QTCC leader Abdulla extends winning streak

Qatar’s non oil exports at QR1.71bn

in February

Traffic on Umm Besher interchange that was opened recently. The interchange was opened due to the closure of a 250-metre stretch of Al Wukair Temporary Street to expedite completion of a 22km main carriageway, which is a part of Ashghal’s East-West Corridor Project. Once completed, the project will deliver five lanes in each direction, providing direct, free flow of traffic between the Industrial Area and Hamad International Airport. Pic: Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula

Umm Besher Interchange opens

BUSINESS | 21 SPORT | 28

Volume 22 | Number 7127 | 2 RiyalsMonday 10 April 2017 | 13 Rajab 1438 www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

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Sanaullah Ataullah The Peninsula

To meet the growing demand for electric-ity in the country, Qatar General Elec-tricity and Water

Corporation (Kahramaa) yes-terday signed contracts worth a total QR8.3 bn with local and international companies for expansion of electricity network.

The projects — Phase 13 of Qatar Power Transmission Sys-tem Expansion Plan — include construction of 77 substations and laying of 453.3km Extra High Voltage (EHV) cables.

“The projects will

serve different sectors in the country, the most important of which is the land sector, which has been allocated by the gov-ernment to the citizens," said Kahramaa’s President Eng. Essa bin Hilal Al Kuwari in a press

Raynald C Rivera The Peninsula

T Philippine President Rodrigo R Duterte will be meeting the Filipino community in

Qatar on Saturday during his first state visit to the country, the Phil-ippine Embassy announced yesterday. Duterte is scheduled to arrive in Doha on Friday.

“The Philippine Embassy would like to inform the Filipino community that President Rod-rigo Roa Duterte will be in the State of Qatar from April 14 to 16 for an official visit.

In this regard, Filipinos are invited to attend the Filipino com-munity meeting with the President to be held at the Lusail Sports Arena (Lusail Multipurpose Hall) on

Saturday between 6.30pm to 8pm,” said the announcement signed by Philippine Ambassador Alan L Timbayan.

The Philippine President enjoys big support from over-seas Filipinos worldwide which was evident during last year’s elections which saw his landslide win in many countries where overseas absentee voting was

held including Qatar which has more than 200,000 Filipinos. Many of his overseas compatri-ots here are expected to throng the much anticipated meeting. Prior registration is required for those who wish to attend the community meeting as the venue has the capacity of only 6,000.

→ Continued on page 4

The Peninsula

Under the patronage of Minister of Administra-tive Development,

Labor and Social Affairs, H E Dr Issa Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi, Dar Al Sharq will hold the fourth edition of its annual conference on 'Labour Care' on May 1, at Kempinski Hotel at The Pearl.

The conference under the theme “Achievements and Challenges” will host represent-atives of a number of government institutions, min-istries, companies and human right organisations.

This is the first conference on labour issues to be held by Dar Al Sharq Group following the enforcement of Law No. 21/2015 regulating the entry, exit and residency of expatri-ates on December 13.

As Qatar is hosting 2.1 mil-lion expatriate workers, the law which has replaced the Kafala (sponsorship) system with a contract-based system aims to improve the work and living conditions of the workers.

The opening session will be addressed by H E Dr Issa Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi, the Minis-ter of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti, and CEO of Dar Al Sharq Group, Abdullatif Al Mahmoud.

The conference will have three sessions.

The first session will high-light the legal achievements and actions taken for imple-menting rules and regulations to improve the living condi-tions of the labour force in Qatar.

This session will host senior officials from the Min-istry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs.

The second session will focus on the role of private sec-tor and views of legal experts on labour rights and achieve-ments that have been realised on the ground.

The third session under the theme, “better communication initiatives for workers in Qatar” will be addressed by officials from the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

Dar Al Sharq labour conference on May 1

London

AFP

British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon yesterday accused Russia of being

"responsible" by proxy for the death of 87 civilians, including

many children, killed last week in a suspected chemical weap-ons attack.

"Assad's principal backer is Russia. By proxy Russia is responsible for every civilian death last week," Fallon wrote in an opinion column published

in The Sunday Times. "If Russia wants to be

absolved of responsibility for future attacks, Vladimir Putin needs to enforce commitments, to dismantle Assad's chemical weapons arsenal for good, and to get fully engaged with the UN

peacekeeping progress," he added. Fallon reiterated Britain's position that Assad should quit.

"Someone who uses barrel bombs and chemicals to kill his own people simply cannot be the future leader of Syria," he wrote.

→ See also page 18

Kahramaa signs

QR8.3bn power

expansion deal

conference held yesterday. “The projects will also cover

a range of industrial sectors, eco-nomic zones and logistics areas, in addition to one of the major World Cup stations”, said Al Kuwari.

Addressing a press conference at Kahramaa headquarters, Kah-ramaa President Eng Essa bin Hilal Al Kuwari signed the contracts with representatives of the companies, in the presence of the Minister of Energy and Industry H E Dr

Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada.The upcoming projects

involve contractors and consult-ants for Transmission infrastructure development to implement through appropriate international and local private EPC participation. The EPC (engi-neering, procurement and construction) contracts for Phase 13 are for the supply and com-missioning of transmission cable and substations.

All projects will contribute to

improving the power infrastruc-ture in and around Doha, enabling Kahramaa to help achieving Qatar National Vision 2030. These projects include construction of total 77 substa-tions which are being built in various locations of the country. Phase 13 projects also cover up upgrading of few old substations. The project will also witness lay-ing of total 453.3 Kilo Meters Extra High Voltage (EHV) cables.

→ Continued on page 2

Minister of Energy and Industry H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada and Kahramaa President Eng Issa bin Hilal Al Kuwari, with representatives of the companies after signing the contracts, at Kahramaa Tower, yesterday. Pic: Baher Amin /The Peninsula

Rodrigo R Duterte

Russia 'responsible' for Syria deaths: Britain

Philippine President to arrive on Friday

Mowasalat services getting better→ Page 3

Doha

Reuters

SAUDI ARABIA’S finance min-ister said yesterday that citizens would not pay taxes on income and Saudi companies would not see their profits taxed under sweeping economic reforms being introduced in the kingdom.

The collapse in oil prices after mid-2014 has pushed Saudi Arabia to contemplate a radical overhaul of all parts of its econ-omy, including new taxes, privatisations, a changed invest-ment strategy and sharp cuts in government spending. Moham-med Al Jadaan sought in a statement carried by state news agency SPA to allay concern that people would be taxed as part of the ambitious reform plan.

The projects — Phase 13 of Qatar Power Transmission System Expansion Plan — include construction of 77 substations and laying of 453.3km Extra High Voltage (EHV) cables.

No income taxes for Saudi citizens

QNA

EMIR H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent a cable of condolences to President of Egypt Abdel Fattah El Sisi on the victims of the two criminal explosions that took place in Mar Girgis Church in Tanta and in St Mark Church in Alexandria, wishing a speedy recovery to the injured.

In the cable, the Emir expressed his strong con-demnation of this terrorist act which targeted places of worship and innocent peo-ple, stressing the State of Qatar's firm position reject-ing violence and terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.

The two blasts claimed by the Islamic State (IS) killed 43 people. The Foreign Ministry in a statement reiterated Qatar's firm stance rejecting violence and terrorism regardless of the motives and reasons.

→ See also page 8

Emir condoles with Egyptian President

a

st

02 MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017HOME

Call for joint action to tackle challenges facing ALOCairo

QNA

The State of Qatar is tak-ing part in the 44th Session of the Arab Labour Conference, which kicked off in

Cairo yesterday, with a delega-tion headed by H E Dr Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi, Minis-ter of Administrative Development and Labour and Social Affairs and Chairman of the Arab Labour Organization (ALO) Board of Directors.

This year's Conference, chaired by Kuwait's Minister of Social Affairs and Labour, Hind Al Sabeeh, brings together rep-resentatives of governments� workers and business organisa-tions in addition to Arab and foreign figures operating in the economic and social develop-ment field.

In his opening address, Al Nuaimi said the conference is

taking place amid international and regional changes "imposing on us various challenges which are at the heart of ALO's compe-tences and require further joint cooperation to confront and overcome them within the framework of the dialogue between the social partners in the Arab world."

Dr Al Nuaimi reviewed ALO'

Board of Directors' activities dur-ing the two sessions, which included discussions on a number of financial and admin-istrative issues along with reports relating to the activities imple-mented by the organization for the three production parties dur-ing 2016. These activities also included the follow-up of ALO's work progress and the formula-tion of a number of important recommendations submitted before the ongoing conference.

ALO Board of Directors also reviewed a report on the prep-aration for the annual meeting of the Arab Group participating in the 106th Session of the Inter-national Labour Conference scheduled for next June, Dr. Al Nuaimi said.

It had also examined a report on the situation of the workers and the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories and the violations suffered by the parties of production in

Palestine as a result of Israeli practices, which constitute a fla-grant violation of international law and human rights conventions.

In this context, Dr Al Nuaimi praised the Organization of

Education, Culture and Science (Unesco)'s resolution aimed at defending Al-Aqsa Mosque's identity, noting that the confer-ence's agenda includes a detailed report on the BOD' achievements between the two

sessions of the Conference.Dr Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al

Nuaimi expressed hope for the successful and effective conduct of the Conference's activities to better serve labour issues in the Arab world.

44th ALO session

Qatar taking part in the 44th Session of the Arab Labour Conference, which kicked off in Cairo yesterday.

Conference taking place amid international and regional changes, says Labour Minister.

QNA

The construction of Al Bayt Stadium at Al Khor City is in full swing with 40 per-

cent of the structural work of the proposed host venue for the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar now completed.

Aspire Zone Foundation Project Director for Al Bayt Sta-dium, Al Khor City, Dr Nasser Al-Hajeri, said: "Work on the site is progressing on schedule, with 40 percent of the stadium

structural work and 25 percnt of the construction work for the surrounding precincts already completed.

"The area around the sta-dium will include facilities for the community and green areas. There are currently 3,000 con-struction workers on the site, and workers’ welfare continues to be a top priority as we advance with construction on this unique stadium which will leave a tangible legacy for the community af ter the

tournament," the SC said in a report posted on its website.

The retaining wall that will support the next two levels of the stadium's overall weight has also been erected, and will ulti-mately be the main support of the stadium’s state-of-the-art retractable roof that will take just 20 minutes to close. The venue will have an overall height of 37 metres.

Meanwhile, the SC Project Manager for Al Bayt Stadium, Al Khor City, Engineer Mohemed

Ahmed, added: "Recently the site team began installation of the first fix of approximately 2,500 seats at the north stand of the 60,000-seat stadium."

The steel structure platforms for the modular seats are designed in Germany and man-ufactured in Italy while the actual seats are designed and manufactured in Qatar. After the tournament, the stadium’s capacity will be reduced to approximately 32,000 seats, with the upper tiers donated to

countries in need of sporting infrastructure.

The upper concourse of the stadium will then be converted into a hotel. A shopping centre and a branch of Aspetar, the lead-ing sports medicine facility, will also be incorporated into the structure.

Parks and greenery will form an integral part of the surround-ing precinct’s design plan, creating a green lung for Al Khor and pro-viding local families with invaluable outdoor space to enjoy.

Al Bayt Stadium: 40% of structural work completed Inspectors detect 79violationsThe Peninsula

As part of its ongoing inspection campaign, the Ministry of Econ-

omy and Commerce has detected 79 consumer protec-tion related violations last month. During the same period, the Ministry received a total of 1,068 complaints all of which were settled, said the Ministry.

The inspection campaign covered different areas and types of businesses. The cam-paign came in line with the Ministry’s aim to monitor the market and commercial activities in the country and ensure that traders comply with the provisions of the law No 8/2008 on Consumer Pro-tection. The violations included lack of product descriptions, display with wrong information, lack of necessary information about services and prices besides selling low quality products.

In addition, failure to issue bills and sale of expired food stuff were also among violations, said the ministry in a statement yesterday.

The punishments were closure and fines ranging from QR5,000 to QR30,000.

The Ministry said that it will take strict action against violators of the law regulat-ing consumer’s rights. Consumers have also been urged to report any violation they come across through the ministry’s communication channels.

→ Continued from page 1“Nine contracts have been

signed today worth QR8.3bn to expand the local network of the state and support the develop-ment and expansion of the country, and the increasing demand for electricity in resi-dential, commercial and industrial sectors in Qatar," said HE Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada.

“The period of implemen-tation of these contracts extends from 16 to 26 months, and were signed with huge and specialised international com-panies, stressing that these companies will be used in the subcontracts of Qatari compa-nies," he added.

The expansion plan has been laid down to meet the growing demand for electric-ity in Qatar, as the country

continues to witness tremen-dous development and urbanization, said Eng. Essa bin Hilal Al Kuwari.

The project aims to ensure stable power supply to all sec-tors including households, business centers, shopping malls, hospitals and schools.

A major contract in the transport networks is awarded to a local Qatari company.

Contracts for construction of sub- stations were signed with Siemens AG & Siemens consortium (Qatar ), Larsen& Toubro (India), NCC (KSA), Gul-far (Qatar) and Best & Betas Consortium (Turkey)

Contracts for transmission cables were signed were LS Cable and system (S-Korea) , Larsen& Toubro (India), Furu-kawa (Japan) and Elsewedy Cables (Qatar & Egypt).

H E Dr Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi, Minister of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs and Chairman of the Arab Labour Organisation (ALO) Board of Directors, at the conference in Cairo yesterday.

Expansion to meet growingdemand for electricity

HIA hosts two-day DNA seminarThe Peninsula

Hamad International Air-port (HIA) is hosting a two-day Airport Council

International (ACI) Developing Nations Assistance (DNA) sem-inar which will conclude today.

The seminar started with a welcome reception organized by HIA on Saturday.

The Developing Nations Assistance Programme, which is an ACI initiative, is targeted towards airport communities in developing countries and offers no cost and low cost training and other capacity building initia-tives to realize their development objectives.

The seminar is organised in conjunction with Hartsfield Jack-son Atlanta International Airport

and CIFAL-United Nations Insti-tute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and focuses on ‘Airport Air Service Development’.

The main topics include defining the airport/airline busi-ness relations, identifying the market potential for an airport’s location, defining the overall air-port marketing strategy to grow aeronautical and non-aeronau-tical revenues, and formulating marketing support and finan-cial incentives schemes for route development

Engr. Badr Mohammed Al Meer, Chief Operating Officer of HIA, said: “Hamad International Airport is a relatively young air-port, having started our operations in May 2014. Within the past three years, we have achieved our development

objectives largely due to our investment on training and building capacities. Hence, we are happy to provide a similar learning environment, in collab-oration with ACI, to all delegates. We hope they have a produc-tive seminar and are able to take back knowledge that will bring them to greater heights.”

Angela Gittens, Director General of ACI World, said: “I would like to thank Hamad International Airport for host-ing the DNA seminar on ‘Airport Air Service Development.’ This is an increasingly important dis-cipline as airports are no longer public utility monopolies but must compete effectively to attract and retain air service for the benefit of the communities they serve.

03MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017 HOME

Sanaullah AtaullahThe Peninsula

In a country heavily domi-nated by private cars, the public transport is slowly gaining ground. The widen-ing network of public

transportation system and sup-port services have won much appreciation from users. More and more people have started using the bus service to reach

their accommodation and work-place on a daily basis.

Many modern technologies like the advance payment sys-tem, the self-service machine for selling the public transport cards and the SMS notification about the arrival of buses have also helped make the service more people-friendly.

The SMS notification pro-vides real time information about specific bus routes. People can send an SMS with a specific bus-stop number to “92112”, and Mowasalat, the state-backed company that runs the Karwa buses, will provide information about buses on that route, expected timings and even how many stops it is away from the requested stop. The Peninsula tested the SMS notification serv-ice at various stops and found the system accurate and at times, the buses reached specific stops a

few minutes earlier than the time given by the system.

M e a n w h i l e , many commuters expressed their sat-isfaction about the bus services in the country. Mowasalat has added more buses and opened many new routes to ferry the passengers in a record time to all destinations. Many, including low income workers and labourers, also use the bus service to meet their relatives in Doha downtown and cities like Al Khor, Al Shamal, D u k h a n a n d Mesaieed etc during w e e k e n d a n d holidays.

“The availability

of bus services has increased sig-nificantly,” Mohamad Ali, a Nepali worker, told The Peninsula.

“I travel by bus from Al Ghanim Central Bus Station near the Gold Souq to the Industrial Area, Street No. 42, on a daily basis. I get the bus in 10 to 15 min-utes and the travel time is approximately 45 minutes if the bus is not stuck in traffic,” said Ali.

“The travel time has also been reduced because earlier, when the buses were less, there were frequent stops, and now there are limited stops. My accommodation is in Al Shihania labour camp and I come to Asian Town to see my relatives and friends on Fridays,” said Ramesh Yado, a construction worker.

“We noticed remarkable improvement in the bus services compared to the past years,” said Mohamad Jan, a self-employed Pakistani. Jan was waiting for his bus at Al Ghanim Central Bus Sta-tion to go to Dafna. The number of buses in almost all routes across the country has increased significantly, he added.

A number of blue collar workers were also found using the services mostly due to increased frequency in some routes.

“My residence is near the bus station and every few minutes there is a bus passing near my workplace. So I prefer to use the buses than my own car, as it relieves me of the pressure of morning traffic. I can sit and relax while travelling to office and start work afresh rather than being

bothered by all the traffic issues while driving to work in the morning,” said an engineer with a consulting firm.

However, many people who live away from Doha are finding it difficult to plan their travel on Mowasalat buses.

“Every time I need to go to the Industrial Area from Wakra, I have to go all the way to the main bus terminal in Al Ghanim to get a bus or get down at vari-ous stops and get a number of connecting buses, which is diffi-cult. It would be better if they can have more bus hubs in different areas, where buses to some of the most important destinations are available,” said a domestic worker in Al Wakra.

“The payment of fare for a Karwa bus is through the smart card,” said a card seller at Doha Bus Station. “The card is availa-ble at QR30 with QR20 balance. The commuter has to punch the card at the machine mounted besides the bus-driver when they get into the bus and exit and if anyone forgets to punch while exiting the system will deduct QR9 automatically as the maxi-mum charge, regardless of the actual distance.”

Some of the passengers also lauded the better facilities at the Central bus terminal like the sep-arate waiting areas for passengers. “Earlier, people would be walking all around the terminal but now passengers have specific waiting areas and when buses on their route come, they can board. The system is very much organised and there is no chaos while boarding or getting off the buses,” said a fre-quent traveller.

“People wait for their buses in the waiting areas, which has a few gates for passengers to board the buses. When the specific buses come at the gates, the doors will open and passengers can get in, based on the capacity of the buses. There is no more crowding near the bus door,” said another traveller.

Mowasalat-Karwa provides frequent services throughout Doha. Buses are modern, air con-ditioned with low floor access and space for wheelchairs on most types of bus. A fleet of lux-ury buses with reclining seats are used on longer routes like Al Khor, Al Shamal, Dukhan and Messieed as well as Airport Express service.

Mowasalat operates a total of 50 routes starting at as early as 4am with the last bus depart-ing around 11pm. Fares are attractively priced from as little as QR2.50 for short trips with a maximum single fare of QR9 to Al Shamal and Abu Samra on the Saudi border.

Moreover, commuters can submit their requests to Mow-asalat for route changes and additional routes as per their convenience as the services will be provided accordingly if pos-sible. Mowasalat announced earlier that they were receiving requests from various sectors for route changes, additional routes and they evaluate the require-ment to ensure the demand is met with increased passenger load. Then the proposal is sub-mitted to the Ministry of Transport and Communications to verify the feasibility of oper-ating as per the safety of the road conditions.

The transport company had also previously announced that there is a plan to build five new bus stations across the city that would be linked to the metro sta-tions, which are expected to be completed by 2018.

Smooth ride: Mowasalat services getting better

The Peninsula

Ooredoo and Qatar Red C r e s c e n t h a v e announced a three-year

partnership agreement to ena-ble donations to the charity via Ooredoo’s nationwide Self-Service Machine network.

The signing ceremony, which took place at Ooredoo’s HQ1, was signed by Ooredoo’s Chief Operating Officer, Yousuf Abdulla Al Kubaisi, and Qatar Red Crescent CEO, His Excel-lency Youssef Ahmed Al-Hammadi.

With over 200 Self-Service Machines spread across the country, donations to Qatar Red Crescent will soon be easily made by cash or credit/debit card 24/7.

The Qatar Red Crescents fundamental goal is to improve the lives of vulnerable people by encouraging humanity and goodwill in Qatar and abroad.

The three year agreement will enable Ooredoo to add a Qatar Red Crescent donation

option to its Self-Service Machine network and enable donors to give to Qatar Red Crescent projects using their bank cards directly or via cash.

Yousuf Abdulla Al Kubaisi, Chief Operating Officer, Oore-doo Qatar, said: “We’re proud to support the Qatar Red Cres-cent with the amazing work they do across Qatar and the region and urge customers to donate via our Self-Service Machines. We hope that the next time users pay their bill, top-up their serv-ice or head into an Ooredoo Shop, they’ll donate just a few Riyals to Qatar Red Crescent to help those in need. This is the latest in a long line of Ooredoo and Qatar Red Crescent collab-oration’s, and last year we helped support Women Entre-preneurs in Qatar.”

Youssef Ahmed Al-Ham-madi, CEO, Qatar Red Crescent, said: “We thank Ooredoo for its cooperation by adding this spe-cial feature to Ooredoo Self-Service Machines to make donations made to QRC easier

and more convenient, as this will support the mission of QRC to serve communities inside and outside of Qatar.’

He indicated that Qatar Red Crescent is keen to diversify donations means and methods, so that everyone can find an easy way to donate around the world.

“This new feature represents an upgrade to available dona-tions means, which includes donating in cash to QRC branches in different parts of Qatar, through representatives in Malls, via bank transfers, through the QRC website or call-ing 16002 to make a donation.” His Excellency Youssef Ahmed Al-Hammadi added.

This initiative is part of a series of digital self-service enhancements for Ooredoo users. Ooredoo’s network of Self-Service Machines were designed to offer an easy self-service experience for customers to keep up-to-date with their daily services and needs.

Ooredoo signs agreement for donationsOoredoo officials after signing the agreement.

More and more people have started using the Mowasalat bus service to reach their accommodation and workplace on a daily basis.

Passengers boarding a Karwa public bus on a highway in Doha.

A bus passenger in front of a kiosk providing recharge service for Karwa smart cards.

04 MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017HOME

The Peninsula

The Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) has urged patients to call 107 for appointment book-

ings at the health centres, as it will ensure proper scheduling of patients in order to serve them better.

The PHCC has unified ‘Hayak 107’ for all health centres making it easy for visitors to receive infor-mation and schedule appointments. The service is available in five languages.

PHCC has taken efforts to ensure that patients receive timely care by encouraging patients to schedule appoint-ments if they need to visit a health center. Booking an appointment prior to visiting the doctor will ensure that you do not have to commit a part of your busy day waiting to be seen by a doctor when visiting PHCC health centres.

Dr Hanan Al Mujalli, Execu-tive Director of Clinical Affairs at PHCC said, “It’s imperative that we all recognise the benefit of the

appointment system, which plays a vital role in the care and treat-ment we provide to our patients. Providing excellent patient care is our priority at PHCC, we are working hard on delivering a timely service that facilitates the patient’s lifestyles and the tech-nology they use, to provide easy access to the healthcare services.”

“We urge patients to support our efforts by making sure they schedule appointments and attend half an hour prior to appointment time as this will

benefit everyone. The unused appointments hinders patients from getting to see their physi-cian in a timely manner,” she said.

In addition, the appointment system also has other beneficial features like automated text message reminders, which the system sends out to patients and booked individuals on a specific date prior to their scheduled appointment. This reduces the number of missed appointments and allows patients to better manage their time.

“The prior appointment sys-tem, also help patients not to miss appointments numbers of missed appointments saves val-uable resources, ensures appropriate care is provided to other patients and creates a more efficient service for visi-tors by making the appointment system fit into patient’s lives more easily,” Dr Al Mujalli said.

‘Hayak 107’ was initially launched in five health centres in June 2014 and was expanded to all health centres. In 2106 it was reported that an average of 68,000 calls were received by the call centre monthly.

NHRC participates in Unesco workshop held in Tunis

PHCC urges patients to call 107 for appointment

Amna Pervaiz Rao The Peninsula

The Magical Festival Village along the Katara beach front has been attracting

thousands of visitors since it opened doors to the public in January this year.

The European countryside-inspired design serves as a popular recreation-cum-shop-ping venue for families, tourists and children. The Magical Festi-val Village is situated in a 50,000 sqm area within Katara -- the Cultural Village and showcases up to 400 retail outlets, including 357 shops, 19 cafes and 20 res-taurants with about 500 seats and chairs for the public. It also fea-tures a ‘Ladies Boulevard’, an entertainment venue occupied by 21 commercial outlets stretched over an area of 1,000 sqm. The village will be open to the public until April 30.

When The Peninsula visited the Magical Festival Village

recently, it witnessed good sales during the weekends. Rebelen Tanquerido, Salesgirl at Goelia and Lily garments, said: “Dur-ing the weekends, we have always been welcoming a huge number of customers and most of them are local buyers. On weekdays, we receive only around fifteen shoppers daily.”

Rossana Guiniling, cashier at Village Outlet, said: “At the end of the month and first week of the month, we receive a good number of customers. We sell garments, shoes and bags at rea-sonable prices. On weekdays, only three to four customers are willing to pay. Others mostly come for window-shopping.”

Saudi nationals are among the most frequent visitors and good buyers. A Saudi tourist, Muhammad told The Peninsula that the Magical Festival Village was among the most beautiful places to visit in Doha. "My fam-ily has found it very comfortable to enjoy shopping at the village.

My sisters have been enjoying the Alice in the Wonderland café the most.”

Shahadat Husain, Sweet Jour-ney salesman said: “Daily many kids buy toys from me mostly the balloons, balls, plastic toys and electric motorbikes and cars. On weekends, I usually make good money as most of the local fam-ilies visit on weekends. I make more than QR1000 per day on weekends.”

Sand Art in glass bottle attracted a lot of people at the small stall. Mahmood Kinj, Sand Art artist at Magical Festival Vil-lage said: “I have a shop in Katara. I have received many Saudi tour-ists in past few days. Tourists have been amused by this art and we have done very good sales dur-ing these days.” At a Dubai brand ‘Venus’ of cosmetics and per-fumes, an Emirati salesman said: “Since last month I have received a good number of Saudi tourists for shopping. The sale has been satisfactory throughout this year.”

Hayak 107

The PHCC has unified ‘Hayak 107’ for all health centres making it easy for visitors for information and plan appointments.

The appointment system also has beneficial features like automated text message reminders. Visitors at the Magical Festival Village.

Magical Festival Village at Katara attracts thousands

Zakat Fund distributes QR19.4m to needy families in MarchDoha

QNA

The total assistance provided by the Zakat Fund at the Ministry of Awqaf and

Islamic Affairs for needy families in the country last March amounted to more than QR19.4m.

Director of Zakat Fund,

Jassim Mohammed Al Kubaisi, said in a press statement that this amount comes within the framework of permanent and in-kind assistance to those eli-gible for assistance in Qatar.

The aid was disbursed in accordance with the Fund's pol-icy, which takes into account the applicable requirements

governing the Zakat Fund and beneficiaries should be among those stipulated in the Holy Quran, he said.

Al-Kubaisi stressed that the Fund distributes the aid to the beneficiaries after conducting a social and field research during which the real need of aid seek-ers is assessed.

Nasr Al Hariri hails Qatar's role in supporting Syrian people QNA

Head of the delegation of the Syrian High Negotia-tions Committee Nasr

Al-Hariri has praised the role played by the State of Qatar in supporting the Syrian people, stressing that Qatar did not stop for a moment from supporting and helping the Syrian people.

In an interview, Al-Hariri

said that Qatar has never forgot-ten the Syrian people and it is the first country to stand by them in their ordeal.

At the same time, he appreci-ated the efforts of all countries that stand by Syrians and support them in the worst humanitarian disas-ter in this century, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and other friends of Syria.

Regarding the US strike that targeted the site from where the chemical attack was launched against civilians in the Syrian city of Khan Sheikhoun, Al-Hariri expressed his support for the strike and considered it a step in the right direction, but not enough, and called on the United States to continue this attitude, which will lead to an aviation ban and a neutralization of

military bases used by the regime in targeting civilians and killing the Syrian people.

He added that the strike was a warning message to the regime and its allies that they could not continue to kill the Syrian peo-ple, pointing out that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons more than 160 times against its people, although it signed all the agreements that prohibit their

use, most recently the Conven-tion on the prohibition of the use of chemical weapons in 2013.

Meanwhile, he denied the use of chemical weapons by the Free Army since the outbreak of the revolution, and even the availa-bility of weapons owned by the regime. Al-Hariri noted that as long as Bashar al-Assad's regime is in power and his crimes are ongoing on with an international supporter,

Syrians are insisting on the need of al-Assad's departure.

The regime, he said, has also signed the Geneva Protocol which prohibits the use of asphyxiating and poison gases and bacteriological weapons.

Nasr Al-Hariri pointed that the regime confirms to the world that it insists on committing crimes and violating the Geneva Protocol.

Filipinos urged to register→ Continued from page 1

“For security reasons and physical layout limitations, the venue will be able to accommodate 6,000 persons. Filipinos who would like to attend the gathering would be required to register their attendance a few days before the event,” said the embassy.

Those who wish to attend the meeting may register via the website of United Filipino Organisations in Qatar at http://ufoq.org/index.php/events

Duterte’s visit to Qatar will mark the conclusion of his three-country tour to the GCC. He is expected to be in Saudi Arabia from today until Wednesday and in Bahrain from Wednesday until Friday before flying to Qatar for a three-day visit during which he will be signing a number of agreements and meeting the Filipino community. Whenever he has trips abroad, meetings with overseas Filipinos have become an important part of itinerary of Duterte, who has made caring for overseas Fili-pinos a top priority.

The Peninsula

Qatar's National Human Rights Commit-tee (NHRC) took part in a workshop held in Tunis, under the title "Facing social

transformations - inclusive and sustainable cities".

Organised by the United Nations Educa-tional, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, in cooperation with the Arab Institute for Human Rights, the workshop aimed at promoting a network of cities to exchange experiences and knowledge to formulate policies against rac-ism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance.

The workshop, which was attended by NHRC's Head of Media and Public Relations Unit Abdullah Ali Al Mahmoud, reviewed var-ious developments in the Coalition of Arab Cities against Racism, Discrimination, Xeno-phobia and Intolerance and its activities to confront the phenomena of intolerance, hatred and extremism.

Qatar's National Human Rights Commit-tee (NHRC) routinely participates in international conferences and workshops to promote human rights.

05MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017 HOME

President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, received the credentials of H E Abdulrahman bin Mohammed Al Khulaifi as Head of Mission of Qatar to the European Union. Tusk confirmed to the Ambassador the support of European institutions during his mission. The Qatari Ambassador expressed his country's keenness for enhancing cooperation with the European Union and working closely with all its institutions at various levels.

EC President receives credentials of Qatari envoyQA joins hands with HMC for autism campaignThe Peninsula

To mark World Autism Awareness Day, and sup-port the UN World Autism Awareness campaign, Qatar Airways has part-

nered with Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) to offer a pro-gramme of activities to employees of the national carrier during the month of April. The activities are designed to increase awareness and deepen the airline's employees' understanding of those with autism.

As part of the programme, Qatar Airways will organise a series of seminars conducted by Hamad Medical Corporation doc-tors, specialists and therapists for employees to highlight techniques to recognise and support passen-gers with autism. An information kiosk will also be set up at the

Qatar Airways Operations Centre to share information and insights with crew members.

Qatar Airways Senior Vice-Pres-ident Human Resources, Nabeela Fakhri, said: “As part of our

long-standing commitment to social responsibility, we are proud to par-ticipate in this important global initiative at a local level in Doha. Travelling can be challenging and strenuous for most of us, but it can be particularly daunting for those with autism, as well as for caregiv-ers travelling with them. By raising awareness and sharing expertise about the disorder, we aim to edu-cate our staff and increase our crew’s knowledge in order to effec-tively offer support to all of our passengers.”

In addition to the activities that will be held at Qatar Airways’ headquarters, crew will visit the Child Development Centre (CDC), a specialised centre in Doha, located at HMC and Katara, to gain a better understanding of the con-dition. Additionally, a special photo shoot was arranged with

Cabin Crew to pub-lish autism-related content across the airline’s popular social media chan-nels to further increase global awareness.

These activities are part of a number of autism-related initia-tives Qatar Airways is undertaking, including a partnership with Doha’s Shafallah Cen-tre to help employ young people affected by the disorder. The Shafallah Centre offers comprehensive serv-ices and care for individuals with autism and their families.

Spectacle for sky gazers: Moon to come closer to three planetsThe Peninsula

Offering a spectacle to sky gazers in the country, the Moon will come close to three planets this month. Tomor-

row, the biggest planet Jupiter will be at two degrees from the full Moon's centre at 12:20am.

People in Qatar and the region will be able to see and observe Jupiter and Moon till Sun rise over Doha sky at 5:16am.

On April 16, the beautiful planet with rings, Saturn, will be nearest to Moon at 10:00 pm, when people here can see the two

heavenly bodies. Finally, the third brightest luminary, Venus, will be coming closer to Moon on April 23. People in the region can see them over sky from 9pm until sunrise time the next day at 5:05am.

“These astronomical phenomena offer good chances to observe the planets with the Moon together in same time. The events help validate various astronomical calcula-tions and can help amateur astronomers to know map of sky during all month,” said a statement issued yesterday by Dr Moham-med Al Ansari and Dr Beshir Marzouk of the Qatar Calendar House.Qatar Airways cabin crew taking part in Autism awareness month.

As part of the programme, Qatar Airways will organise a series of seminars conducted by Hamad Medical Corporation doctors, specialists and therapists for Qatar Airways employees to highlight techniques to recognise and support passengers with autism.

06 MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017HOME

QC conducts mass wedding in IndonesiaThe Peninsula

A collective wedding was organised by Qatar Charity (QC) in Indonesia, and funded by a gener-

ous Qatari benefactor who wanted to put the basic build-ing block of an Indonesian Muslim community.

Jakarta, the Indonesian cap-ital, had a mass wedding ceremony in the presence of Ahmad Yousef Al Mulla, who is the representative of the CEO of Qatar Charity Yusuf bin Ahmed Al Kuwari, among other guests.

The Qatari benefactor donated QR500,000 to organ-ise a collective wedding ceremony for 100 young men and women. It was conducted at the Sheraton Jakarta Hotel, which accommodated 600

people and they invited Afrah band to celebrate this occasion taking into consideration fol-lowing the Islamic teachings.

They also prepared a wed-ding feast for the couples, their companions, and guests, in addition to media documenta-tion through photography and

taking videos. Besides, the ben-efactor offered $750 per couple to start a stable married life.

QC has provided the couples with 100 gifts, 10 gifts for the guests, refrigerators, washing machines and other domestic appliances. The Saudi ambas-sador offered cash funds to all the couples at a value of $54,500 and ensured payment of the cost of going on pilgrimage for 10 new families.

Commenting on this impor-tant social event, QC's CEO Representative said, "On behalf of QC, it is a pleasure for me to express my happiness for putting a smile on 200 faces of brides and grooms at a mass wedding. May Allah bless it and take good care of it.”

QC, which has begun its work in Indonesia in the most difficult times of 2004 during the Aceh tsunami, has

sponsored more than 2,800 orphans since then and has been keen to maintain the sponsor-ship to enhance community capacity.

Moreover, the couples expressed their thanks and appreciation to the people of Qatar, especially the donor who has made their dreams come true and legitimately got the hearts of the loved ones together.

Officials being presented a memento during the ceremony in Jakarta.

The ceremony

The Qatari benefactor donated QR500,000 to organise a collective wedding ceremony for 100 young men and women.

They also prepared a wedding feast and offered $750 per couple to start a stable married life.

QU-CSIS holds workshop on 'Encyclopedia of Occidentalism'The Peninsula

Qatar University College of Sharia and Islamic Studies (QU-CSIS)

organised an international workshop themed “Founda-tion Rules towards Establishing the Encyclope-dia of Occidentalism” on March 27-28 at the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) headquarters in Morocco.

Organised in collabora-tion with ISESCO, the workshop aimed to create specialised research groups supervised by renowned scholars and experts to iden-tify the chapters and themes of the “Encyclopedia of Occi-dentalism” — the largest scholarly project in the Islamic and Arab world to be launched by CSIS.

The workshop was attended by CSIS Dean Dr Yousuf Al Siddiqi, CSIS Asso-ciate Professor of Dawa and Islamic Culture, Academic Director of ISESCO Chair in Alliance of Civilizations and Executive Director of Encyclo-pedia of Occidentalism Dr Azzeddine Mamiche, and CSIS Dawa and Islamic Culture Department Head Dr Abdelkader Bekhouche, as well as representatives of uni-versities from the Arab region.

The workshop included six sessions related to the Encyclopedia of Occidental-ism’s main themes such as the Encyclopedia’s role in pro-moting religious dialogue, introduction to Occidental-ism, equality between east and west, the role of media and research networks in establishing encyclopedias, and many others.

In his remarks, Dr Yousuf Al Siddiqi said: “This work-shop serves as the starting point towards the establish-ment of the Encyclopedia of Occidentalism, first-ever project to provide a compre-hensive understanding of the west. CSIS will offer the needed support to realise this project and to provide stu-dents and decision-makers with the opportunity to ben-efit from its rich database."

Workshop on Road Safety Audit organisedThe Peninsula

The Qatar Transportation and Traffic Safety Center (QTTSC) at Qatar Univer-

sity College of Engineering (QU-CENG) recently hosted a workshop on “Road Safety Audit” aimed to provide infor-mation on the necessary approaches and tools to develop and evaluate road safety audit.

Organised in collaboration with the International Road Federation (IRF), the workshop brought together around 40 experts from local and regional institutions such as Qatar Min-istry of Municipality and Environment, Qatar Petroleum, and Saudi Arabia Ministry of Transportation.

They discussed and exchanged their ideas and expertise on issues related to traffic safety audit.

Attendees included CENG Dean Dr Khalifa Al Khalifa and QTTSC Assistant Professor Dr

Wael Alhajyaseen, as well as CENG faculty and staff.

Speakers were International Road Federation Executive Vice-President Michael G Dreznes and Fireseeds North Infrastructure Road Safety and

Asset Management Engineer Dr Craig Milligan.

They provided an overview on road safety audits and their application to roads and high-ways in Qatar and beyond, while highlighting the

significant role of road safety audits in helping authorities to reduce the number of road accidents and fatalities.

In his remarks, Dr Khalifa Al Khalifa said: “The event comes in line with CENG’s

efforts to raise awareness on the importance of road safety which is considered as one of the College’s key research areas. CENG is committed to strengthening its research collaborations with regional and international governmen-tal and private institutions, and to spreading knowledge on road safety and accidents pre-vention through a wide range of studies and research that identify the causes of accidents and the critical factors that have an impact on accidents reduction, which ensures the safety and welfare of the peo-ple of Qatar.”

Dr Wael Alhajyaseen said: “Preventive risk assessment tools, such as road safety audits and inspections, are an effec-tive and essential instrument to help road authorities reduce the number of crashes and cas-ualties because design standards alone cannot guar-antee road safety in all conditions.”

Public talk by Ai Weiwei at MIA tomorrowThe Peninsula

Leading contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (pictured) will be giving a public talk at the Museum of Islamic

Art (MIA) tomorrow as part of his visit to Doha this week.

Open for all to attend, the talk to be held at the MIA auditorium at 6pm will also

feature Swiss businessman, diplomat and art collector, Uli Sigg. During the talk, Ai Weiwei will discuss the transformation of his artistic production and Uli Sigg will touch on the importance of collectors and museum donations.

It will be moderated by art expert and curator Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College.

During his time in Qatar, Ai Weiwei will visit the MIA, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and QM Gallery Katara and meet with senior QM representatives. In addition, he will explore the country’s most notable public art projects, includ-ing the striking sculpture East-West / West-East by Richard Serra, located near Zekreet.

He is also expected to meet with aspir-ing artists including residents at the Fire Station: Artist in Residence Programme. This will provide the ideal opportunity for artists to discuss the creative process and explore different techniques with a hugely experienced and established artistic figure.

Khalid Yousef Al Ibrahim, Chief Stra-tegic Planning Officer at Qatar Museums said: “We are pleased to welcome Ai Wei-wei to Doha this week, to inspire local audiences and artists in Qatar and edu-cate our communities about international art. This visit furthers our aim at Qatar Museums of bringing international artists to Doha to inspire an indigenous culture of creativity and innovation and foster an existing culture of artistic appreciation

and participation in Qatar.”Ai Weiwei has a long and established

career as a contemporary artist. He resides and works in Berlin and Beijing. Ai stud-ied animation at the Beijing Film Academy, then studied art in New York in the early 80s. Upon returning to China a decade later, Ai advocated for experimental art-ists by publishing underground books and curating avant-garde exhibitions. He has worked in many media, including sculp-ture, installation, photography, architecture and film.

His work has featured in leading gal-leries and museums around the world including Tate Modern London, Haines Gallery San Francisco, Lisson Gallery Milan and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Participants at the workshop on Road Safety Audit.

07MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017 HOME

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A leading media organization requires a Marketing Executive who can work closely with other departments like advertising, sales and distribution.

Send your CVs to media.vacancies2016@gmail.com

1. Minimum 3 years experience in the field of sales and marketing products or services

2. Excellent written and verbal Arabic and English communication skills

3. Educated to a degree level or equivalent4. Self Starter, who is target driven and self motivated - must be

comfortable in target oriented environment5. Should be able to achieve monthly or annual targets6. Analysing and investigating price, demand and competition7. Reviewing sales performance, devising and presenting ideas,

strategies and promotional activities8. Excellent communication and presentation skills (telephone,

written and face to face)9. Working experience in a marketing agency / media environment

and understanding of and passion for media industry.

Travelocity founder to speak at QBIC Irfan Bukhari The Peninsula

The residents of Qatar particularly young aspiring entrepre-neurs are going to have an opportunity

to benefit from innovative entrepreneur Terry Jones (pic-tured), the founder of Travelocity.com, who will be speaking at Qatar Business Incu-bation Center (QBIC) auditorium on April 24.

Widely known in the world for founding Travelocity.com and serving as founding Chair-man of Kayak.com, Terry Jones has become a powerful voice in the world of entrepreneurship through his numerous speaking engagements and the publica-tion of his book, “ON Innovation”.

QBIC empowers entrepre-neurs to start and grow companies through QBIC’s unique programmes aimed at developing Qatar’s entrepre-neurial scene and young businesses with a high potential to grow, including the very suc-cessful “LeanStartup” and “LeanScaleup” programmes run several times during the year, according to QBIC website.

Being organised under QBIC Speaker Series, the topic of Jones address is “Disruptive Technologies – The Fuel for Innovative New Business Mod-els”. “Join us for a special speaker series session with a world-renowned industry leader in collaboration with the US Embassy in Qatar,” QBIC said on its social media page.

Jones, who began his career as a travel agent, spent 24 years at American Airlines, in market-ing and information technology, capping his career as Chief Information Officer of its SABRE division. While at SABRE, he led a team of six working on a project that became Traveloc-ity.com. Jones served as CEO of Travelocity for seven years transforming it to a public com-pany with $3bn in travel sales, says Jones personal website tbjones.com

He left Travelocity when the company was taken private and

became part of the founding team at Kayak.com, a company that yet again revolutionised how travel was purchased. He served as the chairman of the company from its founding until it was sold to Priceline for $1.8bn in 2013.

Today he is the Chairman of Wayblazer and managing prin-cipal of "ON Inc", a consultancy he founded to help companies in their transition to the digital economy. He has served on the boards of 13 public and private companies and currently serves on the boards of Wayblazer, Boingo, Smart Destinations and The Camping and Education Foundation.

In previous years, QBIC has hosted several sessions held by renowned professionals and high profile entrepreneurs, such as Louis Foremen, founder of Edison Nation; Elmar Mock, co-inventor of SWATCH; Dr Kai Ruggeri, Researcher and Lec-turer at University of Cambridge; Mohammed Jaffar, former CEO of Talabat.com; Rabea Ataya, founder and CEO of Bayt.com; and Christopher Free, General Manager of UBER Qatar and UAE to encourage and support aspiring entrepreneurs in Qatar.

QBIC offers "a complete range of services either to start up from your first idea or to grow an existing company, including space, support, industrial work-shops for light manufacture, smart financing , and mentoring and coaching". The lecture of Jones for registered participants will be from 5pm – 7pm on April 24 at QBIC Auditorium – Salwa Road, Exit 17.

Founding Chairman of Kayak.com, Terry Jones has become a powerful voice in the world of entrepreneurship through his numerous speaking engagements and the publication of his book, “ON Innovation”.

DICID chief to attend Berlin Forum The Peninsula

Dr Ibrahim Al Naimi, Chairman of Doha I n t e r n a t i o n a l

Center for Interfaith Dia-logue – DICID received yesterday in his office, Hans-Udo Muzel, the Ambassador of the Fed-eral Republic of Germany to Qatar.

During the meeting Al Naimi received an invita-tion to attend Berlin Forum which will be held from April 22 to 23 under the theme of “Responsi-bility of interfaith for peace”.

Al Naimi highlighted the cooperation between DICID and German’s insti-tutions in particular the role of German’s scholars, expertise in conferences organised by the centre. He also suggested during the meeting the training of European Imams to take the responsibility of preaching and leading Fri-day sermons because they have better knowledge of their societies.

Ambassador Muzel lauded the Qatari role in supporting peaceful solu-tions for disputes and giving priority for dialogue.

He also appreciated the role of the DICID in enhancing the culture of dialogue, tolerance and co-existence.

Ambassador Muzel suggested areas of coop-eration between the center including organiz-ing a forum for hosting the German and Qatari schools to create plat-forms for interaction and d i a l o g u e a m o n g students.

Participants at the WISE Learners’ Voice Program concluded in Athens.

WISE Learners’ Voice Program session concludes in AthensThe Peninsula

The World Innovation Sum-mit for Education’s (WISE) Learners’ Voice Program

has concluded its first residen-tial session for the 2016-17 year.

Taking place in Athens, Greece, for the first time since its inception in 2010, the inten-sive workshops brought together 25 young people to explore the global forced migra-tion and refugee crisis.

Designed to impart both practical and theoretical knowl-edge, the group spent the days supporting the work of organisa-tions working with both urban and camp refugee communities in Athens, including: Khora Com-munity Centre, METAdrasi, Orange House, Project Elea, and Organization Earth. The practical component was complemented

by evening sessions delivered by expert faculty from the Univer-sity of Oxford, Harvard University, University of Bolog �a, and Save the Children, among others.

Dina Pasic, Head of Pro-grams, WISE, said: “The Learners’ Voice Program chal-lenges its participants to develop feasible, actionable and educa-tional solutions to such challenges. The setting of a the-matic focus was in response to the immediate and ongoing needs of refugees, and the addi-tion of the field component was to enable deeper awareness, to support the work of those on the ground, and to understand the role that the education sector can play in alleviating the symp-toms of displacement.”

The sessions came to a close following the presentation of five group projects to a panel of

education experts, including Stavros N Yiannouka, CEO of WISE; and Dr Stefanos Giala-mas, President of the American Community School of Athens; as well as representatives from Project Elea, METAdrasi, and Organization Earth. The resi-dential sessions of the programme are designed to sup-port the participants as they research and develop a variety of innovative educational projects throughout the year.

The Learners will continue to develop projects that aim to support the needs of displaced individuals and their host com-munities through educational interventions. Successful projects will be pitched at the 2017 WISE Summit and the best project will have the opportunity to present at the 2017 Falling Wall Labs Conference in Berlin.

Dr Ibrahim Al Naimi, Chairman of DICID with Hans-Udo Muzel, the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Qatar.

08 MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Iraqi civilians flee the Old city of Mosul as forces advance in their massive operation to retake the second city from Islamic State militants, yesterday.

Plight of civilians

13 dead as Somalia's army chief survives car bomb attackMOGADISHU: Somalia's new military chief survived a sui-cide car bomb attack yesterday that killed 13 peo-ple, police said. Gen Mohamed Ahmed Jimale had just been sworn into office and was traveling in a con-voy with senior military officials when the bomb exploded near Somalia's defense ministry compound in Mogadishu, police say. Five soldiers and at least 8 civil-ians travelling in a passing minibus were killed, said Capt. Mohamed Hussein, a senior Somali police officer.

Lebanon camp clashes toll rises SIDON: The toll in two days of clashes in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon rose to five on Sunday, med-ics said, as local factions worked to implement a secu-rity plan. Clashes erupted in the camp late Friday as Pal-estinian factions participating in a joint security force begun deploying throughout the area in the southern city of Sidon. They came under fire from a local Islamic extrem-ist group in part of the camp, prompting clashes that Leb-anese and Palestinian medics said Sunday have now killed five people and wounded at least 30, mostly civilians. Among the dead were two civilians, two members of the joint Palestinian security force and one member of the extremist group.

New museum soon outside AnkaraISTANBUL: The Turkish cul-ture ministry has readied designs for a major new museum outside Ankara to remember the defeat of the failed July 15 coup that tried to unseat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, state media said yesterday. Work will start on the museum — to be called the "Museum of the July 15 Martyrs and Democ-racy" — from June and it will open its doors to visitors at the end of 2018, the state-run Anadolu news agency said. It will be built on a 10,000 square metre area in Kahra-mankazan outside Ankara with a modern cuboid design, it said. There will be perma-nent, temporary and interactive exhibits on the "martyrs and warriors" of July 15 while other facilities will include a library, cafe and a gift shop, it said. The coup erupted on the night of July 15 when disgruntled army officers launched a botched attempt to remove Erdogan, bombing Ankara from war planes and open-ing fire around Istanbul's main bridges. The coup was put down when thousands of Erdogan supporters surged into the streets in his support and the Turkish authorities see its defeat as a triumph of democracy.

Saudi executes three PakistanisJEDDAH: Saudi Arabia yester-day executed three Pakistani nationals convicted of smug-gling heroin, bringing the number of executions in the kingdom to 26 this year. The state-run SPA news agency said the three had been found guilty of "smuggling quantities of heroin in their stomachs". It named the three men as Mohammed Ashraf Shafi Mohammed, Mohammed Aref Mohammed Anayt and Mohammed Afdal Asghar Ali. All three are Pakistani citizens.

Antalya, Turkey

Anatolia

Turkey's foreign minister said yesterday that Turkey has no obligation to take a

side in any dispute between the US and Russia.

Asked by reporters what the future holds for Turkish-Russian

ties after Ankara welcomed US missile strikes against a Syrian regime airbase last week — the opposite of Moscow’s reaction — Mevlut Cavusoglu said, Tur-key "does not have to take a side between Russia and the US."

"We recently welcomed the US strike on the Assad regime. We are also keen to continue

efforts to build on the cease-fire within the scope of the Astana talks," he told journalists in a meeting organised by the Direc-torate General of Press and Information in the Mediterra-nean city of Antalya.

"There is no contradiction here." Cavusoglu also said Ankara has been on a "different

page" with Moscow on Assad since the beginning, adding that Turkey "would have given up its principles if it cares what other countries think when there’s a chemical attack and a crime against humanity."

Turkey has long said Syria has no future under the Bashar al-Assad regime, while Russia

has come to the Syrian regime’s aid.

The US strike on a Syrian air base came in response to the Assad regime chemical weap-ons attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun, Idlib province, kill-ing some 100 civilians and wounding hundreds of others, mostly children.

Turkey need not choose between Russia & US: Cavusoglu

Johannesburg

AFP

South Africa's ruling party on Sunday said the gov-ernment will have to

re-think its costly and highly contentious nuclear expansion programme following last week's relegation of the coun-try's creditworthiness to junk.

Within days of each other the world's two major rating agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor's downgraded South Afri-can sovereign debt to junk status after President Jacob Zuma's dramatic ministerial shake-up that saw respected finance minister Pravin Gord-han axed. In 2010 South Africa formulated plans to expand its nuclear power fleet, plans esti-mated to cost around one trillion rand ($73bn).

Two Sunday newspapers cited a confidential document that stated that the country's power utility Eskom would in June invite bids for the con-struction of four plants with a combined capacity of 9,600 megawatts. The successful bid-der would then be named in

March next year, according to the City Press and the Sunday Times. But ANC's head of eco-nomics Enoch Godongwana told reporters that "conditions have changed. It was before we were declared junk status."

"Surely in the light of the junk status we will have to ... revise our expenditure patterns as government." "If we do nuclear we must do it ...at a scope and pace which is affordable."

Godongwana did not rule out Africa's most advanced economy sliding into recession. "Are we anticipating a reces-sion? That's a possibility," he said. When Fitch announced it had downgraded South Africa to non -investment level on Fri-day, it cited "recent political events, including a major cab-inet reshuffle" that would "weaken standards of govern-ance and public finances."

It said differences over the "expensive nuclear programme preceded the dismissal of a pre-vious finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, in December 2015 and in Fitch's view may have also con-tributed to the decision for the recent reshuffle."

London

Reuters

Hardline Shia cleric Ebra-him Raisi announced yesterday he would run

in Iran’s May presidential elec-tion, challenging moderate President Hassan Rowhani’s economic record and his policy of detente with the West.

T h e f o r m e r

prosecutor-general may strug-gle for recognition among voters though analysts say Raisi, thanks to the support he enjoys from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could pose a real challenge to Rowhani’s bid for a second term.

Raisi has faulted Iran’s eco-nomic performance under Rowhani and his pursuit of detente that in 2015 yielded a landmark

deal with world powers under which Tehran curbed its disputed nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

“People are asking why despite all our resources and human tal-ents ...our country is in this situation,” Raisi said in a statement published by Iranian news agen-cies. Rowhani won the presidency in 2013 with the backing of mainly of young people and women.

Tanta, Egypt

AFP

The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for bombing two Egyptian

churches as worshippers gath-ered to mark Palm Sunday, killing at least 43 people in the deadliest attacks on the Coptic Christian minority in recent memory.

The attacks followed a Cairo church bombing in December and came weeks ahead of a planned visit by Catholic Pope Francis intended to show sup-port for the country's Christian minority.

The first bombing struck the Mar Girgis church in the city of Tanta north of Cairo, killing 27

people, the health ministry said.Emergency services had

scrambled to the scene when another bombing rocked the Saint Mark's church in Alexan-dria where Coptic Pope Tawadros II had been leading a Palm Sunday service.

Eleven people were killed in that attack, which the interior ministry said was caused by a sui-cide bomber who blew himself up when police prevented him from entering the church. The ministry said Tawadros was unharmed, and a church official said he had left the church before the bombing.

At least 78 people were wounded in Tanta and another 40 wounded in Alexandria, the health ministry said. Egyptian

officials denounced the violence as an attempt to sow divisions in the country, while Francis sent his "deep condolences" to Tawadros.

IS claimed that its "squads" carried out both attacks, in a statement by its self-styled Amaq news agency published on social media accounts.

Images broadcast by private television stations showed bloodstains smearing the white-washed walls of the church in Tanta next to shredded wooden benches. "The explosion took place in the front rows, near the altar, during the mass," General Tarek Atiya, the deputy to Egypt's interior minister in charge of relations with the media, said.

At least 43 dead in two Egypt church bombings; IS claims role

Hardline cleric to take on Rowhani

S Africa to rethink nuclear deal after junk status : ANC

People look at victims after a suicide bombing in front of a church in Alexandria, Egypt, yesterday.

Muted start to poll campaign in AlgeriaAlgiers

AFP

Campaigning for Alge-ria's May 4 elections got off to a muted start yesterday, with the public showing

little interest in the poll despite government efforts to persuade disillusioned voters to participate.

Over the coming three weeks, 12,000 candidates will compete for 462 seats in the People's National Assembly, with 23 million Algerians reg-istered to vote.

But in Algiers, few parties posted candidate lists on the boards reserved for them.

Many people walked past hoardings without a glance.

"Every time, we are prom-ised wonders and marvels, then: nothing," said Fatma Zohra, a widow who said she is struggling to provide for her three children.

The cleaner in her fifties said she is unlikely to vote.

"I don't have time for that. I work at a company in the morning and in private homes in the afternoon," she said.

Analyst Rachid Tlemcani predicted a "morose" election campaign and the lowest turn-out in the country's electoral history, blaming "the economic and political situation and the fact that the public is fed up".

Government-sponsored advertisements play in a con-tinuous loop on television in a bid to attract a larger turnout

than about 43 percent for the last legislative poll in 2012.

But Tlemcani says the pub-lic is tired of quarrels between political parties.

"Once elected, candidates disappear completely," he said. "Voters are not idiots."

Algeria's parliament has been dominated since inde-pendence in 1962 by the National Liberation Front (FLN), which ruled in a single party system until the early 1990s.

Today, with its coalition ally the Rally for National Democ-racy (RND), the FLN has a majority of seats in the house.

Observers say they are likely to keep their majority after other parties said they would boycott the polls.

In the last election, Islam-ist parties hoped to ride to victory on top of their move-ment's achievements during the Arab Spring uprisings.

But they registered their worst score since Algeria's first multi-party poll in the early 1990s. This year, they have merged or formed alliances in order to increase their chances.

12,000 candidates

Over the coming three weeks, 12,000 candidates will compete for 462 seats in the People's National Assembly, with 23 million Algerians registered to vote.

09MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017 ASIA

Parrikar promises to work more and speak lessPanaji

IANS

Promising to "speak less and work more" as Chief Min-ister, Manohar Parrikar

yesterday said the Congress would soon become a "rare spe-cies" on the canvas of Indian politics.

Addressing a rally, Parrikar also said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could come to

power in the coastal state only because of the party's central leadership and the lacklustre abilities of the Congress leadership.

The rally was organised here to felicitate him for giving up the Defence Ministry for his latest chief ministerial stint and BJP National President Amit Shah for forming the government in four states after assembly elections in five states earlier this year.

"One thing I learned in Delhi is to speak less and work more. This time I have decided to speak less. Whatever work we do, people will see for them-selves," Parrikar said, adding that the performance would be the benchmark of his governance.

During his stint as Defence Minister, Parrikar often courted controversy for his comments.

"We have to think as to why

we dropped from 21 to 13 (MLAs). We are lucky that the party's central leadership was behind us. They gave us full support and to our luck, the person who the Congress had sent here, was more interested in being a tour-ist rather than in government formation," the Chief Minister said.

Parrikar also said the Con-gress was on its way to becoming an extinct species and that the

party would also lose the state assembly polls in Karnataka, which are scheduled for the next year.

"The Congress is like a rare species. Like the wild species which the forest department tracks down when it is on its way to becoming extinct. It (Congress) is there in Karnataka, but next year it will disappear from there too, I know," Parrikar said yesterday.

TV anchor reads out news of husband's deathRaipur

AFP

AN Indian television presenter has been praised for her calm-ness and bravery after reading out a breaking news report of a road accident which killed her husband.

Supreet Kaur was pre-senting a news bulletin on the IBC-24 news channel in Chhattisgarh state on Satur-day when a reporter phoned in live with details of an acci-dent which killed three of the five people travelling in an SUV.

The report did not name the victims.

But Kaur, 28, realised her husband was probably among those killed as he was travelling on the same route and at the same time with four others, the channel's news chief Anshuman Sharmasaid.

"When the reporter said all the victims were from Bhi-lai and were travelling in a Renault Duster, she immedi-ately had a hunch her husband had died in the crash."

New Delhi IANS

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat yesterday called

for a nationwide ban on cow slaughter.

"We have been striving to protect the cow. Sampoorna Bharatvarsh me gauvansh hatya band ho, ye hamari ichchha hai (We wish the killing of cows and its progeny should be banned in the entire country)," Bhagwat said at an event to mark the birth anniversary of Mahavir.

He said it was for the govern-ment to make laws to this effect.

"Wherever in the state govern-ments we have dedicated swayamsevaks, those state gov-ernments have brought in laws. But our desire is that the law should be for entire country".

While several states in India

have banned cow slaughter through stringent laws, many others including north-eastern states, West Bengal, Kerala and even BJP-ruled Goa, put no legal restrictions on consuming beef.

Bhagwat said that enact-ment of such a law every where will take time due to the com-plexities of politics, and expressed confidence that other state governments will find out a way by dealing with local "complexities".

He said any violence in the name of cow slaughter defames the cause, but added that those making efforts to save the cows should continue to do so.

Minister denies 'illegality' during Goa govt formationPanaji

IANS

Union Minister Nitin Gad-kari yesterday said BJP did not do anything ille-

gal to form a government in Goa, but also revealed some of the behind-the-scenes aggressive manoeuvering, which enabled the party, which was short of majority, to clinch power.

At a rally here to felicitate Chief Minister Manohar Parri-kar, who gave up his role as Defence Minister to return to state politics and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah for coming to power in four of the five states where assem-bly elections were held, he also said that the real architect of the coalition government formation process was Amit Shah.

Gadkari explained how Shah worked the phone to good effect with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and key members of the BJP's highest decision-making body, the party's parliamentary board, which triggered a series of developments which led to the BJP eventually cobbling together a coalition government in the coastal state.

One of the obstacles, he said,

was the reluctance of two Inde-pendent MLAs, whose cooperation was required to reach the majority mark of 21. To counter this, he revealed that a message was sent across to their camp that ministerial berths were being allotted to others.

"They had delayed. The Inde-pendent MLAs did not come. I said make others ministers," he said, adding that once the Independent

MLAs got the message, they them-selves called and expressed willingness to join the BJP camp.

While the Congress won 17 seats in the state assembly polls, the BJP had won 13 out of 40 seats. But swift decision-making led to the BJP eventually forming a gov-ernment in Goa, with the support of three MLAs each from two regional parties -- Goa Forward and the Maharashtrwadi

Gomantak Party -- and two Inde-pendent MLAs.

On the Congress' allegation that Constitutional provisions were violated by the BJP in the race for government formation, he said: "We did not do anything wrong. In the history of India, in the Lok Sabha and the legisla-tive assembly elections, those who have the majority are invited to form government."

Officials assure action on Kerala student's deathThiruvananthapuram

IANS

A mother fighting to seek justice for the death of her son, called off her

fast on the fifth day yesterday night after CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan assured her of action.

Mahija, currently admit-ted at the Medical College hospital here after she was roughed up by police on Wednesday while she and her relatives was going to meet the state police chief to demand justice, was on a fast there along with a close relative.

They were demanding arrest of the remaining accused who was responsi-ble for the death of her son Jishnu Prannoy and action against the police officials who roughed them up.

It was after a two hour discussion on Sunday evening led by State Attorney K.G. Sohan and Special Public Prosecutor C.P.Udayabhanu with her relative Sreejith and others that the fast was called off.

"The state government has given us a written agree-ment that all the demands that we raised have been met.

We fully trust the two state government representatives who will ensure that the agreements will be met," said Sreejith who announced that Mahija is ending her fast and so is her daughter Avinsha who is also fasting at their home near Kozhikode.

Sohan told the media in front of the hospital that Vijayan called up Mahija and assured her that her demands will be met.

The agreement was made easy, after news came that the third accused in the case of her son - college Vice-Prin-cipal N.Shakthivel who was on the run for the past three months - has been arrested by police from Coimbatore.

Earlier in the day, Com-munist Party of India-Marxist chief Yechury also spoke to Mahija and assured her that the state government will do all what is necessary.

All these days, Vijayan had stood his ground and even refused to meet or speak to Mahija and all along defended the action of police and gave them a clean chit.

Prannoy was found hang-ing in January on the campus of the Nehru College of Engi-neering and Research, in Thrissur

Initially, the death was dis-missed as a case of suicide.

Call for nationwide ban on cow slaughterSaving the cows

We have been striving to protect the cow. We wish the killing of cows and its progeny should be banned in the entire country: Bhagwat

Byelections for 10 assembly seats beginNew Delhi IANS

Massive violence and a very poor turn-out marred the Srinagar Lok Sabha by-poll

yesterday, while byelections for 10 assembly constituencies across eight states, including in the national capital, saw aver-age to enthusiastic polling.

The assembly constituencies where by-polls were held yes-terday are Rajouri Garden in Delhi, Littipara in Jharkhand, Nanjangud and Gundlupet in Karnataka, Dholpur in Rajasthan, Kanthi Dakshin in West Bengal, Ater and Bandhavgarh in Mad-hya Pradesh, Bhoranj in Himachal Pradesh and Dhemaji in Assam.

Counting for the Lok Sabha seat will be held on April 15, and for the assembly seats on April 13.

In Kashmir, eight civilians were killed and scores injured in clashes with security forces as mobs tried to attack polling sta-tions in the Srinagar parliamentary constituency that recorded a poor seven per cent voting -- the lowest in the state in three decades.

The violence in the Lok Sabha constituency -- spread across the districts of Srinagar, Budgam and Ganderbal -- left seven persons dead in three places in Budgam and one in Ganderbal. Opposition National Conference president Farooq

Abdullah and ruling Peoples Democratic Party's Nazir Ahmed Khan are the main contestants. The seat fell vacant after then PDP leader Tariq Hameed Karra resigned to protest alleged atroc-ities on people during the 2016 agitation.

Karnataka's Gundlupet saw a record 80% turnout while 76% was registered in Nanjangud (reserved) assembly constituency.

In the April 2013 assembly elections, polling percentatge in Gundlupet was also a record 87.05 and in Nanjungud, it was 77.59.

Barring stray incidents like voting being held up due to EVM glitches and poll boycott in a vil-lage in the Nanjangud segment, the by-polls were peaceful in both the segments.

The byepoll for Nanjangud (Scheduled Caste) in Myusuru district was necessitated by the resignation of former Congress

lawmaker and Revenue Minis-ter Srinviasa Prasad, who is re-contesting on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket.

The ruling Congress has fielded K. Keshavamurthy.

The byepoll for Gundlupet in adjacent Chamarajanagar dis-trict was caused due to the death of Congress lawmaker and Coop-eration Minister H.S. Mahadeva Prasad on January 2.

The ruling party has fielded his widow Geetha against C.S. Niranjan Kumar of the opposi-tion BJP.

Delhi's Rajouri Garden assembly by-poll saw disinter-ested voting, registering just 47 per cent.

In the 2015 assembly elec-tions, when the Aam Aadmi Party swept to power, the constituency had witnessed 72 per cent.

Aam Aadmi Party's Harjeet Singh, Congress' Meenakshi Chandela and BJP-SAD's Man-jinder Singh Sirsa are in the fray from the seat. The seat fell vacant as AAP's Jarnail Singh resigned to contest the Punjab assembly polls.

Jharkhand's Littipara bypoll saw 72.15 percent voting. Ten candidates were in the fray for the seat, the contest for which was a prestige issue for both the ruling BJP and opposition Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM).

Counting on Apr 13

Counting for the Lok Sabha seats will be held on April 15, and for the assembly seats on April 13.

Australian PM arrives on 4-day state visit

Kashmiri protesters clash with Indian security forces near a polling station in Srinagar, yesterday.

New Delhi IANS

Australian Prime Min-is ter Malcolm Turnbull arrived yes-terday evening on a four-day state visit to

India."Welcoming a valued friend

and partner. PM @TurnbullMal-colm arrives in New Delhi on his State Visit to India," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay tweeted.

This is Turnbull's first bilat-eral visit to India since he assumed office in September 2015.

His predecessor, Tony Abbott had visited India in September 2014 and this was followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Australia in November that year.

Modi will hold a bilateral summit with Turnbull on Mon-day following which a number of agreements are expected to be signed.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull walks towards his car after his arrival at the airport, in New Delhi, yesterday.

The Trump administration is veering towards the view that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad must leave to pave the way for a political solution to the civil war. Washington’s UN Ambassador

Nikki Haley made this clear during an interview with CNN yesterday. “There’s not any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime,” she told the “State of the Union” programme. This is a departure from Trump’s previous policy towards Assad’s government and comes after the chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun by Assad’s forces, which killed 87 people. After years of calling for Assad’s removal during Barack Obama’s tenure, Washington appeared to be stepping back from seeking regime change in Syria in recent weeks.

Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes was partly driven by an emotional reaction to grim pictures emerging from Syria after the chemical attack. Compassion and sympathies are welcome, but impulsiveness is not advisable in foreign policy. What is needed is a well-thought out, consistent policy that addresses all aspects of the issues. Assad’s cruelty and atrocities against his own people don’t need new proof. He stands accused of massacring his own people, including women and

children, using bombs, chemical weapons and his own soldiers. The chemical attack last week was just one of those attacks, and will not be the last unless the world unites to remove him before more Syrians are killed. The world must share the responsibility for the current crisis in Syria.

Washington has sent a powerful message to Assad with the airstrikes last week, but must move cautiously and diplomatically. Its latest stance on Assad is

welcome and will give a boost to opposition forces seeking his ouster.

At the same time, there is a need to avoid complicating and widening the crisis by creating an atmosphere of confrontation with Russia, which has threated to retaliate “if red lines are crossed”. “From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well,” the alliance supporting Assad said. US must stick firmly to the policy that Assad must leave, without which peace is impossible in Syria. Such a policy would send a clear and powerful message to Russia and other allies of Assad.

Assad’s atrocities are born from a realization that he will continue in power forever and once that feeling is shaken, he will think twice before launching a chemical attack against his own people.

10 MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017VIEWS

E S T A B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 6

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFI

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

Assad must go

QUOTE OF THE DAY

The failure related to the recent strike and the recent terrible chemical weapons attack in large measure is a failure on Russia›s part to achieve its commitment to the international community.

Rex Tillerson US Secretary of State

Washington’s UN ambassador has said Assad cannot stay in power after the suspected chemical attack last week. It’s a welcome shift in policy which the Trump administration must stick to.

Qatari-Ethiopian relations will begin a new phase of cooperation and coordination based on the common desire of the two friendly countries to establish a solid ground for

stronger future prospects. The future of rela-tions between Doha and Addis Ababa represents an integral model due to the advantages that both countries enjoy for the interests of the two countries’ people.

The mutual visits and the establishment of a joint ministerial committee as well as the subsequent signing of cooperation agreements in various fields will strengthen the Qatari-Ethiopian relations and will support the future of the ambitious relationship between the two countries.

Through these various channels of communication between the two countries, the form of cooperation will be changed to wider levels, which in turn will strengthen relations at all levels.

The visit of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia will be a new impetus in the Qatari-African relations, especially the Republic of Ethiopia, where Emir will hold talks with leaders and senior officials on means of promoting and developing bilateral relations, in addition to a number of issues of common interest.

Several agreements and Memorandums of Understanding in various fields will also be signed during the Emir’s visit to Ethiopia.

Last December witnessed a leap in the level of the Qatari-Ethiopian cooperation with the visit of H E Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, during which he met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. The visit revealed Ethiopia’s keenness to encourage and attract Qatari investments and open the way for businessmen, from different sectors, to establish joint projects between the two countries that will help in enhancing and activating the Ethiopian economy as well as creating positive opportunities for Qatari investors to inter-act with foreign projects with good economic and social returns.

The Foreign Minister’s visit to Ethiopia concluded with the signing of 11 coopera-tion agreements in various economic, tourism, investment and infrastructure sectors, supported the bilateral rapproche-ment between businessmen in the two countries and enhanced cooperation in peace and security at both international and regional levels. On the other hand, the Qatari -Ethiopian Joint Technical Commit-tee will play an important role in providing and enhancing investment opportunities in the Republic of Ethiopia and will develop bilateral relations in the economic and development fields.

During the committee’s second meeting in February last year, representatives from the two countries in the fields of foreign affairs, economy, energy and civil aviation met to put forward visions of cooperation for the coming period. The Qatari-Ethio-pian cooperation reflects keenness of the

Qatari-Ethiopian relations towards new prospects of cooperationQNA

leaders of the two countries to pre-serve security, peace, respect for international law and resolve disputes by peaceful means.

Addis Ababa contributes to the establishment of peace and security in East Africa, through its serious and effective participation in resolving the disputes of neighboring countries such as Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and other countries as well as its impor-tant role in supporting the issues of the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia’s election as a non-per-manent member of the Security Council enhances its role in security

and peace issues at the global level, thus strengthening its regional capacity, sup-porting and promoting the effective Qatari role

as an intermediary to reduce and resolve conflicts, and establishing security and peace in the Horn of Africa and in conflict zones around the world.

At the same time, along with its pivotal political and diplomatic role, Ethiopia is a rapidly developing coun-try that has many investment opportunities can be used to under-take developmental work. The government is expanding cooperative areas with neighboring countries and other countries as well as with local and international institutions. Addis Ababa is making efforts to ensure that there is a multiple comprehensive development in the Horn of Africa in energy, transport and other sources in cooperation with neighboring coun-tries of Kenya, Sudan and Djibouti.

According to the latest figures, Ethiopia is the 5th major investor in renewable energy in Africa after each of South Africa, Morocco, Kenya and Uganda. Ethiopia also has more than half a million solar lighting systems.

Ethiopia has many investment opportunities and hosts several insti-tutions and diplomatic headquarters, such as the African Union and many other continental political and eco-nomic bodies and entities that makes

Ethiopia enjoys many opportunities for investment in the hotel and serv-ices sectors.

Policies and strategies that stimu-late foreign investors as well as the establishment of security and peace, broad manpower and the availability of huge energy make Ethiopia a hub for foreign investors.

The Ethiopian government is keen to expand tax-free markets and multi-plicity of work systems that enable businessmen to export their products to the Middle East, Asia and America.

The cultural relations between Qatar and Ethiopia enjoy strong and constant presence. In 2015, Doha hosted the Ethiopian Cultural Day, which included exhibitions of Ethio-pian art, photographs of historic Ethiopian sites registered by UNESCO, and many old and valuable manuscripts.

The exhibition presented the Ethi-opian civilization, geography and history as a model of tolerance and peace between Christianity and Islam, including photographs depicting the country’s historical heritage, obelisks, old mosques, and places where the first Muslims emigrated in their first migration to Abyssinia.

On the display were also the oldest skeleton on earth for the first human being lived in Ethiopia about 3.5 mil-lion years ago.

In early April, Doha hosted a rich Ethiopian cultural events aimed at strengthening the ties between the Qatari and Ethiopian peoples. The events included theater and folkloric performances that embody the Afri-can dimension and highlight the Ethiopian civilization, which includes more than 80 ethnic groups, each with its own language, culture, customs and traditions.

On the other hand, a number of Qatari charitable societies and organi-zations have contributed to the collection of relief materials and aids for areas affected by desertification in Ethiopia and refugee and poor areas. Qatari institutions also play an impor-tant role in increasing employment opportunities and work in the health, education and other sectors.

Qatar and Ethiopia have long standing relations since decades ago. In 1995, the establishment of diplo-matic relations between the two countries was officially announced.

In recent years, there has been a remarkable development in bilateral relations, which were expressed by a large number of high-level mutual visits and the signing of bilateral agreements strong.

During the past five years, figures indicate a significant increase in the number of agreements and Memo-randa of Understanding aimed at regulating and developing relations and providing more opportunities for better investment of the potential of the two countries for the interests of their peoples.

The visit of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia will be a new impetus in the Qatari-African relations, especially the Republic of Ethiopia, where Emir will hold talks with leaders and senior officials on means of promoting and developing bilateral relations, in addition to a number of issues of common interest.

ED ITOR IAL

11MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017 OPINION

Georgia would seem an unlikely venue for a Democratic revival. Trump won it by about 5 per-centage points in November. And its voters backed Republican nominees in eight of the last nine presi-dential contests, including the last six in a row.

But demographic changes are brewing. Growing minority communities and transplants from other regions have made Atlanta’s suburbs increasingly competitive for Democrats. Georgia’s sixth con-gressional district, the location for April’s special election, exemplifies changes common in booming southern cities like Atlanta, Charlotte and Nashville.

The district is white collar, educated and doing well economically, with median household incomes of $80,000 versus $50,000 statewide, and nearly 60 percent of adults holding a college or profes-sional degree, more than twice the statewide average. It is also increasingly diverse, and in recent years became a magnet for well-educated immi-grants from India and other parts of Asia.

The district was about 80 percent white at the turn of the century. But since then, the black share of the population has grown from 10 percent to 13 per-cent, the Hispanic share has doubled to 12.5 percent and Asian representation doubled to more than 10 percent. About a fifth of the district is now foreign born – twice the statewide average, according to census data. Though newer immigrants may not be eligible to vote, census data indicate more than 40 percent are naturalized citizens, potentially bringing a different set of views on issues like immigration to the table than the voters in this district who sent Trump adviser and former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to Congress for 10 straight terms.

April’s special election fills the seat vacated by Tom Price, the new secretary of health and human services. It gives both parties a chance to test their messages for election battles next year in suburban districts where Democrats need to make inroads and where Trump’s populist economic message did not sell well in November. While Price sailed to re-election with 62 percent of the vote, Trump barely beat Clinton in Georgia’s sixth district by one per-centage point. In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney beat Democratic President Barack Obama in the district by 23 points. Republican candidates nation-wide will closely watch the result as they calculate whether to embrace the president.

The 11 Republicans in the race have split between those who portray themselves as Trump

What must come next in Syria

American missile strikes against Syria are a critical first step toward protecting civil-ians from the threat of chemical weapons, and President Donald Trump deserves credit for doing what the Obama admin-

istration refused to do. But Thursday’s action needs to be just the opening salvo in a broader campaign not only to protect the Syrian people from the brutal-ity of the Bashar Al Assad regime but also to reverse the downward spiral of US power and influence in the Middle East and throughout the world. A single missile strike unfortunately cannot undo the damage done by the Obama administration’s policies over the past six years.

Trump was not wrong to blame the dire situation in Syria on President Barack Obama. The world would be a different place today if Obama had car-ried out his threat to attack Syria when Assad crossed the famous “red line” in the summer of 2013. The bad agreement that then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry struck with Russia not only failed to get rid of Syria’s stock of chemical weapons and allowed the Assad regime to drop barrel bombs and employ widespread torture against civilian men, women and children. It also invited a full-scale Russian intervention in the fall of 2015, which saved the Assad regime from pos-sible collapse.

Today, thousands of Russian forces operate throughout Syria, and not chiefly against the Islamic State but against the civilian population and the US-backed moderate opposition. Russia has also greatly

expanded its military presence in the eastern Medi-terranean. The extensive air-defense and anti-ship systems Russia has deployed have nothing to do with counterterrorism - because neither the Islamic State nor Al Qaeda has planes or ships - and everything to do with threatening US and Nato assets. Obama and Kerry spent four years panting after this partnership, but Russia has been a partner the way the mafia is when it presses in on your sporting goods business. Thanks to Obama’s policies, Russia has increasingly supplanted the United States as a major power bro-ker in the region. Even US allies such as Turkey, Egypt and Israel look increasingly to Moscow as a significant regional player.

Obama’s policies also made possible an unprece-dented expansion of Iran’s power and influence. Iran has at least 7,000 of its own fighters in Syria, and it leads a coalition of 20,000 foreign fighters, including Iraqis, Afghans and 8,000 Lebanese Hezbollah.

If you add the devastating impact of massive Syr-ian refugee flows on European democracies, Obama’s policies have not only allowed the deaths of almost a half-million Syrians but also have signifi-cantly weakened America’s global position and the health and coherence of the West. Future historians will have to determine whether Vladimir Putin was emboldened to move in Ukraine by Obama’s failure to carry through on his threat in Syria, or whether

China felt free to act more aggressively in the South China Sea. But at the very least US friends and allies in the Middle East and in Eastern and Central Europe have questioned how serious the United States is about countering aggression. Even in East Asia, American allies such as Japan and South Korea were left wondering whether the United States could still be counted on to keep its military commitments.

Trump, of course, greatly exacerbated these problems during his campaign, with all the strong rhetoric aimed at allies. Now he has taken an impor-tant first step in repairing the damage, but this will not be the end of the story. America’s adversaries are not going to be convinced by one missile strike that the United States is back in the business of pro-jecting power to defend its interests and the world order. The Russians, by suspending an agreement with the United States to coordinate air operations over Syria, are already implicitly threatening to escalate in Syria. The Iranians are likely to step up their activities and could strike at Americans in Syria and Iraq. The testing of Trump’s resolve actually begins now. If the United States backs down in the face of these challenges, the missile strike, though a worthy action in itself, may end up reinforcing the world’s impression that the United States does not have the stomach for confrontation.

Instead of being a one-time event, the missile

After the crushing electoral losses that swept Donald Trump into the White House and sealed Republican control of the US Congress, the Demo-

crats’ road to recovery winds through the leafy, well-heeled suburbs of north Atlanta. Here, Democrats are threatening a stunning special election upset that could signal how well the party can turn Trump’s low approval ratings into political gains. And they appear to have an ally in the April 18 vote: Trump himself.

In the first congressional election of the Trump era, a wave of grassroots anti-Trump fervour has positioned Democrat Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old political new-comer, to possibly capture a House of Representatives seat held by Republicans for decades, one of 24 seats Democrats need nationwide to reclaim the House.

“The grassroots intensity here is elec-tric, and it’s because folks are concerned that what is happening in Washington doesn’t represent our values,” Ossoff said in an interview. “This is a chance for this community to stand up and make a state-ment about what we believe.”

With Democrats desperate for signs of hope after Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump, Ossoff’s underdog “Make Trump Furious” campaign has endeared him to national anti-Trump activists and pushed him well ahead of 17 rivals in polls. The documen-tary filmmaker and former congressional aide raised a jaw-dropping $8.3 million in the first quarter, his campaign said.

“I’ve never seen the Democrats around here so engaged, and it’s Donald Trump who got us so engaged,” said Carolyn Had-away, 77, a veteran party activist and retired software engineer from Marietta, a city of about 60,000 people in Georgia’s central Cobb County.

Democrat’s anti-Trump campaign riles Republicans

Smoke billows following an air strike in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, yesterday.

supporters and establishment candidates who keep a respectful and sometimes wary distance. “I’m ready to sup-port him,” former state senator Dan Moody, who was endorsed by US Senator David Perdue, said of Trump in an interview. But “I’m not going to jump over a cliff with him.”

Grassroots Democratic groups flood the district’s tidy suburban neighbourhoods on the weekends, busing in volun-teers from as far away as Maryland to go door to door on Ossoff’s behalf. The Ossoff momentum worries Republicans, say party officials, and outside help has arrived. A super PAC aligned with House Republican leaders put more than $2 mil-lion into ads painting Ossoff as too young and inexperienced. Ossoff played down the strategic value of a possible upset.

“The national implications here will be about how this affects the political calculus for folks in the Republican confer-ence in the House, not about how Democrats are supposed to run in the midterms,” he said. In a low turnout special election, getting supporters to the polls is vital, and Democrats have voted early in greater numbers than Republicans so far.

“We aren’t panicking, but there is concern,” said Maggie Holliman, a member of the Republican state executive com-mittee. Ossoff’s best chance is to win the April 18 vote, a “jungle primary” that features all 18 candidates from both parties on the same ballot. If no one reaches 50 percent, the top two vote getters square off on June 20.

Republicans are confident they can win a one-on-one race with Ossoff, as the party unites with organisational and financial help pouring into the Republican-majority district.

“There is a chance Ossoff can win without a runoff, but that’s his only chance. He’s benefiting from unified Demo-cratic support and Republicans being highly divided,” said Georgia-based Republican strategist Joel McElhannon.

Polls show Ossoff hovering in the low 40s, not enough to avoid a runoff. The leading Republican, former Secretary of State Karen Handel, is well behind. Handel has been cau-tious in talking about Trump. She said in an interview she expected to work with him on issues such as tax reform and border security, but “first and foremost” she would be a con-servative advocate for her district.

By contrast Republicans Bob Gray, a local business exec-utive, and Bruce LeVell, head of Trump’s national diversity coalition, pledge undivided loyalty to the White House. Gray said he was the Republican in the race who performed the behind-the-scenes political groundwork for Trump in the district. LeVell pulled out his cellphone and showed a reporter text messages from Trump aides Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and even Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to prove his insider status with the White House.

“If people are looking for someone to help Trump, I’m their guy,” he said.

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strike needs to be the opening move in a comprehensive political, diplomatic and military strategy to rebalance the situation in Syria in America’s favour. That means reviving some of those proposals that Obama rejected over the past four years: a no-fly zone to protect Syrian civilians, the grounding of the Syrian air force, and the effec-tive arming and training of the moderate opposition, all aimed at an eventual political settlement that can bring the Syrian civil war, and therefore the Assad regime, to an end. The United States’ commit-ment to such a course will have to be clear enough to deter the Rus-sians from attempting to disrupt it. This in turn will require moving sufficient military assets to the region so that neither Russia nor Iran will be tempted to escalate the conflict to a crisis, and to be sure that American forces will be ready if they do.

It was precisely because Obama and his White House advisers were unwilling to go down that path that they resisted military action of any kind, regardless of the provocation. Let’s hope that the Trump adminis-tration is prepared for the next move. If it is, then there is a real chance of reversing the course of global retreat that Obama began. A strong US response in Syria would make it clear to the likes of Putin, Xi Jinping, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Kim Jong Un that the days of American passivity are over.

Robert KaganThe Washington Post

It was precisely because Obama and his White House advisers were unwilling to go down that path that they resisted military action of any kind, regardless of the provocation. Let’s hope that the Trump administration is prepared for the next move. If it is, then there is a real chance of reversing the course of global retreat that Obama began.

John WhitesidesReuters

12 MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017ASIA

Traditional cart raceUS deploys warships to Korean peninsulaWashington

AFP

The US Navy said yes-terday it had sent a carrier-led strike group to the Korean peninsula in a show of

force against North Korea's "reckless" nuclear weapons programme.

The move will raise tensions in the region and comes hard on the heels of a US missile strike on Syria that was widely inter-preted as putting Pyongyang on warning over its refusal to aban-don its nuclear ambitions.

North Korea denounced Thursday's strike as an act of "intolerable aggression" and one that justified "a million times over" the North's push toward a credible nuclear deterrent.

"US Pacific Command ordered the Carl Vinson Strike Group north as a prudent meas-ure to maintain readiness and presence in the Western Pacific," said Commander Dave Benham, spokesman at US Pacific Command.

"The number one threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irre-sponsible and destabilising programme of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability," he said, in an unu-sually forceful statement.

Originally scheduled to make port calls in Australia, the strike group -- which includes the Nimitz-class aircraft super-carrier USS Carl Vinson -- is now headed from Singapore to the Western Pacific Ocean.

Pyongyang is on a quest to develop a long-range missile capable of hitting the US main-land with a nuclear warhead, and has so far staged five nuclear tests, two of them last year.

Expert satellite imagery analysis suggests it could well be preparing for a sixth, with US intelligence officials warning

that Pyongyang could be less than two years away from developing a nuclear warhead that could reach the continen-tal United States.

North Korea on Wednesday fired a medium-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan ahead of a US-China summit.

In February, the North simultaneously fired four bal-listic missiles off its east coast, three of which fell provocatively close to Japan, in what it said was a drill for an attack on US bases in the neighbouring Asian country.

Last August Pyongyang also successfully test-fired a subma-rine-launched ballistic missile 500 kilometres (300 miles) towards Japan, far exceeding any previous sub-launched tests, in what the North's leader Kim Jong-Un hailed as the "greatest success."

A nuclear-capable SLBM sys-tem would take the North's threat to a new level, allowing deploy-ment far beyond the Korean peninsula and a "second-strike" capability in the event of an attack on its army bases.

On Thursday and Friday, US President Donald Trump hosted his Chinese counterpart Xi Jin-ping for talks during which he pressed Pyongyang's key ally to help curb the North's nuclear weapons programme.

4 more bodies found after Java landslidesTuban

Anatolia

SEARCH and rescue teams have recovered four more bodies from landslides on Indonesia's main island of Java, an official from Pono-rogo Disaster Management Agency said yesterday.

"The condition of the bodies can no longer be rec-ognized," Setyo Budiono, head of Emergency Section of the Agency, was quoted as saying by detik.com.

Budiono said the bodies which have been recovered after more than seven days of searching were taken to the nearest hospital for identifi-cation by the DVI (Disaster Victim Identification) team.

National Mitigation Agency said a total of 28 peo-ple have been missing after the landslide, while the local agency said the figure might be up to 31.

Search efforts will be car-ried out until April 15.

Seasonal rains often cause flooding and landslides in Indonesia, which is comprised of a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or flood-prone plains close to rivers.

Getting ready

US Pacific Command ordered the Carl Vinson Strike Group north as a prudent measure to maintain readiness and presence in the Western Pacific: Spokesman

Pyongyang is on a quest to develop a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland with a nuclear warhead, and has so far staged five nuclear tests.

Rhino dead after poaching attack in NepalKathmandu

AP

Authorities are searching for poachers who killed a rare one-horned rhi-

noceros over the weekend in the forests of southern Nepal and cut off the horn, officials said yesterday.

Forest officer Nurendra Aryal said it was the first killing

of a rhino in the Chitwan National Forest in nearly three years.

Soldiers and forest rangers were scouring the forests and nearby areas for the people who shot the rhino.

The dead animal was dis-covered on Saturday.

Aryal said it was a stormy night, so forest officers did not hear a gunshot or spot the

poachers enter the area.The forest located about

160km south of Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, and bordering India is protected by the gov-ernment and guarded by armed soldiers.

Nepal has been working to increase the number of one-horned rhinos in Chitwan National Forest, where the pop-ulation has reached 605.

Six militant suspects dead in Java attackIndonesian medical staff carrying a slain terror suspect after a raid at a police hospital in Surabaya.

Jakarta

AP

Six militant suspects killed in a standoff with police were planning to attack

police officers in Indonesia's East Java province to seek revenge for the arrest of a rad-ical leader, authorities said yesterday.

"The men were cornered in a village in Tuban district on Sat-urday after attempting to shoot

a traffic police officer who was approaching them when he saw their car stopped at the road-side," said national police spokesman Rikwanto.

"The six refused appeals to surrender during a standoff that lasted several hours and were fatally shot by police".

On Friday, counterterrorism police arrested three suspected militants who were allegedly planning to attack a police sta-tion in East Java.

Among those arrested was Zainal Anshori, a senior figure of Jemaah Anshorut Daulah, an umbrella group of Indonesian extremists that claims allegiance to the IS group.

Rikwanto said Anshori had orchestrated Saturday's planned attack.

"They had acted on Anshori's order as a revenge of his arrest," said Rikwanto, citing police interrogation of other arrested militants.

China probes insurance regulator chief over graftBeijing

Reuters

The head of China's insurance regulator is being investigated for

suspected disciplinary viola-tions, the country's top anti-graft body said yester-day, bringing the most senior financial regulator to date into the government's fight against corruption.

China's top leaders have pledged this year to address financial risks and asset bubbles.

In a brief statement, the Central Commission for Dis-cipline Inspection said Xiang Junbo, head of the China Insurance Regulatory Com-mission (CIRC) and a member of the central bank's mone-tary policy committee, was suspected of "serious disci-plinary violations" - a phrase that usually refers to graft.

It gave no further details.Xiang's name and position

has been removed from the CIRC's website, www.circ.gov.cn, although news about him remains.

As head of the insurance regulator, Xiang oversaw rapid growth of the insurance industry, along with

liberalisation of investment rules that provided insurers greater latitude to invest more of their assets at home and overseas.

China's insurance assets nearly doubled over the last three years, reaching $2.19 trillion at the end of 2016.

In February, Xiang appeared at a press confer-ence where he vowed the insurance regulator would take more punitive action to punish short-term speculators and reduce long-term risk.

Xiang said CIRC wouldn't allow the insurance industry to become "a rich man's club" or hideout for "financial crocodiles".

Misconduct

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said Xiang Junbo, head of China Insurance Regulatory Commission, was suspected of "serious disciplinary violations".

Navies of China and India rescue ship hijacked by Somali piratesNew Delhi AFP

The navies of India and China carried out a joint operation yesterday to

rescue a merchant ship hijacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, the Indian defence min-istry said.

After receiving a distress call on Saturday night, the Indian warships established contact with the captain of the merchant

vessel who had locked himself in a strong room along with the rest of the Filipino crew.

"An Indian Navy helicopter

undertook aerial reconnais-sance of the merchant vessel... to sanitise the upper decks of the merchant ship and ascertain the

location of pirates, if still on board," a statement from the defence ministry said.

Emboldened by the helicop-ter cover and on receiving the all-clear signal that no pirates were visible on the upper decks, some crew members gradually emerged from the strong room.

They searched the ship and confirmed that the pirates had fled overnight.

A boarding party from the nearby Chinese Navy ship then

arrived on the merchant ship, while the Indian Naval helicop-ter provided air cover for the rescue operation.

"It has been established that all 19 Filipino crew members are safe," the statement added.

The bulk carrier, OS 35, was travelling from Kelang in Malay-sia to the port city of Aden in Yemen when it came under attack from Somali pirates on Saturday night.

The Indian warships were

in the region as part of an over-seas deployment.

The joint action comes amid a recent strain in ties following the Dalai Lama's visit to the Indian border state of Arunachal Pradesh, parts of which China claims as its territory.

Somali pirates began stag-ing attacks on ships in 2005, disrupting major international shipping routes and costing the global economy billions of dollars.

Participants control their bulls during a traditional cart race to mark the Sri Lanka National New Year, in Kaduwela, yesterday.

After receiving a distress call on Saturday night, the Indian warships established contact with the captain of the merchant vessel who had locked himself in a strong room along with the rest of the Filipino crew.

13MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017 ASIA

Religious festival

Five suspected militants dead in Pakistan

Myanmar boat accident toll rises to 30Yangon

AFP

RESCUERS yesterday found more bodies from a boat acci-dent in western Myanmar that has now claimed the lives of at least 30 people, most of them guests returning from a wedding.

The boat, called "Silver Star" in Burmese, sank on Fri-day evening in a river near Pathein, a port city west of Yangon.

It was believed to be car-rying around 60 passengers when it collided with another vessel in the dark.

Rescuers pulled 21 bod-ies from the river on Saturday and have since discovered more victims.

"We got nine dead bod-ies, three men and six women, today," a police officer at Pathein police station said.

It is unlikely there are many more victims to be found. A local MP said nine people were missing.

Local media photos showed frenzied scenes as rescuers worked throughout the early hours of Saturday to wheel stretchers away from the river and lay bodies onshore.

Fatal boat accidents are common in Myanmar, a country with rudimentary transport and weakly-enforced safety regulations.

Pakistan authorities propose offshore amnesty lawIslamabad

Internews

In what might be construed as a controversial move, Paki-stani authorities are planning

to give protection from all types of fiscal and election laws to those citizens, including those holding public offices, who would declare their foreign assets under a new amnesty scheme.

The stakeholders including the government and businesses

are finalising the Foreign Asset Tax Bill, 2017 to give a general tax amnesty scheme.

This could be the fourth tax amnesty scheme over the last three years by the PML-N gov-ernment. But unlike past, the authorities are now planning to include ‘public officeholders’ among the beneficiaries.

Under the draft bill, the authorities also want to give pro-tection from prosecution under laws of Election Commission of Pakistan, National Accountability

Ordinance, Foreign Exchange Regulation Act and Anti-Money Laundering Act, sources said.

To the public, the scheme will be presented as an effort to bring back money stashed abroad, but it actually aims at saving skin of the billionaire pol-iticians and business executives, who are facing problems due to tightening of global fiscal laws, said a source.

The politicians who would avail the scheme and declare their hidden assets abroad would

be able to dodge disqualification as they would get immunity from the election law.

To evolve a consensus on the draft bill a meeting of the stake-holders was convened on Sunday at the Governor House in Karachi under the chair of Sindh Governor Mohammad Zubair.

However, due to some dif-ferences among the stakeholders another meeting will be held before presenting the final draft to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,

according to the sources yesterday.

During his last visit to Kara-chi, Sharif had called for preparing a consensus draft of the scheme. However, this draft will be subject to scrutiny of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar.

Ironically, those who had earlier facilitated the country’s billionaires to park their wealth abroad to evade taxes and hide ill-gotten money are now involved in the preparation of the scheme.

Blame game begins on Pakistan electoral reform delayIslamabad

nternews

Following the Election Com-mission of Pakistan’s urgent call to finalise leg-

islation on the Election Law 2017, the government, the oppo-sition and the ECP have taken to shifting the onus of delay onto one another.

The two main opposition parties - the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) - put blame on the government and the ECP, whereas the ECP says its hands are tied in the absence of the required legislation.

The ECP wrote to the National Assembly speaker ear-lier this week asking him to direct the Parliamentary

Committee on Electoral Reforms “to finalise its recommendations and lay the bill before the par-liament for making necessary legislation and enact the Elec-tion Act 2017 as early as possible so the ECP could start and com-plete its work in time according to the new law”.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who heads the committee, pre-sented the draft Election Law 2017 on Dec 20, last year before both houses of parliament.

He had announced that the committee had decided to seek feedback from all stakeholders and that a final draft would be completed within 30 days. There has been no progress on the matter since.

Taking exception to the ECP’s move of writing to the

speaker, the PTI’s member in the parliamentary committee, Dr Arif Alvi, lashed out at the ECP for, what he called, and shifting the blame onto others while ignoring its role in the mess.

He alleged that the ECP did not seem to be interested in car-rying out electoral reform. He said the committee had been unable to meet for the past two months due to the ECP’s deci-sion to boycott its proceedings.

The PTI member also alleged that the ECP had been “deliber-ately delaying” the process which was evident from the fact that it had not fulfilled any task assigned by committee on time.

Dr Alvi regretted that there had been no progress on the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), biometric devices for

verification of voters’ identity and the right of vote to overseas Pakistanis.

He said the ECP officials had earlier committed that they were ready to use the biometric ver-ification system, but later termed it “risky” and said the data could be hacked.

He alleged that the govern-ment and the ECP were hand in glove with each other. “The delay suits the government as well,” he said, adding that his party would not allow the ECP to hold next year’s elections without enacting electoral reforms first.

Shazia Marri of the PPP agreed that the ECP had not been “pro-active”; however, she held the government responsible for the delay.

Dhaka upholds death sentence for extremistDhaka

AFP

A top extremist under sentence of death has lost his last hope of

avoiding the gallows after Bangladesh's president rejected a mercy plea, an offi-cial said yesterday.

Bangladesh's highest court last month upheld a 2008 death sentence on Mufti Abdul Hannan and two asso-ciates for an attack on a shrine that left three people dead and injured British high commissioner at the time.

Last month the trio wrote to President Abdul Hamid seeking clemency.

"But the president has rejected all three mercy peti-tions," his press secretary Joynal Abedin said.

"Jail authorities would now go ahead with the exe-cutions," deputy inspector general of prisons Touhidul Islam said. Authorities have not announced the date of executions.

Bangladesh has suffered a spate of attacks on secular activists, foreigners and minorities in recent years.

Catholic priests sprinkle water to bless churchgoers' palm fronds during Sunday mass, marking the start of the Holy Week, inside of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help church, in Paranaque City, yesterday.

Refugees to stay in PNG if no US action: AustraliaSydney

AFP

Asylum seekers sent by Australia to a Papua New Guinea camp will be reset-tled there if they are

not offered a place in the United States, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said yesterday.

Canberra sends asylum-seekers who try to enter the country to offshore processing centres in PNG's Manus Island and Nauru, blocking them from resettling in Australia.

The conservative govern-ment has instead worked to relocate those found to be ref-ugees within PNG or to third countries such as the United States and Cambodia.

The push to move the more than 800 refugees on Manus has sped up with the camp due to close down after a PNG Supreme Court ruling last year declared that holding people there was unconstitutional and illegal.

"There are officials from the

US, both Homeland Security and State Departments, looking at each individual case at the moment," Dutton said, without stating how many refugees might be accepted by Washington.

He said those who miss out are "staying in PNG, that's the arrangement as it currently stands".

"If people have been found not to be refugees, then the expectation is that they will be returned home."

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is in Port Moresby for talks with his PNG counter-part Peter O'Neill, would not comment on whether refugees would be moved to the Nauru

camp, which currently holds 380 men, women and children.

Only 36 refugees have taken up the option of staying in PNG, Dutton said, with others report-edly citing safety fears as a reason for not wanting to settle in the Pacific country.

Successive Australian gov-ernments have sought to stem waves of boat migration by peo-ple from war-torn countries, using harsh policies including turning back the vessels.

A resettlement agreement with Phnom Penh struck in 2014 was criticised after only a few refugees made the move.

The US resettlement agree-ment hit global headlines earlier this year after President Donald Trump reportedly lambasted Prime Minister Turnbull during a phone call and attacked it as a "dumb deal".

Canberra has long defended its policy of denying asylum-seekers resettlement in Australia, saying it has pre-vented deaths at sea.

New arrangement

If people have been found not to be refugees, then the expectation is that they will be returned home: Official

Sydney countryside UN urges Myanmar to release detained Rohingya childrenYangon

AFP

The UN children's agency Unicef has called on Myanmar's government

to release Rohingya children detained as part of a sweeping military campaign in Rakhine state.

More than 600 people were arrested in an army crackdown on Rohingyas in the north of the restive state. The operation was launched after deadly attacks by militants on police posts in October last year.

Rohingya escapees in neighbouring Bangladesh, where more than 70,000 have fled, gave UN investigators

accounts of beatings, torture and food deprivation inside the jails. Minors are among those detained.

Unicef's deputy executive director Justin Forsyth said he had given the country's de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi details of around a dozen youngsters being held in Buthidaung prison.

"There are some children that are detained in prison, so those are the cases that we're raising," he said. "Any child that's detained is an issue for us."

"Suu Kyi and Myanmar's army chief both recognised "that there's an issue here" but made no firm committment for their release".

An Aurizon coal train travels through the countryside in Muswellbrook, north of Sydney, yesterday. Aurizon expects three of its four central Queensland coal railways will be reopened within two weeks.

Karachi

Anatolia

Security forces killed five sus-pected militants in a clash in northeastern Pakistan yes-

terday morning, the Punjab police

said in a statement.One paramilitary soldier

was also killed and another was injured in the clash, Pakistan's army said in a statement, add-ing that the said operation was still underway.

The clash -- the second in the last 24 hours -- occurred during a search operation in the remote Dera Ghazi Khan district, situated nearly 500km from Lahore, the capital of Punjab province.

14 MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017EUROPE

People watch the sunset on the Cap Ferret, from the beach of the Arcachon Bay in France, yesterday.

Twilight beckons

Truck attacker was facing deportation

Stockholm

AFP

The suspected Stock-holm truck attacker had shown interest in extremist groups and was facing deporta-

tion after being refused residency, Swedish police said yesterday.

A second suspect has mean-while been formally placed under arrest in connection with the attack that killed four peo-ple and injured 15 others, the Stockholm district court said yesterday.

The news came as thou-sands of people gathered under sunny spring skies amid a sea of flowers and candles to

honour the dead and to stand against terrorism. The first sus-pect, identified only as a 39-year-old man from Uzbekistan who was arrested hours after Friday's attack, is suspected of having sped a sto-len beer truck several hundred metres (yards) down the bus-tling pedestrian street Drottninggatan in the heart of Stockholm.

The vehicle mowed down shoppers before slamming into the facade of the busy Ahlens department store.

The motive for the attack was not known, but the method resembled previous attacks using vehicles in Nice, Berlin and London, all of them claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

There has been no immedi-ate claim of responsibility for the Stockholm attack — the third in Europe in two weeks, after a car and knife assault outside London's parliament and the Saint Petersburg metro bombing.

The 39-year-old suspect in the Stockholm attack "showed interest for extremist organisa-tions like IS," police chief Jonas Hysing told reporters.

The suspect had also been due to be expelled from Swe-den after his residency application was rejected last

year. "He applied for a perma-nent residency permit in 2014. The Migration Agency rejected it in June 2016 and also decided that he was to be expelled," Hys-ing said.

"In December 2016, he was informed by the Migration Agency that he had four weeks to leave the country. In February 2017, the case was handed over to the police to carry out the order, since the person had gone underground," he said.

But police apparently never found the man, who authorities have said was known to Sweden's intelligence service for undis-closed reasons.

Swedish Prosecution Author-ity spokeswoman Karin Rosander said meanwhile that the second suspect was arrested "on

suspicion of a terrorist crime (by committing) murder", the same accusation as against the first suspect.

No other details about the person were disclosed.

The family of an 11-year-old Swedish girl have meanwhile confirmed she was one of the four people killed in the attack.

The Foreign Office in London said Swedish police had con-firmed to them that a British man was among the dead, while the Belgian Foreign Ministry said a Belgian woman had been killed.

The fourth victim was only known to be a Swedish national. 15 people were injured, four of whom were in critical condition.

Police had said Saturday they were increasingly sure the

39-year-old was the driver of the truck. "There is nothing to indicate that we've got the wrong man. On the contrary, the suspicions have strengthened," Swedish police chief Dan Eliasson said.

Police had found a suspect device in the cab of the truck.

"A technical examination is ongoing, we can't go into what it is right now... whether it's a bomb or a flammable device," Eliasson said.

Sweden has been trying to get back on its feet after what authorities have termed a terror attack. Thousands gathered yes-terday for a "Lovefest" vigil against terrorism and to honour the victims at the Sergels Torg plaza near the scene of the attack, where a sea of flowers, candles and stuffed toys had been placed.

People attend a memorial ceremony at Sergels Torg plaza in Stockholm, Sweden, yesterday close to the point where a truck drove into a department store two days before.

Nato official sees calmer ties between Serbia and KosovoCologne

Reuters

The overwhelming vic-tory of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic in

Serbia’s presidential election on April 2 could help stabilise the country, a top US and Nato military officer said.

Navy Admiral Michelle Howard, who heads Nato’s Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, said she hoped “engineered provocations” between Kosovo and Serbia in recent months would calm down now that the election was over.

“Now that we’re through the election, perhaps the national leaders will refocus on their own countries and govern. That’s my hope,” Howard, who also commands US naval forces in Europe and Africa, said in an interview late on Saturday after an event hosted by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

Howard said the region remained an area of concern for the US military and Nato, which still has 4,500 troops in Kosovo after intervening in 1999 to stop Serbia’s kill-ings of ethnic Albanian civilians in a counter-insur-gency campaign.

She said Vucic, the outgo-ing prime minister, had run for president on a promise to keep the country moving on a path toward European Union accession, which also required a demonstration of economic stability.

“If he’s serious, then I think that is helpful for the country,” Howard said. “As you meet all that criteria, I can only imagine that it’s helpful for ... establishing sta-bility and security of (Serbia).”

If Vucic makes good his vow to continue moving towards EU membership, then Serbia would remain “balanced between Russian influence and the rest of southeast Europe”, Howard said.

Thousands of students and other protesters, who see Vucic as an autocrat, rallied in Belgrade last week to pro-test at his victory and what they see as a fraudulent elec-tion. Although his new post will be largely ceremonial, Vucic is expected to maintain his grip on power through his Serbian Progressive Party.

France decrees to shut oldest nuclear plantParis

AFP

The French government yes-terday published a decree for closing the country's

oldest nuclear plant, fulfilling a campaign-trail pledge made by President Francois Hollande who is now in the final weeks of office.

The decree, gazetted in the Official Journal which publishes government decisions, sets down the conditions for closing a nuclear plant at Fessenheim, a plant in eastern France on the border with southwestern Germany.

Fessenheim will cease oper-ations when a new reactor, currently being built at

Flamanville on the Normandy coast, "enters service," the decree said.

France's nuclear plant operator EDF last month said the Flamanville reactor — a project that has run into deep problems — will begin opera-tions in 2019.

The closure of the twin-reac-tor plant at Fessenheim is part of a plan to slash France's dependence on atomic energy.

Hollande, who leaves office next month, vowed during cam-paigning in the 2012 election to close the facility as part of a promise to reduce the share of nuclear in the energy mix from 75 percent to 50 percent and boost the share of renewables.

Fessenheim, in operation

since 1977, is located on a seis-mic fault line about 100km south of the French city of Strasbourg and about 25km southwest of the German city of Freiburg.

Its closure has been a cam-paign target by French, German

and Swiss environmentalists for years, as well as an enduring source of friction with Germany.

France's minister for ecology and energy, Segolene Royal, on Friday had said that the decree would be implemented to meet the 2012 campaign promise.

"The decree on #Fessenheim closure has been signed and published this morning," Royal tweeted yesterday.

"It was promised, now it's been done."

The conservative opposition has opposed the energy pro-gramme, arguing that France's nuclear industry is a guarantor of the country's energy inde-pendence and a source of cheap electricity. The French trade

unions have also weighed in on the question of Fessenheim, fearing the closure of the plant will lead to the loss of around 2,000 jobs, directly and indirectly.

The new European Pressu-rised Reactor (EPR) reactor, being built at Flamanville alongside two existing reactors, is a novel third-generation design touted as the world's biggest and advanced nuclear reactor.

But the project, along with another EPR contract in Finland, has been plagued by delays and technical problems.

Construction of the reactor began in December 2007, with an operational start initially scheduled for the end of 2012.

Slovenia PM opposes tougher border checksLjubljana

AFP

Newly-introduced tougher checks on the EU's external borders aimed

at stopping suspected Islamist fighters from Iraq and Syria are "unacceptable" and should be amended, Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said yesterday.

The new checks produced traffic chaos over the weekend on the Slovenia-Croatia border, a key bottleneck on the so-called Balkan migrant trail shut down last year.

"The implementation of the EU's directive on the border with Croatia has caused totally intolerable conditions over the last few days," Cerar said in a statement on his Twitter account. He spoke to Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenko-vic on Saturday and both "agreed that the situation is

unacceptable," he said. "Slovenia and Croatia will

present proposals to the Euro-pean Commission to .. satisfactorily change this reg-ulation as soon as possible," he said.

From Friday the EU ordered systematic checks at the exter-nal borders of the Schengen passport-free area under leg-islation designed to tackle "foreign fighters" returning from Iraq and Syria.

Only hours after they took effect backed-up lines of cars and buses began forming at the main border crossings between Slovenia — a member of the Schengen area — and non-member Croatia.

The chaos frustrated many holidaymakers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland who spent hours in queues waiting to head to southern Europe for the Easter or spring holiday break.

Vucic accused of election irregularitiesBelgrade

AFP

Serbian president-elect Aleksandar Vucic's main poll rival accused the

former premier yesterday of "scandalous irregularities" in an election which handed him a first-round victory earlier this month.

Pro-EU candidate Sasa Jankovic, who garnered 16 per-cent in the April 2 polls compared to 55 percent for Vucic, called for a partial recount of ballots.

Thousands of demonstra-tors, mostly students, have gathered daily in Belgrade and other cities to protest Vucic's election, but this is the first time one of his rivals has alleged poll irregularities.

Jankovic's office said a recount showed that Vucic had been been awarded 964 more votes than were actu-ally counted.

Sweden mourns

Thousands gathered under sunny spring skies amid a sea of flowers and candles to honour the dead and to stand against terrorism.

A second suspect has been arrested in connection with the attack.

President Francois Hollande: Keeping his poll promise.

15MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017 EUROPE

Russian naval activity above Cold War levels: HowardBerlin

Reuters

Recent Russian naval activ-ity in Europe exceeds levels seen during the Cold

War, a top US and Nato military officer said, voicing concern that the distributed nature of the deployments could end up “split-ting and distracting” the transatlantic alliance.

Navy Admiral Michelle Howard, who heads Nato’s Allied Joint Force Command in Naples and commands US naval forces in Europe and Africa, said Rus-sia had clearly stepped up its

naval actions in recent years although the size of its navy was smaller now than during the Cold War era.

“We’re seeing activity that we didn’t even see when it was the Soviet Union. It’s preceden-tial activity,” Howard told Reuters in an interview late on Saturday during a missile defence conference.

Howard cited a wide range of activities, including Russia’s deployment of its Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean, increased patrols in the north Atlantic and Arctic region, significant out-of-area

submarine deployments, and submarine movement in the Black Sea.

“They’re a global navy, I understand that. But the activity in this theatre has substantially moved up in the last couple of years,” Howard said.

She said there was a danger that members of the Nato alli-ance would focus on the area of interest closest to them, while losing sight of Russian activities in other areas.

“When ... you think about what happens when they move forces around, you look at the alliance and they end up

splitting and distracting the view of the alliance,” she said.

Howard’s comments came amid a sharp escalation in ten-sions between Russia and the United States after Washington launched 59 cruise missiles against an air base in Syria in retaliation for a deadly toxic gas attack that killed scores of people.

Howard said the Russian naval manoeuvres had been matched by increased persistent cyber attacks by Moscow, and a steady number of unprofessional “fly bys” by Russian aircraft of

US and other allied vessels at sea. Ties between Moscow and

the West have been strained since Russia’s annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Nato has built up physical forces in Poland and the Baltic states to build up a deterrent and underscore the strength of the alliance, but US and Euro-pean officials are also increasingly concerned about what they describe as Moscow’s use of propaganda and cyber attacks to influence Western elections.

Russia denies Washington’s claim that Moscow sought to influence the US election, and views Nato’s buildup of troops in Europe as a provocation.

Howard said members of Nato had rallied to increase their capabilities and send a clear sig-nal about the strength and resolve of the alliance.

She hailed a recent agree-ment by Germany and Norway to build new submarines together as a sign of increased cooperation and said she would welcome further efforts by European partners to pool resources.

Youth held for planting bomb in OsloCopenhagen

AP

A 17-year-old asylum-seeker from Russia was arrested yesterday in

connection with an explosive device found near a busy sub-way station in Norway's capital and defused before it detonated, authorities said.

The youth was detained on suspicion of handling explosives, but investigators do not know if he planned to carry out an attack with the homemade device, Signe Aaling, chief pros-ecutor for Norway's PST security service, said.

"PST is now working on

finding his intentions and find out whether others are involved," Aaling said.

The youth was not identi-fied, but security service head Benedicte Bjornland said intel-ligence agencies were aware of him. He is an asylum-seeker from Russia who arrived in Nor-way with his family in 2010, Bjornland said.

Bjornland also alleged that the youth was part of "extreme Islamism" circles in Norway.

"It is likely that the attacks in France, Germany, Great Brit-ain, Russia and Sweden can create a copycat effect in Nor-way with people with Islamist sympathies," Bjornland said,

listing the locations of extrem-ist attacks that have devastated Europe in the last year.

The discovery of the explo-sive Saturday night — found on the street just outside the Groenland subway station — prompted police to evacuate late bars and restaurants in the Norwegian capital.

The Oslo explosive was found less than a mile from the government buildings that were damaged in a deadly bomb attack carried out by right-wing extremist Anders Breivik in 2011.

That bomb and a subsequent gun massacre at a Norwegian island killed a total of 77 people.

Budapest

Reuters

Tens of thousands of Hungarians protested in central Budapest yes-

terday against new legislation that could force the Central European University (CEU), a school founded by US finan-cier George Soros, to move out of the country.

A bill passed in Parlia-ment this week by the ruling right-wing Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a critic of liberal civil organ-isations funded by Soros, targeted CEU by setting numerous new conditions under which it must operate.

The bill has led to criti-cism from hundreds of leading academics worldwide as well as from the US gov-ernment and the European Union. Hungarian President Janos Ader must now sign the bill by today to make it law.

Metro bomber had travelled to Turkey

St Petersburg Reuters

The man Russian police believe was the sui-cide bomber who killed 14 people in a blast on the St Peters-

burg metro this week developed an interest in Islam and soon after travelled to Turkey, two people who know him said.

The two people said they did not know for sure if the man, Akbarzhon Jalilov, went on from Turkey to neighbour-ing Syria. Turkey has been routinely used by radical Islam-ists as a route into areas of Syria

controlled by the Islamic State group.

If Jalilov had been in Syria, that would expose a major gap in Russia’s counter-terrorism procedures, which rely heav-ily on identifying anyone who has been with militants in Syria and stopping them from returning to Russia, or arrest-ing them.

The metro blast happened last Monday just as Russian President Vladimir Putin vis-ited St Petersburg. No group has claimed responsibility. But Islamic State has threatened acts of violence on Russian soil in reprisal for the Kremlin’s military intervention in Syria in support of President Bashar Al Assad.

Jalilov, the suspected sui-cide bomber, was born in 1995 and grew up in the city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan, a mainly Mus-lim ex-Soviet Republic in Central Asia.

Around 2011, he moved to St Petersburg. He worked in low-paid jobs for several years.

But there is a gap in Jalilov’s biography from the end of 2015 until the start of this year. Dur-ing that period, several acquaintances said he disap-peared from view.

He reappeared when he visited Osh in February this year.

Suspect's trail

Whether Akbarzhon Jalilov went on from Turkey to neighbouring Syria is uncertain as facts emerge about suspected bomber who had recently become more religious.

Acquaintances say Jalilov disappeared from the end of 2015 until the start of this year.

Cop slain in London attack gets rare honourLondon

AP

The body of a police officer killed in last month's attack in Lon-

don has been brought to lie in a chapel at Parliament, an honour usually reserved for senior politicians.

Constable Keith Palmer was stabbed to death by Kha-lid Masood inside the gates of Parliament on March 22. Palmer's coffin, draped in a police flag, was brought to the 13th-century crypt Chapel of St Mary Undercroft yesterday, accompanied by police officers and family members.

The coffin containing the body of PC Keith Palmer is unloaded from the hearse at the Palace of Westminster in central London, yesterday.

French Leftist candidate shakes up raceMarseille

AFP

French Communist-backed presidential candidate Jean-Luc

Melenchon drew tens of thou-sands of supporters to a mass open-air rally yesterday, underlining his surging pop-ularity just two weeks from the unpredictable election.

Polls show far-left Melen-chon closing in on the frontrunners, 39-year-old centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen ahead of the April 23 vote, adding new drama to a rollercoaster campaign.

After strong perform-ances in two televised debates, several new surveys this weekend showed him climbing to third position, with 18-19 percent of voters saying they would vote for him.

German military scours ranks for extremistsBerlin

Reuters

The Germany military’s counter-intelligence agency is looking into

275 suspected right-wing extremists in its ranks, includ-ing a soldier heard saying “Heil Hitler”, the Defence Ministry has told parliament in a letter seen by Reuters yesterday.

About 143 of the cases were reported last year and 53 this year, the Ministry wrote in its 15-page answer, detailing incidents of soldiers performing Nazi salutes or uttering racist remarks against servicemen with migrant backgrounds.

Budapest heaves with protests

Canada was born in France: TrudeauVimy

AFP

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country "was born here" as he led commemorations in France yes-

terday for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

The battle, which started on April 9, 1917, was one of the defining moments of World War I and a founding moment in Canada's history as Canadian troops fought under Canadian command for the first time.

Around 20,000 Canadians made the journey to their country's memorial in north-ern France to mark the centenary, turning the former battlefield into a sea of the red and white of their country's flag.

Speaking from the towering white struc-ture, Trudeau spoke of the 3,598 Canadians — "most were men in their early twenties" — who were killed fighting to take control of the strategic 8km ridge.

Trudeau said one of the 80,000 Cana-dians in the battle, 20-year-old William Bell, had written home on April 7, 1917 to praise the cake his family had sent to the trenches. Within days, he was killed fighting at Vimy.

"It was through their sacrifice that Can-ada became an independent signatory of the Treaty of Versailles," Trudeau said, refer-ring to the most important of the treaties that brought World War I to an end.

"So in that way, Canada was born here."

Trudeau was joined at the memorial by French President Francois Hollande and Brit-ain's Prince Charles and his sons Princes William and Harry.

Charles, the heir to the throne, said the Canadians succeeded where other armies had failed in seizing the high ground at Vimy.

"However, victory came at an unbeara-bly heavy cost. This was, and remains, the single bloodiest day in Canadian military history," he said.

"Yet Canadians displayed a strength of character and commitment to one another that is still evident today... "

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shakes hands with people during a commemoration ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in Vimy, northern France, yesterday.

16 MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017HOME

17MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017 AMERICAS

People dance Zumba at the '22 de Agosto' square in Managua, Nicaragua, yesterday.

Shaking a leg

Around 300 Cubans gather in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico expecting to be allowed to seek refuge in the United States, yesterday. The US, on January 1, this year, removed the immigration privileges for the Cubans who now need a visa to enter the country.

Seeking refuge

Violence rages

Violence broke out when protesters who had gathered in east of the city changed course at opposition leader Henrique Capriles’s request and headed towards the government ombudsman’s office.

Caracas

AFP

Protesters hurling rocks clashed with police fir-ing tear gas yesterday in Venezuela’s fourth demonstration in a

week against President Nicolas Maduro and his government.

The rally was marked by anger over a ruling from the left-ist government banning opposition leader Henrique Capriles from office for 15 years. Around 4,000 people attended the demonstration.

Capriles narrowly lost the 2013 presidential election that brought Maduro to power fol-lowing the death of his mentor Hugo Chavez—father of Vene-zuela’s “socialist revolution.”

The government move, which the 44-year-old Capriles announced on Friday, effectively prevents him from running against Maduro in next year’s general election.

Yesterday’s violence broke out when protesters who had gathered in the east of the city changed course at Capriles’s request and headed towards the

government ombudsman’s office.

The district—home to many government offices—is a pro-Maduro bastion and the president’s supporters were holding a “cultural, sporting and recreational rally” there.

National Guard police fired tear gas, water cannon and rub-ber bullets to force protesters back. Masked demonstrators threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police, said AFP reporters on the scene. At least two police officers were hit by the flaming bottles.

The initial tally of injuries stood at 17, according to mayor of

one of Caracas’s districts. Accord-ing to Capriles, the building where he carries out his political activi-ties was “attacked with bombs” shortly after the demonstration. “What is the order of Maduro? To kill us? If something happens, you know who is responsible and what must be done!” he wrote on Twitter.

Capriles was among the leaders behind demonstrations against Maduro earlier this week that triggered clashes with police.

“This thing that they just did to Capriles is the product of tyr-anny,” said Adel Rincones, 61, who clutched a sign that read “Venezuela is wounded in the heart with hunger, misery, cor-ruption, dictatorship.”

Others at the rally held pic-tures of Capriles. “People are tired of so much corruption, hunger and poverty,” said Vanessa Garcia, 37, an optometry student.

Protests also erupted in sev-eral other cities, including unrest-prone San Cristobal in the west, where masked gunmen reportedly set off explosions, causing demonstrators to flee. In Caracas, the violent clashes went on for about three hours before

demonstrators dispersed.Intelligence Services chief

Gustavo Gonzalez said some leaders of a “fascist terrorist cell” were taken into custody

for fomenting yesterday's unrest.

He said Capriles was a leader of this cell, but did not immedi-ately comment on his status. At

least 51 people were arrested nationwide in Saturday’s protest clashes, 17 of whom were released, the NGO Criminal Jus-tice Forum said.

Fresh anti-Maduro protests erupt in Venezuela

Demonstrators against Nicolas Maduro's government seen amid a tear gas cloud during clashes with riot police in Caracas, yesterday.

Sao Paulo, Brazil

AP

SEVEN inmates have died in a penitentiary in a northern Brazilian state where riots left dozens of prisoners dead ear-lier this year, according to authorities.

Six of the prisoners died on Saturday at the Puraquequara prison in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, the state prison administration said. The seventh body was found yes-terday. It was not clear when the seventh death occurred.

The circumstances sur-rounding all of the deaths are under investigation. One of those killed had been decap-itated; another appeared to have been asphyxiated.

Unlike in previous prison killings, there was no riot when the deaths occurred, accord-ing to the prison administration, and prisoners did not resist the police who responded to the crimes.

Four prisoners died at same lockup in January, when a series of riots at Brazilian prisons left more than 120 inmates dead, including more than 50 at another Amazonas penitentiary. Some of those killed had been decapitated or dismembered in violence blamed on clashes between rival gangs. The deaths raised serious questions about Brazil’s prisons, which are over-crowded and understaffed.

7 inmates die in Amazonas prison

Palm Beach, Florida

AP

A top national security adviser to President Donald Trump is the lat-

est official heading out in an ongoing shuffle within the National Security Council.

K T McFarland came into White House as a deputy to Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Flynn was asked to resign in Febru-ary amid revelations that he misled senior administration officials about his contacts with Russian government officials.

McFarland’s impending move was confirmed yesterday by a senior administration offi-cial who spoke on condition of anonymity. The post requires

Senate confirmation.Flynn’s replacement, Lt Gen

H R McMaster, has been allowed to make changes to national security structure. McMaster immediately expressed a desire to run a less hierarchical organisation and be more accessible to his staff.

Last week, the White House confirmed removal of Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, from the National Security Council, reversing an earlier, controversial decision to give Bannon access to the group’s highest-level meetings.

McFarland worked as a Fox News analyst before joining Trump’s national security team. She previously worked for three presidents — Richard Nixon, Ger-ald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

Washington

AP

The FBI has been reviewing the handling of thousands of terrorism-related tips

and leads from the past three years to make sure they were properly investigated and no obvious red flags were missed, it was reliably learnt.

The review follows attacks by people who were once on the FBI’s radar but who have been accused in the past 12 months of

massacring innocents in an Orlando, Florida, club, injuring people on in New York City, and gunning down travellers in a Flor-ida airport. In each case, suspects had been determined not to war-rant continued law enforcement scrutiny months and sometimes years before the attacks.

The internal audit, which has not been previously reported, began this year and is being con-ducted in FBI field offices across the country. A senior federal law enforcement official described

the review as an effort to “err on the side of caution.”

The audit is a review of records to ensure proper FBI procedures were followed. It’s an acknowledgment of challenge the FBI has faced, particularly in recent years, in predicting which of tens of thousands of tips the bureau receives might materi-alise one day into a viable threat.

Investigations that go dormant because of a lack of evidence can resurface instantly when a sub-ject once under scrutiny commits

violence or displays fresh signs of radicalisation. FBI Director James Comey has likened difficulty to finding not only a needle in a hay-stack but determining which piece of hay may become a needle.

Though there’s no indication of significant flaws in how ter-rorism inquiries are opened and closed, the review is a way for the FBI to “refine and adapt to the threat, and part of that is always making sure you cover your bases,” said a law enforce-ment official.

The pace of FBI’s counter-terrorism work accelerated with the rise of the Islamic State group, which in 2014 declared the creation of its so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq and has used sophisticated propa-ganda to lure disaffected Westerners to its cause. By the summer of 2015, Comey has said, the FBI was “strapped” in keep-ing tabs on the group’s American sympathisers and identifying those most inclined to commit violence.

Salem, Oregon

AP

The Oregon Legislature may have an unusual request for voters in the next general

election that harkens back to that fateful summer day in 1804 when a bitter rivalry between U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr and the nation’s first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, was settled with a fatal gunshot.

Should ongoing discussions in Salem materialise, voters would see a question on their general-election ballots asking

if a 172-year-old ban on dueling by public officials — as in, the old-fashioned way of resolving fights — should be erased from the Oregon Constitution.

The constitutional ban in question is Article II, Section 9, which says anyone who offers, accepts, knowingly participates in a “challenge to fight a duel ... or who shall agree to go out of the State to fight a duel, shall be ineligible to any office of trust, or profit.” (this is exact language from the constitution)

The article was signed into law just 30 minutes after its

drafting by second provisional legislature in 1845, almost 15 years before Oregon’s state-hood, when squabbles were still often resolved by duel even dec-ades after Hamilton’s death on the opposite side of the country.

“They decided that it would not be very civil if two members of the Legislature disagreed and then shot each other on the front steps of the provisional capitol,” Republican Senator Brian Boquist said recently during the proposal’s first committee hearing.

Trump adviser tapped as Singapore envoy

FBI reviews handling of terrorism-related tips

Oregon voters may decide to toss constitutional ban on duels

18 MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017AMERICAS

Meeting tomorrow

The US Secretary of State will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tomorrow, just days after the United States fired cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in retaliation for the chemical attack.

We’re asking and calling on Bashar Al Assad to cease the use of these weapons. Other than that, there is no change to our military posture, he said.

The future USS Gerald R Ford (CVN 78) seen underway on its own power for the first time, in Newport News, Virginia, yesterday. The first-of-class ship — the first new US aircraft carrier design in 40 years — will spend several days conducting builder’s sea trials, a comprehensive test of many of the ship’s key systems and technologies.

Testing its skills

Washington

AFP

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (pic-tured) will press Russia on its failure to prevent Syria’s

use of chemical weapons in meetings this week in Moscow, he said in interviews aired yesterday.

Tillerson stopped short of accusing the Russians of com-plicity in a suspected sarin nerve gas attack on April 4 that killed at least 87 civilians in Syria’s southern Idlib province.

“I don’t draw conclusions of complicity at all, but clearly they’ve been incompetent and perhaps they’ve just simply been out-maneuvered by the Syrians,” Tillerson said in an interview with ABC’s This Week program.

Tillerson meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tomorrow, just days after the United States fired cruise mis-siles at a Syrian air base in retaliation for the chemical attack.

If Syria carries out more

chemical attacks, he said, “that is going to be clearly very dam-aging to US-Russian relations.

“I do not believe that the Russians want to have worsen-ing relationships with the US, but it’s going to take a lot of discus-sion and a lot of dialogue to better understand what is the

relationship that Russia wishes to have with the US.”

At the same time, Tillerson and other top US officials made clear that the US objective was limited to deterring further chemical attacks, and not the start of a campaign to oust Assad.

“We’re asking and calling on Bashar Al Assad to cease the use of these weapons. Other than that, there is no change to our military posture,” he said.

“I’m hopeful that we can have constructive talks with the Russian government, with For-eign Minister Lavrov and have Russia be supportive of a proc-ess that will lead to a stable Syria.”

Coral Gables, Florida

AP

A FORMER gym employee opened fire inside the facility yesterday, critically wound-ing a manager and another person before he killed him-self, officials said.

The manager later died at a hospital after the shooting at Equinox gym, a law enforcement official who was brief on the investigation said. The official spoke on the con-dition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

The shooting happened about at the upscale mall, the Shops at Merrick Park. Shop-pers, diners at mall restaurants and people in workout gear ran to safety or took cover after reports of gunfire.

“Five gunshots,” Ovi Viera, who was washing his hands in the men's locker room, told The Miami Herald. "It was too loud for it to have been a weight dropping. Within two seconds, people just started running out."

Miami-Dade police said the second victim was in crit-ical condition at a hospital. Police have not released the names of the shooter and victims.

“It appears to be an ex-employee, managerial dispute that triggered this shooting,” Miami-Dade Police Detective Alvaro Zabaleta said.

Dallas

AP

Dallas’ emergency siren system was hacked over-night, resulting in them

sporadically sounding for about an hour and a half and forcing officials to have to shut down the system, they said yesterday.

The person or people responsible were able to hack into a part of the system that was communicating with all 156 of the city’s sirens, Rocky Vaz, who heads the city’s Office of Emergency Management, said at a news conference.

He said his office eventually had to shut down the system, which is used to alert people to shelter indoors during severe weather. Technicians are trying to determine how to bring the system back online without the risk of it being hacked again, he said. In the meantime, the pub-lic has access to other alert systems, including reverse 911.

The sirens were activated at 11:42 p.m. on Friday. Officials deactivated the entire system eary yesterday. Vaz said the sirens went through about 15 cycles of a 90-second siren activation.

“We shut it down as quickly

as we could, taking into consid-eration all of the precautions and protocols we had to take to make sure that we were not compromising our 156 siren sys-tem,” he said.

City spokeswoman Sana Syed said investigators believe the hack came from the Dallas area. Vaz said city officials have asked the Federal Communica-tions Commission for help in determining who was behind the hack. He said police were not involved yet.

“We can’t talk a whole lot about the hack itself, because obviously we don’t want this to happen again,” Syed said.

Montgomery, Alabama

AP

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley (pictured) will face impeachment hear-

ings beginning today after the state Supreme Court gave law-makers the greenlight to move ahead with an effort to oust the governor, who is fighting to stay in office amid fallout from an affair with a top aide.

The Alabama Supreme Court reversed a short-lived victory for Bentley when a judge blocked impeachment proceedings. After the high court’s ruling, the House

Judiciary Committee quickly announced plans to proceed with hearings today.

Bentley, a 74-year-old der-matologist, has been engulfed in a controversy since recordings surfaced in 2016 of him making suggestive remarks to a female

aide before he and his wife got divorced. Bentley has vowed to stay in office despite growing calls for his resignation. He stood on marble steps of the state Cap-itol on Friday and somberly acknowledged making personal mistakes but maintained he did nothing to merit his removal from office.

“I do not plan to resign. I have done nothing illegal. If the people want to know if I mis-used state resources, the answer is simply no. I have not,” Bent-ley said. He criticised unnamed people he said were delighting in exposing the embarrassing

details of his personal life.The governor’s legal team

has argued that the proposed hearings are fundamentally unfair and do not give the gov-ernor the adequate opportunity to respond to accusations. The Supreme Court justices asked for briefs on the matter to be filed by today.

“It’s disappointing to hear the committee will plow forward while the Supreme Court is con-sidering the case. We have no idea what the committee has planned for today or who its wit-nesses will be,” Bentley lawyer Ross Garber said.

US steps pressure on Russia ahead of talks

NEWS BYTES

NEW YORK: Workers at a famed New York bakery who face a deadline to produce immigration papers are instead defy-ing the government in public — at President Donald Trump’s Manhattan home.

The 31 employees of the Tom Cat Bakery will be fired and could be deported if they cannot prove by April 21 that they’re working in the country legally.

The Department of Homeland Security set the deadline for the workers to show their employment documents.

Many have worked on the gourmet bakery’s production line for much of its 30-year existence.

Tom Cat covers a whole city block in Queens, churning out artisanal bread 24 hours a day and delivering it around in the New York City area.

Colombian soldier dead in rebel bomb attack; three others hurtBOGOTA: Colombias army said a soldier has been killed by an explosive device attributed to a dissident wing of the Rev-olutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The attack took place early yesterday in the southern depart-ment of Guaviare when soldiers and police were patrolling near a highway. An army statement says three other soldiers were wounded and blames the 1st Front of the FARC.

Two inmates charged for slaying fellow four prisonersWASHINGTON: Two US inmates were charged in the mur-ders of four fellow prisoners at a South Carolina maximum security prison, the state’s law enforcement division said yes-terday. The four men were found dead in a cell at the Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina on Fri-day, according to the arrest warrants.

Denver Simmons and Jacob Philip lured the other four inmates into the cell, the warrants said, before attacking and strangling them.

Man held for human traffickingGEORGETOWN, DELAWARE: Authorities have charged a Delaware man with human trafficking following an investiga-tion by state and federal officials into an alleged prostitution operation in Georgetown.

Officials say 55-year-old Jorge Arcinieja of Georgetown was arrested.

Arcinieja is charged with human trafficking for abuse, trafficking an individual, and conspiracy. He is being held under $250,000 cash bond.

Investigators said they staked out a mobile home in George-town and later executed after seeing several men frequent the home for a short period of time before leaving. A 25-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic was found in a bedroom.

Fans say farewell to Chuck BerryST. LOUIS: Fans lined up before dawn yesterday to pay their final respects to music legend Chuck Berry, roughly three weeks after his death at age 90 near his hometown of St. Louis.

The Pageant, a club where Berry often performed, opened its doors yesterday morning for a four-hour public viewing, which will be followed by a private service and celebration for musicians family and friends.

As fans filed past Berry’s open casket, which has his beloved cherry-red Gibson ES-335 electric guitar bolted to the inside of its lid, a musician outside played Berry standards such as Johnny B Goode, Sweet Little Sixteen and Roll Over Beethoven.

Famed NYC bakery’s immigrant workers defy US President

Washington

AFP

US President Donald Trump notified Con-gress yesterday of the

US missile strikes on Syria days after the event, warning ominously of further actions “as necessary.”

In a letter addressed to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate President Orrin Hatch, Trump gave details on missile strike on Shayrat military air-field, launched in retaliation for an apparent chemical attack.

US warships in the Medi-terranean fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 0040 GMT Fri-day at the airfield located near Homs in central Syria.

US intelligence indicated “that Syrian military forces operating from this airfield were responsible for the

chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians in southern Idlib Province, Syria, that occurred on April 4,” Trump wrote.

“I directed this action in order to degrade the Syrian mil-itary’s ability to conduct further chemical weapons attacks and to dissuade Syrian regime from using or proliferating chemical weapons, thereby promoting stability of the region and avert-ing a worsening of region’s current humanitarian catastrophe.”

Trump wrote he “acted in vital national security and for-eign policy interests of the US, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations and as commander in chief and chief executive.

He added the US “will take additional action, as necessary and appropriate, to further its important national interests.”

Palm Beach, Florida

AP

US President Donald Trump intends to nominate Lee Francis Cissna to head US Cit-izenship and Immigration Services. The White House announced the nomination in a statement yesterday.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services proc-esses immigration and naturalisation applications. The agency is part of Department of Homeland Security, where Cissna currently works as director of immigration policy in the Office of Policy.

Trump has taken a firm stance on immigration since his inauguration, passing executive orders with the intention of tightening bor-der security and restricting the arrival of travelers from certain countries and refugees.

Cissna previously served at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in the Office of the Chief Counsel.

Trump notifies Congress of Syria air strikes

Cissna to head US immigration agency

Former gym employee shoots 2; ends life

Dallas emergency siren system hacked

Alabama Governor faces impeachment hearings

19MONDAY 10 APRIL 2017 MORNING BREAK

A jetski rider enjoys the weather near Brighton Pier on the south coast of England, yesterday.

Creating a surf

HIGH TIDE 04:15 - 17:00 LOW TIDE 10:45 - 22:45

Hazy to misty at places at first be-

comes relatively hot to hot daytime

with some clouds.

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

27oC 34oC

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

LATEST NEWSUPDATE

FAJRSHOROOK

03.59 am

05.17 am

ZUHRASR

11.35 am

03.05 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

05.56 pm

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PRAYER TIMINGS

YouTubers gather for first European meetingAmsterdam

AFP

Thousands flocked to Amsterdam from around Europe this weekend to

meet their online video heroes and mingle with young fans, eager to learn how they too can become a YouTube star.

They were taking part in the first VidCon Europe, an off-shoot of VidCon US set up in Anaheim, southern California,

eight years ago and now a hot venue amid an online revolution.

While such YouTube stars as Tyler Oakley, or Hannah Hart may not be household names to most, they have built up a huge fan base among chil-dren and young adults with their funny, often anarchic videos.

Though sometimes deal-ing with serious issues, they are filmed mostly with a

tripod or webcam from their own kitchens or living rooms.

Amsterdam is VidCon's first foray out of the United States. Organisers are hoping it may become an annual event, and are also looking towards the first VidCon in Melbourne, Australia, later this year.

"The European place for online video is a few years behind the US one, but it is approaching it. Every day

another kid starts a channel and wants to be famous," Michael Gardner, chief oper-ating officer, said.

Some 3,500 people from as far as Latvia, Serbia and Estonia trekked to Amsterdam for the three-day event, where industry figures also mixed with creators, or video produc-ers often referred to as YouTubers, and fans.

Although small compared to the 26,000 who travelled to

Anaheim in 2016, organisers said it was a good debut and the crowd was three times larger than the first VidCon in the US eight years ago.

"Authenticity" is the key to success for new YouTubers, Gardner said. "These online video stars, they're not on script, they're being themselves."

"It's like having a real good friend, who talks to you every day."

Harry Potter play eyes Olivier AwardsLondon

AP

Producers of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" hope

the play will work its magic at British theatre's Olivier Awards, where it's nominated in 11 catego-ries including best new play.

Jamie Parker, who plays a grown-up Harry in the stage sequel to J K Rowling's wizarding saga, is nominated for best actor. He's up against Ian McKellen for "No Man's Land," Tom Hollander for "Travesties," and Ed Har-ris for "Buried Child."

Other nominations for

"Cursed Child" include director John Tiffany; Noma Dumezweni, a sup-porting actress contender for playing the adult Her-mione Granger; and supporting actor nominee Anthony Boyle, who plays Slytherin student Scorpius Malfoy.

Best-actress Olivier nominees include Glenda Jackson for "King Lear" and Ruth Wilson for "Hedda Gabler." The movie-inspired comedy "Groundhog Day," which recently opened on Broadway, has eight nom-inations, including best new musical, at Britain's equivalent of Broadway's Tony Awards.

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