is thoroughly despised by the UK ruling class from which PM Johnson springs. Despite a great deal of pro-American and anti-European rhetoric from within Johnson›s party, the reality is that, not least for geographic reasons, two thirds of UK trade is with EU members and this is unlikely to change soon.

PM Johnson is pragmatic enough, and has a big enough parliamentary majority for the next five years, to allow his more anti-European & pro-US elements to say what they like while he does what he likes. So what practical steps could be taken to improve UK/Iranian relationship?

Trade ClearingThat PM Johnson is willing to engage with Iran was clear

from his visit to Tehran two years ago in December 2017. Unfortunately for him, his predecessor PM Theresa May, under instructions from the US, killed the release to Iran via the banking system of long outstanding funds which could open the way to further trust-building measures.

New financial technology (Fintech) presents new options for innovative UK trade clearing which enable bank payment channels to be transcended. In the energy field, the UK may go beyond the political EU Energy Un-ion project which aimed to both create a pan-European market in energy as a commodity and support the Euro as a currency by securing € denominated debt on energy.

The fundamental flaw of the INSTEX mechanism is that it is reliant on banks as payment channels, and no major bank wishing to clear dollars is prepared to participate in

INSTEX even for trade permitted under US sanctions. The UK may now transcend the INSTEX Euro trade clearing mechanism by creating a complementary trade clearing system in London.

So a new UK/Iran trade clearing system may directly connect businesses wishing to supply for use in Iran per-missible technologies such as desalination and renewable energy in particular.

How may this be achieved? Petro Fintech

Financial Technology is the combination of law & ac-counting with information and communications technology (ICT). A new generation of online businesses emerged around 2001 from the ‹Internet Bubble› of complex and crazy ventures. A similar new wave of Fintech is now emerging from the initial wave of “Blockchain” secure shared databases and “Coin” financial instruments with complex and vulnerable connections to the conventional financial system.

In the field of energy fintech Venezuela›s Petro instru-ment is an excellent case study. The first problem with this Petro is that it is technically backed, not by (say) gasoline or diesel fuel which the average Venezuelan can use, but by heavy grades of crude oil useful only to a few complex refineries. Secondly, this technical oil backing is useless even to complex refineries because Venezuela will not ac-cept the Petro from them instead of dollars or even Euros in payment for oil.

In October 2008, the global banking system froze and the oil price collapsed, which OPEC mistook for lack of

demand, but was simply due to the inability of oil buy-ers to clear payments using bank channels. Meanwhile, in Tehran I proposed, at a major conference chaired by H E Nematzadeh, a simple prepay instrument (“Petro”) returnable in payment for fuel supply.

As an energy prepay (“credit”) instrument Iran›s reality-based Petro will be issued by fuel producers or refiners, not by Iran›s banks or government. The New-Clear combination of transparent issuance, professional system management and mutual assurance by a Protection and Indemnity (P&I) club agreement will enable a Petro Clearing Union.

Proofs of ConceptEvery network is founded by its first connection.

There is no reason why Iran›s frozen assets in the UK, whether long outstanding debts, or ongoing gas production, cannot be mobilised using simple effec-tive energy credit clearing. In this way, projects may be mobilised in Iran exempt from US sanctions and with suppliers and contractors willing and able to implement them, but unable to access conventional payment via banking channels.

Moreover, in Iran itself, all of the elements now exist to rapidly introduce the Petro domestically in order to reduce the initial frictions from reducing subsidies.

My colleagues and I stand ready, as we have since 2004, to at last commence the implementation of a new generation of financial technology both domestically and in bilateral UK/Iran trade clearing: in this way Iran may advance from nuclear to NewClear agreements.

Paul Pillar: If the U.S. wants more out of Iran, it will have to agree to more of what Iran wants Rouhani-Abe meeting shows

Iran and Japan are firm to strengthen ties: Al Mayadeen

TEHRAN — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s

meeting shows determination by both sides to deepen ties, Al Mayadeen has said in a commentary, ISNA reported on Tuesday.

Rouhani met with Abe in Tokyo on December 20. Rouhani was accompanied by a senior political and economic delegation in his tour of Japan.

Rouhani and Abe have met a couple of times over the past years “which shows that both sides are serious about deepening and strengthening bilateral ties and are making efforts to remove impediments on path of relations,” the TV channel said.

It said that Japan is one of the most important economic partners of Iran.

The two countries have not hidden their “good” and “pos-itive” relationship despite pressure by the United States, Al Mayadeen added.

Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who accompanied President Hassan Rouhani to Japan, has said that Iran is aiming to strengthen its relationship with Japan, and keep all channels open, the NHK said in a report on its website on Saturday.

Araghchi also announced on Saturday that Tehran and Tokyo are resolved to continue their consultations over key international and regional issues more closely than ever.

Araqchi, who served as Tehran’s ambassador to Tokyo in the second half of the 2000s, said Iran has been continu-ously holding diplomatic talks with Japan but consultations between the countries are now of paramount importance as Iran has come under “unfair pressures and sanctions” by the United States.

“We have always had close diplomatic consultations with Ja-pan. This year, due to the current developments, including the U.S. unfair pressures and sanctions on Iran, it was necessary to hold closer and tighter talks with Japan which are an old trade partner of Iran,” the deputy foreign minister remarked.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif hailed the “sub-stantive, friendly and frank” summit between Rouhani and Abe, saying the meeting aimed to strengthen ties between the two countries.

“Substantive, friendly and frank summit between President @HassanRouhani and Prime Minister @AbeShizo: further strengthening bilateral, regional and global cooperation,” Zarif tweeted on December 20.

Following his meeting with Abe, Rouhani tweeted on Friday: “I welcome any effort that could boost economic exchanges, es-pecially in the energy sector, and increase oil exports.”

During his meeting with Abe, Rouhani said that he hopes Japan and other countries in the world will work hard to help preserve the 2015 nuclear agreement, officially known as the JCPOA.

Abe, for his part, said, “Japan would like to do its utmost to ease tensions and stabilize the situation in the Middle East.”

“As for Iran, I strongly hope the country will fully imple-ment the nuclear agreement and play a constructive role for peace and stability in the region,” the Japanese prime minister noted.

Tehran rejects Reuters’ claim on unrest death toll

1 In a report on Monday, Reuters claimed that about 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest across Iran that started on November 15.

“The toll, provided to Reuters by three Iranian Interior Ministry officials, included at least 17 teenagers and about 400 women as well as some members of the security forces and police,” the London-based news outlet claimed.

The report came a month after protests erupted in some cit-ies in Iran against increasing gasoline price. In certain cases, the protests turned violent as some rioters clashed with police, using knives and guns.

Rioters damaged public and private property and put banks and state buildings on fire.

The protests ended after a few days.Amnesty International claimed on December 16 that at least

304 people were killed during the unrest. The number has been widely used by news media outlets despite the fact that Iran has repeatedly rejected any international estimate as “invalid”.

Government spokesman Ali Rabiei said earlier this month that the only reason the government has not announced the death toll is a request to hold off by the SNSC – a body responsible to safeguard the country’s security.

“The government, via coordination with the Judiciary and the Interior Ministry, will announce the death toll soon,” Rabiei said.

He was responding to a claim made by U.S. special rep-resentative for Iran Brian Hook, who had said earlier that more than a thousand people might have been killed during the protests.

Reuters’ Monday report also claimed that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had ordered top security and government officials to “do whatever it takes to stop them.”

Zarifian Yeganeh did not specifically mention that part of the report, but said Ayatollah Khamenei had ordered Iranian officials to follow up on the cases of victims of the unrest, express sym-pathy with their families and compensate them for their losses.

Earlier this month, the Leader urged relevant state bodies to practice Islamic mercy when dealing with those who committed acts of violence or caused insecurity in the protests.

He said those who were killed without being involved in pro-voking riots should be considered martyrs and their families should receive stipends.

Ayatollah Khamenei also called for Islamic mercy in dealing with those suspects involved in sabotage acts.

P O L I T I C A Ld e s k

TEHRAN (MNA) — Iranian Parliament speaker’s special adviser on international affairs has said that Saudi Arabia has no choice other than reestablishing normal relations with Iran.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks during a meeting with a group of students and some members of Japan’s Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tehran on Monday.

During the meeting, when asked about the prospect of reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, he said “We have always welcomed constructive and good neighborly relations with Saudi Arabia and believe that Riyadh has no other way than to return to normal relations with Tehran.”

He went on to add, however, that “the current rulers of Saudi Arabia have pri-

oritized the wrong way of war by overt and support of terrorists over a political solution, and in doing so, have undermined the security of the region. We hope to see the Riyadh rulers change their attitude towards the security and stability of the region.”

While discussing Israel’s destabiliz-ing measures in the region, the Iranian parliamentary official said “The Islamic

Republic of Iran has submitted a demo-cratic solution to the United Nations that calls for a referendum among the genuine people of Palestine, including the Jews, Christians and Muslims.”

“Of course, the Zionists who have also played the genuine Jews living in occupied Palestinian lands, have shown that they only understand the language of resist-ance,” he added.

Saudi Arabia has no option but to normalize ties with Iran: special advisor

From Nuclear to NewClear

If there is no U.S.-Iranian agreement before the U.S. presidential election of 2020, the

prospects for such an accord would be better after the election.

Freed of election-related dependence on financial backers firmly opposed to doing any business with Iran, Trump might be better able to focus on building a legacy

of deals rather than of wars.

P O L I T I C A Ld e s k

TEHRAN — Paul R. Pil-lar, a retired CIA officer,

has said U.S. President Donald Trump needs to make a significant change in his Iran policy in order to succeed, arguing that hints of such change have already appeared.

In a peace published on The National Interest, Pillar said abandoning of the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the JCPOA, was motivated by the identification of Barack Obama with the accord.

“That the agreement was a signal foreign policy accomplishment of this Democratic president was reason enough to try to destroy it,” he said.

He also argued that the Islamic Republic has responded to the U.S. policy of maxi-mum pressure with “pressure of its own.”

“If the U.S. administration wants more out of Iran, it will have to agree to more of what Iran wants,” said Pillar, the author of Why America Misunderstands the World.

Excerpts of the piece are presented below:

IN ABANDONING the nuclear deal with Iran, the Trump administration disrupted an international consensus on how to deal with Tehran. U.S. policy toward Iran will now be a story of attempted recovery from the failures of that disruption. Domestic politics drove the original decision to con-front Iran, and domestic politics, in an election year, will shape Donald Trump’s attempts at avoiding war. Any hope of salvaging success will require significant change in Trump’s policy, some hints of which have already appeared.

The Trump administration’s reneging, beginning in 2018, on U.S. obligations under the JCPOA was foreshadowed by earlier Republican attempts during the Obama administration to sabotage the negotiation of the agreement. Both the earlier sabotage and the later reneging were motivated by the identification of Barack Obama with the JCPOA. That the agreement was a signal foreign pol-icy accomplishment of this Democratic president was reason enough to try to destroy it. A complementary motivation was opposition to the agreement by the Israeli government of Benjamin Netan-yahu, whose unrelenting push to keep Iran ostracized served several political purposes, including promoting Israel’s relations with the [Persian] Gulf Arab monarchies and diverting international attention from Israel’s own policies.

Vague references to a “better deal” did not clarify the Trump administration’s desired end game. Different players in the administration had differing desires. Especially evident was a division between Trump, who wants deals, and his former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who always wanted a war. For a while after the initial reneging in mid-2018, the differences did not seem to matter. As U.S. violations of the JCPOA escalated into unrestricted economic warfare against Iran, the administration pointed to the significant damage inflicted on the Iranian economy as if that were ipso facto a positive achievement. The administration took

satisfaction in how the private sector’s fear of losing access to U.S. markets under-mined European governments’ efforts to circumvent secondary U.S. sanctions. The administration’s policies did not even seem to dent the existing nuclear restrictions on Iran. For a year after the United States reneged on the JCPOA, Iran—reaffirm-ing its commitment to the agreement and expressing its desire for full compliance with it—continued to observe its own obligations under the accord.

By mid-2019, however, it was impossi-ble to ignore how the “maximum pressure” campaign was failing on every front. Iran’s patience ran out when the Trump admin-istration ended the last of the waivers of sanctions it had placed on purchasers of Iranian oil. Tehran then began a series of small, incremental moves beyond the JCPOA’s limits on the amount of enriched uranium that Iran could stockpile and the level of enrichment. Using the same strategy it employed before the JCPOA was negotiated, Tehran gradually ramped up its nuclear activity to pressure the United States and other foreign states to negotiate seriously about sanctions relief. Iran, in other words, has been responding to max-imum pressure with pressure of its own.

With each of its incremental steps, Iran has emphasized that what it has done is easily reversible and that its objective is a return of everyone to full compliance with the JCPOA. Iran will continue the

gradual expansion of its nuclear program as long as the maximum pressure cam-paign continues.

One reason the economic and political results inside Iran have not been what the authors of maximum pressure may have hoped for is that Iran—no stranger to hard-ship in time of war or sanctions—has had some success in sustaining its “resistance economy” at a stable, albeit much lower than desired, level. Rouhani was able to point to some signs of this—such as the fact that the non-oil part of Iran’s gdp has increased in recent months—in his speech in September to the United Nations General Assembly. Despite the overall contraction of the Iranian economy over the past year, it still is larger than it was when the JCPOA went into effect in 2015. The International Monetary Fund estimates that contraction of the Iranian economy will stop and small growth will resume in 2020. The value of the rial relative to the U.S. dollar has gained appreciably since April 2019 and is well above its record low of September 2018.

Trump may not understand most of the reasons his Iran policy has not been working, and maybe he will not openly admit that failure. But he can see that it is failing. He is thinking of Iran policy not just in anti-Obama or pro-Likud terms, but also as an opportunity for a deal. He probably has concluded that he needs a deal with Iran because the other big

items on his deal-making agenda—North Korea’s nuclear weapons and trade with China—have hit snags and have not yet furnished breakthroughs.

Among the indications that Trump has decided a change is necessary is his dismissal of Bolton in September 2019. Differences over North Korea and other issues also were involved, but Bolton was probably the single greatest impediment within the administration to any construc-tive dealings with Iran. Trump also has not stood in the way of French president Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to broker a de-escalation of U.S.-Iranian tensions. And Trump has been open about welcoming a presidential-level meeting with Iran.

The principal resistance to initiating U.S.-Iranian negotiations is currently on the Iranian side. Tehran has no interest in any meeting with Trump that would be little more than a photo op. Rouhani rebuffed Macron’s attempt to arrange at least a phone call with Trump on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly session in September. Until current policies and circumstances change, meeting with the chief of maximum pressure would be a big political negative for Rouhani, as it would be for any other Iranian leader.

The Iranian leadership’s primary strategy regarding Trump has been to see him as an aberration that will pass—to outwait and outlast him. This was part of their thinking in continuing to observe the JCPOA nuclear limits for a year after Trump’s reneging on the agreement.

A major reason for Iranian diplomats to stand firm on issues related to the JCPOA is their knowledge that their side is the one in the right. It was the United States, not Iran, that reneged on its obligations. Iran’s incremental exceeding, after its year of patience, of some of the limits on uranium enrichment is technically not even a violation, given language in the JCPOA that—as Iranian officials take pains to point out—explicitly relieves Iran of its obligations if other parties do not live up to theirs.

As long as Trump is president, there will have to be just enough difference from what is on the books for him to be able to claim that the new deal is a vastly “better deal.” But if the U.S. administration wants more out of Iran, it will have to agree to more of what Iran wants. President Rouhani said so in his speech to the General Assembly, making clear that Iran would be satisfied with everyone returning to full compliance with the JCPOA but that “if you require more, you should also pay more.”

If there is no U.S.-Iranian agreement before the U.S. presidential election of 2020, the prospects for such an accord would be better after the election. This would most obviously be true if a Dem-ocrat unseats Trump, but the prospects conceivably might improve even in a sec-ond Trump term. Freed of election-related dependence on financial backers firmly opposed to doing any business with Iran, Trump might be better able to focus on building a legacy of deals rather than of wars.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia major export destinations of Iran’s dairy products

TEHRAN— Iraq, Afghanistan and Russia are the major export destinations of Iranian dairy

products, the secretary of Iran’s Dairy Industries Association said in a press conference on Monday.

Reza Bakeri added that after the three mentioned countries, the Persian Gulf states account for the most part of dairy imports from Iran, adding that export of Iran’s dairy products to Russia has been recently increased, IRIB reported.

The official further put the country’s annual dairy products output at seven million tons and said that of this figure some 450,000 tons valued at $770 million are exported.

He also said that some 120,000 persons have direct jobs while 480,000 persons have indirect jobs in 400 companies active in dairy industry in Iran.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Bakeri complained that dairy produc-tion units are currently working with half capacity in the country, adding, “Of course, the condition can be changed and production capacity can be increased through the help of government.”

Euro set to strengthen going into 2020

Analysts have stated that the euro is set to strengthen in the next quarter. Going into a New Year can be daunting for any currency as it enters a new period of possibilities.

However, analysts at CIBC have pointed out that the global economic sentiment is improving, and the chances of economic stabilization should be enough to see the euro prosper going into 2020.

Analysts at the CIBC have stated that the EUR is in good posi-tioning to benefit from the proposed pick-up in global sentiment and economic stabilization. They also gave an insight into what the

EUR might look like up against the D going into Q1 and Q2, with a returning value of 1.12 and 1.14 respectively.

The analysts are suggesting that the “stars are starting to align for EUR bulls”, but they have taken note that the monetary policy is still quite loose.

On the other hand, manufac-turing sentiment is beginning to recover, especially in Germany after two sluggish quarters of growth. This inspires positivity for the EUR outlook and it appears that the setbacks from the latter end of this year are starting to be

on the road to recovery.On the global trade front, the sentiment is improving and this is

good news for the euro. The Trump Administration has also extended the final decision about auto tariffs into May 2020, further bolstering the positive swing of momentum.

Added to this, a Conservative sweep in the UK general election should ensure that the withdrawal agreement should finally be passed before the January 31st deadline, which will open up the floor for the trade talks to begin between the UK and the EU.

The president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde gave further support for the euro as optimism was spread surrounding the domestic picture for the EUR.

In her first speech she pointed out that stabilization in the Eu-rozone economy is evident and that there were signs of increase in underlying prices.

However, the optimism will only push so far as the ECB is still a long way from paring back its large stimulus program, especially as the bank will only begin to review the strategy next month.

However, with the D currently facing pressures, notably President Trump’s impeachment complexities, the EUR’s topside against the dollar looks more attractive and this will hopefully bring about positive change to the outlook of the euro.

(Source: poundsterlingforecast.com)

1 According to Eslami, Chabahar port has the capacity of transporting 11 million tons of goods, but currently only a small part [20-25 percent] of this capacity is being used.

The minister also noted that in his meet-ing with Jaishankar, the two sides have reached some new agreements, mostly in the transport and transit areas.

“At this meeting we discussed several issues with the Indian side and specialized committees were formed whose focus will be on expanding and increasing the transit capacity,” Eslami said.

Located at southeastern Iran, on the Gulf of Oman, Chabahar is the home for

Iran’s only oceanic port.Due to its strategic geographical po-

sitioning, Chabahar port holds a great significance for Iran both politically and economically.

After years of negotiation, Iran has awarded the development project of this port to India, and the South Asian country committed $500 million to build two new berths in this port.

However, after the U.S. reimposed sanc-tions on Iran in November, the future of many Iranian projects including Chabahar port was shadowed by the consequences of the sanctions.

But following several rounds of nego-tiations and discussions with New Delhi,

the U.S. administration finally exempted the Chabahar project from the sanctions.

1 Shafe’i further referred to the remarks made by the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei about the necessity of laying the ground for better activity of the private sector and noted, “The leader has said that the governmental organizations should improve business environment and the regulations related to the financial, monetary, banking, customs, budget, social security, and other related sectors should be changed in favor of produc-tion and to reduce the imports.”

Higher budget for government contradicts downsizing approach

Masoud Khansari, the head of Tehran Chamber of Com-merce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA), is of the opinion that higher budget allocated to the governmental bodies stands in sharp contrast to the approach for down-sizing the government, something the country has been seriously emphasizing in the recent years.

During a meeting with the TCCIMA’s board of represent-atives on November 16, the official referred to the nearly 16-percent increase in the government’s budget allocated in the budget bill and said how such increase is estimated when the leader and president both are constantly saying that the government should be downsized.

Government optimistic about its incomesPrivate sector also criticizes some other parts of the budget

bill, for example the government’s income predicted in the bill.In a meeting with the board of representatives of Mashhad

Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture on November 14, ICCIMA head said that the budget bill’s estimated figure for the government’s incomes is optimistic and reaching it seems very difficult, unless the government adopts some new strategies.

Shafe’i further said that the government is better to re-duce its expenditures rather than seeking new sources of income, and lamented that the approach of reducing the government’s costs is always ignored when preparing the budget bill.

“If the government focuses on lowering its costs, better results will be definitely obtained”, the official stressed.

One of the ways to materialize such objective is downsizing

the government, ICCIMA head noted and complained that it’s a couple of years that such thing is stressed but nothing is done in practice.

Also, TCCIMA head believes that more tax income pre-dicted in the budget bill is not realistic.

Tax incomes are predicted to be 1.95 quadrillion rials (about $46.42 billion), rising 27 percent from 1.72 quad-rillion rials (about $40.95 billion) envisaged in the present year’s budget.

Khansari says that as the Iranian economy has been in recession over the two past years such figure is somehow unrealistic.

Private sector is also dissatisfied with some other parts of the budget bill, for example predicting issuance of securities worth 800 trillion rials (about $19 billion).

Those active in this sector believe that it is a high figure and if the government cannot repay on due time it will create some high debt for the next government.

Meanwhile, if the people cannot afford to buy the securi-ties, the banks should buy them, and as the result the banks’ sources for paying facilities will decrease, so the enterprises will receive less facilities and face lack of liquidity.

Private sector also disagrees with allocation of dollar based on the official rate of 42,000 rials for imports of some commodities, complaining that just some importers can receive foreign currency at this rate and it will have no result rather than corruption.

By Tom Holian

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

DECEMBER 25, 20194 E C O N O M Y

COMMODITIES

CURRENCIES

STOCK MARKET

USD 42,000 rials

EUR 46,571 rials

GBP 54,361 rials

AED 11,437 rials

TEDPIX 362259.4IFX 4666.47

Brent $65.62/b

WTI $60.64/b

OPEC Basket $67.93/b

Gold $1,492.65/oz

Silver $$17.66/oz

Platinium $943.80/oz

Sources: tse.ir, Ifb.ir

Source: cbi.ir

Sources: oilprice.com, Moneymetals.com

Iran, India to expand transit co-op through Chabahar port

Zarif holds talks with Iranian businessmen in Oman

Iran has taken significant steps to counter money laundering: fin. min.

TEHRAN – Iran’s Foreign Minister

Mohammad Javad Zarif met with a group of Iranian businessmen residing in Oman on Monday night, Mehr News Agency reported.

In the meeting, the businessmen discussed various issues with Zarif and explored ways of improving their trade in the Arab country.

Accompanied by a high-ranking delegation, Zarif visited Muscat on Monday for talks with senior Omani officials on key bilateral, regional and international issues.

Despite the U.S. re-imposition of sanctions against the Islamic Republic, Oman is getting closer to Iran both politically and economically. There is also the same approach adopted by Iran, as Iranian companies now prefer to conduct trade with Oman rather than the United Arab Emirates (UAE), given that the UAE is highly complying with the sanctions.

Iran is somehow replacing some of its previous strategic trade partners such as UAE with Oman, considering the Sultanate as an economic-trade hub.

During the current year, there have been many meetings and negotiations between trade and economic officials from the state-run and private sectors of the two sides with the aim of strengthening and expanding

bilateral trade ties.An Iran-Oman business forum was

held in early December, in which the two countries explored ways of further boosting economic relations.

Hosted by Iran Chamber of Commerce Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA), the forum was attended by senior officials including Iranian Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Reza Rahmani, Oman’s Minister of Industry and Commerce Ali bin Masoud al Sunaidy, and ICCIMA Head Gholam-Hossein Shafeie.

Speaking in the event, Al Sunaidy put the two countries’ trade turnover at nearly $1 billion, saying “in the past, the two countries’ trade barely reached a few million dollars and we have witnessed a significant development in economic relations.”

TEHRAN – Head of Iran-Vietnam Joint Chamber of Commerce says the value of

trade between the two countries reached $352 million in the end of the Iranian calendar year of 1397 (March 20, 2019), up over 100 percent from $172 million in the preceding year.

“According to the official statistics, the worth of trade between the two countries stood at $352 million in the previous Iranian calendar year [1397], the figure, however, is not approved by the joint chamber, since due to the U.S. sanctions much of the two countries’ trade is done through

third countries and is estimated to be around $700 million,” Mostafa Mousavi told ILNA.

The Asian country is eager for boosting its trade with Iran and considering the banking issues the two countries trade is mostly done through bartering, the official said.

According to Mousavi, because of the sanctions most of Iran’s exports to Vietnam are being done through Turkey and Oman, while Vietnamese goods are imported through the UAE, which has led to not being mentioned in the official statistics of the two countries.

He further announced that Trade Promotion Organiza-tion of Iran is going to hold the first Iran-Vietnam economic working group on January 5, in which the two countries are going to sign a memorandum of understanding for expansion of economic cooperation.

Vietnam is one of the world’s major producers of non-oil commodities and its products are of very high quality.

The country was the 45th exporter of goods to Iran during the past Iranian calendar year. The country mainly exported coffee, pepper, fish feed and cellphones to Iran.

At a time when India’s economy is suffering from an acute slowdown, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the current downturn can only be reversed through “urgent” policy actions.

IMF in its annual review said declining consumption and investment accompanied by falling tax revenue have arrested India’s GDP growth, which was one of the fastest in the world just a year ago.

IMF Asia and Pacific Department’s Ranil Salgado told news agency AFP that India is now in the midst of a signif-icant slowdown and only quick policy actions can reverse the slowdown.

“Addressing the current downturn and returning In-dia to a high growth path requires urgent policy actions,” Salgado said.

The government, however, has limited space to boost spending for supporting growth given the current debt sit-uation and interest payments, warned IMF.

IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said last week that India’s slowdown had “surprised to the downside” and it is planning to significantly downgrade growth estimates for the Indian economy in the World Economic Outlook report, which it will release next month.

The international fund earlier slashed its India 2019 growth forecast by nearly a full point to 6.1 percent; the outlook for 2020 was also lowered to 7 percent.

Salgado also said that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has space to cut policy rates further, especially if the period of slowdown extends further.

But the RBI has already cut rates five times this year

and brought it to a nine-year low. The central bank did not cut rates in its December review, citing a potential increase in inflation.

(Source: indiatoday.in)

TEHRAN — Iranian Finance and Economic

Affairs Minister Farhad Dejpasand said on Monday that Iran has taken very effective and practical measures for countering money laundering and cooperation with Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

Dejpasand made the remarks in a meeting with ambassadors and representatives of some Asian and European countries in Tehran, IRNA reported.

Iran’s high council for the prevention of money laundering and terrorism financing convenes regularly under the chairmanship of the economy minister and many government agencies are members of this council, according to Dejpasand.

The official stated that the country’s anti-money laundering code has been passed by the government and is currently being implemented.

“The code is in complete compliance with international standards and it also fully covers the country’s needs,” he stressed.

Back in October, spokesman for the Iranian government Ali Rabiei had announced that the government was planning to form specialized anti-money

laundering working groups to intensify the country’s campaign against financing terrorism.

“The entire executive bodies, including Interior Ministry, Trade Ministry, Foreign Ministry, Justice Ministry, Police, Iran Custom Administration, Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and intelligence and security bodies are duty bounded to prepare required information and data for the specialized working groups,” Rabiei stated.

Later that month, Central Bank of Iran also obliged all the country’s banks and credit institutions to establish anti-money laundering units.

At the beginning of the current year, the Expediency Council gave approval to an anti-money laundering bill seen as crucial to maintaining international trade and banking ties.

The bill on amending the law to counter money laundering was approved with certain changes and sent to the Majlis speaker to be communicated to the government.

The Expediency Council settles disputes between parliament, which approved the bill last year, and the Guardian Council, which vets all legislation and had rejected it.

E C O N O M Yd e s k

E C O N O M Yd e s k

E C O N O M Yd e s k

E C O N O M Yd e s k

Private sector dissatisfied with national budget bill

Iranian Transport and Urban Development Minister Mohammad Eslami (R) and India’s Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar discuss expansion of transport ties in Tehran on Monday.

Iran-Vietnam trade more than doubled in a year

India now in the midst of major economic slowdown, urgent actions needed: IMF

5I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

E N E R G YDECEMBER 25, 2019

TEHRAN — Iranian En-ergy Minister Reza Arda-

kanian inaugurated 18 water and electricity projects worth 95.4 trillion rials (about $227 million) on Tuesday during his one-day visit to the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi, IRNA reported.

Two 400 kilowatt (KW) electricity sub-stations with 19 trillion rials (about $45.2 million) of investment, an earthfill dam project worth 21.5 trillion rials (about $50 million) as well as several water and waste-water projects were among the inaugurated projects.

The mentioned projects were inaugu-rated as a part of a major program called “A B Iran” [the acronyms A and B stand for water, electricity in Persian”, in which 10 trillion rials (over $238 million) of projects will be inaugurated in each of the country’s provinces, on average.

Based on the “A B Iran” program, Energy Ministry plans to inaugurate some water,

electricity projects across the country every week.

In late November, Ardakanian said 227 major water and electricity projects worth 331.74 trillion rials (about $7.89 billion) will be inaugurated in the country in the second half of the current Iranian calendar year (ends on March 19, 2020).

According to the minister, currently, several dams are under construction in Tehran, Ilam, Qom, Yazd, Kerman, West Azarbaijan and Semnan provinces and when operational they will add 745 million cubic meters to Iranian dams’ water capacity.

Over the said period, 1,124 villages would also be supplied with drinkable water and 29 Wastewater treatment plants, over 3,000 megawatts (MW) capacity of thermal power plants and 278 MW capacity of renewable power plants, as well as projects for increasing the efficiency of the country’s agricultural sector through modernizing the irrigation systems, are planned to be inaugurated.

TEHRAN – Average daily gasoline consumption in Iran fell to 75 million liters

in the previous Iranian calendar month of Azar (November 22-December 21) following the implementation of the rationing scheme, according to the managing director of National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC).

“The average daily consumption of gasoline in the 30-day period of Azar reached 75.5 million liters, a decrease of 15.9 percent compared to 89.8 million liters in the same period last year,” Amir Vakilzadeh told Shana.

According to the official, the fall in gasoline consumption as a result of the implementation of the rationing scheme is significant because the country’s fuel consumption was following an upward trend before gasoline was rationed.

“The average daily gasoline consumption since the beginning of the [current Iranian calendar] year (started on March 21) was about 94.4 million liters, which showed a 6.1-percent increase compared to the average daily consumption for the previous year,” Vakilzade said.

In the mentioned period, an average of 134.400 million

liters of gasoil was also consumed in the country, which shows an increase of 41.3 percent compared to the same period last year, he said.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh had earlier pointed to curbing consumption and increasing export capacity as the most important goals of the gasoline rationing plan.

Vakilzadeh had also predicted that with the implementation of the Fuel Management Plan, the daily consumption of gasoline in the country would be reduced by 8-10 percent over the next three or four months.

In mid-November, The Iranian government started rationing of subsidized gasoline and increased fuel prices as part of a plan to reduce the energy subsides to use the revenue for supporting underprivileged families.

Later that month, deputy finance and economic affairs minister said the fuel rationing plan would make the country able to export 3.65 billion liters of gasoline every year and earn about 14 trillion rials (about $3.3 billion) from the exports.

“On average, 100 million liters of gasoline is produced

in the country on a daily basis. If we could reduce fuel consumption by 10 million liters and sell it to other Persian Gulf neighbors, we would export about four billion rials (about $952,000) a day, that would be 14 trillion rials a year,” Mohammad-Ali Dehghan Dehnavi told ILNA.

Oil prices rose on Tuesday in thin pre-Christ-mas trading after Russia’s energy minister said cooperation with OPEC to support the market would continue and as analysts fore-cast a second weekly decline in U.S. crude inventories.

Brent crude LCOc1 was up 12 cents, or 0.2%, at $66.51 a barrel by 0702 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate CLc1 was 7 cents higher at $60.59 a barrel.

OPEC, Russia and other producers that have linked up to curtail production and sup-port prices will continue their cooperation as long as it is “effective and brings results,”

Russian energy minister Alexander Novak said in an interview on Monday.

Cooperation with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) would continue “until the market requires it,” Novak added.

OPEC and other producers agreed in No-vember to extend and deepen output curbs in place since 2017. The reduction of output could see as much as 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd) taken off the market, or about 2% of global demand.

Still, OPEC needs to do more to balance out the market on a sustainable basis, Bjornar

Tonhaugen, head of oil market research at Rystad Energy, said in a note.

The “OPEC cuts didn’t fully solve the prob-lem – instead they offer a light bandage to get through the first quarter of 2020,” said Tonhaugen, adding “after that, we believe the market will begin to realize the looming oversupply.”

U.S. producers have been happy to fill any gaps in the market, pumping ever greater amounts of crude to reach a record high of around 13 million bpd in November.

That has helped swell inventories, which have been stubbornly resistant to drawdowns.

U.S. stocks are up around 1% this year.Crude stocks are, however, expected to

have fallen by about 1.8 million barrels last week, a second week of declines, according to a preliminary Reuters poll.

Still, gasoline stocks are expected to have risen for a seventh week in a row and distillate inventories are forecast to have gained for a fifth consecutive week.

The weekly government report on inven-tories has been delayed by two days due to Christmas. The report is normally released today at 10:30 A.M. EST (1530 GMT).

(Source: reuters.com)

Global coal demand is expected to decline this year but to remain broadly stable over the next five years – a period during which renewables will supply a major portion of increasing power demand, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The drop in coal demand in 2019 results mainly from coal-fired electricity generation, which is set to experience its largest ever decline – of over 250TWh, or more than 2.5%. This drop is led by double-digit falls in U.S. and European demand, according to the IEA’s Coal 2019, which contains analysis and forecasts through to 2024.

The Paris-based agency said it is too soon to say whether the expected global decrease in coal power generation this year will be the start of a lasting trend. Electricity generation from coal will only rise marginally over the next five years, at less than 1% per year – and

its share will decline from 38% in 2018 to 35% in 2024. However, this still means coal remains by far the single largest source of power supply worldwide.

The Coal 2019 analysis says public oppo-sition to coal is growing, many countries are mulling stronger climate and environmental policies, and renewables and gas are becoming increasingly competitive.

But the IEA points out that ultimately, global trends will largely depend on China, where half of the world’s coal is produced and consumed.

In Europe and the U.S., the analysis shows coal power generation is sinking to levels not seen in decades. Growth in wind and solar PV, low natural gas prices and stagnating electricity demand have created a perfect storm for coal in both regions, where plant retirements continue to take place.

Trends will continue The IEA said these trends will continue

through to 2024, although the speed of the declines is expected to slow unless coal comes under additional pressure from stronger climate policies or lower-than-expected gas prices.

“Wind and solar PV are growing rapidly in many parts of the world. With investment in new plants drying up, coal power capac-ity outside Asia is clearly declining and will continue to do so in the coming years,” said Keisuke Sadamori, the IEA’s director of en-ergy markets and security.

“But this is not the end of coal, since de-mand continues to expand in Asia,” Sadamori added. The “region’s share of global coal power generation has climbed from just over 20% in 1990 to almost 80% in 2019, meaning coal’s fate is increasingly tied to decisions made in Asian capitals.”

The report highlights that countries in South and Southeast Asia – such as India, Indonesia and Vietnam – are relying on coal

to fuel their economic growth. Natural gas and oil have traditionally been the main sources of power generation in Pakistan, but the country has commissioned 5GW of coal power capacity since 2017, and another 5GW is set to come online in the next few years.

In Bangladesh, where natural gas has long generated the bulk of electricity supply, coal will gain share in the coming years, with 10GW of capacity in the pipeline.

“In 2019, global coal power generation will experience the biggest drop ever and coal power generation in India will prob-ably decline for the first time in 45 years,” Sadamori said.

The “global picture, however, has not changed much. Coal is disappearing in many advanced economies, but it remains resilient and is even continuing to grow in developing Asia.”

(Source: rechargenews.com)

Solar Provider Group (SPG), a Toronto, Canada based global solar development company, has arranged a team to enter the Brazilian solar market with the goal to complete investments totaling D 250 million over the next five years.

“I am excited at the opportunity the Brazilian market represents, for both Solar Provider Group, and the global solar industry. We look forward to building strong partner-ships and providing clean, sustainable energy to my home country of Brazil.”

The solar market in Brazil is growing exponentially, with 3.3 GW deployed in 2019 alone, 44% growth since 2018, and an estimated 126 GW by 2040.

Public opinion and support has been essential for this substantial growth. In a recent survey by Ibope Inteligencia, 93% of Brazilians want to produce their own renewable electricity at home.

Additionally, in a 2015 survey done by DataSenado, 85% of Brazilians supported more public investments in renewable energies, such as solar and wind.

The government’s goal is to attract $8 billion in private direct investments, generating more than 160,000 new jobs.

SPG believes that the Brazilian market has the right set of opportunities that fit perfectly into the company’s global

strategy. The solar markets

With a track record that spans 11 countries and over a dozen U.S. states, the company excels at executing in young, fast-growing solar markets.

To achieve its ambitions goals, SPG is looking for local development partners in Brazil, as well as corporate buyers of energy.

The SPG team is led by Cesar Frota, a veteran executive

in the renewable power industry. “I am excited at the op-portunity the Brazilian market represents, for both Solar Provider Group, and the global solar industry. We look for-ward to building strong partnerships and providing clean, sustainable energy to my home country of Brazil,” said Frota.

With its financing, structuring, engineering and devel-opment expertise, SPG is looking to build relationships with Brazilian solar companies that excel at permitting and de-velopment on a local level.

SPG has the experience in forming strong partnership and executing at scale, thus increasing deployment speed and adding value.

Having applied this strategy successfully in various emerg-ing economies across the globe, SPG’s approach benefits all parties involved, including helping local developers to scale faster and more profitably while minimizing project attrition.

SPG is also looking to build relationships with corporations with significant energy costs that are interested in buying solar power at a discount compared to current retail prices.

SPG’s one-stop solution enables companies to switch a substantial portion of their energy consumption to cheaper and cleaner power in a simple, sustainable fashion.

(Source: businesswire.com)

Numerous water, electricity projects inaugurated in northeastern Iran

By Christopher Hopson

E N E R G Yd e s k

E N E R G Yd e s k

Daily gasoline consumption falls to 75m liters

Oil prices rise in quiet Christmas Eve trade amid supply cuts

Energy abundance is the new normal for oilGlobal oil markets notched up a number of milestones this year that echoed the story of the past decade: the world has shifted from an era of supply tightness to plenty.

What distinguished the developments of 2019 was not just how big they were but often how little impact they had. From the world’s biggest-ever initial public offering to its worst-ever supply disruption, a barrage of sanctions on exporters to two OPEC interventions, never before had so many momentous events left investors so unmoved.

At the heart of that indifference was the force that has transformed world energy balances over the past 10 years: the American revolution in shale oil and gas, which is cush-ioning global markets against shocks that would once have sent prices rocketing. This too achieved a landmark in 2019, turning the U.S. into a net exporter of crude and refined oil.

And there was another turning point showing the years ahead may also be marked by supply abundance. For the first time, the world’s leading energy institution predicted that demand for oil - once expected to keep growing almost indefinitely - will stall at the turn of the next decade.

“This year is probably the first in my recollection where oil prices so extremely decoupled from geopolitical risk,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, senior energy and environment fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “It was also the year when analysts and car companies started to talk about the possibility of peak car and peak demand with increasing probability.”

The biggest headlines of 2019 came out of the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia. Riyadh finally floated part of state oil giant Saudi Aramco after a laborious three-year process, securing a valuation of $2 trillion that made it the world’s biggest company.

The local buyersYet the 1.5% stake sold was just a portion of the original

plan, and mostly marketed to local buyers instead of the for-eign investors once courted, as fund managers balked at the lofty asking price.

The sudden loss of 5.7 million barrels a day was exactly the crisis the industry had feared for decades, and in previous years might have triggered a prolonged rally. Although prices initially rocketed 19% in an unprecedented surge, the gains dissipated in two weeks.

Riyadh’s attempts to shore up oil prices also yielded lack-luster results.

The Saudis led the OPEC cartel and its partners in not one but two coordinated production cutbacks this year, an unusual level of activity for the organization, and reduced its own output far more than initially planned.

Their efforts were amplified by extreme levels of political involvement in the oil market, as U.S. sanctions squeezed exports from OPEC members Iran and Venezuela to the lowest in decades. Yet prices remain about 12% below this year’s high, trading near $66 a barrel in London.

The main source of the cartel’s struggle remained the U.S. shale-oil industry, which has turned the country into the world’s biggest oil producer, and propelled nationwide production to a new record of almost 13 million barrels a day this year.

Even as the shale boom shows some signs of slowing, pro-duction from offshore deposits once thought unviable in an era of low prices - such as Brazil and Norway - is springing to life.

“Despite major geopolitical tensions around the world, oil markets have remained surprisingly calm,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency in Paris. “This is mainly due to significant amounts of oil supply coming into the market from the U.S. as a result of the shale revolution, and from other non-OPEC producers.”

The transformation though isn’t confined to the supply side of the market.

The IEA, which for years projected that oil demand would increase for the foreseeable future, predicted last month that consumption will plateau at the turn of the next decade as efforts to avert catastrophic climate change spur the use of more efficient car engines and electric cars.

Growth in world oil will dwindleGrowth in world oil demand will dwindle from about 1

million barrels a day, or 1%, currently to roughly 100,000 a day in the 2030s, the IEA said. Sales of passenger vehicles with internal combustion engines are probably already in decline, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The change is increasingly occupying financial investors, who are shifting their portfolios from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy sources. Reflecting that anxiety, the or-ganizers of the “Oil & Money” conference, held annually in London for the past four decades, announced a re-branding that will remove both words from the title.

Perhaps the greatest symbol of changing attitudes has been the rise of 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg. The “strike for climate” she began at school last year became a global phenomenon, leading her to address the United Nations in New York and earn Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ award - a level of international popularity the organizers of the Aramco IPO can only dream of.

These were the details of the news Energy abundance is the new normal for oil for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.

It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at Gulf News and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.

(Source: alkhaleejtoday.com)

Global coal demand declines while renewables on the rise: IEA

Solar Provider Group plans to invest D 250m in Brazil

Iranian Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian inaugurates Abiverd earthfill dam in Dargaz county in northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi on Tuesday.

REUTERS — The 21st century’s teen years, bookended by a financial crisis at the start and the fintech revolution at the end, were a decade of disruption. From negative borrowing costs to bitcoin, here are ten trends that have upended tradi-tional economic and investment models in the past decade:

1/FAANG-TASTIC FIVEIf they were a country, they would be the fifth largest in

terms of economic output, outgunning Britain and snap-ping at Germany’s heels. With a $3.9 trillion market value (versus around $100 billion in January 2010), tech giants Facebook, Amazon.com, Apple, Netflix and Google-owner Alphabet — collectively known as the FAANGs — are not only at the vanguard of history’s longest share bullrun but have transformed how humans work, shop, consume news and relax.

FAANGs comprise seven percent of the MSCI global equity index today, up from around 1.6 percent in early 2010. The savvy investor who sank $25,000 in Netflix in 2009 would now be sitting on $1 million.

And in the slip stream of the five pioneers, other tech titans are rising, from China’s BAT grouping of Baidu, Al-ibaba and Tencent to sector “disupters” Uber, Airbnb and Deliveroo. For better or worse, the world — and markets — have changed for ever.

2/PAYING TO BORROWA defining feature of the years following the 2008-2009

meltdown was the slide of interest rates and government borrowing costs below 0 percent, possibly for the first time in history. U.S. and German 10-year borrowing costs collapsed by 200 to 400 basis points this decade; the latter to as low as minus 0.7 percent. Roughly $12 trillion in debt carries negative yields, almost a quarter of all bonds outstanding.

The drivers — central banks’ asset buying, sub-zero interest rates, yield curve manipulation and the tech revolution’s deflationary effects — were in themselves groundbreaking, at least in terms of scale. The Bank of Japan holds assets collectively worth more than Japan’s economy. The European Central Bank’s balance sheet is a quarter the euro zone’s annual output but double decade-ago levels.

3/A CENTURY IN BONDS

With record-low rates and yield-starved investors, bonds with tenors longer than the average human lifespan have caught on.

A handful of 100-year bonds were around in 2010, but Mexico’s $1 billion issue maturing 2110 started an issu-ance surge that saw U.S. and British universities, Ireland, Belgium and Austria, U.S. municipalities and corporations such as Coca Cola and Petrobras sell century bonds. Even junk-rated serial defaulter Argentina drew huge bids for its 2117-maturity bond.

Just over 1,400 century bonds, worth almost $170 billion are now outstanding, according to Refinitiv.

But ... caveat emptor. Buyers of the Argentine century bond have watched it lose half its value. Austria’s issue, also sold in 2017, is up more than 60 percent.

4/COINING ITIn 2010, Bitcoin was an idea causing ripples in niche online

forums. Ten years later, cryptocurrencies are intertwined with finance, business and politics.

Crypto markets, non-existent in 2010, are now worth over $200 billion, having hit a $815 billion peak at the apex of the bitcoin bubble. Having changed hands for just 3 cents in its first public trade, bitcoin now trades over $7,500. That’s off its peak near $20,000, though - a reminder of its volatility. Usage has also spread. Coin Metrics estimates that from 130 active bitcoin addresses a decade back, there are now nearly 750,000.

Crypto took many guises through the 2010s, from rebel technology to a tool for criminals, speculative token to the great hope for frictionless payments. While it never really shook off doubts over security, virtual money and block-chain tech have evolved at a dizzying pace, typified recently by Facebook’s push to launch its Libra token and steps by central banks to create their own digital currencies.

5/PASSIVE AGGRESSIVESometimes it’s better to be passive. The punter who opted

to ride the past decade’s equity boom via an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking the S&P500 would have earned 200 percent but at a fraction of the fee a mutual fund manager would have charged. Hence spectacular ETF growth — assets have swelled to almost $7 trillion, from below $2 trillion in 2010, consultancy ETFGI says. Low investment fees should help extend the boom: total ETF assets could hit $50 trillion in 2030, BofA predicts.

6/INVESTMENT CLIMATE

With the hottest four years on record occurring in the past four years (according to the World Meteorological Or-ganization), climate is shaping investor thinking in a way it did not a decade ago.

Crop failures, floods and wildfires can all inflict portfo-lio losses. More funds are reducing exposure to polluting industries, embracing renewables and water conservation technologies or investing in the likes of fake-meat firm Be-yond Meat, whose 2019 IPO was greeted with rapture on Wall Street.

Over $30 trillion is held in sustainable or green invest-ments, the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance estimates, more than doubling from 2011.

Green bonds debuted in 2007 to fund projects with en-vironment benefits. This year, issuance totaled a record $200 billion-plus.

7/SHALE OIL

Having learned to wring oil from shale with fracking, the United States has vaulted to the top of the oil producer rankings, with 12.5 million barrels per day of output, double 2010 levels. Shale oil production exceeds 9 million bpd, from below one million bpd in 2010, making the United States an oil exporter for the first time in 40 years.

The shale boom is partly why conversations around energy have switched from peak supply to peak demand. Surging output comes alongside environmental concerns, meaning an oil glut is likelier than shortages.

8/ELECTRIC DREAMS

Having relied for over a century on the internal combus-tion engine, the global auto industry is being upended by battery-powered cars. In 2010, electric car maker Tesla went public and its shares, launched at $17, now trade at $380.

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been pledged to develop a new generation of electric cars. Industries sup-plying car batteries are booming and demand for their main component, lithium, could triple by 2025.

EV sales so far have disappointed — two out of 100 cars sold today are electric. Petrol and diesel vehicles are cheaper and EV charging infrastructure is limited.

But growing alarm over climate change and government incentives to steer consumers away from petrol means the electric revolution looks unstoppable.

9/FLASH BOYS, FLASH CRASHESTech’s transformative power has not bypassed currency

trading floors. Ten years ago, dealers did the buying and selling for banks and clients. Today, electronic trading com-prises 90 percent of some products, doubling in this period. Another shift is toward “algos” — computer programs that follow pre-set instructions, or algorithms, to trade, often at speeds impossible for humans.

From being largely nonexistent a decade ago, algo trad-ing now comprises a fifth of FX spot volumes on Refinitiv FXall, a platform for the buyside. On another venue EBS, over 80 percent of the order book is algo-driven, the Bank for International Settlements estimates.

One side effect is that ‘flash crashes’ — wild exchange rate swings — have become frequent, ostensibly due to algos that are programmed to turn off if markets become volatile.

The winners? Those who can afford the most sophisti-cated algos. Almost half of global currency trading is now with the top five banks, with smaller institutions — and of course, traders — having to exit.

10/GOING TO POTMarijuana took a trip this decade from street corners to

stock markets. The first pure-play U.S. “potstock” — Tilray — debuted on NasDaq in 2018, leaping 36 percent on the first day. And 18 months since Canada legalized recreational cannabis, hundreds of potstocks are trading.

Pot also spawned one of the decade’s asset bubbles. Dubbed the green rush, shares in firms such as Aurora Cannabis and Canopy Growth rose several-fold before peaking in October 2018. At their high, the 10 biggest components of a potstock benchmark, the Alternative Harvest ETF, were worth $50 billion.

A year later, $30 billion had gone up in smoke. Blame regulation and overproduction hitting weed prices. A sign of a maturing industry? The highs may have evaporated, but potstocks aren’t going anywhere. Except perhaps London, which may host the next set of cannabis listings in 2020.

EURONEWS — 2019 has been a year of global street protests. All have had differ-ent aims and methods, but they have often had elements in common: the fight for po-litical freedom and against inequality and corruption.

Most of them happened simultaneously, influencing each other on how to express their demands and keep fighting for their ideals.

FranceIn Europe, the anti-government demon-

strations’ most visible proponents were France’s Yellow Vests. Some of the protests finished with major riots, among the most violent since the famous disturbances of May 1968.

Initially inspired in mid-2018 by rising fuel prices and a high cost of living, the pro-testers essentially accused the government of ignoring the needs of ordinary citizens.

Eastern EuropeIn some Eastern European countries, in-

cluding Georgia, Albania and Romania, the anti-government protesters were angered by the alleged corruption and demanded more democratic reforms.

In Russia, protests were held in the sum-mertime following the cancellation of the registration of independent candidates wishing to participate in the Moscow City Council elections. Demonstrators continued street protests demanding the release of around 1,500 detainees, some of whom were handed long prison sentences.

Central and South AmericaIn Chile, the protests were initially sparked

by a subway fare hike, seen as the last straw by many in an already difficult situation. The frustration with the high cost of living fueled the anger of thousands of people. The country is wealthy and generally stable, but also has what many regard as high levels of inequality.

In Ecuador, a general strike paralyzed the country. The president declared a state of emergency and then cancelled his austerity measures.

In Bolivia, it was claims of electoral fraud in the general election there that ignited the mass protests. The President, Evo Morales, fled to Mexico. A new vote is expected in the coming months.

Middle eastA surprise increase in fuel prices was the

spark that moved hundreds of thousands of Iranians all over their country to protest

against fuel price hikes. Known to be one of the worst unrest in four decades, the government blocked the internet nationwide for a week.

In Iraq, the prime minister Adil Ab-dul-Mahdi resigned, pushed out by mass protests against corruption and a perception of poor services.

In Lebanon, the government stepped down after announcing a tax rise in the middle of an economic crisis.

AnkarraStreet protests across the world shook

the year 2019, as mass demonstrations took place against corruption, inequality, alleged election rigging, price hikes.

According to data compiled by Anadolu Agency, millions of people filled the streets in 17 countries, from Asia to Europe and from South America to the Middle East. Hundreds

lost their lives as still thousands were injured or detained.

AlgeriaAlgeria became the epicenter of the pro-

tests in the Mahgreb. The announcement that Abdelaziz Bouteflika was to run in an attempt to gain a fifth term as president was too much for millions of Algerians.

After weeks of mass demonstrations, Bouteflika stepped aside after the army withdrew its support from him. New elec-tions were held in December, but the protests have continued, as many believe that the old regime is still ruling the country despite the figurehead stepping down.

AsiaIn Hong Kong, it all began with a con-

troversial bill that would allow extradition of fugitives to mainland China. The bill was withdrawn but the protesters pressed on with demands for deeper, democratic reforms.

The unrest in Hong Kong is far from over. Like most of the protests mentioned here, it looks like they will continue far into 2020.

Students in Indonesia’s major cities, especially the capital Jakarta, organized to protest corruption and new criminal law regulations. Five people lost their lives in the demonstrations.

In India, protests were held in December against the country’s new citizenship law, which granted citizenship to six religious groups from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bang-ladesh, but was changed to exclude Muslim immigrants in the same circumstances.

(Source: Euronews/Anadolu)

DECEMBER 25, 20196I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

INTERNATIONAL

Disruptive decade: Ten things the teen years brought world markets

Nord Stream 2 sanctions are a win-win for PutinOILPRICE — The construction of Nord Stream 2 (NS2) has been a rollercoaster of a project with many ups and downs for both its proponents and opponents. On Friday, Trump approved sanctions on companies involved in the construction of the project. The move by Washington has been strongly condemned by both Germany and Russia, who see the sanctions as evidence of the Trump adminis-tration interfering with their internal affairs.

The sanctions mean that the visas of employees can be revoked and assets can be frozen. Allseas, a Dutch-Swiss private company, is going to be significantly affected because it owns considerable assets in the U.S. and the specialized nature of its operations makes it essential for the project.

Washington’s risky gameThe NS2 sanctions are one of the few topics about which

both Democrats and Republicans can agree on. President Trump’s quick response regarding the signing into law of the sanctions bill shows his intention to be tough with Russia. That toughness is partly to do with the Democrats’ accusation of Moscow’s rigging of the 2016 Presidential Election with the collusion of Trump’s campaign team.

The current administration’s ‘America First’ policy and tough stance regarding alleged trade disadvantages has put the U.S. on a collision course with trading partners. But Washington’s newest sanctions on NS2 are arguably the most risky yet with the potential of upending its rela-tionship with a crucial ally.

The losersAllseas announced, shortly after the imposition of sanc-

tions, that it is suspending construction activities and wait for further information on the U.S.’ intentions. Although the administration has 60 days to identify the companies working on the pipeline before it imposes punitive restric-tions, the Dutch-Swiss company decided to act preventively. This means that it is uncertain when NS2 will be completed. It is companies like Allseas who are currently set to suffer most from Friday’s sanctions.

According to Gazprom, costs have already ballooned due to Denmark’s foot-dragging concerning approval for activities in its territorial waters. The current suspension could increase the financial burden even more. To the det-riment of Gazprom and customers in northwestern Europe who will now need to find alternative sources of natural gas on the international market to replace expected supply from Russia.

Another important loser, paradoxically, is the U.S. itself. Relations between the U.S. and the EU are at a historic low and a trade war between the two may soon be upon us. Washington’s aggressive policy towards Europe under the current regime has already led to a more assertive. Eu-ropean foreign policy and even talks of a European army. Although unlikely in the short to medium term, the fact that it is being discussed at all shows how U.S.-European relations have deteriorated.

Even Brussels, which at the start of 2019 was trying to obstruct NS2’s construction, has joined the chorus of criticism being leveled at Washington. According to EU Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan, “Brussels opposes the imposition of sanctions against any EU companies con-ducting legitimate business.”

The unexpected winnerBesides Ukraine, who risked being circumvented by NS2

and Turk Stream, an unlikely country stands to benefit from the sanctions. While it may sound confusing, Russia is a beneficiary of the suspended activities on the construction of Gazprom’s most important project. While it costs Mos-cow hundreds of millions in lost income and additional investments, the country is benefitting on a geostrategic and political level.

For a mere $9.5 billion, NS2’s price tag, Moscow has unintentionally managed to drive another wedge between key Western allies. Berlin is furious about the sanctions and its already fraught relations with Washington are set to escalate even further. According to German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, the American sanctions amount to “interference in autonomous decisions taken in Europe.”

How the Nord Stream 2 saga will endWhat is certain is that NS2 will be completed eventually.

Most of the work on the 1,230 kilometer or 765 mile long pipeline has already been finished. Also, the vast majority of the $9.5 billion in investments have already been spent. The biggest problem is that Allseas is one of the few com-panies in the world with the specialized vessels to weld, test, and drop the pipes to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Technically, there are three possibilities for how this saga could develop. The first scenario would see construction activities delayed for an unspecified amount of time, before a breakthrough allows NS2 to be finished. The deadlock could be breached by political means or technical assistance from different suppliers.

In the second scenario, NS2’s completion is made im-possible after which construction is abandoned entirely. This is the most unlikely scenario.

The final scenario would see Trump start a trade war with the EU and use NS2 as a bargaining chip. Washing-ton may offer a potential sanctions waiver to Allseas to extract more concessions from the EU and Germany. In this scenario, NS2’s competition would only come after the EU-U.S. trade war is brought to an end.

Uncertainty aheadThe next step in this saga is for Brussels and Berlin to

send a diplomatic mission to Washington to find ways out of the current crisis. Whoever wins in the ongoing battle concerning NS2, the situation is a win-win for Moscow.

Vanand Meliksetian for Oilprice.com

2019: A year of global street protests

7I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

ANALYSIS & INTERVIEWDECEMBER 25, 2019

Has India’s Narendra Modi gone too far with controversial new citizenship law?

By Tara John

Erdogan’s latest bid to reshape the

Mediterranean provides military

support to Tripoli against

Russian-backed rebels.

The spectacle of Aung San Suu Kyi, a once-persecuted Nobel peace laureate now

defending her country against allegations of genocide over its treatment of the Rohingya minority, has been one of bewildering irony.

By Nick Beake

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Indian govern-ment has stripped the country’s only Muslim-majority state of autonomy and rolled out a citizenship check in the north-eastern state of Assam that effectively left nearly 2 million people stateless, many of them Muslims.

And when Modi backed the passage of a controversial new citizenship law, which prioritizes immigrants from three Muslim-majority countries of virtually every religious stripe over Islam,protests broke out across India.

The Prime Minister, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was re-elected in a landslide victory earlier this year, has dominated Indian politics since first sweeping to power in 2014. While he has been hailed for his efforts to bring prosperity to poorer regions and root out corruption, his emphasis on empowering India’s Hindu majority has raised concerns among its Muslim minority.

To Modi’s critics, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) -- which fast-tracks applications for immigrants, including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who arrived in India before 2015 -- has become the most brazen example of a Hindu nationalist agenda aimed at marginal-izing Indian Muslims. Opponents say it is part of an effort to tear at the fabric of India’s secular identity.

Since the law passed through both houses of Parliament last week, demonstrations have swept university campus-es in at least nine states. Protesters have taken to the streets across Assam and Tripura over fears that large numbers of Hindus, who migrated to the region in the past few decades, will now be able to get their citizenship fast-tracked. Many there fear it will dramatically recast the religious and ethnic makeup of the northeastern states -- home to 200 distinct indigenous groups.

“In the north, they believe the bill has gone too far and the amnesty will allow too much immigration,” Milan Vaishnav, director and senior fellow of the South Asia Program in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN.

The new law will make it more difficult for Muslim migrants to get Indian citizenship. And critics are worried it might pave the way for nationwide citizenship tests, stripping the rights of Muslims who have lived in India for generations but cannot prove their family’s lineage -- turning countless people stateless.

Home Minister Amit Shah has repeatedly said that the government will roll out a national citizenship registry.

Modi tried to reassure the public on Monday, saying on Twitter that the new law “does not affect any citizen of India of any religion.” And that “no Indian has anything to worry” about.

But when a citizenship registry took place in Assam earlier this year it left 1.9 million people off a list of Indian citizens. The government said at the time that no one would be declared a foreigner if they are not on the list, but that failed to temper concerns.

What is at stake is “the future of liberal democracy in India,” Vaishnav said. “And it looks like a side, which has been asleep or at least silent, has really woken up and made sure that their voices are being heard.”

The backlashThe protests are sure to have caught Modi -- who has

developed a reputation for being a Teflon premier -- some-what off guard. The leader has enjoyed widespread support,

even when his public initiatives have hurt citizens -- and the economy.

Buoyed by a strong grip on power and a faithful Hindu base, Modi’s BJP has doubled down on what critics call the party’s nationalist agenda, known as Hindutva.

Critics are worried the party is using its stronger mandate to redefine India -- home to the world’s second largest Muslim population -- as a religious state and a Hindu homeland.

Progressive Indians watched in horror as Modi stripped Jammu and Kashmir -- India’s only Muslim-majority state -- of its partial autonomy in August. Yet “very few people stormed the streets,” Vaishnav said.

This, in part, may explain why the government failed to anticipate the potential backlash to the citizenship bill. As protests roiled the country over the weekend, the government shut down the internet in several affected states in a bid to maintain law and order.

“The BJP have been adept at using their grassroots presence to build support for their policies and have been effective at sidelining institutions such as parts of the media,” Champa Patel, head of the Asia-Pacific program at the UK-based Chatham House think tank, told CNN.

But they “have been backfooted by the scale of resistance to (the law),” Patel said. “The question now is how will they respond because it’s the first real test that they have faced.”

World is watchingIndia’s government says the law is a humanitarian measure

to help persecuted religious minorities from its three neigh-boring countries -- Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

And as protests continued in the capital New Delhi on Tuesday, Modi accused political rivals of fomenting dissent and encouraging the discontent.

Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia Director of Human

Rights Watch, told CNN that the government needs to “un-derstand that a Hindu majoritarian ideology may not be acceptable to a large number of Indian citizens.” That is a view shared by more than 500 jurists, lawyers, academics and actors, who have condemned the legislation in a statement seen by Indian media.

But in spite of mounting grievances, analysts think it is unlikely that the BJP will scrap the law. “Modi still remains, head and shoulders, the most popular politician in India,” Vaishnav said.

The BJP has a wide mandate since their second consec-utive win in the general election, a race fought on a cultural agenda that appealed to their hard-line base. “And I don’t think they are going to deviate from it,” Vaishnav added.

In the meantime, India lacks a foreplan for what comes next. Its detention centers do not have the capacity need-ed to house “millions of people that could potentially be caught up,” if a nationwide citizenship check is rolled out, Vaishnav said.

And there appears to be no existing talks with neighbor-ing countries, like Bangladesh, on the issue of deportation, Patel, from Chatham House, added.

As concerns mount, India watchers say Western govern-ments have taken too soft a touch with the country -- widely seen as a potential democratic counterpoint to neighboring China.

“I think what that does is turn a blind eye to just how authoritarian the BJP has been within India,” Patel said.

The foreign community “is waiting and watching to see how the (law) will be implemented,” Vaishnav added.

“Are you going to see large numbers of Muslims detained or lose their citizenship? It is a game of wait and see.”

(Source: CNN)

In the years after she was released from house arrest in 2010, princes, presidents and prime ministers welcomed Aung San Suu Kyi with open arms into their own opulent homes.

The feel-good factor of rubbing shoulders with someone who had dedicated much of her adult life to the pursuit of democracy was irresistible.

Then, the grandeur of the Peace Palace in The Hague - a marble-floored monument to global harmony - would have been com-fortable surroundings for Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. A native habitat, even.

But not now. There was no red carpet, welcoming committee or brass band.

Instead the light pouring through the stained glass of the Great Hall of Justice il-luminated an often haunted-looking figure who had chosen to come and listen to descriptions of some of the most unimaginably gruesome acts. Acts said to have been committed in her country. On her watch.

After two years on trial in the court of international public opinion, Aung San Suu Kyi was now trying to win over the 17 judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) - as she defended the same Myanmar military which had taken away her freedom for 15 years.

It was something she - and the rest of the world - surely never imagined would happen.

The cognitive dissonance of a faded beacon of universal human rights arguing against the horrific testimony of some of the 740,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees who had her fled her country pulsed through The Hague this week.

I realized that she was taking her seat in court 28 years to the day after she had accepted her Nobel prize, in absentia. It was a quirk of history that defined the slow-mo-tion transformation of Aung San Suu Kyi’s global standing.

I will long remember certain images from this remarkable week.

There were the Rohingya survivors who’d travelled from the crushing bleakness of Cox’s Bazar - the largest refugee camp in the world - to be guests in the court.

Every morning, they arrived in the same type of sparkling executive transport as Ms

Suu Kyi: afforded the same comfort as the leader of the country accused of trying to exterminate their people. For these three representatives of their stateless community, the scales of justice had finally levelled, if only for a few hours.

Then there was the face of Aung San Suu Kyi, possibly hearing for the first time in such brutal detail the crimes alleged to have been perpetrated by the Burmese Army in their clearance operation in Rakhine state in Au-gust 2017.

Such was the interest in Aung San Suu Kyi’s appearance, they had to open a second room to contain the international media. There were rueful shakes of the head, gentle intakes of breath as lawyers for The Gambia read out graphic accounts from Rohingya survivors: pregnant women beaten to death, mass rape, children thrown into fires.

We watched Ms Suu Kyi’s face - seem-ingly frozen at times - on a large television as she listened to the allegations against her Myanmar.

Aung San Suu Kyi may have sat alongside her legal team and a small Burmese dele-gation but she often cut a lonely figure. She is a leader who has alienated herself from

former friends in the West and taken refuge in the powerful embrace of China, which continues to provide invaluable economic support and political protection in the UN Security Council.

It is the certainty of a Chinese veto on any vote on Myanmar’s alleged crimes that has blocked the most obvious path to justice for the Rohingya: a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

I will remember the crowds outside court - both for and against Ms Suu Kyi. More than a hundred supporters had flown the 5,000 miles from Myanmar to wave banners and shout slogans supporting “Mother Suu”.

I have no doubt the affection for her was genuine - this was no communist regime-style gathering where pure fear drives the chanting and nobody want to be first to stop applaud-ing. In fact, they sang an old favorite which criticizes the former military dictatorship - the apparatus of evil which truly instilled terror in people’s hearts.

That said, there was an approved list of songs and a ban on waving flags of Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party. Presumably, this was to avoid the im-

pression the NLD was benefitting from her appearance in The Hague. But be in no doubt her defense of the nation will have given her a huge domestic boost ahead of next year’s general election in Myanmar.

I saw three photographs this week which felt significant. The first was the image of 10 murdered Rohingya men in a grave in the village of Inn Din, shown to the court. This was the massacre exposed by Reuters reporters Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone. The journalistic world rewarded them with a Pulitzer Prize; Myanmar handed them more than 500 days in prison. Aung San Suu Kyi’s legal team suggested it was a gratuitous and tasteless picture to show.

When it was the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s turn to put something on screen she chose a snap of a smiling crowd at a football match in Maungdaw township in Rakhine State. Buddhists and Muslims united, shoulder to shoulder. It felt a strange, naive and weak response to the Inn Din photo.

The third and final photograph was sent to me by a Burmese colleague in Yangon. I received it just as Aung San Suu Kyi was addressing the court for the final time. It showed a tank on the street.

I froze. Was this a military coup? An at-tempt by the still-powerful generals to steal back the country while the democratically elected leader was defending their troops to the world? It turned out the tanks were apparently being transported to a new base but it caused hearts to race in a country whose transition to democracy is still precarious.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s decision to come here ensured this would always become a massive spectacle and one which marked the end of any lingering hope in the West that she would distance herself from the army she doesn’t control.

After two years of blistering international criticism for failing to use her moral authority to stand up for the Rohingya, she is now the permanent face of the legal defense of some of the worst abuses imaginable.

The generals, safe for now and far from the winter chill of The Hague, have watched a Nobel Peace Prize winner trying, in many people’s eyes, to defend the indefensible. They wouldn’t have it any other way.

(Source: BBC)

Newly aggressive Turkey forges alliance with LibyaFOREIGN POLICY.COM — Turkey is meshing together two Mediterranean crises in a desperate bid to reshape the region in its own favor, with potentially nasty implications both for the ongoing civil war in Libya and future energy development in the eastern Mediterranean.

This month, Turkey’s unusu-al outreach to the internation-ally recognized government of Libya has resulted in a formal agreement for Ankara to pro-vide military support, including arms and possibly troops, in its bid to hold off an offensive from Russian-backed rebels in the eastern part of the country. The military agreement came just weeks after Turkey and that same Government of Nation-al Accord reached an unusual agreement to essentially carve up much of the energy-rich east-ern Mediterranean between them—threatening to cut out Greece and Cyprus from the coming bonanza.

Turkey’s pledge of military support, which Libya formally ac-cepted last week, comes at a critical time in the battle between the United Nations-recognized government and the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army, which just renewed its assault on the city of Misrata and again demanded that Turkish-backed militias with-draw from the capital city of Tripoli. Both the United States and the European Union expressed concern at the escalation in Libya, and especially international involvement on both sides—which includes ongoing violations of the U.N. arms embargo on Libya.

Turkey’s double-barreled approach to Libya is a response to its

growing diplomatic isolation in the region. Turkey has fallen out with the United States over its incursion into northern Syria and is still at odds with Saudi Arabia over the murder of a journalist in a Saudi consulate in Turkey. Turkey is on the opposite side of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia in Libya. It is battling Egypt for influence around the Red Sea and sees a constellation of states such as Israel, Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt teaming up to exploit the region’s energy leaving Turkey in the cold.

From Ankara’s perspective, the pair of agreements with Libya potentially offer a way to shape the region’s future in its own favor—or at least prevent what it sees as the unacceptable rise in influence of rivals like Russia and Egypt in the Mediterranean.

“Turkey’s recent agreement with Libya’s legitimate govern-ment about maritime delimitation line and defense cooperation deal is crucial for protecting Turkey’s and Libya’s rights in the Eastern Mediterranean region,” said a Monday column in the government-friendly Daily Sabah newspaper.

The link between military support for Libya and Turkey’s geopolitical position in the region was the declaration, formalized earlier this month, of a new maritime boundary line between Turkey and Libya. As a result of that bilateral agreement, Turkey is laying claim to a huge chunk of the eastern Mediterranean—an area that includes large reservoirs of natural gas that Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, and even Lebanon are racing to exploit.

For several years, Turkey has pushed back against efforts by Cyprus to exploit those gas discoveries by harassing drill ships operating there with Turkish naval vessels and send-ing its own drilling ships into Cypriot waters. By laying legal claim to a big chunk of the Mediterranean—especially between Greece and Egypt—even if only on paper, Ankara hopes to forestall those other countries’ claims to the resources. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday insisted he won’t back down from his new Libyan deals, despite the protests from other countries.

The energy question in the eastern Mediterranean is taking on new urgency from Ankara’s point of view. The United States passed legislation last week that will boost U.S. support for energy development in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as greater security assistance for Greece and Cyprus.

Perhaps more importantly, after years of talking about it, Greece, Israel, and Cyprus are getting closer to a deal on a pipeline that would carry natural gas right through those disputed waters, via Crete, to Greece and Italy. On Sunday, the three countries said they could formalize an intergovernmental agreement on the MidEast pipeline as soon as Jan. 2, though crucially Italy hasn’t yet indicated that it will sign the accord.

The project would be the culmination of the so-called East-ern Mediterranean Gas Forum that Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, and Greece signed earlier this year—pointedly excluding Turkey from the club.

Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Taher Siala, left, and his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, cement closer ties between the two countries as part of Ankara’s push to reshape the Mediterranean on Dec. 22. MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Demonstrators shout slogans during a protest in Guwahata on Friday, December 13.

Myanmar Rohingya: Aung San Suu Kyi cuts a haunted figure in court

DECEMBER 25, 20198I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

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S C I E N C EDECEMBER 25, 2019

If you live in Europe, Asia, Australia or Africa, you could be in for a treat - you might be in the path of the last solar eclipse of 2019.

On December 26, places such as India, Singapore, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and some parts of Australia will be treated to a ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse to end the year and, depending who you ask, the decade as well.

Unlike the great 2017 solar eclipse that was visible across the United States, this one will leave a little ring of Sun when hitting the point of totality, a type of type of eclipse is

called an annular eclipse.The reason we get this ‘ring of fire’ is due

to the distance of our planet’s little satellite. The Moon is currently closer to its apogee (meaning it’s farther away from Earth), which makes it appear 3 percent smaller than the Sun when viewed from Earth.

Although an annular eclipse might not be as jaw-dropping as a total solar eclipse, it’s still amazing to think that the Moon and Sun are aligned so perfectly to produce magnificent celestial displays for us here on Earth.

Interestingly enough, solar eclipses always occur within roughly two weeks of a lunar eclipse, because of the way the eclipse season works. During eclipse season (which happens every six months or so), whenever there is a full Moon, a lunar eclipse occurs; and, whenever there is a new Moon, a solar eclipse occurs.

The current season’s lunar eclipse is happening on 10 January, but unfortunately it’s a penumbral lunar eclipse, which is hard to distinguish from a usual full Moon.

The last eclipse of 2019 also gives us a

moment to reflect back on the 2010s.It’s been a huge decade for science, with

black hole images, CRISPR breakthroughs and both amazing and uncanny deep-learning from AI. But it’s also been a decade filled with heatwaves, pollution, and inaction on climate change.

There’s something rather comforting in knowing that at least some things – such as eclipses – don’t care about our issues and will just keep occurring anyway.

(Source: sciencealert.com)

The last solar eclipse of 2019 will create a beautiful ‘ring of fire’ this week

Massive gas disk raises questions about planet formation theoryAstronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) found a young star surrounded by an astonishing mass of gas. The star, called 49 Ceti, is 40 million years old and conventional theories of planet formation predict that the gas should have disappeared by that age. The enigmatically large amount of gas requests a reconsideration of our current understanding of planet formation.

Planets are formed in gaseous dusty disks called protoplanetary disks around young stars. Dust particles aggregate together to form Earth-like planets or to become the cores of more massive planets by collecting large amounts of gas from the disk to form Jupiter-like gaseous giant planets. According to current theories, as time goes by the gas in the disk is either incorporated into planets or blown away by radiation pressure from the central star. In the end, the star is surrounded by planets and a disk of dusty debris. This dusty disk, called a debris disk, implies that the planet formation process is almost finished.

Recent advances in radio telescopes have yielded a surprise in this field. Astronomers have found that several debris disk still possess some amount of gas. If the gas remains long in the debris disks, planetary seeds may have enough time and material to evolve to giant planets like Jupiter. Therefore, the gas in a debris disk affects the composition of the resultant planetary system.

“We found atomic carbon gas in the debris disk around 49 Ceti by using more than 100 hours of observations on the ASTE telescope,” says Aya Higuchi, an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). ASTE is a 10-m diameter radio telescope in Chile operated by NAOJ. “As a natural extension, we used ALMA to obtain a more detailed view, and that gave us the second surprise. The carbon gas around 49 Ceti turned out to be 10 times more abundant than our previous estimation.”

Thanks to ALMA’s high resolution, the team revealed the spatial distribution of carbon atoms in a debris disk for the first time. Carbon atoms are more widely distributed than carbon monoxide, the second most abundant molecules around young stars, hydrogen molecules being the most abundant. The amount of carbon atoms is so large that the team even detected faint radio waves from a rarer form of carbon, 13C. This is the first detection of the 13C emission at 492 GHz in any astronomical object, which is usually hidden behind the emission of normal 12C.

“The amount of 13C is only 1% of 12C, therefore the detection of 13C in the debris disk was totally unexpected,” says Higuchi. “It is clear evidence that 49 Ceti has a surprisingly large amount of gas.”

What is the origin of the gas? Researchers have suggested two possibilities. One is that it is remnant gas that survived the dissipation process in the final phase of planet formation. The amount of gas around 49 Ceti is, however, comparable to those around much younger stars in the active planet formation phase. There are no theoretical models to explain how so much gas could have persisted for so long. The other possibility is that the gas was released by the collisions of small bodies like comets. But the number of collisions needed to explain the large amount of gas around 49 Ceti is too large to be accommodated in current theories. The present ALMA results prompt a reconsideration of the planet formation models.

(Source: Science Daily)

No one can escape fruit cake for Christmas, not even ISS astronauts in space

The holidays have finally hit a fever pitch, and with Christmas day on the horizon, it’s as good a time as any for the astronauts aboard the International Space Station to send down some warm holiday wishes for the rest of us Earthlings.

In a new video published by NASA, astronauts Christina Koch, Drew Morgan, and Jessica Meir are joined by mission commander Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency, and the group shows off how they’ll be celebrating the big day in space.

The video, which is about three minutes long, offers a lovely look inside the space station and includes all four astronauts in some seriously festive holiday garb. The crew shows off their holiday stockings and offer their own perspectives on what it means to spend a family-focused holiday in space, even as their families gather back on Earth.

As for how the astronauts will actually be celebrating the big day, a special holiday meal is in order. Noting that the crew had turkey for dinner on Thanksgiving, Morgan reveals that Christmas dinner will include smoked salmon. That sounds pretty great, but there’s a small downside, at least for the astronauts who can’t stomach fruitcake.

“We had to come all the way to space to try to get away from fruitcake… but it didn’t work,” Koch bemoans. “We got some anyway.”

There will also be some hot apple cider and hot cocoa, both of which come in metallic-looking pouches. It might not be the fanciest meal ever, but when you’re drifting through space at nearly five miles per second, you have to work with what you have available.

The current ISS expedition, Expedition 61, officially began on October 3rd. These missions stretch on for months, and the crew of Expedition 61 has already accomplished a lot. The team has carried out a number of repairs on the exterior of the space station and installed new components that will ensure the future operation of the spacecraft far into the future.

(Source: msn)

Astronomers confirm the existence of planets that have the lightness of cotton candy

300m-year-old fossil is early sign of creatures caring for their young

No two planets in the Solar System are exactly alike, but we can broadly categorize them - rocky worlds Earth, Venus, Mercury and Mars; gas giants Saturn and Jupiter; ice giants Neptune and Uranus; and dwarf planets, like Pluto and Ceres.

That sounds pretty diverse, but astronomers have just made a detailed study of a fascinating type of planet we don’t have - super-puff worlds.

Of all the exoplanets our efforts have uncovered to date, only a handful - less than 15 - have been puffy. These three young planets, seen orbiting a star around 2,600 light-years away, are almost the size of Jupiter, but have less than one percent of its mass.

That means they have spectacularly low density; in fact, they’re the puffiest planets ever seen, with a density lower than 0.1 grams per cubic centimeter. In press statements, the texture of these planets has been likened to cotton candy.

“This is an extreme example of what’s so cool about exoplanets in general,” said exoplanet scientist Zachory Berta-Thompson of the University of Colorado Boulder (UC Boulder).

“They give us an opportunity to study worlds that are very different than ours, but they also place the planets in our own Solar System into a larger context.”

The three planets, orbiting a star called Kepler 51, were discovered in 2012, but it wasn’t until 2014 that their strangely low density was discovered. Now, using observations taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has revealed what is happening with the planets’ atmospheres.

The Kepler space telescope located exoplanets using the transit method - that is, the dimming of the light of a star when a planet passes between the telescope and the star, in what is known as a transit.

The other awesome thing about transiting exoplanets is that when they dim the star’s light, some of it gets filtered

through the exoplanet’s atmosphere (if it has one). So you can look at a spectrum of electromagnetic wavelengths from the star when the planet both is and isn’t transiting.

Because certain molecules block certain wavelengths, these absorption lines on the spectrum can be read to infer the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

This is what the researchers did to analyze the atmospheres of Kepler 51 b and Kepler 51 d. But when they got the results back, the atmospheres were concealed by an opaque layer at high altitude.

“It definitely sent us scrambling to come up with what could be going on here,” said planetary scientist Jessica Libby-Roberts of UC Boulder. “We expected to find water, but we couldn’t observe the signatures of any molecule.”

So, they turned to computer simulations to see what sort of atmospheric conditions could produce something like the super-puffs - overall very low-density, but wrapped in an opaque shell. And the best fit turned out to be an atmosphere that was a mixture of hydrogen and helium, with a high-altitude layer of methane.

We’ve seen something like that methane layer before, in Saturn’s moon Titan. Because of the thick methane layer surrounding Titan, we didn’t get a direct image of the moon’s surface until Cassini arrived in 2004.

“If you hit methane with ultraviolet light, it will form a haze,” Libby-Roberts said. “It’s Titan in a nutshell.”

The team also discovered that these atmospheres are leaking off into space at a tremendous rate. That, they said, could explain why these super-puff planets are so rare.

Since these strange puffs are so young, the cotton-candy state could be a temporary stage in their development, and the final planet could be something much more expected - mini-Neptunes, the most common type of planet in the galaxy (and also not found in the Solar System).

(Source: sciencealert.com)

Fossil hunters say they have unearthed the earliest evidence yet of four-limbed vertebrates looking after their young, after discovering the entwined remains of two lizard-like creatures preserved in an ancient plant stump.

The fossil found in Nova Scotia, Canada, is thought to be the remains of an adult and young of a newly identified species of varanopid.

“[The adult] probably would have been about 20cm in length from the tip of the snout to the base of its tail, and it would have had a long tail,” said Hillary Maddin, a co-author of the research and an assistant professor at Carleton University in Canada.

The smaller individual was found beneath the upper leg bone of the larger one, and was encircled by the larger creatures’ tail – an entwinement that the team say suggests the two animals were curled up together in a den.

The den appears to have been made in a hollowed-out stump of a plant known as a lycopsid. “These very fragile fossils, especially the baby, are preserved in a very natural-like position and would have to have been buried very quickly,” said Maddin, adding that the stump was probably inundated with sediment, possibly in a storm.

The animals are thought to have lived just over 300m years ago, pushing back the record for evidence of extended parental care among four-limbed vertebrates by about 40m years.

Parental care is any behavior that aids the survival of offspring, such as guarding eggs or nest-building. Extended parental care is any support for young after birth or hatching, for example providing food or protection.

Experts say prolonged care is seen across a wide range of animals, from reptiles to birds, and is particularly common to mammals as they produce milk for their young. Such behavior can help offspring to

survive but comes at a cost to parents, who must invest time, energy and resources.

Writing in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, the team report that the new species has been named Dendromaia unamakiensis, derived from the ancient Greek words for tree and mother and the Mi’kmaq’ indigenous people’s name for Cape Breton Island, where the fossil was found.

The find was made by Brian Hebert, a fossil enthusiast who runs a gift shop and tours in the fossil-rich Joggins area of Nova Scotia and is part of Maddin’s field team.

There is a debate over whether varanopids are part of a group of animals that eventually gave rise to mammals, or whether they a sit on a different evolutionary branch leading to reptiles.

If the former, traditional view is correct, Maddin said the new fossil suggests parental care of young cropped up early on the path that led to mammals. That such behavior is also seen in birds and some reptiles, she said, was probably down to it evolving independently in these groups.

Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study, said the fossil find was exciting.

“The discovery of an adult and a much smaller juvenile side by side is good evidence that they were interacting with each other in life, as it would be quite the coincidence for them to randomly die, get buried and fossilize together,” he said. “And although it’s always tricky to infer behavior from fossils that are hundreds of millions of years old, to me this seems to be good evidence that there was parental care going on.”

He said this was significant because it suggested such behavior is an ancient trait. “It’s incredible to think that something we consider so human – parents taking care of children – was developed so long ago, in such distant ancestors, when the world was so much different.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Astronomers discover a ‘cosmic candy cane’ near the Milky Way’s core

Deep within the central zone of the Milky Way, a bizarre cluster of dense gas clouds has taken the unusual form of a gigantic, cosmic candy cane.

CNN reports that the observation may help scientists understand the process through which our galaxy forms stars — because the cosmic candy cane, and the clouds surrounding it, contain the raw materials necessary to generate tens of millions of new stars.

The yellow feature interrupting the red straight part of the candy cane — which researchers call “The Sickle” — is likely the source of high-speed electrons that NASA detected with a space telescope called GISMO, according to a NASA press release. These may be responsible for lighting up the

red Radio Arc.Scientists from the space agency published research in

The Astrophysical Journal last month that connects those signals to areas that are actively churning out new stars.

The image below of the Milky Way’s core shows data from microwave (green), infrared (blue) and radio wave (red) sources.

“We’re very intrigued by the beauty of this image; it’s exotic,” Johns Hopkins University scientist Johannes Staguhn, who led the research behind that new paper, told CNN.

“When you look at it, you feel like you’re looking at some really special forces of nature in the universe.”

(Source: sciencealert.com)

10I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

HERITAGE & TOURISM DECEMBER 25, 2019

TEHRAN — Millions of foreign nationals did not pay attention to the U.S. sanctions

and plots, aiming to discourage potential travelers from visiting the Islamic Republic, First Vice-President Es’haq Jahangiri said on Monday.

“Americans assumed that sanctions would prevent for-eign tourists from traveling to our country, but statistics show that each year, number of international travelers has increased by [some] 30 percent since [the Iranian calendar year] 1397 when the sanctions were [re-]imposed,” Jahangiri said, IRIB reported.

“More than seven million foreign travelers have arrived in the country since the start of the [current Iranian] year, which shows an annual 30 percent growth,” the official noted.

Deputy tourism minister Vali Teymouri said in No-vember that foreign travelers have not been deterred by Iranophobia.

“I, as an expert, who have been working in the field of tourism for the past twenty years, believe that the main challenge of our travel industry is that Iran is in-ternationally unknown. Moreover, over the past years, an Iranophobia project [orchestrated] by our enemies have been added too,” Teymouri explained.

In November 2017, the Trump administration rein-stated sanctions on Iran, mainly the ones that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal, in order to batter Iran’s economy.

The sanctions, however, together with anti-Iran prop-aganda campaigns have decreased Western tourists but Iran has managed to compensate the blow even flourishing its tourism by doing its best to attract more from neighboring states.

To encourage people form some target markers, Iran has attempted to ease traveling from Iraq, China, Republic of Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, and several other countries who arrive in Iran for medical, pilgrimage

and cultural heritage purposes.For instance, some two million Iraqi nationals visited

Iran during the first seven months of the past Iranian calendar year, constituting Iran’s largest source of in-bound passengers.

Iran eyes to have a bigger share of Chinese tourism, as it, in a unilateral measure, recently approved to waive the visa requirement for the Chinese passport holders.

The World Travel & Tourism Council’s latest report indicates that Iraq was the main source of tourism for Iran in 2018, as Iraqis constituted 24% of all inbound visitors.

Other major sources were Azerbaijan (17%), Turkey (8%), Pakistan (4%) and Bahrain (2%). The remaining 46% came from the rest of the world.

Iran embraces hundreds of historical sites such as bazaars, museums, mosques, bridges, bathhouses, ma-drasas, mausoleums, churches, towers, and mansions, of which 22 being inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The country

Under the 2025 Tourism Vision Plan, the country aims to increase the number of tourist arrivals from 4.8 million in 2014 to 20 million in 2025.

T O U R I S Md e s k

T O U R I S Md e s k

U.S. plots fail to deter foreign travelers from visiting Iran, VP says

Newly-excavated site yields pre-historic to Islamic-era relics in Iran

TEHRAN — A team of Iranian archaeolo-gists and researchers has recently unearthed

pre-historic to Islamic-era relics and fragments of objects from a piece of land, which is speculated to be once a historical cemetery, in Asiabsar village, northern Mazandaran province.

Affiliated with the Research Institute for Cultural Heritage and Tourism, the team has dug 16 trenches inside and outside of a piece of land whose landlords accidentally found historical objects while preparing parts of the land for housing construction, IRNA reported on Tuesday.

Of the trenches, nine yielded both architectural and trans-portable pottery pieces, complete or fragmented earthenware, glass pieces, iron and bronze objects, stone blades and spindles.

Moreover, the researchers have found architectural and portable objects that date from various Islamic eras such as the Ilkhanate times (1256–1335/1353), Safavid-era (1501–1736), and Qajar epoch (1789 to 1925).

An extensive scientific research is needed to fully explore the site that is nicknamed by the team as “a cemetery for various civilizations,” the report said.

Soaked in a vibrant history, Mazandaran (also known as Tab-arestan) was a cradle of civilization since the beginning of the first millennium BC. According to Britannica Encyclopedia, it was almost overrun in about 720 CE by the Arab raiders.

Its insecure eastern and southeastern borders were crossed by Mongol invaders in the 13th and 14th centuries. Cossacks attacked the region in 1668 but were repulsed. It was ceded to the Russian Empire by a treaty in 1723, but the Russians were never secure in their occupation. The area was restored to Iran under the Qajar dynasty. The northern section of the region consists of a lowland alongside the Caspian and an upland along the northern slopes of the Alborz Mountains.

Carnival Glory sets sail after repairs from crashing into other cruise ship in Cozumel, Mexico

Following some quick repairs to damage from a Friday incident with another Carnival ship in Mexico, the Carnival Glory set sail from the Port of New Orleans Monday for a holiday cruise in the western Caribbean.

Six passengers had minor injuries Friday after the Glory struck another ship, the Carnival Legend, at the port of Cozumel.

The Carnival Glory sustained damage to its Platinum Dining Room, but the company said none of the damage had com-promised the ship’s seaworthiness.

(Source: MSN)

H E R I T A G Ed e s k

Iguazu National ParkThe Iguaçu National Park is a World Heritage property of 169,695.88 hectares located in the State of Parana, in southern Brazil, adjacent to the Iguazu National Park, also a World Heritage property in Argentina.

Both properties, together with some protected areas, are contiguous major remnants of the interior Atlantic Forest, once a much larger forest area, along the junction of the Iguacu and Parana rivers where Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil converge.

Made up of many cascades producing vast sprays of water, it is one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world. The surrounding subtropical rainforest has over 2,000 species of vascular plants and is home to the typ-ical wildlife of the region: tapirs, giant anteaters, howler monkeys, ocelots, jaguars and caymans.

Located in Misiones Province in the Northeastern tip of Argentina and bordering the Brazilian state of Parana to the north, Iguazu National Park, jointly with its sister park Igua-cu in Brazil, is among the world’s visually and acoustically most stunning natural sites for its massive waterfalls. It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1984.

The river, aptly named after the indigenous term for “great water” forms a large bend in the shape of a horseshoe in the heart of the two parks and constitutes the international border between Argentina and Brazil before it flows into the mighty Parana River less than 25 kilometers downriver from the park. Large clouds of spray permanently soak the many river islands and the surrounding riverine forests, creating an extremely humid micro-climate favoring lush and dense sub-tropical vegetation harboring a diverse fauna.

(Source: UNESCO)

ROUND THE GLOBE

TEHRAN — Discover Russia’s top five national

parks and nature reserves which are widely considered as travel destinations for food nature lovers to visit:

Pechora-Ilych Nature ReserveThe Manpupuner rock formations in the

northern Ural Mountains — seven pillars of rock, the highest of which reaches a towering 42 meters in height — are the result of millions of years of weathering and erosion, and they are worth a visit. “Manpupuner” can be translated from the Mansi language as “a small mountain of idols”. The Manpupuner Plateau has been officially named as one of the seven wonders of Russia. Moreover, the Pechora-Ilych Nature Reserve is part of the Virgin Komi Forests, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the last large area of virgin forest left in Europe.

The best time to plan a trip to the Seven Strong Men Rock Formations is 2020, when there will be a new runway and a 90-kilometer hiking trail for tourists. The Ediniy Ural (or United Ural) hiking trail will pass through two nature reserves in the northern Ural slopes — the Pechora-Ilychsky Nature Reserve (which stretches from the Dyatlov Pass to the Man-pupuner Plateau) and Ivdelsky. There will be lodges every 10-15 kilometers along the trail, where tourists can spend the night. The plan is to create a route that will be accessible in all seasons. The runway is going to be built on the outskirts of Vologda, where the shortest hiking route with the best infrastructure on the Manpupuner Plateau begins. According to early estimates, a helicopter tour to the Manpupuner Plateau will cost 20 thousand rubles per person in a couple of years, which is almost a quarter of the current price.

How to reach the Pechora-Ilych Nature Reserve: By helicopter from Ukhta or Perm. If you are on a tighter budget, you can get there by train, from Ukhta to Troitsk, and then take a bus, taxi, or book another form of transport to the reserve. The best time to travel is from June to September. Only organized groups accompanied by a ranger can visit the reserve, and must stick to the routes that have been approved. The hike to the Manpupuner Plateau takes five days (the starting point is Yaksha village). However, there are also short hiking trails through the reserve that only take a few hours to cover.

Sikhote-Alin Nature ReserveThese places are off the beaten track, and

will delight even the most experienced travelers: the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve is difficult to access and little research has been carried out there so far. The Sikhote-Alin mountain range consists of three winding chains of mountains.

A trip to Sikhote-Alin is a real expedition: there is no infrastructure for accommodation and nowhere you can buy food in the nature

reserve. You need to come prepared and carry everything with you.

The Sikhote-Alin reserve is home to the lynx, the brown bear and the Himalayan brown bear. You can see the seal rookeries on the rocky north cape. And ecological walking trails leading to the nesting places of birds have been created by lake Blagodatnoye. Before visiting the reserve, visitors are advised to get vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis.

How to reach the Sikhote-Alin Nature Re-serve: the reserve is not an easy place to reach. First you need to fly to Vladivostok or take the Trans-Siberian Express “Rossiya” (which departs from Yaroslavsky Railway Station in Moscow). From Vladivostok, you need to travel about 700 kilometers northeast to the village of Terney on the Pacific coast. The journey takes 14 hours by bus, which departs twice a day.

Stolby National Nature ReserveTaiga, snow, coniferous forest, and

breath-taking cliffs, veiled in an ashy mountain dew. The Stolby Nature Reserve in located on the right bank of the Yenisei River and just south of Krasnoyarsk, a city of stone that looks as if it were carved out of the Siberian landscape by nature itself.

The reserve covers an area roughly the size of Andorra at just under 500 square kilometers. “Stolby” is Russian for “pillars”, and describes the dramatic rock formations the reserve is famous for. People visit the reserve to either admire the gigantic pillars and take in the stun-ning views from these watchtowers, overlooking the taiga, or to climb and conquer them. A total of almost two hundred rocks are suitable for climbing. Almost all of these pillars have names: These include Manskaya Baba (lit. the Old Lady from Mana), Feathers, Lion’s Gate, the Savage, the Fortress, the Vulture, the Monk, Cain and Abel, the Sinner, Mitre (the Bishop’s Hat), the Sparrows, Yermak, the Guard, and the Chinese Wall. The highest pillar is called the Second Pillar (Vtoroy), and reaches 100 meters. In addition to these pillars, there are also huge stone boulders scattered all over the reserve, and they also have names (the most famous one is the Little Elephant).

The rocky part of the reserve is divided into four districts: Tsentralny (Central District), Takmakovsky District, Kalgansky District and “Dikiye Stolby” (Wild Pillars). Central District receives the most visitors; its walking trail fol-lows a circular route and is the most popular with tourists. The trail starts at the First Pillar, and passes the Granddaughter, Grandmother and Grandfather pillars, then Feathers, Lion’s Gate, and the Fourth, Third and Second pillars, before looping back to the First Pillar and the Little Elephant Boulder.

No special permits are needed to visit the reserve. But there are a few rules that you must follow for your own safety. Firstly, do not try to

climb the rocks in rainy or snowy weather — they will be very slippery and dangerous. Secondly, do not try to feed or approach wild animals. Not even the foxes! Thirdly, you should only visit the reserve at daytime. Trekking poles are recommended. You can rent them from Krasnoyarsk Sports and Tourism Center’s shop at the reserve. Fourthly, book a tour! This will help you save time: tours include transport that can take you up to the rocky area of the reserve. Fifthly, remember that camping is forbidden on the territory of the Stolby Nature Reserve.

One of the unwritten rules when visiting Stolby is that you have to try the hot donuts or the Russian Pirozhki (small pies) at Cordon Laletino. After a long walk, they are the most delicious thing in the world!

They also sell hot tea and cookies there. Make sure you try the local sbiten, a tradition-al hot drink Russians drank before they had tea and coffee, which is brewed with Siberian herbs. You can try it at Laletino on 2-aya Pop-erechnaya Street or at the “Pereval” tourist center. You can charge your phone and dry off any clothes that got wet during your hike in the tourist center’s special drying cabinets. You can find more information about the center’s working hours on the official website of the Stolby Nature Reserve.

If you take a snack and a thermos of hot tea with you, you can enjoy a lunch break with absolutely stunning views!

How to reach Stolby National Park: regular bus routes run from Krasnoyarsk. Take no. 19, 50, or 78 (no. 80 on weekends) to the “Turbaza” bus stop. To reach the reserve’s Central District and the First Pillar, you need to pass the wel-come sign marking the start of the reserve, and walk about seven kilometers up Laletinskaya Road. First you will pass Cordon Laletino (two kilometers into the climb) on your way up, then continue on to the Mikha Taigish Forest Theater (a competition was held to choose a name for the theater. Mikha Taigish was the witty competi-tion-winning name, which sounds something like “Mr. Teddy Taiga” in Russian). Next you will see the “Retroploshchadka” viewing platform (1-aya Poperechnaya Street) and “detskiy gorodok”, or children’s town (2-aya Poperechnaya Street). After that, there is the steep climb that locals have dubbed “Pykhtun”, which roughly translates to being out of breath, and then up on to Pereval. After that, there are only 317 steps left to climb, and you’ve made it to the top.

The Curonian Spit in the Kursh-skaya National Park

The Epha Dune, Miller’s Height, the Fring-illa Ornithological Station, white beaches, the curved and intertwining trees of the Dancing Forest and the heady scent of pine trees: The Curonian Spit National Park in Russia is the country’s smallest national park, but it’s full of gems. And it also receives the most visitors!

The Curonian Spit is a narrow sandy peninsula separating the Baltic Sea from the freshwater Curonian Lagoon. It is almost 100 kilometers long.

It is a good idea to arrive there early in the morning to completely immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the reserve before the crowds of tourists get there. You can find pieces of amber on a walk along the beach! Follow the Epha Height trail, which leads to the crest of the Orechovaya Dune (Petshch). In windy weather you can hear the song of singing sand.

Comfortable walking shoes are an essential for this trip: you will be doing plenty of walking. However, it is easier to go barefoot across the high dunes, which rise a few dozen meters above sea level. And bring something to eat and a thermos of tea or coffee with you: the local roadside

cuisine is fairly mediocre and expensive.How to reach the Curonian Spit: regular

buses run several times a day from Kaliningrad, Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk. If you travel to the reserve by car, you will be charged 150 rubles to enter the reserve. There is also an extra fee of 150 rubles per passenger, including the driver.

Valdaysky National ParkThe lakes and the southern taiga of Valdaysky

National Park are just a few hours away from St. Petersburg and Moscow. The entire nature reserve is part of the Pechora River basin — the main continental divide between Europe and Asia.

Great rivers — the Volga, Dnepr and Western Dvina — originate in the Valdai Hills. There are two hundred lakes in this wildlife reserve, the most popular of which are Lake Seliger and Vejle. Hunting for sport and fishing are allowed. However, you need to obtain a license before going on one of these trips.

The mighty armada of pines, dark green spruce and graceful birch trees line the pictur-esque hills, and a necklace of crystal-clear lakes create a landscape of extraordinary beauty. You can spot rare birds on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species in the National Park — from the black stork to the golden eagle. There are also fifty species of mammals: wolves, foxes, elks, wild boars and lynxes.

One of the main advantages of the Valdaysky National Park is that there is a hotel located on the territory near the visitor center. This is convenient for tourists travelling by car.

How to reach the Valdaysky National Park: the most convenient way is by car. The Na-tional Park is on the M10 Highway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg. Railway lines also link Valday with Moscow and St. Petersburg. You can also travel there on the bus from St. Petersburg — from the coach station on the Obvodny Canal embankment.

They also sell hot tea and cookies there. Make sure you try the local sbiten, a tradition-al hot drink Russians drank before they had tea and coffee, which is brewed with Siberian herbs. You can try it at Laletino on 2-aya Pop-erechnaya Street or at the “Pereval” tourist center. You can charge your phone and dry off any clothes that got wet during your hike in the tourist center’s special drying cabinets. You can find more information about the center’s working hours on the official website of the Stolby Nature Reserve.

If you take a snack and a thermos of hot tea with you, you can enjoy a lunch break with absolutely stunning views!

How to reach Stolby National Park: regular bus routes run from Krasnoyarsk. Take no. 19, 50, or 78 (no. 80 on weekends) to the “Turbaza” bus stop. To reach the reserve’s Central District and the First Pillar, you need to pass the wel-come sign marking the start of the reserve, and walk about seven kilometers up Laletinskaya Road. First you will pass Cordon Laletino (two kilometers into the climb) on your way up, then continue on to the Mikha Taigish Forest Theater (a competition was held to choose a name for the theater. Mikha Taigish was the witty competi-tion-winning name, which sounds something like “Mr. Teddy Taiga” in Russian). Next you will see the “Retroploshchadka” viewing platform (1-aya Poperechnaya Street) and “detskiy gorodok”, or children’s town (2-aya Poperechnaya Street). After that, there is the steep climb that locals have dubbed “Pychtun”, which roughly translates to being out of breath, and then up on to Pereval. After that, there are only 317 steps left to climb, and you’ve made it to the top.

(Based on a research into Russian sourc-es; See the full edition, which includes more details, on our website)

Russia’s top 5 national parks

Foreign tourists use a mobile phone to take a selfie picture as they are standing at the UNESCO-registered Imam Square in Isfahan, central Iran. (Photo credit: IRNA)

ANTIWAR — They lived in similar squalor, shared the same God, and celebrated the same holidays. It was December 24, 1914, Christmas Eve, and – though they spoke different languages and had ruthlessly killed one another for over four months – the British and German soldiers in the opposing trench lines had much in common.

The ruling families, the leaders of the prominent monarchies of Germany, Russia, and England were literally blood relatives. Indeed, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was Queen Victoria’s grandson and regularly visited the British Isles throughout his youth. Given the commonalities of the mostly working-class soldiers in the opposing trenches, perhaps, then, it should come as little surprise that some British an German enlisted men spontaneously, and unofficially, called a truce that Christmas, and, in their own way, celebrated the birth of Christ – their shared savior – together, if only for a moment. How beautiful it was…

These days, the war described is known as World War I, but, since the boys on the frontline couldn’t then imagine another maelstrom so terrible would follow, it was known, at the time, simply as the Great War. Warfare of such dimensions had never unfolded before. The scale of the bloodshed had been unthinkable even a Christmas before – about a million men had been killed since August – yet by then stalemate reigned as both sides settled into trench lines that stretched from Belgium to Switzerland. A peculiar, ultimately absurd, form of hyper-nationalism had recently infected Europe, and, when combined with a worldwide competition for colonies, caused this arguably existential war. So prevalent, in fact, was the jingoistic patriotism of the era that even the socialists of each nation initially, and widely, supported the march to war.

Those were dark times. To simplify the military anal-yses of the war, the tactics (mass formation infantry attacks) had yet to catch up with the more lethal tech-nology (machine guns, poison gas, and airplanes) of the day. The senseless delusion of nationalism ought to have died a bloody death – metaphorically riddled with bullets whilst stuck in endless strands of barbed wire – commensurate with the murder of so many mil-lions of naive troopers. It didn’t, unfortunately, and across the globe today – even in normally circumspect Western Europe – insular nationalism is again on the rise. Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Bolsinaro, Modi, Orban…they’re all symptoms of the resurgence of this worldwide disease. Spoiler alert: it didn’t end well last time around.

Still, I digress – back to the Christmas truce. Though some have described the widespread phenomenon as somewhat apocryphal, some version of the following certainly did occur. Up and down the lines that first Christmas Eve of the Great War, German soldiers sang well-known holiday songs, such as “Silent Night.” Though the language of the verses differed on either side of the trenches, the melodies and content were widely known. British troops joined in the rather solemn caroling, as did some brass bands, along both sides of the lines.

At dawn on Christmas Day, Germans and Britons – up and down the firing line – emerged from their trenches and ventured into the deadly “No Man’s Land” between the armies. Some brought Christmas trees along; others exchanged cigarettes and snacks with their normative enemies. None brought weapons. During the brief, beautiful, gesture of piece, many soldiers also took the opportunity to identify, retrieve, and bury the bodies of comrades stranded between the trench lines. In one sector, at least, the opposing troops played an ad hoc game of soccer – another shared cultural pastime. As one participant, German Lieutenant Kurt Zehmisch, remembered: “How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.”

The undeniable beauty, the event’s last gasp of war-time chivalry, aside, it was never to be repeated – not on the four following Christmases of that war, nor in the interminable global warfare that has since followed. Senior officers on both sides, rightfully, had been terrified by the 1914 display of class and species solidarity, and brutally quashed such cross-trench harmony in years to come, with threats of disciplinary action. So it goes…

Nonetheless, as today’s forever wars rage – decades longer than the first Great War of old – the time for spontaneous truce between the grassroots ranks of all sides couldn’t be more essential. I know, I know, con-temporary wars are geographically diffuse, rage far from the European continent, and are waged between belligerents that practice different religions. On the surface, at least, these caveats seem sensible. But are they? What if Americans and Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Somalians, et. al., have more in common – even now – than most assume?

Bear with me now: it ain’t as much of a stretch as it may seem. First off, contrary to popular belief, Christians and Muslims worship the same god, if with a different flavor of tradition. Figures such as Abraham, King Da-vid, Jesus, and, especially Mary, figure prominently in the Koran. Islam, as such, though often distorted – as it was (and is) in certain bellicose strands of Christi-anity – is best seen as an extension, or addition, to the Judeo-Christian tradition, rather than a unique religion. Furthermore, the grunts on either side of America’s “terror wars” still share extraordinary commonalities.

Both are often drawn to military service by the limited economic opportunities in their respective societies. The soldiers who served under me typically joined as a means to a fiscal end – paying off college debt, learning a trade, or seeking healthcare and housing security. The foot soldiers in the Taliban buried IEDs and laid in wait to ambush my troops, as often as not, for a steady paycheck, a sense of dignity and purpose in a circum-scribed Third World job market. American and Taliban grunts, for example, share more than they diverge. Both wage wars not of their own making; neither possess a clear path to victory; neither count many prospects in civilian life. Both believe the purported birth of Jesus to be a profound matter. The same can be said of the

antagonists across America’s wars today. Let them all lay down their arms, for a moment, and celebrate in solidarity this Christmas. If only…

Alas, nationalism, particularly in its more pugnacious form, is again on the rise – from Brazil to Bengal. Yet, logically, it should be extinct. That it isn’t, and shows no signs of dissipation, might just presage the extinction of us, the human race! Truly existential threats pervade this world – climate change and potential nuclear war-fare for starters – and even cursory historical analysis demonstrates that democracies, or republics, cannot weather indefinite warfare. America’s Army Chief of Staff during World War II, George Marshall, began his career as a young lieutenant engaged in an indecisive, endless war in the Philippines. The experience stuck. Decades later, Marshall, one of this nation’s most ef-fective and humble military leaders, opined that “a democracy cannot fight a Seven Years War.” What, one wonders, would the former general, secretary of defense, and secretary of state, think of an American war that’s well into it’s 19th year?

As the should-be-bombshell Afghanistan Papers – long since buried by the impeachment charade dominating Capitol Hill and the media – definitively demonstrat-ed, today’s generals and admirals can’t be counted on, neither for competence nor character. No, the move-ment for peace must come from the grassroots, from the under-privileged and under-served combatants on both sides of the contemporary fighting lines.

Truth is, as a troop commander in Kandahar in 2011-12, I had (crazy as it may sound) more in common with my counterpart in the local Taliban than with my star-fixated colonels and generals in the U.S. Army. At least my Taliban mirror also faced the daily prospect of death and undoubtedly knew the pain of burying young men under his command. I only wish that one of us, both of us, had had the courage to lay down our guns, take that exceedingly alluring risk, and met halfway between my outpost and his village, defied our respec-tive commanders, and shared a Christmas moment.

Maybe it is fantasy; as is my hope that other bel-ligerents will attempt this remarkable 1914-inspired protest tonight and tomorrow. Still, dreams, as they say, are what makes life tolerable…

TEHRAN (FNA) — Christopher White, journalist, says the European Union countries, as sovereign states, are adopting protecting policies by introducing taxes and tariffs which can lead to a trade war between the EU and the US.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with FNA, White said, “The US has entered into trade conflict with China meanwhile sanctions continue against Russia… Brexit […] will weaken the EU economy and the German economic picture is looking bleak […] the World Trade Organization is weak”, drawing a gloomy picture of the EU-US economic future.

Christopher White is a British journalist based in Brussels. He is the founder and former publisher of the EU Reporter magazine.

Below is the full text of the interview: The US and EU officials are preparing

for a World Trade Organization ruling that could empower the US to impose new tariffs on the European products. The EU is expected to retaliate. How do you view the US-EU trade war?

A: Trade war would be a disaster on a global basis but especially for the EU. The economic situation in Europe is, as presented widely in the media, approaching recession. There are similar problems in the United States where a current report highlights the growing gap between the super rich and ordinary citizens. This has long been the situation in developing countries and is now true in developed countries. That the EU, a federal state still in the making, has

adopted policies that target its closest non-European military ally is highly questionable. Much the same has to be said for the US that refuses to adapt certain principles, on food quality for example. The US has entered into tr ade conflict with China meanwhile sanctions continue against Russia. Without questioning the rights or wrongs of any particular aspect, it is abundantly clear that matters are getting out of hand. One should ask whether we are approaching the situation that existed in the 1920’s and 30’s dominated by national protectionism, not to mention the situation that followed.

Which rules-based international systems do you think have been disregarded to take the EU-US trade

dispute to the present levels?A: There is a historical equivalent to

what is happening today. The League of Nations, designed to promote peace, failed due largely to the dominance of economic nationalism. As world leaders attending the league spoke about goodwill among nations its member states were promoting economic conflict. The EU is now driven by states protecting, as they see it, their economic well-being by introducing taxes and tariffs as ‘sovereign nations’. The French economy is under pressure and so France is “retaliating” to US levies. That the EU is being drawn into the dispute or, to put it a different way that the EU is also collectively joining the battle does not bode well for the future.

Brexit, should it happen, will weaken the EU economy and the German economic picture is looking bleak. The US has a history of isolationism and current US trade policy is reminiscent of that. The World Trade Organization is weak, recall the League of Nations, and it is hard to see how the current climate would permit strengthening it. The immediate future is an open question.

How would you think this will affect the global economy?

A: The global economy has slowed down and is continuing to decline. China has its own problems including increased wealth among its population resulting in rising production costs. Defense spending is keeping the Chinese economy relatively buoyant. Academics lecture on the need for levelling wealth. That was one of the principle ambitions of the European Union - the levelling-up of wealth in poor regions like Spain and Portugal in the 1980’s creating, in theory, new markets for the wealthy regions like Germany, the UK and Scandinavia. The academics of those times, it appears, overlooked the arrival of China and the developing nations into the market place. Now everything has been overtaken globally by the enormous gap between the extremely wealthy and the general populace who pay the bulk of state taxes. Perhaps the question should be when will the general population stop spending either for political reasons or because they just can’t afford to keep the economy going and what will happen then?

11I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

DECEMBER 25, 2019

By Maj. Danny Sjursen

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Christopher White: EU targeting U.S. economy

Christmas: Time for a Truce Intl. reactions to Saudi scandalous verdict on Khashoggi murder

1 The first trial session of suspects in the Khashoggi murder case was held on 3 January 2019 in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

The Saudi government has characterized Khashoggi’s death as a rogue operation and detained 21 suspects, charging 11 of them but Riyadh has repeatedly denied allegations that any members of the royal family were involved in the incident.

On 23 December 2019, the Saudi public prosecutor has stated that the court has sentenced five people to death over the Khashoggi case. Another three people face a total of 24 years in prison for covering up the murder and vio-lating regulations and another ten had been questioned and released due to the lack of evidence against them.

The verdict says the Saudi investigation concluded that the killing was not premeditated and that Saudi Arabian consultant Saoud Al Qahtani was cleared of any wrongdoing.

In the immediate aftermath of the court’s announcement, Saudi media was flooded with commentators saying that justice had been done while some countries and interna-tional rights groups condemned a Saudi court verdict on Khashoggi murder.

Khashoggi’s son Salah accepted the verdict but others were less impressed.

Earlier this year, Salah took to Twitter to deny that a settlement had been reached between his family and the Saudi government after a source told CNN that Khashog-gi’s family has received millions of US dollars in cash and assets as compensation for the killing.

But Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancée, in a tweet message on Monday said that she would never forget Khashoggi, nor his “murderers” or “those who are trying to cover up” his murder.

Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Middle East Research Director, said it was a whitewash. “The verdict fails to address the Saudi authorities’ involvement in this devastating crime or clarify the location of Jamal Khashog-gi’s remains,” Amnesty said in a statement.

The human rights group said, “Only an international, independent and impartial investigation can serve justice for Jamal Khashoggi.”

The Washington Post’s publisher, Fred Ryan, also con-demned the findings.

“The complete lack of transparency and the Saudi gov-ernment’s refusal to cooperate with independent inves-tigators suggests that this was merely a sham trial,” he said in a statement. “Those ultimately responsible, at the highest level of the Saudi government, continue to escape responsibility for the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”

UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard called Monday’s court rulings “anything but justice” in a series of posts on her official Twitter account. The UN expert previously found “sufficient credible evidence” that called for the Saudi Crown Prince to be investigated.

Callamard criticized the court’s conclusion that the killing was not premeditated, citing, “the presence of a forensic doctor,” how the “defendants had repeatedly stat-ed they were obeying orders” and how the consul general “took all necessary precautions to ensure there will be no eye witness present.”

She added, “Bottom line: the hit-men are guilty, sen-tenced to death. The masterminds not only walk free. They have barely been touched by the investigation and the trial. That is the antithesis of Justice. It is a mockery.”

Turkey described the verdict as “scandalous” and said those responsible for the murder had been granted im-munity.

“Those who dispatched a death squad to Istanbul on a private jet ... and sought to sweep this murder under the rug have been granted immunity,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s top press aide, Fahrettin Altun, wrote on Twitter.

Turkey also said the Saudi findings left many unan-swered questions.

In a written statement, Turkish foreign ministry spokes-person Hami Aksoy said the verdict was disappointing as “important aspects of the murder remain in the dark.”

“It is not just a legal necessity but also moral respon-sibility and obligation that light is shed on this murder committed on our soil and all those responsible are pun-ished,” Aksoy added.

Aksoy also renewed Ankara’s demand for judicial co-operation from Saudi authorities.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a state-ment: “The killing of Jamal Khashoggi was a terrible crime. Mr. Khashoggi’s family deserves to see justice done for his brutal murder. Saudi Arabia must ensure all of those responsible are held to account and that such an atrocity can never happen again.”

Paris-based media rights watchdog Reporters With-out Borders said that justice was “trampled on” with the death sentences meted out after a trial that did not respect international standards of justice.

Even the US Department of State official told report-ers after the ruling, “Today’s verdicts were an important step in holding those responsible for this terrible crime accountable,” adding, “We’re pressing them [Saudi Ara-bia] for more transparency and for holding everybody accountable.”

Iran’s Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare Mohammad Shariatmadari (R) and Armenian Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Zaruhi Batoyan.

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

S O C I E T Y DECEMBER 25, 2019

TEHRAN — Iran’s Minister

of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare Mohammad Shariatmadari and his Armenian counterpart Zaruhi Batoyan signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enhance cooperation in the fields of vocational training, labor, and social welfare.

The two officials discussed ways to expand cooperation during a meeting in Tehran on Monday.

Supporting small and home busi-nesses, developing training programs for empowering female heads of households, exchanging experience on disability issues and preventing social harm were among the issues discussed during the meeting.

Batoyan expressed interest in using Iran’s experience in dealing with vulnerable groups of people, persons with disabilities, children, the elderly, and women.

12Iran, Armenia ink MOU to expand

labor, social welfare co-opAbility of re-grown Amazon forest to combat climate change ‘vastly overestimated’, study suggestsThe capacity of re-grown areas of the Amazon rainforest to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and combat climate change may have been “vastly overestimated”, scientists fear.

The forest is a gigantic carbon sink, drawing the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. Cleared areas that are re-planted are known as secondary forest, and have been seen as key to fighting climate change, researchers at Lancaster University said.

But a new study has found that those areas held just 40 per cent as much carbon dioxide as sequestered by parts of the Am-azon untouched by humans, casting doubt on their ability to aid in mitigating the crisis.

And at the same time, global warming appeared to be ham-pering the re-growth of secondary forest.

Scientists monitored forest regrowth over a period of 20 years and revealed how the Amazon was affected by periods of drought. During times of “water deficit”, regrown forests absorb less carbon from the atmosphere.

“If current trends continue, it will take well over a century for the forests to fully recover, meaning their ability to help fight climate change may have been vastly overestimated,” Lancaster University said.

Increased temperatures from global warming are in turn causing more drought-years in the Amazon, therefore lim-iting the capabilities of the secondary forests to help beat carbon pollution.

Led by a group of Brazilian and British researchers, the study also found that even after 60 years, regrown forests held only two-fifths as much carbon as virgin forests.

It could take more than a century for the forests to fully recover and “reduce the effectiveness of climate mitigation strategies in regions that have a long history of human occupation”.

Author Fernando Elias, of the Federal University of Para, said: “The region we studied in the Amazon has seen an increase in temperature of 0.1C per decade and tree growth was lower during periods of drought.

“With predictions of more drought in the future, we must be cautious about the ability of secondary forests to mitigate climate change. Our results underline the need for international agreements that minimise the impacts of climate change.”

Scientists also found there to be a “near-zero increase” in biodiversity within these secondary forests between 1999 and 2017.

Forests are vital habitats for threatened species and ecosystems, but results from the study show poor biodiversity relationships in highly-deforested landscapes.

“It is also likely that we are overestimating the relative recovery of biodiversity,” added the study.

Joe Barlow, professor of conservation science at Lancaster University and also an author of the study, said secondary forests’ potential to mitigate climate change was of “global importance”.

He also called for “more long-term studies like ours… to better understand secondary forest resilience and to target restoration to the areas that will do most to combat climate change and preserve biodiversity”.

(Source: The Independent)

WORDS IN THE NEWSBetter rice, less global warming (August 21, 2002)Rice plants which produce higher yields make less of the greenhouse gas methane, researchers have discovered. Scientists say their finding could lead to new varieties of rice which make more grain and contribute less to global warming. This report from Richard Black:Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, and rice fields are among the biggest sources of methane. It’s produced by a bacteria living in the wet soil of the paddy-field.Now scientists from Europe and the Philippines have discovered that less methane is made in fields where the plants are producing more grain. The reason is that making methane needs carbon.Plants absorb carbon from the air. They use some for making grain and some finds its way to the roots and then into the soil, where the bacteria can use it to produce methane. So if more carbon is tied up in making grain, there’s less in the soil, which means less methane.Rice is the staple food of half the world’s population. But yields vary widely from region to region, and in some places, they’re falling. A few months ago, to great fanfare, scientists unveiled the genome sequence of rice — a tool of great potential use to researchers trying to develop new strains of rice with higher yields.This latest research will now help steer scientists towards the genes they must work with if they want to design those new high-yielding strains without contributing to global warming.

Wordsgreenhouse gas: a gas that may cause warming of the Earth’s atmospherepaddy-field: a flooded field where rice is growntied up: busy or occupiedstaple food: a basic part of the daily dietyields: an amount of food produced by a plantto great fanfare: with a lot of publicityunveiled: revealedgenome sequence: the genetic information that describes a human, animal or planttool: an instrument used for doing something (here refers to ‘genome sequence’)steer: to guide something or someone in a certain direction

(Source: BBC)

TEHRAN — Iranian talented children have

ranked first in team category of the 19th Pan Pacific Abacus and Mental Arithme-tic Association Global Abacus and Mental Arithmetic Championships which was held in Thailand on Sunday.

Children in 5 different age groups, including age 5-7 as group A, 8-9 group B, 10-11 group C, 12-14 group D and 15 or older in group E, annually attend the contest solving multiple math equations, including division, multiplication, square root, cube root, fractions, time, etc.

Iranian teams participated in the whole five age groups of the competitions; these 55 smart children won 3 “champion of champions” titles, 48 “champion” titles, three were ranked as the “first winner”, and one the “second winner”, head of Smart Kids institute Rouhollah Mokhberian said.

Some 55 children were selected among 388 students from all over the country in national competitions, he added.

The Smart Kids institute holds a national competition annually on August 2 to select members of the Iranian team for attending the PAMA global abacus championships. Children from 7 to 13 years of age take part in the competition to solve some 7 mathematical test sheets using abacuses.

Over 610 children from 24 countries participated in the event, Mokhberian noted.

Different countries, including, Taiwan, Thailand, Canada, Hong Kong, the Unit-ed States, South Africa, Vietnam, South Korea, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Austral-ia, India, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Tajikistan, and Yemen attended the international competition.

The championship, organized by a non-profit organization established in 1999, is an example of what can be achieved with early intervention in abacus math and mental arithmetic education. The purpose of the competition is to allow for the observation of mental arithmetic skills from all countries, to promote abacus and mental arithmetic education, and to improve friendships among participants from around the world.

The Iranian team consisting of 35 chil-dren ranked first in different categories of the 18th PAMA Global Abacus and Mental Arithmetic Championships held in Malaysia on December 30, 2018.

Scientists researching a group of fluffy grey monkeys in the Amazon rainfor-est have determined the animals belong to a new species.

The primates, named Plecturoce-bus parecis, were first discovered by biologists more than 100 years ago but have only recently been recognised as a distinct group.

The species lives on the Parecis plateau in Rondonia, Brazil, and has survived de-forestation because the plateau’s steep sides make it difficult to access.

Biologists originally thought the mon-keys were part of the “ashy black titis” species when they were discovered in 1914.

However, Adrian Barnett, a biologist who worked on confirming the new spe-cies, told the New Scientist that a report by the researcher who first discovered the monkeys showed he was “clearly in doubt” about their classification.

The Parecis monkeys, which are known as “oto?ho?” by local indigenous people, are distinguished from the dark grey ashy black titis by their chestnut brown backs and large white patches on their chests.

When the research team compared DNA from the Parecis monkeys with 10 other species, including the ashy black titis, they found it was distinctly different.

Researchers have argued the new species of monkeys should be considered “near threatened” under the criteria set

out by the IUCN Red List for endan-gered species.

“The range is small and the popula-tion restricted,” Mr Barnett told the New Scientist.

He added that the Parecis monkey was the third new species found in Brazil this year and the 20th monkey species dis-covered there since 2000.

Mariluce Messias, a biologist who worked on the research project after coming across the new species in 2011, was also involved in the discovery of the Munduruku marmoset in the southeastern Amazon earlier this year.

Mr Barnett said the new discoveries may be due to deforestation making access to parts of the Amazon easier.

“One thing about deforestation is that it gives everyone access to remote areas, so sometimes scientists get to areas that have never been properly explored just before the chainsaws,” he said.

(Source: The Independent)

New species of monkey found in Amazon rainforest

Iran ranks first in international abacus contest 2019

ENGLISH IN USE

3,863 Iranians lost lives in road crashes within 3 monthsRoad crash casualties amounted to 3,863 in the country during the first three months of the current Iranian calendar year (starting on March 21), traffic police chief Seyed Kamal Hadianfar has said.During the first three days of summer, 64 people were killed in traffic related accidents, while 1,375 others got injured, he added.He went on to note that 2,368 drivers were responsible for the crashes occurred in the aforementioned period.Given that 91 percent of the country’s total transportation is carried out on roads, there must be special attention to the infrastructure of the roads nationwide, he noted.Approximately, 22,270,187 vehicles are running in the country and the number of motorcycles reach over 11 million, he said, adding that some 41 million of Iranians currently have driving license.

۳،۸۶۳ نفر کشته در تصادفات ۳ ماه نخست سالرئیــس پلیــس راهــور گفــت: در ســه ماهــه نخســت ســال جــاری، ۳ هــزار و ۸۶۳ نفــر

در تصادفات کشــته شــدند.بــه گــزارش خبرنــگار باشــگاه خبرنــگاران پویــا؛ ســردار ســید کمــال هادیان فــر اظهــار ــر در ــزار و ۸۶۳ نف ــن ۳ ه ــرگ ای ــث م ــر باع ــده مقص ــزار و ۳۶۸ رانن ــرد: دو ه ک

تصادفــات شــدند.رئیــس پلیــس راهــور ادامــه داد: 91 درصــد ترددهــا در کشــور، در جاده هــا صــورت

ــژه ای شــود. ــه زیرســاخت جاده هــا بایــد توجــه وی می گیــرد کــه بوی تصریــح کــرد: اکنــون 22 میلیــون و 270 هــزار و 1۸7 دســتگاه خــودرو و بیــش ــب ــر صاح ــون نف ــود دارد و 41 میلی ــور وج ــیکلت در کش ــون موتورس از 11 میلی

گواهینامــه هســتند.

LEARN NEWS TRANSLATION

PREFIX/SUFFIX PHRASAL VERB IDIOM“cerebro-, cerebr-”

Meaning: brain For example: Passive smoking is considered a

major cause of cerebrovascular disease, which causes strokes.

Think something up Meaning: to produce a new idea, name etc. by

thinking For example: She was trying to think up

an excuse.

Give somebody a (good) run for their money

Explanation: to make your opponent in a competition use all their skill and effort to defeat you

For example: They’ve given some of the top teams a run for their money this season.

S O C I E T Yd e s k

S O C I E T Yd e s k

S O C I E T Yd e s k

TEHRAN — Iranian college students won a gold medal and a special award at the

Seoul International Invention Fair (SIIF) which was held on November 27-30, ISNA news agency reported on Tuesday.

The event aimed to hold a wholly integrated invention fair providing inventors from all over the world with compre-hensive information on the commercialization of inventions, patent information, and technology transfer.

Two Iranian teams consisting of school students and college students competed in the event. Shahriar Shariati and Adel Ahmadi Fariman won the gold medals among school students, Amir-Abbas Mohammadi-Koushki, head of the Iranian teams said.

The students’ innovative project was “smart depres-sion detection system using artificial intelligence” which ranked first surpassing South Korea, the United States

and Germany, he noted.The college students’ team was awarded for “block

chain system in medical information technology” which aims to eliminate insurance booklets in Iran, Moham-

madi-Koushki highlighted.Features of the project include physicians’ tax bills,

saving on paperwork costs of hospital and government-run medical centers, preventing patients from using duplicate medicines, and making medical records always available, and fast access to patients’ health background for doctors while ensuring the safety of patients’ health information and data, he explained.

Supported by the World Intellectual Property Or-ganization (WIPO) and the International Federation of Inventors’ Associations (IFIA), the 4-day event gathered inventors and researchers to showcase their new ideas and products to manufacturers, investors, distributors, licensing firms, and the general public.

In SIIF 2018, 604 inventions from 32 countries and around 40,000 spectators participated.

Iranian students win gold medal, special award at SIIF 2019

Transport strike in France mars Christmas

Venezuela arrests 11 after weekend raid of military outpost: Maduro

Christmas Eve in France has been set to be marred by the nearly three-week standoff between French train drivers and the government over pension reforms.

Now in its 20th day, the walkout has ruined Christmas travel plans for tens of thousands of ticket holders unable to reach loved ones in time for Christmas Day on Wednesday.

Workers at the national SNCF and Parisian RATP rail and public transport companies have downed tools to protest at the government’s plan to meld France’s 42 pension schemes into a single points-based one, which would see some public employees lose certain privileges.

There will be no surprises under the Christmas tree for those keen to travel on Tuesday, with up to 40 percent of high-speed rail and express regional trains canceled, along with up to 20 percent of other trains.

The SNCF has also announced that on Tuesday evening, trains between Paris and its suburbs will be halted. Some lines will reopen Wednesday morning, others only on Thursday.

Laurent Brun of the hard-line CGT

union, said strikers have a “set of plans to celebrate Christmas” together while maintaining action all week-long.

Talks between the government and unions last week failed to find middle ground, and strikers vowed there would be no holiday truce unless the pension overhaul plan was scrapped.

Trade unions and others involved in the strike will meet with the government on January 7 to discuss the pension re-forms, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s office said Monday. The talks are set to run through the month of January.

On Saturday and Sunday, the last weekend before Christmas, the SCNF provided half the usual number of TGV high-speed trains, a third of regional TER services, a quarter of intercity trains, and one in five connecting Paris to its outer suburbs.

Unions are angry about the govern-ment’s plans, which would see some public employees — notably railway staff — lose early-retirement and other benefits.

The government insists the new system would be fairer and more transparent.

(Source: AFP)

Venezuela has arrested 11 people in con-nection with a weekend raid of a remote military outpost in southern Bolivar state, but some suspects have fled across the border to Brazil with stolen weapons, President Nicolas Maduro said.

Authorities have accused Brazil, Colom-bia and Peru - all adversaries of socialist Maduro who recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as the rightful president - of complicity with the attack, in which one Venezuelan soldier was killed. All three countries’ governments have denied involvement. In an evening address on state television, Maduro called on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to cooperate.

“Capture the assailants in Brazilian territory and return the weapons to the Venezuelan armed forces,” Maduro said.

He said the 11 detainees included both military and civilian suspects, without providing details.

Authorities have blamed “extreme sectors of the opposition” for the raid. Venezuela, whose economy has collapsed under Maduro, has been locked in a deep political crisis since Guaido, the head of the opposition-held National Assembly,

assumed a rival presidency in January.Maduro dismisses Guaido as a U.S.

puppet seeking to oust him in a coup.Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez

said in an earlier address on Monday that Darwin Balaguera, a former National Guard member who deserted in February and fled to Colombia, was detained over the raid. The channel broadcast video of Balaguera answering authorities’ questions in cus-tody. Balaguera was among hundreds of Venezuelan soldiers who defected to Co-lombia during a Guaido-led attempt to bring humanitarian aid into the country through Colombia and Brazil in February. Some have said they are prepared to take up arms to remove Maduro.

Olnar Ortiz, an attorney with nonprofit rights group Penal Forum, said at least seven members of the Pemon indigenous group were arrested in connection with the incident. Ortiz said four other Pemon individuals were missing. Ortiz said au-thorities raided homes in the Pemon village of Kumarakapay near Venezuela’s border with Brazil on Sunday evening, searching for suspected participants in the raid.

(Source: Reuters)

WORLD IN FOCUS 13I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Russia will closely monitor new U.S. missile deployments in Europe & Asia-Pacific:Putin

Moscow will monitor the potential deploy-ment of American short- and intermedi-ate-range missiles in various parts of the world, Vladimir Putin has told the military.

The U.S. has effectively dismantled the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty this year, Putin said at an annual gathering of the Defense Ministry board, which gives new reasons for Russia to be vigilant. The treaty in question banned land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers with ranges of up to 5,500km (3,418 miles). While keeping an eye on these developments, Moscow also needs to “analyze potential military threats and determine measures for the use and further improvement of the armed forces.”

The Pentagon is ramping up its strike capabilities after withdrawal from the INF, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at the same event. The U.S. military will soon be able to scramble nuclear-armed bombers in just 24 hours, reducing the readiness time from the previous ten days.

Aside from that, the Baltic countries witnessed the construction of U.S. ear-ly-warning radars capable of scanning Russian airspace within 450km, the minister said. Meanwhile, NATO holds “up to forty

explicitly anti-Russian large-scale drills.” Putin takes first train across

Crimea bridge Vladimir Putin stood in the driver’s

cabin of a train for the official opening of a railway bridge that links annexed Crimea to southern Russia, with the launch drawing

sharp criticism from Ukraine and the EU. During his ride from Kerch in Crimea in a shortened three-carriage train, Putin also spent time drinking tea with engineers on the 227 billion ruble ($3.6 billion) project.

The rail bridge, which Putin praised as “magnificent,” is 19 kilometers long. The

bridge for car traffic opened in May last year when the president drove a truck across it.

The total rail route from the northwest-ern city of Saint Petersburg to the Crimean port city of Sevastopol covers a distance of 2,500 kilometers.

Putin said the bridge would restore rail links to Crimea severed in 2014 when Moscow annexed the peninsula, sparking an ongoing separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine that has claimed more 13,000 lives.

The company of Putin’s close ally, bil-lionaire businessman Arkady Rotenberg, won the construction contract for the bridge. He sold the company last month.

Putin told workers an anecdote about receiving an emotional call from “your main boss with the simple Russian sur-name Rotenberg,” after the completion of a key stage of the project.

“He called me at night and spoke in such a voice that I asked him ‘Have you been drinking?’” the Russian leader said.

The coverage of the project has been reminiscent of Soviet infrastructure proj-ects, with a newsreader on state-controlled Rossiya 24 television channel calling the opening “without exaggeration historic.”

(Source: RT)

1 The remaining three, however, were found not guilty, including Saud al-Qahtani, a former top adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Ahmed al-Assiri, an ex-deputy intelligence chief, and Mohamed al-Otaibi, who was consul general in the kingdom’s con-sulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul when the murder happened.

Both Qahtani and Assiri were relieved of their duties in the immediate aftermath of Khashoggi’s assassination last year. Qahtani and Otaibi were also sanctioned a year ago by the U.S. Treasury for their involvement in the murder.

Khashoggi — an outspoken critic of the heir to the Saudi throne — went into self-imposed exile in the U.S. in 2017. The Washington Post columnist entered the Saudi consu-late in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, to obtain paperwork he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée.

Inside Riyadh’s mission, he was confronted by a Saudi hit team, who killed him and brutally dismembered his body.

The CIA has concluded that bin Salman had ordered the murder. The journalist’s remains have yet to be found.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Shaalan claimed that Khashog-gi’s killers had decided to murder him after their arrival in Istanbul.

“Our investigations show that there was no premedi-tation to kill at the beginning of the mission,” he claimed.

Shaalan’s claims sparked a wave of condemnations from the world body, human rights organizations and U.S. legislators.

HRW: Trial ‘all but satisfactory’Ahmed Benchemsi, spokesman for Human Rights

Watch, told the Doha-based Al Jazeera broadcaster that the trial was “all but satisfactory.”

The case was “shrouded in secrecy since the beginning, and it’s still ... until now ... We do not know the identities of those masked perpetrators, we don’t know the specific charge leveled against who exactly,” he said.

“Saudi prosecutors did not even attempt to investigate the upper levels of this crime, and whether they played a role in ordering the killing, including Crown Prince Mo-hammed bin Salman,” he added.

Adam Coogle, who researches Saudi Arabia for the HRW, underlined the need for an independent probe.

“Saudi Arabia’s absolution of its senior leadership of any culpability in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi raises serious concerns over the fairness of the criminal pro-ceedings,” he said.

“Saudi Arabia’s handling of the murder, from complete denial to hanging the murder on lower-level operatives in a trial that lacked transparency, demonstrates the need for an independent criminal inquiry.”

Amnesty: Verdict ‘a whitewash’In turn, Amnesty International has blasted the verdict

as “a whitewash” and said Saudi officials have failed the slain journalist and his family.

“This verdict ... brings neither justice nor the truth for Jamal Khashoggi and his loved ones. The trial has been closed to the public and to independent monitors, with no information available as to how the investigation was carried out,” Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Middle East Research Director, said in a statement.

“The verdict fails to address the Saudi authorities’ in-volvement in this devastating crime or clarify the location of Jamal Khashoggi’s remains,” she added.

UN rapporteur: Masterminds walking freeIn a series of tweets, Agnes Callamard, the UN rap-

porteur investigating Khashoggi’s killing, condemned the ruling as a “travesty,” noting that the trial had failed to consider the involvement of the state.

“The execution of Jamal Khashoggi demanded an investigation into the chain of command to identify the masterminds, as well as those who incited, allowed or turned a blind eye to the murder, such as the Crown Prince,” she wrote.

“This was not investigated. Bottom line: the hit men are guilty, sentenced to death. The masterminds not only walk free, they have barely been touched by the investi-gation and the trial. That is the antithesis of justice. It is a mockery.”

In her 101-page report released in June, Callamard said that there is “sufficient credible evidence” indicating that the heir to the Saudi throne bears responsibility for the murder and thus should be investigated.

Erdogan spox: Those ordering murder given immunity

Fahrettin Altun, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that the Saudi officials who had ordered the operation were “granted immunity.”

“To claim that a handful of intelligence operatives com-mitted this murder is to mock the world’s intelligence — to say the least,” he tweeted.

UK: Khashoggi’s family deserve to see justice

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab described Khashoggi’s murder as “a terrible crime.”

“Mr. Khashoggi’s family deserve to see justice done for his brutal murder. Saudi Arabia must ensure all of those responsible are held to account and that such an atrocity can never happen again,” he said in a statement.

Washington Post: An ‘insult’ to Khashog-gi’s family

The Washington Post editorial board called Monday’s sentences a “travesty of justice.”

“The result is an insult to Khashoggi’s family and to all those, including a bipartisan congressional majority,

who have demanded genuine accountability in the case,” it wrote in an op-ed.

The editorial board also warned the international com-munity against welcoming the result of the Saudi trial.

“International acceptance of the result would not only be morally wrong but dangerous, too: It would send the reckless Saudi ruler the message that his murderous ad-venturism will be tolerated,” it said.

‘Trial comedy’The dissident Saudi Twitter account Prisoners of

Conscience criticized the trial of Khashoggi’s killers as a “comedy,” saying that all those involved in the crime should be held accountable.

“Just a year ago, the U.S. intelligence published a re-port revealing correspondences between Saud al-Qahtani and Bin Salman before, during and following Khashoggi’s assassination,” it pointed out.

“Today, the Saudi judiciary claims that the crime took place without prior planning and acquits Saud al-Qahtani! What kind of independent judiciary is this?!” it added.

American lawmakers fume at sentencesSeveral U.S. legislators have censured not only Saudi

Arabia for the verdict but also U.S. President Donald Trump, who has shielded bin Salman from blame for Khashoggi’s assassination and emphasized Riyadh’s lucrative arms deals with Washington instead.

Senator Bernie Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, highlighted the CIA’s conclusion and slammed the trial as “a cover-up” by the Saudi regime.

“This sham trial, carried out by a despotic and law-less regime, looks more like a cover-up,” he said. “Maybe Donald Trump might want to stop proclaiming his love and affection for the Saudi dictatorship.”

Similarly, Democrat Senator Tim Kaine cited the CIA’s assessment on the case, urging the U.S. government to seek justice for Khashoggi.

“Senior Saudi officials continue to escape accountability for the state-sponsored murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” said Kaine, who represents Virginia, where Khashoggi lived.

“The Trump Administration should be demanding jus-tice for the brutal killing of a journalist and VA resident instead of ignoring the CIA’s assessment of who killed him,” Kaine added.

Connecticut Democrat Senator Richard Blumen-thal blamed the U.S. president for bin Salam’s evasion of responsibility.

“After a sham trial, the masterminds behind Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder walk away scot-free,” he said. “Trump is also culpable - having done next to nothing to hold the Crown Prince accountable for murdering a brave, truth-seeking journalist.”

(Source: agencies)

‘Antithesis of justice’: Khashoggi verdict roundly condemned

Syrian army makes fresh gains against terrorists in IdlibThe Syrian government forces have made fresh gains against foreign-backed terrorists in Idlib province, the last major strong-hold of militants in Syria, as the army tightens the noose around the extremists operating in the region.

The Syrian armed forces cleared two key towns after destroying the terrorists’ hideouts and fortifications on Monday.

Government forces also surrounded a Turkish observation post in Idlib. Earlier, the Syrian army troops established control over five villages in the northwestern province.

According to Syria’s official news agency, SANA, government troops established control over the villages of al-Hraki and al-Qrati, besides several plots of farm land in Idlib’s southeastern coun-tryside on Sunday.

The capture came after “intense battles” with members of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, Takfiri terrorist group, formerly known as the al-Nusra Front, SANA added, noting that army soldiers inflicted heavy losses upon the Takfiri forces.

In recent days, Syrian government forces have succeeded in wresting full control over several villages, following heavy exchanges of gunfire with the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terrorists.

The Takfiris were using the villages as a launching pad for their mortar attacks on areas in southern Idlib, which have re-turned to government control.

The armed conflict began in Syria in 2011. But the Syrian military, backed by the Russian air force and Iranian military advisers, have taken back control of most of the areas in Syria that had been held by militant and terrorist groups.

(Source: Press TV)

Indian citizenship law and discrimination against Muslims

1 However, the representatives of Modi’s nationalist party have announced in the parliament that the government will not back down on the implementation of the bill under no circumstances.

In response to the protests, the prime minister attributed the recent events to his domestic opponents and the rival par-ty. Modi also refused to show flexibility toward the protests. In such circumstances, it seems that the government is seeking to politicize the issue and bipolarize its supporters and opponents in the face of recent internal tensions.

Revoking the autonomy of Muslim-populated Jammu and Kashmir state, as well as threatening to strip citizenship from 1.9 million of residents in Assam, which mainly include Mus-lim immigrants from India’s neighboring country, Bangladesh, are among the measures taken by the conservative government against Muslims in the past year.

Therefore, it can be concluded that ethnic policies are not limited to the new citizenship law, but more generally the government is pursuing an ethnic approach to domestic affairs, especially against Muslims.

The way that the government treats the Indian Muslims along with officials’ ethnic policies, including the citizenship law, clearly shows the roll-back of the world’s greatest diplomacy.

The roll-back, at the same time of being discretionary, is a disproportionate attempt to return to identity. The Indian gov-ernment is carrying out the attempt, largely defined in terms of Hindu identity, in an inefficient way.

India seems to be entering a new critical phase of identity, which makes religion a criteria for citizenship.

In fact, despite the political democracy in India that pursues a liberal democracy, putting the issue of identity aside over the past years has had an opposite result and caused the conservatives took power. In an inefficient roll-back, India’s conservatives are seeking to highlight a form of insider identity against outsider, with a focus on Hindu identity and confrontation with Muslim identity.

It is not clear that how long the current crisis resulted from inefficient identity policies last in India, but one can expect that entering the stage of identity crisis in liberal-democratic countries that have ignored identity diversity will continue.

Senate leaders at impasse over Trump impeachment trialThe fate of a Senate impeachment trial for President Donald Trump is at an impasse as Republican and Democratic leaders remained at odds over what form it would take and what wit-nesses would be called.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he has not ruled out calling witnesses but also indicated that he was in no hurry to seek new testimony either. The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, responded that any trial without witnesses would be “Kafkaesque” and a “sham.” He said he remained open to negotiating with McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.

“Let’s put it like this: If there are no documents and no wit-nesses, it will be very hard to come to an agreement,” Schumer told The Associated Press on Monday.

The House voted Wednesday to impeach Trump, who became only the third president in U.S. history to be formally charged with “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But the Senate trial may be held up until lawmakers can agree on how to proceed. Schumer is demanding witnesses who refused to appear during House committee hearings, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.

McConnell, who has all but promised a swift acquittal of the president, has resisted making any guarantees, and has cautioned Trump against seeking the testimony of witnesses for fear of prolonging the trial. Instead, McConnell appears to have secured Republican support for his plans to impose a framework drawn from the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.

“We haven’t ruled out witnesses,” McConnell said Monday in an interview with “Fox and Friends.” “We’ve said let’s handle this case just like we did with President Clinton. Fair is fair.”

That trial featured a 100-0 vote on arrangements that es-tablished two weeks of presentations and argument before a partisan tally in which Republicans, who held the majority, called a limited number of witnesses. But Democrats now would need Republican votes to secure witness testimony - and Republicans believe they have the votes to eventually block those requests.

(Source: AP)

DECEMBER 25, 2019

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

W O R L D S P O R T S DECEMBER 25, 201914

Nadal: Winning 20 Grand Slam titles is a dream

Australian Open prize money tops £38mAustralian Open organizers have increased the prize money to more than £38m with the biggest gains for those losing in the earlier rounds.

The overall prize fund for the tournament has increased by 14% to 71m Australian dollars (£38.1m).

Players who exit in the first round will receive 20% more than last year while money for losers in the opening qualifying round is up by a third.

The tournament proper begins in Melbourne on 20 January.Tournament director Craig Tiley says the Australian Open

is committed to “improving the pay and conditions for a deeper pool of international tennis players”.

“We worked with the tours to establish the weighting for prize money increases round by round, and we pushed to reward players competing early in the tournament in both singles and doubles,” added Tiley.

“We strongly believe in growing prize money at all levels of the game and we will continue to work with the playing group to create viable career paths in the sport and enable more players to make more money.”

Singles champions at the 2020 tournament will take home 4.12m Australian dollars (£2.21m).

The prize money for losing in the first round of qualifying is 20,000 Australian dollars (£10,707) and 90,000 Australian dollars (£48,183) for exiting in the first round main draw.

(Source: BBC)

Rangers boss Gerrard wants ‘severe example’ made of bottle-throwersRangers manager Steven Gerrard has urged Scottish football authorities to make a “severe example” of bottle-throwing sup-porters if they are serious about protecting players.

Gers left-back Borna Barisic only narrowly escaped a potentially serious injury during a win away to Hibernian on Friday when a glass bottle was hurled at him from the Easter Road stands.

This was not the first time the Edinburgh club’s East Stand has provided the backdrop for a violent incident.

Rangers captain James Tavernier was confronted by a pitch invader in March, just a week after a glass bottle was thrown at Celtic winger Scott Sinclair.

Gerrard believes the repeat nature of these incidents has only increased the likelihood for further attacks, with the for-mer Liverpool and England midfielder saying now was the time for stern measures.

“It’s a crazy decision to throw a bottle onto a football pitch,” Gerrard said. “The damage you could do is unthinkable.

“If the punishment isn’t severe enough then people will con-tinue to make bad decisions from the terraces.

“There needs to be an example set -- a severe one -- and then that will make people think and things will improve. But it does seem like we’re going backwards rather than forwards.”

Meanwhile Hibernian said later Monday they had passed footage of four men throwing missiles last Friday to the police.

A club statement added “those who misbehave should know we will leave no stone unturned to identify them and bring them to book”.

Victory over Hibs left second-placed Rangers five points behind arch-rivals Celtic, the reigning Scottish Premiership champions.

(Source: Mirror)

Iachini appointed Fiorentina coachGiuseppe Iachini has been appointed coach of struggling Fioren-tina, the Serie A club confirmed on Monday.

Iachini, 55, replaces Vincenzo Montella who was sacked on Saturday with the team trailing in 15th place, three points above the relegation zone.

“The current ranking has forced us to change coach,” said Fiorentina owner Rocco Commisso.

“We chose Iachini because he is a man of substance, tied to Florence and Fiorentina.

“Now we have to stay united and get back on the right track as soon as possible.”

He added: “I would like to thank Vincenzo Montella for the commitment and professionalism he showed during his time at the club.”

Former Fiorentina midfielder Iachini lined out 127 times for the Tuscany club between 1989 and 1994 during his playing career.

Since turning to coaching in 2002 he has managed Italian teams including Sampdoria, Palermo, Sassuolo and Udinese.

He has been without a club since being sacked by Empoli last March, after just four months in charge.

Iachini will be presented to the press on December 28, leading his first training session the following day.

Fiorentina lost 4-1 at home to Roma on Friday and have taken just two points from their last seven games.

Buoyed at the start of the season by the arrival of Franck Rib-ery, the team has been struggling since the Frenchman suffered a serious ankle injury that will keep him out until February.

(Source: Football Italia)

Tottenham ban fan who threw cup at Chelsea keeper KepaTottenham Hotspur have identified and banned a supporter who threw a cup at Chelsea goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga during Sunday’s 2-0 home defeat for Spurs, the Premier League club said on Tuesday.

With his side already two goals down, Kepa was targeted by a supporter behind the goal in the 65th minute, with the cup missing the Spanish goalkeeper by inches when he walked across his six-yard box.

“We can confirm that we have identified and issued an im-mediate ban to the individual responsible for throwing a cup at Chelsea goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga during Sunday’s Premier League home fixture,” the club said in a statement.

“We shall continue to take the strongest action possible against anyone found to be behaving in this way.”

Chelsea defender Antonio Rudiger was also allegedly racially abused in the match, and the German defender urged the club to find and punish those involved. Spurs said their investigation into that “remains ongoing”.

(Source: Reuters)

The latest racism row engulfing English football took a fresh turn Monday amid reports Tottenham Hotspur’s Son Heung-min as well as Chelsea’s Antonio Rudiger had been abused by spectators during Sunday’s fractious London derby.

Chelsea’s 2-0 Premier League win at the Tottenham Hot-spur stadium saw referee Anthony Taylor halt play during the second half when Rudiger complained of hearing monkey noises from spectators.

Moments earlier, the Chelsea defender had been involved in a clash with Son that saw the South Korean sent off.

But late Monday a report on the website of Britain’s Guard-ian newspaper said a Chelsea supporter had been arrested for racially abusing Son on Sunday.

London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed an arrest con-cerning a possible racially aggravated public order offence, with a spokesman saying: “Police were made aware of alleged racist chanting during the second half of the Tottenham vs Chelsea match on Sunday, 22 December.

“Officers will work with the club in an attempt to identify any people responsible.”

Meanwhile Tottenham, having promised a thorough in-vestigation of the Rudiger incident, said Monday their initial inquiries had failed to find a culprit despite “many hours” reviewing images from stadium video cameras and having

professional lip-readers study the footage.Tottenham insisted any fan found guilty would receive a

lifetime ban, but stressed: “At this time, however, we should point out that our findings are inconclusive”.

Shortly after the stoppage brought about by Rudiger’s complaint, Taylor halted play and spoke to both managers, Jose Mourinho and Frank Lampard, while an announce-ment over the stadium’s public address system warned “racist behaviour among spectators is interfering with the game”.

‘Misconception’ The announcement was repeated, with Tottenham saying

this had created a “misconception that any issue was ongoing” because Taylor had implemented the first stage of European governing body UEFA’s protocol for dealing with racist inci-dents, rather than the equivalent Premier League regulation.

After the match, Rudiger tweeted: “It’s just such a shame that racism still exists in 2019.

“When will this nonsense stop?” the German added.England’s Professional Footballers Association, called late

Sunday for a government inquiry into racism within football, adding its members were “on the receiving end of the blatant racism that is currently rife in the UK, but they are not alone”.

A Downing Street spokesman responded Monday by condemning “racism of any kind.

“Clearly there remains more work to be done by the foot-ball authorities in tackling this issue and we are committed to working with them on this to stamp it out.”

The spokesman added: “We will continue working with the authorities on this, including the Professional Football-ers’ Association and we don’t rule out taking further steps if required.”

Sports minister Nigel Adams said later Monday he had held positive talks with Tottenham, the Premier League and the PFA.

UEFA chief Aleksander Ceferin insisted earlier this month his organization was working to tackle the rising problem after several incidents across the continent including the hurling of racist abuse at England players during a match in Bulgaria.

But Ceferin has accused British Prime Minister Boris Johnson of fuelling the problem, a point echoed by former Manchester United and England defender Gary Neville.

“We’ve just had a general election in this country with both main parties and the leaders of both main parties accused constantly of fuelling racism and accepting racism in their parties,” Neville told Sky Sports on Sunday.

“Maybe we have to empower the players to walk off the pitch and stop the entertainment while it is happening,” he added.

(Source: AFP)

Rudiger racism row takes new twist amid reports of Son abuse

Holiday shines as Pacers edge Raptors in overtime

Klopp does not know where new boy Minamino will play at Liverpool

Aaron Holiday finished with 19 points and made two clutch three-pointers in overtime as the Indiana Pacers snapped the Toronto Raptors five-game winning streak with a 120-115 win on Monday.

Myles Turner and TJ Warren also had 24 points each, and Holiday added 10 as-sists in the win over the injury-depleted Raptors who were coming off their biggest comeback win in franchise history.

“It’s a big win for us,” said Holiday, who finished with 19 points in getting the start at point guard for the injured Malcolm Brogdon. “It’s fun playing with emotion, especially in big games.”

Kyle Lowry had 30 points and nine as-sists for Toronto, who defeated the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday after trailing by 30 points in the third quarter.

“We gutted it out, we played our butts off and gave ourselves a chance to win at the end,” Lowry said of the Raptors. “Un-fortunately, we came up short.”

But the Raptors, who were missing sev-eral starters, ran out of gas on Monday in front of the crowd of 17,100 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse arena in Indianapolis.

This time, Toronto was forced to come back from a 15-point deficit but couldn’t pull out the victory.

Domantas Sabonis scored 12 points and grabbed 17 rebounds for Indiana. Jeremy

Lamb and TJ McConnell both had 12 points. Lamb missed the two previous games with a groin problem.

Serge Ibaka had 23 points and nine re-bounds, Fred VanVleet contributed 21 points and 11 assists, and OG Anunoby scored 15 points and 12 rebounds for Toronto.

The Pacers got three-pointers from Holiday and Warren to lead by two with 41 seconds remaining in regulation. Lowry’s layup tied it 107-107 with 34 seconds left. Lowry then took the final long shot of regu-lation but missed badly.

Holiday’s three-pointer gave Indiana a three-point lead with just over two minutes left in overtime. He made another three-point dagger with 54 seconds left to increase the lead to four.

This was the first meeting between the teams this season after Toronto won two of three from Indiana last season.

The Pacers beat the visiting Raptors 110-106 on January 23 in the final meet-ing, which saw Indiana star Victor Oladipo suffer a serious knee injury in the second quarter. Oladipo has yet to play this season as he is still rehabbing that injury.

The Raptors are playing without key in-jured players, comprising Pascal Siakam (groin), Marc Gasol (hamstring) and Nor-man Powell (shoulder).

(Source: Eurosport)

Jurgen Klopp admits he isn’t sure where Liverpool new boy Takumi Minamino will fit into his side when he arrives on January 1.

Liverpool snapped up the Red Bull Salz-burg attacking midfielder for a bargain £7.25million last week.

Though hopes are high for the 24-year-old, Klopp insists he will ease him in as he figures out his best lineup.

‘How can we put him in, in the short-term?’ he asked during a press-conference on Tuesday.

‘Long-term, there is no doubt that he will help us, that’s clear. I’m looking forward to working with him, but between now and Takumi’s first real day at Melwood there’s still three games so I have a little bit of time to think about where he will fit in.’

But he believes the Japan international will be a natural addition to his table-topping side.

Takumi is likely to provide an alternative option for Klopp to his traditional front three of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane, as well as an option as the most advanced of a midfield three in a similar ilk to the currently injured Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Klopp said: ‘All the things we know about Takumi, so many things fit very well to us.

‘His football skills first and foremost

obviously, his decision-making in tight areas, his speed, his desire to win the ball back.

‘Counter-pressing, he’s used to that be-cause Salzburg have a similar philosophy that we have.

‘That’s all really good but then you have to see how he will adapt when he is finally coming over and we are allowed to work with him.’

Minamino has scored nine goals in 22 appearances in the Austrian Bundesliga so far this season, and impressed in Salzburg’s 4-3 defeat at Anfield in October.

He has earned 22 caps for his country, and leaves Austria after five years. He won the Austrian Bundesliga in every season he has had with Salzburg, as well as lifting four Austrian Cups with the club.

He could make his Liverpool debut in the third-round FA Cup tie against Carlo Ancelotti’s Everton, in what would be a baptism of fire at Anfield on January 5.

Klopp’s league leaders return to action on Boxing Day when they travel to title rivals Leicester in the Premier League’s late game.

Minamino is excited about his new venture, admitting to the club’s website last week: ‘It has been a dream, my dream to become a Liverpool player.

(Source: Daily Mail)

Rafa Nadal has admitted that equalling Roger Federer’s Grand Slam tally of 20 would be a dream for him.

The Spaniard is currently on 19 Grand Slam titles and will be targeting more in 2020.

“I’m on my own path, like I have been my whole life. This is the reality,” Nadal told MARCA.

“But [reaching 20 Grand Slams] is a dream, although I think that restrained ambition is bad.”

Nadal answered several questions about his academy, museum, his fans and his personal life, as well as talking more about his competition with Federer.

How does it feel to see the Rafa Nadal Academy grow?

We’ve been going non-stop for years and it’s not just my close team but more than 300 workers. We’re trying to give the best service possible to everyone that visits us so that they leave with a good memory.

What stands out is a museum of Spanish sporting history.

We’re lucky that great athletes from past and present have lent us their historical objects to put on display, and this is the great satisfaction. It’s not just a tennis museum or a museum about me. I always wanted to steer away from that. What I wanted was to make it for the whole world of sport. Evidently, because it’s about my academy, I had to be central. But I think it encapsulates sport in general and that’s why I wanted a little bit

of everything. Do you think there will be a

Spanish youngster coming through than can win trophies alongside you soon?

Let’s hope so, that’s what we work for. But you have to be honest and not push people. We’re a very young center, we’ve only been going for three years. The results of academies are often seen as the years go by. A young, already developed player than come here and be successful to make the academy more well-known across the world. But the real success of a place like

this has to be the foundation work. We need more time to see the results.

How does the support of your fans feel?

I’m lucky enough to receive so much love and support from so many people. Sometimes this is more important than winning. When I’m injured, people always ask me what I miss most about tennis: it’s this feeling of going out on court, seeing the fans that want to see you, fans who want to support you wherever it is in the world. It’s a difficult feeling to explain, but it gives me great personal satisfaction. It suggests

that you’ve done well on and off court with good behavior. The personal side is always more important than the professional side.

What is your philosophy?You can always do a little bit more. I don’t

want to go away knowing that I didn’t fight until the end. I think this is what keeps the balance. If I’m not all there, I’m sure that I won’t succeed. If I’m there, even though I’m playing badly, I can succeed. Why not? I put videos of me on the Internet, I see positive, exciting moments and you realize that you’ve done it before. I never want to have the feeling that I gave up.

Nicolas Almagro made a phrase about you famous during the 2008 French Open: “This guy will still be winning here at 65 years old.” Do you think your opponents see you as unbeatable on the clay at Paris?

I don’t think they see me as unbeatable because I’ve lost before. No one is unbeatable, and let’s hope this continues. It’s like that. Being unbeatable isn’t a human trait. Human beings aren’t perfect and invincibility is perfection. Everyone is beatable and I consider myself normal and ordinary despite having done special things on a tennis court. In the best moments of my career, my opponents will have thought it was difficult to beat me at Roland Garros in the same way that I look at playing against Federer and [Novak] Djokovic, who are very difficult for me to beat.

(Source: Marca)

S P O R T S 15I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

S P O R T Sd e s k

S P O R T Sd e s k

DECEMBER 25, 2019

Qatar will begin sifting through fan feedback from the Club World Cup to see how it can provide supporters with a successful World Cup in 2022, but cultural differences will be a tricky challenge to surmount.

The first ‘trial run’ for the Qatari 2022 World Cup completed at the weekend, with Liverpool defeating Brazil’s Flamengo in the final.

Judging from the views of fans, the feedback is likely to be a mixture of reassurance about their infrastructure but concern about the ‘fun factor’.

Drinking and partying can be a tricky concept in a country with strict restrictions on alcohol consumption and low tolerance for rowdiness.

“It’s much more about people than bricks and mortar now,” Hassan Al Thawadi, head of Qatar’s World Cup organizing committee, told Reuters in an interview.

“We are looking at the fans here at this event as part-ners, to educate and teach us whether our plans worked or not, what can we improve, what doesn’t work and what we need to scrap all together.”

The tournament attracted around 13,000 Brazilian fans as well as thousands of Liverpool supporters from around the world. Mexican, Saudi and Tunisian fans were also in attendance to support other teams in the competition.

“All the facilities look top-notch. The stadiums are all state of the art, everything is state-of-the-art here,” said Liverpool fan Adnan Vola, who had travelled from Britain.

But Tunisian fan Ahmed Ali, decked out in the red

and yellow shirt of his team Esperance, said that the Qataris will need to shift their approach to satisfy fans from around the world who are used to gathering in large numbers to drink and sing before matches.

Singing and chanting“I think they have to be a little bit more open. You are

going to have teams coming from England, Germany, France, South America - guess what? They have to be a little bit open.”

Some Flamengo fans took to wearing Arabic-style head-dress in their team’s colors and staff on the new metro system appeared a little flustered by large crowds singing and chanting in the carriages.

Ali said that the “openness” was needed primarily in allowing fans to enjoy their usual pre and post-match rituals which often involve drinking.

In Qatar alcohol sales are limited to a handful of hotels which are allowed to operate bars but for the Club World Cup, organizers created a fan-zone, at a golf club, where supporters could buy beer at friendlier prices than in high-end accommodation.

Fans were then bussed from the fan-zone to the sta-dium, where alcohol was not for sale.

For the organizers this has the advantage of reducing the risk of alcohol fuelled incidents either in the city’s public places or at the stadium.

It is expected that more fan-zones will be created for the World Cup with concerts and other entertainment put on to encourage supporters into these separated areas.

But the possibility of allowing beer at the stadium

itself is not completely off the agenda.“That is being discussed, keeping in mind that al-

cohol is not part of our culture but hospitality is,” said Al Thawadi.

“We want to ensure that everyone has a good time, we want to make sure that what we put in place, that bridges the cultural gaps and cultural differences.

“We have put something in place, I want to hear from the fans, all of them, about their experiences in Doha. About their experience of having a drink, going out to the stadium, we are here to listen and to improve,” he added.

(Source: Reuters)

TEHRAN — Tractor defeated Shahr Khodro 3-1 in Tabriz to keep Iran Pro-

fessional League title hopes alive. Reza Asadi put the hosts in the lead in the 37th min-

ute and Masoud Shojaei made it 2-0 five minutes into the second half.

Shahr Khodro got back into the game three minutes later when Mohammadhossein Moradmand pulled one back.

Ashkan Dejagah poured cold water on their chances of levelling the match in the 72nd minute.

Tractor moved to fifth place with 27 points, four

points adrift of top. In Sirjan, Gol Gohar celebrated their first win in the

current season, edging past Machine Sazi 1-0 thanks to a goal from Mehrdad Abdi in the 51st minute.

Pars Jonoobi also defeated Paykan 3-1 in Bushehr. Mohammad Nouri opened the scoring for the host in the 20th minute. Pouria Aryakia and Nima Entezari also were on target in the 43rd and 48th minutes.

Paykan forward Jalaleddinn Alimohammadi pulled a goal back in the 81st minute.

Sepahan and Persepolis sit at the top of the table with 31 points and one game in hands.

FIFA has banned Bahrain defender Sayed Baqer for 10 matches for ‹discriminatory behavior’ in a World Cup qualifier against Hong Kong, soccer’s world governing body has said.

Baqer, 25, was captured on video mak-ing a slant-eyed gesture in the direction of Hong Kong supporters after a goalless draw in the city on Nov 14.

FIFA opened disciplinary proceedings against Baqer last month and announced that the player had also been fined 30,000 Swiss francs (US$30,530) and warned over his conduct.

The suspension follows the governing body’s July announcement that it had doubled the minimum ban for racist behavior to 10 games.

A number of high-profile racist incidents have marred the game this season.

The most recent involved the arrest of a Chelsea fan for allegedly racially abusing Tottenham Hotspur’s South Korean forward Son Heung-min in a Premier League match in London on

Sunday.Chelsea defender Antonio Rudiger

also alleged he was racially abused in the same game, prompting the Pro-

fessional Footballers’ Association to call for a government inquiry into the proliferation of racist incidents in Eng-lish soccer.

Italy has also been front and center this season with Inter Milan’s Romelu Lukaku and Brescia’s Mario Balotelli being targeted by rival fans during Serie A matches.

In a separate ruling, FIFA ordered Indonesia to play one match behind closed doors without fans and fined the country’s soccer association 200,000 Swiss francs (US$203,500) over security failings during a World Cup qualifier with Malaysia last month.

Malaysia were fined 50,000 Swiss francs (US$50,890) for the behavior of their fans.

Sierra Leone have also been told to play one game behind closed doors and were fined 50,000 Swiss francs (US$50,890) for a lack of order during a qualifier against Liberia in September.

(Source: Reuters)

Booze and football present tricky choices for Qatar

IPL: Tractor back in title race

Bahrain’s Baqer gets 10-game ban for racist gesture

Iranian women proud of gold medal wins in world athletic contests

IRNA — Since the outset of presence of the Iranian women in the world athletic contests two years ago, they are proud of winning colorful medals day by day.

On December 23, the Iranian women’s Alysh team clinched the championship title at the 2019 world alysh competitions held in Nur Sultan, Kazakhstan.

The victory was the first in history achieved by Iran’s female alysh wrestlers, and it made Iran be proud of its powerful women.

Also about four months ago, Poupak Basami, Iranian woman who had taken part in the 2019 IWF World Championships in Pattaya, Thailand, broke her national records and stood at the sixth place.

Participation of Basami and her teammates in the world contests had reaction worldwide as International Weightlifting Federation congratulated Iran for sending four female weightlifters to this year’s world championships.

It was in 2017 that the Iranian Weightlifting Federation an-nounced officially that female athletes are allowed to compete in the world contests. Now, after two years from the announce-ment, the Iranian women can make history at the IWF World Championships on September 18-27.

Meanwhile, Mansourian sisters well-known to the world for their Wushu capabilities have brought several gold and other colorful medals from the world competitions to the country.

Iran handball team to hold camp in Qatar

TASNIM — Iran national handball team left Tehran Tuesday noon to hold a 10-day training camp as part of preparation for the 2020 Asian Men’s Handball Championship.

Team Melli will play several friendly matches with the Qatari clubs in the camp.

The 2020 Asian Men’s Handball Championship is the 19th edition of the championship held under the aegis of Asian Hand-ball Federation.

The championship will be held at Kuwait City, Kuwait from 16 to 27 January 2020.

It acts as the Asian qualifying tournament for the 2021 World Men’s Handball Championship.

Iran have been drawn in Pool A along with Bahrain and New Zealand.

Pool B consists of Qatar, Japan and China. South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Australia are in Pool C.

Host Kuwait are drawn in Pool D along with the UAE, Iraq and Hong Kong.

Persepolis reaches agreement with Branko Ivankovic: report

PLDC — Persepolis football club’s representatives have reportedly reached an agreement with Branko Ivankovic in Zagreb, Croatia.

The Croatian coach left Persepolis at the end of the last season after the Iranian team failed to meet its financial commitments.

Ivankovic had said he would file a complaint to FIFA against Persepolis but the Iranian team has reportedly negotiated with him to change his decision.

Ivankovic, who is a nominee to take charge of Team Melli, has said he will lead Iran national football team if Persepolis pays off his debt.

A source close to the club said that a delegation has traveled to Zagreb to negotiate with Branko over his settlement.

World champion wishes Yazdani speedy recovery

MNA — David Taylor of the United States, 2018 World Wrestling Champion, wished the injured Iranian wrestler Hassan Yazdani a quick recovery.

“Wishing you a smooth and quick recovery. Great competitors are what make this sport and competitions so special. If all goes well, I am looking forward to seeing you in Tokyo,” Taylor wrote on his official Instagram account.

Meanwhile, Hooman Tavakolian, a former Iranian-Amer-ican wrestler and a member of UWW, said that wrestlers and coaches in the United States are concerned about the conditions of Yazdani. “Here [in US] all wish that Yazdani would make it to the Olympics since they are waiting for Yazdani vs Taylor in the final of Tokyo 2020.”

Yazdani underwent successful surgery on his knee on Mon-day. Doctors say that the Iranian Olympics gold medalist will be prepared for the upcoming Tokyo 2020.

In an interview with the United World Wrestling, Yazdani said “It was a successful surgery. I am in a good situation now. I’ll start training on the mat in two months. I am in good spirits now. Lets see what happens in future.”

Yazdani won the gold medal of 74kg freestyle wrestling in the 2016 Olympics. A year later, he changed his weight to 86kg and won the two world titles in 2017 Paris and 2019 Nur-Sultan. He is considered one of Iran’s main hopes to win a gold medal at the upcoming Olympics.

TEHRAN — After a three-week scramble,

Andrea Stramaccioni has not yet returned to Iran to lead his beloved team Esteghlal and two parties find themselves trapped with an unsolved issue.

He left the Iranian popular team after the club failed to transfer his salary over the U.S. sanctions.

Due to such problems, Esteghlal had been forced to transfer his wage through multiple bank accounts, belonging to several individuals in Europe. This reportedly led to the partial closure of Stramaccioni’s bank account in Italy over money laundering charges.

However, the Italian coach received part of his unpaid salary after the repre-sentative of an Iranian bank gave him a check at Iran’s Embassy in Rome.

Under stewardship of Stramaccioni, Esteghlal had moved up top of the ta-ble after about four years but the team have earned four points from the past three matches, leaving the Blues in the third place.

Esteghlal club say they have accept-ed all conditions of the Italian coach; however, he is not ready to come back to Tehran.

“Stramaccioni had said he would have returned to Iran if he had received his payment. We don’t know what’s the prob-lem,” Ali Fathollahzadeh, a member of Esteghlal board of directors, said.

On the other hand, Stramaccioni has demanded Esteghlal’s officials stop lying. The ex-Inter coach has recently published a post on his Instagram account he has

never asked Esteghlal to increase his wage. Esteghlal have a busy schedule in the

coming months since the Blues have to

play in AFC Champions League play-offs as well as Hazfi Cup and Iran league and cannot waste the time.

Stramaccioni’s thick walls of distrust toward Esteghlal will only make things worse for two sides.

Stramaccioni, Esteghlal; an unsolved problem

No. 18, Bimeh Alley, Nejatollahi St., Tehran, IranP.o. Box: 14155-4843

Zip Code: 1599814713

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GUIDE TO SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

He who complains of his need to a believer, seems as if he has taken it to God, and he who takes it to an infidel, seems to have complained of God.

Imam Ali (AS)

National Orchestra to hold Azerbaijani-Iranian Music Night in Tehran

Ensembles team up to stage operetta “Dance of Melodies” in Tehran

TEHRAN — Shiftegane Del, a large

troupe of female performers, and the Avaze Melal ensemble have teamed up again to stage an operetta entitled “Dance of Melodies” at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall on January 3.

The operetta will be directed by choreographer Hayedeh Kishipur

and Shahla Milani will lead Avaze Melal choir, which will perform in company with mezzo-soprano Nasrin Nasehi.

Shiftegane Del features about 30 adult members as well as over 50 child performers.

Only an audience of females is allowed to attend the performance.

TEHRAN — Pieces by Iranian musicians and

Azerbaijani composers will be performed in Tehran by Iran’s National Orchestra in a program titled “Azerbaijani-Iranian Music Night”.

The orchestra will perform under the baton of guest conductor Aghaverdi Pashayev from Azerbaijan at Vahdat Hall

on January 16.Vocalist Fakhri Kazim Nijat and tar

player Sahib Pashazadeh, both from Azerbaijan, will accompany the orchestra during the performance, which will feature a repertoire of songs including “Asgarin Ariyasi”, “Sana da Qalmaz”, “San Siz”, “Ayriliq”, “Karanful”, “In Memory of Saba” and “Shur Afarin”.

Iran’s National Orchestra in an undated photo. A poster for the operetta “Dance of Melodies”.

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TEHRAN — The World Service of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting

(IRIB) has recently launched a live online Russian-language TV channel.

The two-hour-long news channel is available on Russian Radio, a Russian and international radio station broadcasting in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), including Armenia, Belarus, Moldova and Russia.

Visiting different IRIB World Service channels on Tuesday,

Iran’s new ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, said that Iran needs to make cultural programs for Russian Muslims.

“At the current time, Russian Muslims are quite interested in Iran, therefore we need to take serious actions in the media and make programs for them,” he said.

“I have also talked with the IRIB Managing Director Abdolali Ali-Asgari who also emphasized the need for launching a Russian TV channel. This is a good beginning and I hope we will make good progress in the future,” he added.

IRIB World Service launches live online Russian-language TV channel

TEHRAN — Eight films will be screened at

the Boston Festival of Films from Iran as the organizers have recently announced the official lineup.

The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston is the main organizer of the festival, which will be held from January 16 to 26, 2020.

Each year, film curators from the MFA, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, work together to curate this compelling festival.

The lineup includes “Filmfarsi”, a found-footage documentary by Ehsan Khoshbakt that unearth the cinema in pre-revolutionary Iran, and “When the Moon Was Full”, Narges Abyar’s drama that blends political thriller and horror.

Also included are “Cold Sweat” by Soheil Beiraqi, “The Warden” Directed by Nima Javidi, “Old Men Never Die” by Reza Jamali, “Just 6.5” by Saeid Rustai, “Untimely” Directed by Pouya Eshtehardi and “Orange Days” by Arash Lahuti.

“When the Moon Was Full” tells the story of a woman from Tehran who marries a man from an Iranian province near the border of Pakistan. Soon afterwards, she discovers that her new brother-in-law is a religious extremist trying to recruit her husband for his bloody cause.

Starring Baran Kowsari, “Cold Sweat” is based on a true story about Afruz, Iran’s national women’s futsal team captain, whose lifelong dream appears over when her estranged husband uses his legal right to prevent her from leaving the country for the Asian Games final in Malaysia.

“The Warden” tells the story of an Iranian prison warden who is assigned to transfer

prisoners to a new building during the 1960s.“Old Men Never Die” tells the story of an

Iranian village where nobody has died for 45 years, and only the aged remain. 100-year-old Aslan and his friends begin to think suicide is the solution.

“Just 6.5” shows a police group under

the leadership of Samad who was assigned to arrest Nasser Khakzad, a major drug trafficker in Tehran.

“Untimely” is about Hamin, a young private doing his military service in a watchtower on the border of Iran and Pakistan. Impatient for a day off to attend his sister’s wedding

ceremony, he gets into a fight with his commander.

Up against unfair odds, “Orange Days” shows a tough-as-nails farm contractor who proves she can compete with male competitors and lead her crew of female workers on northern Tehran’s largest orange harvest.

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Book Garden, Abbasabad district to host Tehran sculpture biennial

TEHRAN — The 8th edition of the Tehran National Sculpture Biennial will be held at

the Book Garden and in the Abbasabad district, the organizers announced on Tuesday.

The biennial, which is organized every year by the Association of Iranian Sculptors and the Visual Arts Office of Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, will be held from late February to April.

Vocalist Shahram Nazeri to record videos to promote tamboura 1 “The group is doing its final rehearsals for the videos,

which will be recorded during March in case of good weather conditions, otherwise the project will be carried out in April,” he added.

Shahsavari announced Turkey’s plan to register the art of tamboura craftsmanship and playing the instrument on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

“The collaboration of nearly 600 tamboura players in the project can be a key document to prevent Turkey from inscribing the instrument on the list for the country,” he noted.

In September 2016, the UNESCO Cluster Office in Tehran honored Nazeri during a special ceremony in Tehran for his musical project in which he highlighted several cultural heritage sites in the central Iranian city of Isfahan.

A singer of dozens of memorable songs, Nazeri received the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur medal, one of the most coveted trophies in the world of art and culture, from the French government in 2007.

Ammar festival to honor “Gando” crew

TEHRAN — The organizers of the 10th edition of the Ammar Popular Film

Festival plan to honor the crew of “Gando”, a docudrama that revolves around the spy case of Iranian-American journalist Jason Rezaian.

The head of the Policymaking Council of the festival, Vahid Jalili, announced the news in a press conference held on Tuesday at Hosseinieh Honar, a center for revolutionary artists in Tehran.

Directed by Javad Afshar, the 30-episode series was aired in July on IRIB Channel 3. It is about Jason Rezaiaan who served as Tehran bureau chief for the Washington Post.

Rezaian was arrested in Iran in July 2014 and was convicted of espionage in a trial in 2015. On January 16, 2016, he and three other U.S. citizens were released in exchange for the release of seven Iranians who were accused or convicted of sanctions violations.

The series faced some criticism from the government and the Foreign Ministry, which were portrayed as uninformed, neutral and westernophile organizations in the production.

Established by a number of Iranian revolutionary figures, the Ammar Popular Film Festival has been named after Ammar Yasir, a close companion of Prophet Muhammad (S).

The 10th edition of the festival will be held in Tehran during January 2020.

Actor Payam Dehkordi portrays Jason Rezaiaan in the Iranian TV series “Gando”.

Brussels puppet theater adds Monty Python humor to nativity tale

The Netflix decade: How one company changed the way we watch TVNEW YORK (Reuters) — In the not-so-distant past, TV viewers were forced to wait a week for the next installment of their favorite shows, parceled out by networks in half-hour or hour-long increments.

Fast forward to 2019, when media and tech companies are subverting that schedule and the majority of viewers using U.S. TV streaming services watch an average of four hours of content in one sitting, according to Deloitte.

To understand how we got here, look at Netflix (NFLX.O).

At the start of the decade, binge watching involved VHS tapes, DVD box sets or long nights glued to a DVR. TV cable hits included “Homeland” and “The Wire” - hour-long dramas with complicated plot lines that needed to be watched sequentially.

Watching “Saturday Night Live” on a Sunday became normal, and viewers started to lose track of the broadcast schedule.

In November 2010, Hulu, which debuted in 2008 as an ad-supported streaming video site, launched its subscription service,

including full seasons of certain shows.Around the same time that the

broadcast TV schedule was losing its hold on viewers, Netflix was beginning to invest in original content.

In 2011, it struck a deal for its first original show, the political thriller “House of Cards.” It released all 13 episodes of the show’s first season on Feb. 1, 2013. That July it followed with the entire first season of “Orange is the New Black.”

Viewers were hooked, and the cultural shift accelerated. “Binge-watch” was a runner-up to “selfie” for the Oxford Dictionary’s 2013 word of the year.

Netflix championed this new kind of consumption, commissioning a survey to determine how many people binge-watch, and why.

“Our viewing data shows that the majority of streamers would actually prefer to have a whole season of a show available to watch at their own pace,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos at the time.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) — A Brussels puppet theater as old as Belgium itself is staging its Christmas nativity show this year with a dash of Monty Python humor added to the traditional story of Jesus’s birth.

“It’s like a parody, a little bit like Monty Python’s Life of Brian. We don’t mean to be disrespectful, but...it’s not the Bible, really,” said Nicolas Geal, director of the Royal Theater Toone in the Belgian capital.

“I don’t know whether I will go to heaven or hell for playing this,” he added with a smile.

Life of Brian, a 1979 film written by Britain’s Monty Python comedy group, is the satirical tale of a man born on the same day and next door to Jesus, and later mistaken for the Messiah.

Playing off the film, the puppet theater’s nativity tale features silly foreign accents, particularly from the Three Wise Men, lots of jokes and slang often with a local flavor.

The theater was formed in 1830, the year Belgium was founded. Geal, who dubs himself Toone VIII, succeeded his father, who moved the theater to its current site

in an alleyway near Brussels’ regal Grand Place in the 1960s.

Now boasting 1,400 puppets including some dating to the 19th century, the theater has put on shows ranging from Carmen to Cyrano de Bergerac, Dracula and Hamlet, geared more to an adult than child audience.

Geal said the European tradition of puppet shows dates back to the Middle Ages when the church forbade people to perform nativity scenes themselves, prompting performers to use puppets.

Toone’s marionettes, with a rod attached to the head, are like those used in Sicily where this form of puppet theater is thought to have originated, but given a Belgian twist.

“What’s typical of Belgium is the fact I believe that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Then we have this kind of surrealism,” Geal said.

Brussels once had as many as 50 puppet theaters, Geal said, but almost all folded as other forms of entertainment became popular, particularly television, with only the Toone surviving.

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A scene from “When the Moon Was Full” by Narges Abyar.

Boston Festival of Films from Iran unveils official lineup

A logo for the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB)’s World Service.