Qatar outline busy schedule ahead of World Cup qualifiers

BUSINESS | 22 SPORT | 29

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

H E Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari, Adviser at the Emiri Diwan and Qatar’s candidate to the post of Director-General of Unesco, presenting his book to Lebanese St Joseph University’s President Dr Rev Salim Dakkash, in Doha yesterday. The Lebanese University welcomed Al Kawari’s nomination. → Report on page 5

Nomination hailed

SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016 • 8 SHA’BAAN 1437 • Volume 21 • Number 6797 thepeninsulaqatar @peninsulaqatar @peninsula_qatar

The Peninsula

DOHA: An average 83 percent of the parents are satisfied with the quality of education in Independ-ent, international and the Arab private schools in Qatar, shows the 2014-2015 annual report on schools performance, issued by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

Independent schools top the list in terms of parents’ satisfaction with quality, at 84 percent, closely followed by international schools at 83 percent. Arab private schools came far below at 78 percent.

The report shows that an over-all average of 72 percent teachers are satisfied with their salaries. The satisfaction level is the highest (80 percent) about Independent schools, and lower in International schools

(35 percent) and Arab private schools (29 percent).

The report includes data on different aspects of the schools, including students, teachers, parents, academic achievements, teaching methods, facilities and services, home work etc.

Parents’ satisfaction about school curriculum is also consider-ably high at an average 80 percent, with international schools topping at 83 percent, followed by Independent schools (79 percent) and Arab private schools (78 percent).

A high 84 percent of parents, on an average, are satisfied about the school’s treatment of children, International schools at 86 percent, Independent schools at 84 percent, and Arab private schools at 78 per-cent. Parents’ satisfaction level about school’s communication is relatively low, at 74 percent on an average, international schools 76 percent, Independent schools 84 percent and Arab private schools 65 percent.

On the other hand, an average 63 percent of students are satisfied with their school activities, the highest at Independent schools (64 percent), followed by international schools (62 percent) and Arab private schools (55 percent).

→ Continued on page 5

The Peninsula

DOHA: GCC states are working on unified technical regulations for beauty products.

A draft of the technical regula-tion for cosmetics will be completed soon, with a proposal to make it a law in member countries.

This was disclosed in a report

presented by Secretary-General of the Gulf Standardization Organization (GSO) Dr Nabil bin Ameen Molla, at a meeting of the GSO board in Riyadh.

The meeting chaired by the Min-ister of Municipality and Environment H E Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi approved 34 draft technical regulations and upgraded 22 tech-nical regulations to Gulf Standards.

The GSO Board reviewed the report of the GSO Secretary-General

which pointed to approving 2,326 standards and 19 Gulf technical regulation during the period from November last year to April this year.

The fourth addition of the GCC specification certificate programme for vehicles, tires and bikes was launched last January, said the report.

It will be mandatory for all manufacturers to implement the updated GCC technical regulation GSO/42/2015 for vehicles and general

requirements for all the 2017 mod-els. A fuel economy certificate will be also implemented for the vehicles weighing less than 3.5 tonnes of 2017 models.

The report pointed to six aware-ness campaigns on the Gulf technical regulations on low-voltage electri-cal equipment which will be enforced from July 1, in addition to finalis-ing the draft of the safety system of industrial products.

Unified GCC rules for beauty products likely

AP

BEIRUT: The Islamic State (IS) group launched an offensive against government forces in eastern Syria yesterday and cap-tured several buildings, including a hospital, in clashes that left more than two dozen people dead on both sides.

Deir Al Zour, near the bor-der with Iraq, is split between government forces and IS fight-ers. Government-held areas have been under a months-long siege by the extremists, and the UN has been airdropping aid to res-idents amid food and medicine shortages.

The Local Coordination Com-mittees, an activist-run collective, said IS fighters have captured the Assad hospital, university dorms and grain silos in an advance that began at dawn.

By Sachin Kumar

The Peninsula

DOHA: Most of the currencies have remained stable during the first four months of this year against Qatari riyal. Euro, Indian rupee, Philippine peso, Pakistani rupee, Sri Lankan rupee and Bangladeshi taka remained stable.

Nepalese rupee declined by around 3 percent during the same period. A depre-ciating currency benefits expatriates because they get additional income due to decline. When a currency appreciates or rise against Qatari riyal, expatriates get less from their currency.

“There was not much fluctuation in the currency market in the first quarter of this year. Most of the major currencies, except Egyptian pound, did not exhibit any major change,” Zuber

Abdul Rahman, Operations Manager, Al Zaman Exchange told The Peninsula.

Exchange houses in Qatar have not seen any surge in remittances out-flows in the first four months of this year. “Remittances have not shown any surge this year so far, but we expect to see increase from next month due to the holy month of Ramadan,” said Rahman.

→ Continued on page 5

Most currencies remain stable

Ministry releases report on schools’ performance

IS seizes hospital in Syrian town

More parents are happy with Independent and international schools’ performance.

A woman walks past damaged buildings in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret Al Numan town in Syria’s Idlib province, yesterday.

s

Israeli attacks leave 25 kids dead in 3 monthsAFP

JERUSALEM: Twenty-five Pales-tinian children were killed in the last three months of 2015 during a wave of anti-Israeli attacks and the number detained was the highest in seven years, the UN children’s agency said.

“Serious concerns arose regarding excessive use of force, particularly in relation to inci-dents where Palestinian children were shot dead by Israeli secu-rity forces after carrying out or being suspected of carrying out stabbing attacks,” Unicef said in a report.

It said more than 1,300 Pales-tinian children were injured during the spike in attacks, almost all in the West Bank and east Jerusa-lem, while three Israeli children were hurt in the West Bank and west Jerusalem.

QC and ICSS launch ‘Sport and Commerce’

initiative

HOME02 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

The Peninsula

DOHA: Under the patronage of Prime Minister and Interior Min-ister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Ministry of Economy and Com-merce is organising Sport and Business Opportunities Forum next Sunday, in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, Qatar Olympic Committee and Aspire Zone Foundation.

The forum is expected to attract a large number of par-ticipants, including prominent businessmen, investors, entrepre-neurs, and owners of major local and foreign companies.

It aims to explore investment opportunities in the sports sec-tor and highlight Qatar’s efforts towards strengthening public- private sector partnerships and supporting the sports sector, which represents a key pillar of the country’s diversification pol-icy in line with Qatar National Vision 2030.

The forum also provides a platform for communication for partners from the public and pri-vate sectors to explore investment opportunities in various areas of the sports sector, including events management, sports development, the establishment of sports facil-ities and facilities management.

It is consistent with Qatar’s growing role in hosting major international sporting events such as the 2019 World Champi-onships in Athletics and the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

PHCC marks International Nurses DayDOHA: Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) celebrated International Nurses Day, to highlight nursing services, with activities for patients in its health centres across Qatar.

International Nurses Day is celebrated on May 12 to mark con-tributions nurses make to society.

This year’s celebration aimed to highlight the role of nurses in the community and recognise the distinguished and genuine work of the nursing staff of PHCC.

Dr Mariam Ali Abdulmalik, Managing Director, PHCC, said the celebration of International Nurses Day is a real opportunity to high-light the nursing staff’s efforts and contributions to providing supe-rior care and improving healthcare outcomes for patients.

In a statement, Dr Abdulma-lik stressed the need for everyone to continue hard work to become ambassadors of the profession in terms of providing comprehensive care for all members of the com-munity regardless to race, age or social level.

The Peninsula

DOHA: The first hospital in the region dedicated to diagnosis, treatment and management of infectious diseases is getting ready at Hamad Bin Khal-ifa Medical City.

The 65-bed purpose-built Com-municable Disease Centre (CDC) is among the seven new hospitals of Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) slated to open by the end of next year.

The centre will also house a travel medicine clinic where people can have pre-travel vaccinations and advice.

The new development is included in HMC’s expansion plans to provide faster access to high quality, special-ised care.

Dr Abdullatif Al Khal, Deputy

Chief Medical Officer, and Head of Infectious Diseases, said the centre will focus primarily on the manage-ment of infectious diseases of public health importance, including tuber-culosis, Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/Aids), hepatitis and leprosy.

The centre will also provide care to patients with infections that need prolonged treatment such as osteomy-elitis (inflammation of bone or bone marrow, usually due to infection).

“The centre is the first facility of its kind in the region and will set the standard for diagnosis, treatment and management of infectious diseases as well as research into these condi-tions,” said Dr Al Khal.

“It will not only play a vital role in improving the health and wellbeing of patients with infectious diseases in Qatar but will also provide leadership in education and preventative meas-ures, while supporting HMC’s public health mission,” he added.

Dr Muna Al Maslamani, Senior Consultant of Infectious Diseases, said: “Where needed, the centre would also play a role in the identifi-cation, treatment and management of

other highly infectious illnesses such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV), H1N1, SARS and Ebola in times of epidemics and pandemics which makes it unique in the region.

“As the designated facility for dealing with infectious diseases, another focus of the centre will be on initiating preventative measures in identifying outbreaks, managing them and strengthening Qatar’s response to health threats they may pose to the country,” Dr Al Maslamani said.

The centre will work alongside the Ministry of Public Health, Primary Health Care Corporation, Qatar’s Aca-demic Health System partners and private healthcare organisations to provide trusted guidance, disease tracking and support to ensure Qatar can respond quickly and effectively to health threats emanating from infec-tious diseases.

In addition to comprehensive inpatient services for infectious disease and those who need hospi-talisation, the facility also houses outpatient clinics, including pre-marital counselling and education for those with blood-borne pathogens.

It will operate a specialised travel medicine outpatient clinic where peo-ple can go for vaccinations and health advice before travelling. It will also have a pharmacy, radiology facilities and National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory, which diagnose, tracks and monitors the illness.

The CDC will be the first hospi-tal in the new Hamad Bin Khalifa Medical City campus to open, with Women’s Wellness and Research Centre; Ambulatory Care Centre; and Qatar Rehabilitation Institute — all scheduled to open in the coming months.

First infectious diseases hospital getting readyThe first hospital in the region at Hamad Bin Khalifa Medical City to house Travel Medicine Clinic for vaccinations and advice.

Forum on sport

and business

opportunities set

The Peninsula

DOHA: Several interesting topics, includ-ing opportunities for manufacturing medical equipment in Qatar, will be dis-cussed at Qatar International Medical Congress (QIMC) 2016 to be held from Wednesday to Friday.

QIMC 2016 will offer unprecedented opportunities for health professionals to discuss in detail the latest technological and scientific discoveries in the diagnosis of cancers and epidemic diseases, as well as the latest scientific and medical tech-nologies available in the Qatari market.

“We are proud to participate in QIMC for the second consecutive year,” said Dr Mohammed Hamad Al Nuaimi, General Manager, Al Maha Medical.

“We expect that our participation this year will be very special, as the exhibi-tion and conference will have strategic importance for Qatar, considering the prominent speakers and experts who will discuss unprecedented topics.

“We also expect to witness deals and agreements aimed at strengthening the medical industry in Qatar,” he added.

Morad Mallah, Executive Man-ager, Al Maha Medical, said: “One of the most prominent characteristic of this year’s edition is the emergence of researchers, especially in the field of

new technologies, who are interested in breaking ground for manufacturing in Qatar due to the great support offered by the country’s leadership, as well as the participation of specialised organi-sations such as Qatar Development Bank and Manateq.”

QIMC 2016 has attracted prominent international medical think tanks, led by Professor Johannes Schweizer, who owns 14 patents and is considered one of the most prominent contemporary research-ers at Stanford University in California.

In addition, researchers from Qatar Computing Research Institute of Hamad Bin Khalifa University will engage in a knowledge-sharing session with experts in the health sector.

The conference will also provide an opportunity to learn about international medical breakthroughs prominent lab-oratories are using to identify Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids), and hepatitis by using a swab of saliva instead of blood as is the case at present.

As for the control and regulation of all laboratory testing procedures, especially in light of diseases such as epidemiological and viral diseases that develop and spread quickly such as the Ebola and Zika viruses and others, QIMC 2016 will set up a first-of-its-kind labora-tory in the Middle East to strengthen our stance and brings our slogan ‘In the heart of healthcare’ into reality’, he added.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) has launched a socio-economic empowerment programme for poor families in Qatar, at a cost of QR2.9m.

The fund is being pro-vided by Occidental Petroleum of Qatar Ltd. (Oxy Qatar) over four years, as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) and human-itarian partnership policies to serve the needy people.

This year, QRCS is offering monthly financial support and food subsidies for 28 low-income families to help them meet their basic needs.

The subsidies amounted to QR732,000, with each fam-ily receiving QR2,000 a month, based on a study conducted to know the financial conditions of the beneficiary families, their

expenses, resources and needs.Home visits were made to the

beneficiary families to estimate their monthly expenses, based on the number of family mem-bers and total income.

Priority was given to the families with heavy debts, divorced women, widows and orphans.

The partnership between QRCS and Oxy Qatar aims to help improve the living standards of disadvantaged people, empower them to preserve their well-being and health, stretch out social welfare wings, promote solidarity in society members and ensure stability for as many vulnerable families as possible, said Saleh bin Ali Al Mohannadi, Secretary-General, QRCS.

“We are proud of our contin-uing partnership with QRCS and support its socio-economic pro-grammes,” said Stephen Kelly, President and General Manager,

Oxy Qatar. Our goal is to build positive and durable partner-ships with organisations that can make a real difference.

“We believe that QRCS is doing this work very effectively, with its outreach programmes. It is our pleasure to be part of this significant effort.”

Under a four-year agree-ment signed in 2014, OXY is sponsoring one aspect of QRCS’s socio-economic programme, which serves about 1,500 fam-ilies every year, with an annual budget of over QR7m.

Apart from the financial and in-kind subsidies, QRCS provides financial support for poor stu-dents, covers treatment costs for poor patients, holds programmes for women for their professional and economic empowerment, and other social initiatives to help achieve the holistic devel-opment goals of Qatar National Vision 2030.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Lulu Hypermarket outlets have launched an innovative cam-paign — ‘Win 1,000 Free Trolleys with Lulu’ promotion — for the first time in Qatar in line with Lulu’s anniversary celebrations.

The wow factor is that customers shopping supermarket items will have the opportunity to win the full trolley of items bought by them for free while they make payment at the POS machine.

It is an amazing promotion controlled by the computer system. The promotion started on May 12 and continues for 10 days until May 21, at all Lulu Hypermarket outlets.

Simultaneously, it has also launched ‘Buy One Get One at Half Price’ Promotion on garments, footwear, churidhar, sarees and ladies bags.

Customers will have a unique experience when they buy any two of these items, as they are entitled to get the lowest-priced item at half price.

Lulu Group is also making history with an amazing promotion of 10 Mercedes-Benz E-200 cars of model 2016.

Customers are entitled to get a coupon on every purchase of items worth QR50 to win 10 cars. The promotion started on May 11 and con-tinues until August 6. It will culminate in five mega draws starting from August 7 to 11 at D-Ring Road branch; Al Gharrafa branch; Al Khor branch; Lulu Centre; and Barwa City branch, respectively.

Lulu Group has conceived the strategy of launching ideal and wor-thy promotions for a bigger and better experience for shoppers.

The group believes that this will remain forever in the hearts of its customers. Customers are also benefitted by more savings if they pur-chase on Lulu-Doha Bank Credit Card.

The group also announced that it is going to open the Department Store of Lulu Hypermarket Barwa City on Wednesday, with big sur-prises and exclusive promotions.

Medical congress to

discuss opportunities

to make equipment

QRCS and Oxy Qatar give financial

aid to poor families in Qatar

Saleh bin Ali Al Mohannadi, Secretary-General, QRCS, presenting a certificate of appreciation to Stephen Kelly, President and General Manager, Oxy Qatar, as other officials look on.

Wioleta Barbara Widelska, a Polish national and customer, receiving her trolley prize from the Service Manager, Lulu Hypermarket on D-Ring Road.

Lulu begins ‘Win 1,000 Free Trolleys’ promotion

HOME 03 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

The Peninsula

DOHA: The Public Works Author-ity (Ashghal) will put in place a temporary diversion on part of the westbound lanes of Dukhan Road, leading from Doha to Dukhan, for 2.5km near the Mall of Qatar, as shown in the map.

The diversion will be imple-mented from tomorrow and will continue until August 7, in coordi-nation with the Traffic Department.

Traffic on the closed section will be diverted to Al Rufaa Street, where motorists can use Al Rufaa Round-about and take a U-turn back to Dukhan Road, as shown in the map.

The closure is required to com-plete construction works as part of the Dukhan Highway Central project, which includes a new highway with the mainline road starting west side of existing Wajba Interchange and

concluding one kilometre east of the town of Al Shahaniyah.

The project comprises 15km of a dual carriageway with four lanes in each direction, hard shoulders

and grade separated interchanges. Ashghal will install road signs advis-ing motorists of the closure and has urged road users to abide by speed limits and follow signs for safety.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Ooredoo yesterday announced that it will be the lead sponsor of the sixth edition of Qatar’s World Stadium Congress to be held in Doha from tomorrow until Thurs-day at the Westin Doha Hotel & Spa.

The congress, organised in part-nership with the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, aims to discuss the importance of design and delivery of world-class sporting infrastruc-ture around the world.

Ooredoo will demonstrate the progress being made in developing “smart stadium” solutions for venues that will host major sporting events, and help make Qatar a leading sport-ing destination.

Waleed Al Sayed, CEO, Ooredoo Qatar, said: “We are delighted to be working with the congress to show-case connected services, integrated systems and centralised management

solutions that will deliver a next-gen-eration stadium experience for fans and visitors.

“Developing infrastructure and knowledge-base that will enable the construction of smart solutions is a key part of our vision to become a leading ICT innovation engine for Qatar.”

Ooredoo will hold a 20-minute innovator session at the congress, to cover the company’s guidance on how to architect effective partner-ship models for mega tournaments to deliver an amazing stadium experi-ence for fans and other stakeholders.

Part of the company’s vision is to utilise Ooredoo Supernet to take sports into the future of immersive media, meaning it will no longer matter what seat people have in the stadium. Thanks to the company’s solutions, it aims to provide a serv-ice that enables users to watch live replays from multiple angles, check the latest statistics and use their mobile device to have a more exciting

and interactive experience. Ooredoo has demonstrated its experience and expertise in connecting world-class ICT infrastructure on major national projects, including Lusail City, Hamad International Airport, Katara, Souq Waqif, and more. The sponsorship is part of the company’s ongoing initiative to support sports and tech-nological innovation in Qatar.

Ooredoo has provided Internet services and connectivity at major sporting events this year, including the Exxon Mobile Tennis tournament in 2016, and aims to showcase the lat-est technology plans at the congress.

The congress will have dis-cussions, panels, presentations, networking and educational oppor-tunities for participants. This year’s event is set to be the biggest, with world-leading architects, solution providers and stadium operation consultants attending from around the world. For details on the congress, go to http://www.worldstadiumcon-gress.com/.

Ooredoo is lead sponsor of World Stadium Congress 2016

Diversion on part of Dukhan Road from tomorrow

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar National Library (QNL) and Qatar Muse-ums (QM) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the exchange of knowledge and expertise to enhance collective research, education and commu-nity development in the country.

The MoU outlines cooperation between both sides in areas, including digitisation of historical docu-ments, enhancing e-learning resources, development of training programmes for researchers and librarians, cooperative reference services and shared catalogues, inter-library lending, and document delivery.

Dr Claudia Lux, Project Director, QNL, said: “Our collaboration with QM will serve to further facilitate an enriched learning experience by making our exten-sive resources widely accessible for everyone in Qatar.

“Our collective efforts will ultimately contrib-ute to improving learning outcomes and preserving Qatar’s rich heritage, while empowering the wider community by providing them with continued learn-ing opportunities.”

As a member of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), QNL’s agreement with QM will make lasting contributions to the holistic development of the wider community by spreading knowledge, nurturing imagination, cul-tivating creativity and preserving the nation’s heritage for the future.

Susan Parker Leavy, Head, Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) Library, said: “It is with great pleasure that we partner with QNL to enrich the lives of our local com-munity and support Qatar’s progress as an artistic and cultural hub. Having one of the largest collections of books on Islamic art in the region, including over 15,000 at MIA Library, we are delighted to open up these resources to a wider audience, allowing the commu-nity to explore our collections, discover our exhibitions and engage with Islamic art through our publications.”

QM hosts several libraries, including the MIA Library and Mathaf, with additional facilities being developed. The MIA Library specialises in the history and preser-vation of Islamic art and houses books, monographs, periodicals and art auction catalogues detailing the rich history of Islamic art in Qatar and the region.

Qatar Museums and QNL sign deal to preserve heritage

The Peninsula

DOHA: The Doha Film Institute (DFI) yesterday announced the recipients of the Spring 2016 session of its grants pro-gramme.

Three projects from Qatari directors are among the 26 selected for funding, including four from Lebanon, three from Palestine and two returning recipients.

Two of these new recipients, along with four recipients of funding from previous sessions, will have their world premieres at this year’s Festival de Cannes.

Twenty-six projects from 14 countries — comprising 13 feature-length narrative films, six feature documen-taries, three feature experimental or essay films and four short films — will receive funding for development, pro-duction or post-production.

The Spring session marks the 12th session of the grants programme, which is dedicated to supporting new cin-ematic talent, with a focus on first- and second-time filmmakers. Twenty of the projects are from the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, and six from the rest of the world. Stories of embezzlement, coming of age, time travel, liberation, physical or spiritual journeys, tales of family life and of life in exile are highlighted in the selec-tions this Spring.

Qatari-based directors Mohammed Al Ibrahim’s Bull Shark; Sara Al Obaidly’s Coming of Age feature narra-tive project and Abdulla Al Mulla’s short Green Eyes — all received grants this session.

Lebanese projects which have received backing include The President’s Visit by Cyril Aris (Lebanon, Qatar), To the One Who Didn’t Give Me Life by Wassim Geagea (Leba-non, Qatar); Summer of 2015 by Angie Obeid (Lebanon, Qatar); and The Insomnia of a Serial Dreamer by Moha-mad Soueid (Lebanon, Qatar).

The three Palestinian projects which are grants recip-ients this round are: A House in Jerusalem by Muayad Alayan (Palestine, Qatar); Screwdriver by Bassam Jar-bawi (Palestine, Qatar); and The Forgotten by Ghada Terawi

(Palestine, Qatar). Two of the Spring 2016 recipients are also screening in key sections at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — Dogs (Un Certain Regard section) directed by Bogdan Mirica (Romania, France, Bulgaria, Qatar); and Diamond Island directed by Davy Chou (Cambodia, France, Germany, Qatar) in the Critics Week section.

Co-directors Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk are returning recipients of grants with their new project On Trials, after having been granted in 2013 for their project Out on the Streets. Kasem Khasra is also a second-time recipient of grants for I Dreamt of Empire after his grant for the project Shelter in 2013.

Four other previous recipients selected for screening in official sections at Cannes this year are: Divines (Direc-tors Fortnight section), Apprentice (Un Certain Regard), Mimosas (Critics Week) and Tramontane (Critics Week).

Highlights from this session’s grants include the strong presence of projects from established filmmakers in Mena with four as recipients this session — Headbang Lullaby from Hicham Lasri (Morocco, France, Qatar), The Jour-ney from Mohamed Al Daradji (Iraq, Qatar), Whispering Sands from Nacer Khemir (Tunisia, France, Qatar) and

The Insomnia of a Serial Dreamer from Mohamed Soueid (Lebanon, Qatar).

Fatma Al Remaihi, CEO, DFI, said: “Our Spring recip-ients cover a broad range of subjects and represent some powerful new voices in cinema. But we are especially proud of the high quality of Qatari projects represented including four strong projects from established Mena filmmakers. Two of our recipients from this round are selected for screening in official selection in Cannes along-side four older grants projects which I think is testament to the strength of our grants programme, the exciting new filmmakers emerging from our region and beyond, and the high quality of the films we are pleased to be able to support.”

Submissions for the next funding round open on July 14 and closes on July 27. Funding is available for projects by filmmakers from around the world, with an emphasis on support for filmmakers from Mena. Certain categories of funding are reserved for Mena and Qatari filmmakers.

The fund is primarily for first- and second-time filmmakers. Post-production funding is available for estab-lished filmmakers from Mena.

3 Qatar films among 26 win DFI grantsTwo of the new recipients, along with four recipients of funding from previous sessions, will have their world premieres at this year’s Festival de Cannes.

A scene from the film Tramontane. Funded by the Doha Film Institute in a previous session, the film will be screened in official sections, Critics Week, at Cannes.

Work on Doha Metro project in progress near Hamad Bin Khalifa Medical City. Pic: Abdul B / The Peninsula

Doha Metro project on track

HOME04 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

The Peninsula

DOHA: With less than a week for the Emir Cup 2016 final match between Al Sadd and Lekhwiya to start, Qatar’s most prestigious football prize visited the Paediatric Oncology Ward and Children’s Ward at Hamad General Hospital (HGH).

The children were ecstatic to be part of the Emir Cup fever and took every opportunity to take pictures with the trophy.

Organising a stop for the Emir Cup Tour at HGH was a way for Qatar Football Association (QFA) to give something back to the children and put a smile on their faces. The

QFA delegation received a warm wel-come from Maitha Albuainain, CEO, HGH; Abdullah Al Hajri, Public Rela-tions Manager; and Fatima Jassim, Children’s Programme Coordinator at the hospital.

“The delegation distributed gifts to all children at both wards and

briefed them the Emir Cup. All gifts were presented by Fifty One East and Sony, the official sponsor of the Emir Cup 2016.

Ali Abdullah Al Khater, CEO, Cor-porate Communications, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), said: “I am pleased to welcome the QFA del-egation to HMC and thank them for this generous gesture and visit which aim to put a smile on the faces of chil-dren receiving treatment at HMC.

“I would like to call on insti-tutions in Qatar to follow in the footsteps of QFA by visiting the children’s wards at the hospital and involve the kids in their CSR initiatives.

“The Emir Cup comes at the fore-front of sports activities which aim to promote a culture of exercise among all segments of the community in addition to the positive impact foot-ball has on public health,” Al Hajri said.

“I wish QFA all success in its future initiatives and events and we look forward to taking part in next year’s Emir Cup Trophy Tour,” he added

The tour is part of QFA’s strategy as part of its corporate social respon-sibility to reinforce the importance of collaboration with local entities to promote the Emir Cup among com-munities. QFA works on all levels of the football system to identify and develop young Qatari talents.

It bonds with the local society to promote the game and expand its fan base in a systematic and methodical approach.

QFA also reinforces profession-alism in the game by improving infrastructure of the game through its professional league known as Qatar Stars League.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP), the country’s primary accelerator and incubator for technological develop-ment, hosted another successful TECHtalk expert discussion under the theme ‘Indus-trial Technology and Commercialisation’.

The event saw QSTP and the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT), with whom QSTP has a knowledge-sharing agreement, present best practices

from various perspectives that highlight technological experiences of Qatar and South Korea.

In the opening discussion, Hamad Al Kuwari, Managing Director, QSTP, addressed the commercialisation of technologies from the R&D stage to their successful introduction into practice, and the vital role of techno parks in the process.

“Technology parks are central to acti-vating the catalytic process which fosters business development,” he said.

“New R& D f i r m s c reate

Emir Cup Tour brings smile to kids at HGH

entrepreneurships and job opportunities for highly qualified peo-ple. They also improve the country’s physical and technological infra-structure, attract foreign investment and create a stimulating environment with unique facilities and quality services.”

He stressed the value of Qatar-South Korea collaboration.

“Through discus-sions between QF R&D representatives and their Korean counterparts last year, agreements were set, specifically between KIAT and QSTP. The agreements outline and work towards establish-ing policies on industrial manufacturing and creat-ing an ideal ecosystem of collaboration.”

James (Jung-Wook) Kim, Leader, Global Strat-egy Planning Team, KIAT, said: “R&D is meaningless until it is put to use.

“Money and time are required for the commer-cialisation of technologies and these are not always available. South Korea has a top ranking in invest-ment and research, but still lags behind in the commercialisation aspect, making it important to initiate programmes that support tech transfer.

“That is what our National Tech Bank does, and this is why we value the rich exchange between KIAT and QSTP in terms of sharing knowledge and experi-ence in best practices, successful entrepre-neurial programmes and favourable industrial policies, in addition to providing mentorship opportunities.”

Senior QSTP officials gave presentations on the park’s successful support programmes.

Qatar Football Association organises tour to brief children on the Emir Cup and distribute gifts.

A youngster takes a selfie with the Emir Cup from his bed at Hamad General Hospital.

QSTP hosts TECHtalk with South Korean institute

Officials from Qatar Science & Technology Park and the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology at the event.

A mango tree with abundant fruit dwarfs a date palm in Doha’s Al Hilal. The juicy fruit, native to South Asia, is generally grown all over the tropics. Though some mango trees are found in Qatar, one in the heart of largely urbanised Doha is hard to come by. Pic: Salim M/The Peninsula

Date(s) with mangoes

HOME / MIDDLE EAST 05SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Alma mater hails

Al Kawari’s

nomination

Continued from page 1

Nepalese rupee, which was trading at 28.32 against Qatari riyal on January 1, ended at 29.15 per riyal at the end of April, showing a fall of 3 percent.

Sri Lankan rupee lost by around 1 percent, as it fell from 39.70 from start of January to 40.02 at the end of April. Indian Rupee was trading at 18.23 per riyal on April 30, marginally weaker than 18.19 per riyal on January 1.

Philippine peso remained stable at 12.93 per riyal dur-ing the four months while Bangladeshi taka moved from 21.60 per riyal on January 1 to 21.53 on April 30. Pakistani rupee changed from 28.77 to 28.79 in the same duration while euro was stable at 0.25 against riyal.

Egyptian pound started the year at 1.96 per Qatari riyal on January 1 and ended at 2.44 per riyal on April 30.

The major reason behind fall in the currency was devaluation of Egyptian pound by the Central Bank of Egypt. The Central Bank of Egypt in March set the Egyp-tian pound at 8.85 per US dollar. Before the devaluation announcement, the exchange rate stood at 7.73.

Political crisis a hurdle in fight against IS: Abadi

Devaluation behind fall in Egyptian pound

QNA

DOHA: Lebanese Saint-Joseph University’s President, Dr Rev Salim Dakkash has welcomed the nomination of H E Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari, Cul-tural Adviser to the Emiri Diwan and Qatar’s candidate to the post of Director-General of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco). Dakkash expressed pride that Dr Al Kawari is a graduate of the uni-versity.

This came at the second annual meeting of the alumni of St Joseph’s University in Qatar in the presence of Dr Al Kawari and a number of ambassadors, including French Ambassador to Qatar Eric Chevallier, and Leba-nese Ambassador in Doha Hassan Qassim Najem .

Dr Al Kawari thanked the uni-versity president, emphasising that quality in education is one of the most important pillars of his pro-gramme in the UN organisation.

Expatriates at an exchange house in Doha.

FAO chief meets Qatar’s envoy to ItalyROME: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director Gen-eral Jose Graziano da Silva met Thursday with Qatar’s Ambassador to Italy Abdulaziz bin Ahmed Al Malki Al Jehani, who is also Qatar’s permanent representative to the UN agencies in Rome, reports QNA.

The officials discussed issues of mutual interest.

Al Jehani expressed Qatar’s support for FAO in combating pov-erty, hunger and food shortage, as well as development policies and technical cooperation among member states.

Reuters

BAGHDAD: A political crisis in Iraq is hampering the fight against Islamic State, Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi said yesterday after some of the bloodiest attacks on Baghdad this year.

Abadi’s government has been crippled for weeks since parties resisted a cabinet reshuffle aimed

at fighting corruption. In a televised speech, he said a “climate of dis-pute” had given the militants space to operate in areas under nominal government control.

“The political conflict among politicians and their impact on the brave security forces permits acts of terrorism to occur,” he said.

Hours earlier, an attack by Islamic State on a town near Bagh-dad killed five members of the security forces and wounded 13. On Wednesday, suicide bombers killed at least 80 people, the highest daily toll in the capital this year.

Seventeen soldiers died in blasts on Thursday in the western city of Ramadi and 16 people, mostly civil-ians, were killed north of Baghdad on Friday. Prime Minister Abadi dismissed claims that rival politi-cal parties were behind the violence.

Iraqi leaders says “climate of dispute” had given militants space to operate.

Continued from page 1

An average 92 percent of the school directors and 71 percent of the teach-ers are satisfied about discipline and behaviour of the students.

Student- teacher ratio has been put at 11.1 percent on an average, with one teacher for 8.3 students in Independent schools, 15.9 students in Interna-tional schools and 17.9 students in Arab private schools). Average experience of teachers is 11.8 years, the highest at Arab private schools (15.4 years), followed by International schools (11.9 years) and Independent schools (11.7 years).

Annual average family expenditure on students has been put at QR12,690. The expenditure is the highest at International schools (QR21,633), followed by Arab private schools (17,485) and Independent schools (QR8517).

Al Fadl Omar Abdul Aziz Al Naama, director of school assessment depart-ment at the ministry said, “This annual report provides the vision about education in Qatar, because it includes detailed information about differ-ent aspects related to teaching and learning process, which creates a good base for analysis, dialogue and discussion.”

“The report is important because it helps teachers, parents and inter-ested people to compare a school with other schools and the performance in the previous years,” he added.

Most teachers satisfied with discipline

MIDDLE EAST06 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Anatolia

GAZA CITY: Palestinian resist-ance movement Hamas yesterday denied recent claims by an Israeli army official that members of the Daesh terrorist group had recently entered the Hamas-run Gaza Strip from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

“These allegations are promoted

by the Israeli occupation; they are mere fabrications that have no basis in fact,” leading Hamas member Ismail Radwan said. The claims, he added, “seek to justify Israel’s dec-ade-long blockade of the Gaza Strip”.

On Friday, Israeli army Major-General Yoav Mordechai alleged that Daesh members had entered the Hamas-run coastal enclave to undergo military training via cross-border tunnels from Egypt’s Sinai.In

April, Hamas announced that it was stepping up security along the Gaza Strip’s borders with Egypt.

The announcement came after a Hamas delegation visited Cairo in March to meet with Egyptian offi-cials. The visit was the first of its kind since Hamas-Egypt relations nose-dived in the wake of a 2013 military coup that ousted Mohamed Mursi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president.

AFP

WASHINGTON: The United States called on Iran to free seven leaders of the minority Baha’i faith serving 20-year prison sentences, urging Tehran to ensure religious and other freedoms.

The Baha’i leaders were arrested eight years ago and convicted of espi-onage, insulting religious sanctities and propa-ganda against the Islamic Republic. “We join the international community in condemning their con-tinued imprisonment and calling upon the Islamic Republic of Iran to release them immediately, along with all other prisoners of conscience in Iran,” State Department spokes-man John Kirby said in a statement.

“Furthermore, we call upon Iranian authorities to uphold their own laws and meet their international obligations that guaran-tee freedom of expression, religion, opinion and assembly for all citizens,” he said.

AFP

CAIRO: An Egyptian court yes-terday sentenced 51 people to two years in prison for protests against the handover of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, judicial officials and lawyers said.

Parents and friends of the defendants burst into tears and cried out in shock after learning of the verdict outside the Cairo courthouse.

Defence lawyers Hossam Al Khadrawy and Ahmed Abdel Latif confirmed the verdict, which they said can be appealed.

Thirty-three defendants were present in the court, while the rest had been released on bail.

Police had quickly dispersed

protests against the islands deal on April 25 and arrested dozens of peo-ple. Prosecutors charged them with participation in illegal rallies.

The deal to hand over the islands in the Straits of Tiran had galvanised dissidents who oppose President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

In the leadup to the protests, police already made dozens of arrests to discourage a repeat of a large rally on April 15 at which dem-onstrators chanted for the “fall of the regime”.

The government says the islands had always belonged to Saudi Arabia and that Egypt had merely adminis-tered them while on lease since the 1950s.

Critics accuse Sisi of “sell-ing” the islands in return for Saudi investments.

Sisi, a former army chief who was elected president after over-throwing his Islamist predecessor in 2013, has been accused by activists of installing a heavy-handed regime that tolerates no dissent.

After president Mohamed Mor-si’s overthrow, a police crackdown killed hundreds of Islamist protest-ers, while hundreds of policemen and soldiers have died in a jihadist insurgency.

The crackdown has extended to secular and liberal dissidents over the past two years.

Sisi had initially been feted by millions of Egyptians who opposed Morsi’s rule and welcomed a firm leader at the helm to revive the econ-omy.But he faces growing discontent with his rule, with the islands con-troversy seen as another example.

Egypt jails 51 for protests over island deal

Hamas denies Israeli claims of Daesh presence in Gaza

AP

TEHRAN: Iranians staged an international contest for cartoons depicting the Holocaust yesterday but insisted the event was aimed at criticising alleged Western double standards regarding free expression and not at denying the Nazi geno-cide.

The event was nevertheless likely to shock many around the world and could embarrass Ira-nian President Hassan Rouhani and other moderates who have tried to improve ties with the West following last year’s landmark nuclear deal.

Iran has long backed armed groups committed to Israel’s destruction and its leaders have called for it to be wiped off the map. Iran has also criticized depic-tions of the Prophet Muhammad, arguing that Western countries tol-erate expression deemed offensive to Islam but not the questioning or denial of the Holocaust.

“We have never been after deny-ing of the Holocaust or ridiculing its victims,” contest organizer Masuod Shojai Tabatabaei said in a speech opening the event.

“If you find a single design that ridicules victims or denies, we are ready to close the exhibition,” he said. “Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust were subject to oppres-sion by Nazis.”

Nazi Germany and its collabora-tors killed 6 million Jews during the World War II-era genocide.

The denial or questioning of the genocide is widespread in the Middle East, where many believe it has been used as a pretext for the creation of Israel and to excuse Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians.

“Holocaust means mass killing,” Tabatabaei said. “We are witness-ing the biggest killings by the Zionist regime in Gaza and Palestine.”

Israeli officials could not imme-diately be reached for comment on the event.

Some 150 works from 50 coun-tries are on display in the contest, which opened on the anniversary of Israel’s creation in 1948. Many of the works portrayed Israel as using the Holocaust to distract from the suffering of the Palestinians, and

many compared Israeli Prime Min-ister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.

The contest was organized by non-governmental bodies with strong support from Iran’s hard-liners, who were opposed to the nuclear deal and are against taking further steps to improve ties with the West. Some $50,000 in prize money will go to 16 finalists, with the top winner receiving $12,000. The exhi-bition runs through May 30.

A previous contest was held in 2006 during the presidency of Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, a hard-liner who referred to the Holocaust as a “myth” and repeatedly predicted Israel’s demise.

Tabatabaei also depicted the

contest as a response to depictions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and oth-ers, saying Western countries have a “double standard” when it comes to free speech. Holocaust denial and hate speech are illegal in some Euro-pean countries.

There was no immediate com-ment from the Iranian government on the contest. But Foreign Minis-ter Mohammad Javad Zarif, who played a central role in the nuclear negotiations, told The New Yorker magazine in April that the contest was organised by a group “that is not controlled by the Iranian gov-ernment. Nor is it endorsed by the Iranian government.”

US urges Iran to free Baha’i leaders

Holocaust cartoon contest not aimed at its denial: Iran

An Iranian man looks at an anti-Nazi cartoon showing late German dictator Hilter at the second international exhibition of drawing and cartoons on the Holocaust, in Tehran yesterday.

Al Sisi, a former army chief who was elected president after overthrowing his Islamist predecessor in 2013, has been accused by activists of installing a heavy-handed regime that tolerates no dissent.

MIDDLE EAST 07SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Vehicles cross the Tunisian-Libyan border of Ras Jedir, yesterday. Tunisian and Libyan authorities have reached a deal to lift a trade blockade at their main border crossing, after angry street protests.

Trade blockade lifted

Reuters

BEIRUT: Hezbollah said yesterday its top military commander, whose death it announced on Friday, was killed in Syria by Sunni Islamist artillery fire and not by an Israeli air strike as one member of the Lebanese Shia move-ment had said.

“Investigations have showed that the explosion, which targeted one of our bases near Damascus Interna-tional Airport, and which led to the

martyrdom of commander Mustafa Badreddine, was the result of artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri (hardline Sunni) groups in the area,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

The Shia group is fighting in Syria, backing President Bashar Al Assad against a range of Sunni groups including Islamic State and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.

But a war monitoring group cast doubt on its version of Badreddine’s death, saying there had been no shell-ing by rebels in that area for more than a week.

Damascus airport and its sur-roundings are controlled by the Syrian government and allied forces. Between it and government-held cen-tral Damascus, rebels control a portion of the Eastern Ghouta suburb, which has experienced fighting for most of the conflict now in its sixth year.

“There has been no recorded shelling or firing from the Eastern Ghouta area onto Damascus Interna-tional Airport for more than a week,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdulrahman said.

Hezbollah’s statement did not say when the attack took place or when Badreddine died. Badreddine was given a military funeral in Hezbol-lah’s stronghold in southern Beirut on Friday.

“The outcome of the investigation (into Badreddine’s death) will increase our determination ... to continue the fight against these criminal gangs and defeat them,” Hezbollah said.

Iran-backed Hezbollah, consid-ered a terrorist group by the United States and Gulf Arab states, wields enormous political influence in Leb-anon alongside its powerful military wing. Around 1,200 Hezbollah fight-ers are estimated to have been killed in the Syrian conflict.

Badreddine had many enemies He was sentenced to death in Kuwait

for his role in bomb attacks there in 1983 and escaped from a Kuwaiti jail after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded in 1990.

His release from jail in Kuwait was one of the demands made by the hijackers of a TWA flight in 1985, and of the hijackers of a Kuwait Airways flight in 1988.

For years, Badreddine master-minded military operations against Israel from Lebanon and overseas and managed to escape capture by Arab and Western governments.

“The martyred commander spent years of his life on the front line of the jihad (struggle) against the Zionist entity,” Iran’s parliament speaker Ali Larijani said in a telegram to Hezbol-lah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah reported by the group’s media outlet Al Manar. Israel declined to comment on speculation it was behind Badred-dine’s death, but a former Israeli official said his country would be glad of the news.

Badreddine was one of five Hez-bollah members indicted by the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Leb-anon in the 2005 killing of statesman Rafiq Al Hariri, one of Lebanon’s most prominent Sunni Muslim figures. Hez-bollah denied any involvement and said the charges were politically motivated.

Reuters

ANKARA/ISTANBUL: Dissidents in Turkey’s nationalist opposition accused the government yesterday of interfering in an internal party dis-pute that could end up jeopardising President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plans for more power.

Several hundred members of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have launched a bid to oust Devlet Bahceli, leader for much of the last two decades, and to do so they need to change party rules at a special congress they want to hold today.

Four leaders of the revolt, including former interior minister Meral Aksener, issued a statement accusing Erdogan’s AK Party of intervening to try to block the spe-cial congress.

“This incident showed most importantly how the executive branch watched and pressured the judicial branch in Turkey, how it ille-gally intervened,” Aksener later told journalists.

She said the hotel where the con-gress was scheduled to take place on Sunday was sealed off by the police with chains and water canons were in place. But the dissidents would still gather there, even if they could not enter the hotel.

Bahceli’s faction sought an injunction to block the meeting but an Ankara court upheld the

dissidents’ countersuit. Only minutes later, state-broadcaster TRT reported verdicts from two other local courts that would halt the congress.

The MHP’s dispute could be cru-cial for Erdogan because he needs its help to amend the constitution and give him more power. Aksener opposes that and polls say she could double support for MHP if she ousts Bahceli.

The AK Paarty has increased its influence over the courts in recent years and its opponents say the legal chaos surrounding the congress results from its efforts to keep Bah-celi in power.

“This is a direct intervention from the AK Party and government to the MHP congress and it is unac-ceptable,” the dissidents said in their statement.

Bahceli has led the MHP for much of the last two decades. His party won about 12 percent of the general election last November, get-ting 40 seats in parliament whose votes the AK Party needs to call a referendum to amend the constitu-tion. Bahceli loyalists seem willing to do this, but Aksener has vowed she would defend Turkey’s current parliamentary system and oppose Erdogan’s plan.

AK Party officials reject any suggestions that the government or ruling party are influencing the courts, or that the MHP’s leadership battle and their party’s efforts to win its support on constitutional change are in any way linked.

Turkey: MHP dissidents blame AKP for legal limbo

Hezbollah blames rebel shelling for commander’s death

AFP

RAMALLAH: Israel has arrested a prominent Palestinian activist and sent him to a military prison for “interfering” with the work of the army in the occupied West Bank, his family said yesterday.

Abdullah Abu Rahma has had several run-ins with the army and has spent time in jail in the past for organising weekly demonstrations against Israel’s separation barrier in the village of Bilin.

The activist, who has organised

the protests for the past 11 years, was arrested again on Friday, said his brother Rateb Abu Rahma.

He was moved to the Ofer mil-itary prison in the West Bank on Saturday and told his lawyer he had been accused of “interfering with the work of the army in a closed military zone,” he added.

In February, an Israeli court handed Abu Rahma a four-month suspended sentence on similar charges. He was also arrested and jailed for 15 months in 2009 for coor-dinating the Bilin protests.

Over the years foreign and Israeli demonstrators have joined

Palestinians staging weekly protests in Bilin. Rateb Abu Rahma said that Israeli activists were arrested along-side his brother on Friday. The Israeli army declined to comment.

Israel began building what it calls its “security fence” in 2002 after a wave of Palestinian attacks. The Pal-estinians see it as a land grab aimed at stealing part of their future state, referring to it as the “apartheid wall”.

In a non-binding decision, the International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that construction of the barrier was illegal and, like the UN General Assembly, demanded it be dismantled.

Israel arrests Palestinian activist

Anatolia

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s daughter Sumeyye Erdogan married Turkish businessman Ozdemir Bayraktar’s son Selcuk Bayrak-tar at a ceremony in Istanbul yesterday.

Among witnesses to the wedding were political leaders, former prime min-isters and presidents, plus senior figures from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Devel-opment (AK) Party.

The wedding at the Kucukcek-mece Yahya Kemal Beyatli venue was conducted by Istanbul’s mayor, Kadir Topbas.

Witnesses included the previous president of Turkey, Abdullah Gul; Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu; Par-liament Speaker Ismail Kahraman; Chief of the Turkish General Staff Gen Hulusi Akar; member of the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bakir Izetbe-govic; Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif; former Lebanese prime minister

Saad Hariri and Albanian Premier Edi Rama.

Anadolu correspondents reported that ministers, ambassadors, mayors,

artists and businessmen, plus a great number of other guests, also attended.

Intense security measures were taken by police before the ceremony.

AP

BAGHDAD: More than a dozen suicide bombers attacked a resi-dential and government complex outside Baghdad yesterday, kill-ing at least six people, an official said.

The police chief of the town of Amiriyat Fallujah, Col. Ali al-Issawi, said at least 14 suicide attackers broke into the complex at dawn. In addition to homes, the complex also includes a police station and several government offices.

Al Issawi said five of the attackers blew up themselves while clashing with security forces, while others holed up inside the buildings, and were later killed. He added that five troops and one civilian were killed, while another 18 people were wounded.

The town is located a few miles south of Fallujah, the main Islamic State stronghold in Anbar province, about 40 miles west of Baghdad.

IS still controls key areas in northern and western Iraq, includ-ing the country’s second largest city, Mosul. The extremist group has declared an Islamic caliphate on the territory it holds in Iraq and Syria.

More than 100 people have been killed in in a string of bomb-ings, mainly in Baghdad, since Wednesday.

6 dead in suicide attack outside Baghdad

A destroyed building in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, yesterday.

Erdogan’s daughter marries in Istanbul

Anatolia

SANA’A: The Houthi Shia militia and their allies yesterday shelled positions held by the Yem-eni army and forces loyal to President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi in Yemen’s northern Al Jawf prov-ince, according to pro-Hadi sources.

Abdullah Al Ashraf, a spokesman for the pro-Hadi “popular resistance” in-Al Jawf, said Houthi shelling had targeted several parts of the province, killing two military personnel.

According to Al Ashraf, the shelling was the fiercest since a UN-backed ceasefire went into effect on April 11.

In a related development, a Yemeni army com-mander was quoted by Yemen’s official SABA news agency as saying that within the past 24 hours the Houthis had also shelled a power plant and five vil-lages in the country’s eastern Shabwah province.

Yemen has been racked by chaos since 2014, when the Houthis and their allies overran capi-tal Sanaa and several other parts of the country, forcing Hadi and his Saudi-backed government

to temporarily flee to Riyadh. In March of last year, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive military campaign in Yemen aimed at reversing Houthi gains and restoring Hadi’s embat-tled government.

According to UN figures, the ongoing conflict has led to the death of some 6,400 Yemenis to date and forced some 2.5 million to flee their homes.

On April 11, UN-brokered peace talks kicked off in Kuwait following the announcement of a cease-fire in Yemen.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s warring parties, involved in ongoing United Nations (UN) sponsored peace talks in Kuwait, concluded a joint general session yesterday, according to Kuwait news agency (Kuna).

The session, mediated by UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, tackled a range of political and security issues, including the plight of prisoners and detainees, in a bid to find a fea-sible and lasting solution to the Yemeni conflict.

The Yemeni government delegation at the talks demands the immediate implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which calls on the Houthis to withdraw from cities occupied ear-lier and to lay down their arms.

Two dead in Houthi shelling in Yemen’s Al Jawf province

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s daughter Sumeyye Erdogan and her husband Selcuk Bayraktar posing after their wedding ceremony at the Yahya Kemal Beyatli Arena, in Istanbul, yesterday. Erdogan’ younger daughter Sumeyye married the defence industrialist Selcuk Bayraktar, in a high security ceremony.

Badreddine was one of five Hezbollah members indicted by the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the 2005 killing of statesman Rafiq Al Hariri, one of Lebanon’s most prominent Sunni Muslim figures.

ASIA / PHILIPPINES08 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Anatolia

ZAMBOANGA: Philippines pres-ident-in-waiting Rodrigo Duterte (pictured) announced plans to implement nationwide some of the regulations that won his repute as a southern mayor, while also continu-ing some of the economic policies of outgoing leader Benigno Aquino III.

“The economy is doing good under the Aquino administration,” news website InterAksyon quoted the outspoken mayor of Davao City -- a major bustling city in the south -- as saying.

“We will have to admit it is doing well. And if it’s not really broken, why should I fix it?” he added. “I would hire Cabinet members who are good, then allow them enough time to come up with something that would equal or maybe enhance more the eco-nomic policies of Aquino.”

Addressing criticisms that some in the business community may find him lacking in expertise, Duterte said he had never presented himself as “an economic genius”.

“As a matter of fact, I am not a graduate of Wharton,” he said, refer-ring to the business school at the University of Pennsylvania. “My par-ents can not afford that. I am just a lawyer, a prosecutor, perhaps.”

Among the notable alumni of Wharton is United States presidential candidate Donald Trump, to whom some media have compared Duterte.

The presumptive Philippine pres-ident also underlined Friday that he would consider implementing nationwide some of the restrictions in Davao City, where he has served as mayor for 22 years.

Among them are bans on public smoking, and the selling of alcohol and the operation of entertainment spots past midnight.

Vowing during the campaign trail to crush criminalities and run after corrupt government officials, Duterte, set to become the 16th president and first from the south, captured the presidency by a large majority of votes May 9.

He is still not yet officially proclaimed president as the can-vassing of election returns is yet to be completed

A Filipino jumps over candles during the first ‘AIDS Hour’ in observance of the International AIDS Candlelight Memorial (IACM) in Quezon city, northeast of Manila, yesterday.

Creating AIDS awareness Duterte may adopt Aquino’s policies We will have to admit that the economy is doing well. And if it’s not really broken, why should I fix it?: Duterte

AFP

DHAKA: An elderly Buddhist monk was found hacked to death yesterday in Bangladesh, police said, the lat-est in a spate of murders of religious minorities and secular activists in the Muslim-majority nation.

No group has yet claimed responsibility, although the killing in the remote southeastern district of Bandarban appeared to bear a resemblance to several recent mur-ders by suspected Islamist militants.

A troubling rise in violence in the South Asian nation has now seen seven murders since the start of last month alone.

“Villagers found Bhante (monk) Maung Shue U Chak’s dead body in a pool of blood inside the Bud-dhist temple this morning. He was hacked to death,” Jashim Uddin, dep-uty police chief of Bandarban, said.

Uddin said the monk, 75, appeared to have been attacked by at least four people at the Buddhist temple in Baishari, some 350km southeast of Dhaka early Saturday morning. “We saw human foot-prints in the temple and found that four to five people entered the com-pound,” he added. He said U Chak was living alone in the hillside tem-ple after having recently left farming to become a full-time monk. A top

Bangladeshi human rights lawyer who is close to the country’s Bud-dhist community said that U Chak had received anonymous death threats.

“He became a monk just one and a half years ago. He had received death threats, but nobody took it seriously,” lawyer Jyotirmoy Barua said. Bandarban is largely Buddhist, home to indigenous peoples who adopted the religion centuries ago.

Police district sub-inspector Ani-sur Rahman, who was at the scene, said that officers had not yet estab-lished a motive for the killing but that “it appeared the monk did not have any personal enemies”.

The killing comes as suspected Islamists have been blamed for or claimed responsibility in dozens of murders of minority Sufi, Shiite and Ahmadi Muslims, Hindus, Christians and foreigners in recent years.

Yesterday’s murder adds to a grim toll in past weeks, with an athe-ist student, two gay rights activists, a liberal professor, a Hindu tailor and a Sufi Muslim leader hacked to death since last month. The Islamic State group and a Bangladeshi branch of Al-Qaeda have said that they carried out several of the killings. But the secular government in Dhaka denies that IS and Al-Qaeda are behind the attacks, saying they have no known presence in Bangladesh, and blames the killings on homegrown militants.

Anatolia

ZAMBOANGA CITY: Three sol-diers died and two others were injured early yesterday in a shoot-out with the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philip-pines (CPP) in the country’s central Western Visayas region.

According to a report from ABS-CBN news, the men were among troops who encountered at least 10 New People’s Army rebels at Sitio Carbon at 6.45am, yesterday.

Revekka Knothess Roperos, a 2nd lieutenant major in the army’s 303rd Infantry Brigade, said that the soldiers were on a combat operation in response to reports from civilians of armed rebels in the area when they encoun-tered an undetermined number of guerrillas.

He added that the wounded troops were being treated in a local hospital. The NPA, which had around 3,200 fighters at the end of 2014, has been waging a 40-year guerrilla war against the government. It is designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States State Depart-ment and as a terrorist group by the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy.

AFP

BEIJING: A Chinese man freed after spending more than 20 years in prison for murder will get more than $400,000 in compensation, a court said on Friday according to official media.

Chen Man, now in his early 50s, was given a sus-pended death sentence -- which in China is normally commuted to life imprisonment -- in November 1994 for killing in the southern island province of Hainan.

After a series of appeals going as far as the coun-try’s highest court, he was finally acquitted and released in February due to a “lack of evidence”.

It was one of a series of cases to highlight miscar-riages of justice in China, where the courts are tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party, forced con-fessions are widespread and more than 99 percent of criminal defendants are found guilty. Hainan’s pro-vincial court, which upheld Chen’s suspended death sentence in 1999, agreed Friday to pay him around 2.75 million yuan ($422,000) for loss of personal freedom and mental suffering, said state broadcaster China Central Television.

Chen initially demanded more than 9.66 million yuan in compensation and for the court to make for-mal apologies in national and local media outlets.

“We have regrets. But we acknowledge it according to the State Compensation Law,” he said, according to the report. China has occasionally exonerated wrong-fully executed or jailed convicts after others came forward to confess their crimes, in some cases because the supposed murder victim was later found alive.

Buddhist monk hacked

to death in Bangladesh

3 Philippine

soldiers dead

in shootout

Chinese man gets

$400,000 for

20 years in jail

ASIA / AFRICA 09SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

AFP

ABUJA: Foreign and regional pow-ers were yesterday told to do more to help countries affected by Boko Haram, with greater cooperation urged to neutralise the threat and prevent the creation of new extrem-ists. Delegates at the conference in Abuja were told that progress had been made since the last meeting in Paris two years ago, as the Islamists had been pushed out of territory it controlled in northeast Nigeria.

But with a worsening humani-tarian crisis of more than 2.6 million people in the Lake Chad region, where Nigeria meets Cameroon, Chad and Niger, there were calls for more to be done.

“It is vital that the international community now does more. We need to continue,” said French President

Francois Hollande, warning it was “not time to drop our guard”.

Boko Haram has been desig-nated “the world’s deadliest terrorist group” and has links to the Islamic State group, which is active in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Nigerian rebels have been reported in north Africa.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told the summit: “A last-ing peace can only be achieved if the countries of the region, with our support, cooperate to imple-ment a sustainable strategy that not only wins the war but also wins the peace.”

Countries hit by the violence that has killed at least 20,000 since 2009 had to win “the hearts and minds of those terrorised by Boko Haram”, he said, describing the conflict as “a generational struggle against an evil that will destroy us if we do not destroy it”.

“Much more besides” a military strategy and a coordinated regional force was needed, he said, adding: “We must sustain this fight until evil is defeated and good prevails.”

Nigeria’s President Muham-madu Buhari said the Lake Chad Basin Commission estimated some 960 million euros (just over $1 bil-lion) was needed in the short and medium term to develop the region.

Lack of development has been seen as a key factor in radicalising impoverished young people.

US Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who said Wash-ington was “deeply committed” to helping the military effort and also reconstruction, also said “victory on the battlefield is not enough”.

AP

UNITED NATIONS: The UN Secu-rity Council is strongly condemning attacks by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram and expressing alarm at its links to the Islamic State group ahead of a summit in Nigeria to eval-uate efforts to combat the extremists.

A presidential statement approved Friday by all 15 council members demands that Boko Haram “imme-diately and unequivocally cease all violence and all abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law.”

It also demands the immediate release of the thousands of people held captive by Boko Haram including 219 Nigerian schoolgirls abducted in April

2014. The council welcomed Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s “cru-cial initiative” to convene Saturday’s summit in the capital Abuja to eval-uate the regional response to Boko Haram “with a view to adopting a comprehensive strategy to address the governance, security, development, socio-economic and humanitarian dimensions of the crisis.”

Amnesty International called on leaders attending the summit to ensure that justice remains a priority and to increase efforts to protect civilians.

Some 20,000 people have died and 2.1 million become refugees in Boko Haram’s nearly 7-year upris-ing to create an Islamic state but US -backed African governments have made military advances against Islamic extremists.

Two bombings this week in the

northeastern city of Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram and head-quarters of the military’s campaign against the jihadists, were the first attacks in two months.

They indicated the success of heightened vigilance by soldiers and self-defense groups that have reported intercepting several suicide bombers recently.

The decrease in attacks, which were an almost daily occurrence ear-lier this year, also marks the success of the military campaign that offic-ers say has Boko Haram hemmed into strongholds in the Sambisa Forest, a sprawling game reserve 45 minutes’ drive southwest of Maiduguri.

Dozens of Boko Haram fighters are surrendering, reporting food and ammunition shortages, the military said this week.

Reuters

KAMPALA: Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye was charged with treason late on Friday for declaring himself president and challenging the election victory of veteran leader Yoweri Musev-eni, officials from both camps said.

The charge - which carries the death penalty - marked an esca-lation in recent confrontations between the government and Besigye who has been repeatedly arrested and accused authorities of beatings and intimidation.

Tensions have mounted since the disputed February poll and authorities this week blocked Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and other social media, saying they were worried about security around Museveni’s official inaugu-ration on Thursday. Government spokesman Shaban Bantariza said Besigye had been charged with treason because he had declared himself “an alternative president”.

“He has openly declared his intention to topple this govern-ment, that’s not constitutional,” he said. Authorities have dismissed accusations of targeting Besigye, saying they have only acted to keep order. Besigye was arrested in the capital Kampala on Wednesday, on charges of addressing an ille-gal assembly and was taken to Moroto town, 500 km (300 miles) away near the border with Kenya.

“He was charged with treason yesterday (Friday) in Moroto mag-istrates’ court and remanded to prison,” Semujju Nganda, an oppo-sition legislator and spokesman for Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party told Reuters.

A party official told Reuters on Wednesday there had been a cer-emony when their candidate was sworn in as president.

Nations told to unite against Boko Haram

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari (right) shakes hands with his French counterpart Francois Hollande during joint news conference in Abuja, Nigeria, yesterday.

UN condemns Boko Haram attacks

Members of a lion dance team perform during a street parade to celebrate the birthday of sea deity Tam Kung in Hong Kong, yesterday.

Celebration wave

Reuters

KINSHASA: Police in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo arrested at least four people yes-terday who were protesting the failure of government and UN peacekeeping forces to prevent repeated massacres, the United Nations said.

About 15 people were pro-testing peacefully outside the UN peacekeeping mission’s headquar-ters in the eastern city of Goma when police violently dispersed them with batons, said Jose Maria Aranaz, director of the UN human rights office in Congo.

Four were arrested and three injured. The protest group said in a statement that seven of its mem-bers and a journalist had been arrested. The provincial police commander was not immediately available for comment.

AFP

JOHANNESBURG: A retired South African sales executive who emigrated to Australia 30 years ago is hatching a daring plan to air-lift 80 rhinos to his adopted country in a bid to save the species from poachers.

Flying each animal on the 11,000km jour-ney will cost about $44,000, but Ray Dearlove believes the expense and risk is essential as poaching deaths have soared in recent years.

The rhinos will be re-located to a safari park in Australia, which is being kept secret for security reasons, where they will become a “seed bank” to breed future generations.

“Our grand plan is to move 80 over a four-year period. We think that will provide the nucleus of a good breeding herd,” Dearlove said while visiting South Africa to organise for the first batch to be flown out.

The Australian Rhino Project, which the 68-year-old founded in 2013, hopes to take

six rhino to their new home before the end of the year. Funding -- from private and corpo-rate sources -- is nearly in place, and the first rhinos have been selected from animals kept on private reserves in South Africa.

“We have got to get this first one right because it’s a big task, it’s expensive, it’s com-plex,” Dearlove said.

When they are settled successfully in Aus-tralia, “then we hopefully will go up in gear,” he added. South Africa is home to around 20,000 rhinos, around 80 percent of the worldwide population.

But they are being killed for their horns, which are in high demand in China and Viet-nam where they are prized for their purported medicinal purposes. The horn is composed mainly of keratin, the same as human nails, but it is sold in powdered form as a supposed cure for cancer among other diseases, and as an aphrodisiac.

Poachers slaughtered 1,338 rhinos across Africa last year -- the highest level since the poaching crisis exploded in 2008, according

to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN, which rates white rhinos as “near threatened” as a species, says that booming demand for horn and the involve-ment of international criminal syndicates has fuelled the explosion in poaching since 2007.

Dearlove still faces a major logistical bat-tle to bring his dream to reality.

South African and Australian authorities have imposed stringent requirements on mov-ing the animals.

The rhinos will be placed in quarantine for two months before they board a cargo plane and then go straight into quarantine in a zoo in Sydney until being taken to the safari park.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done because there is some lack of clarity in the proposal that they have made,” South African Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa said.

“Who bears the cost? It’s quite enormous. We still don’t have answers to such things.”

Internal and cross-border relocations of animals are not new in Africa.

Tajikistan leader creates

holiday in his own honour

AFP

DUSHANBE: Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon yesterday signed a law to create a holiday honouring his autocratic rule in a move that fuels fears of a burgeoning person-ality cult in the Central Asian state.

Amendments to the Law on Holi-days were passed without opposition last month in a parliament packed with Rakhmon loyalists who agreed that November 16 would be the date the ‘President’s Day’ holiday will be celebrated. The law was accepted “taking into account the significant political experience and huge contri-bution” to peace and national unity in Tajikistan made by Rakhmon, according to a statement from the presidential press service.

The date was chosen because the former collective farm boss was elected head of parliament on

November 16, 1992, as the ex-Soviet state reeled from the outbreak of a civil war won five years later by pro-government forces. Rakhmon was later elected president in 1994.

A referendum scheduled for May 22 is likely to trigger constitutional changes allowing Rakhmon to run for office an unlimited number of times.

Authorities have recently pushed through a growing number of initi-atives celebrating Rakhmon’s reign, which is regularly lambasted by rights organisations as corrupt and repressive.

In February Tajikistan’s youth affairs committee launched a contest for the best essays by schoolchildren in praise of strongman Rakhmon’s “heroic” rule.

The competition called for chil-dren to submit their essays on the topic: “Young People: Followers of the Leader of the Nation”, which is Rakhmon’s official title.

Ugandan oppn

leader charged

with treason

De-horned rhinoceroses roaming in a field at the John Hume’s Rhino Ranch, belonging to millionaire John Hume, a private rhino owner/breeder in South Africa who strongly advocates for legalising trade, in Klerksdorp, in the North Western Province of South Africa.

80 African rhinos to be flown to Australia to escape poachers

Congo arrests 4

for protesting

massacres

A lasting peace can only be achieved if the countries of the region, with our support, cooperate to implement a sustainable strategy that not only wins the war but also wins the peace: Hammond

VIEWS10 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

The Cold War ceased. But never ended. So, the most potent geopolitical powers — United States and Russia — continue to be engaged in a kind of one-upmanship that is a throwback to the days of the Cold War. With the launch of a missile defence shield in

Romania and another planned in Poland, the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) has given Russia’s Vladimir Putin another stick to beat the West with.

The Western military alliance has been clashing with Moscow for years over the deployment of missile defence shields in Europe. Washington’s Cold War rival, which sees the US as the ultimate enemy, believes or wants to show it believes that the missile interceptors in Europe are a ploy at containment.

More than two decades after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Russian leadership is yet to come to terms with the sense of loss it inherited from the dissolution of the USSR. Putin has called it the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th

century. US and its allies in Nato have been insisting that the missile defence capability with an ultimate command and control facility in Germany is not directed at Russia. But the Kremlin sees it as a direct threat and refuses to believe the shield is not an attempt at emasculating Russia and its bid to court countries in its sphere of influence.

Washington’s assertion that the capability is directed at Iran is not very convincing after last year’s vaunted pact that virtually took away all the sting from Tehran’s infamous nuclear programme given to secretive locations

and subterfuge in operations. But why would the biggest military power in the world want

to rile another that apparently doesn’t pose a threat to its global ambitions and purported hegemonic designs?

The eastward expansion of Nato has been a point of contention between Washington and Moscow. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact — formed to counter the trans-Atlantic multilateral alliance came as another shock for post-Cold War Russia, shattering every bit of its self-esteem. The rapprochement the West was looking for with Russia never materialised and Putin kept whipping up nationalistic fervour to use it as a prop to strengthen his hold on power and the polity.

The missile shield may have given Romania and Poland a leg up in a balance of power equation in eastern Europe but has opened up an inflammatory front in relations with Russia.

Containment or not, US policy of spreading its strategic footprint has worked to make it unpopular in the international community. In a unipolar world, Washington needs to tread softly so as not to be branded an aggressor.

Offensive shield

Nato missile shield in Romania will do little more than heighten tensions between Russia and US.

Quote of the day

I don’t think Canadians yet understand what happened. They know there was a fire.

Justin TrudeauPrime Minister Canada

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By Nicholas Paphitis

AP

At the end of a long, straight road on the coastal flats between the southern Greek vil-lage of Myrsini and the

Ionian Sea sits a refugee shelter that could have popped out of a travel brochure.

The 338 Syrians and Iraqis who have been living there since March say they’re grateful to be safe in seaside bungalows, but getting restless, eager to continue jour-neys they hope will take them to the more prosperous nations of western Europe.

Local authorities volun-teered the resort, which had been abandoned for years, to a Greek government that encountered strong opposition from some other communities as it quickly tried to build camps for tens of thousands of stranded refugees.

About a million people fleeing war or poverty in the Middle East and Africa arrived in Greece from neighboring Turkey between Jan-uary 2015 and March 2016, when a series of countries further north closed their borders. New arriv-als have since dropped to a few thousand, mainly because of a new European Union deal for Turkey to host people who otherwise would have arrived by boat, but about 54,000 remain stranded in dozens of official camps — and two make-shift tent cities — across Greece, awaiting asylum in the financially broken country or relocation else-where on the continent.

Most of the organized camps consist of boxy prefabricated units or canvas tents, set up hurriedly by the military. About 1,300 people live in the former arrivals area of the old Athens airport, and another 2,100 in defunct sports venues built for the 2004 Olympics.

In several cases, local com-munities bucked sharply at their selection to host migrant shelters, some ploughing the appointed sites overnight or fighting for days with riot police.

Not so in Myrsini, part of the municipality of Andravida and Kyl-lini. Municipality Mayor Nampil Morant is a Syrian immigrant him-self, who married a Greek woman and settled in nearby Lechaina almost three decades ago. But he says that wasn’t what motivated his municipal council’s decision.

“We could see the dramatic situ-ation of these refugees, the children that drowned at sea, the difficulties they face — and that can’t leave you untouched,” said Morant, a Paris- and Brussels-educated doctor born

in Homs, a city ravaged by Syr-ia’s civil war. In 2014 he became the first immigrant to win a Greek local election.

“The site was useless to us, it had been abandoned and was in the middle of a court process,” he said. “So we told the central gov-ernment: ‘Look, this place is in a mess. If you want, you can have it, fix it up and put them there.’”

The Syrians and Iraqis, mostly families of women and children, moved there from a squalid encampment of thousands that sprang up on the quays of Piraeus, the port of Athens where Aegean island ferries dock.

Morant says he believes things have worked well so far, so much so that refugees from other parts of Greece are turning up on their own. But they’re sent away because Morant wants people to live in proper facilities, not in tents.

In the camp, men play volley-ball, children throng a playground, mothers hang washing outside the ochre-painted bungalows and young women chat on the beach. At least one baby has been born here and was entered by Morant in the local birth register.

It’s a carefree, sheltered exist-ence. But the refugees are antsy. They risked their lives to reach Greece in flimsy boats, paying a small fortune to smuggling gangs, with the ultimate aim of starting a new life. Now that’s been sus-pended, with no clear indication of how long they may have to wait.

Heba Algafer, an English stu-dent from Damascus, says it’s time to move on.

“We don’t need a place to live or OK food, we don’t need this life,” she said. “We need to travel, to find a place to stay, and work, and learn.”

Algafer and her fiancé, Damas-cus car mechanic Ahmed Qasem, crossed to the island of Samos on a boat crammed with nearly 70 peo-ple on March 19, a day before the cut-off date after which any ref-ugees reaching Greece are liable for deportation to Turkey, under the agreement with the European Union. They landed destitute, as smugglers forced them to dump their bags with all their cash and belongings into the sea, to make space for more passengers.

The couple is now impatient to register for relocation to Sweden, where Qasem’s mother has lived for the past five years. His father, a schoolteacher, remains in Syria.

Wis Najjar, 53, a house painter and furniture polisher from Aleppo, has already registered, together with his wife and three sons. But he, too, is frustrated with the wait.

“It’s good here, and the peo-ple are good, they help a lot and I’m very grateful,” Najjar said. “I did my papers a month ago and am waiting, but I wish the process was quicker. All day it’s sleep, food, sleep, food — that’s not a proper life. I want to work, and the boys to go to school or work.”

Morant said he expects the camp will start to empty after Sep-tember. Some 60 percent of the residents are women with children who should be accepted by coun-tries their husbands have already reached. Another 20 percent, he says, want asylum in Greece, while the rest will either be relocated in Europe or will return to Syria.

While local councilors over-whelmingly backed the camp, what Morant describes as a “small minor-ity” of residents initially opposed it, citing fears of crime, disease or religious discord with the Muslim refugees.

“I had some elderly constit-uents telling me that they would shut themselves in with shotguns to protect themselves,” he said. “Well, now the same elderly peo-ple are going to the camp to hand over useful items to the refugees.”

Camp residents say they feel welcome.

“They are very good people here, they have given me lifts to and from the camp,” Qasem said. “Once when I was in the village it started to rain and somebody gave me an umbrella.”

He plays a video on his mobile phone shot on the sea journey to Greece, when he says Turkish offi-cials fired warning shots in the air and tried to puncture the rub-ber boat to stop them. He says he will keep the footage to show his children.

“I want them to see what hap-pened to us,” Qasem said.

In Greek seaside resort, refugees see dreams put on hold

A man and his son looking at Mao statues lined up in a Mao memorabilia shop. Shaoshan in central China’s province Hunan is the hometown of former communist leader Mao Zedong. The small village is a hotspot for ‘red tourism’.

Syrian refugees walk at a former bungalow resort, in the village of Myrsini, about 276km west of Athens, recently.

OPINION 11SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

The solution to a water security threat of the most severe kind

By Ron Daniel

If reduced energy consumption and water security was to be accom-plished through environmentally sound and sustainable methods, two of the four Pillars of Qatar’s 2030

Vision would be largely accomplished. There is now a technology available in Qatar that will not only achieve water security for many hundreds of years but will also simultaneously reduce Qatar’s carbon footprint. It does so by working with nature in an environmentally harm-less and completely sustainable process.

REDUCING QATAR’S CARBON FOOTPRINT

Since 1959, when a Scottish engineer, developed what is called “multi-stage flash evaporation” (MSFE), Arabian Gulf nations have ardently pursued this extraordinar-ily reliable but hyper energy-consuming technology to produce their drinking water.

Today, Qatar’s fresh water is almost exclusively provided by desalination plants ostensibly utilizing those same MSFE methods. However, this method requires a significant share — more than one-fifth — of the country’s electrical generating capacity and more than 10 percent of the nation’s domestic natural gas consumption.

57-years later, another Scottish engi-neer, with his own company registered

in Qatar (Ron Daniel, GM of Composium Group WLL and author of this article) has developed a process that will reduce the typical energy consumption of desalina-tion by approximately 20% regardless of the desalination method preferred; e.g. Reverse Osmosis, Multi Stage Flash Distillation, Multiple Effect Distillation, solar-powered desalination, etc.

Consequently, the production of fresh water will consume 4% less of the coun-try’s electrical generating capacity and 2 percent less of the nation’s domestic nat-ural gas. This new technology is called the Incrediwell Process.

The Incrediwell Process is a seawater extraction system that drains large volumes of highly-filtered seawater from below the sands of the seafloor. This unique tech-nology delivers a multitude of benefits. ��Reduction of Qatar’s carbon Footprint with sustainable delivery of less expen-sive Water and Power production. �� Natural and highly effective water filtration, maintained by constant wave actions, currents, tides and storms. Conse-quently there is no biofouling and therefore, no need for the toxic and carcinogenic bio-cide chemicals that have been used to keep open intakes operational. ��Protection of the marine environment of the Gulf, allowing recovery. ��Water security for all future genera-tions of the Gulf. WATER SECURITY. When considering water security, the biggest problem of them all, a problem that exists on a completely differ-ent order of scale, a problem that dwarfs all others is the destruction of the only water source capable of supporting the populations and economies of the region and that is the waters of the Arabian Gulf.

The present day method (and the only method utilised to acquire seawater from the Gulf) is the same method that has been in use for the past 60 years, i.e. open-intakes. The logistics have changed a lot in those 60-years. Qatar’s present day desalinated water production — 1.5 million cubic meters (400 million gallons) daily — represents 5 percent, or one-twentieth of the Gulf’s total production of desalinated water. The total Gulf desalinated water capacity is therefore 30 million cubic meters per day requiring at least 60 - 90 million cubic meters of raw seawater to be drawn from the Gulf each and every day.

Open intakes, as a consequence of the considerable destruction caused to the envi-ronment the water is sourced from, are now discredited and virtually outlawed in the USA. If the Gulf is to be protected, the Gulf countries must urgently follow suit. Aside from the immense harm done to the marine environment, first with entrainment of all

levels of marine ecology and then second, with the discharge of large quantities of toxic, carcinogenic effluent, it is actually the hyper-saline content of the effluent that creates the greatest challenge to sus-tainable desalination in the Gulf.

The Gulf, the world’s saltiest sea, is home to approximately 60% of the entire global desalination capacity and records demon-strate a constant year-on-year increase in the Gulf seawater salinity levels. Therefore, each year, more salt needs to be removed in the Desalination Process.

This additional salt requires more energy to be expended by desalination plants in removing it and consequently, increased levels of salt effluent are then returned to the Gulf..

This is surely the epitome of the Law of diminishing returns.

Scientists are now warning that the salinity level increase in the waters of the Gulf will cause the existing water and power facilities to be completely unviable. If the desalination capacity in the Gulf increases as predicted (some estimate a 100% increase within the next decade) this catastrophe will occur much sooner.

This is a threat to Qatar’s economic

growth, human well-being, and national security of the most severe kind. SOLUTION. With Incrediwell Process systems in place of Open intakes, it will be possible to engineer Zero Liquid Dis-charge processes and thereby create the opportunity for the marine environment of the Gulf to recover from the destruc-tion that it has been subjected to.

With 568km of coastline, there are numerous opportunities to build Incredi-well process systems and with just 25 of these systems, Qatar will be provided with all its Domestic, Agricultural and Industrial water requirements at a fraction of the cost of the mega reservoirs that are currently being built. The transformation from open-intakes to the Incrediwell Process can be carried out without any interruption to every day Water and Power production operations.

95% of all power and water production failures are attributable to open intake problems whereas the Incrediwell Proc-ess is impervious to all these shut-down events such as Red Tide (HAB’s), Oil spills, Marine swarms and Storms.

Additionally, sub seafloor seawater abstraction delivers water with valuable geothermal properties. This will create

multiple revenue opportunities. If, for example, the seawater abstracted via the Incrediwell Process and intended as a Desalination feed source was first to be used as a District cooling heat transfer process, this would result in a 30% reduc-tion in overall Capex and 60% reduction in overall Opex in comparison with the conventional district cooling systems uti-lising Cooling Towers

In conclusion, it is this generation that has allowed the Gulf marine environment to be destroyed and thereby severely risk-ing future Water and Power production. The simple change in procedures, mov-ing from open intakes to the Incrediwell Process sub seafloor intakes will allow us to correct the problems that we have cre-ated and instead, provide a LEGACY that will last for as long as the Gulf itself exists. ron.daniel@composium-group.com.

Ron Daniel a Construction and Engineer-ing Project Manager with over 40-years experience in the industry. He is the General Manager of Composium Group Ltd and he is currently seeking a suitable Qatari Partner to help him launch the Incrediwell Process in Qatar.

Why Iran hard-liners hate foreign investment

By Marc Champion

Bloomberg

US Secretary of State John Kerry is making a lot of people in Washington even madder than usual. He’s

been encouraging European banks and companies to invest in Iran -- which certainly is weird, given the history between the US and the Islamic Republic.

As the former George W. Bush administration official Elliott Abrams put it on Thursday: “There is simply no defensible reason for an American official, much less our top diplomat, to concern himself with how much investment and profit Iran can eke out of the nuclear deal.”

Except that there is. Increas-ing foreign trade and investment for Iran was part of the mix in the 12-year negotiation over Iran’s nuclear fuel

programme, from start to finish. It was resisted by the Iranian Revo-lutionary Guard Corps and other hard-line factions in the Tehran regime because they feared foreign influence that could undermine their control. So it’s at least defensible to ask western treaty opponents why, if they think foreign investment would help the Revolutionary Guard conduct its military adventures, the Revolu-tionary Guard doesn’t want it.

Twelve years ago, I went to Iran to figure out whether the incentives European negotiators were using -- with the backing of the Bush administration -- to persuade the regime in Tehran to stop manufac-turing nuclear fuel could work. The answer was no.

That wasn’t obvious at the time. The offer went roughly like this: The Iranians would permanently mothball their fuel program and, in exchange, get access to top-of-the line civilian nuclear technology, along with trade privileges and additional investment from the European Union, then Iran’s biggest economic partner. Western diplomats were convinced that this would work. They pointed to the huge demographic bulge for which the regime needed to create jobs, or risk revolt. Investment and technol-ogy transfer would create those jobs.

But this was 2004, when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was feeling

decidedly insecure. The US had declared Iran part of an “axis of evil” and then invaded Iraq, parking 150,000 troops on Iran’s doorstep. Moreover, if reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s engage-ment with the West and its investors delivered prosperity, Khamenei’s revolutionary regime risked losing its credibility. At the same time, the price of oil was climbing, making for-eign funding less vital.

As a result, the most power-ful man in Iran didn’t want foreign investment and was hardly going to trade much away for it. The big con-tracts Khatami’s government signed with foreign investors were getting shut down and taken over by the Revolutionary Guard -- in one case, using tanks. Soon, Khatami would be replaced by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the nuclear talks would go into deep freeze.

That hasn’t happened this time. Khamenei agreed to a nuclear deal and, for now at least, has reined in the hard-liners who oppose it. That’s because he wants the investment.

“Everything is different,” said Cyrus Razzaghi, President of the con-sultancy Ara Enterprise, whom I also met back in 2004. “This time there is no threat to Iran’s security -- Iraq is now our biggest export market, and Iran and the US even have a com-mon enemy in Islamic State. Plus the

oil price is low and the economy has taken a beating from sanctions. We have a real chance.”

Just as important, says Razzaghi, is the difference between Khatami and today’s president, Hassan Rouhani: “Khatami was a super nice guy, but a philosopher. Rouhani is the ultimate pol, the ultimate insider.” As a result, Rouhani has been much more success-ful at keeping Khamenei on his side.

Now it is a substantial swath of the US Congress and the Washington for-eign policy community that doesn’t want investment to flow into Iran. Khamenei is showing signs of impa-tience, because the economy still hasn’t benefited much from the lift-ing of sanctions while Rouhani may be growing too strong politically after winning parliamentary elections in February. When Khamenei delivered his annual address to mark the Iranian new year, in late March, he lambasted the US for keeping sanctions in effect and criticised Rouhani for working with the “arrogant” Americans.

Although Iranian oil produc-tion returned to pre-sanctions levels this week, European banks are still refusing to clear transac-tions. That’s because they fear that the US Treasury Department may fine them for transgressing US sanc-tions that remain in place, even after the nuclear deal lifted international sanctions. The inability to clear large

transactions has so far made most agreements on foreign investment projects moot.

Iran’s irreconcilable conserva-tives are crowing, reminding Iranians that they’d always argued that the US would never let Iran benefit from the lifting of sanctions and had dismissed the nuclear deal as a ruse. Their hope is that the nuclear deal unravels and a discredited Rouhani fails to get reelected next year, leaving the presi-dency open for one of their own.

This is why Kerry is trying to per-suade Europe’s big banks to go ahead and work in Iran -- as the nuclear deal envisaged they should be able to do. So far, they have not been con-vinced. The US has hit many of them with large fines for clearing Iranian dollar transactions for Iran in the past, at a previous time when the US had sanctions on Iran but European gov-ernments did not. Who knows what the next US president might order the Treasury to do.

There is, of course, an element of good-cop-bad-cop theater to Ira-nian politics, but the tussle for power is genuine. Kerry’s best defense of his advocacy for investment in Iran is that America’s most implacable enemies in the regime want him to fail.

Marc Champion writes editorials on international affairs for Bloomb-erg View.

Although Iranian oil production returned to pre-sanctions levels this week, European banks are still refusing to clear transactions.

All thoughts and views expressed in these columns are those of the writers, not of the newspaper.All correspondence regarding Views and Opinion pages should be mailed to the Editor-in-Chief.

The volumes referenced above are projected to double within the next decade.

PAKISTAN12 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Peace deal expected with armed Afghan group

AP

KABUL: The Afghan government is expected to finalise a peace deal with a notorious militant insurgent group within days, marking a breakthrough in attempts to end the 15-year war, an official and a representative of the group said yesterday.

Ataul Rahman Saleem, deputy head of Kabul’s High Peace Council, said that the deal with the armed wing of Hezb-i-Islami could be completed today, after two years of negotiations.

A senior representative of

Hezb-i-Islami, Amin Karim, also said he expected President Ashraf Ghani (pictured) to approve the final ver-sion of the agreement today.

Such a deal would mark a much-needed success for Ghani in forging peace with insurgent groups fighting to overthrow the Kabul administra-tion. His attempts to open a dialogue with the Taliban, mainly via overtures to the Pakistan government which is believed to support it, have failed.

While Hezb-i-Islami has been a largely dormant force in recent years, and has little political rele-vance in Afghanistan, the deal with the Afghan government could be a template for any future deal with the Taliban. It commits the group to end-ing its war against Kabul, respecting the Afghan constitution, and ceasing all contact with other armed, anti-government groups. Hezb-i-Islami is led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmat-yar, best known for killing thousands of people in Kabul during the 1992-1996 civil war.

He is believed to be in Pakistan,

though Karim has said he is in an unspecified location in Afghani-stan. Under the terms of the 25-point agreement, a draft of which has been seen by AP, he could soon return to Kabul to sign a formal peace deal and take up residence.

Hekmatyar, in his late 60s, is designated a “global terrorist” by the United States and blacklisted by the United Nations along with Osama bin Laden. The agreement obliges the Afghan government to work to have the restrictions lifted.

Hezb-i-Islami has only intermit-tently been active on the battlefield for some time; its last known major attack was in 2013, when at least 15 people, including six American sol-diers, were killed in Kabul.

Saleem said Hekmatyar’s associ-ates, including his family, all appeared united behind him and “are not dis-senting with their leader.” He said a few points in the agreement were still to be thrashed out, and added: “It is strongly possible that we get to the final points tomorrow and finalise the

peace negotiations.”Ghani is due to return to Kabul

today from an official visit to London. Karim said he expected the president to give his final approval to the con-tent of the truce agreement soon after

his return. Negotiations began in July 2014, Karim said, when Hekmatyar received a letter from Ghani, then campaigning to become president, noting that one of Hekmatyar’s key conditions for peace — the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan — was about to be met. “That was the beginning,” Karim said.

Progress stalled after US Presi-dent Barack Obama decided to leave a 10,000-strong force in the coun-try through to the end of 2016 until Hekmatyar dropped the condition and renamed it “a goal” earlier this year.

Karim and a number of Afghan officials have said that a peace agree-ment with Hekmatyar’s group could encourage Taliban fighters to end their participation in the war, and eventually lead to a full-blown peace. Others, however, regard Hekmatyar as politically irrelevant and lacking any real influence.

Spokesmen for the Taliban were not immediately available for com-ment. The agreement covers a wide range of points, including a guarantee

of equality between men and women and respect for the Afghan constitu-tion, both points of contention with the Taliban, whose 1996-2001 rule of Afghanistan was characterised by extremist attitudes that cloistered women in their houses and mandated strict religious education, to the exclu-sion of almost all else, for boys.

Brokered under the auspices of the High Peace Council — a govern-ment body charged with negotiating an end to almost 40 years of war — the agreement allows Hezb-i-Islami to operate as a bona fide political party and participate in elections at every level.

It gives legal immunity for “all past political and military proceed-ings” by Hezb-i-Islami members and mandates the release of all prison-ers within three months. Karim said there are about 2,000 Hezb-i-Islami prisoners in jails across Afghanistan.

The Afghan government under-takes to provide housing and security for Hekmatyar at two or three resi-dences in places of his choosing.

Deal with the armed wing of Hezb-i-Islami could be completed today, after two years of negotiations.

Afghan police inspect the site of a suicide car bombing, detonated near a police training base in the Nad Ali district of Helmand province yesterday.

Bomber leaves three dead at Afghan police training centreAFP

KANDAHAR: A Taliban suicide bomber detonated an explosive-laden car at a police training centre in the opium-rich southern province of Helmand yesterday, killing at least three people and wounding nine oth-ers, officials said.

The attack in Nad Ali district comes in the midst of the Taliban’s annual spring offensive launched last month, in what is expected to be the worst fighting season in 15 years of war.

“Three policemen were killed in a suicide car bombing in Nad Ali,” Helmand police chief Abdul Rah-man Sarjang said.

“Seven police and two civilians were among the wounded,” he added.

Eyewitnesses said the powerful bombing left a huge crater outside the training centre.

The attack comes after a period of relative calm in Helmand, a Tali-ban hotbed, for more than a month when many militants left the front-lines to assist in harvesting poppies for opium — the group’s main source of revenue.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf

Ahmadi said the militants were behind the bombing and claimed that dozens of policemen were killed in the attack.

The militant group is known to exaggerate death toll figures in attacks on government or Western targets.

The insurgents have frequently used roadside bombs, ambushes and suicide assaults in nearly 15 years of war. The Taliban have vowed “large-scale attacks” across Afghanistan in this year’s spring offensive — dubbed Operation Omari in honour of its late founder Mullah Omar, whose death was announced last year.

Scientist AQ Khan’s family named in Panama PapersInternews

KARACHI: The family of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Paki-stan’s nuclear programme, has been named in the Panama Papers. Abdul Quyuim Khan, the brother of AQ Khan, and Hendrina, his wife, as well as Dina and Ayesha Khan, his two daughters, are all shown as owners of Wahdat Ltd, a company registered in the Bahamas.

Although the names are not part of the data released online by the International Consortium of Inves-tigative Journalists (ICIJ), Wahdat Ltd does appear on the website. How-ever, it has been named in the larger database obtained by the group.

The company was registered in January of 1998, months before the nuclear tests of May that year, and deregistered on Dec 31, 1999, shortly after the October 12 coup.

“I have never even heard the name of this company,” AQ Khan said over phone. “Neither did my wife and daughters. My brother, who died a few years ago, was with Habib Bank and, as you know, bank-ers are always up to their tricks and hanky panky,” he said without minc-ing words. “My wife and daughters never signed any documents to cre-ate this company. The signatures (on the incorporation paperwork) are surely false. My brother never dis-cussed it with me and my family only heard about this company after the Panama Papers release.”

The company has been shown as an intermediary of ILS Fiduciaries

IOM (Ltd), registered in the Isle of Man and still active. That company has links to 611 other entities from various jurisdictions like Panama and Niue in the database, dating back to 1993, most of which are either “inactive” or “defaulted”.

The ICIJ defines an intermedi-ary as “[a] go-between for someone seeking an offshore corporation and an offshore service provider-usu-ally a law firm or a middleman that asks an offshore service provider to create an offshore firm for a client.

It is not clear what the docu-ments in the larger ICIJ database reveal about the activities of the company since ICIJ has not released them publicly.

According to at least one person who has examined the documents but declined to share them, there is neither any evidence of move-ment of funds nor any information regarding bank accounts owned by the company.

Further public disclosure of these documents will clarify this.

In 2004, Dina Khan’s bank accounts in the UAE were frozen on the request of the US government. US government cables leaked through Wikileaks described three conver-sations between the governor of the UAE’s central bank and an official from the US Treasury Department, in which the governor was quoted as saying: “I personally recommend that Dina Khan be eliminated from the list [of people whose accounts have to be frozen due to links with WMD proliferation] because there is not enough evidence to justify con-tinuing the freeze”.

PML-N fares well in Peshawar by-electionInternews

PESHAWAR: The victory of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate Arbab Waseem in the by-election on the provin-cial assembly constituency PK-8 proved that the party has a solid vote-bank in this area.

It also belied the allegations of rigging levelled against the late Arbab Akbar Hayat in the 2013 general election. The seat had fallen vacant due to the death of Arbab Akbar Hayat, who had been elected as MPA on the PML-N ticket from PK-8 Peshawar-VIII in the 2013 polls.

Arbab Akbar Hayat was the lone MPA elected on the PML-N ticket from Peshawar district where Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) had won all the national and provincial assembly seats.

Arbab Waseem, the nephew and son-in-law of Arbab Akbar Hayat, retained the seat at a time when the province is governed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and its allies, Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and QaumiWatan Party (QWP).

The three ruling parties had put a joint candidate, Shahzad Khan of the PTI, in the by-election but he lagged behind in the con-test. The PML-N achieved victory despite the fact that the party’s organizational structure is almost invisible and the central leadership has turned a blind eye towards the province. It showed that the party’s vote-bank is intact and it can be revived with some attention from the federal government and the central PML-N leadership.

No important PML-N leader held election rally for the party candidate in PK-8.

Imran Khan admits using offshore company to avoid British taxReuters

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani opposi-tion leader Imran Khan, who tried to oust Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a row over offshore wealth, has acknowledged using an offshore company to avoid paying British tax on a London property sale.

Analysts say the admission is likely to ease the pressure on Sharif’s government from a Panama Papers data leak that showed Sharif’s chil-dren had used off-shore companies to buy London properties. Last month the government bowed to opposition demands for a review by an independent commission.

Khan’s PTI party initially denied media claims that he bought a prop-erty in London through an off-shore company in 1983, when he was play-ing cricket in England.

But late on Friday, Khan said he set up the company to legally avoid

paying British taxes. “Because I was not a British cit-

izen, an offshore flat was bought. When I sold that flat in 2003, I did not have to pay the taxes in UK,” Khan told reporters at London’s Heathrow Airport. “There is noth-ing illegal in it.”

PTI and Khan did not respond to requests for comment.

Khan, long revered as a crick-eting hero, had relentlessly needled Sharif over the Panama Papers rev-elations and railed against people who use off-shore companies to dodge tax.

Media commentators and Nawaz supporters quoted back at him his Twitter comment from last month: “Only reason ppl open offshore accts through Panama is to either hide wealth, esp ill-gotten wealth, or to evade tax or both.”

Umar Cheema, a Pakistani reporter who collaborated with the International Committee of Jour-nalists (ICIJ) on the Panama Papers

leak, said Khan’s use of an off-shore company in 1983 pre-dates anything found in the Panama Papers about other Pakistanis.

Khan “is pioneer in offshore company formation, among Pakista-nis. Not only the oldest, his company remained operational for the long-est period,” Cheema said on Twitter.

Mohammad Zubair, the priva-tisation minister, said Khan should prepare to face a parliamentary grilling. He added Sharif does not own any off-shore companies.

Sharif’s daughter Maryam, who is alleged to have owned an off-shore company used to buy a flat in London, also waded in.

“The ‘PIONEER’ of offshore com-panies ..... The TRAILBLAZER award goes to Mr. Khan. #Hypocrisy,” she said on Twitter.

One political analyst said the opposition was likely to keep using the Panama Papers to pillor Sharif but Khan’s revelations will help blunt those attacks.

Imran Khan, chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), addresses his supporters during a by-election campaign rally in Lahore.

INDIA 13SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

IANS

UJJAIN: Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday made a veiled attack on Western countries and their “expansionist” designs and pointed out that their “holier than thou” atti-tude is primarily responsible for challenges like terrorism and global warming.

“Tere raaste se mera raasta zyada sahi hai (My way is better than yours). This holier than thou approach is dragging the world towards conflicts,” the prime minister said, addressing the International Convention on Uni-versal Message of Simhasthon on the sidelines of the Simhasth Kumbh here.

“Vistar-vad (expansionist design)

— is also leading us towards conflict. Time has changed. Expansionist style is not a solution to problems. We should not go horizontal. It is not a solution. We need to go vertical and raise ourselves from within,” Modi

said in the presence of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and other dignitaries.

Paying rich tributes to India’s pluralism and its “inherent conflict management” traditions, Modi said often an outsider feels that India is a society always in conflict. “But the conflict management the world is trying to evolve in big seminars is actually present as an inherent virtue in us. Otherwise, we would not have been following and paying abeyance to two extreme thinking,” he said.

Prime Minister Modi said: “We Indians worship Lord Rama for his obedience to his father and in the same breath we glorify Prahlad who disobeyed his father. Similarly, we hail Sita, who obeyed her husband, and also Meera, who disobeyed her

husband. This only shows that people here know how to handle conflicts.”

However, he also hastened to underline that a right balance ought to be stuck between traditions and modernity and use the traditional knowledge and human values in a more scientific manner.

“It is also important that in the name of tradition, we should not promote unscientific matters and superstitions. We have to draw lessons from the past values, but reflect on them in the context of modern social values,” the prime minister said and maintained that earlier going over-seas was considered a taboo, but it is no longer relevant.

“There was a time when cross-ing the seas was considered unholy but that has changed. Likewise, some

traditions can also change with time,” he underlined.

At the same time, he said efforts should be made to tell the world “in the language they understand” the sanctity and prowess of Indian values.

Simhastha Kumbh Mela is one of the world’s largest spiritual gatherings held once in 12 years when devotees, including saints, take a dip in the Kshipra river at Ujjain in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Modi said the world over people often call Indians “unorganised” but such a grand gathering could take place at Ujjain without any invita-tion to participants or even without making any accommodation arrange-ments for participants. Trying to lay emphasis on such mammoth gath-erings like Kumbh every 12 years,

he said these occasions provide an opportunity to analyse the recent past as well as create a roadmap for the future. The prime minister released a 51-point ‘Simhastha Declaration’ jointly with Sri Lankan President Sirisena and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Chouhan.

He said Kumbh and such mam-moth gathering of saints and people from across the country besides talk-ing about “Moksh (salvation)” should also deliberate about more mundane issues like the importance of tree plantation, girl education and keep-ing the society and the world clean.He recalled that once former prime min-ister Lal Bahadur Shastri had urged citizens to skip an evening meal in solidarity with the poor of the country and so many people did exactly that.

Artiste from the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) perform during the Open Cultural Show titled, ‘Fusion’ as part of tourism promotion at McLeod Ganj near Dharamsala, yesterday.

Tourism fusion

IANS

NEW DELHI: A court here yesterday issued summons to environmentalist RK Pachauri, accused of harassing a colleague, after taking cognisance of a charge-sheet against him and holding there is enough material to proceed against him under charges dealing with stalking, words, ges-tures or acts intended to insult a woman’s modesty.

Metropolitan Magistrate Shiv-ani Chauhan considered the charge-sheet and said that there is sufficient material to proceed against the former chief of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) under the Indian Penal Code’s sections 354A (advances involving unwel-come and explicit sexual overtures), 354B (using criminal force against a woman), 354D (stalking), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) and 341 (wrongful restraint). The court, however, dropped charges under section 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC.

“There are several allegations against that he made abuse remarks upon the complainant on several

occasions. He touched the com-plainant inappropriately on several occasions, despite a clear indication of disinterest and opposition from her side. He also sent inappropri-ate SMSs, whatsapp messages and e-mails to the complainant,” the court said. “Let the accused (Pach-auri) be summoned for next date.”

The court fixed July 11 for further hearing. A set of copy of the charge-sheet will be supplied to Pachauri at the next hearing.

Police have cited around 23 pros-ecution witnesses and several text messages, e-mails and WhatsApp messages exchanged between the accused and victim as evidence to support its case.

Pachauri was accused of sex-ually harassing a female colleague in 2015. He stepped down as chair-person of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-mate Change in February last year and proceeded on leave from TERI, where he was the director general.

In November, the woman researcher who accused him of sex-ual harassment quit her job at TERI, alleging she was treated badly. TERI denied the charge. On February 8, Pachauri was appointed executive vice chairman of the organisation.

IANS

PATNA: Nearly twenty-four hours after the killing of a senior journal-ist of Hindi daily Hindustan in Bihar’s Siwan district, police are yet to make any breakthrough even as opposition NDA leaders have termed the incident as “return of jungle raj” in the state.

Meanwhile, the last rites of Rajdeo Ranjan, who was shot dead at a busy

market near the Station Road on Fri-day night, were held in Siwan.

Media persons, wearing black badges, also held a protest in the dis-trict and demanded arrest of those responsible for the crime. Journalists in Patna also took out a protest march and demanded justice to Rajdeo’s family.

Siwan Superintendent of Police Saurav Kumar Sah said that initially four suspects had been detained in connection with the killing of Ranjan,

the Siwan bureau chief of the Hindi newspaper, which is part of the HT Media, but later, two were released following questioning.

“Only two people have been arrested and interrogated in connec-tion with the killing,” he said.

However,a senior police official at police headquarters here told IANS that no major breakthrough in this case has been made so far.

“A manhunt has been launched to arrest the killers soon,” the official

said. The Bihar Police headquarters sent a Special Task Force (STF) and Special Operations Group to Siwan late Friday night.

“We will nab the people behind the killing and will not spare any one,” said Bihar Police chief P.K. Thakur.

It was a sheer coincidence that Ranjan, 46, was planning to celebrate 18th marriage anniversary on Satur-day (May 14) but it never happened.

His family said he had no enmity with anyone and was busy preparing

for the last few days to celebrate his anniversary. Coming close on the heels of the killing of teenager Adi-tya Sachdeva allegedly by the son of a ruling Janata Dal-United law-maker in Gaya district, the journalist’s murder has been described by oppo-sition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as another addition to the “fast-mount-ing proof of the return of jungle raj in Bihar”. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad have condemned the killing.

Visitors talk as others swim at Rushikonda Beach in Visakhapatnam, yesterday.

Leisure time

IANS

CHENNAI: Two days before the assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, the Election Commission’s (EC) fly-ing squad yesterday morning stopped three trucks carrying a total of `570 crore cash in the state’s Tiruppur dis-trict, officials said.

The money purportedly belonged to the State Bank of India and was being taken from Coimbatore, around 500km from here, to Vishakapat-nam in Andhra Pradesh. The election commission said that a separate committee of officials would deter-mine the source of the cash, but a bank union leader said banks do transport heavy cash by road/train but faulted the SBI management for being careless in doing so during election time. Speaking to reporters,

Tamil Nadu chief electoral officer Rajesh Lakhoni said initial inquir-ies reveal that the cash belonged to SBI but the security guards in the vans were carrying only copies of the documents and not originals, raising suspicion. They were also in plain clothes and not in their uniform.

All India Bank Employees’ Asso-ciation (AIBEA) general secretary CH Venkatachalam said that “now-adays such transport of heavy cash by banks by road/train is common”.

“Hard cash will be transported from locations where there is surplus to locations where there is a need,” he said, adding wire transfers are not possible in case where hard currency is needed.

Earlier banks used to deposit the surplus currency with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The RBI has shifted that responsibility to individ-ual banks. However, Venkatachalam

said that transporting several hun-dreds of crore of cash poses a big risk for the security guards and other offi-cials accompanying the cash.

“Curiously the banks insure only the cash and not the people who accompany the cash. We have been demanding that the people - secu-rity guards, driver and other officials - who accompany huge cash trans-ports should also be adequately insured,” he said. He also faulted the SBI management for being careless in transporting huge cash during the election time.

“It is common that the EC flying squads check and seize unaccounted cash. Ideally the SBI management should have informed the officials of election commission, state police and all the district administrations en route about the transport and got appropriate permission in writing,” Venkatachalam said.

Scribe held

for fabricating

RTI reply

IANS

NEW DELHI: A journalist was arrested yesterday for allegedly “fabricating” a response to his right to information (RTI) request to make the claim that the Ministry of Ayush has a policy not to hire Mus-lims, police said. “He was arrested for fabricating an RTI reply,” a sen-ior police officer told.

Journalist Pushp Sharma was arrested under section 418 (Cheat-ing), 467 (Forgery of valuable security), 469 (Forgery for pur-pose of harming reputation) and 153A (Promoting enmity between different groups on ground of reli-gion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.) of the Indian Penal Code, the police officer said.

Sharma had claimed, in an article headlined “We don’t recruit Muslims: Modi government’s Ayush Ministry,” and published in March in Milli Gazette newspaper, that the ministry informed him that it is the “government policy” not to recruit Muslims.

“The ministry said a total of 711 Muslim yoga trainers had applied for the short-term assignment abroad but none was even called for an interview while 26 trainers (all Hindus) were sent abroad on this assignment,” Sharma wrote in the article in question.

The article was accompanied by a letter from the ministry trans-ferring Sharma’s RTI request to a government yoga institute along with an ‘Annexure-I’ that included the statement, “As per government policy, no Muslim candidate was invited, selected or sent abroad”.

This annexure was “non-existent” and “fictitious” as was “never issued by the ministry”, the government said. Sharma’s RTI query that purportedly invited the ‘Annexure-I’ was: How many Muslim candidates were invited, selected

PM lashes out at ‘expansionist designs’ of West

Court summons Pachauri

for insulting colleague

No breakthrough yet in senior journalist’s killing in Bihar

Flying squad stops trucks carrying

`570 crore cash in Tamil Nadu

Expansionist style is not a solution to problems. We should not go horizontal. It is not a solution. We need to go vertical and raise ourselves from within: Modi

INDIA14 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

IANS

HYDERABAD: After a respite of a few days due to unseasonal rains, mercury has started rising again in Telangana and the met office has issued a heat wave warning.

Several places in the state yes-terday recorded temperatures two to four degrees above average for the season. Ramagundam was the hottest place in the state with mercury soar-ing to 45.8 degrees Celsius. Adilabad too sizzled at 45.3 degrees. Nizam-abad recorded 44.4 degrees while it was 43.1 in Hanamkonda. State capital Hyderabad too was hot at

41.6 degrees. The heavy rains which lashed Hyderabad and other parts of the state since early this month had brought down the temperatures below 40 degrees.

It was huge relief for the state which witnessed over 250 deaths due to the heat wave this season. Hyderabad Meteorological Cen-tre has issued heat wave warning for Sunday. “Heat wave conditions are very likely to prevail at isolated places in the districts of Adilabad, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Medak and Khammam of Telangana state dur-ing next 48 hours (May 14 and 15),” it said in a bulletin.

The met office has also fore-cast light to moderate rains or

thundershowers at isolated places over next four days (till May 18). It also issued a warning of thunder-storm accompanied with squalls.

It made a similar forecast for coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions of Andhra Pradesh. Accord-ing to the weather bulletin, the trough of low pressure at mean sea level over south west Bay of Bengal off Sri Lanka coast with an upper air cyclonic circulation persists. “Under its influence, a low pressure area very likely to form over the same region during next 24 hours. It is likely to become well marked and further concentrate into a depression during subsequent next 48 hours,a said the bulletin issued at 5.30pm yesterday.

IANS

GHAZIABAD: At least five people were killed and six injured after a major fire broke out in an office of IndiaMART, an online marketplace firm, in Raj Nagar area of Ghazia-bad yesterday.

According to police, the fire broke out at 10.30am in a residen-tial building in Raj Nagar where commercial activities were being carried out by IndiaMART and two other companies.

The fire broke out on the ground floor and soon reached the first floor where IndiaMART executives were busy in their tele-marketing job.

The executives were trapped on the first floor as the fire blocked the only passage to the ground floor. In an attempt to escape, two executives broke open a window and jumped. One of the two, iden-tified as Piyush Goel, fell headlong and died on the spot.

“We rushed to the spot after we received an alarm and res-cued about a dozen executives. We rushed five fire tenders and controlled the fire. With the help of civil defence staff we rushed the injured to nearby Gargi Hospital,” said Fire Safety Officer RK Yadav.

Two people were declared brought dead to the hospital. The deceased were identified as Chan-dra Prakash Tyagi and Puneet Mishra.

“Both died due to suffocation,” said a doctor.Two executives who were rushed to the MMG Dis-trict Hospital were also declared brought dead. They were identi-fied as Ritik and Hemant.

Tiwa boys performing their traditional dance as they celebrate the Wanchuwa festival in Karbi Anglong district of Assam state, yesterday.

Festive dance

IANS

NEW DELHI: Hitting back at the Congress for targeting the NIA and the NDA government over a clean chit to Malegaon blast accused Sad-hvi Pragnya Singh Thakur and five others, the BJP said yesterday that the then Congress-led UPA had strengthened Pakistan’s theory of Hindu terror by framing charges against Hindu leaders.

“A conspiracy was hatched to frame Sadhvi Pragnya. It was Paki-stan’s theory that alleged Hindu radicals were behind terrorism in India. The Congress leaders strengthened this by coining Hindu terror word,” BJP national secretary Srikant Sharma said.

“When Pakistan was being put on dock by international agencies over terrorism, Congress leader Sushil Kumar Shinde coined the term Hindu terror to weaken the cases of terrorism,” he added.

The NIA on Friday gave a clean chit to Malegaon blast key accused Sadhvi and five others, paving the way for their early release from prison.

However, eight more accused, including Lt.Col. Prasad Sri-kant Purohit, will continue to be prosecuted for their role in the Sep-tember 29, 2008 terror bombing that claimed at least seven lives in the Muslim majority town in Maharash-tra’s Nashik district.

Sharma, who is also the con-venor of the BJP’s media cell, had earlier said that the investigative agencies used to probe the terrorism cases while wearing “Italian glasses”.

“Now our agencies are prob-ing the matters by wearing Indian glasses,” he said, and asked Congress leaders not to undertake politics over terrorism.

“Its a legal matter and the court has given clean chit in Malegaon blast case. They (Congress) are not only politicising it but also question-ing the court verdict. They should refrain from such politics over ter-rorism as it has no colour,” Sharma said. He also accused the opposition parties of double standards on Male-gaon blast cases.

“When eight accused in the case were discharged by the court recently, the Congress and com-pany were silent and now they are questioning the court verdict. This is nothing but their double standard,” he alleged.

A special court on April 25 had discharged all nine Muslim youths charge-sheeted in the 2006 Malegaon serial blasts case. They included one who died recently.

Senior Congress leader Digvi-jaya Singh on Friday hit out at the NIA and the BJP-led government for safeguarding “terrorists”.

“We know you want to safe-guard them (the accused) and we also know you have links with those who are involved in terror activities,” he had said.

IANS

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Nearly three weeks of high-voltage election campaigning for the Kerala assembly polls ended yesterday evening with the two rival fronts - the ruling Con-gress-led UDF and the Left opposition -- exuding confidence of garnering peoples’ votes on polling day tomor-row.

Incidentally, former defence

minister AK Antony, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury, all said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will not open its account in the state.

“History will be created on May 19, when for the first time a ruling government will retain power. The BJP in Kerala will be able to watch the assembly proceedings from the visitor’s gallery of the Kerala assem-bly only. The final surge for the UDF has come following the irresponsible statement of Prime Minister Narendra

Modi. We all thought he would cor-rect himself, which he did not,” said Antony to reporters here.

Yechury while emphasising that the BJP will not open its account, however said that should that hap-pen, then it will be clear that this is because of “match-fixing between the Congress and the BJP”.

“We are going to have a land-slide victory and will restore Kerala to a proper path of growth and one with a holistic development process; besides we will put up a corruption

free governance,” said Yechury to reporters here.

BJP chief Amit Shah, who has been camping in the state for the past many days and directing the campaign, challenged the rival fronts to come clear on what their policy would be if there is a hung Kerala assembly.

“We make our stand clear now itself, that we will not have any tie-up with either of the fronts,” said Shah.

Chandy told reporters in Kot-tayam that Kerala will not give any space to the “divisive policy” of the

BJP. “The people of Kerala will give a fitting reply to Modi for his Soma-lia remarks. We are going to retain power with an increased tally of seats,” Chandy asserted.

Meanwhile, the state unit of the BJP on Saturday gave a complaint to Kerala Governor P. Sathasivam and the Chief Election Commissioner that Chandy has “twisted” the statement of Modi on Somalia to “belittle the post of prime minister” and suitable action should be taken. “Modi never made any derogatory comparison,

but all know that such a comparison was made by former chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan and CPI-M polit-buro member Pinarayi Vijayan, and instead of registering a case against them, Chandy is attacking the PM,” said the complaint by state BJP pres-ident Kummanem Rajasekheran. Communist Party of India-Marx-ist (CPI-M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan told reporters in Kannur that the Left Democratic Front will better its 2006 win by increasing from 98 seats to a three digit figure.

IANS

RANCHI: Thousands of peo-ple, including 10 lawmakers, were arrested in Jharkhand yesterday and a few incidents of arson were reported during a shutdown called by opposition party JMM against the state government’s domicile policy.

“A total of 8924 people, includ-ing nine MLAs and one Lok Sabha MP of JMM Vijay Hansda, were arrested

during the shutdown. It was by and large peaceful barring a few inci-dents,” a police official said.

Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) described the shutdown as suc-cessful. “Raghubar Das government adopted repressive measures and detained many people on Friday night. Despite government crack-down the shutdown was successful. The shops were closed and long dis-tance buses did not ply,” Supriyo Bhattacharya, JMM general secre-tary, told reporters. The protesters

burnt a bus in Jamshedpur and a mini truck was torched in Bokaro. Three people were inured when protest-ers threw a petrol bomb on a truck on the Ranchi-Jamshedpur national highway.

The shutdown affected normal life in Jharkhand. Shops, schools and colleges were closed. The buses did not ply and the protesters tried to dis-rupt train services at a few places.

The state government made heavy security arrangements to pre-vent any untoward incident.

IANS

MUMBAI: The main runway at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport here was closed for oper-ations after a Lufthansa flight suffered four tyre bursts late on Friday, officials said here yester-day.

The Mumbai International Airport Ltd. has opened up the secondary runway for regular operations after the incident which led to flight delays or diversions as the main runway remained shut for nearly 15 hours till 3pm yesterday.

Officials were unsure when it would be reopened even as the Lufthansa Airlines officials were busy replacing the damaged tyres of the aircraft stranded on the main runway.

Four tyres of the landing gear of Airbus A-330 Munich-Mumbai flight LH764 were damaged after landing and the plane could not be moved. The incident took place around 10.45pm, the Lufthansa Airlines said in a statement yes-terday. There were 163 passengers on board who were evacuated via stairs on the runway, and the return flight LH-765 of Saturday was cancelled, hitting the flight plans of 223 passengers. The air-line was making efforts to rebook them on other flights.

IANS

WASHINGTON: Amid China and Pakistan’s opposition to India’s bid to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the US has backed New Delhi’s entry into the group.

US State Department spokes-man John Kirby on Friday quoted US President Barack Obama as say-ing during his visit to India in 2015 that “India meets missile technology control regime requirements and is ready for NSG membership”.

To reports that China has blocked India’s membership to the group, Kirby said the US was committed to help India become a member of NSG. On Pakistan and China’s position on India’s mem-bership to the suppliers group, Kirby referred the media persons to the governments of the respec-tive country.

“I’m going to refer you to the gov-ernments of China and Pakistan with respect to their positions on India’s membership,” Kirby said.

China and Pakistan are closely coordinating their strategy against India’s admission into the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The sources pointed to the fact that when India requested a session with the NSG participating governments at the recent NSG Con-sultative Group meeting on April 25 and 26, where it would have made a formal presentation in support of its membership, Pakistan also sought a similar opportunity.

US expressed their disappoint-ment with China’s tactics of “using Pakistan’s non credentials with the NSG to settle scores with India.” The “either both or none” strategy is not a secret; it was coordinated during the visit of Pakistan’s Presi-dent Mamnoon Hussain to China in November 2015.

Sputnik News quoted sources as saying that the Chinese govern-ment told President Hussain that if India is allowed into the NSG, China would ensure that Pakistan also gets its membership in the group. How-ever, “if India is allowed to join the NSG and Pakistan is deprived of NSG membership, Beijing will veto the move and block the Indian entry.”

“India’s non-proliferation cre-dentials are not comparable with Pakistan’s, as Pakistan has a his-tory of “selling nuclear technology to rogue states like Libya,” the sources noted.

US backs India’s entry into NSG amid oppositionUS expressed their disappointment with China’s tactics of using Pakistan’s non credentials with the NSG to settle scores with India.

Villagers fill containers with water after a tanker made its daily delivery at Shahapur, some 130km southwest of Mumbai, yesterday.

Mercury rising again in Telangana

Five IndiaMART

executives dead

in office fire

UPA strengthened Pakistan’s

theory of Hindu terror: BJP

Lufthansa plane blocks Mumbai airport runway

Thousands held during Jharkhand shutdown

Kerala poll campaign ends as rival fronts exude confidence of winning

EUROPE / UK 15SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

A man fires a cannon in the living history meeting in Halle, Germany, yesterday. Around 50 people participated in the event.

Blowback to the past

Two men climb as they try to set a world record by building the highest Kapla tower, in Lyon, France, yesterday.

Aiming high

Nikola Gruevski’s rivals have declared a boycott, saying conditions for a free and fair vote have not been met.

AFP

SKOPJE: Macedonia’s former and possible next prime minister Nikola Gruevski (pictured) said his party is preparing to stand in an early elec-tion next month despite a boycott by his opponents and international dis-approval.

Gruevski, who had stepped down

in January after 10 years in power to make way for the vote, told report-ers early yesterday that the troubled Balkan country could now face two general elections in coming months.

Parliament was dissolved in April as part of an EU-brokered deal to end a national political crisis and street protests, but Gruevski’s conservative VMRO-DPMNE was the only major party to register candidates for the June 5 poll. His rivals have declared a boycott, saying conditions for a free and fair vote have not been met.

“We are in a unpleasant situa-tion now, the only (one) of four big political parties which is going to the elections,” Gruevski told reporters at his imposing party headquarters in downtown Skopje.

If the vote goes ahead next month as he expects, Gruevski said his party would be “immediately ready” after a new parliament is formed to go to yet another election and “give citizens the

chance to choose”. “We want a deserved victory,” the

45-year-old politician said.Described by critics as a corrupt

authoritarian who has clamped down on media freedom, human rights and democracy, opinion polls nevertheless suggest Gruevski maintains strong support among Macedonia’s two mil-lion people.

Meanwhile opposition leader Zoran Zaev told reporters he was confident the election would be postponed until fairer conditions were in place.

But Gruevski said he saw no way of avoiding the vote following parlia-ment’s dissolution.

“Generally the international com-munity is not in favour of elections on 5th June”. but nobody has come up with a “constitutional way to postpone this,” he explained.

The former economist and ama-teur boxer spoke after a special envoy

from Germany, Johannes Haindl, vis-ited Skopje to try to help resolve the deadlock.

The prospect of back-to-back elections comes as Macedonia wrestles with twin crises: domestic political turmoil and thousands of migrants blocked on its border with Greece.

Gruevski warned that his land-locked nation, one of Europe’s poorest and not a member of the EU or Nato, was struggling to fund security at its southern frontier.

“The country is less and less able to directly finance the cost for the policemen, the soldiers, and equip-ment for them,” he said, describing military budgets as “exhausted.”

The domestic crisis erupted in February last year, when Zaev began releasing tapes that appeared to reveal official wire-tapping of 20,000 Macedonians, including poli-ticians and journalists, and high-level

corruption. Gruevski dismisses the material

as mostly “created and fabricated and edited.”

But the scandal sparked major protests both for and against his government, leading the European Union to step in and mediate a deal last summer.

According to the pact an election

was supposed to be held in April, but this was postponed until June owing to opposition concerns about fraud.

Deepening the crisis, President Gjorge Ivanov last month unex-pectedly halted a probe into more than 50 public figures suspected of involvement in the wire-tapping scandal—including his ally Gruevski—granting a mass pardon to those implicated. It sparked further pro-tests and international condemnation.

Rallies against Gruevski’s party, dubbed the “Colourful Revolution”, continue in Skopje each evening, drawing a few thousand protesters who hurl paint at neoclassical gov-ernment buildings and monuments undergoing a costly and controver-sial makeover of the capital.

Defiant Gruevski remains confi-dent of his support and insists he was “surprised” by the pardons. “I know the perception from outside... but time will say who is right and who is not.”

Macedonia’s ex-PM Gruevski to go ahead with poll

AFP

LONDON: Prime Minister David Cameron (pictured) yesterday stepped up his campaign for Britain to remain in the EU, warning that exiting the bloc would cost Britain billions of pounds in investment.

Both Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn, leader of main opposition Labour Party, were each out on the Remain campaign trail in search of voter support, as was leading Leave cam-paign member Boris Johnson, an MP within the prime minister’s Conservative party and recently the London mayor.

Johnson will be speaking in the southwest of England, while a rally in the northwest will see Conservative former cabinet minister Owen Paterson argue that a vote to remain will consign

Britain “to being a colony of an EU Superstate”.With less than six weeks to go before the

June 23 vote, the Remain and Leave camps are neck-and-neck at 50 percent each, accord-ing to the What UK Thinks website’s average of the last six opinion polls.

The official Britain Stronger In Europe cam-paign said that it is staging 1,000 pro-Remain events across the UK with Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron and Greens’ Caroline Lucas also among those taking to the streets.

“This is bigger than party politics,” Cam-eron said. “Its effects will last longer than our lifetimes. So we are saying with one voice: make sure Britain is stronger, safer and better off—and vote to remain in a reformed European Union.”

Even so, Corbyn was set at a rally in Lon-don to attack the Conservatives, arguing that responsibility for many of the country’s prob-lems “lies in 10 Downing Street, not in Brussels”.

Cameron said a vote for Brexit would mean an end to Britain’s membership of the European Investment Bank, which in the past three years has given more than £16bn ($23bn,€ 20bn) for UK projects.

AP

LIMA: A British woman who was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for drug traf-ficking will be deported back to Britain, Peru’s judicial authority has said. Judge Ana Zapata said she has accepted an appeal lodged by 22-year-old Mellisa Reid with the court of the port city of El Callao, 15 km) west of Lima.

Zapata said Reid had fulfilled requirements set for a first-time foreign offender. This included serving a third of her sentence, expressing remorse, working and showing good behaviour in

prison, and paying around $2,900 dollars in rep-arations to the state, the judicial statement said.

The statement said Peru’s National Migrant Agency, the British embassy in Lima and the pris-oner will be notified prior to “proceeding to a transfer to her home country.”

Janet Sanchez, Peru’s penal system spokes-woman, said the deportation would take up to 25 days because several legal procedures have to be completed between the court and the Brit-ish embassy, including determining who would pay for the plane ticket.

Reid and 23-year-old Irish woman Michaella McCollum pleaded guilty in 2013 to trying to carry 12 kg of cocaine hidden in mayonnaise bags.

Ukraine minister

slams journalists

accredited

with rebels

AFP

KIEV: Ukraine’s interior minister yesterday lambasted reporters who were accredited by pro-Rus-sian rebels to cover fighting in the country’s east, after their details were leaked by hackers.

Journalist groups have slammed a group of pro-Kiev hackers for revealing details of thousands of reporters who got accredited with the insurgents to work in territory they control.

The list includes journalists from Agence France-Presse and other global media organisations and contains the email addresses and phone numbers.

Journalists who entered the war zone needed to receive spe-cial permits from the separatist authorities to work in the territory the rebels have controlled since the start of the conflict in April 2014.

But Interior Minister Arsen Avakov lashed out at those who had worked with permission from the rebels.

“I find it impossible to have any contact with the self-appointed occupying authorities—impossi-ble and immoral”, Avakov wrote on his Facebook page.

“This is your choice to coop-erate with occupying authorities... Don’t hide it”, he added, address-ing journalists.

Since the information was revealed the only Ukrainian offi-cial to support the journalists has been deputy minister of informa-tion policy Tetiana Popova, who said that she does not understand why it was necessary.

“This has led to massive threats to journalists and me,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

A letter co-signed by reporters from The New York Times as well as The Economist and a Ukrain-ian representative of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media rights organisation said the security breach put their lives at risk.

The website that published the information has been shut down.

AP

MOSCOW: A violent brawl at a Mos-cow cemetery yesterday involving about 200 people in an apparent turf war left three people dead and 23 others hospitalised, police and health officials said.

Those in the brawl fired guns and used shovels, shovel handles, steel bars and baseball bats against their opponents, news reports said.

Two of those who died were hit by a car driven by someone trying to flee the scene, Moscow police spokes-woman Sofia Khotina said. She said the three people in the car, who were armed with pistols, were among more

than 50 people detained by police.The city health department said

another person also was killed and four of the 23 hospitalized were in serious condition.

Police said the brawl was believed to have been about who con-trols providing burial services at the sprawling Khovanskoye cemetery in southwest Moscow.

AFP

MOSCOW: Three top editors at a top Russian media group which has reported on the business interests of President Vladimir Putin’s family quit in the latest blow to the coun-try’s beleaguered media industry.

The RBC group’s daily newspa-per recently published a number of high-profile investigations including about the business interests of peo-ple close to Putin, among them his reported son-in-law.

The resignations came after the group controlled by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov said in April that editor-in-chief Elizaveta Ose-tinskaya, 39, was set to leave to take a sabbatical to study at Stanford.

Her temporary leave was then widely linked to Kremlin pressure on Prokhorov over the media group’s increasingly independent stance and investigative reporting.

In April, Prokhorov’s offices were also searched in what was believed to be a signal to the Kremlin-friendly tycoon to rein in his media manag-ers. The three editors leaving are Osetinskaya, editor-in-chief of the RBC media group; Roman Badanin,

editor-in-chief of the group’s news agency; and Maxim Solyus, editor-in-chief of its daily newspaper.

“Recently we have talked a lot about how to develop RBC further and in these conversations we have been unable to reach a common opinion on important issues,” RBC general direc-tor Nikolai Molibog said.

“That is why we have decided to part ways,” he added.

The group declined to comment on whether the editors departed under pressure from the Kremlin.

Company spokesman Yegor Timofeyev said Osetinskaya would begin her studies at Stanford in Sep-tember, declining further comment.

Writing on Facebook, Ose-tinskaya thanked her supporters but said she would not make any comment.

Before taking the helm at RBC in late 2013, Osetinskaya was edi-tor-in-chief of the Russian version of Forbes and was also in charge of the website of Vedomosti.ru, Rus-sia’s top liberal daily.

Media observers say that during her tenure Osetinskaya whipped the RBC group previously known for its highly dubious practices into shape, building it into one of Russia’s most widely-read media outlets.

EV vote: Cameron steps up campaign

Peru to expel British woman convicted for drugs trafficking

Moscow cemetery brawl leaves 3 deadEditors quit Russian media group

People react as they are daubed with coloured powder during the ColourFest festival in Minsk, Belarus, yesterday.

Colour caper

EUROPE 16 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

The calculations include costs for accommodating and integrating refugees as well as tackling root causes for people fleeing from crisis-stricken regions, a magazine said.

Reuters

BERLIN: Germany’s government expects to spend around €93.6bn by the end of 2020 on costs related to the refugee crisis, a magazine said yesterday, citing a draft from the federal finance ministry for nego-tiations with the country’s 16 states.

The figure is likely to stoke con-cerns, particularly among growing anti-immigration movements, on the impact of new arrivals on Europe’s largest economy which took in more than a million people last year, many

from Syria and other war zones.The German weekly news mag-

azine Der Spiegel said the finance ministry’s calculations included the costs for accommodating and inte-grating refugees as well as tackling the root causes for people fleeing from crisis-stricken regions.

Officials based their estimates on 600,000 migrants arriving this year, 400,000 next year and 300,000 in each of the following years, the report said, adding that they expected 55 percent of recog-nised refugees to have a job after five years.

A spokesman for the finance ministry declined to comment on the figures but pointed to ongoing talks between the government and states, saying they would meet again on May 31 to discuss how to divide up the costs between them.

The report said that €25.7bn ($29.07bn) would be needed for job-less payments, rent subsidies and other benefits for recognised asy-lum applicants by the end of 2020.

Another €5.7bn would be needed for language courses and €4.6bn would be required for measures to help migrants get jobs, it added.

The annual cost of dealing with the refugee crisis would hit €20.4bn in 2020, up from around €16.1bn euros this year, the report said.

Reuters

BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s junior coalition partner accused her of doing an about-turn on her refugee policy since she opened Germany’s borders to thousands of migrants in September.

German Vice Chancellor and Social Democrats (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine that Merkel had made the right decision to let in the refugees last year, respond-ing to a humanitarian emergency.

But she had since changed her

tune, he added. “I won’t glorify her refugee policy either because in the meantime she has completely changed her policy,” he was quoted as saying in the interview published on Saturday.

“Now, after Austria, Hungary and Slovenia have closed the Balkan route, she says: ‘We’re not taking in any ref-ugees from Idomeni because people could look for accommodation there.’ If I may say so, that’s a 180-degree turn,” Gabriel added.

Merkel has faced accusations of being too open to migrants, both from anti-immigrant Alternative for Ger-many (AfD), and her conservative allies in Bavaria.

The fresh criticism for changing tack by refusing to take some migrants highlights political tightrope she has had to walk over the highly-charged issue in Europe’s largest economy.

Germany took in more than a mil-lion migrants last year, mostly people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Mid-dle East and Africa, but the numbers have fallen this year.

On whether Merkel could consider that drop a personal success, Gabriel said that was at best a “half truth”, adding the numbers had declined because the Bal-kan route had been closed and because Turkey was preventing so many boats from setting sail.

Migrants rescued

off Sicily not

Syrians: IOM

AFP

ROME: There were hardly any Syr-ian migrants among the 800 people rescued off Sicily, contrary to earlier reports from Italy’s coastguard, the UN and the International Organisa-tion for Migration have confirmed.

The coastguard had said on Thurs-day that half of the 342 migrants they had picked up were Syrians, sparking concern that the flow of Syrians previ-ously attempting to cross into Europe via Turkey and Greece was shifting to Italian shores.

Around 50,000 Syrians arrived in Italy between mid-2013 and early 2014, after which Greece became the route of choice, the IOM said.

While only 26 people from the war-torn country have landed in Italy this year, a deal between Tur-key and the EU to close down that route and return those attempting to cross has raised fears Syrians would begin once more to set out for Sicily.

Of the 800 arrivals, only two people were believed to be Syrians.

“The information was incorrect,” Carlotta Sami, Italy spokeswoman for the UN’s Refugee Agency, told reporters after UNHCR humanitarian workers spoke to the newly-arrived migrants after they were brought to various ports on the Italian island.

“There are a lot of different nationalities: Yemenis, Somalis, Eritreans, South Sudanese”, she said, while IOM spokesman Fla-vio di Giacomo said there were also many Egyptians and a high number of unaccompanied minors.

Bosnian cops seize

arms headed

for Sweden

AFP

BANJA LUKA, BOSNIA: Bosnian police said they had arrested five suspected smugglers and seized arms including rocket launchers destined for Sweden, but declined to confirm reports it was for an Islamist group.

The five were seized in an operation carried out in coordina-tion with Swedish police, Bosnian police spokeswoman Mirna Mil-janovic told reporters.

“A huge quantity of arms, ammunitions and military equip-ment was seized,” Miljanovic said adding one person was earlier arrested in Sweden, and two oth-ers were still at large.

The search was conducted at seven locations in northern Bosnian towns of Gradiska and Laktasi, he said, giving no further details. The suspects have admit-ted involvement in smuggling, Boris Grubesic, a spokesman for Bosnia’s prosecutor office told reporters.

But he said there was no evi-dence so far that they had links with terrorist groups, and they do not fit a jihadist profile.

A police source on condition of anonymity said there were some indications the arms were destined for a group called the Muslim Brothers. The link with Islamists was “not official,” the source further said.

Reuters

AMSTERDAM: A few hours of free-dom ended for two Bengal tigers that escaped from a big cat shelter in the Dutch countryside yesterday, when police managed to sedate them and get them back in their enclosure.

Residents in village Oldeberk-oop, with a population of 1,500, had been told to stay indoors while the tigers—named Radjah and Dehli - were on the loose.

“Careful work by a dog catcher and a vet tranquilised both tigers. Now checking if they’re sleeping deeply,” said local police officer Jan Graafstra in a tweet before it was confirmed they were back home.

An initial attempt to tranquilise one of the tigers failed.

Nobody had been in any dan-ger during the chase, said Gijsje van Bentum, spokeswoman for Fel-ida animal sanctuary, where Radjah and Dehli are kept. The tigers had never left the shelter’s property after escaping their enclosure, she added.

Felida receives often elderly big cats from circuses and zoos, treats them, and works to rehome some in a larger shelter in South Africa. This pair was rescued from a zoo in Germany where they were no longer being fed. The two tigers escaped from their enclosure through a gate that was accidentally left open.

According to Felida’s website, its residents include two lions, eight tigers, a black jaguar and a leopard.

AFP

PARIS: French Economy Minis-ter Emmanuel Macron (pictured) denied reports that he is raising funds for a presidential election war chest and would announce his bid next month.

“These two assertions are totally false,” the 38-year-old rising star told

reporters. “I won’t declare next month and... I have not raised any funds to this end.”

Earlier this month, Paris Match magazine reported that Macron raised nearly £10m (€12.75m, $14.5m) during a trip to London to “fund a campaign if he decides to run”.

Then the Mediapart news web-site reported that Macron would announce his bid on June 10, prompt-ing categorical denials from his aides.

The former banker said: “I will not do anything in June aside from my job as minister” while nevertheless evok-ing the need for an “overhaul” of the Socialist government’s agenda.

Government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said earlier that he hoped the Mediapart report was a “hoax”.

Macron made waves last month by setting up his own political move-ment, En Marche (On the Move), prompting cabinet colleagues to call

on him to get into line.The deeply unpopular President

Francois Hollande has said he will not decide until the end of the year whether to seek re-election.

Opinion polls predict he would be eliminated in first round of the two-round contest starting on April 23. A poll last month showed that Macron would fare better if he was named the Socialist candidate, and would progress into the second round.

AFP

MADRID: Spanish authorities allowed residents near a giant tyre dump blaze to return home yesterday, saying that toxic fumes billowing from the rubber heap posed less of a risk although the fire has yet to be extinguished.

The news came as it emerged that the European Commission had con-tacted Madrid over the illegal dump, the first step in a procedure which it can launch when it suspects a mem-ber state of infringing EU law.

Some 10,000 people living in Sesena evacuated their homes on Friday after the dump went up in

flames in a suspected arson attack.A massive black cloud of fumes

billowed into the air, prompting wide-spread health concerns.

The government of Castilla-La Mancha, where the dump is located, said Saturday it had lifted its evacu-ation order “as a result of the reduced risk for residents in the area” as fire-fighters brought the blaze under control and the cloud reduced in intensity.

The blaze broke out before dawn on Friday in the dump that stretches over 10 hectares (25 acres) -- the equivalent of about 10 rugby fields—and straddles the Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid regions.

The massive stack of tyres started

to form in the 1990s when a company began using the site as a temporary depot for old tyres due to be recycled, and it grew from then on.

It was declared illegal and envi-ronmental groups had long warned that it posed a health hazard, but authorities only recently started act-ing on the problem, inviting bids to empty the dump and destroy the tyres at the end of last year.

The European Commission, the European Union’s powerful executive, yesterday said it had got involved too.

“There were contacts and requests of information by the Commission to the Spanish authorities on land-fills, including the one in Sesena,” Commission spokesman Christian

Wigand told reporters in Madrid.Under a EU directive, used tyres

cannot be dumped in landfills.Tyre dump blazes are notori-

ously difficult to extinguish and have been known to last for months and even years.

But Francisco Martinez Arroyo, environmental minister for the Cas-tilla-La Mancha government, told Spanish radio the fire would likely be extinguished in “two or three days.”

In a bid to alleviate health con-cerns, Madrid’s emergency services tweeted that air quality measuring stations continued to give normal readings. Authorities nevertheless told residents returning home to keep their windows closed.

Berlin plans to spend €93.6bn on refugees

Bolt for freedom ends for

Dutch tigers on the loose

A group of migrants and refugees who stayed in Idomeni makeshift camp walks through a field in an attempt to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near village Evzoni, Greece.

Merkel accused of policy U-turn

French minister denies raising funds for presidential bid

Spaniards evacuated due to tyre fire return home

Emergency teams continue to put out the fire that broke out at a tyre dump in Sesena.

Alberta officials said they will have a plan within two weeks for getting residents back into their homes.

AMERICAS 17SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

AP

FORT MCMURRAY, ALBERTA: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says most Canadians have yet to grasp the lengths to which firefighters went to save nearly 90 percent of the oil sands capital of Fort McMurray from a massive wildfire that forced the evac-uation of more than 88,000 people.

Trudeau visited the devastated northern Alberta city almost two weeks after the wildfire ignited, tear-ing through the isolated region and surrounding areas, causing several oil sands operations to shut down. Alberta officials said they will have a plan within two weeks for getting residents back into their homes.

Trudeau took a helicopter ride over a patchwork of devastated

neighbourhoods, where some homes still stand while others burned to their foundations. Alberta offi-cials say 2,432 structures have been destroyed, 530 damaged and 25,000 saved. Despite the savage fire, offi-cials said 85-90 percent of the city has been saved.

“I don’t think Canadians yet understand what happened. They know there was a fire. They’re begin-ning to hear the wonderful news that so much of the town was saved,” he told 150 firefighters and first respond-ers after his aerial tour by military helicopter of Fort McMurray.

“But they don’t yet understand that that wasn’t a fluke of wind or rain or luck that happened. This was the extraordinary response by peo-ple such as yourself. The work you did to save so much of this community, to save so much of this city and its downtown core ... was unbelievable.”

Trudeau toured one of the city’s damaged neighbourhoods after his visit with first responders and vol-unteers before meeting with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.

In the forest surrounding the Fort McMurray airport, where Trudeau landed, trees looked like little more than used match sticks, charred right up to the tarmac, and the ground was blackened.

“When I got a chance to fly over

Guatemala

to restart

genocide trial

for ex-dictator

AFP

GUATEMALA CITY: Former Gua-temalan military dictator Efrain Rios Montt’s genocide trial will restart from zero after being sep-arated from a similar case against his spy chief, a lawyer said early yesterday. A linked trial of the two men on the genocide charges had been under way since March 16.

But evidence and hearings in Rios Montt’s case were presented behind closed doors while those for his intelligence chief, Jose Rodriguez, were conducted in open court.

Early this month, an appeals court ruled that the two cases should be tried separately. The plaintiffs had fought for that out-come, fearing the linked trial raised the risk of a verdict being thrown out on appeal.

“The ruling cancelled all that has already taken place and annuls the hearings held up to May 2,” said Hector Reyes, lawyer for the Centre for Legal Action in Human Rights, which is participating in Rios Montt’s trial.

If no appeal is lodged, moves will be made for new judges to be designated to take on the fresh and separate trials of Rios Montt and Rodriguez at dates yet to be set.

Rios Montt’s trial will again be held behind closed doors, and without the 89-year-old ex-leader present because of health problems.

His attorneys say he suffers from dementia and is too ill to attend his trial. Rodriguez’s hear-ings will again be open to the public. Rios Montt is accused of being ultimately responsible for the murders of 1,771 indigenous Ixil-Maya people in 1982-1983, at the height of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war which ended in 1996.

AFP

BRASÍLIA: Brazil’s new justice min-ister pledged his “full support” for an explosive corruption investigation that has a host of top politicians in its sights, including several of his colleagues.

Opponents of the new govern-ment installed by acting president Michel Temer have accused it of seeking to smother the anti-graft probe known as “Operation Car Wash,” which has uncovered a multi-billion-dollar embezzlement and bribery scheme centered on state oil company Petrobras.

But Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes said he would protect the probe’s independence and even increase its funding if necessary.

“There isn’t the slightest

possibility of interference,” said Moraes, who was previously security secretary for the state of Sao Paulo.

“Fighting corruption is the most important thing in the country, now and always,” he said.

Temer, the former vice president, took power on Thursday from his sus-pended boss-turned-nemesis, Dilma Rousseff, pending her impeachment trial on unrelated charges of cooking the government’s books.

He promptly sacked the left-ist leader’s ministers and installed his own business-friendly cabi-net—including three ministers under investigation in the Petrobras probe and several others whom witnesses accuse of involvement.

Temer is not under investiga-tion himself, but some key allies are, including top leaders in his party, the centre-right PMDB.

Reuters

SANTIAGO: A team of scientists will determine if salmon producers dumping tonnes of dead fish into the Pacific contributed to a massive “red tide” that is wreaking havoc among fishermen in southern Chile, the gov-ernment said.

The red tide —an algal bloom that turns the sea water red and makes seafood toxic - is a common, naturally

recurring phenomenon in southern Chile, though the extent of the current outbreak is unprecedented.

After starting in the Los Lagos region, the bloom has steadily spread outward, depriving many coastal communities of their livelihood. That in turn has led to massive pro-tests and a network of roadblocks set up by fishermen who consider the government’s efforts to mitigate the economic fallout from to bloom to be inadequate.

Scientists say this year’s El Nino

weather pattern is likely a key factor in the red tide, as it warms the ocean and creates bloom-friendly condi-tions. Along with Chile’s SERNAPESCA fisheries body, they have widely rejected a link between salmon dumping and the recent outbreak.

Many fishermen and communities in southern Chile, however, are blam-ing the country’s salmon industry, the world’s second largest, for exacerbat-ing the problem by dumping tons of dead salmon into the ocean after a separate algal bloom killed off an

estimated 100,000 tonnes of fish.“A team of five excellent profes-

sionals has been formed that will be working on the task of examining the link between the dumping of salmon and the red tide phenomenon,” Econ-omy Minister Luis Felipe Cespedes said in a statement.

Fishermen have blockaded the principal access point to the island of Chiloe for the past three weeks, largely isolating its population of around 140,000 and stranding some tourists.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

of Arizona found

in contempt

of court

AP

PHOENIX: The six-term sheriff of metro Phoenix has been found in contempt of court for disobeying a federal judge’s orders in a racial profiling case, bringing the law-man who calls himself “America’s Toughest Sheriff” a step closer to a possible criminal contempt case that could expose him to fines and even jail time.

The ruling marked one of the biggest legal defeats in long career of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is known for cracking down on illegal immi-gration, and was expected to lead to greater court oversight of his office.

US District Judge Murray Snow set a May 31 hearing for attorneys to discuss penalties. Shortly thereafter, Snow said he will issue an order on remedies and whether he will refer the case for criminal contempt.

Arpaio, a month away from turning 84, is running for re-elec-tion for the job he’s held since 1993. Dan Saban, a former police chief in suburban Buckeye who ran unsuc-cessfully against Arpaio in 2004 and 2008 and is in the race again, said that it was time for the long-time sheriff to resign.

The civil contempt finding doesn’t disqualify Arpaio from holding office. It’s unclear whether a criminal contempt finding would prevent him from serving as sher-iff. A felony contempt conviction would force him from office, but the judge has the option of recom-mending either a misdemeanor or felony contempt case.

Arpaio and three of his top aides “have demonstrated a per-sistent disregard for the orders of this court, as well as an intention to violate and manipulate the laws and policies regulating their con-duct,” Snow wrote in his 162-page finding of facts ruling.

“We have begun our read-ing and analysis of this lengthy document, and expect to file a responsive memorandum,” attor-neys for the sheriff’s office said. “Despite disagreeing with some of the court’s findings, the Mar-icopa County Sheriff’s Office will continue to work with the court-appointed monitor, the ACLU and plaintiffs to comply with the court’s orders, as it has since Jan-uary 2014.”

Snow ruled three years ago that Arpaio’s officers systematically racially profiled Latinos in regu-lar traffic stops and immigration patrols. He ordered a sweeping over-haul of the agency, including making patrol officers wear body cam-eras and conducting more training to ensure officers aren’t making unconstitutional traffic stops.

Bloomberg

WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton (pic-tured) is facing a convergence of controversies and questions, old and new, that are likely to drag through the Democratic nominating conven-tion into the general election and offer Republicans a ready-made frame-work for attacks.

A Wall Street Journal report this week is bringing renewed scru-tiny of the Clinton Global Initiative, founded by her husband, and rais-ing questions about whether Clinton would be able to disengage from the tangled personal and business ties of former President Bill Clinton and the family’s foundation. A Republi-can-led House committee is aiming to release its report on the 2012 attack on a US diplomatic outpost in Beng-hazi, Libya, in July, as both party

conventions are getting underway. The FBI, meanwhile, is working to conclude an investigation into her use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state.

“This kind of stuff isn’t going away any time soon, and I hope the cam-paign is going to move aggressively to deal with it in the most transpar-ent way possible,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former top communications adviser to Sen-ate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

Clinton’s style typically is to hun-ker down for as long as it takes for storms to pass, a stark contrast to pre-sumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. While he faces a challenge in trying to unify his party and defends his shifting stances on topics from for-eign policy to taxes, Trump responds by sitting for back-to-back television interviews, staying on the offensive no matter the controversy.

Clinton, who’s been in the national

spotlight since her husband was elected president in 1992, has been under little pressure to respond to questions about the foundation, the FBI investigation or Benghazi in the Democratic nomination race. Her challenger, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, has said explicitly that he’s not interested in raising those issues. That suggests both campaigns read Democratic voter sentiment as set on Clinton’s long public history and, barring a new revelation, the contro-versies won’t change many minds.

But in making the case for his own candidacy, Sanders has argued that that Republicans won’t be reticent about tackling the e-mail investigation or the Clinton foundation, and persist-ently highlights surveys showing him outperforming Clinton against Trump.

The most recent questions sur-rounding the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation stem from a report about its subsidiary Clinton

Global Initiative helping set up a $2m financial commitment in 2010 to a for-profit company part-owned by people with ties to the Clintons. The Journal also said Bill Clinton endorsed the company for a federal energy department grant. One of the part-owners of the company, Energy Pioneer Solutions Inc., is a woman whose longstanding personal friendship

with the former president has been a source of intrigue and speculation in political books and tabloids.

Clinton’s campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment, and the foundation rejected any suggestion that there was any conflict of interest.

“No funding from Clinton Founda-tion went to finance this or any other commitment, and CGI has no role in implementing commitments that our members pledge,” the foundation said in a statement, describing the Clinton Global Initiative as a “marketplace” for participants to find funding.

Manley said he doesn’t blame the Clintons for sometimes being “a little too cautious,” given “that they’ve been burned so many times by bad report-ing and outrageous allegations.”

“It’s natural in these kind of sit-uations to try and starve the oxygen out of it by trying to avoid it,” he said. “But whether right or wrong, these issues aren’t going away.”

Canadian PM praises firefighters’ efforts

Alberta’s Premier Rachel Notley (centre) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau inspecting wildfire damages caused in Fort McMurray, Alberta.

the community, the first thing you notice is the smoke, the haze, the smell in the air. Even from the airport, which was untouched, you can tell the scale and the scope of what just happened. And then you notice the blackened forest that surrounds Fort McMurray... entire swaths of burned

out trees and hillsides,” Trudeau said during an evening news conference.

He told of the moment when he saw a small plastic child’s scooter on the sidewalk as he toured the city.

“The one thing I realised, unlike so many images we’ve seen, that lit-tle plastic scooter, whatever little

boy or girl was using that just before the evacuation, they’re safe. They’re alive,” he said. “They’re being shel-tered by friends or family or kind strangers.” “Yes, this was a terrible disaster to befall this community but there is strength here and a will to build a stronger future,” Trudeau added.

Chile scientists to examine red tide row

Brazil’s new govt vows

support for graft probe

Hillary controversies drag on as next phase of campaign begins

Thousand of supporters of Dilma Rousseff protest against suspension of her mandate at Cinelandia in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Reuters

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama toasted Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland at a star-studded state dinner, lauding the nations for their global influence on civil rights, humanitarian issues and curbing climate change.

The red carpet glamour followed a White House summit where Obama

and the leaders of the five nations presented a united front against Mos-cow’s recent military aggression in Ukraine and the Baltic region.

But the meeting was more about soft diplomacy than launching ambi-tious foreign policy endeavors, given that Obama’s second and final term ends in January. Americans will vote in presidential elections on Novem-ber 8. “I thought this was a very useful and important conversation, although there was probably too much agree-ment to make for as exciting a multilateral meeting as I sometimes participate in,” Obama said.

More than 300 guests includ-ing rapper Common, comedian Will Farrell and actress Tracee Ellis Ross mingled with diplomats, tech and For-tune 500 CEOs, White House officials, and political donors in a glass-ceiling tent built around a tree on the South Lawn. Hand-rolled beeswax candles and strings of lights reflected off ten-foot pillars of ice, an homage to the northern lights.

“It’s a great opportunity to make progress on the most serious issues of our time,” Samantha Power, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters on her way into the dinner.

The summit was aimed in part at

sending a message to a nation not on the guest list: Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 and has stepped up its military posture.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organ-ization (NATO) is planning its biggest build-up in eastern Europe since the Cold War to try to deter further

Russian aggression, and Denmark and Norway said they would contribute to the “enhanced allied forward pres-ence” with Nato.

“We will be maintaining ongoing dialogue and seek cooperation with Russia, but we also want to make sure that we are prepared and strong, and

we want to encourage Russia to keep its military activities in full compli-ance with international obligations,” Obama said after the summit.

Obama has long expressed admiration for the pragmatic and liberal-leaning politics of the Nor-dic nations.

The red carpet glamour followed a White House summit where Obama and the leaders of the five nations presented a united front against Moscow’s recent military aggression in Ukraine and the Baltic region.

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales attends a ceremony marking the anniversary of Curva town in La Paz Department, Bolivia.

Celebrations in Bolivia

AMERICAS18 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Puerto Rico

reports first case

of microcephaly

Reuters

NEW YORK: Puerto Rico’s health ministry confirmed early yester-day its first case of Zika-related microcephaly in a fetus, increas-ing concerns of the virus’ spread by mosquitoes and the financially strapped US commonwealth’s ability to address the growing health crisis.

“This is the first case of con-genital and developmental Zika in the product of a pregnancy that are detected or reported in Puerto Rico,” Dr Brenda Rivera, the island’s chief epidemiologist said.

US health officials have con-cluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause micro-cephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies.

The World Health Organisation has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome that causes temporary paralysis in adults.

Rivera said the fetus was donated by a family that did not have any recent travel history. Details about the pregnancy were kept to a minimum at the fami-ly’s request.

An ultrasound examination by a primary care physician sev-eral weeks ago detected the fetus had abnormalities. Confirmation that Zika was present in the brain tissue of the fetus came this week from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Rivera said. “The product of this preg-nancy was donated by the family to the department of health. This fetus was determined to have severe microcephaly and intrac-ranial calcifications, which is what you tend to see with these cases,” Rivera said.

Puerto Rico’s social services have been severely hampered over the last few years by an increas-ingly dire fiscal crisis that has resulted in hospitals closing wards to save money and doctors emi-grating to the mainland for better paying jobs.

AP

WASHINGTON: Investigators can now probe Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites as a part of background checks for security clear-ances — something that lawmakers said early yesterday was a classic case of the government playing catch-up with technology.

Director of National Intelli-gence James Clapper signed a policy directive announced yesterday that allows the investigators to collect publicly available social media information pertaining to the person whose background is being checked.

Unless there is a national secu-rity concern or the need to report a crime, any information pertaining to people who appear in the subject’s

social media will not be investigated or pursued, the directive says.

“It defied common sense for the government to overlook social media data available to anyone with an Internet connection,” said Rep-resentative Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Committee. He said he was glad the intelligence commu-nity was taking the step to fix “such a glaring lapse in our security clear-ance process.”

“It may surprise many readers to know the government only now is codifying its approach to the virtual lives of the people it entrusts with real secrets,” William Evanina, who leads the National Counterintelligence and Security Centre, wrote in an opinion piece announcing the new policy yes-terday in The Hill newspaper. “What

may be less surprising is that technol-ogy often outpaces policy.”

Evanina said the policy does not allow the government to “request or require individuals subject to the background investigation to pro-vide passwords or log into private accounts, or take any action that would disclose non-publicly avail-able media information.”

Evanina told the Congress yester-day that the agencies had “to strike the right balance between what we need to ... obtain reasonably from social media in the ever-growing Internet age and balance that with the civil liberties and privacy” of peo-ple seeking clearances.

Representative Gerald Con-nolly, D-Va., ranking member of the subcommittee on the government operations, said that while social

media is a promising and valuable source of information, the govern-ment should not retain social media information of third parties that is collected in background checks for security clearances.

Representative Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., called the policy a good step in the right direction.

“However, I must also say that national security demands that the Congress and the administration work together to ensure that our national security framework is able to adapt to evolving technologies must faster than the usual pace that is characteristic of the federal gov-ernment,” Lynch said.

More than 4 million US citizens hold federal security clearances that allow them to access classified national security information.

Two Mexicans

convicted in drug

cartel killing

Reuters

FORT WORTH, TEXAS: Two Mex-ican citizens were convicted by a US jury in Texas of helping set up an ambush slaying of a suburban Fort Worth attorney who prose-cutors said was a high-ranking member of a Mexican drug cartel.

Jesus Ledezma, 59, and his cousin Jose Cepeda, 60, were each convicted of interstate stalking and conspiracy to commit murder for hire in the May 2013 shooting death of Juan Guerrero at a shop-ping center in the upscale Fort Worth suburb of Southlake.

Prosecutors presented evi-dence showing Guerrero was gunned down by an assassin in a revenge plot masterminded by Mexican citizen Rodolfo Villarreal Hernandez, known as “El Gato” or “the cat,” the US Attorney’s Office for Northern District of Texas said.

Ledezma and Cepeda tracked Guerrero for two years, both in Mexico and the United States to set up the hit, according to evidence presented by prosecutors.

The two men placed sur-veillance cameras in Guerrero’s neighbourhood and put tracking devices on vehicles owned by him and his relatives, prosecutors said.

Guerrero, who prosecutors said was an attorney for a former leader of the Los Zetas crime syn-dicate, was shot multiple times with a 9 mm pistol while he sat in a Range Rover parked in an upscale shopping area.

Video surveillance from the shopping centre showed a Toyota Sequoia pull up behind the Range Rover. Someone then exited the vehicle and walked towards the passenger side of the Range Rover, where Guerrero was seated.

AFP

BUENOS AIRES: Assets belonging to former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner Fernandez de (pictured) were frozen after she was charged with damaging national finances by manipulating the Central Bank’s exchange operations during her last months in office.

Federal Judge Claudio Bonadio said it was “evident that the then president gave instructions—which without a doubt were developed jointly—to her economy minister to carry out the financial operation,” according to a statement released on the Supreme Court’s website.

Bonadio ordered assets worth 15m pesos’ ($1m) held by Kirchner to be frozen. He delivered the same charge and asset freeze against Axel Kicillof, Kirchner’s minister of the economy from 2013 to 2015, and against former Central Bank pres-ident Alejandro Vanoli and 12 other former members of its board.

Kirchner, who held office from 2007 to 2015, is accused of having caused a loss in monetary authority through speculative dollar sales by the Central Bank at the end of 2015, just before the election of center-right President Mauricio Macri.

According to the current govern-ment, which opposed Kirchner, the operation caused a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to Latin Amer-ica’s third-largest economy.

Kirchner’s defenders say that the issue cannot be taken to court as it concerns disagreements over mone-tary policy aimed at maintaining the value of the peso.

On December 16, just six days after taking office, Macri ordered measures that led to a 34-percent

devaluation of the Argentine peso, resulting in an exchange rate of one dollar per 15 pesos.

Kirchner, 63, left office in December after two consecutive terms and is no longer protected by political immunity.

The leftist former leader appeared in court in mid-April, where she refused to answer ques-tions and instead presented a document demanding Judge Bon-adio’s dismissal.

Bonadio is an open critic of Kirchner, who in the past tried to have him dismissed from his post.

Kirchner has also been impli-cated in an embezzlement case, and along with her son, has been swept up in legal proceedings over irregularities in family real-estate activities. Several former Kirchner administration officials have been tainted by allegations of corrup-tion, but the Macri administration also faces problems.

Former planning minister Julio De Vido faces criminal negligence charges for his poor administra-tion of the railroad system, which resulted in a 2012 train crash that killed 51 people and injured 700.

Reuters

WASHINGTON: Researchers who dove hundreds of times into a sink-hole beneath the brown murky waters of Florida’s Aucilla River have retrieved some of the oldest evidence of human presence in the Americas including stone tools apparently used to butcher a mastodon.

Scientists said the tools, animal bones and mastodon tusk found at the site showed that people already had occupied the American South-east by 14,550 years ago, about 1,500 years earlier than previously known.

The site provided some of the most compelling evidence that

humans had spread across the New World earlier than the so-called Clovis people, who archeologists for six decades considered the Ameri-cas’ first people.

The Clovis people, recognised for their distinctive spearheads, are known from archeological evidence about 13,000 years old.

The artifacts painted a picture of human hunter-gatherers butch-ering or scavenging a mastodon, an extinct elephant cousin, next to a small inland pond. The tusk had cut marks from a tool used to remove it from the skull, perhaps to access edi-ble tissue at its base.

Intrigued by previous archeolog-ical finds at the site, the researchers conducted 890 dives into the 35-feet-deep sinkhole in limestone bedrock at

the so-called Page-Ladson site near Florida’s capital Tallahassee from 2012 to 2014.

They excavated stone tools including a biface, a stone knife useful for butchering animals, and bones of extinct big mammals including camels, bison, horses and mastodons.

Florida State University anthro-pologist Jessi Halligan, who dove 126 times, said nomadic hunter-gatherers may have followed big prey like mas-todons from water hole to water hole.

Bones that appear to be from dogs suggest the hunter-gatherers had canine companions with them.

There were no humans in the Americas until people crossed the land bridge that once connected Siberia to Alaska during the Ice Age

but the timing of that event remains mysterious. “The evidence from the Page-Ladson site is a major leap for-ward in shaping a new view of the peopling of the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age,” Texas A&M Uni-versity archeologist Michael Waters told reporters.

“In the archeological community, there’s still a terrific amount of resist-ance to the idea that people were here before Clovis.”

Only a handful of pre-Clovis sites are known in theAmericas. There is controversy about the legitimacy of some of them. The Florida site is roughly the same age as one in Chile that is considered the most scientifi-cally accepted pre-Clovis locale.

The research was published in the journal Science Advances.

Obama hails Nordic nations at state dinner

US President Barack Obama laughs with Norway Prime Minister Erma Solberg, Sweden Prime Minister Stefan Lofven (second left) and Denmark Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen prior to a US-Nordic Leaders Summit at the White House in Washington.

Background checks to include social media

Argentina’s Kirchner charged with fraud

Evidence of ancient humans found under Florida river

AMERICAS 17SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Father Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani witnessed last evening the arrival of Fath Al Kheir 2 at Katara Cultural village beach. The event was also attended by H H Sheikh Jassem bin Hamad Al Thani, Representative of the Emir. Pic: Qassim/The Peninsula → See also page 26

Ayyayayayayayayyyy

Colombian Navy soldiers stand guard over a homemade semi-submersible boat captured in the Pacific coast offshore of Candelilla de la Mar, Colombia. Around 900kg of cocaine was seized by authorities along the Colombian Pacific, the Navy said.

With the catch

19

AFP

CARACAS: Embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro declared a three-month state of emergency early yesterday to face “threats from abroad,” as his emboldened foes geared for a vote to oust him.

In an address to the nation, Maduro said he had signed a new state of emergency decree “to neutralise and defeat foreign aggression,” which he says is closing in on the country.

Maduro said the measures will likely last through 2017, but he did not

specify if they will limit civil rights.The new decree, he said, is “a

fuller, more comprehensive protection for our people,” which “guarantees peace, guarantees stability, that will allow us ... to recover the country’s productive capacity.”

It will be extended “constitution-ally” and last for the rest of the year “and likely throughout the year 2017,” he said.

Maduro first issued a 60-day decree for emergency powers on January 14, which was extended in March, to deal with Venezuela’s out of control economic crisis. The eco-nomic decree authorized the president to take over private business assets in order to guarantee the supply of basic household products to the public.

Maduro’s political opposition says this opens the door to new expropria-tions. The president is widely blamed for a crisis in which Venezuelans are having to queue for hours for rations of basic food and other goods.

Maduro has also imposed daily electricity blackouts and has public employees working just two days a week due to power shortages.

In 2015 Venezuela’s economy con-tracted 5.7 percent and its official inflation rate topped 180 percent—one

of the highest in the world. Non-gov-ernment economists estimate the real inflation rate is several times higher.

Maduro regularly blames US and local business interests for what his administration sees as a conspiracy against Venezuela amid low oil prices.

Washington has had a rocky rela-tionship with the leftist government in Caracas for years, and the two coun-tries have not exchanged ambassadors since 2010. Despite the acrimony the United States is Venezuela’s main trading partner and the biggest customer for oil, the South Ameri-can country’s main export. Caracas depends overwhelmingly on oil rev-enue, and has suffered mightily since the plunge in world oil prices.

Maduro, blamed for Venezuela’s deep economic crisis, has a 68 per-cent disapproval rating according to pollsters Venebarometro.

Senior US intelligence officials believe that Venezuela’s leftist gov-ernment could be overthrown in a popular uprising this year, The Wash-ington Post reported yesterday.

“You can hear the ice cracking,” an intelligence official said. “You know there’s a crisis coming.”

The US officials spoke on condi-tion of anonymity about Venezuela to

a small group of reporters. US policymakers believe they can

do little to influence quickly changing events in Venezuela, and their main concern is that the country does not collapse, the Post said.

US officials have been especially disappointed by the undisciplined, divided opposition to Maduro, the

Post said. Two senior Venezue-lan officials, lawmaker Diosdado Cabello and Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez, expressed support for Maduro on Twitter.

Opposition lawmaker Tomas Guanipa meanwhile said the state of emergency is aimed at “destabilising the country to prevent the recall vote.”

Maduro announced the decree hours after Venezuelan opposition leaders met with Luis Almagro, the head of the Organisation of Ameri-can States (OAS).

It would be “the worst act of polit-ical corruption,” if a recall vote is not held this year, said Almagro, speak-ing at a forum in Miami.

Reuters

WASHINGTON: Air Force Gen-eral Lori Robinson (pictured) took charge of the US military’s Northern Command early yesterday, becoming the first woman to head a US com-batant command.

The position is one of the most senior in the US military and makes Robinson, who previously led US air forces in the Pacific, the top general overseeing activities in North Amer-ica and holding responsibility for homeland defence.

The US military last year moved to open up all combat roles to women, a historic step striking down gender barriers in the armed forces.

The Defence Department has nine unified combatant commands, responsible for different parts of the world and functions.

“She was instrumental in oper-ationalising our rebalance to the Pacific and in strengthening ties with the air forces of some of our closest allies,” US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter said at a ceremony in Colorado that

was broadcast to the Pentagon in Washington.

Robinson also took command of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which is run jointly with Canada to monitor aer-ospace and maritime security in the region. Robinson, who was named on Time magazine’s “100 Most Influ-ential People” list this year, said she was taking charge “at a time when regional and global events pose increasingly serious challenges to the international community and to our own national security.”

She has moved quickly through the ranks in the past few years, from deputy commander of US Air Forces Central Command in 2012 to vice commander of Air Combat Com-mand a year later.

“Just in the last several years she’s been adding really a star per year to her shoulder,” said Melissa Dalton, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

During a US Senate confirmation hearing last month, Robinson laid out her priorities, saying that Rus-sia was the largest external threat to US national security while she would closely track home-grown “violent extremists.” Robinson has said that she views herself as a leader who just happens to be a woman.

Out of 39 four-star generals and admirals, only three are women, according to Pentagon data. Robin-son is one of them.

“One woman can’t change things all by herself and it’s going to take leadership and willingness to evolve the military,” said Kate Germano, chief operating officer of Service Women’s Action Network.

AP

JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI: Mis-souri lawmakers passed a sweeping expansion of gun rights, allowing people to carry concealed guns without needing permits while also expanding their right to stand and fight against perceived threats.

The legislation, which goes to Dem-ocratic Gov. Jay Nixon, was among the most prominent measures passed by the Republican-led Legislature on the final day of its annual session.

Under the measure, most people could carry concealed guns, even if they haven’t gone through the train-ing now required to get a permit. The

legislation would also expand the state’s “castle doctrine” by allowing invited guests such as babysitters to use deadly force against intruders. And it would create a “stand-your-ground” right, meaning people would have no duty to retreat from danger in any place they are legally entitled to be present.

Republican supporters described it as a reasonable approach to per-sonal safety, while many Democrats decried it. “There won’t be blood in the streets,” said Representative Joe Don McGaugh, of rural Carrollton. “But what there will be is more peo-ple protected by the right to bear an arm legally.”

Lawmakers also gave final approval to a bill bringing the state’s

law on deadly force by police into compliance with a US Supreme Court ruling from 30 years ago. The out-dated law — which doesn’t specify that suspected felons must be dan-gerous — gained national attention when Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown in August 2014.

Grand jurors were initially given the old law before prosecutors sup-plied them with updated guidelines. Wilson, who is white, was not charged for shooting the black 18-year-old by either state or federal authorities.

Nixon was among those calling upon lawmakers to update Missou-ri’s law on police force. But he had not sought the other gun-law measures.

Ten other states already have

what supporters describe as “consti-tutional carry” allowing concealed guns without permits, including ones enacted this year in Iowa, Mississippi and West Virginia, according to the National Rifle Association.

The NRA says 30 states have laws or court precedents stating people have no duty to retreat from a threat anywhere they are lawfully present. But Missouri’s measure would make it the first new “stand-your-ground” state since 2011, according to both the NRA and the opposition group Eve-rytown for Gun Safety.

Florida’s “stand-your-ground” law came under national scrutiny after neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman fatally shot unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012.

Chicago replaces

agency that

reviews police

misconduct

AP

CHICAGO: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he is abolishing the agency that currently investigates police mis-conduct and replacing it with a civilian department that he said will have more independence and resources to do its work.

Emanuel’s announcement came a month after a task force recommended the move in a report that said police in the nation’s third-largest city have “no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of colour” and have alienated blacks and Hispan-ics for decades by using excessive force and honoring a code of silence. The Task Force on Police Accountability had recommended replacing the “badly broken” Inde-pendent Police Review Authority, (IPRA), with a “new and fully transparent and accountable Civil-ian Police Investigative Agency.”

IPRA had been criticised for slow investigations of complaints that seldom led to discipline.

“It is clear that a totally new agency is required to rebuild trust in investigations of officer-involved shootings and the most serious allegations of police mis-conduct,” Emanuel said.

He said details about the new agency’s makeup and duties will be worked out and presented at a City Council meeting on June 22.

Emanuel said he would appoint a public safety inspec-tor general to “audit and monitor policing in Chicago,” and a Com-munity Safety Oversight Board to oversee the city’s entire “policy accountability system.”

Reuters

NEW YORK: Two of America’s lead-ing auctioneers of guns said they refused on ethical grounds to handle the sale of the 9 mm pistol that George Zimmerman used to kill unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.

The firearm is so toxic that another auctioneer, the man who sold the revolver used to kill John F Kennedy’s assassin, said he would want no part of it had he been approached by Zimmerman.

Zimmerman, a onetime neighbour-hood watch volunteer, is trying to sell the Kel-Tec PF-9 that he used to shoot the black Florida teenager in 2012, a case that convulsed the country and ignited debates on race relations, gun

control and American justice.A jury acquitted Zimmerman, who

was protected by Florida’s “stand your ground” self-defense laws.

Two auctioneers, Wes Cowan of Cowan’s Auctions in Cincinnati and James Julia of James D. Julia Auction-eers in Fairfield, Maine, both said that Zimmerman called their establish-ments recently hoping to consign the gun with them. Both turned him down. Cowan said he never returned the call. Julia said he instructed his employees not to accept the gun.

“The man is despicable and I would have nothing to do with his gun,” Julia said. Cowan said: “Mor-ally and ethically, no, I wouldn’t do it.”

Zimmerman could not be reached for comment, but told Orlando TV station WOFL this week said the gun was his to sell and he

would not be “cowed” by critics.The gun may be valuable to

history buffs, gun enthusiasts or opponents of the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement that Martin’s death helped spawn.

Others who apparently retain vit-riol for Zimmerman have placed false bids on the gun in an online auction on the United Gun Group’s website, bidding it up to $65m with bidder names such as “Racist McShootFace.”

Herman Darvick, a collector and auctioneer, said there was no such backlash when he helped Jack Ruby’s brother sell the .38 Colt Cobra that killed Lee Harvey Oswald, two days after assassination of John F. Kennedy. The gun sold for $220,000 in 1991.

Darvick said selling the Zimmer-man gun was outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour.

“No, I wouldn’t touch it,” Darvick said. “If anything, it should go to a black history museum. He shouldn’t get a penny for it.”

Another antique gun dealer, who was not approached by Zimmerman, said he would turn it down just as he refuses to sell Nazi memorabilia.

Sean Rich, owner of Tortuga Trad-ing and well known as an antique firearms consultant on the History Channel TV show “Pawn Stars,” said the negative publicity for an auction-eer would outweigh any profit.

“That’s one of the reasons I choose not to deal with Nazi material. You have to draw the line somewhere,” Rich said.

But guns used by gangsters and gunslingers from the past are more acceptable, the dealers said, in part because of the passage of time and the lore surrounding personalities

such as Jesse James, prohibition-era bootleggers or Bonnie and Clyde.

Rarely do history’s most infamous guns go on sale. The Mannlicher-Carcano rifle from the Kennedy assassination is held at the National Archives. John Wilkes Booth’s Der-inger, used to kill President Abraham Lincoln, is on display at the Ford’s Theater Museum.

The Deringer would get $1m to $2m at auction, Julia estimated. About 10 years ago, he sold the rifle that killed outlaw Clyde Barrow for $69,000. He said he would have to think about selling Jack Ruby’s gun. That gun belonged to South Flor-ida real estate developer Anthony Pugliese III, who bought it at Darvick’s auction, but he had to give up formal ownership when he pleaded guilty to a fraud charge last year.

Maduro issues emergency decree amid opposition

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (second left) during a meeting with members of his government at the Presidential Palace in Caracas, Venezuela.

US Air Force General

becomes first woman to

lead combatant command

Missouri lawmakers pass expanded gun rights

Top auctioneers refuse to sell gun from Trayvon Martin shooting

In an address to the nation, the Venezuelan President said he had signed a new state of emergency decree to neutralise and defeat foreign aggression.

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Jose Mourinho: Why the Special One is the Only Way to Go for Man United

Miralem Pjanic: Why the Bosnian star would be a big signing for Chelsea

Lufthansa plane blocks Mumbai airport runway, flights hit

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INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY

A Mango tree with full of fruits on it standing next to a date palm in the Al Hilal area. Photo by Salim Matramkot

A woman placing a gingerbread cake, used for the creation of the world’s biggest gingerbread heart at The Living Museum of Gingerbreads, in Torun, Poland, yesterday. According to the organisers the whole gingerbread heart has 14 square metres and weighs more than 300kg. Torun is the Polish capital city of gingerbreads. The cakes are produced here since Medieval times.

Gingerbread (he)art

Bloomberg

NEW YORK: After heart disease and cancer, medical errors kill more Americans than anything else, claim-ing a quarter of a million lives a year, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

If bungles and safety lapses in the hospital were accounted for as deaths from disease and injury are, they would be the third most common cause of death in the US, leading to more fatalities than respiratory dis-ease, the report in the British Medical Journal argues.

Medical error is a broad label. It could include delivering the wrong drug, misreading a patient’s chart, or operating on the wrong organ. A famous report by the Institute of Medicine in 1999 alerted America to the toll, estimating that medical errors killed between 44,000 and 98,000 people a year. Even at the low end of that range, they would have been the eighth leading cause of death at the time, more deadly in the late 1990s than car crashes, breast cancer, or AIDS.

Since that landmark report was published, US hospitals, doctors, insurers, and regulators have taken halting steps to improve the safety of medicine. It’s an ongoing, decades-long effort to make health care more

like aviation, a high-risk environment where safety is paramount, systems are designed to prevent mistakes, and fatalities are rare.

The new estimate, published recently, draws on four studies of deaths due to errors that have come out since the 1999 report. The authors extrapolate from those findings to reach their estimate of 251,000 annual deaths. Even that figure, they say, probably underestimates the actual toll, because it includes only deaths in hospitals, not in out-patient surgery centers, nursing homes, or other health care settings.

That doesn’t mean deaths from medical errors have increased since the 1990s. Because different meth-odologies were used to come up with the numbers, it’s hard to say what the trend looks like.

The American Hospital Associ-ation said in a statement that while “one incident is too many,” the indus-try has made progress. The group cited federal data indicating that one type of patient harm, hospital-acquired infections, dropped by 17 percent between 2010 and 2014.

But the problem may well be undercounting, as the research-ers warn, not over-counting. Public health authorities routinely tally deaths from diseases such as lung cancer and injuries such as auto crashes and drownings. They use that data to craft interventions — policies

to discourage smoking or safety standards for cars and pools. There is no equivalent data for deaths from medical errors. Researchers can try to estimate the incidence, but they don’t have precise tallies that show trends over time.

As a means of recording reliable data, the authors of the BMJ study call for a space on death certificates where doctors can indicate that a medical error contributed to the death. It may seem far-fetched to ask doctors to report their own mistakes, but at least one attempt to collect that information had high response rates and found that 5 percent of deaths may have been preventable. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, staff are even blogging about case studies of medical mis-takes and the hospital’s attempts to prevent them from happening again.

Perhaps because doctors and hospitals would worry that admit-ting errors might invite lawsuits, the Johns Hopkins authors alternatively suggest a system in which hospitals can investigate whether errors con-tributed to a death, assured that “data acquired for quality improvement is not discoverable” in court.

The need for better data is clear. “Measuring the consequences of medical care on patient outcomes is an important prerequisite to creating a culture of learning from our mis-takes,” the authors write.

IANS

LONDON: Use by human societies in pri-mordial trade routes has shaped the genetic diversity of the camel, famously known as the 'ship of the desert', finds a interesting study of its ancient and modern DNA.

Single-humped 'Arabian camels', properly known as 'dromedaries' (Came-lus dromedarius), have been fundamental to the development of human societies, providing food and transport in desert countries, for over 3,000 years.

Researchers analysed genetic infor-mation from a sample of 1,083 living dromedaries from 21 countries across the world. The findings showed that they were genetically very similar, despite pop-ulations being hundreds of miles apart. Centuries of cross-continental trade caused this "blurring" of genetics, the researchers explained.

"Our analysis of this extensive dataset actually revealed that there is very little defined population structure in modern dromedaries. We believe this is a conse-quence of cross-continental back and forth movements along historic trading routes," said Olivier Hanotte, professor at Notting-ham University in Britain.

For the research, published in the jour-nal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the team combined an exam-ination of ancient DNA sequences from bone samples from early-domesticated dromedaries from 400-1870 AD and wild ones from 5,000-1,000 BC to reveal for the first time ever a historic genetic pic-ture of the species.

"The genetic diversity we have discov-ered underlines the animal's potential to adapt sustainably to future challenges of expanding desert areas and global climate change," noted Faisal Almathen from King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia.

IANS

WASHINGTON: The local atmosphere in Mars is clear in winter, dustier in spring and summer, and windy in autumn, show measurements by Nasa's Curiosity rover that has completed recording environ-mental patterns through two full cycles of Martian seasons.

Curiosity this week completed its sec-ond Martian year since landing inside Gale Crater nearly four years ago. The repeti-tion helps distinguish seasonal effects from sporadic events, Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab-oratory said in a statement. Each Martian year — the time it takes the Red Planet to orbit the sun once — lasts 687 Earth days.

Measurements of temperature, pres-sure, ultraviolet light reaching the surface and the scant water vapour in the air at Gale Crater show strong, repeated seasonal changes, the statement added. Monitor-ing the modern atmosphere, weather and climate fulfills a Curiosity mission goal

supplementing the better-known investi-gations of conditions billions of years ago.

Back then, Gale Crater had lakes and groundwater that could have been good habitats for microbes, if Mars has ever had any. Today, though dry and much less hospitable, environmental factors are still dynamic, the statement added.

Curiosity measured air temperatures from 15.9 degrees Celsius on a summer afternoon, to minus 100 degrees Celsius on a winter night.

"Curiosity's weather station has made measurements nearly every hour of every day, more than 34 million so far," said Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasa-vada of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "The duration is important, because it's the second time through the seasons that lets us see repeated patterns," Vasavada noted.

The similar tilts of Earth and Mars give both planets a yearly rhythm of seasons. But some differences are great, such as in comparisons between day and night temperatures.

Even during the time of the Martian year when temperatures at Gale Cra-ter rise above freezing during the day, they plummet overnight below minus minus 90 degrees Celsius, due to the thin atmosphere.

Also, the more-elliptical orbit of Mars, compared to Earth, exaggerates the south-ern-hemisphere seasons, making them dominant even at Gale Crater's near-equa-torial location.

"Mars is much drier than our planet, and in particular Gale Crater, near the equator, is a very dry place on Mars," Ger-mán Martinez, Curiosity science-team collaborator at the University of Michi-gan, Ann Arbor.

"The water vapor content is a thousand to 10 thousand times less than on Earth," Martinez said.

While continuing to study the modern local environment, Curiosity is investigat-ing geological layers of lower Mount Sharp, inside Gale Crater, to increase understand-ing of ancient changes in environmental conditions, Nasa said.

IANS

LONDON: Kids, especially boys, who start walking, running and jumping early at 18 months of age are more likely to have stronger bones later in adulthood, a study has found.

These movements in toddlers place a stress on the bones, causing them to become wider and thicker, thereby making them stronger than those in children who may not be moving as much, the study said.

The findings from the study may help to identify who is at a greater risk of osteoporosis and bone

fractures in later life. "The find-ings are intriguing as they provide a link which wasn't previously under-stood, primarily that how we move as a young child can have ramifications for our bone strength even 16 years later,” said lead researcher Alex Ire-land from Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain.

"Being more active gives you stronger muscles which can then apply bigger forces to the bones as we walk, run or jump, helping to strengthen bones as we grow older," he added in the paper published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. The team analysed 2,327 participants from chil-dren born in the early 1990s.

Their movement was assessed at 18 months, and hip and shin bone size, shape and mineral density was measured at 17 years of age for both males and females, by scanning with X-ray absorptiometry and peripheral computed tomography. The findings showed the effect was more pro-nounced in males than in females, suggesting early movement plays less of a role in female bone strength.

"Importantly, the results could have implications for later life by help-ing medical practitioners to anticipate and detect those who are at a greater risk of osteoporosis or fractures, thus helping them to devise prevention and coping strategies,” Ireland stated.

Medical errors ‘leading killer’ after heart disease and cancer

Curiosity measures seasonal patterns in Mars atmosphere

Nasa’s Curiosity rover.

Lady Gaga to star in biopicPARIS: Singer-actress Lady Gaga will star as late English singer Cilla Black, whereas LeToya Luckett will play Dionne War-wick in Dionne, a new biopic about the legendary singer that was announced at the Cannes Film Festival. The film will span the early days of Warwick’s career from 1962 to 1968.

Danny Glover will portray War-wick’s father, Mansel Warwick. Olympia Dukakis will co-star as German songstress and actress Marlene Dietrich, who mentored Warwick. Warwick, 75, said she was pleased that Luckett (an orig-inal member of R&B girl group Destiny’s Child) was channeling her on the big screen.

Shooting is set to begin in October, with Mario Van Peebles in talks to direct. AMBI Pictures and David F Wooley’s WW Film Company are financing the movie.

Study reveals

genetic history

of camels

Kids who walk early may have stronger bones

IMF warns of risks from Brexit

PAGE | 23 PAGE | 24

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year: Tsipras

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Steady but unimpressive growth in eurozone: QNB

The Peninsula

DOHA: Growth in the euro region is stabilising, showing that the worst of the crisis is probably behind the region. However, it is settling at a rather unimpressive rate, said QNB

in its Economic Commentary released yesterday. If the region is hit by an adverse shock, either domestic or external, then the policy space to respond is limited — especially on the monetary front added the report.

Growth in the Euro Area was stronger than expected in the first quarter of 2016, registering 2.2 per-cent on an annualised basis. While the full data are yet to become available, early signs indicate strong growth in the European periphery such as Ire-land and Spain.

This suggests that at least part of the region’s crisis is behind us. But there is still some way to go for the region. Although growth for the year 2016 is expected to stabilise, it is set-tling at the rather unimpressive rate of 1.5 percent. Furthermore, if any

negative shock hits the economy, there would be limited policy space to respond, especially on the mone-tary side, said the report.

Growth in the Euro Area beat expectations by around 0.6 percent. But the overall better-than-expected performance hides regional variation in growth among Euro Area coun-tries. Germany continues to show steady growth, with analysts expect-ing around 2.4 percent growth in Q1 (first quarter).

Meanwhile, Spain and Ireland are the standout performers, with the former growing by 3.2 percent in the first quarter, and the latter grow-ing by 7.8 percent in 2015 (Q1 data are not available yet).

The stellar performance of some periphery countries shows that at

least some adjustment has actually taken place in the Euro Area. Indeed, most periphery countries have man-aged to turn their large current account deficits, one of the major causes of the Euro Area crisis in 2011-12, into surpluses as they successfully regained competitiveness.

This was achieved through both the reduction of domestic costs and wages in the periphery countries as well as the depreciation of the euro, which improved the external balances of the region as a whole.

Despite the correction of the external imbalances, growth in the region is expected to stabilise in 2016 at 1.5 percent, similar to the rate achieved last year as some tailwinds are offset by headwinds.

On the one hand, lower oil prices

this year should support consump-tion in the region given that it is a net oil importer.

In addition, both monetary and fiscal policies are expected to con-tinue to be supportive for growth.

On the other hand, and despite accommodative monetary policy, its impact is becoming more limited. Furthermore, the uncertainty sur-rounding potential UK exit from the European Union (“Brexit”) is hinder-ing growth in the region, although to a lesser extent than its impact on the UK. While growth is expected to sta-bilise, the region also faces a number of risks.

On the domestic front, there is the risk of other countries seeking an exit from the European Union or the Euro Area if Brexit succeeds.

There is also the risk of spillover from Greece if the annual round of negotiations over debt fails to reach an agreement. The region also faces a number of external risks such as a disruptive slowdown in the Chinese economy or a derailing of the recov-ery in the US.

If these risks materialise, there will be limited policy space to respond.

On the monetary side, there is little the central bank could do hav-ing already reduced interest rates to negative and embarked on a large quantitative easing programme.

This leaves fiscal policy to do the heavy lifting, but even this is con-strained by the high level of public debt, which is currently around 93 percent of GDP.

If any negative shock hits the economy, there would be limited policy space to respond, especially on the monetary side.

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BUSINESS22 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

By Mohammad Shoeb

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Chamber (QC), the country’s oldest private industry representative body, and the Inter-national Center for Sports Security (ICSS), have signed a multi-faceted cooperation agreement to launch a joint initiative titled “Sport and Com-merce”.

The agreement was signed by Saleh Hamad Al Sharqi, Director-General of QC, and Mohammed Hanzab, President of the Doha-based ICSS, in the presence of Ali bin Abdu-lateef Al Misnad, Honorary Treasurer at QC.

Under the agreement, each party will participate in events held by the

other party and QC will support ICSS’ activities held in Qatar and overseas by inviting businessmen to take part in the ICSS programmes.

“QC is a very big umbrella organ-isation of private sector, which is playing a vital role by extending its support in hosting big events in the country. Therefore, we are also trying to win the support of private sec-tor through this initiative,” Hanzab told The Peninsula on the sidelines of the signing ceremony held at QC headquarters.

He added: “Sports need financial support both at local and interna-tional level. The private sector, as part of its CSR activities, can play a major role to make sports better by ensur-ing safeguards. In addition, sports can learn a lot from private sector in terms of maintaining transparency and good governance.”

Highlighting the role of ICSS, he said that the Centre acts as a bridge between people and the private sector to discuss and explore oppor-tunities and also find ways to make sports clean, transparent, safe and fair from all aspects to ensure that whatever is invested in the sector it makes real impact on the ground.

Commenting on the legal man-date of his organisation, he said that ICSS is a Qatar-based non-profit organisation sharing the mandate

of a host of international entities on several issues, including sports’ secu-rity and safety.

“We managed to set up the safety and security standards for several major events, which was missing earlier. Recently, over 50 leading rep-resentatives from sports, government, academia, sponsors and other inter-national and corporate organisations gathered in Madrid to progress first-ever Sport Integrity Alliance to drive reform in sport, which included World Bank, OECD, Spanish Govern-ment, and many private companies of international repute such as Master Card and Deloitte,” he added.

“We did a comprehensive study with Harvard University to meas-ure the economic impact of sports in major events. Similar studies can be done in collaboration with QC to prepare a data base.”

QC shall also use its various tools to promote ICSS international activities and events through for-eign trade chambers, especially in countries where events are organ-ised by holding bilateral meetings between Qatari businessmen and their counterparts in the countries concerned.

In turn, the ICSS shall provide all possible forms of facilities for QC to take part in the center’s activities.

The two sides will exchange

QC and ICSS launch ‘Sport and Commerce’ initiative

Officials of Qatar Chamber and the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) at the MoU signing ceremony at the Qatar Chamber headquarters yesterday. Seen are ICSS President, Mohammed bin Hamad Hanzab, Qatar Chamber Honorary Treasurer Ali bin Abdulateef Al Misnad and Qatar Chamber Director-General Saleh Hamad Al Sharqi. Pic: Qassim R/The Peninsula

information and data available to utilise in the fields of studies and research or to perform any actions or take decisions relating to the func-tions and competencies of each party.

The two sides will coordinate the events organised by any of them, whether inside or outside Qatar.

Each party shall name the other party as a partner and official

sponsor to their activities. In addition, the parties will work on qualifying and capacity development of their staff through training programmes, offered by QC.

Each party will participate in events held by the other party and QC will support ICSS’ activities held in Qatar and overseas.

Retaj Hotels signs hotel management contract The Peninsula

DOHA: Retaj Hotels & Hospitality signed a management agreement for a new luxurious 5-star resort in Doha, “Vichy Célestins Spa Hotel by Retaj” on Salwa Road near Aqua Park, featuring 168 Keys; 78 standard guestrooms and suites and 90 villas ranging from one to three bedrooms.

The resort includes three restau-rants, two cafes, a 3,500 m2 medical spa center specialising in weight loss, diabetes prevention, metabolism and anti-ageing treatments, all delivered with a French touch of luxury, Meet-ing area, Business Center, Jewelry Shop, Hairdresser, Fitness center, outdoor and indoor swimming pools, lazy river, Tennis Courts, Landscape area as well as Vichy water boutique.

Vichy Célestins SPA Hotel by Retaj will stand apart as a unique resort in Qatar. The resort is bringing an entirely new hospitality and medical spa concept to Qatar and the region. It combines hospitality and health-care with a strong focus on customer experience, which is mega-trend for the hospitality industry in the future.

Vichy Company holds a conces-sion over two thermal facilities and an estate that includes nine springs, including the famous Vichy Célestins in France; the company owns the

Five-Star Vichy Spa Hotel, Les Célestins, as well as a 4-stars hotel, 3-stars hotel and two 2-stars hotels

The contract was signed between Nesf Bin Mohamed Al Boenein, Mem-ber of board of Directors of Retaj Group, Abdulla Hassan Al-Ghanim CEO of Hala Group Enterprises and Jerome Phelipeau Chairman of Vichy Company France. The signing of the contract was hosted by the CEO of Retaj Hotels & Hospitality Dr Kamel

Senhadji and attended by corporate team, General Managers and Manage-ment team of Retaj Group. The signing ceremony was also witnessed by a number of important personalities.

Dr Kamal Senhadji has deliv-ered an opening speech where he welcomed all guests and expressed his happiness with this cooperation between Retaj, Hala and Vichy, stress-ing that this step is the embodiment of the Retaj Hotels’ vision to expand

on the local, regional and interna-tional level.

Ijaz Malik, General Manager of Hala Group stated that a huge lobby, 3500 square meter of spa area, 4000 square meter of artificial lake, a water fall, 600 meter long river with 6 swimming pools in addition to Olympic size outdoor pool, indoor hydrotherapy pool and beautiful landscape are unique features of this project.

Officials signing the agreement in Doha.

Lower oil prices tightening liquidity: R SeetharamanThe Peninsula

DOHA: Doha Bank hosted a knowl-edge sharing session on “Changing dynamics and market opportunities” at Jumeirah at Etihad towers, Abu Dhabi on May 11.

Speaking during the session, Dr R Seetharaman, CEO of Doha Bank, gave an insight into global econ-omy and the regional economies. “According to IMF April 2016 out-look, the UAE economy expected to grow by 2.4 percent this year. Abu Dhabi is projected to grow at 1.7 per-cent in 2016. In real terms, non-oil activities accounted for 50.2 percent of the GDP at constant prices in 2014. As part of Abu Dhabi’s Economic Vision 2030, the contribution of the non-oil sector is aimed to be 64 percent of GDP. Domestic and gov-ernment credit demand has risen, up 8.1 percent y-o-y in February 2016, while demand from government-related enterprises climbed by 5.5 percent,” said Seetharaman.

“Lower oil revenues are driving tightening of liquidity. Government deposits were down 13.9 percent

year-on-year in February 2016. Combined government and pub-lic sector deposits, meanwhile, had fallen by 5 percent year-on-year in February 2016. The trade balance between Qatar and Abu Dhabi had reached $6-7bn. Recently Abu Dhabi has issued benchmark dual-tranche 5 and 10 years bonds worth $5bn. The low oil prices have emphasized on fiscal discipline and liquidity management,” he added.

Talal Touqan, Head of Research & Advisory at Al Ramz Capital spoke on “Oil paradigm leads to differ-ent investment themes”. He gave insight on oil price trends in 2014 and 2016 and its impact on various stocks. He highlighted the factors which are responsible for oil prices to drive equity markets. Economic growth, Oil exporting countries tapping SWFs, Oil and gas compa-nies’ retrenchment and lending to oil and Gas companies are some of the factors impacting equity mar-kets. He also highlighted the impact on Regional and UAE Banking due to low oil prices.

Padmanabh Acharya, Partner at Deloitte gave insight on Mar-ket overview and key Business

issues. He said “The focus for many companies is survival, We expect pragmatism to win over optimism. The companies will do what needs to be done to survive in a lower price environment. Most have at least one of three critical attributes: flexibility, near-term liquidity or continued access to capital markets. Slowing Chinese economy, Sluggish

growth in the Eurozone economies and Lower oil revenues are likely to drive lower bank deposit levels and greater withdrawals to support potential”.

Huda Al Matroushi, Executive Board Member of Abu Dhabi Busi-ness Women Council (ADBWC) spoke on “Changing Dynamics and Market Opportunities” from the perspective

of Business Women. She spoke on the vision of the UAE towards women empowerment and UAE leadership in developing Women entrepreneurs. Equal opportunities are being created for women in what is traditionally believed as Man’s world in various business segments. She also high-lighted the services, projects and initiatives of ADBWC.

Dr R Seetharaman, CEO of Doha Bank, speaking during the knowledge sharing session held at Abu Dhabi.

Rwanda risks property bubbles in race for growthReuters

KIGALI: When property consultant Simon Ethangatta set up in Rwan-da’s capital in 2011, the view from his office was of tin shacks overlooked by modest suburban homes on the wooded hillsides.

Now, some of the slums have made way for mirror-glass office blocks while smart houses spring up beyond in Kigali districts which were once littered with corpses dur-ing the 1994 genocide. “It’s changing so fast,” said Ethangatta, a Kenyan. “These guys are so ambitious.”

To the government, this is proof of Rwanda’s dramatic recovery in the two decades since 800,000 eth-nic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered by Hutu extremists.

But the pace of change - part of a ‘Vision 2020’ plan to turn one of world’s poorest states into a mid-dle-income country by the end of the decade - is starting to reveal the risks of going too far, too fast.

As imports are sucked into a nation dependent on farming, foreign aid and modest mineral exports, the Rwandan currency has fallen, some banks are turning cautious on prop-erty lending and economic growth

- while still strong - has slipped.All this is threatening to take the

shine off President Paul Kagame, a former rebel who masterminded the revival but has drawn criticism from Rwanda’s tiny domestic opposition as well as foreign governments for changing the constitution. This could allow Kagame, who has already effec-tively run the country for more than 20 years, to stay in power until 2034.

“If people start to question whether he can deliver, there will be trouble,” said one Kigali-based diplomat. The authorities dismiss such worries and point to the record of change. In the last decade, the economy grew at an average rate of 8 percent a year, one of the fastest in Africa.

This week, hundreds of foreign visitors are attending the World Eco-nomic Forum on Africa in Kigali, where four international hotels - two Hiltons, a Marriott and a Radisson - will open in the next three months.

Hundreds of new homes are coming on the market worth $500,000 each - a huge sum for a country where most of the 11 mil-lion population are subsistence farmers and the per capita income is just $730, far short of the $1,045 that the World Bank defines as mid-dle income.

Cyprus recordsstrongest Q1 growth in a yearAFP

NICOSIA: The economy of bailed-out eurozone member Cyprus has recorded its strongest quarterly growth in a year, official figures showed yesterday.

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.9 percent in the first quarter of 2016, compared with 0.4 percent during the October-December period, the country’s statistical service said.

It was the fifth consecutive quarter of expansion and the high-est rate since one percent growth was seen in the first quarter of 2015. On a year-on-year basis, GDP was up 2.7 percent.

The figures showed growth in manufacturing, construction, trade, hotels and restaurants, transport and technical activities.

There was a contraction in financial services and household activities. Cyprus has emerged from more than three years of economic slowdown after the gov-ernment imposed harsh austerity measures in exchange for a EU and IMF bailout.

Renowned Omani football player Ali Al Habsi inaugurating the 151st global outlet of Malabar Gold & Diamonds and the 11th in Oman at Lulu Hypermarket, Barka, in the presence of Dr P A Ibrahim Haji - Co Chairman, Malabar Group, and Shamlal Ahamed, MD - International Operations, and other officials.

Malabar Gold opens new outlet

BUSINESS 23SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

THe Peninsula

DOHA: Aamal Medical, a sub-sidiary of Aamal Company, and a leading supplier of medical equip-ment in Qatar, hosted the 3rd edition of ‘Aamal Medical Exhibition 2016’, which showcased a wide range of latest medical equipment and tech-

nologies, many of them available for the first time in Qatar.

The exhibition, held under the patronage of Sheikh Faisal bin Qas-sim Al Thani, Chairman of Aamal Company, showcased medical equip-ment from the leading international medical technology, services and solutions companies from GCC, Ger-many, the UK, and the USA that have distribution agreements with Aamal Medical.

Exhibitors included Verna Care, Atmos, MDT & PEKE, SECA, Masimo, GE Healthcare, Karl Storz & Storz Medical, Drager, Telelift, IBM, TPP, PhysioControl, ALVO, Car Fusion-BD, TRU-D & SPOC, HIE, ETASCO & Covidien.

With detailed demonstrations of the latest medical devices used in operating rooms (OR), intensive care units (ICU), sterilisation and infection control in addition to IT healthcare solutions, the exhibition showcased a range of new technologies availa-ble for the first time in Qatar.

These include the TRU-D Smart UVC (TM); a mobile UV disinfec-tion system, Nano Therapeutics CTS medical devices; that offers sim-ple, safe and effective solutions to manage pain, swelling and discom-fort associated with sports injuries, post-surgical and non-surgical thera-peutic return-to-function, in addition to HiCare – Lady, Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS); a method of pain relief in which a special device transmits low-volt-age electrical impulses.

Sheikh Faisal, said: “The signif-icant development of the medical sector over the past decade reflects the government’s strenuous efforts to improve healthcare in the coun-try. The National Health Strategy represents the essential founda-tion of driving this change towards achieving the health goals speci-fied in Qatar’s National Vision 2030. Aamal Medical Company is one of the leading companies in Qatar that is able to meet the needs of the medical

Aamal medical expo 2016showcases latest products

Chairman of Aamal Company, Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani, touring the exhibition.

sector, by providing access to the lat-est medical equipment. We are proud of our contribution to the growth and development of healthcare in Qatar and proud to be to be part of the pri-vate sector’s active partnership role towards achieving the developmental

goals of our beloved country Qatar”. Sherif Shehata, General Man-

ager of Aamal Medical Company, added: “The Aamal Medical Exhi-bition seeks to introduce customers to the latest developments in medi-cal equipment, to provide practical

guidance on how to use the equip-ment and how to benefit from it. By keeping up to date with the latest global advancements in medical technology we are able to provide the best and very latest equipment to the local market.”

Medical equipment from leading international medical technology, services and solutions companies from the GCC and the world were on display.

Greece aims to tap bond markets next year: TsiprasReuters

ATHENS: Greece aims to tap bond markets next year, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (pictured) told a Greek newspaper yesterday, after Athens started talks with creditors earlier this week on how to make the coun-try’s debt burden more manageable.

Cut off from global credit markets since 2014, Greece signed up to a third multi-billion euro bailout last July.

Tsipras’s leftist government hopes to conclude a review of its progress on reforms at a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on May 24, a step that would unlock funds in time for upcoming repayments to the

European Union and the Interna-tional Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as state suppliers.

Greece hopes the meeting will also yield progress on measures to ease its debt burden, which is set to reach 182.8 percent of gross domes-tic product (GDP) this year, according to European Commission forecasts.

“We will return to the markets in 2017,” Tsipras said in an interview with Realnews newspaper, part of which was carried on the weekly’s website.

Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said last year a long-term commitment to debt relief from euro zone countries was crucial to restor-ing investor confidence in the country and that Athens could start borrow-ing on the bond market again by the

end of 2016.Treasury bills are for now

Greece’s main source of short-term funding. Tsipras was re-elected in September on promises to mitigate the impact of austerity on Greeks, already weary of five years of spend-ing cuts and tax hikes.

“We might exit the bailout once and for all a lot before the programme expires in August 2018,” Tsipras said.

In another local newspaper inter-view, Deputy Prime Minister Yannis Dragasakis said Athens wanted a debt relief deal that would help the coun-try access debt markets in 2017 and allow for sustainable primary budget surpluses.

“The (Greek) government is seek-ing a solution which will fulfil specific

criteria, among those is the criterion of economic viability,” Dragasakis said in an interview with Naftempo-riki paper. “The arrangement should facilitate Greece’s exit to the debt markets within next year.”

He added that a conclusion of the reform review would lead to the European Central Bank reinstating a waiver for Greek banks, allowing them access to cheaper funding. He said it would also boost fund-ing to the country by allowing to be included in the ECB’s asset-buying programme.

“I estimate that a total of €9bn-12 bn could come into the real economy within 2016, which along with other factors will help economic recovery,” Dragasakis said.

Gulf Air showcases Istanbul to Muscat travel agents

Ineco Almana launches construction productsThe Peninsula

DOHA: Ineco, a division of Almana Trading Co WLL, in association with Stell Logi, Korea, launched some of their latest products in Doha recently. The new products from Ineco Almana are set to establish a new benchmark in the construction field. “Ineco, being a highly safety conscious organisation and a part of Almana Group, always thrives on introducing innovative products and technologies to the construction sec-tor, enhancing operational and user friendly capabilities of end-users,” said Srinivas Vemparala, CEO – Al

Mana Group, at the launch ceremony.Among the innovative products

being introduced by Ineco AlMana are: UL certified pullers, and four wheel drive electric carts.

The UL certified pullers are specially designed to withstand hazardous areas such as oil and gas plants. They are designed to pull up to three tonnes of heavy load, thus making it an affective technology in assisting construction.

The UL certified pullers are easy to operate and are equipped with an electromagnetic brake system. Four wheel drive electric carts have a lifting capacity that reaches up to 600kg. The carts can lift up heavy loads up to 1.1M from ground. Ineco and Stell Logi Korea officials at the product launch.

The Peninsula

MANAMA: Gulf Air, the King-dom of Bahrain’s national carrier, recently gave a number of prom-inent Muscat-based travel agents, tour operators and select media representatives the opportunity to explore the Turkish city of Istanbul with a familiarisation trip jointly hosted by the airline and OUA (Oman United Agency) Holidays.

With the aim of promoting one of the airline’s key network des-tinations, participants had the opportunity to experience Gulf Air’s onboard and on-the-ground offering including its dedicated Gulf Air Falcon Gold Lounge at Bahrain International Airport in addition to participating in tailored tours of Istanbul’s historical and cultural sites.

Gulf Air has had a strong pres-ence in the Sultanate of Oman

since Bahrain’s national carrier was first established in 1950. The airline currently operates 3 daily flights to Muscat and 5 weekly flights to Istan-bul – increasing to a daily Istanbul service as part of Gulf Air’s Summer 2016 Schedule. Boasting one of the largest networks in the Middle East

with double daily flights or more to 10 regional cities, in addition to select destinations in the Indian Subcontinent and Europe, from its hub at Bahrain International Airport Gulf Air is well-positioned to connect travelers from several key destina-tions across its global network.

Muscat-based travel agents in Istanbul.

IMF weighs new loans for Afghan economyAFP

WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund said yesterday that it is considering new financial support for the Afghanistan gov-ernment as the country’s economy continues to stumble.

The IMF lauded the country’s gains under a just-concluded IMF-monitored program to close vulnerabilities with reforms in the government budget proc-ess and in the financial sector. “Despite difficult circumstances, the authorities implemented the program successfully,” the IMF said in a statement.

But given the country’s ongoing domestic conflict and the draw-down of international military forces from the country, it said, “Afghanistan’s economic situa-tion remains very difficult.”

The Washington-based glo-bal lender said that it expects the economy to grow only about two percent this year, barely faster than last year. And that pace is at risk to a further deterioration of security conditions and slowing donor aid. On top of that, it added, the country’s banking system needs more reform to eliminate vulnerabilities.

The IMF said it will be dis-cussing with Kabul authorities this month a new Extended Credit Facility loan the government requested to help it address some of these problems. “The ECF would help tackle some of the challenges and thus assist in improving the conditions for sustainable growth and in catalyzing support from donors,” it said.

A member of the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement (KFEM) protests for a boycott of products made by Oxy Reckitt Benckiser Korea at a supermarket in Seoul. Reckitt Benckiser’s humidifier sterilisers Oxy are blamed for the deaths of more than 100 people from their toxic chemicals. The company has apologised and promised compensation for the victims of the toxic humidifier steriliser.

Toxic product

BUSINESS24 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Reuters

LONDON: A majority of inter-national businesses from seven countries including Germany and China believe a British exit from the European Union would be bad for them and lead to a cut in investment, according to an Ipsos MORI poll.

In all, 78 percent of the 667 com-panies questioned said they believed the impact of a vote to leave the EU in a June 23 referendum would be negative, with only 5 percent think-ing it would be positive for their business. The rest said it would be neither positive nor negative or did not know.

Ipsos MORI said its online poll, carried out between April 19 and May 2, involved businesses belong-ing to the bilateral Chambers of Commerce of Canada, France, Ger-many, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. Asked about the impact of a Brexit on their likely future UK investment, 61 percent said the impact would most likely be negative with 5 percent hav-ing the opposite view and about a

quarter, 27 percent, saying it would most likely have no effect. The rest, 7 percent, were unsure either way.

One in three said the impact would be very negative causing a decrease in investment of more than 10 percent. Meanwhile, Ger-man companies are scaling back their investment in Britain ahead of its June 23 referendum on mem-bership of the European Union, and German industry is becoming increasingly vocal in warning that a Brexit would hit both countries’ economies.

German foreign direct invest-ment to Britain fell by 6 percent on the quarter to €4.4bn ($5bn) in the first three months of this year, Bun-desbank data reviewed by Reuters showed. That followed an already steep annual decline of more than 40 percent in 2015.

“A British exit means uncertainty for German companies doing busi-ness in Britain,” Markus Kerber, managing director of the BDI Fed-eration of German Industries, told Reuters. “Firms are reacting to this, they are delaying or reducing their investment.”

Reflecting the concerns of Ger-man companies and investors ahead of the British referendum, Kerber said a Brexit would lead to severe legal uncertainties for at least the next two years, creating economic risks for both Britain and Germany.

German companies are among the biggest foreign investors in the UK, with 2,500 subsidiaries and some 500,000 British employees in sectors such as financial services, manufac-turing, transport, energy and retail, according to German Industry UK, a private organisation of some 100 chief executives of companies in Britain with a German majority shareholding.

AFP

LONDON: The International Mone-tary Fund has warned that Britain’s potential exit from the European Union posed a “significant down-side risk” to the economy.

IMF boss Christine Lagarde, unveiling the global lender’s latest health check on the British economy just six weeks before Britain votes on whether to remain in the EU, added that Brexit could push the country into recession, echoing comments from Bank of England (BoE) chief Mark Carney.

The latest warning comes as Prime Minister David Cameron campaigns fervently to keep Britain in the 28-nation EU in a referendum on June 23.

Leave supporters, which hit out against Carney for his and the BoE’s stance on Thursday, also criticised the IMF’s intervention.

“IMF has talked down the UK’s

economy before and has been wrong in past forecasts about the UK and other countries,” read a tweet from the official Leave campaign.

Lagarde admitted Friday that sometimes the IMF is wrong.

“We are one of the very few institutions that actually acknowl-edge when we are wrong... but on that particular one which relates to the negative consequences of Leave vote, we have looked very carefully at the whole range of existing opin-ions (and) calculations.”

Opinion polls are showing that the nation is still largely undecided.

Lagarde, speaking at the Treas-ury in central London, told reporters that the IMF’s findings were not polit-ically motivated.

“We’re not doing it out of politics -- this is not the job of the IMF.

“We are doing it because it’s a sig-nificant downside risk, number one. Second, it’s not just a domestic issue... it’s an international issue.

“I don’t think that in the last six months I have visited a country

anywhere in the world where I have not been asked ‘what will be the eco-nomic consequences of Brexit?’.”

The IMF meanwhile forecast the British economy would rebound in the second half of this year if the country stays in the EU.

“Assuming that... the UK voters choose to remain... we will expect growth to rebound,” Lagarde said.

The report was published one day after Carney warned that Brexit could prompt a technical recession, or two straight quarters of economic contraction.

Questioned about Carney’s comments, Lagarde told reporters: “A technical recession is one of the probabilities in the downside sce-nario in case of a Leave vote.”

The IMF added that Brexit would spark fresh markets volatility and a lengthy period of uncertainty.

“A vote for exit would precipitate a protracted period of heightened uncertainty, leading to financial mar-ket volatility and a hit to output,” the report said.

Scandal-hit Volkswagen gives staff €3,950 bonusAFP

BERLIN: German auto giant Volkswagen announced that it is giving its staff a €3,950 bonus for 2015, despite suffering huge losses due to an emissions-cheating scandal which sent shockwaves through the industry.

The pre-tax premium -- less than the €5,900 handed out for 2014 -- comes after VW also revealed huge bonuses for top executives last month, sparking a storm of criticism.

Those bosses’ bonuses gen-erated widespread resentment among employees, especially at a time of salary negotiations.

“Volkswagen staff provided very good work as a team, despite the difficult situation,” said VW human resources chief Karlheinz Blessing in a statement. “Their strong commitment deserved to be recognised,” he added.

After criticism about the bosses’ bonuses the automaker’s supervisory board decided at the end of April to freeze 30 percent of the annual payouts for nine direc-tor-level executives.

The frozen amount will be paid out in three years if the company meets stock market targets.

The executives’ bonuses sparked intense criticism both from the public and politicians, including German Finance Min-ister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

Volkswagen was forced to recall vehicles around the world last year after admitting it had installed so-called “defeat devices” aimed at cheating emissions tests into 11 million diesel engines.

The carmaker unveiled a loss of €1.58bn after setting aside €16.2bn in provisions to cover the potential fines, lawsuits and recall costs it foresees from the scandal.

It was the auto giant’s first loss since 1993.

VW employs 600,000 people globally.

International firms say Brexit would be bad In all, 78% of the 667 companies questioned said they believed the Brexit impact would be negative, with only 5% thinking it would be positive.

IMF warns of risks from BrexitInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde (right) is greeted by British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, ahead of a press conference, at the Treasury Office in central London on Friday.

AFP

CARACAS: Embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro extended by three month emergency powers to shore up the country’s crippled economy, and said that he expects to continue such extensions through 2017.

Speaking in a broadcast address to the nation, Maduro said that he signed a new emergency decree “that will allow us during the months of May, June, July” to “recover the coun-try’s productive capacity.”

He said that the extension will be done “constitutionally” and will last “for the year 2016 and likely

during the year 2017.” Maduro reg-ularly blames US and local business interests for what his administration sees as a conspiracy against Vene-zuela amid low oil prices.

Washington has had an acrimo-nious relationship with Caracas for years, especially following US sup-port for a short-lived 2002 coup against late leader Hugo Chavez.

Venezuela has the biggest known oil reserves in the world but has suffered from the plunge in world oil prices since mid-2014. Cara-cas depends overwhelmingly on oil revenue.

Maduro first issued a 60-day decree for emergency powers on Jan-uary 14, a measure that was extended in March.

The decree authorizes the pres-ident to take over private business assets in order to guarantee the sup-ply of basic household products to the public.

Maduro’s political opposition says this opens the door to new expropriations.

Henry Ramos, the head of Venezuela’s opposition-control-led legislature, said on Wednesday that Maduro “does not have the constitutional authority to extend the decree beyond the first exten-sion,” which he says was “already unconstitutional.”

To enter into effect the National Assembly would have to approve the measure, which it strongly opposes.

Change in shipping laws draws oil firms to Canada’s east coastBloomberg

TORONTO: A change to an obscure shipping law is helping draw major oil companies to an area off Canada’s east coast that may rival the North Sea for its production potential.

Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Statoil, BG Group and BP are among the compa-nies that committed to spend C$1.2bn ($934m) in auctions last November by the province of Newfoundland and Labrador for seven parcels off the coast. Now the government is add-ing 13 new parcels in an auction set for this November, as the removal of a decades-old shipping restric-tion opened the area to more vessels seeking oil and natural gas.

In the past, the sole domestic seismic ship used to locate potential oil deposits was operated by a Cana-dian company, Geophysical Services Inc., or GSI. That’s because the nation’s maritime law gave domes-tic businesses the ability to block the use of foreign-owned vessels.

That barrier was removed in 2012, and since then a small squadron of ships has been col-lecting offshore data on more than 82,000 square kilometers (32,000 square miles) in partnership with the regional government. That data, available to companies in the next auction, more than doubles the area for exploration. Last year, five ships were collecting data off the prov-ince’s coast.

“What we are seeing here is sim-ilar to North Sea Norway in terms of its potential,” said Ed Martin, the former chief executive officer of Nalcor Energy, the province’s oil company, who spearheaded efforts to open new offshore areas and cited Norway as a model.

The exploration blocks awarded last year may hold as much as 12 billion barrels of oil, several times

bigger than the province’s biggest field Hibernia, according to Nalcor. The 13 new parcels to be auctioned are in the Eastern Newfoundland and Jeanne d’Arc areas. The province is expected to offer as much as 2 per-cent more area annually thereafter.

Norway, pumping about nine times more offshore crude than New-foundland and Labrador, has drilled eight times as many exploratory wells off its coast, according to Nalcor data. Oil has helped make the Nordic coun-try Europe’s second richest per capita behind Luxembourg, according to World Bank data.

That promise is spurring Cana-da’s energy hopes even after prices cratered. Crude’s drop from more than $100 a barrel in 2014 to below $30 earlier this year hit the provin-cial economy hard. Offshore royalties account for just 9 percent of revenue in the Newfoundland Labrador 2016-2017 budget, down from 37 percent two years ago.

While results from the first auc-tion show promise, the price of oil remains low at around $45 and drill-ers have trimmed their budgets.

“It’s not an ideal macro situa-tion for Newfoundland expansion,” said Mark Oberstoetter, lead ana-lyst for upstream research at Wood Mackenzie in Calgary. “We are see-ing exploration spending activity cut around the world.” BP and Chevron declined to comment on their inter-est in the area. Statoil, Exxon and BG’s owner Royal Dutch Shell didn’t immediately respond to emails or phone calls seeking comment.

Similar to the US Jones Act, that old shipping law, known as the Coast-ing Trade Act, was written to protect Canadian-flagged vessels from for-eign competitors in domestic waters. Included in its remit were seismic vessels, even though only one was registered in Canada before 2011, according to PennEnergy Research, which tracks ships. That vessel

belonged to GSI.Under the law, companies that

wanted to use a foreign vessel for testing would have to apply for a license. Canadian-based firms could object, often blocking approval. That occurred six times between 2000 and 2006, with GSI the blocking company, according to Wes Foote, Newfoundland’s assistant deputy minister for petroleum development.

In 2011, Nalcor partnered with Asker, Norway-based TGS Nopec Geo-physical Co and Oslo-based Petroleum Geo-Services to invest in a multi-cli-ent 2D seismic survey of the province’s waters. The plan was hindered by the Coasting Trade Act, spurring the gov-ernment to change the law’s wording on seismic vessels. Not everyone is happy with the changes. Paul Einars-son, GSI’s chairman, said amending the act wasn’t fair because it targeted “our ship only.”

More 2D seismic data was col-lected in 2014 than any year since the early 1980s, according to the Can-ada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board.

Just 5 percent of Newfoundland and Labrador’s offshore waters are currently licensed to companies. The province’s total offshore area is bigger than Norway’s section of the North Sea, according to Nalcor.

Energy producers now operate three platforms: Hibernia, Terra Nova and White Rose. Combined, they had output of about 70 million barrels last year, almost half what was pro-duced when output peaked in 2007, provincial data show. The 150,000 barrel-a-day, Exxon-led Hebron project is scheduled to start produc-tion next year.

“What we see really is almost like a renaissance in Newfound-land and Labrador,” Robert Cadigan, chief executive officer of the New-foundland and Labrador Offshore Industries Association, a trade association.

Maduro extends economic measures

A man carries his luggage past a mural in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia’s economy expanded in the first quarter at its slowest rate since the global financial crisis, data showed, as the energy-exporting country grapples with falling oil prices and weak overseas demand.

Malaysian economy slows

BUSINESS 25SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Reuters

DUBLIN: Finance ministers from the world’s largest developed economies met in Germany a year ago against a backdrop of faltering global growth, scant inflationary pressures and the latest chapter in the Greek debt crisis.

When they and their G7 cen-tral bank colleagues convene again in Japan next Friday the first two items remain just as problematic and potentially even trickier than a year ago. Only unusually smooth talks between Athens and its lenders may keep Greece off the agenda this time around.

The hosts’ monetary and fiscal policy trajectory appears obvious: the Bank of Japan is coming under

increasing pressure to counter a dam-aging rise in the value of the yen that could derail a fragile recovery for the world’s third-largest economy.

Talk of more action gathered pace after an academic seen to be close to Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the BOJ is likely to expand monetary stimulus either in June or July. The gov-ernment has also said Tokyo is ready to intervene in currency markets.

Whether explicitly on the agenda or not, such interventions are certain to be brought up by counterparts from France, Italy, Germany, Britain, Can-ada and the US either side of a planned field trip to see how the northeastern Japanese city of Sendai has recovered from the devastating 2011 earthquake.

First-quarter economic growth data on Wednesday should also add to the backdrop with quarterly gross

domestic product (GDP) forecast to have expanded by just 0.1 percent, according to a Reuters poll.

“The Bank of Japan has been heavily criticised for its decision not to take further economic stimu-lus measures at its meeting in April,” said Commerzbank economist Bernd Weidensteiner. “Because of its refusal to bow to the market expectations of ‘more and more’, the central bank cur-rently faces a tough task to convince the markets of its policy actions.”

Things are not so straightfor-ward for the US Federal Reserve, which is caught in a bind over when to push interest rates higher amid concerns about the health of the labour market at home and fears about the knock-on effects its actions will have abroad.

There was fresh hesitation among

economists ahead of the release next week of the minutes from the April 26/27 Fed meeting when the cen-tral bank’s rate-setting committee acknowledged that economic growth seemed to have slowed.

The Fed will likely wait until Sep-tember before raising rates again, a Reuters poll found this week, stretch-ing to nine months the time since its first hike in nearly a decade as it waits for clear signs inflation is picking up.

April’s US inflation figures arrive on Tuesday, a day before the euro zone give an update on its battle to register any kind of price growth and the same day Britain releases its con-sumer price data for last month.

British price growth is expected to have slowed after a pick up in March while jobless numbers on Wednesday may also show a dip in hiring in the

first quarter as employers turn cau-tious ahead of June’s Brexit vote. Retail sales are due on Thursday.

Latest polling on the EU member-ship referendum will be just as closely watched to see if the Bank of Eng-land’s warning that a Brexit would slow the economy sharply, and could even push it into recession, has had any impact on voters.

“Signs of a slowing economy and uncertainty around Britain’s EU ref-erendum appear to have resulted in a shift in emphasis from perma-nent to temporary hiring among UK employers,” Markit economist Oliver Kolodseike said. “The labour market may therefore be set to cool further in coming months.” The other big Q1 GDP releases come from Russia and Mexico while interest rate decisions include South Africa.

Same old problems for G7 finance ministers this week

Reuters

BERLIN: Germany’s economy more than doubled its expansion rate in the first quarter as spending picked up, cementing its role as the growth engine for a region in which the effects of high-powered monetary stimulus appear to be gaining trac-tion.

The euro zone’s dominant econ-omy grew 0.7 percent, its strongest quarterly rate since an identical read-ing in the first quarter of 2014 as higher state and household expend-iture more than offset a dip in foreign trade, the Federal Statistics Office said yesterday.

The figure beat forecasts as well as a preliminary growth rate of 0.5 percent in the currency bloc as a whole announced by European sta-tistics agency Eurostat in Brussels.

Separate national GDP data pub-lished on Friday showed quarterly growth accelerated to 0.3 percent in Italy and to 0.5 percent in the Netherlands.

For the German economy, private consumption has overtaken trade as the most important growth driver, with record-low unemployment, low interest rates and higher wages

pushing households to spend more.Also yesterday, Germany’s big-

gest trade union, IG Metall, said it agreed a two-stage wage increase of 4.8 percent over 21 months, which analysts said should further boost consumption.

Investment in construction and capital goods rose, the statistics office said, boosted by relatively mild win-ter weather that had a similar impact in some other euro zone countries, while Europe’s migrant crisis also played a role.

“It is likely that higher public expenditure contributed to growth in a number of countries, in some cases lifted by spending to deal with the influx of refugees (which was true of Germany),” Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS, said of the Eurostat data.

Policymakers at the European Central Bank said the investment jump was unlikely to be a blip, sup-porting the bloc’s slow but steady recovery which the bank has under-pinned with its stimulus programme.

Buying 1.7 trillion euros ($1.93 trn) worth of assets and cutting rates deep into negative territory, the ECB has pushed down borrowing costs for governments, businesses and house-holds, hoping to kick-start spending to generate growth.

Though the ECB’s ultra-loose monetary policy has been criticized by German politicians, economists linked it to the rise in consumption as well as a booming real estate sector.

Germany’s quarterly growth rate easily beat the 0.3 percent posted in the final three months of 2015, and was also higher than all but four of the euro zone states for which Euro-stat published quarterly figures.

But the unadjusted year-on-year

figure of 1.3 percent missed the Reu-ters consensus forecast of 1.5 percent, and the economy ministry in Berlin said it expected German growth to slow. That view was shared by econo-mists, who said the impact of weaker exports - a trend fuelled by a stronger euro currency - would eventually be felt as demand from emerging mar-kets ebbs.

“Trade remains the problem child because of weakness in emerging markets,” said Sal. Oppenheim econ-omist Ulrike Kastens.

Holger Sandte of Nordea added: “Growth will not remain so strong, but strong enough so employment continues to rise.”

Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the government should increase investments, echoing calls by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“The German economy started 2016 on a good footing: industry posted an increase in production, employment is noticeably rising, and higher income of private households is leading to higher private spending,” Gabriel said.

“Our task is to use this momen-tum to invest in education, modern infrastructure and innovation.”

But ING economist Carsten Brze-ski said the strong data might provide more ammunition for German poli-ticians to resist calls by the IMF and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to reform the economy.

The IMF has urged Germany to boost investment, and reform its labour market and pension system, while the OECD has also called for tax reductions.

“The strong growth performance also shows what currently is the big-gest risk for the German economy: complacency,” Brzeski said.

AFP

TOKYO: Honda Motor said its full-year net profit dropped by a third, pressured by the exploding airbag crisis at key supplier Takata that has led to a worldwide recall.

Tokyo-based Honda is the biggest buyer of airbags from Takata, which is struggling to overcome a defect that has been linked to the deaths of 13 people and has led to the global recall of tens of millions of inflators.

Honda said net profit came to 344.5bn yen ($3.2bn) for the fiscal year to March, down 32.4 percent year on year. Operating profit dropped 24.9 percent to 503.4 billion yen, while annual sales rose 9.6 per-cent to 14.6 trillion yen, Honda said.

The company mainly attributed the profit declines to “quality-related

costs” linked to the airbag crisis at Takata. US auto safety regulators last week ordered Takata to recall between 35 million and 40 million airbags installed in US cars, in a push for the replacement of dangerously explosive inflators.

The decision came after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that the inflators are prone to ruptures, adding to nearly 29 million Takata airbags already recalled in the US.

Takata said that in the business year to March it logged a net loss of 13.08bn yen. The company said it posted a special loss linked to the airbag problem, including a penalty levied in the United States.

Local media said Honda would recall an additional 20 million Takata-made airbags globally but a Honda spokesman denied the reports. “We had assessed that Honda

had been turning the corner of the negative impact of the airbag acci-dents but it appears to be lingering,” said Shigeru Matsumura, analyst at SMBC Friend Research Center.

Honda also said its expects net profit in the current fiscal year to rise 13.2 percent to 390bn yen but sales are forecast to fall 5.8 percent to 13.8 trillion yen. Rival Toyota warned this week that its net profit for the cur-rent year to March 2017 will fall by about a third as a stronger yen and a slowdown in Chinese growth and other emerging markets dent its bot-tom line.

Nissan, which on Thursday announced it was taking a 34 percent stake in troubled Mitsubishi Motors, said its net profit would remain vir-tually unchanged for the current year but forecast a 10.5 percent fall in operating profit because of the stronger yen.

Honda profit drops by a third

Germany powers eurozone as growth doubles in Q1

China April coal output down 11% on yearReuters

BEIJING: China produced 268 mil-lion tonnes of coal in April, down 11 percent on the year, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday, with producers cutting back in a concerted effort to shore up prices.

China’s coal sector has been struggling with a massive capacity glut and miners have been encour-aged to cut production to shore up domestic prices, which plummeted around 30 percent last year. The country has promised to shed 500 million tonnes of surplus capacity in the next five years.

Coal output over the first four months reached 1.081 billion tonnes, down 6.8 percent from the same period last year, with full-year production on course to see its third consecutive annual decline.

Though coal consumption nor-mally rises in the second quarter, with supplies traditionally under intense pressure as power plants boost their reserves ahead of the summer peak, analysts do not foresee any jump in prices, partic-ularly as high hydropower volumes reduce the need for coal-fired generation.

“Entering May, the weather has been fine, residential power use has stayed weak and power plants are undergoing routine maintenance, and also we have the heavy rainfall in the south that has boosted hydropower,” said Chen Jie, an analyst with the China Coal Trade and Distribution Centre, in a research note.

Thermal power generation hit 328 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in April, down 5.9 percent on the year, though a 10 percent jump in hydropower generation during the month meant overall volumes fell by just 1.7 percent to 444.4 billion kWh.

Crude steel production hit 69.42 million tonnes, down from a record-high in March but 0.5 per-cent higher than the same period of last year, with mills still keep-ing output high in order to profit from higher prices.

For the German economy, private consumption has overtaken trade as the most important growth driver.

Schoolchildren gather at the Honda’s headquarters showroom in Tokyo.

Moody’s cuts Poland outlook to negative AFP

WARSAW: Global ratings agency Moody’s yesterday cut Poland’s out-look from stable to negative over “fiscal risks” posed by its right-wing government, but left its investment grade unchanged.

Moody’s change in Poland’s outlook was the first in over a decade and comes after a deeper ratings cut in January by Stand-ard and Poor’s, which blamed the government led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party for “weakening institutions.”

Moody’s however said it would keep Poland’s foreign debt grade at A2, reflecting “the country’s eco-nomic resilience.”

“Poland has a large, diversified economy that has shown robust real GDP growth in recent years, despite being exposed to significant external headwinds at the time of the global financial and euro area debt crises,” a statement said.

Poland’s finance ministry wel-comed the unchanged rating following market speculation about another downgrade.

The “rating is one notch higher than Fitch’s rating and two notches higher than S&P’s rating from Janu-ary this year,” a ministry statement said.

Finance Minister Pawel Sza-lamacha said later Saturday he expected Poland’s battered zloty currency to “strengthen” on the Moody’s assessment.

The New York-based ratings agency said its outlook cut was triggered by “the fiscal risks aris-ing from a substantial increase in current expenditures” and the “risk of impairments to the invest-ment climate from a shift towards more unpredictable policies and legislation.”

Elected in October on a popu-list spending platform, the PiS has introduced a generous child-bene-fit subsidy, promises tax breaks for low income earners and is intent on reverting to a lower pension age.

BUSINESS26 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Reuters

NEW YORK: The US Federal Reserve will likely wait until September before raising interest rates again, stretching to nine months the time since its first hike in nearly a decade, as it waits for clear signs inflation is picking up,

a Reuters poll found.This is the second time this year

that economists have delayed their rate-hike expectations, casting doubt on the likelihood the Fed will be able to deliver two rate hikes this year as the US Presidential election in November could make further pol-icy changes sensitive.

Almost a third of more than 90 economists in the poll still expect the Fed will raise its federal funds rate to 0.50-0.75 percent in June, suggest-ing the less than 8 percent chance markets have assigned to that may be too low.

But many others have backed off calling for a June hike, a view which has held for the past three months even as rate futures have swung wildly, following a slowdown in April hiring and a widely expected poor

showing on first-quarter growth.“It is not that a June rate hike is

off the table entirely, but again, we would need to see some fairly strong data between now and the June FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) meeting,” said Sam Bullard, senior economist at Wells Fargo.

The US central bank is now expected to push the fed funds tar-get rate up to a range of 0.50 percent - 0.75 percent in the third quarter and to 0.75 - 1.00 percent by year-end, from 0.25 - 0.50 percent now, according to median forecasts in the poll.

Economists gave a 60 percent probability the Fed will pull the trig-ger by end-September, while for end-July, they penciled in a 40 per-cent chance.

The new hesitation among

economists comes despite com-ments by Fed officials in recent days that suggested the economy is pro-gressing as they expect and giving no reason to doubt the likelihood of a rate hike soon.

Fed will need to hike if sec-ond-quarter data points to stronger economy: Fed’s Rosengren

New York Fed President William Dudley said of the April jobs report: “It’s a touch softer, maybe, than what people were expecting, but I wouldn’t put a lot of weight on it in terms of how it would affect my economic outlook.”

The Fed’s policy statement in April was also slightly less dovish than pre-vious ones, removing concerns about the global economy that had held it back previously.

Since the last time the FOMC

raised rates in December, its view has changed considerably. At the time, committee members expected around four rate rises this year, but now they expect two.

Apart from a robust US dollar which has since moderated amid the Fed’s own hesitation, the main reason the Fed has been reluctant to proceed stems from a lack of convincing evi-dence of rising inflationary pressure, not worries over the job market.

“This is a Fed that is willing to be modestly behind the curve,” wrote Michael Hanson, global and US econo-mist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

“This approach amounts to the Fed taking an opportunistic reflation approach and allowing the inflation rate to overshoot its target after run-ning below for several years.”

In March, the Fed’s preferred core

PCE measure of inflation cooled to 1.6 percent compared with a year ago from 1.7 percent in February and is unlikely to be anywhere close to the Fed’s 2 percent target any time soon.

Indeed, forecasts are for core PCE price index to average 1.7 percent this year, 1.8 percent in 2017, and 1.9 per-cent in 2018. The US economy needs to expand at an annualized quar-terly pace of 2.4 percent to produce the kind of inflation that justifies reg-ular policy tightening, according to economists in the poll.

But that looks like a tall order.Economic growth slowed to just

0.5 percent on an annualized basis in the first quarter of the year. The economy is forecast to grow 1.8 per-cent this year, down from 2.0 percent expected in last month’s poll, with 2.3 percent growth seen next year.

Reuters

TOKYO: Japan’s three leading auto-makers expect a stronger yen will cost them around $14 billion in lost operating profit this year alone - just as they need to invest more in every-thing from cleaner fuel to driver-less cars.

After three years of supernormal profits on the back of a weaker cur-rency, Toyota Motor, Nissan Motor and Honda Motor now face a reality check as the yen has turned around.

While the recent years’ currency boon has filled automakers’ coffers - Toyota alone has around $10 bil-lion in cash - a squeeze on margins will put them under pressure to focus their investments, analysts say.

“How to respond to yen rises while securing profits and continu-ing future investments: this balance is important,” Toyota Executive Vice President Takahiko Ijichi said this week.

The US dollar climbed roughly 60 percent against the yen between late-2011 and mid-2015, a huge windfall for Japan’s car makers, but so far this year it is down roughly 9 percent against the Japanese currency.

Toyota, the world’s largest auto-maker, has forecast a 40 percent drop in operating profits this year because of the stronger yen - a 935 billion yen ($8.6 billion) hit for a company that exported nearly half its Japanese production last year. Honda forecast a 303 billion yen hit to its operating profit, while Nissan expects a “massive impact” of 255 billion yen on its operating profit.

Even automakers that have invested more in local production outside Japan expect some currency pain. Suzuki Motor Corp, which through its Maruti Suzuki venture has almost 50 percent market share in India, expects annual net profit to fall by a fifth.

This is all money that could be invested in cleaner alternative propulsion systems, technology to link cars to data services and the

development of autonomous driving.In the United States, for exam-

ple, General Motors has invested $500 million in ride-sharing serv-ice Lyft to develop an on-demand network of autonomous vehicles. It also bought Cruise Automation, a San Francisco start-up focused on developing driver-less cars.

Toyota has said it would set up a research and development company to focus on artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley, in a departure from its cautious stance on automated driving.

Japan’s ‘big three’ automakers are, however, verging on the con-servative with their assumed yen rate of 105 to the dollar, which is more downbeat than a Reuters poll of foreign exchange analysts, which forecast the yen easing to 115 per dollar by next April.

And that is already having an impact.

Toyota forecast its smallest rise - just over 2 percent - in R&D spend-ing in four years, to 1.1 trillion yen in 2017.

“We’re seeing a double whammy of yen strength combined with Japan Inc’s tendency to give very conserv-ative guidance,” said Stefan Worrall, director of Japan equity sales at Credit Suisse.

“So you have to acknowledge some uncertainty over how much capex will actually be impacted by the stronger yen because we’re unsure just how much exaggera-tion we’re seeing in dim earnings forecasts.”

Nissan, whose development capacities may be boosted by a proposed tie-up with Mitsubishi Motors, has ramped up production of its Rogue crossover SUV in Japan, a model that has been selling well in the United States. That made sense when the yen was weak, less so now.

But capacity constraints mean Nissan has little hope of altering its plans to increase Japan production.

“We’re not using it as a strategy, we’re using it as an opportunity. We have capacity available in Japan and no capacity available in North Amer-ica,” said CEO Carlos Ghosn.

Bloomberg

CHICAGO: Baoshan Iron & Steel Co., China’s second-largest steelmaker, urged a US trade agency to reject a complaint filed by US Steel Corp. to block imports from the Asian nation.

“Never before has a single com-pany sought to use this agency to erect what would be a total blockade of steel trade from an entire country,” Baos-teel’s American unit said in a May 11 filing with the US International Trade Commission in Washington.

Baosteel’s submission was one of more than a dozen filed either in favor or against US Steel’s complaint. The complaint pits steel makers against some US packaging companies who say they can’t get the products they need from domestic suppliers.

The American company filed the complaint on April 26, claiming that Chinese steel products are being made using stolen technology obtained by government hackers, and accusing the Chinese companies of anti-competitive pricing and sending shipments through intermediaries to skirt U.S. restrictions.

Baosteel said that those types of allegations, even if true, should be addressed between trade officials of the two countries, not through a process that’s usually used for

patent-infringement cases. It said a victory for US Steel “would have pro-found and long-lasting adverse effects” on economic relations between the US and China.

Hunan Valin Steel Co., another Chinese manufacturer named in the case, said US Steel’s actions are “not a campaign against individual private entities but a campaign against the Chinese government itself.”

Some of Baosteel’s customers and distributors, including Ball Metal Food Container, Coastal Pipe USA, and the Allstate Can Corp., also asked the ITC not to institute an investigation of the complaint.

“If new products developed by Baosteel are blocked for importation into the United States, it will cause harm to our economy and to the pub-lic health and safety of the public, as these products are not being developed by the domestic tin plate producers,” Allstate Can wrote.

US Steel’s complaint has the back-ing of other US steel producers and the industry’s workers. The largest U.S. steelworkers’ union said mem-bership is in decline and more than 13,500 members are on layoff.

“The future viability of the domes-tic steel producing sector is at risk because of continuing unfair and predatory practices such as those alleged in the complaint,” the United

Steelworkers wrote to the agency.The case filed by US Steel focuses

on advanced high-strength mate-rial used in the automotive industry, which requires light, flexible steel that’s corrosion resistant and “able to take a flawless paint finish.”

US Steel said it plans to expand into the markets for agriculture and heavy machinery, and has spent millions of dollars in research over a decade, according to the complaint.

Some of the companies that buy Chinese steel say they do so because their needs aren’t met by US producers. Allstate, which makes products such as decorative cookie tins, said that neither US Steel nor ArcelorMittal wanted to work with such a small customer, and Bway Corp., which makes containers such as paint cans, said US manufac-turing is concentrated among a few companies with “no known plans to increase investment to improve per-formance or innovate” in tin mill products.

The American Iron and Steel Insti-tute countered that the domestic steel industry has “substantial available unused capacity” to meet the needs of companies now buying from China.

An import ban on the Chinese steel would allow domestic producers “to increase production and employ-ment in the steel industry in the United States.

Demand muted as

rally keeps gold

buyers at bay

Reuters

MUMBAI/BENGALURU: Gold demand in Asia was muted this week as physical buyers stayed off the market due to the bullion’s recent rally, with a key festival in India failing to lift demand in the world’s second biggest consumer.

Gold has gained about 20 per-cent this year, touching a 15-month high earlier in May.

Though prices slipped from those highs this week, consum-ers shied away from making big purchases, and premiums in key markets remained low.

Indians bought a third less gold than last year during the annual Hindu and Jain holy festival of Akshaya Tritiya this week, when it is considered auspicious to buy gold.

“This week’s demand was better than last week as consum-ers were making purchases for Akshaya Tritiya.

Year-on-year basis demand was much lower during the festival due to higher prices,” said Aditya Pethe, a director at Waman Hari Pethe Jewellers.

Demand in India was also hurt by droughts that have hit the earnings of millions of farmers. Rural demand accounts for about two-thirds of India’s total gold consumption.

Dealers were offering dis-counts of up to $15 an ounce to the global spot benchmark this week, up from a discount of up to $12 in the previous week.

“Jewellers have slowed down purchases. Retail demand is not picking momentum despite various promotional schemes launched by them,” said a Mumbai-based bul-lion dealer with a private bank.

India’s gold demand in the first quarter slumped 39 per-cent from a year ago due to a rally in gold prices, jewellers’ strike and as consumers had delayed purchases hoping a cut in India’s 10 percent import duty on gold in the national budget, the World Gold Coun-cil said earlier this week.

Physical demand in other major trading centres also remained tepid.

Premiums in Singapore were quoted at 60-80 cents an ounce, lower than the usual of $1-$1.20, while those in Hong Kong ranged from 10 to 60 cents. Prices in Tokyo were at a discount of $1 to $2 an ounce.

“Physical demand is not excep-tional at the moment,” said Brian Lan, managing director at Singa-pore-based gold dealer GoldSilver Central.

“The refineries in the region are having a lot of gold scrap.

They are buying more than they are selling. That is the rea-son why there are lower premiums over here,” Lan said.

In top consumer China, premi-ums ranged between $1 and $1.50, largely unchanged from last week.

Traders said a sub-$1,250 price level will be required to bring buyers back into the mar-ket. Prices are currently trading near $1,270 an ounce.

Reuters

SINGAPORE: Asia’s refined prod-uct markets are being swamped by a wave of petrol as a long-lasting crude oil glut spills into the one fuel market refiners had hoped would save them, ruining margins and dragging down share prices across the region.

Singapore’s benchmark gaso-line margins - long the bright spot for Asia’s oil processors amid rock-bottom profits earned on diesel, jet and shipping fuel - have more than halved since the beginning of 2016, when they were near at least a seven-year high for first-quarter values.

With gasoline’s slump, overall refining margins in Singapore have dropped nearly 60 percent since

the beginning of the year, buckling under the weight of the fuel products pumped out of oil plants as refiners feasted on crude prices that were as low as three-quarters of their mid-2014 levels.

Besides dragging down crude refiners’ share prices, this drop in margins could also undercut glo-bal oil prices that have struggled up from 12-year lows hit early this year, and refiners say the situation will not improve anytime soon.

“We don’t expect 2016 refin-ing margins to improve. In fact, the situation could worsen from second-half of 2016 as the peak maintenance season in Asia will be over,” said KY Lin, spokesman for Formosa Petro-chemical Corp, meaning that more fuel would hit the market once shut-down refineries restart.

In a sign of just how bloated the market has become, Singapore’s light distillate stocks, which includes gaso-line, hit nearly 16 million barrels late last month, the highest on record, according to government figures. The stocks have dropped back since, but there’s still enough gasoline in the tanks to fill up almost 50 million aver-age-sized vehicles.

Lin said some of the main contrib-utors to the gasoline glut have been private Chinese refiners, known as “teapots”, that have started exporting their surplus petrol, overwhelming demand. The collapsing margins are a sharp reversal from expectations of a few months ago. Just in February South Korea’s SK Innovation, a major Asian refiner, said its margins would remain strong as demand for gasoline and naphtha offset weaker markets

for other fuels.Formosa Petrochemical operates

a 540,000 barrels per day (bpd) refin-ery in Mailiao, Taiwan, the island’s largest and one of the 10 biggest in Asia. Formosa produces about 3 mil-lion barrels of gasoline a month, over half of which it usually exports.

The impact of tumbling refining profits has been reflected in the stock markets. The market capitalization of SK Innovation has fallen by half a bil-lion dollars in the last three weeks to 14.6 trillion won ($12.5 billion) as its share prices dropped by 15 percent.

The trend has been similar for Formosa Petrochemical and oth-ers - such as Japan’s major refiners JX Holdings, TonenGeneral, Cosmo Energy and Idemitsu Kosan - with shares down between 5-10 percent so far in May.

The slumping processing prof-its are fallout from a crude glut that emerged in 2014 as exporters around the world raced to ramp up output in a fight for Asian market share.

With daily output last year even-tually exceeding demand by as much as 2 million bpd, crude prices fell by around 75 percent between mid-2014 and early 2016.

This was a signal for refiners to ramp up operating rates across Asia to profit from still strong demand for fuel, especially from China and India.

“That caused global oversup-ply and refining margins to tumble as demand couldn’t (keep) sup-porting the increasing supply,” said Kim Woo-kyung, an SK Innova-tion spokeswoman, adding that her company now had high volumes of unsold fuel.

Fed to delay rate hike on tame inflation outlook

Massive yen headwind

hits Japanese carmakers

as research needs grow

Refiners struggle to stay afloat as Asia drowns in petrol

Chinese steel producer challenges US trade complaint

An employee walks past columns of steel at a steel production factory in Wuhan, Hubei province in China.

This is the second time this year that economists have delayed their rate-hike expectations.

BUSINESS VIEWS 27SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

For Deutsche Bank’s Cryan, profit can waitBy Arno Schuetze, Edward Taylor and John O’Donnell

Reuters

Almost one year into his tenure as Deutsche Bank’s chief executive, John Cryan says he has ushered in a new culture of openness, rooted

out bad behavior and set about untangling the bank’s technology.

Profit, says the 55-year-old Briton, can wait.

“If we had wanted to be profitable this year, then it’s a done deal. We can stop invest-ing in IT. We can put off litigation,” he said, in reference to lawsuits against the bank.

Cryan, earlier at Switzerland’s UBS, has been tasked with cleaning up a business which in three years declined from a potent force on Wall Street to posting a record loss in 2015. It’s share price has fallen 35 percent so far this year.

While its neighbor on New York’s Park Avenue, JP Morgan, made a record profit of more than $24 billion last year, Deutsche lodged a loss of $7.7 billion.

One of the main reasons for Deutsche’s woes is a litigation bill since 2012 that has already hit 12.6 billion euros.

Claims filed by individuals, companies and regulators against Deutsche, outlined in the bank’s 2015 annual report, relate to misselling of subprime loans and manipu-lation of foreign exchange rates or gold and silver prices.

Other law suits are for the rigging of bor-rowing benchmarks Libor and Euribor, used to set the price of mortgages and derivatives. Deutsche paid more than $3 billion in fines after regulators’ probes into manipulation of such interbank rates.

Cryan has said he hopes to put many of the bank’s legal issues behind it this year.

But his clean-up has exposed weaknesses that he believes need to be dealt with before the bank rebuilds its bottom line.

Deutsche, for example, had a messy and outdated computer system that used 4,400 different software applications — since pared back to 3,900 by getting rid of duplicates.

“We could kick the can down the road but won’t do it,” Cryan said in conversation at Deutsche’s offices in Frankfurt.

He faces a difficult challenge. Interviews

with one dozen present and former Deutsche staff and managers describe an organization still dominated by fiefdoms and bureaucracy.

The European Central Bank, which supervises Deutsche, is concerned about such fiefdoms as well as the group’s finan-cial prospects and is urging an acceleration of Cryan’s clean-up, according to one person with knowledge of the matter.

The ECB declined to comment, while Deutsche rejects any doubts over its finan-cial health, which Cryan described as “rock solid” in an email to staff in February.

Some investors are alarmed by the bank’s falling returns.

Lenders now believe Deutsche’s subordi-nated debt is riskier than almost all European rivals.

“The big question is ... how deep is the collapse in income,” said Helmut Hipper of Union Investment, a shareholder.

Cryan guided UBS through the debt crisis as finance chief. Unlike UBS, however, which shifted its focus from investment banking to private banking, Deutsche has no such alter-native to fall back on.

Some of the bank’s employees criti-cized Deutsche for being bureaucratic and

disjointed. They traced some problems back to Deutsche’s drive to take on Wall Street in the 2000s.

Managers had created their own fiefdoms, one senior trader said, adding that Cryan was limited in what he could do because the inefficiencies were profound. Ross Taylor, a managing director at the bank between 1999 and 2004, said Deutsche was characterized by rivalries during his time there.

“If you came up with ideas that made money, it was passed on ... and you ended up competing with people five meters from you for the same trades,” he said.

Cryan, through his changes, wants to address such complaints. He is engaging with customers and staff. When he spoke with Reuters he was just returned from a trip to Singapore, China and California. He meets at least one client every day and on some, more than a dozen.

He is scaling back risk-taking, reducing Deutsche’s outstanding derivative positions from 52 trillion euros to less than 42 trillion.

But the bank’s global markets division, its biggest revenue generator, is still trying to find its feet in a world where traders have shifted to dealing in low margin products.

By Aditi Shah and Norihiko

Shirouzu

Reuters

Despite years of trying, Asia’s fast-growing emerging markets have proved elusive for

Japan’s Nissan Motor Co (7201.T), one reason behind its $2.2 billion move this week to take control of scandal-hit Mitsubishi Motors Corp (7211.T).

Nissan has invested aggres-sively in countries including Indonesia, deploying targeted models and beefing up distribu-tion in Southeast Asia’s largest car market. After three decades, in 2012, it revived low-cost brand Datsun.

But its market share in Indo-nesia is just 2.5 percent, compared with smaller rival Mitsubishi’s 11 percent, in part because of a dis-tribution network that analysts say is still insufficiently broad.

Turbo-charging its business there and in other growing econ-omies in the region is one clear motivation for Nissan, which is pressing ahead with a plan to take a 34 percent stake in Mitsubishi Motors, even as the group tries to recover from damaging rev-elations over misleading fuel economy data.

“In ASEAN, (Mitsubishi) makes more than 7 percent operat-ing margins. In 2015, we had a negative margin,” Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn told ana-lysts after the Mitsubishi deal was announced. A negative gross profit margin means Nissan is losing money on each sale.

“Their position of strength is our position of weakness. In ASEAN, they can support us a lot,” he said.

Boosting their presence in emerging markets is critical for global automakers, but even more so for Nissan, overpowered by Toyota (7203.T) and its sister brand Daihatsu in Indonesia and by Suzuki in India, for example, where Suzuki accounts for one in every two cars sold.

Mitsubishi, meanwhile, has a more established name in South-east Asia, where it has a long history producing and market-ing trucks.

Sharing manufacturing plants, suppliers and dealers will help bring down costs in those price-sensitive emerging automotive markets for both Nissan and Mitsubishi.

But the clincher for Nissan, analysts say, is Mitsubishi’s port-folio that is dominated by SUVs, increasingly popular with the region’s growing middle classes, as well as small cars favored in emerging economies.

“Overall Mitsubishi is into core

segments which actually have mass market and a lot of potential is still there,” said Puneet Gupta, associate director at consultant IHS Automotive.

“With Mitsubishi, Nissan will have a better foothold even in terms of small cars,” he said.

In Indonesia, a significant fac-tor in Mitsubishi’s popularity is its network of suppliers for parts and components, ensuring good availability by keeping parts sim-ple, and sticking to basic models.

“Our customers benefit from vast availability of spare parts, many of which are non-maker-certified, generic components,” Mitsubishi Motors Chief Execu-tive Osamu Masuko told last year.

“Most consumers don’t mind that because you can buy those parts anywhere in Indonesia and keep your cars in operation with-out disruptions.”

Mitsubishi does not sanction use of components not certified by the company for maintenance and repair, Masuko said.

Mitsubishi said last year it would build a new parts pur-chasing department and a new assembly plant near Jakarta and has said it plans to export vehi-cles from this factory to other markets in Southeast Asia and beyond. Production begins in 2017.

“They have, in our opinion, better suppliers than us. We can take some of the parts,” Ghosn said on Thursday.

Nissan’s previous attempt to woo buyers in emerging markets like Russia, South Africa, Indone-sia and India by resurrecting the Datsun and a $3,000 model has had little success.

India, where annual car sales are growing at their fastest pace in five years, was the first coun-try chosen for the launch.

But in an effort to make the car low-cost, Nissan ended up using poor quality materials, say analysts, and the move back-fired.

Datsun sales were slow to pick up — few knew the brand and dealerships are sparse in small towns where demand for low-cost cars is highest.

Last year, Nissan’s sales in the country, set to become the world’s third-largest car market by 2020, fell 17 percent.

Overall, Nissan has a lead over Mitsubishi in India, but the cars it sells are limited to the low-cost and mid-income segments.

The most expensive car Nis-san sells in India is the Terrano SUV, priced starting at 1 million rupees ($15,000).

By contrast, the minimum price of Mitsubishi’s Pajero SUV in India is 2.65 million rupees.

In India, Nissan would benefit from tapping Mitsubishi’s premium customers, whereas Mitsubishi can take advantage of Nissan’s econo-mies of scale with suppliers.

Mitsubishi Motors deal may help Nissan crack emerging Asia at last

Monsanto now in awkward role as possible target

By Karl Plume and Ludwig Burger Reuters

A year after Monsanto Co sparked a massive consolidation race in the agrochemical industry by bid-ding for a rival, the world’s largest seed company now finds itself in

the uncomfortable role of takeover target.Monsanto shares rallied as much as 12

percent on Thursday on new reports that Bayer AG and BASF SE were interested in the St. Louis-based company, highlighting the drive for more marriages in the sector.

Bloomberg News reported Bayer was exploring a bid for Monsanto, while finan-cial news website Street Insider reported that BASF was looking at a Monsanto acquisition.

Monsanto, Bayer and BASF all declined to comment.

Talk of such deals has swirled for months as Monsanto faced mounting cor-porate woes and rivals met with advisers to weigh various deal combinations.

Both Bayer and BASF have been exploring tie-ups with Monsanto for several months, but valuation concerns have made a deal elusive, people familiar with the mat-ter told on condition of anonymity.

The sources said both were concerned about the price Mon-santo shareholders would want, embold-ened by recent deals.

Consolidation has been spurred by high

inventories and low prices for agricultural commodities.

ChemChina agreed in February to acquire Switzerland’s Syngenta AG for $43 billion after Dow Chemical Co and DuPont inked a deal to combine into a $130 billion company in December.

Still, some analysts were skeptical such a deal involving Monsanto would go through, or were even necessary for Bayer or BASF even though combining businesses would be complementary.

“This is a rumor of a speculation of a company talking to an investment bank doing M&A,” said Bernstein analyst Jonas Oxgaard said. “It doesn’t get any more vague than that.”

As recently as a month ago Monsanto’s management denied the likelihood of any near-term deals. Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant said on an analyst call the com-pany no longer saw large-scale M&A as an opportunity. Smaller research and devel-opment or commercial partnerships were more likely. That was just the latest head-line in an annus horribilis.

Before Thursday’s merger talk boosted its stock, Monsanto’s market cap had fallen 28 percent in the past 12 months as its four largest rivals announced bids to merge.

On top of that, US regulators delayed approval of a key new weed killer, dicamba, and glyphosate, the herbicide key to its Roundup weedkiller, was labeled a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization.

US securities regulators said in February the company would pay $80 million in a set-tlement over accounting violations.

Overseas, Monsanto is embroiled in a royalty fight over cotton seed pricing in top grower India, and a similar battle over soybean royalties in No. 3 soybean grower Argentina. And the lack of timely import approval from the European Union derailed the launch of its next-generation GMO

Bayer is No. 2 in crop chemicals, with an 18% market share, according to industry data. The largest, Syngenta, has a 19% share. Monsanto is the leader in seeds, with a 26% market share, followed by DuPont, with 2%.

Cryan, earlier at Switzerland’s UBS, has been tasked with cleaning up a business which in three years declined from a potent force on Wall Street to posting a record loss in 2015. It’s share price has fallen 35 percent so far this year.

soybean seeds in the United States and Canada this spring, as major grain compa-nies said they would not accept the crops.

Amid the setbacks and challenges, the Monsanto management team has remained largely intact, leading ana-lysts to conclude it performed adequately during boom times, but may have been overmatched by the wave of change.

“The difficult headlines along with their significant slowdown in growth, which has impacted the valuation more than the headlines, is definitely an opportunity (for an acquiring company),” said Brett Wong, senior research analyst for agriculture at Piper Jaffray. In recent years Monsanto has taken on a substantial debt load, in part for a $10 billion share buyback pro-gram, which could make it unappetizing to potential bidders.

Over the last two years its debt-to-equity ratio has jumped to 2.17 from 0.23, according to Reuters data. Monsanto stock is down nearly 30 percent and it has sold a large amount of bonds, putting debt at more than twice the value of its equity.

Any deal between Bayer and Monsanto would raise US antitrust concerns because of the overlap in the seeds business, par-ticularly in soybeans, cotton and canola, two antitrust experts said.

Bayer is No. 2 in crop chemicals, with an 18 percent market share, according to industry data. The largest, Syngenta, has a 19 percent share. Monsanto is the leader in seeds, with a 26 percent market share, followed by DuPont, with 21 percent.

Still, a US antitrust review involving any combination could include a prod-uct-by-product analysis or a broad look at a suite of products, similar to the Justice Department review of the now-scuttled merger of oil services giants Hallibur-ton and Baker Hughes, said Seth Bloom a veteran of the Justice Department now at Bloom Strategic Counsel.

The Monsanto logo is displayed on a screen where the stock is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York City.

BUSINESS28 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

LSE ready to start service that eases banks’ capital burdenBy Will Hadfield

Bloomberg

London Stock Exchange Group Plc is ready to debut its much-her-alded service to ease

capital requirements on banks, one of the key reasons behind its planned tie-up with Deutsche Boerse AG.

LSE’s LCH division has received regulatory approval to lower the margin needed to back trades executed on Nas-daq Inc’s NLX futures market from May 23, according to an e-mail to members that Bloomb-erg has seen. That’s earlier than expected. LSE had previously told member firms that the service, LCH Spider, would start before the end of June.

Spider compares interest-rate swaps held by LCH with futures contracts traded on NLX. If Spider finds that a swap and a futures contract cancel each other out, it reduces the amount of margin that the bank needs to post to safeguard the trade and therefore the amount of capital the bank needs to hold against the margin.

LSE and Deutsche Boerse have said that their plan to com-bine into a European exchange giant makes sense because it would save money for banks. LCH, which is majority owned by LSE, clears the vast major-ity of the world’s interest-rate swaps. Eurex, a subsidiary of Deutsche Boerse, is among the biggest futures markets globally.

Xavier Rolet, LSE’s Chief Executive Officer, has argued

that Spider would make banks’ balance sheets more efficient without merging LCH and Eurex Clearing into a single clearing-house. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have said that they don’t want to see any clear-inghouse become too big to fail.

LSE plans to introduce Spider for its new futures market, Curve Global, but Curve won’t begin trading until the third quarter.

With Spider, Nasdaq is attempting to drain market share from Europe’s two dom-inant markets for interest-rate futures: Eurex and Intercon-tinental Exchange Inc.’s ICE Futures Europe. It has a long way to go. NLX had almost 35,000 open interest-rate contracts at the end of trading on May 11, compared with 6.5 million on Eurex and 19.6 million on ICE.

NLX’s head of business development, Victoria Kent, says that using Spider to scour LCH’s repository of swaps will enable the clearinghouse’s bank customers to reduce the margin paid by both their customers and themselves. As margin is classi-fied as a risk asset, banks have to increase their capital in tan-dem with their margin.

“In the first instance, we are focusing on the Short Sterling product and then we are moving onto Euribor, which is a bigger market,” Kent said. “It’s impos-sible to determine how portfolio margining will roll out on an institution by institution basis.”

Exchanges have sought to put a number on how much the banks will save from portfolio margining, but estimates are difficult because any savings would differ by institution.

By DERRIK J LANG AP

WHEN it comes to virtual reality, how exclusive is exclusive? After delaying orders because

of component shortages and angering wannabe early adopters, VR company Oculus is confronting another head-ache as it seeks to technologically and culturally establish the immer-sive medium. It’s now possible to play titles that were intended to only be used with the Oculus Rift system on an entirely different VR headset.

In less than four weeks after the March 28 launch of the $600 system, cunning amateur coders figured out how to unlock the cartoony plat-forming game “Lucky’s Tale” and VR vignette collection “Oculus Dream-deck” for the HTC Vive, an $800 competing VR system released on April 5 by smartphone maker HTC and gaming company Valve, which operates online marketplace Steam.

And in recent weeks, additional “only on Oculus” content has been cracked. For now, the reverse isn’t an issue for HTC and Valve, whose online hub is headset agnostic, meaning con-tent purchased from Steam can be used for the Vive or Rift. However, titles from the Oculus Home online store are meant to only work with the Rift system, although neither Oculus nor HTC restrict developers from sell-ing content elsewhere.

It’s another blow to Oculus, the Facebook-backed VR pioneer that’s struggled to fulfill the promise of high-fidelity VR in consumers’ homes and faced questions over its privacy policies. While most VR developers are designing for as many systems as possible, several are initially

releasing titles for either the Rift or Vive, which currently have different control schemes.

“We’re focused on the Vive right now because of the ability to create room-scale experiences, but we’re planning to release on every plat-form available,” said Kjartan Pierre Emilsson, co-founder and CEO at Sol-far Studios, which crafted the “Everest VR” simulator. “In these early days, we think it’s important for ‘Everest VR’ to be experienced by as many people as possible.”

For decades, video game exclu-sivity has mostly been restricted to consoles, which are more difficult to crack than PCs. For instance, gam-ers can only hop into a “Super Mario Bros.” installment on systems created by Nintendo, while the “Uncharted” series is exclusively on PlayStation machines. For gamers with an Xbox, they have the “Halo” franchise to themselves.

It’s an on-going conflict known as “the console wars”. Despite the Rift and Vive both requiring

high-powered PCs to operate and providing similar windows into 360-degreee virtual worlds, they currently have different approaches to VR. The Vive’s sensors and wand-shaped controllers offer VR across a room, while the Rift only works seated with a traditional gamepad, until Oculus releases its Touch con-trollers later this year.

Sony will enter the marketplace in October with the comparable Play-Station VR system. The difference? Unlike the Rift and Vive, PS VR will cost $400 and only work in tandem with a PlayStation 4 console. It’ll also arrive with many more exclu-sive titles, including the robot battle game “RIGS: Mechanized Combat League” and a VR rendition of “Star Wars: Battlefront”.

“We think content is king,” said Shawn Layden, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment America. “We have six months not only to educate consumers about VR but also make sure we have a robust line-up when we launch in

October. I think we’ll have a nice, healthy line-up when we bring PS VR to market. It’s so important to have all the software there.”

By the end of 2016, all three major VR systems are slated to essentially feature the same func-tionality: a headset and a pair of controllers capable of mimicking hands in virtual world. With each operating their own marketplace for VR experiences, it is possible that consumers could see the dawn of “the VR wars,” depending on how Sony, Oculus and HTC tackle con-tent exclusivity.

“Are they selling razors or razor-blades?” said Chris Curran, chief technologist at Pricewaterhouse-Coopers. “I think moving forward this is going to be much more about the platform and the marketplace for content than it is about the headset. It’s not unlike smartphone market. At first, that was about the hard-ware. Now, it’s more about the overall experience.”

As with Nintendo’s motion-detecting Wii controllers or touchscreen Wii U Gamepad, it’s possible the next iteration of VR sys-tems could mean that developers will have to specifically build content for those input devices. From VR tread-mills to VR gloves, many peripheral aficionados have already constructed prototypes that could make the medium feel more, well, real.

“There are so many opportu-nities to layer onto the headset and hand-tracked controllers,” said Jason Rubin, head of worldwide studios at Oculus. “This is the most likely point for us to be close together. It might be beyond any question that eve-rything is exclusive going forward because developers may be building for devices that aren’t even mirrored by other platforms.”

For now, they’re just trying to get goggles onto customers’ faces.

For virtual reality makers, a new version of an old struggle

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Worldwide announced M&A deal value YTD16 tops $1 trillion.

Tight liquidity may hurt Q2 corporate earnings in KSA.

The prospect of creat-ing sustainable #jobs outside of the #oil industry in #Libya is daunting.

China indicators sug-gest economy still struggling

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BACK TO BUSINESSsight

Wenger in spotlight ahead of Arsenal’s final game

PAGE | 30 PAGE | 35

Hamilton grabs pole position at

Spanish Grand Prix

SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016 • 8 SHA’BAAN 1437

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

@peninsulaqatar @peninsula_qatarthepeninsulaqatar

Qatar prepare for busy schedule ahead of World Cup qualifiers

By Rizwan Rehmat

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar will launch this sum-mer’s 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying preparations with an international friendly against Albania at the end of this month, coach Jose Carreno con-firmed yesterday.

Carreno, who took over as coach of the Qatar side a year ago, yester-day announced a batch of 27 players for the team’s training camp in Aus-tria from May 24-30.

“We have a busy schedule in the coming weeks. We will be trying to get ready for the next stage of the 2018 FIFA World Cup by playing as many friendlies as possible,” Carreno said yesterday.

“This is a very important phase for

me and my squad. We have to sort out many things as me move ahead,” the 53-year-old Uruguayan coach said.

“For our friendlies in August, we will be looking for teams that play Asian brand of football. We look for-ward to the next few months,” Carreno said.

He said 23 players will travel to Austria.

“We may make changes to the squad announced. A number of decisions have to be taken after my medical teams test the fitness of the players who are about to finish what has been a long season,” he said.

Qatar open the third stage of the Asian Zone, Group A, qualifiers with a game against Iran on September 1. Other teams in the group include South Korea, Uzbekistan, Syria and China.

Carreno said his players ‘have improved over the last 12 months’.

Qatar lost just one out of eight matches in the previous World Cup qualifying campaign that saw them annihilate Bhutan 15-0 in September last year.

“The difference is obvious - I know my players better now,” Carreno said when asked to compare the players he picked for the first time last May.

“I also see there is great cohe-sion in the team. Also, the team has improved tactically and shows great competitiveness. And we believe that national ream will be competitive even if we win or lose, but we will fight. Of

course I have seen a positive change since I started working with the team,” he said.

Carreno said the friendly against Albania will be used to plan ‘things for the future’.

“No, we are not worried about this game. We will use this time to discuss our future plans. We are not very concerned about the game. Playing disciplined football is more important. It is important to gather all players for such a game. We need to get the right momentum. We have players who have performed highly or who can play highly. Some may not be in good shape but we are looking at the future. Selecting the players is a great responsibility,” he said.

Carreno said he was not surprised to see Qatar bunched together with some of Asia’s finest teams for the next stage of World Cup qualifiers.

“Of course the draw wasn’t a sur-prise. We were expecting a tough draw,” Carreno said.

Carreno said he wanted the Qatar Stars League (QSL) to start in August this year so that his players could get enough time to settle down ahead of the September 1 clash against Iran. But the Uruguayan admitted it was difficult to plan the start of a league with perfection with QSL organis-ers having to take into consideration many things.

“All (league) schedules are positive and negative as the same time. There’s

no perfect schedule, especially when you think of many things like club and national team needs,” he said.

“I thought two rounds (of Qatar Stars League) in August would have been good. We didn’t get what we were looking for. The change from playing August would have allowed a few extra games for national team. From August 1 to 31 would have been ample time for national team,” he said.

“We will play 3-4 games prior to our first qualifier. We haven’t decided whom we play yet. Against Iran is cer-tain that national team is playing on

home turf. We have to be well prepared to avoid problems,” he said.

“On August 24, we will play against Thailand in Doha. We are currently working on another side (to play) in August.”

“Mid-August we will have two games in Europe where we will fol-low teams with style of play of our opponents in the qualifiers. It may be around 14, 17, 18. The dates are not con-firmed. We have a list of teams who are free and we will see who we can play. August is not FIFA date so it is not easy to find teams to play,” he said.

Claude Amine, Omar Barry, Saad Abdulla, Khalifa Ndiaye,

Pedro Miguel, Boualem Khoukhi, Ahmed Yasser, Ibrahim Ma-

jed, Abdulreahman Abakr, Mohamed Musa, Musaab Khidir,

Abdelkarim Hassan, Khaled Muftah, Yasir Abubakar, Karim

Boudiaf, Ahmed Mohamed, Luiz Martins, Mohamed Hussain,

Ahmed Moein, Hassan Al Haydos, Ali Asadalla, Rodrigo

Tabata, Magid Hassan, Mohammed Muntari, Sebastian Soria,

Ahmed Ala El din and Ismail Mohamad. Coach: Jose Carreno

Men’s 100m

1. Justin Gatlin (US) 9.94, 2. Femi Ogunode (Qatar)

10.07, 3. Mike Rodgers (US) 10.10

Men’s 400m Hurdles

1. Michael Tinsley (US) 48.90, 2. Patryk Dobek (Po-

land) 49.01, 3. Jeffery Gibson (Bahamas) 49.11

Men’s Shot Put

1. Kurt Roberts (US) 21.40m, 2. Tomas Walsh (New

Zealand) 21.20m, 3. Joe Kovacs (US) 20.82m

Women’s 1500m

1. Faith Chepngetich Kipyegon (Kenya) 3:56.82, 2.

Hellen Onsando Obiri (Kenya) 3:59.34, 3. Dawit

Seyaum (Ethiopia) 3:59.87

Women’s High Jump

1. Levern Spencer (St Lucia) 1.94m, 2. Nadiya Dusa-

nova (Uzbekistan) 1.94m, 3. Ana Simic (Croatia) 1.92

Women’s Long Jump

1. Ivana Spanovic (Serbia) 6.95m, 2. Christabel Nettey

(Canada) 6.75m, 3. Tianna Bartoletta (US) 6.75m

Women’s Discus Throw

1. Sandra Perkovic (Croatia) 70.88m, 2. Dani Samu-

els (Australia) 67.77m, 3. Denia Caballero (Cuba)

66.14m

QATAR FOOTBALL SQUAD

MEETING SHANGHAI RESULTS

Three European friendlies and a home game against Thailand on the cards as Jose Carreno’s side eyes more foreign exposure

Qatar football coach Jose Carreno speaking to press during a media briefing held yesterday.

Qatar’s Ogunode finishes second behind Gatlin in ShanghaiAgencies

SHANGHAI: Qatar’s speedster Femi Seun Ogunode clocked 10.07 behind the American superstar Justin Gatlin who ran a sub-10 in the men’s 100 metres final at the IAAF Shanghai Dia-mond League in Shanghai, China yesterday.

A fast start and a battling second half gave last year’s Dia-mond League winner Gatlin the edge over others. The US world silver medallist, who domi-nated last year’s Race, was in front from the start and wen on to cross the line in a wind-legal season’s best of 9.94.

Gatlin’s US compatriot and world finalist Mike Rodgers took third three hundredths back

ahead of former world cham-pion Kim Collins.

The Qatari star Ogun-ode said: “I had a bad start, as always. I have to work on this. The rest of the race was ok, have not to complain about that. I wanted to run every race sub 10 seconds. Competing in China is good for me, great to be here. I’m the Asian record holder of 100m and 200m and

have the world lead, for sure I will improve those this season, for sure!”

After the victory, Justin Gatlin said: “I came out here to execute and I know being an Olympic year, it is a long sea-son and my coach and I have a plan. The ankle injury over the winter made it a difficult prep-aration, but Diamond League races are important to win”. Milindi stars as Birla Public

School emerge championsThe Peninsula

DOHA: Milindi and Wenshuka came up with crucial contributions which helped Birla Public School win the Inter-School Women’s Cricket Championship 2016.

The championship was hosted by Qatar Cricket Association (QCA), headed by MA Sha-hid, to provide exposure and opportunity to female players.

In the final against Al Khor International School, Milindi laid the foundation of her team’s challenging 123 for three in 15 overs. She smashed 29 not out. Heta was the most successful bowler with two scalps.

Later, Milindi’s good work was extended by Wenshuka and Ananya, who dismissed half the Al Khor International School team with their steady bowling.

While Wenshuka grabbed three wick-ets, Ananya picked a brace to stop the rivals

11 runs before the target in a thrilling finale. Peusti made 15 during the chase and Palakben scored 8. Besides Wenshuka and Ananya, Anuja and Insha shared two wickets between them.

QCA General Secretary Manzoor Ahmad was present at the closing ceremony along with other officials Gul Mohammad Khan Jadoon, Head of Domestic Cricket, Amjad Baig, Syed Hassan Raza, Aminul Islam, Mrs. Mariam Gul Khan, Women’s Cricket Head, Mrs. Pramjeet Kaur Bhullar, Umpire, Mrs. Shivani Mishra, coach, Ms. Nazia Tabbasum, coach and Ms. Noureen Javaid, Women’s Wing Secretary and Ahmad.

Brief Scores:Birla Public School: 123 for 3 in 15 overs

(Milindi 29 not out, Heta 2 wkts, Jiya 1 wkt)Al Khor International School: 112 (Palak-

ben 8, Peusti 15, Srushti 5, Nenshiben 5, Ananya 2 wkts, Anuja 1 wkt, Insha 1 wkt, Wenshuka 3 wkts)

Player of the final: Milindi of Birla Public School.

Qatar’s Femi Seun Ogunode (left) and Justin Gatlin of the US compete in the men’s 100m event at the Shanghai Diamond League athletics competition in Shanghai, China yesterday.

Players of Birla Public School and Al Khor International School pose for a photo with Qatar Cricket Association officials and team officials after the final of the Inter-School Women’s Cricket Championship 2016.

The Peninsula

DOHA: The 2016-17 season of Qatar Stars League (QSL) will kick off on September 15 as the clubs would not like it to start on August 4, Qatar Football Associa-tion announced during a meeting on Thursday.

The date was deemed most convenient for clubs with a launch in August thought to be unfeasible due to the soaring heat at that time. The start date also allows time for the national team to prepare for the first two games in the final stage of the 2018 World Cup qualifiers away against Iran on September 1 and at home against Uzbekistan on Sep-tember 6.

However, Qatar coach Jose Carreno had said he wanted the Qatar Stars League (QSL) to start in August this year so that his players could get enough time to settle down ahead of the match against Iran.

Qatar Stars

League to

start on Sept 15

light al’s

SPORT30 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

F1: Hamilton grabs pole position

AFP

BARCELONA: Lewis Hamilton grabbed his first pole position in three races ahead of his Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg with a thrilling revival of his speed in yesterday’s qualifying session for today’s Span-ish Grand Prix.

The defending three-time world champion, who trails Rosberg by 43 points in the title race, revived his quickest form of the past with a stun-ning showing in both Q2 and Q3.

He ended up with a best lap in one minute and 22 seconds, 0.280 sec-onds ahead of Rosberg’s fastest lap on a day when teenager Max Verstappen demonstrated just why he was pro-moted, so unexpectedly, by Red Bull from Toro Rosso.

The 18-year-old Dutchman was second-fastest at one time and his speed inspired his Red Bull

team-mate, Australian Daniel Ric-ciardo, who responded by qualifying third ahead of him on the grid.

This meant the two Red Bulls separated Mercedes from their main rivals Ferrari, who were pushed back to fifth and sixth, Finn Kimi Raik-konen edging ahead of four-time champion Sebastian Vettel in the final seconds.

Hamilton’s success brought him his third pole this year, his second in Spain and the 52nd of his career, a feat that left him euphoric as he waved to

the crowd afterwards. “I’m so very, very happy with this,” he said. “Nico has been strong here all weekend, but one step at a time, I’ve been bringing it together. I didn’t get to compete in the last two qualifying sessions so this is three out of three for me!”

Rosberg said: “I’m disappointed, but Lewis was just quicker today and that’s it. It’s the race that counts so I’ll try to take my chances.”

Finn Valtteri Bottas was seventh for Williams ahead of Spaniard Car-los Sainz in the leading Toro Rosso,

Mexican Sergio Perez of Force India and the home hero, two-time cham-pion Fernando Alonso of McLaren Honda.

On a warm day, with an air tem-perature of 22 degrees and a track temperature of 42 degrees, qualify-ing delivered an early surprise with the Q1 elimination of veteran Brazil-ian Felipe Massa of Williams.

Massa had been complaining about his discomfort with the car throughout practice and was unable to deliver a lap that reflected his usual speed. He went out in 18th place, one behind the Renault of British rookie Jolyon Palmer, but ahead of the two Saubers of Swede Marcus Ericsson and Brazilian Felipe Nasr.

The final two places were filled by the two Manor Racing men, Ger-man Pascal Wehrlein and Indonesian Rio Haryanto.

“The team made a big mistake today with the timing and let’s hope we don’t do it any more,” said Massa, his team having chosen to be the last to join the fray, long after the rest had clocked a lap. Rosberg had been quickest at the front, with a best lap of the weekend until that point, ahead of Hamilton, but the world champion bounced back in Q2 with an emphatic show of his pulverising pace.

Clocking a best of the day in 1:22.159, Hamilton was six-tenths clear of Rosberg with Verstappen, in inspired form, again securing third ahead of Raikkonen, Ricciardo and Vettel.

Behind them, a late lap from Perez lifted him to seventh and eliminated Force India team-mate Nico Hulken-berg out of the top-ten shootout.

Briton Jenson Button took 12th in the second McLaren ahead of

Russian Daniil Kvyat, back at Toro Rosso, Frenchman Romain Grosjean of Haas, Dane Kevin Magnussen of Renault and Mexican Esteban Guti-errez in the second Haas.

Inspired, perhaps, by his home fans, Alonso squeezed through by just 0.011 seconds ahead of Hulkenberg.

The two Mercedes men were first out on track for Q3, Rosberg going quickest on their first runs followed by Hamilton locking up his left front

wheel at Turn 10 and running wide when he was three-tenths up on another flying lap.

The Mercedes men were then split by an extraordinary effort from Ver-stappen, the Dutch teenager showing the raw talent that persuaded Red Bull to promote him from Toro Rosso.

That effort meant he was ahead of every world champion on the provisional grid before the top men prepared for their final flying runs.

I am so very, very happy with this. Nico has been strong here all weekend but one step at a time, says Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton of Mercedes AMG GP celebrates after taking the pole

position.

Hamilton in the media glare after winning his third pole position of

the year.

FORMULA ONE: SPANISH GRAND PRIX GRIDBARCELONA: The starting grid for today’s Spanish Grand Prix follow-ing qualifying yesterday:

1st row

Lewis Hamilton (GBR/Mercedes)Nico Rosberg (GER/Mercedes)

2nd row

Daniel Ricciardo (AUS/Red Bull-TAG Heuer)Max Verstappen (NED/Red Bull-TAG Heuer)

3rd row

Kimi Raikkonen (FIN/Ferrari)Sebastian Vettel (GER/Ferrari)

4th row

Valtteri Bottas (FIN/Williams-Mercedes)Carlos Sainz Jr (ESP/Toro Rosso-Ferrari)

5th row

Sergio Perez (MEX/Force India-Mercedes)Fernando Alonso (ESP/McLaren-Honda)

6th row

Nico Hülkenberg (GER/Force India-Mercedes)Jenson Button (GBR/McLaren-Honda)

7th row

Daniil Kvyat (RUS/Toro Rosso-Ferrari)Romain Grosjean (FRA/Haas-Ferrari)

8th row

Kevin Magnussen (DEN/Renault)Esteban Gutierrez (MEX/Haas-Ferrari)

9th row

Jolyon Palmer (GBR/Renault)Felipe Massa (BRA/Williams-Mercedes)

10th row

Marcus Ericsson (SWE/Sauber-Ferrari)Felipe Nasr (BRA/Sauber-Ferrari)

11th row

Pascal Wehrlein (GER/Manor-Mercedes)Rio Haryanto (INA/Manor-Mercedes)

New deal is ‘underwhelming’, says Red Bull bossAFP

BARCELONA: Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has accused Formula One’s rulers of taking a soft option in their confirmation of a long-awaited new deal on future engine regulations.

Horner spoke out at a news conference at the Circuit de Catalunya, describ-ing the new agreement to run from 2017 to 2020 as “a little underwhelming” and “a very soft agreement between the manufacturers and the FIA.”

He added that it was “a shame more couldn’t be done, but I suppose if you look on the bright side, it’s better than nothing.”

The International Motoring Federation (FIA) had been under pressure to agree a new engine deal with the teams to prevent discord and possible splits in the sport.

The deal was done to end arguments over costs, performance and sup-ply problems that had threatened the future of some teams.

“It tickles the price, deals a little bit with convergence, the obligation to supply doesn’t really apply. So it’s a very weak agreement,” said Horner.

Red Bull won four successive championships with engine suppliers Renault before the current turbo formula was introduced, handing the initiative to Mercedes, a factory ‘works’ team that has since dominated the sport.

Unsurprisingly, Mercedes team chief Toto Wolff was keen to support the new deal.

He said: “We achieved a major price reduction over two years. We’ve opened up development scope for others to catch up and we’ve designed an obligation to supply, so no team runs out of an engine contract.

“We have found a mechanism how performance convergence could be triggered. So, lots of good things, many months of hard work in trying to get everybody on the same page.

“I think it’s a good step forward.”

I’ve been working on the starts, says happy Hamilton after pole position

Reuters

BARCELONA: Triple world champion Lewis Hamilton looked forward to ending Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg’s seven-race winning streak after denying the Formula One leader pole position at the Spanish Grand Prix yesterday.

The Briton’s stunning performance, with a fastest lap of one minute 22.000 seconds on a sunny afternoon at the Circuit de Catalunya, put a smile back on his face after power unit problems in the past two races.

“Hopefully everything comes together,” he said of Sunday’s race. “I’ve been working on the starts...I will try and get off on the right foot and tomor-row could be the day.”

Rosberg qualified second, 0.280 slower, and has a real fight on his hands if he is to become only the third driver after compatriot Michael Schumacher and Britain’s Nigel Mansell to win the first five races of a season.

“Fortunately it’s the race that counts,” said the disappointed German, who leads Hamilton by 43 points overall. “There are still a couple of oppor-tunities tomorrow, for sure.

“The start, for example, and then strategy wise. It’s not going to be an easy race tomorrow so I will try and take my chances there.”

The pole was the 52nd of Hamilton’s career, and third of the season. For Mercedes, it was their 11th in a row.

Hamilton considered it to be three out of three in real terms since the champion was ruled out of qualifying in China due to a power unit failure and missed the final phase in Russia for the same reason.

“Obviously Nico has been really strong all week so it was crucial...bit by bit, one step at a time, I have been trying to bring the pace together,” said Hamilton. “The car was great. Hamilton damaged a set of tyres when he locked up and also had to contend with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen pulling out of the garage in front of him before his final run.

“All of a sudden he appeared and I thought he was going to hit me,” said Hamilton, who had to lift off the throttle.

Red Bull filled the second row, with Australian Daniel Ricciardo a jubi-lant third while Dutch teenager Max Verstappen was a stunning fourth on his debut weekend with the team after moving up from Toro Rosso.

The decision to draft him in as a replacement for Russian Daniil Kvyat, demoted back to Toro Rosso, looked far more logical.

Verstappen’s grid position was the best by a Dutch driver in Formula One and he had been third in the first two phases of qualifying, slower only than the Mercedes duo.

Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone

(right) talks with Red Bull Racing team principal

Christian Horner (left) during the third qualifying

session yesterday.

British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes AMG GP in action during the third qualifying session at the Barcelona-Catalunya Circuit in Montmelo, Barcelona, Spain, yesterday. The Spanish Grand Prix will take place today.

SPORT 31SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALOREC H Gayle b Kulkarni 6

V Kohli c Bravo b Kumar 109

A B de Villiers (not out) 129

S R Watson c Karthik b Kumar 0

Extras (B-1, LB-1, W-1, NB-1) 4

Total (for 3 wkts in 20 overs) 248Did not bat: K L Rahul, Sachin Baby, S T R

Binny, C J Jordan, S Aravind, V R Aaron, Y S

Chahal.

Fall of wickets: 1-19, 2-248, 3-248.

Bowling: P Kumar 4-1-45-2; D S Kulkarni

3-0-33-1; S Kaushik 3-0-50-0 (1w); PV Tambe

2-0-25-0; D J Bravo 3-0-46-0 (1nb); R A

Jadeja 4-0-34-0; D R Smith 1-0-13-0.

GUJARAT LIONSD R Smith b Aravind 7

B B McCullum c de Villiers b Chahal 11

R A Jadeja c&b Jordan 21

K D Karthik c de Villiers b Jordan 2

A J Finch c Aravind b S Baby 37

D J Bravo lbw Chahal 1

A D Nath b Chahal 3

P Kumar b Jordan 1

D S Kulkarni b Jordan 2

P V Tambe (not out) 7

S Kaushik c Aravind b S Baby 0

Extras (B-1, LB-3, W-5, NB-3) 12

Total (all out in 18.4 overs) 104Fall of wickets: 1-9, 2-37, 3-44, 4-44, 5-47,

6-68, 7-69, 8-74, 9-104, 10-104.

Bowling: S T R Binny 2-0-13-0; S Aravind

3-0-15-1; Y S Chahal 4-0-19-3; S R Watson

1-0-3-0 (1w); C J Jordan 3-0-11-4 (2w); V R

Aaron 2-0-19-0 (2w); V Kohli 1-0-13-0 (2nb); C

H Gayle 2-0-3-0 (1nb); Sachin Baby 0.4-0-4-2.

SCOREBOARD

Kohli, De Villiers shine in Royal Challengers’ big winIANS

BANGALORE: Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) smothered Gujarat Lions (GL) to a 144-run defeat in a lopsided Indian Premier League (IPL) contest at the M. Chinnaswami Sta-dium here yesterday.

Requiring 249 runs in 20 overs with an asking rate of 12.45 runs per over, Gujarat Lions could only man-age 104 runs by the 19th over, losing all 10 wickets.

Royal Challengers have thus added two more points to their tally and now have a total of 10 points. They are at the unchanged sixth position in the points table while Gujarat Lions hold on to the second position with 14 points.

Out of 11 encounters, RCB have won five and lost six. Gujarat Lions added a loss to their record, which includes seven victories in 12 encounters.

South African superstar Abra-ham de Villiers was adjudged the man of the match for his scintillat-ing century for RCB.

Royal Challengers demolished the top order of the visiting team by the eighth over, reducing Gujarat Lions to 47/5.

Except for Aaron Finch (37), Ravindra Jadeja (21) and captain Brendon McCullam (11), all the other Gujarat batsmen fizzled out with sin-gle digit scores.

Yet again, Royal Challengers bowling mainstay Yuzvendra Cha-hal produced an excellent effort with the ball. He went 3/19 in four overs with an economy of just 4.75 while Sachin Baby took two wickets in just four balls of his only over.

Chris Jordan emerged as the most successful Royal Challengers bowler, claiming four wickets in

three overs for just 11 runs. Earlier, Royal Challengers batsmen Abra-ham de Villiers (129) and Virat Kohli (109) pummelled the Gujarat Lions bowling attack to blast electrify-ing centuries, powering the team to 248/3 in 20 overs.

De Villiers, who remained unbeaten, smashed 12 sixes and 10 fours while Royal Challengers cap-tain Kohli blasted eight sixes and six fours. Kohli hit a 55-ball-109 while de Villiers smashed a 52-ball-129.

Altogether, RCB cracked 17 fours and 20 sixes. Of the total 248 runs scored, 188 emerged from bound-aries alone. Other than the two centurions, only Chris Gayle hit a four.

De Villiers and Kohli built a part-nership of 229 runs in 97 balls. At one time in the last stages of the innings, the duo plundered 47 runs off 14 balls.

Some of the sixes hit by de Vil-liers are so unique that only he could have hit them. Some of the shots demanding extreme flexibil-ity included a couple of deep sixes near the third man position, rarely seen before.

Not just boundaries, quick run-ning between the wickets also helped Royal Challengers greatly in grabbing many quick singles and exploiting sloppy fielding by the Gujarat Lions at times.

Hell-bent on ending his run of poor form, Chris Gayle kept it slow, trying to steal quick singles. Despite exhibiting great discipline, Gayle succumbed to an inside edge off Dhawal Kulkarni in the fifth ball of the fourth over.

Enter de Villiers, and the face of the innings changed with regu-lar boundaries all over the ground with all possible shots.

Royal Challengers Bangalore captain and batsman Virat Kohli gestures to the cheering crowd while walking back to the pavilion during the IPL match against Gujarat Lions, yesterday.

Royal Challengers Bangalore batsman AB de Villiers plays a shot during the IPL match against Gujarat Lions, at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, yesterday.

Murray hoping for maiden Rome title

AFP

ROME: Andy Murray can’t remem-ber if he has ever won a match on his birthday, but the British second seed is hoping to make today’s cele-brations memorable with a maiden Rome Masters title.

The 28-year-old cruised into his maiden final in the Italian capi-tal after sweeping lucky loser Lucas Pouille aside 6-2, 6-1 in a rain-inter-rupted semi-final on Centre Court yesterday.

The Scot remains on course to meet world number one Novak Djokovic if he overcomes Japan’s Kei Nishikori in their semi-final, a week after the Serbian beat Murray in the Madrid final.

“I’d love to win tomorrow’s final and get another Masters title on the clay and my first title here,” said Murray, who claimed his maiden clay-court title in April last year in

Munich and his maiden Masters title on the surface soon after with vic-tory in Madrid.

“I haven’t won many matches on my birthday before. I don’t remem-ber winning any, which isn’t a good sign. Hopefully tomorrow that will change.”

Djokovic leads their ongoing 32-game ATP rivalry 23-9, and none of Murray’s wins have come on the red dirt.

But Murray’s clay court game has been progressing this year.

Beating Djokovic will be a tall order, especially after the Serbian buried any doubts over his form in the lead up to the French Open with a convincing quarter-final win over Rafael Nadal on Friday.

Murray suffered defeat to Nadal in the semi-finals of Monte Carlo last month and, although he brushed off suggestions Djokovic is not on top of his game, he is hoping to make his 29th birthday one to remember.

After facing statistically weaker opposition in the shape of Belgian David Goffin in the quarters, then lucky loser Pouille in the semis, Murray will have to step up his game significantly if he is to beat Djokovic for the first time in a clay court final.

The pair’s rivalry stretches back more than 10 years, since well before they were fledgling professionals, and they are known to have a strong and

friendly relationship off the court.Djokovic has shown some chinks

in his armour in Rome, notably los-ing a first set 6-0 to Brazilian Tomaz Bellucci on Thursday before turning the match around to cruise into the quarter-finals.

Again, on Friday, the Serbian admitted he struggled at the start of both sets before fighting his way back into the game to beat seven-time Rome champion Nadal 7-5, 7-6 (7/4).

But the numbers speak for themselves, and Murray said: “Maybe he hasn’t started some tour-naments well. I saw a little bit of yesterday’s match, and it was a very good level.

“I think Novak is playing extremely well this year. He’s win-ning and that’s a sign of someone who’s very confident.”

A win would be welcome, but Murray said that simply the pros-pect of a three-set Masters final with Djokovic can only boost what he believes has been a good prepa-ration for the French Open.

“Any time you play the best play-ers it’s great,” added Murray.

“The French Open starts in a fortnight and you don’t get any bet-ter preparation for that than playing the best players in the world.

“My preparation has gone extremely well leading up to Roland Garros.”

Fiji, New Zealand

off to winning

sevens starts

AFP

PARIS: Reigning series champi-ons Fiji got off to a winning start at the Paris leg of the World Sev-ens Series on Friday.

The Pacific Island nation com-fortably beat Scotland 38-12 with French-based pair Josua Tuisova of Toulon and Montauban’s Sami-soni Viriviri scoring two tries each.

“I was nervous on the bench beforehand, Scotland are a great side, but I am happy we got this out the way and can concentrated on tomorrow now,” said Fiji’s Eng-lish coach Ben Ryan.

“We have a great side, a few players in the wider squad and some up our sleeve too, but our new boys made an instant impact which was great. The benefit with these guys is they have played sevens before so that helps and it’s just honing some of their skills and fitness over the next couple of months now.”

Lewis Ormond scored twice for a New Zealand side boasting code-swapping star Sonny Bill Williams as Russia were beaten 35-10. Hosts France started with a bang as Terry Bouhraoua scored two tries and Fiji-born Virimi Vakatawa shone in a 42-5 win over Canada.

Birthday boy is hoping to make today’s celebrations memorable

Britain’s Andy Murray celebrates after defeating France’s Lucas Pouille in their semi final match of the Italian Open tennis tournament at the Foro Italico in Rome, Italy, yesterday.

Tri-series in Caribbean to make floodlight historyAgencies

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados: The upcoming tri-series between the West Indies, South Africa and Aus-tralia will be the first series in history to see all matches played under flood-lights, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) announced yesterday.

All 10 of the one-day internation-als will be day/night affairs, with the first match on June 3.

“This is a major series with three very attractive teams featuring some of the world’s best players,” WICB Operations manager Roland Holder

said. “They are accustomed to play-ing under lights all over the world so we look forward to some very enter-taining cricket.

“We looked at ways to enhance the appeal and the spectator experi-ence and it is accepted that fans like the day/night matches.”

International cricket will return to Guyana for the first time in two years, to coincide with the country’s 50th anniversary of independence, for the opening fixtures.

After three matches in St Kitts, the last group games and the final will be held at the Kensington Oval, Barbados.

The announcement comes at

a time when South Africa have raised concerns about Austral-ia’s proposal to play a Test match on their tour this summer under lights.

Meanwhile, Australia vice-captain David Warner has voiced concerns about the pink ball used for day-night Tests, a report said yesterday, amid a stand-off with South Africa over a proposed fixture.

Cricket Australia want day-night Tests against South Africa and Paki-stan in their 2016-17 home season but have admitted that player con-cerns about the experimental format mean the Proteas’ match has not been locked in.

Aggressive opening batsman Warner reportedly told The Austral-ian newspaper that players want the pink ball improved.

“The concept is fantastic and it is a great spectacle, but for those of us who play it, the most important thing is getting the ball right,” he said from India where he is playing for the Sun-risers Hyderabad.

“It’s always going to be an issue because it is not a red ball. You can’t shine it up like you do a red ball and Test cricket has always been about using the red ball properly when you’re in the field.

“Looking after it to get swing is a key and we can’t do that with a pink

ball because it will not shine up.”Warner, who played in the inau-

gural day-night Test against New Zealand in Adelaide last year, said batsmen and fielders struggled to see the pink ball at times.

“It’s still hard to see during the twilight period,” he said.

“The guys on the side boundaries have trouble picking it up. You have to get that right.

“With the ball they used last year, there was no chance of seeing the seam. If you’re a batsman it is crit-ical to be able to see the seam as it gets closer to you so you can work out which way it is going to swing -- if it does.”

Aust ra l ia n administ rators regard the inaugural day-night Test against New Zealand in Adelaide last season as an outstanding suc-cess, attracting 123,000 spectators and an average television audience of two million.

But players from both sides have complained about the pink ball’s movement and durability, as well as the difficulty batsmen faced seeing it under lights.

The Australian said that Cricket Australia had subsequently tested a modified pink ball in domestic Shef-field Shield matches but players reported it was worse than the pre-vious model.

SPORT32 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Brambilla at the double as Dumoulin struggles

AFP

AREZZO, ITALY: An audacious solo attack on the tough white chalk roads of the Giro d’Italia eighth stage saw Italian Gianluca Brambilla rewarded with a pres-tigious stage win and the race leader’s pink jersey yesterday.

Etixx team rider Brambilla had been in an earlier escape of 13 rid-ers on the tough, 186 km ride from Foligno to Arezzo.

But the Italian seized his chance of glory by pulling away from the group of frontrunners on a section of white chalk road, with 25 km remaining.

With the main peloton including overnight leader Tom Dumoulin (Giant) and all the race favourites over three minutes in arrears, it proved a judicious move.

As Brambilla forged on for the finish line virtually unhindered, Dumoulin was left tumbling down the overall standings after race favourites Vincenzo Nibali, Ale-jandro Valverde and several other rivals left the Dutchman in their wake.

Brambilla now leads the race with a 23secs lead on Russian Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha), although the overall standings are expected to be shaken up again on Sunday after a time trial in the Chianti wine-producing region.

Italian rider Gianluca Brambilla of the Etixx - Quick Step team is on his way to win the 8th stage of the Giro d’Italia cycling race over 186km from Foligno to Arezzo, Italy, yesterday. Brambilla took the overall leader’s pink jersey.

China seek Olympic boost with Thomas and Uber Cup titlesAFP

SHANGHAI: Lin Dan’s (pictured) China will look to reassert their dom-inance in Badminton ahead of the Olympics by resuming their stran-glehold on the Thomas and Uber Cup titles on home ground from today.

The sport’s pre-eminent nation suffered a blip at the last Thomas Cup in 2014 when Lin’s team were stunned in the semi-finals by Japan, who then beat Malaysia in the final.

But Japan axed star man Kento Momota in April over a gambling scandal, and the signs are that nor-mal service will be resumed when the world team championships con-vene in Kunshan.

China’s men won the Thomas Cup five times in a row until their defeat to Japan, while their women have col-lected eight of the last nine titles in the concurrent Uber Cup.

Uppermost in their minds will be the Rio Olympics in August, where China will attempt to match their performance at the last Games where they swept all five gold medals.

“China always makes a strong point to prove their strength in team matches,” Raphael Sachetat, chief editor of the online magazine badzine.net, told AFP.

“Players always give their best for their country and this will be espe-cially true for the men’s event.”

Lee Chong Wei could be one stumbling block. The Malaysian

star, who led Malaysia to the 2014 final, beat both Lin and top-ranked Chen Long to win the Badminton Asia Championships earlier this month.

“The team is definitely ready for the challenge. We are all well pre-pared,” Lee, the world number two, told Malaysia’s The Star newspaper.

Winning the Thomas Cup would be a significant boost for Lee, 33, as he aims for a still-elusive gold medal in Rio.

But experts warn that pressure is already mounting on the veteran as he gears up for the Olympics -- after losing the 2008 and 2012 finals to his nemesis, Lin.

“The pressure is on Lee Chong Wei to deliver the nation’s first ever (Olympic) gold medal,” Rizal Hashim, a Malaysia-based sports analyst, said.

China will have an early chance for revenge against Japan in Group A, where they will also play France and Mexico, while Malaysia face South Korea, England and Germany in Group C.

In Group D, second-seeded Den-mark are drawing inspiration from Japan’s 2014 run as they take on Tai-wan, New Zealand and South Africa.

“If Japan can win the Thomas Cup, I think we can win as well,” fifth-ranked Jan O Jorgensen of Denmark told the Badminton World Federation website. “Two years ago was an eye-opener for many teams.”

In the Uber Cup, defending champions China are favourites to secure their 14th crown with three former world number ones, includ-ing Olympic champion Li Xuerui, at their disposal.

However Japan’s Nozomi Oku-hara, and top-ranked doubles pair Misaki Matsutomo and Ayaka Taka-hashi, could cause them problems, as could Thailand’s world number two Ratchanok Intanon.

“Japan will be their main threat, led by Nozomi Okuhara, who has beaten top Chinese players recently and (has) very strong women’s dou-bles,” said Sachetat.

Both competitions feature 16 teams divided into four groups, with the top two in each qualifying for the quarter-finals.

Guardiola signs off at Bayern with German league title

AFP

BERLIN: Pep Guardiola signed off his three years in the Bundesliga yester-day as Bayern Munich lifted a fourth straight German league title after yes-terday’s 3-1 win over bottom-side Hannover.

Bayern’s 28th win in 34 league games triggered party scenes at the Allianz Arena as the Bavarians cele-brated their 26th German league title.

This was Guardiola’s 20th trophy as a coach after 14 in four years with Barcelona and now six in three years in Munich before leaving to coach Manchester City next season.

It was only a matter of minutes

after the final whistle before he was soaked in beer as his players emptied over-sized glasses over the Spaniard in the traditional title celebrations.

“It’s been a great day,” said Guardiola.

“Normally games like this are unpleasant and boring, because the concentration is lacking a bit, but that was a great game with lots of intensity.

“Now we’ll celebrate for a day before getting ready to play Borussia Dortmund next Saturday.”

Guardiola’s final game as Bayern coach is next Saturday’s German Cup final against Borussia Dortmund in Berlin where his side could send him off with the domestic double.

The Spaniard received a stand-ing ovation after a presentation from the 75,000 sold-out crowd at the Alli-anz Arena as Bayern became the first club to win the German league four times in a row.

Poland hot-shot Robert Lewand-owski finished as the Bundesliga’s top scorer after claiming his 30th league goal of the season.

No other foreign striker has ever scored so many goals in a single

Bundesliga season. Mario Goetze then netted twice

in what could be his last Bundesliga game for Bayern.

According to reports, the German

World Cup winner has been told to find a new club by Bayern’s in-com-ing coach Carlo Ancelotti, who will replace Guardiola next season.

Lewandowski opened the scor-ing on seven minutes before Goetze doubled the hosts’ lead on 28 minutes when he beat the Hanover defence, then chipped home to get the party started.

He claimed his second after the break after Hanover made a hash of defending a corner.

Hanover, playing their last game before relegation, pulled a goal back when Poland international Artur Sobiech got in behind the Bayern defence on 66 minutes.

Bayern finish 10 points clear after second-placed Dortmund drew 2-2 at home to Cologne, with Germany winger Marco Reus equalising for the hosts. VfB Stuttgart, the 2007 champi-ons, were relegated, joining Hanover in the second division next season, after their 3-1 defeat at Wolfsburg.

Andre Schuerrle boosted his chances of making Germany’s Euro 2016 squad on Tuesday with two goals as Wolfsburg caught Stuttgart on the counter-attack.Stuttgart forward

Daniel Didavi sparked a late fightback with a 78th minute goal but his side finished 17th -- second from bottom.

Werder Bremen stay up after Sen-egal defender Papy Djilobodji, on loan from Chelsea, scored their dramatic 88th-minute goal to seal a 1-0 win at home to Eintracht Frankfurt.

It marked the end to a turbulent week for the Senegal international, who is being investigated by state prosecutors for making a cut-throat gesture at an opponent during a Bun-desliga game in March.

The result saw Bremen move up to 13th while Frankfurt finish 16th and now face a two-legged play-off against Nuremberg, who finished third in the second division.

The first leg will be held in Frank-furt on Thursday with the return leg on Monday May 23 in Nuremberg.

Schalke will play in next season’s Europa League, along with Mainz and Hertha Berlin who drew 0-0, after their 4-1 thumping of hosts Hoffen-heim. It was Andre Breitenreiter’s final game as Schalke coach, after only one season in charge, as he announced before kick-off that he is leaving a year before his contract ends.

Polish hot-shot striker Lewandowski finishes as Bundesliga’s top scorer with 30 goals

Bayern Munich celebrate their Bundesliga title after their match against Hannover 96 in Munich, southern Germany, yesterday. Bayern Munich won the German league for a record 4th time in a row. RIGHT: Bayern Munich coach Pep Guardiola holds the trophy.

GERMAN BUNDESLIGA LEADING SCORERS

30 goals: Lewandowski (Bayern Munich)25 goals: Aubameyang (Borussia Dortmund)20 goals: Mueller (Bayern Munich)17 goals: Javier Hernandez (Bayer Leverkusen)15 goals: Modeste (Cologne)14 goals: Kalou (Hertha Berlin), Pizarro (Werder Bremen), Wagner (SV Darm-stadt 98)13 goals: Didavi (VfB Stuttgart), Rafael (Borussia Moenchengladbach)12 goals: Hartmann (FC Ingolstadt 04), Huntelaar (Schalke 04), Meier (Eintracht Frankfurt), Reus (Borussia Dortmund)11 goals: Malli (Mainz 05), Mkhitaryan (Borussia Dortmund), Ujah (Werder Bremen)10 goals: Ibisevic (Hertha Berlin)

Gibraltar, Kosovo join FIFA family as members

Reuters

MEXICO CITY: Kosovo and Gibraltar were accepted as mem-bers of FIFA on Friday as soccer’s governing body increased its number of affiliated football asso-ciations to 211.

FIFA has already said that both teams will be able to take part in the 2018 World Cup quali-fying competition which starts in September.

Kosovo, which joined Euro-pean soccer’s governing body UEFA last week, was elected despite strong opposition from Serbia.

It was not immediately clear whether Kosovar players who have already played for another national team would be allowed to switch nationalities.

FIFA rules do not allow play-ers to change allegiance but there have been calls to make an exception for Kosovo, which could have a big impact on Swit-zerland and Albania who both have contingents of players with Kosovar roots.

FIFA rejected an applica-tion from the British territory of Gibraltar in 2014 but the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last week ordered it to reconsider and accept the request.

SPORT 33SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Record-setting Day leads by four

Agencies

MIAMI: World number one Jason Day of Australia completed a 36-hole course record effort yesterday to seize a four-stroke lead entering the third round of the US PGA Players Cham-pionship.

Day, a winner of six of his prior 16 starts, birdied the 15th hole and added three pars to finish a second-round 66, six-under par, to stand on 15-under 129 after 36 holes at the TPC Sawgrass layout.

Another Australian, Greg Norman, had established the 36-hole Players record of 130 in 1994.

“(Got) the 36-hole scoring record, which is nice, but I can’t lose focus,” Day said. “I’ve got to knuckle down and keep scoring well.”

Day’s four-shot halfway lead over Ireland’s Shane Lowry was also a new mark for the event, one shot lower than the old record margin set by Norman in 1994 and American Lanny Wadkins five years earlier.

“I’d like to say I’m confident but I’m trying to focus and get the right things done out there,” Day said.

“I’ve got a pretty sizeable lead now. I’m going to do my best to try and stretch that lead.”

World number two Jordan Spieth, who defends his US Open crown next month at Oakmont, missed the cut for the second year in a row in his first

event since a Sunday back-nine fade cost him a second consecutive Mas-ters title last month.

“I don’t think there’s much of a connection to the Masters. I just didn’t putt well,” Spieth said. “Augusta seems like a long time ago to me.”

The tournament was set to get back on schedule by playing the third round in threesomes off the front and back nines.

“It’s going to get tricky out there,” Day said. “We’re not going to score as well as we have the first two days.”

Fellow Americans Phil Mickel-son and defending champion Rickie Fowler also missed the cut by one stroke, Mickelson making an early exit for the fourth straight year.

Day could match Norman and Tiger Woods as the only golfers to win the Players while atop the rankings, but he has only two wins in nine tries with a 36-hole PGA lead -- last year’s BMW and this year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational.

After matching the 18-hole course record with a 63 Thursday, Day went five-under for 14 holes on Friday before a storm delay and darkness left him in the 15th fairway on 14-under overall. When play resumed yesterday morning, Day dropped his approach 15 feet from the cup and curled in the putt for his third birdie in a row on the round.

“I’m actually glad I stopped half-way down the fairway at 15 before hitting my wedge shot,” Day said. “I don’t think I would have stopped it where it was.”

Day, who won his first major title at last year’s PGA Championship, missed a 10-foot birdie putt at the par-5 16th and at 17 two-putted from 53 feet for another par.

Seeking his first career bogey-free 36-hole start, Day found the right rough off the 18th tee, was just short

of the green with his approach, then pitched the ball inches from the cup and tapped in for par.

“I’m very happy to go through that stretch of 16, 17 and 18 at par,” Day said. Spieth, 22, was a playing partner of Day, 28, and looked as miserable watching the Aussie sink his birdies the first two rounds as he did hand-ing over the green jacket to England’s

Danny Willett last month at Augusta National.

“It’s tough when you are getting shellacked by 15 shots in the same group,” Spieth said.

“You see all those birdies going in and you wonder why you aren’t making any of them. It’s tough see-ing every hole being birdied and not being able to do much about it.”

“I’m striking the ball great. I just need to grind on my short game. If I putt anywhere near the standard I normally putt I’m at 6- or 7-under just on the greens.”

Spieth also said he needs to have more fun during rounds and change his attitude if he hopes to approach the success he enjoyed last season.

Defending champion Fowler and World No. 2 Spieth both miss the cut at the Players Championship

Jason Day hits his tee shot on the 6th hole during the second round of the 2016 Players Championship golf tournament at TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course yesterday.

Park turns to CAS in bid to overturn KOC banReuters

SEOUL: Former Olympic swimming champion Park Tae-hwan has asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport to “mediate” with the Korean Olympic Committee, the KOC said yesterday, after he was left off the team due to a controversial doping ban.

Park, who has already served an 18-month doping ban imposed by world governing body FINA, is fight-ing to overturn a KOC regulation that has tacked on an additional three-year suspension, which would rule him out of the Rio Olympics.

Critics of the regulation say it punishes an athlete twice for the same offence but the KOC says it is aimed at keeping Korean sport free of doping.

World sport is facing an unprec-edented drug crisis and this week’s World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) foundation board meeting was rocked by yet another string of dop-ing bombshells involving Russian athletes.

“Park asked CAS for mediation, and CAS notified the KOC and the

swimming federation that such a request came in,” a KOC spokesman said on Saturday.

He added that while Park had requested an interview with the KOC and a meeting had been scheduled for May 25, the committee had not shifted its position.

“There is no change in the KOC stance that doping should be dealt with zero tolerance.”

Park’s management agency said yesterday he had filed his appeal with CAS on April 26 but asked the sport-ing tribunal to suspend it two days later until he had received a final decision from the KOC.

“We are still waiting,” said a Team GMP spokeswoman by telephone, emphasising they would only pro-ceed if the KOC did not provide a “positive resolution”.

Park won gold in the 400 metres freestyle at the 2008 Beijing Games to become the first Korean to win an Olympic swimming medal.

But his reputation was shattered when he tested positive for testo-sterone ahead of the Asian Games in September 2014.

The 26-year-old attributed the failed test to an injection he received

at a local clinic, where he said he was being treated for a skin complaint.

Despite the KOC ban, Park entered national trials this month and won all four of his races in Olympic qualification times.

However, his name was not included on the Korea Swimming Federation’s preliminary list of ath-letes who will have a shot at making the squad for Rio.

A recent public opinion survey by a prominent local polling com-pany suggested most South Koreans thought Park deserved a second chance, while some experts have suggested the KOC could be in trou-ble with the International Olympic Committee if it upholds the ban.

In 2011, CAS ruled that the IOC’s “Osaka Rule”, which banned athletes hit with anti-doping suspensions of at least six months from competing at the next Olympic Games, was a vio-lation of its own statutes.

Former World Anti-Doping Agency boss Dick Pound told local media last week that the KOC, as a signatory to the WADA Code, had to abide by the rules laid down for inter-national sport.

Spain compete in the Women’s Synchronised Swimming Team Free Final at the European Aquatics Championships in London on Friday.

Russia anti-doping body unlikely to be cleared before Rio: WADA

Russian Deputy Sports Minister Yuri Nagornyh and cross-country skier Alexander Legkov attend a news conference after rejecting claims that Russian athletes who competed at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics were part of a state-run doping program, in Moscow, Russia, yesterday.

Reuters

LONDON: The head of the World Anti-Doping Agency said yesterday that Russia’s anti-doping authority was unlikely to be declared compli-ant with world sports rules before the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.

“As far as the Russian anti-dop-ing agency is concerned, I think it highly unlikely that organisation would be compliant by the time of the games in Rio,” WADA President Craig Reedie told BBC radio in an interview yesterday.

A report on Russia’s compliance with doping rules would be sent to the International Olympic Commit-tee which would then rule on whether the country’s track and field ath-letes can take part in the August 5-21 Games in Brazil, he said.

It would also be sent to the Inter-national Association of Athletics Federations which has to take a deci-sion on whether to lift a suspension on Russia’s track and field federation.

Allegations about systemic doping in Russian sport have been rumbling for months, but Moscow has been able to argue that the wit-nesses were unreliable and if there was wrongdoing, it was just a few iso-lated cases.

But comments by Grigory Rod-chenkov, the former head of Russian sport’s anti-doping laboratory, in what he described as an extensive programme to cheat at the Sochi Olympics takes the crisis over drugs in Russian sport to a new level of severity.

A Kremlin spokesman denied Rodchenkov’s allegations, made in an interview with the New York Times, saying they amounted to “slander by a turncoat”.

The chair of WADA’s athletes committee said on Thursday that Russian athletes should be banned from the Rio Olympics unless there are guarantees that they are drug free.

Further allegations of drug use by Russian athletes appeared media this week and Reedie told

the BBC he was “horrified” by the claims, which have been denied by Russia.

“If these allegations are true, and they have to be investigated, then what has appeared to have happened is absolutely unaccept-able and people can draw their own conclusions from those facts,” he said.

Reedie also said he assumed a large percentage of the Russian team would be clean athletes.

Meanwhile. Kyrgios asks fans to judge- The war of words between Nick Kyrgios and his national Olym-pic committee has continued, with the Australian tennis player launch-ing a poll on social media as to whether he should be selected for the Rio Olympics.

Kyrgios and the Australian Olympic Committee have been at log-gerheads over Rio since team chef de mission Kitty Chiller suggested the hotheaded 21-year-old and his Davis Cup team mate Bernard Tomic could miss out due to their on-court behaviour.

Rahman takes narrow lead in Mauritius

AFP

PORT LOUIS, Mauritius: Bangla-deshi Siddikur Rahman fired a 69 yesterday to take a one-shot lead into the final round of the Mauri-tius Open on seven under par, as Andrew Dodt suffered a late col-lapse.

World number 406 Rahman has won two Asian Tour titles, but is seeking his first on the European Tour in this co-sanctioned event.

The 31-year-old has not finished in the top 20 of any tour-nament since November, but he got off to a quick start at Four Seasons Golf Club with a birdie at the first.

A three on the par-four 16th helped Rahman post a leading mark of 209.

“I really enjoyed my round today, it was a very special day for me,” Rahman told www.euro-peantour.com.

“I am very excited and I will try to enjoy myself tomorrow. One more day to go. Nothing’s going to change.

“I’ll just try and play the same way as I did for the last few days. I am looking forward to playing in the leader group again tomorrow.”

Dodt had led by three at half-way, but the Australian fell away dramatically on the back nine.

He extended his lead with two birdies on the outward half, but had double bogeys at the 13th and 15th in a terrible clos-ing stretch of holes to sign for a five-over-par 77.

South Korean Wang Jeun-ghun is now Rahman’s closest challenger, as he moved onto six under by mixing four birdies with three bogeys yesterday.

SPORT34 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Baseball: Sale sparkles as White Sox down YankeesReuters

NEW YORK: Highlights of Friday’s Major League Baseball games:

White Sox 7, Yankees 1Chris Sale became the first

eight-game winner in the majors when he tossed a six-hitter as the Chicago White Sox rolled to a 7-1 victory over the New York Yankees on Friday.

Sale (8-0) allowed one run and four hits in becoming the first Chi-cago starter to win his first eight starts since Jon Garland in 2005 and the fourth in team history. He allowed one run or fewer for the 52nd time in 124 career appearances.

Cubs 9, Pirates 4Addison Russell, Kris Bryant

and David Ross all homered as Chicago (26-8) beat Pittsburgh in the opener of a three-game week-end series.

Jason Hammel allowed one earned run as he worked a sea-son-high 6 2/3 innings to improve to 5-0.

Nationals 5, Marlins 3Bryce Harper, who fell behind

0-2 in the count, recovered nicely and crushed a two-run homer in the seventh to break a tie and help Washington beat Miami.

Harper, who entered the game with an on-base average of .441, walked his first two times to the plate and singled in his third trip.

Orioles 1, Tigers 0Adam Jones hit his 200th

career home run and Chris Till-man threw seven shutout innings as Baltimore stretched its winning streak to six games.

The Orioles (22-12) could not do much against Detroit starter Justin Verlander (2-4), scoring the lone run when Jones homered in the sixth inning.

Rockies 5, Mets 2Jon Gray won his first career

game in his 13th start to help Colo-rado snap an 11-game slide against New York.

Gray, who allowed five hits, two runs and one walk with eight strikeouts in seven innings, was 0-1 with a 9.20 ERA in seven starts at Coors Field entering the game.

Giants 3, Diamondbacks 1Joe Panik hit a three-run

homer on a 3-0 pitch and right-hander Jeff Samardzija won his fifth game as San Francisco defeated Arizona.

Panik turned on 92 mph fast-ball from right-hander Shelby Miller (1-4) and drove it deep into the right field seats for a 3-1 lead in the sixth inning.

Astros 7, Red Sox 6George Springer hit a tiebreak-

ing two-run homer off former University of Connecticut team-mate Matt Barnes in the sixth inning as Houston erased a four-run deficit and ended Boston’s five-game winning streak.

Springer, whose homer was his eighth of the year, and Jose Altuve both stroked three hits and scored twice to help the struggling Astros to their fourth win in their last six games. Marwin Gonzalez delivered a pair of RBI singles.

Athletics 6, Rays 3Oakland snapped a five-game

losing streak, getting four home runs -- two from Danny Valen-cia -- in a victory over Tampa Bay.

The Athletics (15-21) had allowed at least 11 runs in each of its last four losses, but found its pitching as well with starter Rich Hill (5-3) overcoming a rough start and retiring 12 batters in a row at one point.

Phillies 3, Reds 2Philadelphia opened up a

nine-game homestand with a vic-tory over Cincinnati for its major league-leading 13th one-run win.

Jeremy Hellickson allowed two runs in seven innings, allowing four hits and two unearned runs while striking out nine -- one shy of his career high -- against one walk to earn his third victory. He also provided the winning RBI in the fourth inning.

Blue Jays 5, Rangers 0Veteran right-hander R A

Dickey retired 14 straight Texas hitters and the Toronto offense got going late en route to victory.

Dickey allowed three singles, including a bunt to leadoff hitter Rougned Odor, in eight innings.

NBA: Dragic plays the star role as Heat scorch Raptors

AFP

MIAMI: Goran Dragic scored 30 points as the Miami Heat roared back to level their Eastern Confer-ence semi-final series with a gutsy 103-91 victory over the Toronto Rap-tors here Friday.

Slovenian star Dragic was out-standing as Miami squared the best-of-seven series at 3-3 to set up a decisive final duel in Toronto today.

Dragic on Friday also had seven rebounds and four assists as Miami seized an early lead before gradually pulling away from the Raptors.

Dragic’s tally was his highest ever score in a playoff game and once again demonstrated his knack of delivering on the big occasion.

He has scored 20 or more points in four of his last seven play-offs games.

Friday’s haul came from 12 of 21 shots, including six layups and two three-pointers.

“I don’t want to go home to Europe,” Dragic said afterward.

“I still want to be here,” he told reporters.

Dwyane Wade also made a tell-ing contribution for Miami, chipping in with 22 points, including five assists and six rebounds at the AmericanAir-lines Arena in Miami.

Kyle Lowry, meanwhile, gave a superb individual display for Toronto in a losing effort.

The 30-year-old point guard finished with a game high 36 points, with three assists and four rebounds. DeMar Rozan added 23 for the Raptors.

Toronto coach Dwane Casey said

his team had failed to adapt to Miami’s early brisk tempo.

“(Miami) set the tempo, and we didn’t adjust as far as guarding the basketball and keeping it in front of us,” Casey said.

Lowry, meanwhile, paid tribute to Dragic’s match-winning performance.

“The way (Dragic) played today -- he played downhill,” Lowry said after the game.

“He’s shifty. He tries to drive the ball. You have to pay attention to him at all times.”

Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said the Slovenian’s ability to keep calm in a crisis had been crucial during the series.

“Goran has great emotional sta-bility. He knows there are going to be highs and lows, especially in a com-petitive seven-game series,” Spoelstra said.

The winner of the series faces a daunting meeting with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals.

Toronto are chasing a first ever

appearance in the Eastern Conference finals in the Raptors’ 20-year history.

If Miami advance, however, it will mean a tantalizing duel against James, who helped the franchise land two NBA titles before returning to Cleve-land in 2014.

On Friday Miami had edged clear in a cagey first quarter in which both sides struggled to find their range, shooting only 40 percent.

But Dragic began to hit his stride in the second quarter, completing six of seven shots from the floor including

four layups on his way to collecting 14 points.

Dragic’s efforts gave Miami a 53-44 lead at the break.

That was the cue for Lowry to turn on the style in the third quarter, with 12 points.

But Miami kept their noses in front and extended their lead to 82-72 as the fourth quarter got under way.

Toronto rallied in the fourth quar-ter but were always struggling against a skilful Miami team as the Heat com-pleted victory.

I don’t want to go home to Europe, I still want to be here, says Goran Dragic after producing 30 points in key win for Heat

NHL: Lightning strike to stun PenguinsAFP

WASHINGTON: Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 24 shots as the Tampa Bay Lightning withstood furious pres-sure from the Pittsburgh Penguins to secure a 3-1 victory in the open-ing game of their Eastern Conference final duel on Friday.

Goals from Alex Killorn, Ondrej Palat and Jonathan Drouin handed the Lightning their fourth straight win over Pittsburgh this season and gave them vital home-ice advantage head-ing into Game Two tomorrow.

The Lightning achieved victory the hard way after Vezina Trophy finalist Ben Bishop left the game with what looked like a serious injury in the first period.

The Lightning were already with-out star forward Steven Stamkos and key defenseman Anton Stralman.

Bishop was left clutching his left knee and screaming in agony before being carried from the ice on a stretcher 12:25 into the first.

Yet the sight of the Lightning’s tal-ismanic goalie leaving the ice was the cue for a heroic performance from his replacement Vasilevskiy.

Vasilevskiy, 21, produced the game of his life to keep the Penguins all-star offense at bay.

Forward J T Brown said the Light-ning had used Bishop’s injury as a rallying point.

“It’s kind of been the mantra -- we’ve had guys go down in the play-offs and we wanted to win for him,” Brown said.

“It showed a lot of the strength of our team,” goalscorer Palat adeed.

Lightning coach Jon Cooper said

X-rays showed no structural damage in Bishop’s leg.

However he was not sure on when the goalie may return.

“That’s tough, (when) guys go down in that much pain. ... You feel for the guy, hope he’s OK,” Lightning center Brian Boyle said. “You know the kind of competitor he is, the team-mate he is, and you want to do well for him.”

Pittsburgh stars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were both shutout, with the Penguins lone goal coming from Sweden’s Patric Hornqvist.

Crosby called on his team-mates to improve for Game Two.

“We’ve got to be better, now that

we have a better understanding of what they do,” Crosby said.

“We’re hoping for the best,” Light-ning coach Jon Cooper told reporters.

A finalist for the Vezina Trophy, Bishop is Tampa Bay’s backbone and he had started in net for each of the team’s games in the post-season.

Vasilevskiy will get the call as goaltender, a 21-year-old with just 40 career contests under his belt.

Vasilevskiy was poised in finish-ing off a 3-1 triumph for the Lightning on Friday and earned valuable expe-rience in relief of Bishop in last year’s Cup final.

Winning a Stanley Cup on the strength of backup goalies is rare

but not unprecedented. Chris Osgood famously led the Detroit Red Wings to the trophy in 2008 after taking over for starter Dominik Hasek, though Osgood was a veteran when he was called upon.

The timing of Bishop’s injury is particularly cruel for the Light-ning who are in red-hot form in the play-offs, having lost just two games through their first 11.

Tampa Bay appeared determined to get back to the Cup finals where they fell to the Chicago Blackhawks a year ago.

Bishop, the Lightning’s all-time leader in wins, fought hard in that title matchup and revealed after the sea-son that he had torn his groin early in the series but played through it.

Kris Letang (58) of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Alex Killorn of the Tampa Bay Lightning fall to the ice after colliding in Game One of

the Eastern Conference Final in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat drives to the basket against Cory Joseph of the

Toronto Raptors during Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Semi-finals of the

2016 NBA Play-offs at American Airlines

Arena in Miami, Florida.

The Tampa Bay Lightning

players celebrate after defeating the Pittsburgh

Penguins in Game One of the Eastern Conference Final with a

score of 3 to 1 during the 2016

NHL Stanley Cup Play-offs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

SPORT 35SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

Manchester rivals fightfor last spot of Europe

Arsenal vs Aston Villa, Chelsea vs Leicester, Everton vs Norwich, Manchester

United vs Bournemouth, Newcastle vs Tottenham, Southampton vs Crystal

Palace, Stoke vs West Ham, Swansea vs Manchester City, Watford vs Sunder-

land, West Brom vs Liverpool

Ranieri relishes triumphant return to Chelsea AFP

LONDON: Claudio Ranieri’s Premier League story comes full circle today as he returns in triumph to Chelsea for the final fixture of title-winners Leicester City’s momentous and his-toric season.

Ranieri’s sacking by Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich in May 2004 set in motion a succession of managerial posts -- at Valencia, Parma, Juventus, Roma, Inter Milan, Monaco and the Greek national team -- that seemed to confirm his

reputation as one of football’s eter-nal nearly men.

But Leicester’s 5,000-1 success has earned him sporting immortality and when he return to the Stamford Bridge touchline, the 64-year-old Ital-ian will do so as a hero.

“It is amazing,” Ranieri said. “I have been back there with Juventus in the Champions League, but this time is different because this time it is with Leicester, another English club.

“It is emotional. I hope my old fans are happy. When I came here, I said ‘The last match is at Chelsea. Wow.’ Now I come back as a champion. It’s a good story.”

Ranieri’s engaging character and gift for a soundbite made him a popu-lar figure during the three and a half years he spent at Chelsea.

But his tactical tweaking earned him the nickname of ‘Tinkerman’ from the British media and despite four seasons of steady progress, cul-minating in a second-place finish in 2003-04, he was sacked because Abramovich reportedly felt that he could not win the league.

Nevertheless, he brought in some of the players who were to form the core of the team that would win back-to-back league titles under his successor, Jose Mourinho, blooding

John Terry and notably signing Frank Lampard, Claude Makelele, Joe Cole and William Gallas.

It was Chelsea, ironically, whose 2-2 draw with Tottenham Hotspur two weeks ago delivered the title to the King Power Stadium and as the min-utes ticked down at Stamford Bridge, a chant of “There’s only one Ranieri!” echoed around the ground.

Leicester’s players will receive a guard of honour from their oppo-nents when they take to the field, but regardless of the formalities, they still have milestones in sight.

Should Tottenham lose at New-castle United and third-place Arsenal

fail to beat Aston Villa, a Leicester vic-tory will give them a winning margin of 13 points -- the joint-second-big-gest gap since three points for a win was introduced in 1981.

Jamie Vardy, meanwhile, trails Tottenham’s Harry Kane by just one goal in the race for the Golden Boot, having taken his tally to 24 with a brace in the 3-1 win over Everton last weekend that preceded Leices-ter’s trophy presentation.

As well as saying hello again to Ranieri, Chelsea’s fans will bid fare-well for a second time to interim manager Guus Hiddink, who has managed to steady the ship since

succeeding Mourinho in December, as he did during a previous stint in 2009.

The game was also expected to be a swansong for legendary captain Terry, who announced in January that he would be leaving at the end of the season, only for Chelsea to reveal yesterday that he has been offered a one-year contract extension.

Terry, who is said to be consid-ering the offer amid interest from two Chinese clubs, is suspended for Leicester’s visit, but the 35-year-old is expected to take part in what could yet be a poignant post-match lap of honour.

AFP

LONDON: Manuel Pellegrini has warned his Manchester City stars to keep their eyes on the prize as they aim to secure a Champions League place at the expense of Manchester United, while champions Leicester will bring down the curtain on their astonishing season at Chelsea today.

With a memorable Premier League campaign coming to a conclusion with the final round of fixtures this weekend, the focus is split between the Manchester rivals’ battle for the last spot in Europe’s elite club competition and a fitting finale for Leicester as the fairytale champi-ons bow out at the home of last year’s winners.

For City manager Pellegrini, his side’s trip to Swansea offers an opportunity to leave on a high note as the Chilean prepares to clear his desk ahead of the arrival of Pep Guardiola, who moves to Eastlands from Bayern Munich in the close-season.

Fourth placed City are two points clear of United and, with their goal dif-ference at +30 compared to their fifth placed rivals’ +12, Pellegrini’s side need only to draw in south Wales to qualify for the Champions League and consign their neighbours to the drudgery of the Europa League.

But Pellegrini knows a complacent attitude from his team could lead to a calamity at the Liberty Stadium.

“This Premier League is not easy. Swansea are a difficult team when you play away,” he said.

“They have done well in the last two games. We must play a very good game to qualify.

“If we play the way we did against Arsenal (last weekend) and we win, it will be a good finish.”

United’s 3-2 defeat at West Ham in midweek took their European fate out of their hands and they host Bournemouth knowing only a victory, combined with a City defeat at Swansea, will be enough to snatch a top four finish.

Just 10 months after being installed as 5,000-1 outsiders for the title, Leicester bid farewell to the most remarkable sea-son in the club’s 132-year history with a trip to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea.

It is an appropriate last hurrah for Claudio Ranieri’s side because the team-spirit and desire that played such a significant role in their title triumph stands in marked contrast to the lethar-gic efforts of Chelsea’s sullen superstars.

While Eden Hazard, Diego Costa and company showed little commitment to the cause in a desultory title defence, the likes of N’Golo Kante and Jamie Vardy rose from obscurity to reach the pinna-cle of the English game.

Leicester midfielder Kante, a £5.6 million ($8 million, 7.1 million euros) signing from Caen, summed up that never-say-die spirit with more tackles and interceptions than other Premier League player this season.

Mauricio Pochettino’s second placed side are two points ahead of Arsenal with a far superior goal difference, meaning a draw or win at Newcastle would make it irrelevant how the third placed Gunners fare in their home fixture against bottom club Aston Villa. West Ham, Southamp-ton and Liverpool are all in contention for Europa League spots, although qual-ification may not be decided until after the FA Cup final.

Memorable Premier League campaign comes to a conclusion with the final round of fixtures this weekend

TODAY’S FIXTURES: (ALL 1400 GMT)

Wenger in spotlight ahead of Arsenal’s final gameAFP

LONDON: Arsene Wenger again found his future was the focus of attention ahead of Arsenal’s final game of the season against Aston Villa at the Emirates Sta-dium today.

At the Gunners’ last home game, some supporters staged a protest urging Wenger to quit and two weeks on, the Arsenal manager’s contract was again at issue, with the Frenchman insisting he would not consider extending his current deal until it is due to expire at the end of next season.

Wenger admitted he would see how next term pans out before deciding on his next move and the same no doubt applies to the club, although the 66-year-old enjoys strong backing from the board.

A repeat of this season’s frus-tration will leave Wenger in a similar position, but it is a measure of the consistency he has brought to the club that a likely third place finish in the Premier League is viewed as a disappointment.

They could even finish second

if Tottenham lose at Newcas-tle and Arsenal beat bottom club Villa.

But the main difference this season is the widely held belief this was the best chance Arsenal had of winning the title in years.

“It was a strange season. We’ve finished the season disap-pointed because we felt we had the chance to win the champion-ship,” Wenger said.

“Of course we are frustrated but Leicester have had consistent results and the rest of the division have had ups and downs.

“Everybody else can be frus-trated but Leicester only lost three games this season. Nobody else had the same consistency.

“Is it down to the fact that Leicester were a surprise pack-age? Is it down to the fact that they only played one competition?

“Certainly there’s some explanation there, but if you only analyse the technical numbers, there’s no rationale.

“That’s why you have to say they have been absolutely remark-able and you have to congratulate them.”

The possibility of finishing behind bitter rivals Tottenham for

the first time in Wenger’s 20-year tenure also hurts. Arsenal will be without England forward Danny Welbeck, who has been ruled out for nine months after picking up a knee injury at Manchester City last weekend.

Aston Villa will look to end their dismal season with just their fourth victory in the league, with their fate of relegation hav-ing been sealed mathematically almost a month ago.

Their players will depart for their holidays after the final

whistle at the Emirates Stadium, not knowing who will own the club or who will manage the team into next season.

But caretaker boss Eric Black has ordered the players not to repeat the mistakes of this cam-paign in their future careers.

“The only discussions I have had with them is ‘try to ensure that you’re never part of anything like this again’,” he said.

“Don’t allow any standards to drop and don’t drop to other peo-ple’s standards.

Arsene Wenger

Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini

Van Gaal admits future uncertain after title flopAFP

MANCHESTER: Louis van Gaal claims it was unrealistic to expect Manchester United to win the Premier League and admits his job secu-rity is uncertain heading into the final game of the season.

United can still qualify for the Champions League with a top four finish, but only if fourth placed Manchester City fail to collect a point at Swansea and van Gaal’s fifth placed team beat Bournemouth at Old Trafford today.

Defeat at West Ham in midweek took the chase for fourth place out of United’s hands and left them facing the prospect of a season out of Europe’s top tier competition.

But, frustrated by United’s long injury list, van Gaal feels their run to next week’s FA Cup Final against Crystal Palace and involvement in the battle for a European berth should be enough to keep him in his job for the third and final year of his contract.

“We can win the FA Cup,” said van Gaal. “How many are still in the race?

“It’s not so many, so of course if we don’t qualify ourselves, then we haven’t reached our aim.

“That is true because our aim was to qual-ify, but we are in the final of the FA Cup and we are in the race in the last match - mathemati-cally, we can qualify ourselves still.

“How many teams can say that? Not many. Of course you can say Manchester United need to be champions.

“Yes, I know the expectations are like that but I don’t think that is realistic.

“And I have said I shall be here, that is my opinion, so the board has to decide if it is like that. That is a different way of looking to the situation.”

Van Gaal’s claim that hopes of a United title success are unrealistic ring somewhat hollow in a season in which low-spending Leicester have won the league with comparative ease.

But there have been few indications from within the United hierarchy over the identity of their manager next season amid specula-tion Jose Mourinho could be set to take charge.

Yesterday, executive vice chairman Ed Woodward spoke with investors on a telephone conference call and failed to mention van Gaal or his fate even once.

However, consensus has grown that should van Gaal finish fourth, and lead United to their first FA Cup success since 2004, that will be sufficient to keep him in the job, not that the manager himself wished to talk about the hypo-thetical possibilities of his situation.

“That is ‘if’ and I want to stick to the facts,” he said.

“We are dependent on Manchester City, that’s the difference, that’s also frustrating when you had the chance, two matches before the end, to keep that advantage.

“We were 2-1 ahead with 15 minutes to play and then we gave it away, but still it is possible. We fight until the end.”

Bournemouth’s refusal to be dragged into the relegation fight was an impressive feat in their first ever top-flight campaign and man-ager Eddie Howe is convinced his players will not let up despite having little to play for.

Louis van Gaal

Benitez’s future up for grabs as Pochettino sticks with SpursAFP

NEWCASTLE: While Rafael Ben-itez’s future at Newcastle United remains uncertain, Mauricio Pochettino confirmed his com-mitment to Tottenham Hotspur this week by agreeing a new deal that will keep him at the club until 2021.

The two managers meet at St James’ Park this weekend when Pochettino will attempt to cap a fine season by seeing his side confirmed as runners-up behind Premier League champions Leicester City, while Benitez’s tar-get is to ensure Newcastle restore at least some pride before drop-ping down into the Championship.

Pochettino sparked some con-cerns among Spurs’ fans when he was spotted leaving a restaurant with Alex Ferguson, the former Manchester United manager, ear-lier this week.

But the Argentinian confirmed Ferguson was not attempting to persuade him to move to Old Trafford and stressed he was now focused on making sure Totten-ham finish above north London rivals Arsenal for the first time in over 20 years.

“When I was young, when I started my career as a manager, he (Ferguson) was always my inspira-tion, my reference and when you can share two hours with a per-son who, for me, was the greatest manager in the world, the history of football, only you can enjoy,” said Pochettino.

Newcastle are set for further talks with Benitez in an effort to persuade the Spaniard to remain as manager.

After initial talks on Thursday, Benitez will meet Newcastle man-aging director Lee Charnley again early next week, with the club hop-ing those discussions will see the 56-year-old stay in place to lead the north-east club’s efforts to return to the Premier League at the first attempt.

Benitez, who failed to prevent the club falling into the Champi-onship for the second time in seven seasons after taking charge for the final 10 games, has a relega-tion release clause in his current short-term deal.

But he could well agree to remain at St James’ Park, provid-ing he receives assurances about the transfer budget available, and the amount of control he will have at his disposal.

The former Liverpool manager is said to be open to an approach from his old club’s local rivals Everton regarding their vacant manager’s role, but Newcastle hope to tie him down to a long-term deal.

Despite their relegation fate being sealed by north-east neigh-bours Sunderland’s 3-0 victory over the Toffees in midweek, Ben-itez will resist the temptation to make sweeping changes for the final top flight game at St James’ Park for at least 15 months.

Newcastle are unbeaten in five games, but can still be overtaken for 18th place by Norwich.

Benitez is aware his side need to give a good account of them-selves given Arsenal can still overtake Tottenham to finish run-ners-up should Newcastle win today.

36 SUNDAY 15 MAY 2016

AFP

MEXICO CITY: FIFA named a Sen-egalese UN diplomat as its first ever female Secretary-General on Fri-day, a historic move announced at a congress that sought to relegate world football’s corruption crisis to the past.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino made the surprise announcement in Mexico City that he had chosen 54-year-old Fatma Samoura, an out-sider unknown to the football world, to be his deputy at the male-domi-nated organisation.

“The congress of today dem-onstrates without any shadow of a doubt that FIFA is back on track,” said Infantino, who was elected in Febru-ary after his predecessor Sepp Blatter was brought down by the scandal.

“I can officially inform you here that the crisis is over and we are all looking forward to a great future,” he said after vowing that FIFA would be “reborn”.

Samoura, who has worked on humanitarian crises with the United Nations for 21 years, is currently based in Nigeria for the UN Devel-opment Program.

“We have to be serious when we say we embrace diversity and we believe in gender equality,” Infan-tino said, describing Samoura as the “most competent” person for the job, with experience in managing big organizations.

She will bring a fresh wind to FIFA, somebody from outside, not somebody from inside, not somebody from the past but somebody new.”

Samoura will take her post by mid-June after undergoing an eli-gibility check administered by an

independent review committee.“Today is a wonderful day for

me, and I am honored to take on the role of FIFA’s Secretary-General,” Samoura, who has also worked at the World Food Program, said in a statement.

“I also look forward to bringing my experience in governance and compliance to bear on the important reform work that is already under-way at FIFA.”

The former Secretary-General, Jerome Valcke of France, was sacked in January and banned from football for 12 years over misconduct in tel-evision deals and World Cup ticket sales -- one of the many scandals that hit FIFA.

Germany’s Markus Kattner had been serving as interim secretary general since then.

Infantino also welcomed the appointment of Canadian soccer

federation chief Victor Montagliani as the new president of the North and Central American and Caribbean football confederation (CONCACAF), whose previous three leaders left office under the cloud of corruption allegations.

FIFA officials meeting in the Mexican capital formally imple-mented governance reforms that were adopted at an extraordinary congress in February. The measures include term limits, transparency in salaries, reinforcing integrity checks of council members, and renaming the disgraced executive commit-tee as the council and pruning its powers.

The congress also approved a 2015-2018 budget that increases development aid to each football association from $400,000 (354,000 euros) to $1.25m per year.

FIFA, meanwhile, resumed this

week the process to select the host of the 2026 World Cup.

“After all the issues, or criticisms, or whatever, which happened around the last World Cup bidding process, it is absolutely crucial for FIFA’s cred-ibility that we have a bullet-poof bidding process in place for 2026,” Infantino said.

He noted that human rights requirements will be examined during the process for the first time and that bidders that fail technical requirements will be excluded.

But the scandals keep haunting world football. Monday, Infantino’s former boss, Michel Platini, said he will step down as head of European football body UEFA after failing to overturn his ban from all football-related activity over allegations that he received a dubious two million Swiss franc ($2m, 1.8m euros) pay-ment from FIFA.

FIFA names first female Secretary-General

FIFA Secretary-General Fatma Samoura

Five games that earned Barcelona La Liga ATLETICO MADRID 1 - BARCELONA 2

SEPTEMBER 12, 2015

Barca faced a huge test just three games into

the defence of their title with a visit to Champi-

ons League finalists Atletico.

Lionel Messi started only on the bench the day

after the birth of his second son, but the World

Player of the Year came on to score the winner

after a stunning Neymar free-kick had cancelled

out Fernando Torres’s opener.

REAL MADRID 0 BARCELONA 4

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

Messi watched on from the bench once more

for the first hour on his return from knee liga-

ment damage, but Barca still landed an early

blow in the title race from which Madrid and, in

particular, beleaguered coach Rafael Benitez

never recovered.

Suarez and Neymar starred with the Uruguayan

opening and rounding off the scoring, whilst

the Brazilian slotted home the second just be-

fore half-time and teed up Andres Iniesta’s

stunning strike for the third with a cheeky

backheel.

BARCELONA 6 CELTA VIGO 1

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

Barca blew open a tight game with a magnifi-

cent 20-minute spell to score four goals of

stunning quality to see of a valiant Celta Vigo.

The easiest finish was the most talked about as

Suarez slotted home Messi’s pass from the

penalty spot in homage to the late Johan Cru-

yff’s famous effort for Ajax 34 years previously.

That was part of a second-half hat-trick for

Suarez, whilst Neymar and Ivan Rakitic chipped

home classy finishes late on to add to Messi’s

inch-perfect first-half free-kick.

DEPORTIVO LA CORUNA 0 -

BARCELONA 8, APRIL 20, 2016

Having suffered three consecutive league de-

feats for the first time in 13 years, Barca

bounced back in stunning fashion with a demo-

lition of Deportivo inspired by four goals and

three assists from Suarez.

Messi, Neymar, Rakitic and Marc Bartra also

netted as the confidence flowed back to start a

run of five wins to end the season by a com-

bined score of 24-0.

GRANADA 0 - BARCELONA 3

MAY 14, 2016

Suarez was the hero once more as he struck a

hat-trick to take his tally for the season to 59

and become the first player other than Messi or

Cristiano Ronaldo to win the Pichichi trophy as

La Liga’s top scorer in seven years.

AFP

BARCELONA: Barcelona sealed their 24th La Liga title as Luis Sua-rez took his tally for the season to 59 goals with a hat-trick in a 3-0 win at Granada to hold off Real Madrid’s

late-season surge. Real registered their 12th consecutive La Liga win, 2-0 at Deportivo La Coruna thanks to Cristiano Ronaldo’s double, but finished a point behind their bitter rivals.

Suarez’s treble also sees him become the first player in seven years other than Ronaldo and Barca team-mate Lionel Messi to win the Pichichi award for La Liga’s top goalscorer with 40.

Barca had seemed set to cruise to the title until a run of three con-secutive defeats for the first time in 13 years last month.

However, they bounced back like champions as, inspired by Suarez’s 14 goals, they scored 24 times without reply in the last five games to win the title. Barca were put under pressure

early on as Ronaldo struck after just seven minutes to put Madrid in front in La Coruna.

Gerard Pique was twice denied by Andres Fernandez from corners, whilst the Granada goalkeeper also tipped over Messi’s driven effort from the edge of the area.

Barca’s nerves were settled by a brilliant team move on 22 minutes as Neymar freed Jordi Alba down the left and his low cross was turned into an empty net by Suarez at the back post.

Suarez then doubled Barca’s advantage when he nipped in ahead of Fernandez to head in Dani Alves’s cross at the near post.

Fernandez made excellent saves from a Messi free-kick that was arrowing towards the top corner and Neymar to keep Granada in the game

after the break. And the Andalusians had the chance to set up a nervy fin-ish but former Barca winger Isaac Cuenca’s shot was beaten away by Marc-Andre ter Stegen.

However, fittingly Suarez sealed a stunning season when he completed his hat-trick from Neymar’s unself-ish square pass.

Madrid’s record 12-game win-ning streak to end the season wasn’t enough to overcome the 12-point deficit they faced to Barca back in March.

“I am very proud of the players and what we have done,” said Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane.

However, victory secured second place ahead of Champions League final opponents Atletico Madrid, whilst Ronaldo moved past the 50

goal mark for the sixth consecutive season. The three-time World Player of the Year opened the scoring as he swept home Karim Benzema’s mishit effort at the back post.

Ronaldo’s second was slightly for-tuitous as his header was deflected past the helpless Stipe Pletikosa by Pedro Mosquera.

However, the Portuguese could have had four before he was replaced at half-time with one eye on the Champions League final on May 28 as he also hit the post and the cross-bar before the break.

Zidane also withdrew Gareth Bale 15 minutes from time to keep the Welshman fresh as the visitors played out the second-half in the knowledge Barca were in command in Granada.

Hat-trick hero Suarez leads Barcato title glory

The Uruguayan bags his third hat-trick in five games as Luis Enrique’s side defend La Liga crown

Enrique hails Barca Reuters

BARCELONA: Barcelona coach Luis Enrique paid tribute to his team’s con-sistency after they retained the La Liga title by strolling to a 3-0 win at Gra-nada thanks to a hat-trick by top scorer Luis Suarez yesterday.

“We played very well over the full season, we were on top of the table for many weeks and the most consistent team wins the title,” Luis Enrique told a news conference.

“I am very happy for all Barca fans, for our families and the club. People suffer a lot in some moments, and now we want to win another trophy next season.”

Barca finished top of the table on 91 points, one clear of second placed Real Madrid, regaining their composure by winning their final five games after a late slump in form allowed Real and Atletico Madrid back into the title race.

“I will remember the good moments, and the people who sup-ported us in delicate moments, which

the fans did. The supporters stayed with us, despite many things going on all around us. So I would tell all Barca fans to go out and enjoy this title.”

Barcelona can clinch a consecu-tive double by beating Sevilla in next week’s King’s Cup final in Madrid and even if their hopes of a consecutive treble were dashed by Atletico in the Champions League quarter-finals, Luis Enrique said there was much to be proud of.

“We set out at the start of the sea-son to win all trophies, as nobody had ever done,” he said.

“Sometimes people think not win-ning one is a disaster. But we know how difficult it is to win trophies.

“We will celebrate this, we enjoy our team, and the style in which they play. In history just two teams have previously won consecutive doubles. We always give ourselves high objec-tives --and we will keep doing that.”

Barcelona have now won six of the last eight titles.

“It shows the club has a winning mentality,” Luis Enrique added. “We must value each title.”

FC Barcelona players celebrate their team’s victory in the Spanish La Liga after defeating 3-0 Granada FC at the end of their last Spanish Primera Division soccer match played at Nuevo Los Carmenes stadium in Granada, southern Spain yesterday.

40: Luis Suarez (Barcelona)

35: Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid)

26: Lionel Messi (Barcelona)

24: Neymar (Barcelona), Karim Benzema

(Real Madrid)

21: Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid)

19: Gareth Bale (Real Madrid)

18: Aritz Aduriz (Athletic Club), Ruben

Castro (Real Betis)

17: Lucas (Deportivo Coruna), Borja Bas-

ton (Eibar)

LA LIGA TOP SCORERS

Barcelona’s Uruguayan forward Luis Suarez celebrates after scoring his third goal during their Spanish league football match against Granada CF at Nuevo Los Carmenes Stadium in Granada yesterday.