Committee to handle Deputy Emir receives credentials of ... · ing the injured a speedy recovery....

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Volume 21 | Number 7008 | 2 RiyalsMonday 12 December 2016 | 13 Rabia I 1438

Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani receiving credentials of Seiichi Otsuka, Ambassador of Japan, at the Emiri Diwan yesterday. The Deputy Emir also received the credentials of new Iran Envoy Mohammad Ali Sobhani. The Ambassadors conveyed to the Deputy Emir greetings of their countries' leaders and their best wishes of further progress and prosperity to the Qatari people.

Deputy Emir receives credentials of new envoys Emir condoles with ErdoganEMIR H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held via tel-ephone a conversation with President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan. During the call, the Emir offered condo-lences to the Turkish President on the victims of Saturday's criminal bombing in the Besiktas district of Istanbul, praying to Allah the Almighty to bestow blessing upon the deceased and wish-ing the injured a speedy recovery. The Emir also reiterated Qatar's support to Turkish government and people, and its backing to all measures taken to preserve the coun-try's security and stability.

The Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani also sent a cable of condolences to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey will fight terror-ism "right to the end," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said following twin blasts in Istanbul that blamed on Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, that has waged a bloody campaign against the Turkish state since 1984.

→ See also page 8

Mohammed Osman The Peninsula

The Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani has issued a decision setting up the Grievance Committee that

will look into complaints related to exit of expatriate workers.

The committee has been set up in line with the Law No. 21 of 2015 regulating the entry, exit and residency of expatriates that will come into force tomorrow.

The Grievance Committee will start receiving exit-related complaints from expatriate workers from tomorrow, coin-ciding with enforcement of the new law, Brigadier Salem Saqr Al Meraikhi, Direc-tor of Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Interior and Chairman of the committee said yesterday, in a press conference held at the Civil Defense headquarters.

As per the ministerial decision, the committee comprises representatives of the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of

Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs and the National Human Right Committee (NHRC).

The committee will have its office at the old premises of the Traffic Department in North Madinat Khalifa.

→ Continued on page 7

Sachin Kumar The Peninsula

Qatar will merge LNG produc-ers Qatargas and RasGas to create a new energy giant.

The integration process is planned to start immediately and is expected to be completed within the next 12 months, said Saad Sher-ida Al Kaabi, President and CEO of Qatar Petroleum (QP) yesterday. The new entity, named Qatargas, will operate all of Qatar’s LNG ventures.

“It has been decided to merge RasGas and Qatargas into one com-pany under the name Qatagas. Operations will remain the same with the same numbers. The inte-gration aims to create a truly unique global energy operator in terms of size, service and reliabil-ity,” said Al Kaabi in a press conference held yesterday held at QP headquarters. “We will merge the distinctive resources and capa-bilities of Qatargas and RasGas to create even higher value for our stakeholders, and enhance our

competitive position,” he added.Representatives of the main

international shareholders in both companies including ExxonMobil, Total, ConocoPhillips, and Shell, and the CEOs of Qatargas and Ras-Gas were present during the press conference.

He told reporters that the inte-gration of the activities of these two energy centres of excellence means that upon completion, there will be a single expanded and enhanced operating entity.


QP announces merger of Qatargas and RasGas

Committee to handle exit-related disputes from tomorrow

The Peninsula

QATAR has become the first country in the region and one of the few nations to conduct successful 5G trials. The trails done by Qatari telecom pro-vider Ooredoo was able to attain the fastest mobile data service in the world today with 35.46 GB per second.

Ooredoo, in partnership with Huawei and Nokia, suc-cessfully demonstrated its 5G capabilities on its ‘Supernet’ within Ooredoo’s 5G laboratory. The Qatari telecom provider completed trials for speed and latency, and achieved incredi-ble speeds of up to 35.46 Gbps, which would make it the fast-edt mobil data service in the world today, according to Oore-doo officials.

However it will take some time for the Ooredoo custom-ers to enjoy the benefits of 5G, as the full commercial launch of 5G services is still some time

away. This is because 5G-ready devices and technology are not available anywhere in the world today. However, by achieving this technological breakthrough, Ooredoo is positioning itself in the top quadrant of data opera-tors in terms of network quality and potential.

Ooredoo’s success in trial-ling 5G technology provides the first regional example of the potential and performance of the upcoming fifth-generation wireless broadband technology, which is based upon the emerg-ing standards.


Qatar first in region with successful 5G trials

Sidi Mohamed & Irfan Bukhari The Peninsula

ALONG educating visitors on how to differentiate counter-feit consumer goods from genuine products, the Ministry of Economy and Commerce’s pavilion at Darb El Saai is encouraging residents to take pictures of counterfeit and expired goods so that swift actions be ensured against the violators.

The visitors of Darb El Saai are getting necessary informa-tion about the counterfeit consumer goods, expired food stuff, and the products not meet-ing GCC standards. The Ministry’s enclosure is creating awareness about counterfeit or expired products through displaying of seized items including expired food stuff, electrical appliances, cosmetics and auto spare parts among others.

→ Full report on page 20

Mohammed Osman The Peninsula

Part of the Doha Corniche will be closed for traffic from 6.30 am to 10 am on

December 18 for the National

Day parade, the General Direc-torate of Traffic at the Ministry of Interior said yesterday.

Vehicle owners intending to decorate their vehicles as part of the National Day celebrations are allowed to do so from December

15 to December 21, after which it will be considered a violation of the rules, Lieutenant Colonel Moham-med Radi Al Hajri, Director of Media and Awareness at the Department said.


Vehicle decoration from Dec 15 to 21 onlyCamel riders perform at the Darb El Saai grounds as part of the National Day celebrations, yesterday. Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula

Saad Sherida Al Kaabi (right), President and CEO of Qatar Petroleum (QP), during the press conference at QP Headquarters yesterday. Pic: Baher Amin/The Peninsula

Both the employer and employee can lodge a complaint against the decision of the committee to the Minister of Interior within 14 hours. The exit permission being granted by the committee is for one time and not for multiple use.

Law No. 21 of 2015 regulating the entry, exit and residency of expatriates that will come into force tomorrow.

Darb El Saai visitors get tips to deal with counterfeit items

02 MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016HOME

Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani with the Ambassador of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka to Qatar, W M Karunadasa, who called on the Deputy Emir to greet him on the occasion of the end of his tenure in Qatar. The Deputy Emir wished the Ambassador success in his future assignments and further progress and prosperity in bilateral relations.

Deputy Emir meets outgoing envoy

Raynald C RiveraThe Peninsula

A Filipino resident is turn-ing a productive hobby he learned during his

stay in Qatar into a lucrative business back in his home country.

After working as a firefighter in Qatar for seven years, Kian Castaneda (pictured) is deter-mined to go back to his hometown in the Philippines for good. His plan: to put up a hydro-ponics farm business, a favourite pastime he started years back which later turned into a passion.

It all began in early 2010 when Castaneda stumbled upon an article published in The Peninsula about a Filipino hydroponics hobbyist Angelo Ramos who had turned the tiny entrance to his flat into a soil-less garden with over a hundred edible vegetables.

“I have already developed keen interest in farming when I was a child and upon reading the article, I started to do research since I thought it would be a good alternative since in hydroponics, you can

grow plants anywhere without soil and even with limited space,” he told this daily.

It took him a year to study and experiment on the method but it became easy when he met Ramos who provided him very helpful tips, he related.

“I later joined him in con-ducting seminars. We also have a Facebook group where we connect with other hydropon-ics enthusiasts, making it easier for them to begin their setup compared several years ago when I was starting,” he said.

With over 400 members, the Facebook group called Pinoy Hydroponics Qatar has been generating interest among green thumbs wishing to con-tinue their passion in gardening in the absence of a patch of land to farm. Compared to tradi-tional farming, hydroponics is cheap, requires very small area and less labour, but in terms of yield, it can produce two to three times than traditional farming method making it a very lucrative business.

“When I go back to the Phil-ippines in March, this is the first thing that I’m planning to start doing. In the province where I

come from, there are already many restaurants, in fact we have ventured into it as our family business. But it is hard to find certain herbs like basil available in another city,” he explained.

“No one in our place has ventured into hydroponics business and that’s why it has potential. There is a market for it, that’s why I will really make a business out of it. My wife will focus on our restaurant while I take care of the farm,” he added.

One benefit of hydroponics is that plants can thrive even during hot weather since they can be set up conveniently

inside the house, with the help of light bulbs to replicate ade-quate sunlight needed by the plants, making it an ideal agri-cultural method in a country with very hot climatic condi-tions like Qatar.

Vegetable seeds and nutri-ents are available in Qatari market. Other materials can be improvised such as styrofoam fruit crates, food trays and cups used as breeding ground for the vegetables, said Castaneda.

Almost all kinds of vegeta-bles can be grown using hydroponics but Castaneda cul-tivates those which are easy to grow such as bok choy, lettuce, celery and capsicum.

Filipino turns hobby into business

Sanaullah AtaullahThe Peninsula

The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs opened a forum on managing Zakat funds and the institutions

concerned in the GCC countries to ensure transparency in char-ity works, at the Torch Doha Hotel yesterday.

The five-day event is being organised by the Zakat Fund at the Ministry in collaboration with GCC-General Secretariat.

The forum aims to educate participants about the concept of governance, its purpose and benefits and international standards.

The forum will also focus on the principle of the governance of public institutions, charity organisations, Islamic financial institutions, mechanism for strengthening the norms of transparency and combating

corruption, among others.At the end of the forum, a

panel discussion will be held to float and discuss ideas, and pro-posals will be made to prepare a governance charter for char-ity organisations including Zakat funds.

Dr Abdul Azaiz Al Hammadi, an authorized trainer at the Min-istry of Administrative

Development, Labour and Social Affairs, Qatar University, and representatives of other famous institutions of the country will deliver lectures at the forum.

The forum is meant to share the experiences of GCC coun-tries in regulating Zakat funds, said Mobarak Al Mobarak, Head of Legal Monitoring Unit at Gen-eral Secretariat of GCC.

The forum will help increase transparency at the institutions dealing with Zakat funds, he added.

Dr Mohamad Khalif Al Kubaisi, Head of Zakat Services Section at Zakat Fund, urged the participants to utilise the sug-gestions of the forum.

"We are still in the basics of the governance required for our institutions dealing with Zakat funds to improve our perform-ances on this religious obligation to build trust among people in our existing institutions," he added.

Ministry organises forum on managing Zakat funds

→ Continued from page 1

“The collective resources, talents, and capabilities of two global leaders will be joined to create an even more effective and efficient organisation to uphold the best interests of Qatar, our customers, and our shareholders,” the President and CEO of Qatar Petroleum added.

The existing operations groups within both companies will not be impacted at all by the integration, as the highest pri-ority is given to ensuring a safe, seamless and risk-free business continuity, he added.

Al Kaabi said that the merger will help to reduce operation costs and will make the entity more competitive. "Of course, as an outcome of this cost reduc-tion will be realised, it will make us more competitive in the mar-ket," he said, adding that the move would save “hundreds of millions of dollars”, without giv-ing a timeframe for the savings. “It's one business that will do the same thing. Putting it all (in) one place gives you a much bigger advantage in marketing,” he said. He emphasised on Qatar Petroleum’s resolve to achieve its vision‘to become one of the

best national oil companies in the world’, and to ensure the reinforcement of Qatar’s contin-ued and sustainable economic growth. “Hence, this and other initiatives that QP has embarked upon, are all enablers that will make our vision become a real-ity,” he said.

He paid tribute to the high Qatari competencies and capa-bilities, which were at the centre of attention and development throughout the history of Qatar-gas and RasGas, and which have proven high professionalism in their various fields of expertise.

Emir condoles with IndonesiaPresidentQNA

Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yesterday a cable

of condolences to President of Indonesia Joko Widodo on the victims of the earth-quake which struck Indonesia's Aceh province on Saturday.

Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani and Prime Minister and Minister of Interior H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Than have also sent a cable of condo-lences to Joko Widodo on the earthquake.

Qatar condemns attack on Egypt Coptic churchTHE State of Qatar condemned yesterday the explosion which targeted a Coptic Cathedral in Egypt and led to the kill-ing and injuries of a number of people.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed, in a state-ment released yesterday, Qatar's position that denounces violence and ter-rorism regardless of its motives.

The Ministry also offered its condolences to the fami-lies of the victims and the Egyptian people, wishing the injured a speedy recovery.

Qatar slams attack in SomaliaTHE State of Qatar expressed strong condemnation of the explosion which targeted a municipality building in the Somali capital Mogadishu yes-terday morning.

In a statement released yes-terday, the Foreign Ministry said the State of Qatar condemns this criminal act which contradicts all human values and princi-ples. The statement affirmed solidarity with the govern-ment and people of Somalia, and its support in all the efforts to maintain stability and secu-rity in the country.

The statement also stressed Qatar's sincere con-dolences to the families of the victims, as well as the government and people of Somalia.

Merger will 'help reduce operation costs'

Transparency

The five-day event is organised to ensure transparency in charity works and achieve high standards of quality.

Participants from Gulf countries share their experiences in regulating Zakat funds.

DFI names Masters of Qumra 2017The Peninsula

Doha Film Institute (DFI) has announced contemporary Iranian master Asghar

Farhadi, French auteur Bruno Dumont, and Cambodian creative documentarian Rithy Panh as the first Masters of Qumra 2017. A DFI initiative that provides mentor-ship, nurturing, and hands-on development for emerging film-makers from Qatar and around the world, the third edition of Qumra will be held from March 3 to 8 next year in Doha.

Fatma Al Remaihi, Chief Executive Officer of DFI, said: “We are deeply honoured to welcome three visionaries of contemporary world cinema – Asghar Farhadi, Bruno Dumont and Rithy Panh – who bring their diverse approaches to filmmaking to Qumra 2017. A close-knit industry event that is set on nurturing the skills of emerging filmmakers, Qumra

will gain tremendous insight from these three internation-ally acclaimed writer-directors. We are excited at the prospect of welcoming these Masters and look forward to engaging inter-actions among them and the participating filmmakers.”

Artistic Advisor to DFI, Elia Suleiman, added: “The third edition of Qumra insists on remaining faithful to its essence and ideal; to being precise, con-sistent and sincere. Bruno Dumont, Asghar Farhadi, and Rithy Panh are three artists who will greatly enhance this con-cept and philosophy. These three filmmaker poets will present their work and expand on their diverse ways of seeing: Farhadi’s hyper-real visual interpretation of social set-tings.” Qumra is designed to provide creative and profes-sional support to directors and producers attached to as many as 25 features and 10 shorts.

Participants at the forum on managing Zakat funds.

03MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016 HOME

Prime Minister and Minister of Interior H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani with heads of the Boards of Arab Federations of Chambers, on the occasion of their 123rd meeting in Doha. During the meeting, they discussed ways of enhancing economic integration among Arab countries. The Prime Minister wished success to the heads of federations of chambers.

PM meets heads of Boards of Arab Federations of Chambers Global forum on traffic safety from tomorrowQNA

Under the patronage of Prime Minister and Inte-rior Minister, H E Sheikh

Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khal-ifa Al Thani, Doha hosts the 'Global Forum Traffic Safety and Sustainable Transport Sys-tems" on December 13-14.

The event is organised by Qatar University in collabora-tion with the National Traffic Safety Committee. The interna-tional Forum, organised by Qatar Center for Transport and Traffic Safety, part of the Fac-ulty of Engineering at the University of Qatar, aims to support and promote the vision

and goals of the 2013 -2022 National Strategy for Traffic Safety in the State of Qatar.

The Forum brings together a number of senior national and international experts in sustain-able transport systems to exchange international expertise and offer the best international practices in the sphere of trans-port system: "Planning, Design, Construction, Operations and Maintenance Levels."

Participants will also dis-cuss the implementation of the requirements of the UN Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 and the UN Sustainable Develop-ment Goals.

Mobile health care 'key to developing healthy lifestyle'Fazeena Saleem The Peninsula

Introducing the use of mobile phones to educate people on lifestyle diseases and managing chronic health conditions is one of

the possible ways to develop a healthy population in the coun-try, say experts.

Personalised alerts and information sent via mobile phones on healthy lifestyles and controlling chronic diseases will allow the public to take control of their health effectively, said Dr Najeeb Al Shorbaji, former Director of Knowledge, Ethics and Researchm at the World Health Organisation.

“Health will soon become the responsibility of individuals and the state will facilitate and cre-ate the infrastructure. But individuals will have take full

charge of their health and mobile health is one way of achieving it,” he told The Peninsula yesterday.

Al Shorbaji is also the Vice President of e-Marefa and spoke on the sidelines of an event held yesterday highlighting the role of ‘mobile healthcare.’

mHealth (mobile health) is the use of mobile phones and other wireless technology in health care. The most common application of mHealth is the use of mobile phones and commu-nication devices to educate people on prevention of diseases. mHealth is also used for disease surveillance, treatment support, epidemic outbreak tracking and chronic disease management.

Al Shorbaji highlighted the considerable scope for mobile health services in several areas including education, follow-up communication etc. He said that Qatar is well positioned in terms of access to technology and with a law to protect personal data information, but further develop-ing and executing an effective mobile health strategy for Qatar will be one of the key success fac-tors in developing a sustainable and effective healthcare system.

International law firm Pin-sent Masons, which has regional offices in Dubai and Doha, together with Philips Healthcare, are facilitating discussions on Qatar’s healthcare industry in a series of roundtable events.

Roger Phillips, Legal Direc-tor of Pinsent Mason's Doha office, said, “We are also pleased that through this initiative, we are able to continue our support to the Ministry of Public Health's National Health Strategy and E-Health work. Mobile applica-tions are more useful in monitoring and managing chronic disease such as diabetes, a huge issue in the country.”

Representatives from the Min-istry of Public Health and Ministry of Transport and Communications, Ooredoo, Qatar Biobank, Hamad Medical Corporation, Sidra Medical Research Center, Primary Health-care Corporation and private

hospitals were present at the dis-cussions. Taylor Barr, Senior Manager, Transformation Serv-ices, at Philips Healthcare in Doha said, “It is clear mobile devices and hospital-to-home tools will be

instrumental in achieving Qatar’s bold health initiatives. What we need to do now is understand how these tools can be developed and leveraged in the most effective way possible.”

FROM LEFT: Dr Najeeb Al Shorbaji, Taylor Barr and Roger Phillips speaking about the opportunities on introducing mHealth in Qatar. Pic: Abdul Basit / The Peninsula

mHealth

mHealth (mobile health) is the use of mobile phones and other wireless technology in health care.

Health will soon become the responsibility of individuals: Expert

→ Continued from page 1Part of the Corniche from

Qatar Post Office to Ras Buabood area will be closed for traffic for the morning parade and again will be open from 10am for the day-long celebrations.

People attending the morn-ing parade need to come to the parking areas at Souq Waqif, Mohammed bin Abdulwahab Mosque, Sheraton park, Doha Port and other designated park-ing areas before 6.30am. There will be buses to transport them to the National Day parade venue.

“People must respect the privacy and rights of people coming from different parts of the country and other GCC states to take part in the National Day celebrations,” said Al Hajri.

He pointed out to the acces-sibility of helpline 999 at any time, adding that the system has been set up to identify the

location of the caller through the numbers given on the lamp-posts that the security patrols can reach there easily. Any per-son seeking help or those who lost their children can call this number mentioning the number of nearest lamp-post.

Rules regulating the National Day celebrations pre-vent changes in the vehicle’s body or colour as well as use of decorations that cover the number plates. Tenting the front and back glasses of the vehicles and the side glass near the driv-er’s seat is also banned, said First Lieutenant, Ahmed Al Musaifir, Lekhwiya.

People are not allowed to dance between the cars hinder-ing traffic flow, apply spray paint on other cars or pedestri-ans or engage in stunt shows using their vehicles.

The rules also prohibit

putting the Qatari flag in a way covering the back or front side of the vehicles because this can confuse other motorists, said Al Musaifir. However, small flags, pictures of the leaders and other National Day insignia are permitted.

Al Musaifir advised motor-ists not to carry more than the designated number of passen-gers, not to stand up through the sunroof or use horns or trum-pets or any other noisy devices. There will be traffic and secu-rity personnel at all traffic signals, roundabouts, and gath-ering points to help people.

During the afternoon events and the fireworks on the Cor-niche area, there will be safe lanes for pedestrians and traf-fic officers will be available to help the people, said Fahad Buhindi of the Traffic Department.

First Lieutenant Ahmed Al Musaifir, Lekhwiya; Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Radi Al Hajri, Director of Media and Awareness; and Fahad Buhindi of the Traffic Department at a press conference on traffic arrangements on the occasion of the Qatar National Day celebrations held at the Civil Defence headquarters yesterday. Pic: Qassim Rahmatullah / The Peninsula

Restrictions on use of privatevehicles for celebrations


HBKU issues call for papers for media conference on audiovisual translationThe Peninsula

Hamad Bin Khalifa Univer-sity’s (HBKU) Translation and Interpreting Institute

(TII), part of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), is accepting submissions from scholars and profession-als who are passionate about audiovisual translation (AVT) for the 7th Media for All Interna-tional Conference on Audiovisual Translation, a press

release said. The Conference will be held in Doha from Octo-ber 23 to 25, 2017 in Education City. The aim of the conference is to address the rapid expan-s i o n o f a u d i o v i s u a l communication and translation services in the global market, as well as creating a platform for intercultural exchange to build human capacity by sharing best practices and research in the field.

The theme of the conference

is to highlight cutting-edge pro-fessional practices and research topics that map the current sta-tus of the profession, production and distribution techniques, and end-user needs for AVT services.

Through papers, panels, and round-table discussions, partic-ipants will gain insight into the new AVT landscape. Profession-als and academics will engage with peers to learn more about new media, formats,

and contexts, alongside innovative approaches to solve challenges.

Dr Amal Mohammed Al-Malki, Dean of CHSS noted: “Audiovisual trans-lation has become a major driving force in the world of communication at large. The challenges and oppor-tunities of the rapid changes in society and technology are reason enough to dedicate a whole conference to this theme. By hosting Media for All at TII-HBKU, we wish to make Qatar a hub for the development of audiovisual translation in the Arab world. We encourage scholars, researchers and stake-holders to use this forum as an opportunity to plan ahead towards 2022.”

The 7th Media for All International Conference on Audiovisual Translation will create an open meet-ing space for sharing the challenges and opportuni-ties of the AVT field.

It will directly help address Qatar’s require-ments in developing the tourism and sports indus-try for the upcoming FIFA World Cup to be hosted by the country in 2022.

The Peninsula

Souq Al Medina, The Pearl-Qatar’s latest indoor shopping complex, has

recently welcomed its first batch of retailers comprising of an eclectic mix of shopping and dining outlets and coffee shops. The Souq is strategically located in the vibrant district of Medina Centrale, pleasantly catering to the tastes of residents and vis-itors within its modernly designed internal shopping arcades.

The first occupants include

the popular Al Jazeera perfumes, fast food eateries Mister Pizza and Hot Dogty along with healthy and flavorful popcorn shop Let’s Popcorn and authentic Turkish restaurant Hasan Kolcuoglu.

These brands join more than 74 outlets now operational in Medina Centrale. Souq Al Medina is also set to welcome a larger number of diverse commercial shops in the coming period including coffeeshops, restau-rants, fashion and accessory stores, perfumeries as well as a medical facility Queen Medical Center. Some of these confirmed

brands are Crepe & More, Shater Abbas and the Kuwaiti Triangle restaurants, French bakery and coffeeshop France Delice, Tamima, Blackout Concept for watches, Ajmal Perfumes and Dnata Travels among many oth-ers within a total area of 19,000 square meters.

Medina Centrale has been witnessing an increased footfall, and as such it was earlier announced that it would become a car-free environment during weekends to boost visitors’ enjoyment of the Island’s vibrant towncentre in the cooler months.

HMC hosts activities to mark World Diabetes DayThe Peninsula

Hamad Medical Cor-poration (HMC) has screened more than a thousand people for diabetes during

the awareness activities held at different venues in the country to mark the World Diabetes Day (WDD).

Also, a series of events were held during November raising awareness of how to better man-age and prevent the disease.

At Al Wakra Hospital, more than 550 people were screened during an exhibition and public screening and over 450 people were screened at the Al Khor Hospital. Another screening event was held at the Aspire Park, checking hundreds for diabetes.

HMC’s major public outreach and awareness activities were kicked off during the official opening of its annual exhibition gazebo located near the entrance of the Outpatient Department at

Hamad General Hospital. H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, the Minister of Public Health, attended the opening ceremony and had her glucose checked during the free diabetes screen-ing. Other HMC activities included a workshop for children and screening events at various hospitals, businesses, schools and colleges. Activities also included a mobile screening unit for non-medical staff at HMC and

participation in the second Annual Arab Diabetes Medical Congress.

The theme for this year's WDD was ’eyes on diabetes,’ focusing on preventative eye

care and the importance of screenings. Diabetes is a leading cause of blindness in the

developed world. Officials with the diabetes care team at HMC say it is important to get annual health screenings as well as eye exams.

“It is only through greater public awareness and education that we will ever be able to lessen the burden of this disease. Offer-ing screenings, and getting the public in the habit of being screened, is an important part of raising awareness,” said Manal Othman, Director of Diabetes Educator at HMC.

The National Diabetes Center at Hamad General Hos-pital was opened in 2013 and receives about 2,000 adult and 700 paediatric patients each month. The National Diabetes Center at Al Wakra Hospital opened in 2014 and receives approximately 400 patient vis-its each month. Offering a multi-disciplinary approach to patient care, the Centers pro-vide patients with improved access to specia l i sed treatment.

Awareness drive

Awareness activities held at different venues in the country to mark the World Diabetes Day (WDD).

The theme for this year's WDD was ’eyes on diabetes,’ focusing on preventative eye care.

World Diabetes Day exhibition and public screening held at Al Wakra Hospital.

'Souq Al Medina' welcomes first retailers

Souq Al Medina at The Pearl-Qatar.


Asean envoys vow to deepen integrationRaynald C Rivera The Peninsula

Philippine Ambassador Wilfredo C Santos has urged Asean Commit-tee in Doha (ACD) members to do their

part in achieving the goals of Asean as it marks its 50th founding anniversary next year which coincides with the Phil-ippines’ chairmanship.

Santos said the Asean 2017 theme ‘Partnering for change, engaging the world’ “reflects our resolve to consolidate Asean to enable it to take its rightful place in the internat ional community.”

“For the 50th anniversary of Asean we hope to highlight Asean as a model of regional-ism and a global player with the interest of the people at its core. Towards this end we should all do our part in deepening inte-gration to propel us forward to the realisation of a rules-based

people-oriented people-centred Asean community,” he stressed.

The envoy was speaking at the Asean Night on Saturday during which he handed over the ACD chairmanship to Thai-land Ambassador Soonthorn Chaiyindeepum.

“It has been a memorable experience for me working with all of you, my Asean brothers in pursuit of elevating Asean pro-file here in Qatar. I hope that with the able leadership of Thai-land next year the ACD will pursue various activities which will enhance cooperation with global partners and to make this

From left: Singapore Ambassador Jai Sohan Singh, Malaysia Ambassador Dato’ Ahmad Jazri Mohamed, Thailand Ambassador Soonthorn Chaiyindeepum, Philippine Ambassador Wilfredo C Santos, Brunei Ambassador Haji Nordin Bin Haji Ahmad, Vietnam Ambassador Nguyen Hong, and Indonesia Ambassador Muhammed Basri Sidehabi do a traditional chain handshake at the Asean Night held on Saturday at Hilton Doha Hotel. Pic: Kammutty VP / The Peninsula

happen, we will need your coop-eration and support of all Asean member states,” he said.

He added: “I am confident that with our concerted efforts relations between Asean and Qatar will continue to grow and advance and that Asean can con-fidently do its role as global player contributing to the eco-nomic growth and prosperity in our region.” Accepting the ACD chairmanship, the Thai envoy thanked the members for

entrusting him to carry on the position and vowed to meet their expectations by implementing different programmes and activ-ities aimed at promoting Asean in Doha as well as strengthen the bond among members.

He mentioned a number of areas which he plans to focus on as new ACD chairman. “First, we hope to promote and enhance the profile and visibility of Asean to a wider community in Doha. Sec-ond, while we are working to

promote our visibility to the Qatari public, I think we should also con-tinue community building within the Asean community.

Third, I would like to strengthen camaraderie among Asean missions in Doha,” he said.

The envoy stressed he will take advantage of Asean Day as a good opportunity to highlight the achievements of Asean con-tinuing the partnership with Philippine School Doha in organ-ising the celebrations.

Diplomatic pitch

Philippine envoy hands over ACD chairmanship to Thailand Ambassador Soonthorn Chaiyindeepum.

Vegetable prices in Central Market decrease 15%The Peninsula

Prices of vegetables declined 15 per-cent in the Doha Central Market last month compared to the cor-

responding month last year. However, the fall in prices of vege-

tables was four percent last month (November) compared to the previous month (October), according to the

monthly statistical report on the prices of vegetables, fruits, fish, meat and fod-der at Central Market.

The difference in price fall ranges from QR1 to QR2 per kg for many agri-cultural products in the Central Market in a year. The produce includes Jorda-nian tomato, cauliflower and Kusa, Saudi cauliflower, carrot, eggplant and Kusa, Indian onion among others.

However, Chinese garlic became expensive at QR3 per kg from QR7 per kg in November 2015 to QR10 per kg in November, 2017. Prices of Qatari cucumbers went up by QR0.5 per kg from QR3 per kg to QR3.5 in a year.

Prices of fruits declined eight per-cent in November 2016 compared to November 2015. However, the fall in prices of fruits was only one percent last

month compared to the previous month. Fish prices fell six percent in Novem-

ber 2016 compared to November 2015. The monthly fall in prices of fish was only one percent.

Prices of Shari fish declined 25 per-cent in November 2016 compared to November 2015 and 17 percent com-pared to the previous month.

Prices of kingfish fell six percent in

November 2016 compared to Novem-ber 2015. However, the price of kingfish increased 11 percent at QR30.50 per kg in last month compared to the previous month when it was available at QR27.50.

Prices of Hamour fish also increased 31 percent from QR40 in November 2015 to QR52.5 in November 2016. The prices of Houmour went up 11 percent last month compared to previous month.

Ooredoo to share 5G trial results

Continued from page 1The company has also

promised to demonstrate the power of this new 5G tech-nology with Nokia in the coming days, including a demonstration of next-gen-eration virtual reality and robotic applications.

In addition, the results from Ooredoo’s trials will be shared with global partners, to contribute to the interna-tional agreements on standards and spectrum that will be necessary to support the global launch of 5G serv-ices. Ooredoo’s trial results will also help the develop-ment of 5G-ready equipment and devices.

“Ooredoo worked hard to complete this important tech-nological breakthrough ahead of our country’s celebrations for Qatar National Day, so that we could share this remarkable achievement with our people and the world.

Qatar continues to break new ground in the technol-ogy and services we are making available for our peo-ple," said Waleed Al Sayed, CEO, Ooredoo Qatar.


Toyota wins 2016 Autobacs Super GT seriesThe Peninsula

The Toyota camp had rea-sons to rejoice at the 2016 Autobacs Super GT series,

as a thrilling encounter in the final round (Round 8) resulted in a victorious No 25 Toyota 86 MC VivaC passing the checkered flag, with No 31 Toyota Prius apr GT competing brilliantly for a second spot finish. The much-awaited contest was held on a dry course and under bright, clear skies at the Motegi Twin Ring in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan.

With this momentous win and overall second win of the season, the No 25 Toyota 86 MC VivaC — expertly driven by

Takeshi Tsuchiya and Takamitsu Matsui throughout the series — also bagged the GT300 class Drivers and Team Champion-ship titles.

The early stages of the all-important race belonged to No 31 Toyota Prius apr GT — driven by Koki Saga and Yuichi Nakayama — that glided com-fortably in the leading position through the first turn and beyond. Early threat to its spot came from competitor car No 65 that made futile attempts to exploit any gaps. Well behind in the competition, the eventual winner of the race had a luke-warm start to the race.

No 25 Toyota 86 MC VivaC lost ground in the opening laps

and its driver Takeshi Tsuchiya seemed visibly reluctant to increase pace. This caution hinted towards a possible tactical manoeuver that would contrib-ute to a strong comeback, and ultimately a victory for the team.

Lap 15 into the race marked a pit stop for most cars, but fore-going the regulatory halt was of much tactical interest to the No 25 Toyota 86 MC VivaC that was now lagging behind in the tenth spot.

HGH bags best hospital for research award

The Peninsula

Hamad General Hos-pital (HGH) has been awarded for being the best hos-pital for research

within the Hamad Medical Cor-poration (HMC) during its Annual Research Day.

Organised by HMC’s Medi-cal Research Center, the theme for this year’s event was ‘Bridg-ing the Gap between Research and Innovation in Patient Care’.

This year’s Annual Research Day featured many new awards, recognising the out-standing contributions of researchers at HMC.

The individual award for Distinction in Research was won by Dr Talal Ibrahim, Sen-ior Consultant, Orthopaedic, Surgery Department, Hamad General Hospital, while the award for Distinction in Research was awarded to the Rheumatology Team of Hamad General Hospital.

Excellence in Basic Research award went to Sha-hab Uddin Khan, Academic Research Scientist, iTRI, Aca-demic Health System, Excellence in Clinical Research to Dr Saad J Taj-Aldeen, Clini-cal Scientist, Department of

Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Excellence in Health Services Science Research award went to Prof Adeel Ajwad Butt, Vice-Chair for Fac-ulty Affairs, Department of Medicine and the Promising Young Researcher was Dr Tariq Osman Saeed Abbas, Special-ist, Surgery Department, Hamad General Hospital.

Promising Resident/ Research Fellow award was given to Dr Abduljabbar Alham-moud, Medical Resident, Medical Education and Best Publication Award was given to 'Beneficial Effects of Imple-menting Stroke Protocols Require Establishment of a Geographical Distinct Unit.'

Professor Ibrahim A. Janahi, Executive Director of Research at HMC, addressing delegates on the Annual Research Day.

Health Excellence

Hamad General Hospital (HGH) awarded along with other experts on Annual Research Day.

The Peninsula

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce, in col-laboration with Al

Fardan Automobiles, dealer of BMW vehicles in Qatar, has announced the recall of BMW 3 Series, 5 Series & X5 model year 2002-2005 over a potential defect in the gas generator of the driver’s

airbag. The Ministry said the recall campaign comes within the framework of its ongoing efforts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs

The Ministry said that it will coordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works.

BMW 2002-05 models recalled

NU-Q alumnus wins key journalism honourThe Peninsula

Ismaeel Naar, a Northwestern University in Qatar alumnus, has been named Outstanding

Young Arab Journalist of the year. Naar received the award at an event recognising out-standing achievements by young Arabs.

Naar, an online journalist with Al Arabiya, was the student graduation speaker at NU-Q in 2013, as well as the recipient of the Dean’s Award. During his time as a student, Naar partici-pated in a residency programme with The Financial Times in New York. He also received NU-Q Media and Research Awards in two categories — for Best Doc-umentary, which he filmed on refugees in a UNHCR health cen-tre in Jordan; and Best Profile for a photography project on Qatar National Day celebrations.

“Ismaeel was an excellent student while attending North-western and his success as a professional journalist is some-thing that all of us at

Northwestern take great pride in witnessing,” said Everette E Dennis, dean and CEO at NU-Q.

After graduation, before joining Al Arabiya, Naar worked for the Al Jazeera Media Net-work, as an online reporter for its English website. The 25-year-old Bahraini journalist was one of the youngest reporters from

the region to cover the frontlines of the Saudi-Yemen war. He was also the first journalist to break the news of the Haj stampede in 2015.

"In the career I've had so far, I've covered several breaking international news stories, including the failed coup attempt in Turkey and the recent US

presidential elections. My jour-nalism classes at NU-Q equipped me with the skills needed to handle such stories and develop solid and accurate coverage,” Naar said.

Naar was selected as the Out-standing Young Arab Journalist by a distinguished judging panel, which was headed by Chaker Khazaal – the 28-year-old author of the 'Confessions of a War Child' trilogy. The other judges included former UK ambassador to Leb-anon Tom Fletcher, filmmaker Farah Nabulsi, columnist Fasial Al Yafai, journalist Momen Mah-moud, OMG (MENA) CEO Elie Khouri, Asda’a Burson-Marstel-lar CEO Sunil John, humanitarian Mouna Elhaimoud, and MBC Sen-ior Vice-President Mazen Hayek.

Naar said that he accepted the award with great pride and was “thankful to my first editors, who were my journalism pro-fessors at NU-Q. My passion and drive to tell other people's sto-ries was born from their classes all those years ago,” said Naar.

Ten Shafallah students join beauty workshopThe Peninsula

In the framework of the joint cooperation between Qatar Foundation for Social Work’s (QFSW) Centers, Nama Center, a member of QFSW, has launched a three-month

“beautification and health care” training workshop for 10 of the Shafallah Center students, at the Qatar International Beauty Academy (Tajmeel). The intensive training programme comes as part of Nama’s ‘Tamkin’ project, one of the Cent-er’s “Professional training and development” projects.

The creative workshop provides the young ladies with the guidance they need and nurtures their interest in beau-tification and skin health care, one of the vital fields in the diverse labour market, which contributes to enriching the development opportunities available for women in Qatar, as well as expands the scope of Nama’s services.

Nama’s Tamkin project aims to empower women and provide them with beautification and skin health care skills through vocational training and rehabilitation at the Acad-emy, in accordance with International standards and accreditation, presenting women with economic empow-erment opportunities.

The project was launched in October, under the wider scope of the Center’s “Professional training and develop-ment” project, which focuses on education and training for building the capacity of socially disadvantaged and econom-ically underprivileged groups, and enable them to participate in social work and community service.

Founded in 2009 by Nama, Tajmeel was established to provide training courses of the highest caliber within the beauty industry.

Ismaeel Naar receiving the award for 'Outstanding Young Arab Journalist' of the year in Dubai.

Tamuq faculty members awardedThe Peninsula

Two faculty members from Texas A&M University at Qatar (Tamuq) were rec-ognised with the Engineering Genesis

Award for Multidisciplinary Research from the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station.

Dr Nimir Elbashir and Dr Shehab Ahmed each received the award, which is presented to TEES researchers who have secured significant research grants of $1m

or more. Elbashir is professor in the Chem-ical Engineering Program and the Petroleum Engineering Program at Tamuq and director of the TEES Gas and Fuels Research Center. Ahmed is an associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Program at Tamuq.

They were recognised for research excel-lence in building up unique global research collaboration models between academia and industry to develop novel technologies for carbon dioxide utilisation.

Dr Nimir Elbashir (left) and Dr Shehab Ahmed


Al Ahli doctors present studies at meetingThe Peninsula

The Department of General Surgery, Al Ahli Hospital, participated in the 4th

Annual Gulf Obesity Surgery Society Meeting (GOSS2016), which took place in Bahrain from November 30 to Decem-ber 2, 2016.

Dr Abdul Azim Hussain, Chief of Medical Staff & Dr Bakhos Al Haddad, Specialist General Surgeon presented two studies, which were performed on a large number of patients who were treated for essential obesity by endoscopic and laparoscopic surgical proce-dures. These studies included assessment of age, gender, body mass index, co-morbid-ity, excess weight loss, possible complications of these proce-dures, and management of the complications.

Dr Abdul Azim Hussain pre-sented a scientific study about a new endoscopic technique for management of overweight condition and obesity. This technique is called POSE Pro-cedure (Primary Obesity Surgery, Endoluminal), and it was implemented for the first time in Qatar at Al-Ahli Hospi-tal. The aims of this study were to define the patients who are candidates to be treated by this technique, to measure the

excess weight loss, and to com-pare the results of this study with results of the international studies which were conducted on such procedures.

Dr Bakhos Al Haddad pre-sented a scientific research that was performed on 463 patients who underwent laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy for manage-ment of obesity at Surgery Department of Al Ahli Hospital from January 2014 until Decem-ber 2015.

The aims of this research were to determine the selection criteria of patients who are can-didates for this procedure, to compare that criteria with the international standards, to show the distribution of this type of

operation between men and women, to measure the Excess Weight Loss after 1 to 2 years, and to study the possible com-plications and the best ways to manage them.

Dr Abdul Azim explained matching results of these two studies with results of the inter-national studies regarding the selection criteria, excess weight loss, complications, and man-agement of these complications, which shows that the medical staff in Al Ahli Hospital is keen to keep up with the highest international standards in selec-tion of appropriate patients for each type of bariatric surgery, and the latest surgical tech-niques in order to reach high

success rates and decrease the possible complications.

And he pointed to the satis-faction of participants in this conference of surgeons from around the world on the results of these two researches and their adoption of the highest interna-tional standards. Dr Abdul Azim has stressed that Al Ahli Hospi-tal is keen on the annual presence and active participa-tion in these kind of conferences by participating scientific researches, and exchange of experiences with surgeons from around the world with the aim to develop the performance and improve the results and to keep up with the latest standards and international technologies.

Doctors from Al Ahli Hospital who participated in the 4th Annual Gulf Obesity Surgery Society Meeting in Bahrain.

QC opens two new mosques in Indonesia The Peninsula

Supported by Qatari philanthropists, Qatar Charity (QC) has recently opened two mosques in Bintan,

Indonesia, bringing the total number of mosques built dur-ing 2016 to 24 in different areas of the largest Muslim country. The total number of mosques built by Qatar Charity in Indo-nesia is 765.

The two new mosques include an inner oratory for an area of 2,100 square metres and a ceramic tiled patio of the same size, where Friday prayers and Taraweeh prayers are performed, and various cel-ebrations conducted. They also include toilets.

Qatar Charity has imple-mented developmental and humanitarian projects in Indo-nesia for many years, in line with a developed plan that aims to help Muslims in the country, especially in the field of build-ing mosques, which are much needed due to the population density.

The first mosque was built at "Insan cheetah" Institute. Agus Aerawana, the governor of the region, attended the mosque's inauguration extend-ing his thanks to the people of Qatar who met the actual needs of the Indonesian people by supporting the mosques and wells project. The Institute's Sheikh, Sheikh Sudirman thanked the people of Qatar for

building the mosque at the Institute saying that people were praying in a wooden mosque four years ago that had a ceiling leak. He added that the new mosque is the most valu-able gift, where the Muslims will worship Allah Almighty during their five daily prayers and optional night prayer and will recite the Holy Quran.

Sohide, the representative of the Minister of Religious Affairs, pointed out that Qatar Charity built about 20 mosques and dug more than 250 water wells in Bintan during 2015-2016. "May Allah reward them and the philanthropists," he said.

Khalid Al Yafei, the Direc-tor of Operations Department at QC, said that Qatar Charity recognises the importance of mosques for Muslims every-where, especially for the Indonesian people who suffer from a lack of mosques in some regions. As a result, QC contin-ues building mosques in this country.

CRA drive to popularise Qatari domain namesThe Peninsula

The Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) has initiated a drive to encourage uptake of Qatari domain

names by local businesses and individuals to increase their web presence.

As part of the drive, CRA has invited local web solution providers to sign up as

accredited domain name registrars with CRA’s Qatar Domains Registry (QDR).

QDR has invested significant time and resources in identifying and accrediting reg-istrars with strong potential in increasing local and global adoption of the “.qa” domains. Accredited registrars represent QDR to offer short, memorable and uniquely Qatari domain extensions to customers, and

to manage the registration process follow-ing international standards set by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Although accreditation by QDR allows any registrar to have direct access to the Registry database, only Qatar-based reg-istrars are able to register second-level “.qa” addresses.

Philanthropy

Qatar-based charity constructed 24 mosques in Indonesia this year, bringing the total number of mosques built in the country by the charity to 765.

FROM LEFT: Major Mohammed Ali Al Kubaisi, MoI, Human Rights Department, Naif Mesbah Al Shammari, member and representative of the National Human Rights Committee, Brigadier Salem Saqr Al Meraikhi, Director of Legal Affairs at the MoI, and Chairman of the committee, Saleh Rashid Al Kowari, Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs at a press conference on Grievance Committee for the Departure of the Expatriates held at the Civil Defence Headquarters yesterday. Pic: Qassim Rahmatullah/ The Peninsula

Grievance panel to meet on Sundays and Wednesdays

Continued from page 1The committee will meet

every Sunday and Wednesday to decide on exit-related com-plaints which will be settled in three working days, said Al Meraikhi

Both the employer and employee can lodge a complaint against the decision of the com-mittee to the Minister of Interior within 14 hours. The exit per-mission being granted by the committee is for one time and not for multiple use, explained Al Meraikhi.

"Although disputes over exit are very few in Qatar, the gov-ernment has decided to establish this committee in line with the provision of the law 21/2015 to make it easier for expatriate workers to leave the country at any time they want, whether for annual leave or in case of emer-gency,” said Al Meraikhi. As per the rules, the expatriate worker

should inform his employer about his intention to leave the country but if the worker is deprived of this right he/she can file a complaint with the com-mittee which will take decision in not more than three days. However, the worker should explain the reason that forced him to refer the case to the com-mittee, he added.

The committee is responsi-ble only for considering disputes over exit, and when addressing the case, it will listen to the two parties, the employee and the employer.

Under the new law, there is a work contract governing the relations between the employer and the employee and it speci-fies the duration of annual leave, its timing, emergency leave, cas-ual leave and sick leave per year. “If both parties stick to the pro-visions of the contract there will not be many complaints or

disputes over exit,” said Al Meraikhi.

The committee held its first meeting and prepared a model form to receive complaints, which is available at the commit-tee’s office. Al Meraikhi explained that at the initiate stage com-plaints can be lodged only using this specific form.

However, in a later phase, the committee will introduce an electronic system to make the procedures easier.

The other members of the committee, Naif Mesbah Al Shammari, member and repre-sentative of the National Human Right Committee, Salih Rashid Al Kuwari of the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs, Major Mohammed Ali Al Kubaisi of the Human Rights Department at the Ministry of Interior were also present at the press conference.

08 MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016MIDDLE EAST

Kuwait City

AFP

Kuwait's Emir H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah opened the new

parliament yesterday by declar-ing that a reduction in public spending is inevitable in the face of weak oil prices.

The Emir said the sharp drop in oil revenues has resulted in a huge budget deficit and there is no other option but to take effec-tive measures to deal with it."I

am confident that parliament and my brother citizens are all aware that reducing public expenditure is inevitable through well-studied measures," he said.

He, however, said that those measures should spare low income people and take into consideration social justice.

Opec member Kuwait, which sits on around seven percent of the world's proven crude reserves, has sought to cut spending and boost non-oil revenues in a bid to diversify

its economy. But the measures, which included raising electric-ity and fuel prices, triggered a political crisis that led the ruler to dissolve the previous parlia-ment in October and call for snap polls.

In the November 26 polls, the opposition which vowed to reject austerity measures won nearly half of the 50 seats. Most of the other candidates also opposed the measures. Before crude prices began to slide in mid-2014, Kuwait generated about 95

percent of its income from oil. But the country's oil revenues

dropped from a massive $97bn in the 2013-2014 fiscal year to just $40bn in the last financial year, which ended on March 31, according to finance ministry fig-ures. And oil income is projected to slide further to around $35bn this fiscal year.

In 2015-2016, the OpecPEC state posted its first budget def-icit, of $15 billion, in 16 years. It is projecting a shortfall of $29bn this year. During its run of

surpluses, Kuwait amassed reserves worth $600bn invested mostly abroad.

Kuwait has been providing a generous cradle-to-grave wel-fare system to its nationals, who make up 30 percent of its popu-lation of 4.4 million.

"I would not have liked to ask you any day to drop anything of the welfare (you have been get-ting)," the emir said in his speech.

To plug a growing budget shortfall, the Gulf state has started borrowing for the first

time in two decades.Parliament yesterday re-

elected pro-government Marzouk Al Ghanem as its speaker for a new four-year term and pro-government MP Issa Al Kundari as his deputy, in a blow to opposition candidates.

The Islamist-led opposition controls nearly half of the 50-member parliament while 15 unelected cabinet ministers out of a 16-strong lineup become members of the national assem-bly and can vote.

Tehran

AP

IRAN has proposed the for-mation of a bloc of Muslim countries to fight terrorism and boost economic cooper-ation that would include Saudi Arabia.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani told a security con-ference yesterday that the two countries, along with Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Paki-stan, should join together to promote "regional peace based on Islam, defending the Palestinian people, fighting terrorism and economic interests."

Iran and Saudi Arabia support opposite sides in the civil wars in Syria and Yemen. Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran in January after Iranian demonstrators stormed Saudi diplomatic facilities to protest the exe-cution of a prominent cleric.

Larijani said Saudi Ara-bia and other nations should know that Iran is not "their enemy."

"Iran is not after creating an empire and hegemony in the region," he said. "Our viewpoint is aimed at improving unity."

Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a 34-mem-ber "Islamic military alliance" against terrorism nearly a year ago, which excluded Iran.

Beirut

AP

Islamic State (IS) militants seized the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra yesterday from government troops despite a wave of Russian

airstrikes, opposition activists and the group reported, a major advance after a year of setbacks in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

The group's new push came hours after government troops and Russian air raids pushed the group out the city. IS militants regrouped and attacked the city from multiple fronts, forcing government troops to retreat. Palmyra opposition activists said the militants were going door to door in the city, looking for rem-nants of government forces.

State news agency Sana quoting an unnamed military official saying that the militant group received reinforcements from its de-facto capital in Raqqa, enabling it to attack with "large numbers" against military checkpoints around the city.

Backed by Russian air power, the Syrian government had recaptured Palmyra, home to towering 2,000-year-old ruins, amid great fanfare in March. But

the militants have been steadily advancing in recent days while the government has been focused on a major offensive against rebels in the northern city of Aleppo.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Palmyra Coordination group said IS militants fought their way into the town in a multi-pronged assault, forcing government forces to retreat to the south. A map by the Observ-atory shows the areas in control of IS to extend east, south and north of Palmyra, securing a number of strategic hills around the city and expanding the group's presence in rural Homs. Palmyra lies in Syria's largest province, Homs, which is mostly under government control.

Osama Al Khatib, of the activist-run Palmyra Coordina-tion group which keeps in touch

with residents in the city, said remaining government and allied troops were escaping from the southwestern edge of the city where the ancient ruins are. He said the few remaining families in the city are also attempting to escape. Another activist-run plat-form, Palmyra News Network,

said intensive airstrikes followed the IS takeover of the city.

Russia had earlier claimed to have repelled an IS attack on Palmyra, saying it had launched 64 airstrikes overnight that killed 300 militants. But hours later, the activists said IS had seized a cas-tle just outside the town that

overlooks its famed Roman-era ruins. Palmyra was a major tour-ist attraction before the civil war broke out in 2011 and is home to world-famous Roman ruins. IS seized the town last year and held it for 10 months. During that time it dynamited a number of temples and destroyed other artifacts.

Cairo

Reuters

A bombing at Cairo’s larg-est Coptic cathedral killed at least 25 people

and wounded 49, many of them women and children attending Sunday mass, in the deadliest attack on Egypt’s Christian minority in years.

The attack comes as Egyp-tian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi battles against an insur-gency in Northern Sinai, led by the Egyptian branch of Islamic State.

The militant group has also carried out deadly attacks in Cairo and has urged its support-ers to launch attacks around the world in recent weeks as it goes on the defensive in its Iraqi and Syrian strongholds.

Sisi’s office condemned the attack as an act of terror-ism and declared three days of national mourning. Al Azhar, Egypt’s main Islamic centre of learning, also denounced the attacks.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamic State (IS) supporters celebrated the attack on social media. The explosion took place in a chapel adjoining the main hall of St Mark’s Cathedral, the largest in the metropolis of 20 million, where security is nor-mally tight.

The chapel floor and pews were covered with debris, dust and sticky patches of blood. “As soon as the priest called us to prepare for prayer, the

explosion happened,” Emad Shoukry, who was inside when the blast took place, said.

“The explosion shook the place... The dust covered the hall and I was looking for the door, although I couldn’t see anything... I managed to leave in the middle of screams and there were a lot of people thrown on the ground.”

Security sources said at least six children were among the dead, with the blast deto-nating on the side of the church normally used by women.

They said the explosion was caused by a device con-taining at least 12kg of TNT. Police were investigating claims by witnesses that the bomb was concealed in the handbag of a woman who had placed it on the floor of the church and left.

Police and armoured vehi-cles rushed to the area, as dozens of protesters gathered outside the compound demand-ing revenge. Scuffles broke out with police.

Though Egypt’s Coptic Christians have traditionally been supporters of the govern-ment, angry crowds turned their ire against Sisi, saying his government had failed to pro-tect them.

“As long as Egyptian blood is cheap, down, down with any president...” they chanted. Oth-ers chanted “the people demand the fall of the regime”, the rallying cry of the 2011 uprising that helped end Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Istanbul

AFP

A defiant President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yester-day vowed to fight terror

"to the end" as Turkey mourned 38 people killed in twin bombings that authorities said were likely the work of Kurdish militants.

The bloodshed, which took place in Istanbul late on Sat-urday, saw a car bomb exploding outside the home stadium of football giants Besiktas and less than a minute later, a suicide attacker blew

himself up by a group of police at a nearby park.

Most of the dead were police officers, who accounted for 30 of the overall toll. The carnage prompted a sharp response from Erdogan, who defiantly vowed Ankara would "fight the scourge of terrorism right to the end".

"They should know that they will not get away with it ... They will pay a heavier price."

Although there was no immediate claim of responsibil-ity, officials said initial findings suggested it was the work of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, that has waged a

bloody campaign against the Turkish state since 1984.

In a ceremony for five of the victims at the city's police head-quarters, officers carried in the coffins draped with flags as Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim looked on before speak-ing with the bereaved families. "Sooner or later we will have our revenge," Interior Minister Suleman Soylu told the mourners.

People also gathered out-side the stadium to lay flowers, many holding Turkish flags and shouting "Down with the PKK!" and "Our homeland is indivisible!"

IS recaptures Syrian city of Palmyra

Spending cuts inevitable: Kuwait Emir tells MPs

25 dead in Cairo church bombing

Civilians wait outside a government military police centre to visit their relatives, who were evacuated from the eastern districts of Aleppo and are being prepared to begin their military service, in Aleppo, Syria, yesterday.

Turkey death toll 38; Erdogan

vows to fight terror to the end

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (centre), Prime Minister Binali Yildirim (second left) and former president Abdullah Gul (second right) pray as they attend a funeral cerenomy for martyred police officers at Istanbul's police headquarters, a day after twin bombings.

Iran proposes anti-terror bloc with Saudi

Baghdad

Reuters

EIGHT people were killed in two car bombings in the Iraqi city of Fallujah west of Bagh-dad yesterday, police and hospital sources said, and a news agency close to Islamic State said its militants carried out the attacks. The bombings took place as Iraqi forces wage an eight-week military campaign to crush Islamic State in its north Iraq stronghold of Mosul, the largest city in its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

The fact that the jihadist group was able to carry out the attack in Falluja, which the Iraqi army recaptured in June, suggests it will continue to pose a threat in Iraq even if it is finally crushed in Mosul.

The sources said a suicide bomber detonated a car at a security checkpoint in the west of the city, and a second bomb in a parked car struck the centre, near a security checkpoint and a busy cafe.

Sources at the hospital where casualties from both incidents were brought said eight bodies were delivered to the hospital. The Amaq news agency, which is close to Islamic State, said both attacks were carried out by suicide car bombers.

8 dead in Fallujah car bombing

Multiple attacks

IS militants regrouped and attacked the city from multiple fronts, forcing government troops to retreat.

Naivasha,

Reuters

A FIREBALL from an oil lorry engulfed vehicles on one of Kenya's main highways, killing over 42 people, a rescue worker at the scene said.

The tanker lorry rammed into vehi-cles north of the central town of Naivasha then exploded, an official with the National Disaster Man-agement Authority said.

"More bodies are still trapped inside the burned vehicles," Red Cross volun-teer Moha Maris said.

The government gave a lower death toll. "The information that we have is that 13 vehi-cles were involved and so far we have retrieved 33 bodies," Irungu Nyakera, Principal Secretary at the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, told a news conference.

An official in Naivasha said 50 people were being treated in several hospitals for burns, eight of them in a serious condition.

In 2009, more than 100 people burned to death near the central town of Molo after a lorry carrying petrol caught fire.

Over 42 dead in oil truck fireball in Kenya

09MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016 ASIA / AFRICA

At least 160 dead in Nigerian church collapseWarri

AP

Metal girders and the roof of a crowded church collapsed onto worshippers in southern

Nigeria, killing at least 160 peo-ple with the toll likely to rise, a hospital director said yesterday.

Mortuaries in the city of Uyo are overflowing from the trag-edy, medical director Etete Peters of the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital said.

The Reigners Bible Church International was still under con-struction and workers had been rushing to finish it in time for Saturday's ceremony to ordain founder Akan Weeks as a bishop, congregants said.

Hundreds of people, includ-ing Akwa Ibom state Governor Udom Emmanuel, were inside when metal girders crashed onto worshippers and the corrugated iron roof caved in, they said. Emmanuel and Weeks, who preaches that God will make his

followers rich, escaped unhurt.Screaming survivors were

streaming out and there were cries from injured victims when computer programme analyst Ukeme Eyibio rushed to the scene. "There were trapped bod-ies, parts of bodies, blood all over the place and people's handbags and shoes scattered," Eyibio said in a telephone interview.

He had parked his car outside the complex to make a phone call, heard a deafening explosion he thought was a bomb only to see that the church had disappeared, he said. Eyibio and three others managed to drag 10

wounded people from an overflow area for of worshippers just outside the collapsed church but they did not enter the main structure because a construction worker among them warned of the danger of a further collapse. The worker called his boss at Julius Berger construction company, who sent a crane to help lift debris off bodies. While they waited for the crane, Eyibio tried to help a man whose legs were trapped under a steel girder. "I rushed to my car, got out the tire jack and used that to get the beam off his legs," he said. "We managed to get him out but we saw others dying all around us," Eyibio, 27, said.

Many uncounted victims are in private mortuaries scattered across Uyo, youth leader Edikan Peters said. He said some peo-ple are secretly taking the bodies of relatives to their homes because mortuaries are over-crowded and some do not have refrigeration.

A crane is being used to lift debris believed to be hiding the bodies of more victims, said

Peters. Peter said he tallied 90 bodies before he was told to stop counting on Saturday night.

Journalists at the scene charge that church officials are trying to prevent them from doc-umenting the tragedy, trying to

seize cameras and forcing some to leave the area.

The governor's spokesman, Ekerete Udoh, said the state gov-ernment will hold an inquiry to investigate if anyone compro-mised building standards.

Buildings collapse often in Nigeria because of endemic cor-ruption with contractors using sub-standard materials and brib-ing inspectors to ignore shoddy work or a lack of building permits.

Heavy duty equipment and machinery are seen at the premises of the collapsed church in Uyo yesterday.

Major tragedy

Hundreds of people, including Akwa Ibom state Governor Udom Emmanuel, were inside when metal girders crashed onto worshippers and the corrugated iron roof caved in. Emmanuel escaped unhurt.

Two young girls stage suicide attack in BornoKano

AFP

Two young girls approxi-mately seven or eight years old blew themselves up in

a northeastern Nigerian market yesterday, killing themselves and one other person and wounding 18 others, sources said.

The girls were "seven or eight", a local militia member in Maiduguri, Abdulkarim Jabo, said. The attack was not imme-diately claimed by Boko Haram but bore the hallmarks of the militants, who routinely use women and girls to carry out sui-cide attacks, often in Borno state, the epicentre of their insurgency.

Borno Governor Kashim

Shettima, visiting victims in the hospital, confirmed the toll in the attack. Maiduguri militiaman Jabo said he saw the girls imme-diately before the explosion. "They got out of a rickshaw and

walked right in front of me with-out showing the slightest sign of emotion," he said. "I tried to speak with one of them, in Hausa and in English, but she didn't answer. I thought they were

looking for their mother," he added.

"She headed toward the poultry sellers, and then deto-nated her explosives belt."

Boko Haram militants have

laid waste to northeast Nigeria since they took up arms against the government in 2009.

At least 20,000 people have been killed and more than two and a half million more displaced by the unrest.

Rights groups say thousands of women and girls have been abducted by the group. In the most infamous incident, in 2014, more than 200 schoolgirls were taken in the remote town of Chibok. Northeast Nigeria has been buffeted in recent weeks by devastating attacks. On Friday, at least 45 people died and 33 others were wounded in another double suicide attack carried out by female bombers at a marketplace in the town of Madagali.

Residents gather near the scene of a suicide bomb attack on a market in Maiduguri yesterday.

Suicide truck bomb leaves 29 dead at Somalia's main port Mogadishu

Reuters

A suicide truck bomb hit the entrance of Somalia's big-gest port yesterday, killing

at least 29 people, police said, an attack claimed by Al Shabaab militants.

The fighters said they were trying to disrupt protracted par-liamentary elections — part of efforts to rebuild the fractured nation after decades of war. The three-month vote is due to end on December 29.

Gunfire rang out after the

blast at Mogadishu Port, Mohamed Hussein, a worker there, said. Two others said work had been halted and staff sent home. The bodies of victims lay strewn outside the capital's ter-minal in a street filled with rubble from damaged tea shops. "At least 29 civilians died and 50 others have been injured in the blast. We believe it was a suicide truck bomb," police officer Colonel Abdikadir Farah said.

Al Shabaab's military opera-tion spokesman, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, said the blast was aimed at police officers stationed

close to the port. "We killed 30 security forces and injured 50. We targeted them because they had been trained to provide security at so-called elections,' he said.

Al Shabaab's insurgency aims to drive out African Union peace-keepers, topple Somalia's western-backed government and impose its strict version of Islam on the Horn of Africa state.

Around 14,000 people repre-senting Somalia's federal states have been chosen to pick the 275 lawmakers. Those members of parliament will choose a new president.

A Somali soldier (left) and residents walk through the wreckage at the scene of car bomb attack near the Mogadishu port yesterday.

Jammeh to challenge election resultsBanjul

Reuters

Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh (pictured), who initially accepted his defeat in a December 1 election

before making a dramatic about-face, will challenge the poll result before the Supreme Court, the ruling party said in a statement.

His loss to opposition candidate Adama Barrow, announced by the elec-tions commission last week and followed by his rapid concession, had sparked hope for change in the tiny West African nation following 22 years of Jammeh's authori-tarian rule. However, in a moved that drew widespread condemnation from the international community, the mercurial former coup leader on Friday decried

"serious and unacceptable abnormalities" and called for fresh polls.

In a statement broadcast on state tel-evision late on Saturday, the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) said it was preparing a legal chal-lenge to the result. "The statement of APRC Chairman Yahya Jammeh on the 9th December was a prelude of a petition that the APRC is in the process of filing before the Supreme Court against the flawed decision of the Independent Elections Commission," it said.

Under Gambian law, candidates have 10 days starting from the announcement of election results during which to sub-mit a challenge with the court. Today is a national holiday in Gambia, making tomorrow the final deadline for filing a petition.

Rights groups say Jammeh exerts strong influence over the Supreme Court which for years has been staffed mainly by judges brought in from other common law nations, including Nigeria and Pakistan.

Jammeh's belated objections to the poll results followed a correction by the elections commission during the week which reduced Barrow's margin of vic-tory to fewer than 20,000 votes.

Barrow, who has pledged to serve as a transitional leader and step down after three years, said that Jammeh had no con-stitutional authority to reject the poll results. The residence in the capital Ban-jul where Barrow was staying yesterday was surrounded by around 30 unarmed supporters who said they were providing security after the police and military

declined to protect him. The head of the Gambian army pledged his allegiance to Barrow last week, however a regional dip-lomatic source who said he'd spoken to the president-elect said he did not feel safe. "He asks that the international com-munity ensure his security because he feels threatened," said the source.

Bashar Al Assad’s army is making the final push to take the last remnants of opposition-held territory in the devastated city of Aleppo, which has been a rebel stronghold since 2012.

There is a general consensus about where this war is heading. Backed by Russia, Iran and other allies, Assad is moving to take full control of Syria. And to achieve this goal, he has no qualms about killing children, women and unarmed civilians by unleashing the deadliest of weapons, and he has no qualms about bombing hospitals, schools and other vital infrastructure which he could have left untouched even if he wanted to punish the rebels. Thousands of civilians are continuing to flee Aleppo as the government bombardment continues. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, around 10,000 people had fled since midnight and were taken to the government-held west Aleppo and the newly retaken areas in the north and centre of the city.

If Aleppo falls (according to reports, 85 percent of east Aleppo has already fallen and the complete

takeover is just a matter of time), it will deal the biggest blow to Syria’s opposition since the start of the civil war in 2011. It’s time for the opposition and all those countries backing them in the Arab world and the West to plan their next strategy, or rather, their future in an Assad-ruled Syria. According to a report, foreign ministers of prominent countries meeting in Paris on

Saturday asked Assad to show grace in victory and not persecute the rebels. These are heart-breaking days for Syria. Syria under Assad would never be the Syria we have known. This war has made the entire country a wasteland, killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions to flee, triggering a migration crisis in Europe and the entire world. Millions of Syrians who sacrificed everything for freedom and justice will not be able to forgive a dictator who destroyed their lives. A generation who is growing up in Syria without education and with heart-rending memories of the loss of their near and dear ones can never forgive a leader who stole their future. Assad will rule over a divided, deeply scarred country which will keep exploding at every thought of the cruelty he has unleashed on his people.

Would a victory for Assad erase the war crimes committed by him against his people? Will the international community cosy up to him to do business as usual? If that happens, it would only expose their opportunism and their wanton disregard for human rights. Assad must be held accountable for the crimes against humanity he committed all these years.

10 MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016VIEWS

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Reining in Assad

QUOTE OF THE DAY

I don‘t know why we have to be bound by a one China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.

Donald TrumpUS President-elect

Even if Bashar Al Assad wins this war, he must be held accountable for the crimes against humanity he committed all these years.

When President Bashar Al Assad turns from the wreck-age of Aleppo to assert his authority across a fractured Syria, it will be as a figure

who is virtually unassailable by rebels, but still faces great challenges in restoring the power of his state.

The expected fall of Aleppo would mean rebels have almost no chance of ousting Assad, but their revolt has left him in hock to foreign allies, resigned to the loss of swathes of his country for the time being and with tough pockets of resistance still to crush.

“Certainly it is not the end of the war ... But when you take Aleppo, you control 90 percent of the fertile areas of Syria, the regions that hold the cities and markets, the populated regions,” said a senior pro-Damas-cus official in the region.

However, the battlefield victories that seem — for now — to have secured Assad’s rule have been won in large part not by his own depleted military, but by Russian war-planes and a shock force of foreign Shi’ite militias backed by Iran.

Assad will rely on Moscow and Tehran to take back more territory, and to hold and secure it, meaning he will have to balance his own ambitions with theirs.

At the same time, as the insurgents lose ground and as the jihadists among them grow more dominant, conventional warfare may give way to an era of guerrilla attacks and sui-cide bombings within areas held by the government.

Aggravating this, the war has taken on sectarian dimensions that will resonate for generations; the uprising identifies itself with the Sunni Muslim majority, and the state led by a minority Alawite draws on the backing of Shi’ite Islamists.

Worst of all, nearly six years of war have killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, dis-placed around 11 million, of whom nearly half have fled the country, and laid waste to much of the infrastructure needed to resurrect a shattered economy.

In rebuilding, Assad will also have to con-tend with Western sanctions on much of his government and with isolation from some of his main previous trading partners — the European Union, Turkey, Gulf monarchies and Jordan. The Gulf states in particular may also continue to fund insurgents.

“Syria has suffered such wounds that there will always be, in my expectation, a day of reckoning,” said Nikolaos Van Dam, a former Dutch diplomat and author of a book about Syrian history and politics, speaking about the future of Assad’s state.

INDISPENSABLETo his supporters, Assad is the one, indis-

pensable figure standing between his country and absolute chaos, the resolute leader of a war against foreign-backed jihadists who wish to slaughter minorities and launch

After Aleppo, Syria’s Assad still far from regaining his stateAngus McDowall Reuters

attacks on other states.Without him, they say, what remains

of the Syrian armed forces and security services will crumble, rendering the country a failed state and a danger to the world for decades to come.

Convincing enough allies — includ-ing Moscow and Tehran — to see him in that light has been Assad’s “political mas-terpiece”, said Rolf

Holmboe, research fellow at the Cana-dian Global Affairs Institute and a former Danish ambassador to Syria.

But to his detractors, Assad is the man who burned Syria rather than allowing power to slip from his grasp, a dictator whose prisons are wallowing in the blood of his opponents and whose cities lie ruined by the bombs of his military.

In Assad’s swift use of force against protesters in 2011 and his deployment of artillery and air power against Syrian towns and cities, critics see his reliance on the example of his father, Hafez Al Assad, who ruled from 1970-2000.

Hafez’s crushing of an Islamist insur-gency that began in 1976, culminating with the massacre of thousands in the city of Hama in 1982, set the template for his son’s response to the Arab Spring protests in 2011 and the subsequent war.

“They have no other solutions and that’s it. They implemented the same manual. They took it from the drawer and implemented it,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, a former friend and pro-reform political appointee of Assad who left Syria in 2007.

For Abdel Nour, Assad at war was a far cry from the man he first knew at Damascus University in the early 1980s, long before the death of an elder brother put him in line to succeed his father as president. “He was like any other per-son: very humble, very nice, very modest because he was not supposed to be pres-ident,” he said. Assad’s early years as president after succeeding his father in 2000 raised hopes of political and eco-nomic reforms, but they mostly faltered, something that was blamed at the time on an old guard of security chiefs.

RAQQA WRITTEN OFF FOR NOWThe president and his allies have

focused their campaign on the populous, fertile, west of his country and few peo-ple expect him to lavish limited military resources on quickly retaking the

eastern deserts or Euphrates valley area from Islamic State.

The senior pro-Damascus official said that Assad had for now written off Raqqa, which has become the de facto Syrian capital of Islamic State, often referred to by the Arabic term Daesh, regarding the jihadist group as Washing-ton’s problem to fix.

“The regime forgot about Raqqa a long time ago and made it the responsi-bility of the Americans. Let those alarmed by Daesh go and remove it,” the official said.

Still, Assad himself signalled in a December television interview that in the end he intended to restore Damas-cus’ sway across the country. Asked about a “federalist” system that Kurds have implemented in parts of north Syria from which the central state has retreated, he dismissed their local coun-cils as “temporary structures”.

In making further military gains after Aleppo, Assad will continue to rely on both Moscow’s air power and the ground force supplied by Iran and the Shi’ite militias it sponsors, foremost among them the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

Several thousand foreign militiamen have already died fighting for Assad, often in the fiercest fronts of the war, and Assad’s regional enemies believe that will make him little more than a vassal for stronger allies who have their own agendas.

Abdulaziz Al Sager, Saudi head of the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Centre and the man asked by Riyadh to mediate talks between Syrian opposition groups last year, believes this has left Assad too weak to rule effectively in the long term.

“My opinion from day one is that Bashar Al Assad is in a losing battle. Even if he gains some position, who is really today ruling Syria? It’s the Russians and the Iranians. He has very little role to play there,” he said by phone.

Assad himself said in the television interview that he consulted with Russia daily, adding that “no decision is issued without discussions between the two countries”.

In Moscow, Vladimir Dzhabarov, a retired Russian special services general and a deputy chairman of the interna-tional affairs committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament, said his country had no ulterior motives in Syria. “Our leadership has always been saying that we don’t support Assad but the rule of law in this country,” he said.

Still, Assad is not without power in his dealings with his allies; both Moscow and Tehran are relying on his presence to keep the government and security forces intact and justify their massive outlay on the war, given few people believe there is a plausible alternative to him among the senior ranks of his administration or military.

“Iran and Russia and Hezbollah, they also need him. Russia and Iran are quite limited in their possibilities of influenc-ing him,” said Van Dam.

Assad will rely on Moscow and Tehran to take back more territory, and to hold and secure it, meaning he will have to balance his own ambitions with theirs.

ED ITOR IAL

communication. Other nations, with much smaller naval power, played a very minimal role in this regard.

Meanwhile, US-led international institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, established a global economic architecture defined by the increasingly free flow of capital, technology and (high-skilled) labour across borders. As a result, labour-abundant China was able to attract large-scale investments from Japan and the West with considerable ease.

Above all, American consumers, buoyed by easy access to credit thanks to the accelerated move-ment of capital across borders, became the primary market for Chinese goods. Arguably, China became the biggest beneficiary of neo-liberal globalisation, although it has consistently criticised laissez-faire economics.

But this era of turbocharged globalisation, as Henry Kissinger rightly identifies, is under threat unlike any time since the end of World War II. In fact, global trade is beginning to shrink. US trade with the world suffered a $200bn contraction last year. This year, it is set to reach the $500bn mark. And China is beginning to feel the pinch, as exports begin to lose steam.

A deglobalisation backlashBritain’s decision to exit from the EU has ener-

gised a wave of populist backlash against the union . In France, Eurosceptics, led by Marie Le Pen, are in anunprecedented position to capture the Elysee Palace. Most shockingly of all, the US, the self-described leader of the “free world”, is set to be

Elites must engage populists or lose to them

A big part of the homework the political center needs to do after Brexit, Donald Trump’s triumph and the rise in nation-alist populism across Europe is to define

the sources of growing popular resentment against the “elite.” That distrust is behind recent election surprises and what disoriented media professionals have dubbed a “post-truth” atti-tude toward the news. Fixing it could be the key to future stability.

Three strains of anti-elite resentment are apparent. One is economic, related to income inequality. Populist politicians, however, would fail if they channeled only economic anger. Bernie Sanders failed in the US, Jeremy Corbyn isn’t doing too well in the UK and leftist fire-brands aren’t big achievers anywhere except, with some caveats, Greece.

The second strain has to do with the percep-tion of the elite as a closed network, based on background and connections rather than educa-tion and achievement. You can’t break into the elite even if you’re smart and have gone to the best schools, unless you’re already part of it by origin. A third strain is the view that elites stand in opposi-tion to national identity. This criticism of elites is interconnected with the economic roots of pop-ulism and the invisible barriers to social mobility.

Recent work by Zsolt Darvas and his col-leagues at the Brussels think tank Bruegel shows there were more “leave” votes in areas of the UK where income inequality was greater, even after controlling for socio-economic and geographic factors. Darvas found a similar pattern in the US Republican swing on November 8. It’s interesting that the absolute size of household incomes or, say, the prevalence of immigrants and people of color wasn’t important for the vote results, but inequality was. Intuitively, it’s easy to see how it’s not poverty as such but the proximity of unattain-

able wealth that makes poor people angry.This, Darvas and his Bruegel colleagues argue,

makes a case for more inclusive growth as a means of thwarting populists — and for reform that would boost social mobility. That’s not just a matter of making sure people from the lower social classes can get access to quality education or passing anti-discrimination laws. The Univer-sity of Chicago’s Seth Zimmerman published a paper this week showing that, in Chile, attending an elite college increases a person’s chances of rising to top management roles in major compa-nies — but only if he’s also attended an exclusive private secondary school prior to university. It’s easy to see the principle at work in Europe or the US In other words, an elite education only serves to amplify an elite background. People from dis-advantaged backgrounds, of course, benefit from a great education — but they don’t, as a rule, rise as high as their privileged peers.

Those who vote for the populists realize the ceiling that separates them from upper social strata is not purely economic or meritocratic, but rather insiders vs. outsiders. Thus the “drain the swamp” chants and the “who needs experts” sneers. Those in the intellectual, academic, policy and media parts of the “elite” are mixed in with the wealthy and the corporate leaders. Their exclusive circles are perceived as airtight and self-perpetuating, and that likely angers the pop-ulist candidates and their teams more than it does their voters, who don’t know much about these strata or care about getting into them.

That leads directly to the national identity

part of the “people vs. the elite” divide. Jimmie Akesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats — a populist party that leads in some recent Swedish polls — recently told Bloomberg News that the populist movements’ success was “not mainly about money.” “It’s mainly about values,” he said. “It’s about how we manage to keep society together.”

Akesson’s values are about the nation state and national identity. His party and similar move-ments elsewhere doubt the “elite’s” patriotism. There are lots of variations on this theme, from anti-Semitic tropes about Jews being disloyal citi-zens to anti-globalist concerns about trade. In the US, many commentators were surprised Hillary Clinton’s emails became such an important cam-paign issue — but to many Americans, her use of a private server was a threat to national security. I heard that many times while covering the presi-dential campaign — as often as I heard people wax indignant about the Clinton’s ability to get away with anything because they were well-connected.

To beat back the populist revolt, centrists need to focus on all three sources of discontent. Merely talking about reducing economic inequal-ity sounds condescending. Besides, in most of Europe it’s not as acute a problem as in the US and the UK. It’s much more difficult to address the other two components of anti-elite resent-ment. Though Trump is being criticized for appointing people with “elite” credentials, such as major investment bank alumni, to his team, he is also handing top government jobs to people with little experience running big bureaucracies and with little support from the policy establishment. His unconventional way of dealing with foreign leaders is also a signal that he’s not going to com-ply with “elite” notions of how things should be done. Trump would seem to tick all the boxes as

an “elite,” but the man from Queens, whatever his inherited wealth, always felt a little the outsider in Manhattan circles. These signals are heartening to his voters more than his choice of wealthy individuals is disappointing.

In the European context, the equivalent would be to invite populists to participate in gov-ernment. Prime Minister Theresa May invited Brexiters into government; it may do governing centrist parties good to bring in populist repre-sentatives in Scandinavia, France, Italy, even Germany. The political elite must not be seen as closed to forces that have support in society — and that might no longer have it after a turn trying to manage something.

The national values part is perhaps the most difficult one for centrists. Stronger border protec-tion and crackdowns on ethnic crime go against their liberal instincts. Yet the center-right can play on this pitch, as Francois Fillon is proving in France. Angela Merkel’s fourth run for German chancellor will also be accompanied by proof of her conservative credentials. Merkel has already announced that she expects 100,000 migrants to leave Germany soon, many of them through vol-untary return programs but a sizable number through deportations, of which there has been a record number this year. In a speech to her party on Tuesday, Merkel backed a ban on Muslim full-face coverings for women. Specific immigrant integration plans, similar to the ones legislated in Germany this year, are also helpful: Voters must know what the rules are for newcomers, and they shouldn’t feel immigrants are favored over them.

Ignoring the populist wave would only con-vince angry voters of the contempt of elites. Populists cannot be eliminated, but they can be co-opted. An effort to engage these voters and those who represent them is the political center’s best chance of widening their voter base.

11MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016 OPINION

Leonid Bershidsky Bloomberg

“Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent,” Chairman Mao Zedong wrote in a letter to his

wife on July 8, 1966. This was the height of the Cold War, as Moscow and Washington vied for global supremacy, and mas-sive protests swept across the West, from Europe to the United States.

The Chinese leader thought that one should embrace a crisis not avoid it, since it is chaos (not stability) that carries in its bosom the seed of radical transformation. This was Marxist dialectical thinking in its finest and most dangerous form.

As the succeeding decade of instabil-ity showed, the Great Helmsman’s China, engulfed by the Cultural Revolution, would become more of a victim than a victor in those heady decades. Pragmatists, led by Deng Xiaoping, eventually abandoned the ossified ideology of Maoism in favour of turbocharged capitalism with a Chinese flavour.

Almost exactly half a century later, the heirs of Mao confront a similar dilemma. Chinese President Xi Jinping can derive both delight and dread from recent devel-opments across the West. Demagogues in Europe and the US, and across the developing world, are shattering the foun-dations of the global liberal order.

At the same time, Beijing is worried about the collapse of the international free trade regime, as populist leaders such as Donald Trump push for protectionist trade policies. As a result, Communist China has become the unlikely champion of eco-nomic globalisation.

End of an eraIn the past three decades, China

became the world’s most successful cap-italist boomstory. Per capita income experienced a mind-boggling 26-fold expansion since 1985, while as many as 600 million people, twice the population of the US, were lifted out of poverty.

Within two generations, the Asian demographic giant went from an eco-nomic backwater to the world’s leading trading nation, which will soon also become the biggest economy. Whether China wants to admit it or not, much of this success, however, was built on a US-led liberal international order.

In a world where the bulk of trans-bor-der trade is done via water, the American naval muscle underwrote freedom of nav-igation and overflight across sea lines of

China: The vanguard of globalisationRichard Javad HeydarianAl Jazeera

Workers are seen inside a Foxconn factory in the township of Longhua in the southern Guangdong province.

ruled by a flamboyant demagogue, who has promised to shred to pieces one major free trade agreement after another. Throughout his widely successful presidential campaign, Trump promised to bring back jobs and growth to his country by launching a de facto trade war.

He has threatened to impose hefty tariffs on Asian exporters, punish American companies outsourcing local jobs to emerging markets, and officially branded China as a currency manipulator.

Trump colourfully described major free trade agreements as a conspiracy by “special interests who want to rape our country”, depriving ordinary workers of long-term employ-ment and dignity. Anti-trade sentiments are also gaining ground across Europe and beyond.

Shortly after his election victory, Trump released a video in which he promised to nix the Transpacific Partnership Agreement, the centrepiece of President Barack Obama’s economic initiative in Asia. Trump has also promised to revisit other trading regimes such as the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. And Canada seems to have taken the threat seriously. In general, these are worrying times for trade-dependent China. But it is precisely here where Xi faces what Mao saw as a blessing in disguise.

With the US set to become more introverted, unilater-alist and protectionist, China is now in a unique position to present itself as the new vanguard of globalisation. No won-der then, during the latest Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Xi portrayed China as a bulwark against “isolation and exclusiveness”.

With the US taking the back seat in trading affairs, the Chinese leader pushed for Regional Comprehensive Eco-nomic Partnership (RCEP) and the Free Trade Area for the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) under its wing.

In fact, Xi is set to become the first Chinese president to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, the global liberal elite’s confab. The age of Trump may present new geopolitical and economic headaches for China, but it has also paved the way for a communist nation to become the de facto vanguard of globalisation.

The writer is a specialist in Asian geopolitical/economic affairs and

author of Asia’s New Battlefield: The USA, China, and the Struggle

for the Western Pacific.

This era of turbocharged globalisation, as Henry Kissinger rightly identifies, is under threat unlike any time since the end of World War II.

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12 MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016ASIA / PHILIPPINES

China has slammed Tokyo for targeting its military aircraft with "decoy flares" over a waterway near Japan, calling the actions "dan-g e r o u s a n d unprofessional". Two Japanese F-15s fired the projectiles as the Chinese planes passed through the Miyako Strait between Japan's Miyako and Okinawa Islands, the defence ministry said in a statement on its website.

The incident took place on Saturday morn-ing as the Chinese planes carried out "routine far seas training", the state-ment said, adding the aircraft were in interna-tional airspace when the encounter occurred.

"The actions of the Japanese fighters was dangerous and unprofes-sional and smashed the freedoms of navigation and overflight provided by international law," it said. The statement gave no details about the Chi-nese aircraft. Japan and China are at loggerheads over a longstanding ter-ritorial row in the East China Sea. That dispute relates to uninhabited islets controlled by Japan known as the Senkakus in Japanese and the Diaoyus in Chinese.

South Korea's defence exports tripleSouth Korea's defence industry saw its exports more than triple in the past seven years, driven by firm demand for sub-marines and high-tech weapons, a report car-ried by Yonhap News Agency said yesterday.

According to the report compiled by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET), the country's defense sector logged 1.9 trillion won ($1.62bn) worth of over-seas sales last year, 210 percent growth from 2009. During the cited period, the sector's out-put jumped 53 percent to 14.5 trillion won with its hiring rising 25 percent to 36,000, the report said. The country's defence industry saw its global ranking rise to the 10th spot from the 13th place over the period, it said. As of 2015, the country's defence budget and output both ranked 10th, with its defence-related technology coming in at 9th.

China flays Japan after jets 'targeted'

Duterte rejects freeing more prisonersManila

Reuters

Philippine President Rod-rigo Duterte yesterday rejected a demand by Maoist-led rebels to free more prisoners as

part of a ceasefire deal, saying he had made enough concessions and was willing to let peace talks collapse if necessary.

For decades the government and the communists' political arm, National Democratic Front, have held intermittent peace negotiations but without success. The release of political prisoners has proved a major stumbling block. Before the resumption of peace negotiations in Oslo in August, four years after the col-lapse of the last attempt, Duterte let 22 rebel leaders out on bail, including two senior guerrilla commanders.

Last month, he also freed four elderly and sick prisoners on humanitarian grounds. But rebel leaders immediately demanded the release of 130 more rebels, a call Duterte has ignored until now.

Since the rebellion erupted nearly five decades ago, it has killed about 40,000 people and stunted growth in resource-rich rural areas of the Philippines. The rebels' armed wing, New People's

Army, is active in almost all but the Muslim majority provinces, and are particularly strong in the mining areas in the southern island of Mindanao.

"I wanted them to start the talks but they want me to free 130 more, so I told them, no, I can-not," Duterte told soldiers at an army base north of Manila, close to where NPA first emerged.

"As a matter of fact, I con-ceded too much too soon. Now, it's up to them if they will termi-nate the peace talks. Let them terminate it. I have freed their leaders, what more do you ask of us? I am running out of cards."

Duterte said violence between the two sides has

declined in the last six months. The two sides have held two rounds of talks since August and plan to meet again early next year with the aim of agreeing on a set of political, economic and social reforms to address the rebellion within 12 months. The rebels want farmlands to be distributed

to landless farmers, the nation-alisation of industries and to share political power with the government. Duterte, former mayor of Davao, a city that was once seen as a breeding ground for rebels, told soldiers at the base that he knew they were hurting from his decision to re-start

peace talks and free top commu-nist rebels, but that he was determined to end the conflict.

About 500 people suspected to be rebels are in jail, which include two men who were con-victed of killing the US military adviser, Colonel James Rowe, in 1989.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte makes a fist bump with the students from Child Development Center Camp Aguinaldo and Tarlac National High School during a visit to Camp Servillano S. Aquino in San Miguel, Tarlac, Philippines, yesterday.

Truce failure

Earlier, Duterte let 22 Maoist rebel leaders out on bail, including two senior guerrilla commanders.

Last month, he also freed four elderly and sick prisoners on humanitarian grounds. But rebel leaders immediately demanded the release of 130 more rebels.

Indonesian police examine a boarding house where the 3kg bomb encased in a pressure cooker was discovered in Bekasi, West Java, yesterday.

Indonesia nabs woman and others in thwarted Jakarta plotJakarta

AP

Indonesian police said they safely detonated a bomb on the outskirts of the capital

after arresting a female would-be suicide bomber and other suspected Islamic militants who were allegedly planning to attack the presidential palace during the weekend.

The thwarted plot is likely to cause particular concern in Indonesia because of the possi-bility that women with militant

network associations are now being recruited into more active roles, including plotting and car-rying out attacks. "This marks a new chapter of terrorism in Indonesia, where the suicide bombing was to be carried out by a woman," terrorism analyst Ridwan Habib said in an inter-view with Indonesian TV.

Umar Surya Fana, the police chief of Bekasi, a Jakarta satel-lite city, said the militants were followed by a police counterter-rorism squad as they drove to Jakarta from Solo in central Java.

The city is known for its radical mosques and Islamic boarding schools. Police said two men were arrested after dropping the 27-year-old woman at the boarding house with the pres-sure cooker bomb. A fourth suspect, a man, was arrested in Solo, said Jakarta police spokes-man Argo Yuwono. The bomb potentially could have caused damage within a wide area.

People living within a 300-meter (yard) radius of the boarding house were evacuated during the police operation.

Prosecutors charge two aides of ParkSeoul

Reuters

South Korean prosecutors indicted a former senior presidential aide and a

former vice culture minister as part of their investigation of a corruption scandal that has led to President Park Geun-hye's impeachment in parliament, media said yesterday.

Friday's overwhelming par-liamentary vote to remove Park from office puts her fate in the hands of a nine-judge Consti-tutional Court, which has 180 days to decide whether to uphold the motion.

Park's powers have been suspended and assumed by Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who has ordered a high state of military alert for any attempt by rival North Korea to take advantage of the political turmoil. South Korea's finance minister warned that the impeachment could weigh on the economy if sentiment was undermined.

Park, whose father ruled the country for 18 years after seizing power in a military coup, has been accused of col-luding with a friend and a former aide, both of whom prosecutors indicted earlier, to pressure big businesses to donate to foundations set up to back her policy initiatives.

Park, who is serving a

single five-year term ending in February 2018, has denied wrongdoing but apologised for carelessness in her ties with her friend, Choi Soon-sil.

Prosecutors yesterday again characterised Park as a co-conspirator, media reported, although she has immunity from prosecution as long as she remains in office.

They made a similar asser-tion on November 20. If the Constitutional Court affirms the parliamentary vote, Park would become the first democratically elected leader of Asia's fourth-biggest economy to be forced from office. "Amid so much glo-bal uncertainty, this political situation is further weighing on the economy and a downturn in sentiment could be another problem," Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho told a news conference.

The two former officials whose charges were reported by media yesterday included a former senior economic aide, Cho Won-dong, accused of col-luding with the president in trying to pressure a South Korean conglomerate, CJ Group, to dismiss a group vice chairman, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

Cho told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday he had found the arm-twisting wrong but he had to deliver the pres-ident's message to the conglomerate.

Kim guides military drill targeting SeoulSeoul

Reuters

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un guided a special operations drill targeting

the South, the North's media reported yesterday, as rival South Korea remained on alert for any attempt by the North to take advantage of political tur-moil in the South.

The North's KCNA state news agency report did not say when North Korean forces conducted the combat exercise, nor did it mention the South Korean

parliament's vote on Friday to impeach its president, Park Geun-hye. Pictures on the exer-cise in the North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed what appeared to be a mockup of South Korea's presidential Blue House as a target.

Park will remain in the Blue House, though her powers have been suspended and assumed by the South's prime minister while the Constitutional Court weighs parliament's impeach-ment vote. South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn has urged a high state of military

alert in case of any provocation by North Korea, including pos-sible cyber attacks.

"We are ready to retaliate if North Korea makes any provo-cations and we condemn its malicious threat," a South Korean military official said.

Tension on the divided Korean peninsula has been high this year after two North Korean nuclear tests and an unprece-dented flurry of ballistic missile tests. The North's tests have brought tighter U.N. Security Council sanctions but no indica-tion North Korea and its young

leader Kim are willing to com-promise on its nuclear and missile programmes.

The Rodong Sinmun pictures included one of Kim observing the exercise through binoculars. "Watching the brave service per-sonnel independently and pro-actively perform their com-bat duty destroying specified targets of the enemy, he said with a broad smile on his face:

'Well done, the enemy troops will have no space to hide them-selves, far from taking any counteraction'," KCNA cited Kim saying.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un guides the combat drill of the service personnel of the special operation battalion of KPA Unit 525 in this undated photo released by North Korea's KCNA in Pyongyang yesterday.

Mubashir Javed elected Lahore mayorLITTLE KNOWN even among PML-N circles, retired Col Mubashir Javed was elected unopposed Lahore mayor, unof-ficially, along with his nine deputies, after the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf failed to pitch a full panel for mayoral polls.

The PTI was required to form a panel against the PML-N’s, but the one it submitted to the Election Commission was declared ‘incomplete’ and subse-quently rejected.

“We had to submit a panel of 12 candidates, but we had only 10 seats (in the UCs). So the PTI panel for mayoral elec-tion was rejected by ECP, declaring it incomplete according to its rules,” PTI Lahore president Waleed Iqbal said.

He said although the PTI did not have the required number of candidates to form the panel, but there should have been some provi-sion in the law for such a situation.

Deal signed with China on tax exemption PAKISTAN and China have signed Avoidance of Double Taxation Agree-ment under which the profits earned by Chinese banks on investment of $34bn into energy projects of Pakistan would be exempted from payment of taxes.

“We have expanded the list by including those Chinese banks providing loans to their companies for investing $34bn into energy projects so the income tax on the prof-its of these banks will be exempted from paying income tax. This incen-tive will help boosting pace on energy projects under China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) worth $34bn,” a top offi-cial of FBR said on Friday.

Audit of assetstatements next weekTHE ELECTION Com-mission of Pakistan (ECP) will finally begin the first-ever audit of lawmakers’ statements of assets and liabilities early next week.

A senior official of the ECP said that scrutiny of statements of assets of members of the Senate and national and pro-vincial assemblies for the financial year that ended on June 30, 2016, was to commence on December 1, but deci-sion on modus operandi and final approval of the standard operating pro-cedure (SOP) delayed it.

He said initially it had been proposed that statements of 25 per cent of lawmakers should be randomly audited, but the commission has decided to scrutinise 100 per cent statements. He said the ECP would pro-ceed against those found guilty of concealing their assets or making any other false declarations under Section 82 of the Representation of Peo-ples Act (ROPA).

NEWS BYTES

Afghan children who were displaced by Kunduz fighting between Afghan forces and Taliban insurgents walk in the snow at a refugee camp in Mazar-i-Sharif, yesterday.

Fun in the snow

13MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016 PAKISTAN / AFGHANISTAN

Islamabad

Internews

The PPP’s top hierar-chy is considering a major reshuffle in the cabinet of Pakistan’s Sindh province, five

months after replacing octoge-narian Qaim Ali Shah with Murad Ali Shah as the prov-ince’s chief minister.

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is not happy with the performance of some members of the provincial cab-inet and feels there is a need to reconfigure Shah’s team, sources said. In July, the PPP replaced the Sindh chief min-ister in a major reshuffle that also saw the induction of some new and relatively young min-isters in the provincial cabinet.

“Bilawal Bhutto has been keenly monitoring the perform-ance of the Sindh government. He feels another major reshuf-fle is inevitable,” said a source in the Sindh government.

The PPP is desperately try-ing to shed the moniker of ‘friendly opposition’ and take on the government aggres-sively. And for this purpose, the party is planning to launch an anti-government movement with a focus on Punjab, the political bastion of the ruling PML-N. Before confronting the ruling party, the young PPP chairman wants to put his own

house in order and make another effort to improve gov-ernance in Sindh, the province where the PPP has been in power since 2008. Sources said Bilawal recently had a review of the Sindh government’s per-formance. Close aides told him that the political change evoked some positive response from general public, but it failed to build a momentum.

“Initially, for two months the response was quite encour-aging, but gradually complacency started factoring in. We can’t afford this any-more,” a close aide quoted Bilawal as telling him. He claimed that Bilawal, who has already completed the review, would soon make important announcements. “Some minis-ters and advisers will be shown the door,” he added.

Major cabinet reshuffle in Sindh on cards

Governance

Bilawal Bhutto has been keenly monitoring the performance of the Sindh government. He feels another major reshuffle is inevitable,” said a source.

The PPP leadership plans to make some big announcements on December 27.

Islamabad

Internews

The French Development Agency (AFD), which pos-sessed portfolio of ¤265m

as soft loan for Pakistan, has appreciated Islamabad for sta-bilising its economy and taking it to a higher trajectory of growth.

Senator Ishaq Dar, Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs, met Remy Rioux, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of French Development Agency (AFD) in Paris Thursday. The CEO of AFD appreciated the progress that Pakistan has made in stabilising economy.

During the meeting, the minister said Pakistan values the

financial assistance provided by AFD in important sectors includ-ing energy, water and sanitation. He added that the Pakistan gov-ernment appreciates AFD’s support for initiatives for improving the transmission effi-ciency and water and sanitation in Pakistan.The AFD announced that for the year 2016, it has approved a portfolio of 265 mil-lion euros as soft loans for rehabilitation of Mangla hydro-power plant, augmenting NTDC transmission capacity and budget support for energy sec-tor reforms.

The AFD has joined ADB and JICA in the five-year budget sup-port programme initiated in 2014 for improving the manage-ment of tariff opening the

market and strengthening accountability and transparency in the energy sector. The AFD also evinced interest in work-ing in the sectors of heritage and culture. The AFD has been oper-ating in Pakistan since 2007. It is promoting green and inclu-sive growth and has been focusing on renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.

Sanjay Pradhan, CEO Open Government Partnership (OGP), called on the finance minister in the embassy of Pakistan and congratulated Pakistan on join-ing the elite group of members of OGP.

He invited Pakistan to par-ticipate in the meetings of various OGP working groups and steering committees.

French agency praises Islamabad

Pakistani art students decorate a wall along a street in Lahore, yesterday.

Street-art

Islamabad

Internews

Cases registered under the ambitious anti-terror law, the Protection of Pakistan

Act (PoPA), have been shifted to the anti-terrorism courts (ATCs). After the lapse of PoPA in July this year, the proceed-ings of these cases, which had not moved very rapidly, to begin with, came to a halt as the tenure of the PoPA judges also expired with the act.

PoPA was promulgated in July 2014 with a sunset clause that the law will expire after two years with the aim of coun-tering terrorism by improving the conviction rate of hardcore terrorist suspects. In addition, it was also supposed to cover some gaps in the judicial sys-tem such as protection of witnessed and judges in terror-ism cases.

Because the act was seen to be in violation of fundamental rights, it was passed with a sun-set clause. Despite this, PoPA was implemented in a slow and patchy manner.

And in December the same year, after the terrorist attack

on the Army Public School (APS) Peshawar, the govern-ment allowed the formation of military courts which over-shadowed PoPA.

Most of the offences and provisions added to the Paki-stan Army Act (PAA) through the 21st amendment were iden-tical to those under PoPA. As a result, PoPA was used to regis-ter very few cases.

Ironically, even these few cases could not be decided in the special courts of PoPA in two years; by the time PoPA lapsed, its courts had not decided a single case.

And once the law lapsed, the cases had to be transferred elsewhere. A few weeks after the expiry of PoPA, the accused as well as the PoPA judges wrote to their respective high courts regarding the fate of the pending cases. A majority of PoPA cases were registered with the counterterrorism department (CTD) which was established in the police in the four provinces. “There were over 50 PoPA cases in ATCs of Punjab pending before the spe-cial courts when the law expired,” said a senior official.

Islamabad

Internews

The five-member imple-mentation committee of the Pakistan People’s

Party (PPP) will hold its meet-ing tomorrow in Islamabad to deliberate on progress on four demands to the government by

the party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and will chalk out future strategy.

The implementation com-mittee headed by former Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani will meet the political leader-ship of other opposition parties to get their support for the implementation of demands.

The purpose of forming the committee was to devise a strat-egy to compel the government to accept the four demands.

The committee will make recommendations that will be presented in the central execu-tive committee meeting of the PPP scheduled to be held on December 27 in Larkana.

Pending anti-terror cases shifted to ATCs

Karachi

Internews

The Sindh province govern-ment has initiated a move to revive the entertain-

ment duty on cinema tickets suspended in 2000 on the direc-tives of the then governor. The Excise and Taxation (E and T) department has put up the case

with Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah requesting him to undo the suspension order as the cinema industry business has improved a lot in the past 16 years.

The entertainment duty on movie tickets was put in abey-ance due to poor business conditions of the industry in the province which threatened

closure of many cinema houses with their buildings being con-verted into shopping malls.

According to the deputy director of the E and T depart-ment, Shabana Baloch, notices had been served to owners of 17 existing cinema houses to pay an entertainment levy as the movie business has improved with a substantial increase in the

sale of tickets. The entertain-ment duty rates for cinemas were revised in 2000 to Rs2,000 per day on tickets sold for the AC class, Rs1,000 for the upper-class and Rs500 per day for ordinary class.

Replying to a question, Baloch said the cantonment boards were charging entertain-ment duty on new movie houses

doing good business in their areas.

She said that the Sindh gov-ernment also had claims on revenue from the entertainment duty collected from cinema owners in cantonment areas. The issue will be raised with the high ups in boards by the Sindh government, she said on Friday.

PPP panel to chalk future strategy

Entertainment duty on cinema tickets likely to be reimposed

14 MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016INDIA

New Delhi IANS

With over 5.5 million chil-dren enslaved across the globe, Nobel

laureates and world leaders yes-terday adopted a 'Will for Children' vowing to collectively endeavour for ending child labour in all its forms and cre-ate and a child-friendly world.

Joined by a host of Nobel laureates and world leaders at Rashtrapati Bhavan here, Pres-ident Pranab Mukherjee yesterday launched "100 Million for 100 Million" campaign that strives to change the future of mi l l ions of chi ldren worldwide.

Conceptualised by Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, the campaign was flagged off by Mukherjee in the presence of

Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, Nobel laureates

Tawakkol Karman and Leymah Gbowee, former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and First Lady of Panama Lorena Castillo.

"Despite the progress the world has made in science and technology, economic develop-ment and in other fields of human endeavour, there are still over a 100 million children who are out of school and are denied a childhood and facing exploitation in various ways," Mukherjee said in his address.

"Mankind must realise with-out any further delay that there can be no progress unless our children are safe and secure, unless they are provided free-dom and the opportunity to become the agents of change," he said. Lauding the campaign, Mukherjee hoped it will have a path-breaking impact on mil-lions of children across the globe.

Campaign launched

Lauding the campaign, Mukherjee hoped it will have a path-breaking impact on millions of children across the globe.

Conceptualised by Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, the campaign was flagged off by Mukherjee in the presence of Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, Nobel laureates Tawakkol Karman and Leymah Gbowee.

"This global endeavour of mobilising 100 million youth and children is the beginning of change that was long overdue. It is only appropriate that the cam-paign begins from India which has the largest population of youth in world," added Mukherjee.

The campaign aims to bring together 100 million young

people and educate them about their rights and the rights of thou-sands of other children, similar to them.

"The 5-year campaign strives to inspire 100 million children to speak and act for the numerous other unfortunate children liv-ing in terrible conditions and will motivate them to build a child-friendly world, where every child

is free and safe to learn and to have an equal chance in life," said Satyarthi.

The campaign also brought curtains to the two-day 'Laure-ates and Leaders for Children Summit' that brought together the collective leadership of around 25 Nobel laureates and leaders for creating a child-friendly world.

President vows to end child labour

Children's right activist and Nobel Laureate, Kailash Satyarthi (centre) gestures towards children in New Delhi, yesterday.

Onlookers gather near the wreckage of a crashed helicopter in an open field in the suburb of Goregaon in Mumbai yesterday.

MORE than 100 impro-vised explosive devices -or crude bombs planted by the Maoist guerrillas were detected and defused in Jharkhand's Latehar dis-trict yesterday, the state police said.

According to a police officer, the improvised explosive devices planted in series were recovered from a jungle in Late-har, around 140km from Ranchi. The bombs were recovered during a search operation by security per-sonnel. The state police said the bombs were planted to target security personnel. Maoist guerril-las are active in 18 of the 24 districts in the state.

RULING AIADMK yes-terday said a total of 470 people have died of "shock" following the demise of former Tamil Nadu chief minister and party general secretary J Jayalalithaa on December 5. The party, which has been releas-ing in the past few days the lists of people who have died of shock over the death Jayalalithaa, yes-terday released names of 190 people.

In a statement that accompanied the list, the party condoled their deaths and announced relief of Rs 3 lakh each to the families of the deceased. The party said the total number of people who had died now stood at 470. The statement added that six people had attempted suicide thus far, including four peo-ple whose details were released yesterday.

The party had earlier announced Rs 50,000 for one person who allegedly attempted suicide and another who had cut off his finger after hearing about Jayalalithaa's death.

NEWS BYTES

100 IEDs found in Jharkhand

470 died of shock over Jaya's demise

Modi vows to end lawlessness in UPBahraich (UP) IANS

Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterdaysaid the BJP will end the 'gunda-

raj' (lawlessness) in Uttar Pradesh if it is voted to power in the state in the assembly elec-tions due early next year.

Addressing a 'Parivartan Rally' (transformation rally) here through mobile phone, Modi said: "Today there is 'gundaraj' in the state. Every-one is fed up of this lawlessness. Even police is unable to stop the 'gundas' (goons)."

"If you have to take your state forward, you will have to throw out those backing these 'gundas'. And the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will do that," Modi said, targeting the ruling Samajwadi Party. The Prime Minister said he cannot under-stand the discomfort of the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) at the central government's fight against black money.

"They (SP and BSP) are sel-dom on the same page on an issue. But nowadays, they are speaking in one voice. I can't understand the reason for their discomfort at the fight against black money," he said.

Modi addressed the rally through mobile phone from the state capital as his chopper could not land here due to low visibility and returned to Lucknow.

The Prime Minister was scheduled to address the rally at 1.00pm, but he could finally address it only around 3.00pm through a mobile phone, which was placed near the micro-phone at the venue, as other senior state BJP functionaries, including state party unit chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, stood in rapt attention on the dais.

Modi accused the opposi-tion of stalling Parliament and not letting the government put forth its viewpoint on demonetisation.

"We are ready for a debate (on demonetisation) but we are not being allowed to present our views by those very parties that have been rejected by the vot-ers," he said.

However, Modi said that his fight against black money and graft would go on and all those hoarding unaccounted money would be caught in the coming days. "My government is all for the poor," he stressed.

This was the fifth Parivar-tan Rally Modi addressed in Uttar Pradesh, where elections to the assembly are due early next year. He has already addressed such rallies in Ghaz-ipur, Agra, Kushinagar and Moradabad. The Prime Minis-ter's next rally is scheduled in Kanpur for December 19.

Strict security arrangements were in place for the Prime Min-ister, with the local police and security personnel forming multiple layers of security around the rally site here.

Private helicopter crashes in Mumbai

Southeast coast on alert as cyclone 'Vardah' approachesBhubaneswar

IANS

Authorities yesterday sounded an alert in And-hra Pradesh and adjoining

Tamil Nadu as cyclonic storm 'Vardah' over the Bay of Bengal has turned into a "very severe" one. The storm is likely to cross north Tamil Nadu and south Andhra Pradesh coast by today afternoon, said Indian Meteor-ological Department yesterday.

According to IMD, 'Vardah' over west central and adjoining south Bay of Bengal moved fur-ther westwards and lay centred at 530 hours over west central and adjoining southwest Bay of

Bengal about 520km east-south-east of Nellore, 490km east-southeast of Machilipatnam and 480km east-northeast of Chennai.

"The storm is very likely to move nearly west-southeast-wards and maintain its intensity till yesterday evening. Thereaf-ter it will weaken gradually while moving towards south Andhra Pradesh coast and adjoining north Tamil Nadu coast," the IMD said.

The Met office has forecast light to moderate rains at many places with isolated heavy to very heavy falls over south Andhra coast and north coastal Tamil Nadu from yesterday evening for

subsequent 36 hours. Light to moderate rains are likely to occur over north coastal Andhra. Strong winds with speed of 40-50kmph are likely along the coast from today. The speed may increase to 70-80kmph at the time of land-fall. Damage to thatched huts, power and communication lines, roads and crops is expected.

As the sea will be rough, fish-ermen have been advised not to venture into the sea for next 48 hours. Authorities have hoisted third warning signal at all ports on Andhra coast.

District administration in Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam and Nellore have been alerted to take all precautionary measures.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Min-ister N. Chandrababu Naidu, who has cancelled his visit to the UAE and Kuwait, is monitoring the situation from the command and control centre in Vijayawada.

Naidu deputed four senior IAS officers to four districts to take necessary steps to minimise the loss of lives and property.

Two teams of National Dis-aster Response Force have reached Nellore district.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Naval Command (ENC) is all geared up to carry out relief operations, as cyclone 'Vardah' is likely to make landfall near Chennai today, the Indian Navy said yesterday. Cyclone Vardah's

severe cycle is around 450km east-north-east of Chennai and is likely to make landfall north of Chennai in the afternoon or evening of December 12.

"In preparation for the relief efforts of very severe cyclone Vardah, the Eastern Naval Com-mand has assumed high degree of readiness to render necessary assistance," said an Indian Navy statement here.

"All operational ships have been readied and kept on standby to undertake humani-tarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) operations, includ-ing evacuation, should the situation demand," the Indian Navy said.

New DelhiIANS

A private helicopter on a joy-ride crashed and erupted into a fireball, killing the

pilot and injuring three others, at an isolated spot in Mumbai suburb Goregaon yesterday. The helicopter, a Robinson R44 belonging to Aman Aviation Pvt Ltd, was on a sight-seeing flight over Mumbai when it suddenly crashed inside the forested Aarey Milk Colony and caught fire around 12.15pm, said the BMC Disaster Control.

The cause of the crash, which hit an area called Jambli Maidan in Filter Pada near the Royal Palms Club, is not known, and an enquiry has bene launched into the incident.

According to witnesses, hundreds of people from nearby

tribal hamlets inside the Aarey Milk Colony and some other set-tlements rushed to help the victims even as fire tenders rushed to the spot.

People and police person-nel extricated the victims from the burning chopper and rushed them to the Seven Hills Hospi-tal in Andheri East. The 53-year old pilot Prafulkumar Mishra who suffered extensive injuries and severe burns was declared dead, and the co-pilot and two passengers including a woman are reported to be in critical condition, Deputy Commis-sioner of Police Kirankumar Chavan told media persons.

The others have been iden-tified as Ritesh Modi, 35, wife Brinda Ritesh Modi, 34, who were on an aerial joyride of Mumbai, and a co-pilot Sanjeev Shankar, 25.

While Ritesh is being treated for multiple head and chest inju-ries, Brinda sustained around 35 burns, and Shankar suffered hand fractures, but is stable.

There was confusion over the timing of the crash with eye-witnesses saying it took place around 11.45 am but the fire bri-gade got a call only around 12.15 pm. The chopper was originally owned by Pawan Hans Ltd, but later sold to Aman Aviation Pvt Ltd, which is one of the small airline companies offering aer-ial tours of the Mumbai and surroundings.

Officials said according to preliminary information, a fire was reportedly noticed when the chopper was flying, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing in a flat open area at Fil-ter Pada inside Aarey Milk Colony.

15MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016 INDIA

THOUSANDS of people were stranded as 90 trains were delayed and eight cancelled due to dense fog in parts of north India yesterday, authori-ties said. A Railway official said 28 trains were rescheduled as the yesterday visibility dropped to 300 metres.

There was dense fog in Delhi, with the minimum temperature recorded at 12.4 degrees Celsius, three notches above the season's average.

The maximum tempera-ture is likely to hover around 22 degree Celsius. Saturday's maximum temperature was 21.6 degrees Celsius, and the minimum was 11.2 degrees Celsius, two notches above the average.

Jammu

IANS

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said yes-terday that terrorism is

a weapon used by weak peo-ple, as brave nations do not take recourse to terrorism to settle scores with their neighbours.

The Home Minister was addressing a gathering of fam-ilies of martyrs in the border district of Kathua in Jammu region of the state to pay hom-age to the martyrs.

In a direct reference to Pakistan, Rajnath Singh said: "Terrorism is a weapon used by the weak and coward people. Brave nations do not use ter-rorism to settle scores with its

neighbours."Pakistan has failed in four

wars to divide India and now it was trying to divide India by using the religion card. Muslims are part of India as much as the followers of any other religion living here."

He further said: "There are 72 schools of thought in Islam and no other country except India has Muslims followers of all the 72 schools of thought.

"Pakistan cannot divide India on the basis of religion. ISIS was not able to establish itself in India and the credit for this goes entirely to Indian Muslims."

He said India had been divided in 1947 on the basis of religion, but that will never ever happen again.

A girl carrying a basket as she crosses a road on a foggy winter morning in Agartala, yesterday.

A Kashmiri vendor selling traditional snacks to devotees at Kashmir's shrine Hazratbal, on the eve of the festival of Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi, in Srinagar, yesterday.

Sweet treats

New DelhiIANS

Deadlock continued between the Centre and the states yes-terday at the 6th meeting here of the

Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council on the vexed issue of "cross empowerment", or dual control of assessees.

The Council's two-day meet-ing commenced earlier in the day in the shadow of the November 8 demonetisation, whose fallout has put a serious question mark on implementing GST by the cen-tral government's targeted deadline of April 1, next year.

The meet was also expected to finalise three legislations — Central GST, Integrated GST and the Compensation law — after which these will be placed in Parliament.

The Council's fifth meeting here earlier this month also failed to break the deadlock

between the Centre and the states on the vexed issue of dual control on assessees in the pro-posed pan-India indirect tax

regime. At the meeting then, the states continued to highlight the impact of the November 8 demonetisation of high-value currency on their respective economies to underline that it is not the appropriate time to implement GST that, they aver, could have a destabilising effect on the economy.

Besides, the Centre contin-ues to be intransigent on the issue of jurisdiction over asses-sees, the states maintain. Calling demonetisation "a big magnum-sized tsunami", West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra ear-lier this week said India's gross domestic product (GDP) in the current fiscal (2016-17) will take a huge hit on its account.

"From an estimate that I have, the growth rate in aggre-gate will fall over 3 percent and arrive at 4.3 percent," he told a TV news channel.

"This means a loss of Rs 4.7 lakh crore of GDP, this will be extinguished. This is in the worst

case scenario... the best case sce-nario is loss of Rs 3 lakh crore," Mitra added.

Mitra, who is Chairman of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers and member

of the GST Council, also said that the postponement of the Goods and Services Tax regime could be an option to stabilise the economy badly hit due to demonetisation.

"Should we rethink of stabil-ising the economy from this big hit resulting from demonetisa-tion and then go for GST? Do we take the risk of a second whammy at this stage," he asked.

New DelhiIANS

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan yester-day blamed "RSS

culture" for the protests which prevented him from attending a function in Bhopal.

Arriving from Madhya Pradesh, Vijayan said the Rash-triya Swayamsewak Sangh, the ideological parent of the BJP, was behind the protests on Saturday.

"Generally when a Chief Minister visits another state, there are protocols. But since the RSS was behind the pro-tests, the police remained silent. It reflects the culture of RSS," he said.

Vijayan was prevented from attending a function in

Bhopal by a group of RSS and Bajrang Dal activists.

The Madhya Pradesh Police told Vijayan to return before he could even reach the venue of a meeting organised by a few Kerala-based organisations.

"This has never ever hap-pened in Kerala. Recently when Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh visited Kannur, a place often referred by all as a party village (CPI-M bastion), there was no issue at all.

"You should not forget that his visit came at a time when there was high tension in Kan-nur. This is the difference in the mindset and culture."

After hearing about the epi-sode, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan telephoned Vijayan and expressed regrets.

Chandigarh

IANS

Kulwinder Kaur, 24, was dancing with fellow women dancers on the

stage at a wedding function in Maur Mandi town in Bathinda district of southwest Punjab on the night of December 3. There was merry-making and drink-ing, which is typical of Punjabi weddings. Among the guests cel-ebrating, there were a few openly brandishing weapons. As

the music and dance went on, in the din came a few shots from firearms. One of these shots, allegedly fired by a drunk guest, hit Kaur on the head. She became the latest victim of wedding cel-ebrations in Punjab and Haryana.

The same guest, now the main accused in the murder case filed by the police, Lucky Goyal alias Billa, had, minutes before, sought to dance with Kaur but she had refused. The weapon used by him belonged to his friend, who

too has been booked. Also booked were the marriage venue owner and the father of the groom — both for allowing weapons to be brought to the function despite a ban imposed by law. But none of that is going to bring back Kaur or give solace to her distraught husband and family. Kaur was three months pregnant when she was killed. She was the bread-winner for her family, which has limited means.

Just over a fortnight before that, in neighbouring Haryana,

a self-styled young godwoman and her gang of private securit-ymen went on a celebratory firing spree at a wedding near Karnal town. Different weapons were used during this exercise. The bullets flew all over and one of them hit a woman guest, Var-sha Mehta, who died later. Two other guests were injured in this incident. The godwoman, Sad-hvi Deva Thakur, and her accomplices were arrested after being on the run.

These are not isolated cases.

In both Punjab and Haryana, dozens of people have lost their lives in recent years to the mad-ness of a few people, high on liquor and wielding guns, who add tragedy to celebrations at wedding functions. While Pun-jab already has a law under which carrying of firearms to marriage venues is banned, the Haryana government has also now imposed a ban on carrying of weapons following recent incidents of celebratory firing at weddings.

GST Council meets in shadow of demonetisationGoods & Services Tax

The meet expected to finalise three legislations —Central GST, Integrated GST and the Compensation law.

Mitra, Chairman of the Committee of State Finance Ministers and member of the GST Council, also said that the postponement of the Goods and Services Tax regime could be an option to stabilise the economy badly hit due to demonetisation.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley addressing media in New Delhi, yesterday.

Kerala CM denied permission to attend function in Bhopal

Celebratory firing leaves trail of deaths at Punjab weddings

Terror a weapon used by weak nations: Rajnath

Dense fog strands many travellers

DELHI Police said yes-etrday they had seized Rs136.5 million in cash, including Rs26 million in new currency notes, from a law firm here.

The Crime Branch on Saturday raided the firm in south Delhi.

Of the Rs 136.5 recov-ered, Rs70 million were in old Rs1,000 notes, Rs30 million in 100 rupee notes and Rs 26.1 mil-lion in Rs2,000 notes, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav said.

The rest of the money was in other denominations.

A currency count-ing machine was also recovered. The Income Tax department has been informed, Yadav said.

DELHI Police yesterday claimed to have solved the murder here of an Assist-ant Sub-Inspector (ASI) of the force and his woman friend with the arrest of two persons.

Accused Jeet Dahiya and Amar Singh were arrested from Rohini area on the charge of killing ASI Joginder Lakra, 45, and his friend Manisha, police said.

Lakra and Manisha were found murdered early yesterday at a prop-erty dealer's office that the deceased police official used to run at Deep Nagar in north Delhi, police said.

"During interrogation, Jeet said he had dealings with Joginder over dance and illegal betting activ-ities. A monetary dispute between the two devel-oped into enmity," Deputy Commissioner of Police M N Tiwari said.

Jeet allegedly hatched a plan with Amar Singh and others to eliminate Joginder. They reached the property dealer's office late on Saturday night and fired multiple rounds at Joginder and the woman, Tiwari said.

NEWS BYTES

Over Rs136m seized from Delhi law firm

Two held for ASI and woman's murder

16 MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016EUROPE

Snap election

The vote was called as part of a European Union-brokered deal between Macedonia’s four main political parties after a mass surveillance scandal erupted in February 2015 and sparked rival street protests.

Dogs play before a sled and skijoring race in the village of Kadnikovo outside Yekaterinburg, Russia, yesterday.

Dear colleague!

Skopje

AFP

Macedonians voted yesterday in an early general elec-tion in a bid to end a deep political cri-

sis that has roiled the small Balkan country for nearly two years.

The vote was called as part of a European Union-brokered deal between Macedonia’s four main political parties after a mass surveillance scandal erupted in February 2015 and sparked rival street protests.

On a sunny day in Skopje, the elderly were among the first to cast their ballots along with young couples with children at a polling station in the city centre.

“I expect this agony to end,” after the elections, 55-year old Zoran Milevski said, referring to the political crisis.

“Whoever wins I hope will bring back stability,” he said.

Electoral officials said turn-out was 9.59 percent three hours after polling stations opened at 0600 GMT, similar to the one in

the last parliamentary elections held two years ago.

The scandal led Nikola Gruevski of the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party to step down, after nearly 10 years in power, to pave the way for a snap election.

Yesterday’s vote, which was twice delayed owing to opposi-tion and international concerns of fraud, pitches the ex-PM against his nemesis, Social Dem-ocrat Zoran Zaev.

It was Zaev who released tapes last year that appeared to show the government wiretapping

thousands of people, including journalists and religious officials, as well as corruption at the high-est level.

Gruevski denied the claims and accused Zaev of planning a coup with foreign support.

“Zoran Zaev underestimates the citizens of Macedonia... He underestimates everyone with his games,” the defiant former premier told a flag-waving crowd of supporters in a Skopje suburb.

Zaev has pitched the vote as a choice between “doom or life” and pledged to stop an exodus of young people from the former Yugoslav republic, which remains one of Europe’s poor-est countries.

Stockholm

Reuters

NOBEL laureate Bob Dylan sent a message thanking Swedish academy for award-ing him the Nobel prize for literature, an honour the Amer-ican singer and songwriter believed was about as likely as “standing on the moon.”

“I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but please know that I am most defi-nitely with you in spirit and honoured to be receiving such a prestigious prize,” Dylan said in a speech read by Azita Raji, the US ambassador to Sweden, at the Nobel ban-quet. He also expressed his huge surprise at receiving the award.

“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon,” he said.

The media-shy Dylan finally accepted the 8m Swedish crown ($870,000) prize for literature, after frus-trating the award-giving academy with weeks of silence following the announcement of the award on October 13. But he chose not to attend the festivities.

In his place singer Patti Smith performed Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall at the award ceremony earlier in the day.

A nervous Smith forgot the lyrics and had to start over but still received emphatic applause at the end.

While Dylan was absent, all other laureates, which include Japan’s Yoshinori Ohsumi for medicine and Britain’s Duncan Haldane for physics, accepted a medal and a diploma from the hand of the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf before attending the banquet at Stockholm’s City Hall for about 1,300 people.

Geneva

AFP

Regular rail service through the world’s long-est tunnel began

yesterday, carrying passengers deep under the Swiss Alps from Zurich to Lugano.

The famed Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) had a ceremonial opening in June, attracting European leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hol-lande for its maiden ride.

The Swiss national rail service (SBB) had announced the start of normal commercial traffic through the 57-km GBT, which took 17 years to build, at a cost of over 12bn Swiss francs

($11.8bn, €11.2bn). The Swiss news agency ATS

reported that first regular pas-senger train to use GBT pulled out of Zurich and arrived in Lugano, with the tunnel pas-sage shaving a full 30 minutes off previous travel time. “It’s Christmas,” SBB chief Andreas Meyer was quoted as saying by ATS after the journey was over.

The ambitious GBT project has won praise across Europe for its pioneering efforts to improve connectivity from Rot-terdam to the Adriatic.

The Swiss funded tunnel was largely made possible by technical advances in tunnel-boring machines, which replaced the costly and danger-ous blast-and-drill method.

Barcelona

AP

A SPANISH couple arrested for allegedly exploiting rare illness of their daughter in a charity scam spent almost €600,000 ($633,000) of donations on a ritzy lifestyle.

Court documents issued by investigating judge said that Fernando Blanco and Magarita Garau spent nearly two-thirds of over €900,000 ($950,000) they received in charitable donations on per-sonal expenses, including their rent, a car, travel and a collection of luxury watches.

The couple raised that money since 2009, when they established a charity in name of their now 11-year-old daughter, Nadia Nerea, who they said suffered from rare disease trichothiodystrophy.

The judge in the court in Catalan town of Seu D’Urgell, where the couple who were arrested lived, said police investigations indicated either they had misrepre-sented the seriousness of their daughter’s illness or had invented it altogether.

The judge ordered the girl to be removed from her par-ents’ custody and placed in care of an aunt.

Paris

Reuters

France’s popular former economy minister , Emmanuel Macron, styling

himself the workers’ champion, drew 15,000 supporters to a rally in Paris which reinforced his image as dark horse in the race for the Elysee.

Macron, once a protege of President Francois Hollande, staged what his supporters called a “tour de force” at the rally, brushing off criticism by his erst-while Socialist allies for running as an independent in 2017 polls.

Macron has refused pleas - most recently by former prime minister Manuel Valls who is seeking Socialist party ticket - to join in Left’s attempts to decide on a single candidate for next spring’s election. He signalled he would not change his mind.

Macron pledged to cut taxes on workers and employers, while raising taxes on income from investments and wealthy pensioners.

“I ask them, in all transpar-ency, for this little effort of a few euros per month because the country’s workers need it ... I am the workers’ candidate,”

he declared to cheers.The large turnout on a cold

evening eclipsed last weekend’s modest gathering by the Social-ists when party grandees struggled to re-energise the Left’s faithful at a convention that drew only 2,500 supporters.

Polls show there is little chance of any left-wing candi-date reaching the election run-off next May and, barring an upset, the stage seems set for a head-to-head between conserv-ative Francois Fillon and far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Fillon, a centre-right former

Dublin

Reuters

A group of British and Irish lawyers are seeking to challenge Britain’s deci-

sion to leave the European Union in Irish High Court to try to establish if Brexit can be reversed once divorce talks have been triggered.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she wants to invoke Article 50 of EU’s Lis-bon Treaty by end of March, kicking off up to two years of exit negotiations following the vote to

leave in a referendum last June.The lawyers hope the court

in Dublin will ask the European Court of Justice, the EU’s highest court, to determine whether Article 50 can be revoked and also if leaving the EU means that Britain automatically leaves the European Economic Area (EEA).

The EEA is the trading club comprising the 28 EU states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechten-stein, three non-EU nations who can access the bloc’s single mar-ket in return for applying its rules and accepting the free move-ment of EU citizens.

European Council President Donald Tusk has said that Brit-ain might ultimately decide not to leave the EU and that if it unilaterally withdrew its request to leave before the two years were up, then it could stay in the Union.

However in the final judge-ment of a ruling last month that Article 50 cannot be triggered without parliament’s assent, Britain’s High Court said that once notice of leaving was given then it will “inevitably result in the complete withdrawal of the United Kingdom”.

That challenge is now in front of Britain’s Supreme Court.

The case proposed for the Dublin courts is being brought in Ireland because the lawyers say the Irish Government col-luded in a breach of the EU Treaties by wrongly excluding Britain from some EU Council meetings after the referendum.

That claim can only be made in the courts of Ireland, they wrote on a crowdfunding web-site seeking to raise 70,000 pounds ($88,000)to initiate the proceedings. Over 30,000 pounds had been raised less

than 24 hours after the appeal was launched.

The group hopes to launch proceedings in the Irish courts by the end of the year and if suc-cessful, move to the European Court of Justice within months, Jolyon Maugham, the British lawyer behind the campaign, told Irish national broadcaster RTE.

Pro-Brexit critics have cast the legal battles as an attempt by a pro-EU establishment to thwart the result of June’s refer-endum, when Britons voted by 52-48 percent to leave the EU.

Macedonia votes hoping to end crisis

The leader of the opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia Zoran Zaev casts his vote with his wife Zorica at a polling station in Strumica, Macedonia , yesterday.

Dylan muses on honour and surprise of Nobel prize

World’s longest tunnel opens regular service

Lawyers seek to launch fresh Brexit challenge in Irish courts

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron addresses a rally at the Porte de Versailles in Paris.

prime minister who has pledged to cut deep into the public sec-tor, would easily beat the

anti-immigrant and anti-euro Le Pen, taking two thirds of the vote if the polls are correct.

Macron bills himself workers’ champion at huge rally

Suspects in ill child charity scam spent €600,000

17MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016 EUROPE

French President Francois Hollande (right) takes a selfie with a supporter as he visits Lascaux 4, a new complete replica of the original prehistoric painted caves, in Lascaux, France.

Selfie fever

Suspense ends

Paolo Gentiloni, who served as foreign minister under Renzi, was asked by President Sergio Mattarella to form a new centre-left government.

The President turned to Gentiloni after opposition parties rebuffed overtures about a possible national unity government.

Rome

AFP

Paolo Gentiloni (pic-tured) was yesterday named as Italy’s new prime minister follow-ing Matteo Renzi’s

resignation in the wake of a crushing referendum defeat.

Gentiloni, who served as for-eign minister under Renzi, was asked by President Sergio Matta-rella to form a new centre-left government that will guide Italy to elections due by February 2018.

A close ally of outgoing pre-mier, Gentiloni now has to put together his own government team ahead of a parliamentary approval vote expected on Wednesday.

In a brief statement, Gen-tiloni said there was an “urgent need for a fully functioning

government” to address a series of pressing international, eco-nomic and social issues.

Chief among those is a loom-ing crisis in troubled banking sector and ongoing relief efforts after a series of earthquakes between August and October.

Mattarella turned to Gentiloni after opposition parties rebuffed overtures about a possible national unity government. The President

rejected opposition demands for an immediate election.

“Not by choice but out of a sense of responsibility I will be

forming a government based on outgoing majority,” Gentiloni said.

The populist Five Star Move-ment, which has led calls for immediate elections, said it would boycott Wednesday’s vote because the new government would have no legitimacy.

“This government is not even worthy of a vote against it,” said Giulia Grillo, head of the Five Star group in the Senate.

Gentiloni, 62, is very close to Renzi and will be seen by oppo-sition as a puppet premier keeping the seat warm for former boss, who is planning a comeback at next elections, whenever they are.

In a statement on his Face-book page, Renzi, 41, admitted it had been a wrench to leave office and vowed to pursue his reform agenda. “It was painful to pack the cartons yesterday evening, I’m not ashamed to say: I’m not

a robot,” he wrote. “Only those who try to

change things can help a coun-try as beautiful and difficult as Italy.”

Five Star, Italy’s biggest opposition party, and the far-right Northern League are demanding a vote as early as possible. But Mattarella, who enjoys extensive executive pow-ers during government crises, has ruled that the current elec-toral laws must be revised first.

Theoretically that could hap-pen quickly but the process of harmonising the rules govern-ing elections to the two houses of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, could also drag on for months.

As things stand, the lower house would be elected by a sys-tem under which the largest party is guaranteed a majority of seats while the Senate would be

voted in under a proportional representation system.

Most observers agree that this is a recipe for chaos.

The situation could be sim-plified at the end of January, when the constitutional court is due to rule on the legitimacy of the new winner-take-all system for the Chamber of Deputies.

Gentiloni had taken over as foreign minister in October 2014, replacing Federica Mogherini who is currently serving as EU foreign policy chief.

He is a longstanding friend and soulmate of Renzi’s and cyn-ics will say that the silver-haired, grey-suited politican’s primary qualification for the job is that he poses no threat to the former premier’s comeback plans.

Gentiloni’s first tricky task as prime minister is likely to be overseeing a rescue of troubled bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena.

Bucharest

AFP

Romanians voted yesterday in parliamentary elections that are forecast to see the

corruption-tainted left stage a remarkable comeback, a year after a deadly club fire forced them from office.

Mass protests after the fire on October 30, 2015 that claimed 64 lives—and which was blamed on corruption—forced premier Victor Ponta and his Social Dem-ocrats (PSD) to resign.

But now, 13 months later, the PSD is expected to be in pole position to return to power, with pre-election opinion polls sug-gesting it will come first with around 40 percent of the vote.

It remains to be seen if it can form a majority government, however. Much will depend on which of the smaller parties make it into parliament.

The rival centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL) and

the Save Romania Union (USR, newly created by a mathemati-cian-turned-activist, are seen garnering a combined 35-40 percent.

The European Union’s sec-ond-poorest country has been run for the past year by a care-taker government under technocrat Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos.

The PNL and the USR have said they would support Ciolos staying on. He is happy to do so but wants to remain an inde-pendent, vowing continued budgetary discipline. But the PSD wants to install instead party head Liviu Dragnea, 54, as premier.

However, Dragnea is serving a suspended sentence for elec-toral fraud, which legally bars him from office, while President Klaus Iohannis, 57, has refused to appoint anyone with legal problems as premier.

This would also exclude a comeback by Ponta, 44, currently on trial—in fact he was already in

the dock as prime minister—for alleged tax evasion and money laundering, charges he denies.

The inferno inside the Colec-tiv club was blamed on bent officials turning a blind eye to a lack of fire precautions. Poor medical care exacerbated the death toll. For many Romanians it was the final straw, and the tragedy prompted a push to clean Romania up.

The National Anti-Corrup-tion Directorate (DNA) has been highly active and visible, bring-ing ministers, senators, lawmakers and other public offi-cials to justice.

A recent survey suggested that 95 percent of Romanians want tackling corruption to be a prior-ity for the next government But there are worries this will not hap-pen if the PSD returns to power.

The clean-up has “dispropor-tionately hit Romanian left,” said Tsveta Petrova from risk consul-tancy Eurasia Group.

“As a result, should a left-led

Sofia

AFP

BULGARIA is seeking offers from the US and three Euro-pean countries to update its ailing fleet of Soviet-built fighter jets, country’s defence ministry said.

As a Nato member since 2004, Bulgaria is obliged to keep at least one fighting fit squadron of jets ready for action, but it currently has only nine working aircraft.

Sofia has asked three Nato allies and Sweden to submit tenders for new or used fighter jets to revamp its fleet of MIG-29 aircraft which date from Soviet times.

“The request for proposal has been sent to... Italy, Por-tugal, the United States and Sweden,” the ministry said.

It provided no further details about the tender, which envisages ordering of a minimum of eight fighter jets.

Most of Bulgaria’s fleet of MiG-29s have been in con-stant need of repairs in recent years.

The ministry has previ-ously said it was looking into buying second-hand F-16s from the US or Portugal, used Eurofighter Tycoon fighters from Italy or new Gripen jets from Sweden.

Brussels

Reuters

Eastern European Union states remain at logger-heads with Greece and

Italy over sharing burden of car-ing for asylum-seekers reaching EU frontiers, officials said.

Largely uncontrolled arrival of some 1.4 million people from the Middle East and Africa in the past two years, many fleeing Syr-ia’s civil war, has triggered bitter EU infighting. Dispute centres on

how countries far from the main migration routes should help frontline peers like Greece, Italy and Malta.

“It is very important that there is a common agreement, which is what we still don’t have now,” said Slovak interior min-ister Robert Kalinak. “We need to work more with our col-leagues from Poland and Hungary, and also Greece and Italy on the other side.”

EU migration chief Dimitris Avramopoulos said it was vital

that member states overcome their differences and agree on common rules on handing asy-lum-seekers to be prepared for any future spike in arrivals.

Nearly all of the 350,000 migrants and refugees to reach Europe’s shores this year have arrived in Greece and Italy, with Italy becoming the main gate-way to Europe this year.

The EU border agency Frontex said that November arrivals across the Mediterra-nean to Italy stood at 13,740

people, more than four times the figure for last year.

Germany, Sweden and Aus-tria, the wealthiest countries and destinations of choice, also want some sort of permanent reloca-tion scheme to share people out more evenly.

But Poland and Hungary refuse to take in asylum-seek-ers, saying admitting Muslims would distort the makeup of their societies. They resist Brus-sels’ efforts to impose relocation quotas.

Italy has criticised eastern-ers and threatened to block any further work on EU budgets, which normally provide billions of euros of development funds to Poland and its neighbours to allow them to catch up with their western peers.

The Council of Europe, a rights organisation, and aid group International Rescue Committee, criticised a separate Brussels proposal to resume returning some asylum-seekers to Greece.

The Hague AFP

The Dutch government is scrambling to negotiate a binding compromise over

an EU-Ukraine pact ahead of a European summit next week, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.

But the premier warned that his government may have to submit a law withdrawing his country’s support for the treaty to back closer ties between Brussels and Kiev if no solution to the standoff is found.

“We are working full-steam behind the scenes to find a bind-ing solution to the ‘no’ vote for

the EU-Ukraine agreement,” Rutte told journalists.

“It’s a complex process and we haven’t found a solution yet.”

Rutte has been walking a political tightrope since an April referendum organised by Dutch eurosceptic groups in which—despite a low turnout —60 percent of those who voted rejected the EU’s cooperation accord with Kiev.

Rutte said he wants “legally binding guarantees” at EU sum-mit to ensure the pact “will not create a defence guarantee” for Ukraine or be a step towards EU membership.

The Netherlands is the only

one of the 28-member bloc yet to ratify the accord, which aims to boost political dialogue with Kiev as well as economic and trade cooperation.

The status of the accord—par-ticularly relating to Dutch issue—will top the agenda at Thursday’s talks in Brussels, with other subjects such as migration and continent’s security.

The Dutch premier, who is under fire at home for not heed-ing the outcome of the consultative referendum, warned that The Netherlands may pull the plug on the pact should an agreement not be reached at the summit.

coalition come to power, it will try to slow down this campaign.”

But the PSD is still forecast to become the largest party in the elections, thanks to solid support among older Romani-ans and in rural areas of the

southeastern European nation of 20 million people.

However, 27 years after the summary execution of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and the end of Communism, voter apathy is rife, with turnout forecast to

be as low as 40 percent.Both sides, while trading

insults and generally avoiding serious political discussion dur-ing the campaign, have pledged spectacular hikes in wages and pensions as well as tax cuts.

Italy & Greece face off easterners in EU migration feud

Gentiloni named Italy’s new prime minister

Romania's Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos (right) casts his ballot during a parliamentary election in Zalau, Salaj county, yesterday.

Romanian left seeks comeback a year after deadly fire

Bulgaria seeks offers to update Soviet-built jets

Dutch govt in bid to resolve row on EU-Ukraine pact: Rutte

18 MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016AMERICAS

GOP sweeps

Voters also filled two open US House seats, choosing Republican Clay Higgins in the 3rd District representing southwest and south central Louisiana and Republican state Representative Mike Johnson in the 4th District covering northwest Louisiana.

People view the Hover Star H1 machine made by the Chinese Shenzhen Hoverstar Flight Technology firm, that they claim can fly at an altitude of 6-15 feet and travel up to 5 miles during the International Drone Expo in Los Angeles, California, yesterday.

Unique drone

Baton Rouge, Louisiana AP

Louisiana voters chose to send Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy to the US Senate, filling the

nation’s last Senate seat and giv-ing the GOP a 52-48 edge in the chamber when the new term begins in January.

Kennedy was always the runoff election’s front-runner in a state that overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump. He defeated Democrat Foster Campbell, a state utility regula-tor whose chances were seen as such a long-shot that national Democratic organisations offered little assistance to Campbell’s campaign.

As he celebrated the victory, Kennedy said he represented change in Washington.

“I believe that our future can be better than our present, but not if we keep going in the direction the Washington insid-ers have taken us the last eight years,” he said. “That’s about to change, folks.”

Voters also filled two open US House seats yesterday, choosing Republican Clay Hig-gins, a former sheriff’s captain known as the “Cajun John

Wayne,” in the 3rd District rep-resenting southwest and south central Louisiana and Republi-can state Representative Mike Johnson in the 4th District cov-ering northwest Louisiana.

Louisiana has an open pri-mary system in which all candidates run against each other. In the contests for the open congressional seats, the November primary ballots were packed with contenders, so the top two vote-getters advanced to yesterday's runoff.

The Senate runoff drew national attention, with Presi-dent-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence each traveling to Louisiana to rally for

Kennedy. The national GOP pro-vided resources and staff to assist Kennedy’s campaign, while national Democratic organisations largely abandoned Campbell, assuming an easy Republican win.

Though Campbell’s chance appeared slim, donations had poured in from around the country, and several Hollywood celebrities championed his can-didacy aiming to bolster resistance to Trump presidency. Campbell said the support he received across the country was “phenomenal.”

“We worked as hard as pos-sible. We left no stone unturned,” Campbell said in his concession speech. “I make no excuses. We did everything humanly possible.”

The co-chair of the Repub-lican National Committee, Sharon Day, described Kennedy’s win as capping “a year of historic Republican wins up and down the ballot.

“With 52 seats in the US Sen-ate, we are excited for Republicans to confirm a con-servative Supreme Court justice and begin working with Presi-dent-elect Trump to pass an agenda of change for the Ameri-can people,” Day said.

Louisiana Governor John Bel

Edwards, a Democrat and ardent Campbell supporter, congratu-lated Kennedy and pledged to work with him to “deliver great things for people of Louisiana.”

The Senate seat was open because Republican David Vitter decided against running for a third term after losing the gover-nor’s race last year. Both men vying for the seat are well-known figures, involved in Louisiana pol-itics for decades.

Kennedy, an Oxford-edu-cated lawyer from south Louisiana, is in his fifth term as treasurer, a role in which he

repeatedly drew headlines for his financial clashes with Louisiana’s governors.

He sprinkled speeches with examples of government-financed contracts he considered outrageous, like money “to study the effects of Swedish massage on bunny rabbits.” In the runoff, he ran a safe, TV-focused effort highlighting his support for Trump and his opposition to the federal health overhaul.

Campbell, a cattle farmer and former state senator from north Louisiana, is a populist who railed against “Big Oil,” wanted to

increase the minimum wage and talked openly about man-made climate change. He pledged that in Washington he wouldn’t “be in anybody’s shirt pocket.”

He also ran as a Louisiana Democrat — strongly opposed to abortion and supportive of gun rights.

Kennedy hit Campbell for supporting Clinton. Campbell called Kennedy a flip-flopper during prior Senate bids, because the treasurer ran in 2004 as a lib-eral Democrat and the most recent two times as a conserva-tive Republican.

Senate Republican candidate John Kennedy delivers a victory speech in Baton Rouge yesterday.

Rio De Janeiro

AP

A former executive at a mega-construction com-pany cited Brazilian

President Michel Temer 44 times during testimony to fed-eral prosecutors in a corruption probe, making accusations of illegal campaign financing that put his embattled administra-tion at an even bigger risk of ending within months.

The 82-pages of testimony by former Odebrecht director Claudio Melo Filho was obtained by a section of press yesterday. If his allegations that Temer illegally financed his campaign are confirmed by Brazil’ top electoral court next year, the president will be removed and Congress will pick a successor.

Melo Filho, one of the many executives who signed plea-bar-gain deals in the corruption investigation at state-run oil giant Petrobras, made accusations against Temer, senior Cabinet members and close aides and allies of the president.

About 100 business execu-tives and politicians have already been arrested or are under inves-tigation in Brazil for allegedly overcharging contracts with Petrobras and other state-run companies to pay for bribes and election campaigns.

In the most damaging of Melo Filho’s accusations against Temer, the former executive

told prosecutors that in 2014 his colleagues at Odebrecht agreed to illegally contribute some $3m to finance Temer’s party’s elec-tion campaign.

At the time, Temer was both Brazil’s vice president and chairman of centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, known as the PMDB.

Melo Filho said he took part in a dinner with Temer at the vice presidential residence where the agreement was reached.

“Michel Temer requested, directly and personally to Marcelo (Odebrecht) financial support for PMDB campaigns in 2014,” Melo Filho told prosecu-tors, referring to former CEO of the construction company.

Temer issued a statement dismissing the allegations, call-ing them “false accusations.”

The plea-bargain testimony needs to be validated by Bra-zil’s top court to count as evidence in the electoral court investigation, but adversaries of Temer are already calling for his impeachment.

Filho said most of the $3m was used to finance Temer’s candidate in 2014 Sao Paulo state gubernatorial race, Paulo Skaf. The rest of the money, according to Filho’s allegations, was channeled to the man who is now Temer’s chief-of-staff, Eliseu Padilha. The executive also suggested that part of money was paid in cash to Jose Yunes, another aide of Temer.

Washington

AFP

A death row inmate in Ala-bama coughed and gasped for 13 minutes

during his execution, witnesses say—an incident that has revived concerns about effectiveness of lethal injection as a means of capital punishment.

Ronald Smith, 45, was put to death for the 1994 murder of a convenience store clerk.

The execution took 34

minutes, during which Smith was apparently struggling for breath, according to Kent Faulk, a journalist from al.com, one of the media witnesses.

“There will be an autopsy that will be done on Mr Smith” to find out if there were any “irregularities” in the procedure, said Alabama’s prison commis-sioner Jefferson Dunn.

Prisons spokesman Bob Hor-ton told reporters the department of corrections followed execution protocol as stipulated by law.

“Early in the execution, Smith, with eyes closed, did cough but at no time was there observational evidence that he suffered,” said Horton.

The US states where the death penalty is still practiced are facing a shortage in the sub-stances used in lethal injections, in part because some pharma-ceutical companies refuse to provide the drugs. To get around the shortage, some states such as Alabama have adopted a three-drug method: the first puts

prisoner to sleep, second causes paralysis and third stops the heart.

Alabama uses sedative midazolam for first phase. Crit-ics say the drug doesn’t induce a deep state of unconsciousness before the other drugs are given.

Smith’s last words, when asked if he had anything to say, were “No, Ma’am,” officials said.

But his lips continued to move before and after the drugs were given to him, and he clenched his fist after the first injection, Faulk said.

Washington

Reuters

THE first gorilla born in cap-tivity has returned to her enclosure at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio after recovering from suc-cessful surgery last week to remove a malignant tumor, the zoo said.

“She got presents and was very active and engaged. She’s on view and she looks great,” Patty Peters, the zoo’s s p o k e s w o m a n , s a i d yesterday.

Veterinarians at the zoo removed the mass from under the arm of Colo, a 59-year-old female gorilla, on December 3, the zoo said in a statement. Days later, a pathology report confirmed that the tumor was malignant. There was no sign that the tumor had spread and no additional treatment on Colo was planned, officials said in the statement.

Colo, a western lowland gorilla born on December 22, 1956, is the matriarch of the Columbus Zoo’s popular gorilla family, according to the zoo’s website. Her name is short for her birthplace: Columbus.

New York

AP

Even as homicide rates have climbed in other American cities, New York City is

again on pace to have a near-record low number of shootings, and police are partly crediting refined tactics that include col-lecting more data and forensic evidence than ever before to go

after the worst offenders.“It’s no longer good enough

to just make an arrest,” said Dep-uty Commissioner Durmot Shea, a top New York Police Depart-ment crime-fighting strategist. The department is also trying to focus harder, he said, on the kind of arrests that make a difference by targeting a relatively small number of people responsible for making neighbourhoods unsafe.

Through December 4, the city had recorded 942 shooting inci-dents, putting the city on course to have even fewer than the 1,103 in 2013 — the lowest number since police department began count-ing shootings in 1993.

A majority of people who have been shot survived. As of December 4, the city had recorded 313 killings, close to the 333 set in 2014.

Still, it’s not clear whether the crime reductions in New York are due to refined police tactics or other factors, like a continuing influx of wealth into the city.

Chicago, which has roughly a third of the population of New York, has adopted a similar phi-losophy of quality-over-quantity gun arrests, yet number of shoot-ings and homicides has soared.

Through end of November, it had recorded more than 700 killings. Chicago is on pace to have nearly 300 more homicides this year than last year.

Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College, said targeted policing may make more sense in New York because, compared to Chicago, gun violence is con-centrated in smaller pockets of poverty.

John Kennedy wins Louisiana Senate race

Temer cited 44 times in graft testimony

Lethal injection row revived after long execution

First gorilla born in zoo returns after surgery

NYPD seeks cure for gun violence with data-driven cases

19MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016 AMERICAS

Construction workers build a reviewing stand for the upcoming presidential inauguration near the White House in Washington, yesterday.

For the grand day

Washington

Reuters

US President-elect Donald Trump rejected as “ridic-ulous” reported US intelligence find-

ings that Russia intervened in the presidential election on his behalf through targeted hack-ing, saying he did not believe it, according to an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

The Republican President-elect’s comments casting doubt on reported US intelligence findings pits him against some leading foreign policy voices in the US Senate from his own party who yesterday expressed alarm about election meddling by Moscow.

“I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it,” Trump said in the interview.

He blamed Democrats for putting out the media reports and said he did not believe they came from the Central Intelli-gence Agency.

Trump’s dismissal was per-haps aimed at squashing doubts about whether he won the November 8 election fairly. However, his comments could also portend conflicts between the new president and the

intelligence agencies he will command and feed criticism that his administration will be soft on Russia.

US intelligence agencies have told Congress and the administration of President Barack Obama that Russia has grown increasingly aggressive in Syria and Ukraine and has stepped up activities in cyberspace including med-dling, sometimes covertly, in

European and US elections.A senior US intelligence offi-

cial told reporters that intelligence agencies have con-cluded with “high confidence” that not only did their Russian counterparts direct the hacking of Democratic Party organisa-tions and leaders, but they did so to undermine Democratic candi-date Hillary Clinton.

The Republican president-elect questioned whether the Central Intelligence Agency was behind the reports that indicated Moscow wanted him in the White House. “I think the Democrats are putting it out,” he said in the interview.

Two leading Republican voices on foreign policy in the US Senate, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, joined two Democratic senators yesterday in expressing concern over possible Russian interference in a US presidential election.

“For years, foreign adversar-ies have directed cyber attacks at America’s physical, economic, and military infrastructure, while stealing our intellectual property. Now our democratic institutions have been targeted,” the senators, including Democrats Chuck Schumer and Jack Reed, said in a statement.

“Recent reports of Russian

interference in our election should alarm every American.”

“This cannot become a par-tisan issue. The stakes are too high for our country,” the sena-tors said in a statement.

Reince Priebus, the Republi-can Party leader Trump picked to be his chief of staff in the White House, attacked the news reports for relying on unidentified sources and denied a New York Times report that the Republican National Committee was hacked. He was speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the US election.

Baltimore

Reuters

US President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name the chief executive of ExxonMobil Corp as the country’s top diplomat, a source familiar with the situation said, an appointment that would put in place an official with close ties to the Russian government.

The choice of Tillerson fur-ther stocks Trump’s Cabinet and inner circle with people who favour a soft line toward Moscow.

Tillerson, 64, has driven Exx-on’s expansion in Russia for decades and opposed US sanc-tions imposed on Russia for its seizure of Crimea. Russian Pres-ident Vladimir Putin awarded Tillerson Russia’s Order of Friendship, one of the country’s highest civilian honors.

Tillerson emerged as Trump’s leading candidate for US secre-tary of state over 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Rom-ney and three other people.

Tillerson met with Trump for more than two hours at Trump Tower yesterday. It was their sec-ond meeting about the position this week. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tillerson was the expected pick but cautioned no formal offer had yet been made. A senior official on the Trump transition team said the President-elect was close to picking Tillerson.

Trump spokesman Jason Miller said no announcement on the high-profile job was forth-coming in the immediate future.

Brunswick, Maine

AP

Federal fishing regulators say they are looking to change the way they man-

age Atlantic halibut in the wake of a surge in catch of the fish.

The government lists Atlan-tic halibut as “overfished” and conservationists want to pro-tect it. But many fishermen say the catch is up because the stock has been rebuilt over recent years.

East Coast fishermen caught more than 215,000 pounds of Atlantic halibut in 2015 in the most productive year of fishing for the flatfish since 1972. Catch of the fish in nearshore Maine waters is helping drive the increase, reg-ulators say.

The regulatory New Eng-land Fishery Management Council decided last month to review management of halibut, which is popular with diners and chefs for its thick, meaty

steaks. Exactly what form reg-ulation changes could take isn’t yet know.

“We’ve identified that this is an issue, and this will be a priority for 2017,” Janice Plante, a spokeswoman for the coun-cil, said.

The council has also asked that Maine’s state fishing man-agers adjust the way they oversee halibut. Part of the issue is that if fishermen exceed their quota for the fish, it can trigger restrictions on fishing that impact fishermen who operate in federal waters. About 40 percent of the halibut catch for the 2015 fishing year was taken in state waters, mostly in Maine.

Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, said Maine should consider limiting the amount of halibut fishing in state waters. Otherwise, federal fishermen will be negatively affected by the surge in state catch, he said.

Mexico City

AP

MEXICAN police arrested son of a drug cartel leader who was extradited to the US, authorities said yesterday.

Federal security forces said the man was arrested in western state of Jalisco along with four others on suspicion of drug trafficking, kidnap-ping and murder.

His full name is not given, but a police official confirmed yesterday it was Alfredo Bel-tran Guzman.

Beltran Guzman’s father is Alfredo Beltran Leyva, a former leader of Beltran Leyva cartel who in February pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in Washington.

The Beltran Leyva cartel began as an arm of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel. Beltran Guzman is also related to the Sinaloa cartel leader who is fighting extra-dition to the US.

The Beltran Leyva oper-ation split from the Sinaloa cartel following Alfredo Bel-tran Leyva’s arrest in 2008.

Beltran Guzman was arrested without a shot being fired in Zapopan, Jalisco. Rifles, a grenade and drugs were also seized.

The statement said Bel-tran Guzman was connected with the kidnapping in August of several people, including at least one of Joaquin Guz-man’s sons in Puerto Vallarta. It also suggested he was behind attacks in Guzman’s hometown, including on his mother’s compound.

At some point, pursued by authorities and Guzman’s people, Beltran Guzman moved his base of operations from Culiacan, Sinaloa to Guadalajara, Jalisco, the statement said. There he formed a relationship with other criminal groups.

New Mexico

AFP

The soldiers ripped opium poppies and tossed them in four bonfires, clearing a hill

in Mexico’s lush northwestern mountains in less than two hours.

But their work in the heart of country’s “Golden Triangle,” a tri-state region of heroin and marijuana production, was far from over.

After the troops destroyed the 1.2-acre field, Lieutenant Juan Pablo Hernandez Zempoaltecatl pointed to another one on a steep hill past a row of pine trees, and more down the Sierra Madre Occi-dental mountain range.

His 18-man unit has destroyed 39 fields amounting

to 15 hectares since they set up camp two weeks ago following a day-and-a-half trek up hills infested with snakes and ven-omous spiders. Hernandez estimates that his unit faces 20 more days of grueling work to clear the remote area while spending chilly nights in small tents in the wild.

But once they’ve destroyed all the bulbs, Hernandez expects farmers to quickly plant new seeds to replace what they just lost. It takes only three months for poppies to grow.

“It’s tiresome to see so many poppies every day,” the fresh-faced, 24-year-old commander said as he trekked back toward the unit’s tent camp.

As Mexico yesterday marked

10 years since the government deployed troops to crack down on drug cartels, the army faced an uphill battle in its four-decade-old struggle to eradicate a growing opium poppy production.

The poppies are grown by local farmers, who extract opium gum from bulbs and sell it to gangs such as the Sinaloa drug cartel, which transforms the raw material into heroin.

“Every time we destroy a field ... the locals come back to plant after our personnel has left the area,” said Colonel Cipriano Cruz Quiroz, chief of staff of a special narcotics eradication unit based in Badiraguato, Sinaloa state.

“They don’t see us in a good light but they tolerate us. They

have their work and we have ours. They plant and we destroy,” said Cruz, whose base is in the

hometown of imprisoned Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Trump denies Russia 'help' in elections

Foul play seen

The President-elect blamed Democrats for putting out the media reports and said he did not believe they came from the Central Intelligence Agency.

Two leading Republican voices on foreign policy in the US Senate, John McCain and Lindsey Graham expressed concern over possible Russian interference in a US presidential election.

President-elect Donald Trump waves to the crowd from an enclosure during the first quarter of the 117 annual Army Navy game at M&T Bank Stadium in Maryland, Baltimore, yesterday.

Trump may pick ExxonMobil CEO as secretary of state

Overfished halibut under scrutiny

Mexican drug cartel leader’s son arrested

Mexican army faces uphill battle against opium poppies

Poppy flowers at Surutato community in Sinaloa state in Mexico.


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Learn to identify fake products at Darb El Saai Sidi Mohamed & Irfan Bukhari The Peninsula

Along educating visitors on how to dif-ferentiate counterfeit consumer goods from genuine products, the Ministry of Economy and Commerce’s pavilion at Darb El Saai is encouraging residents

to take pictures of counterfeit and expired goods so that swift actions be ensured against the violators.

The visitors of Darb El Saai are getting necessary information about the counterfeit consumer goods, expired food stuff, and the products not meeting GCC standards thanks to Ministry of Economy and Com-merce. “We are educating visitors on how to distinguish between counterfeit goods and genuine products and about the products which meet and do not meet GCC standards. They can discover coun-terfeit products through the marked difference in prices and the quality of the product. Another thing that helps people a lot in differentiating counterfeit products with real products is the fact that some brands are sold only on company’s agency or out-lets”, said Mohamed Al Adba, an official of the Ministry while talking to The Peninsula.

The Ministry’s enclosure is creating awareness about counterfeit or expired products through dis-playing of seized items including expired food stuff,

electrical appliances, cosmetics and auto spare parts among others.

“Visitors must be aware of these pieces of impor-tant information because some counterfeit products are very dangerous especially electronics as the fake ones may explode causing a fire”, Al Adba said.

Talking on legal action against traders of coun-terfeit products, the official said that the fine against violators started from QR10,000 to QR1m and clo-sure of outlet for one month and more. “Sometimes the commercial registration in cancelled of

the violators,” he said, adding that only authorities concerned had the powers to decide the value of fine. “A small shop can never be imposed QR1m fine for example.”

To another question regarding the nature of mostly asked question from the visitors, he said that women were asking more about food items and cosmetics while knowing about counterfeit auto spare-parts was the interest of the youth.

The ministry’s stall with the help of dig-ital screens also sharing information with visitors on various subjects falling in its domain like renewal of commercial regis-tration etc.

It also reminds visitors that being con-sumers it is their right to get a receipt in Arabic from commercial complexes, and it

will become obligatory after March 2017. It also advises visitors to check the daily price list of vege-tables and fruits to know the real prices.

The official said that no shop, hypermarket or outlet could announce “promotion” without having license of the ministry. “If people witness two prices of same item, they can lodge a complaint on minis-try’s hotline as well,” he said, adding that it was being recommended to the visitors to take pictures of coun-terfeit, expired or overpriced products so that the violators could not escape the legal action.

Indian Ambassador P Kumaran honouring football players of the Qatar Golden team which won the runner-up title in the 1981 Australia World Youth Football Cup.

QIFF honours 1981 football team The Peninsula

Qatar Indian Football Forum (QIFF) hon-oured the football players of the Qatar Golden team which won the runner-up

title in the 1981 Australia World Youth Football Cup, during the final match of 10th QIFF foot-ball tournament at the Al Arabi Sports Club under the leadership of the Ambassador of India, P Kumaran and QIFF president Shamsudheen Olakara.

The players were welcomed with a grand parade by the Indian community. Kumaran

declared full support of the Indian society for the organisation and coordination of the 2022 World cup. He added that QIFF tournament strengthens the bond between India and Qatar and encourages sporting talent of the Indian community.

TJSV Trissur defeated (2-0) KMCC Kozhikode to win the 10th edition of Qatar Indian Football Forum (QIFF) tournament for Western Union City Exchange trophy at Doha Stadium.

Around 13,000 spectators came to Al Arabi Stadium to watch the closing ceremony and final match.

Counterfeit and genuine products on display at Darb El Saai, yesterday.

Celebrations at Darb El Saai

Pics: Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula

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