targets in Doha GULF TIMES

In brief

GULF TIMES

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QATAR

since 1978

SATURDAY Vol. XXXIX No. 10984

October 27, 2018Safar 18, 1440 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

Local designers in thelimelight at Heya 2018

QATAR | Page 16

Elshorbagy targets fourth title in Doha

SPORT | Page 8

Met Dept forecasts chancesof rain and thunderstorms

Qatar Meteorology Department has forecast chances of scat-tered rain, may be thundery at

times with sudden strong wind, across the country from today afternoon until Monday.

The country is aff ected by an upper level low pressure along with a surface low pressure, and hence chances of rain. It had rained at some places yes-terday, especially at Al Wakrah, going by a video tweeted by the Met Offi ce.

Today, partly cloudy skies are ex-pected with a chance of rain, may be thundery at times, and light to mod-erate in intensity for a short period of time with sudden strong wind reach-ing 30 knots and high waves exceeding 10ft.

Tomorrow, it would be partly cloudy to cloudy with a chance of thundery rain of moderate to heavy intensity in most areas accompanied with sudden strong wind exceeding 40 knots. Visibility may be poor due to dust and high waves exceeding 10ft are forecast.

On Monday, it would be partly cloudy at times with a chance of light to moderate rain with strong wind reach-ing 30 knots at times and high waves exceeding 10ft.

“We are in a transitional period that requires following latest updates through our interactive pages,” the Met Offi ce said in a statement yesterday.

In addition, the Met Department has urged all to take extra care during thun-

derstorms due to the associated risk of strong wind, heavy rain and poor vis-ibility.

The maximum temperature today is expected to be 36C (Abu Samra), fol-lowed by 34C (Dukhan) 33C (Ruwais), and 32C (Mesaieed, Wakrah, Doha and Al Khor).

A minimum temperature of 25C is forecast today at Al Khor, Dukhan and Abu Samra, followed by 27C (Ruwais), 28C (Doha) and 29C (Mesaieed, Wak-rah).

The maximum and minimum tem-peratures recorded yesterday: Me-saieed (33, 29), Wakrah (32, 26), Doha (33, 28), Al Khor (33, 24), Ruwais (31, 26), Dukhan (34, 25), and Abu Samra (37, 24).

Indian minister Swaraj to payvisit to Qatar from tomorrow

India’s External Aff airs Minister Sushma Swaraj will pay a three-day offi cial visit to Qatar from to-

morrow (Sunday) as part of a tour of the region which includes Kuwait, the Indian embassy in Doha announced yesterday.

The minister will be accompanied by a high-level delegation from the Ministry of External Aff airs, New Delhi. Swaraj would interact with Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs HE Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, according to a statement issued by the embassy.

During the visit, the countries are expected to sign important agree-ments. The minister will also have an

interactive session with the members of the Indian community on Monday.

This will be Swaraj’s fi rst visit to Qatar as India’s External Aff airs Min-ister. In August, HE Sheikh Mohamed had visited New Delhi. The Indian minister’s visit is expected to provide an opportunity to hold an in-depth discussion between the two countries on various global, regional and bilat-eral issues, the embassy said.

India and Qatar share a historic and multi-dimensional relationship.

The bilateral visit of His Highness the Amir in March 2015 and HE the Prime Minister to India in December 2016 and that of the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Qatar in June 2016 have further boosted the traditionally cordial and close ties be-tween the two countries.

“Qatar hosts about 700,000 Indi-ans who form the largest expatriate community in the country. Qatar is a reliable energy partner, accounting for more than 50% of India’s natural gas imports. The bilateral trade between the two countries during 2017-18 was $9.9bn. India’s exports to Qatar during this period reached $1.5bn registering an increase of 87% over the previous year,” the statement added.

Kohei Uchimura of Japan competes in the men’s rings qualification during day two of the 48th FIG Artistic Gymnastics Championships at Doha’s Aspire Dome yesterday. More than 500 gymnasts have descended on Qatar this week for the event. Sport Pages 1, 2

Japanese gymnast in action

Amnesty urgesItalian clubsto shun ‘SuperCup’ in Saudi

By Anthony HarwoodGulf Times CorrespondentLondon

Juventus and AC Milan are being urged by human rights campaigners not to play the Italian ‘Super Cup’

in Saudi Arabia following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Amnesty International said that if the clubs go ahead with the fi xture in January it will only help Riyadh to use sport to “rebrand” its tarnished image, known as “sportswashing”.

Soccer bosses from the Italian league, Serie A, signed an $8mn deal in June for the ‘Supercoppa’ to be played in Saudi Arabia over three of the next fi ve years.

The fi rst fi xture in January will be between the winners of the Serie A league, Juventus, and the cup fi nalists, AC Milan – much like England’s Com-munity Shield. Previous Supercoppas have been held in the US, China, Libya and Qatar.

But the international outcry over the savage killing of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month has led to calls for big sporting events in the desert kingdom to be boycotted.

The world’s top two tennis players, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, are already under pressure to pull out of a lucrative exhibition match in Saudi Arabia next month.

Both players took to Twitter in the days just after Khashoggi disappeared to thank the authorities for the invi-tation to visit the “beautiful country” just before Christmas – but this was before the full gruesome details of what had happened to Khashoggi had emerged.

Outrage over the killing later led to more than 40 high-profi le organisa-tions to pull out of this week’s Saudi investment conference, dubbed ‘Davos in the Desert’.

In a hard-hitting statement Am-nesty International UK’s head of policy and government aff airs, Allan Hogarth, said of the Supercoppa plan today: “It’s clear that countries like Saudi Arabia are well aware of the potential for sport to subtlety ‘rebrand’ a country.

“Even before the horrifi c killing of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia had a truly appalling human rights record. Big clubs like Juventus and AC Milan need to understand that their partici-pation in sporting events in the country could be used as a form of ‘sportswash-ing’.

“We’d urge these Italian clubs to think twice about the signal this sends out to sports fans across the world and the brave activists who stand up for hu-man rights in Saudi Arabia.”

If they do decide to go ahead with their match, Nadal and Djokovic have been urged to use the visit to highlight human rights abuses going on in Saudi.

“It’s up to Nadal and Djokovic where they play their lucrative exhibition matches, but if they go to Jeddah we’d like to see them using their profi les to raise human rights issues,” said Hoga-rth. “Tweeting support for Saudi Ara-bia’s brave human rights defenders would be a start.”

Around 15 women’s rights activ-ists, including a friend of the Duchess of Sussex, Loujain al-Hathloul, face 25 years in jail for speaking out on the need for more reforms.

AC Milan referred calls to Supercop-pa organisers, Serie A, who declined to comment.

QATAR | Offi cial

Amir condoles withJordanian kingHis Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani sent on Thursday cable of condolences to Jordan’s King Abdullah II on the victims of the floods in the Dead Sea area, wishing the injured a speedy recovery. HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani also sent a similar cable to Prime Minister Dr Omar Razzaz. Page 3

Amir sends greetingsto Austrian presidentHis Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani sent yesterday cables of congratulations to Austria President Alexander Van der Bellen on his country’s National Day. HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani sent a similar cable to Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

REGION | Confl ict

One civilian killed ‘everythree hours’ in YemenA civilian is killed every three hours in Yemen, Oxfam said yesterday, calling on the United States, Britain and other European states to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. “One civilian has been killed every three hours in fighting in Yemen since the beginning of August, with many more people succumbing to disease and hunger,” Oxfam said in a statement. Citing data collected by the Civilian Impact Monitoring Project, linked to the United Nations global protection clusters, the aid group said 575 civilians were killed between August 1 and October 15, including 136 children. Page 3

ASIA | Politics

Crisis in Sri Lanka aspresident sacks PMPresident Maithripala Sirisena installed Sri Lanka’s controversial former strongman leader Mahinda Rajapakse as the country’s new prime minister yesterday, in a shock move that plunged the island into an unprecedented constitutional crisis. Sirisena’s off ice announced the surprise decision moments after the president sacked incumbent premier Ranil Wickremesinghe — who insisted that he was still the legitimate prime minister and would fight his dismissal in court. Page 6

Juventus and AC Milan asked ‘to think twice’ after Khashoggi case

Turkey seeks extradition of18 Saudis in Khashoggi case

Erdogan urges Saudis to reveal location of journalist’s body

Turkey ‘knows more about case than it has disclosed’

Saudi prosecutor to visit Istanbul tomorrow

ReutersIstanbul

Turkish prosecutors have prepared an extradition request for 18 sus-pects from Saudi Arabia in the

killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, authorities said yesterday, after Presi-dent Tayyip Erdogan urged Riyadh to disclose who ordered the murder.

Erdogan has in recent days stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia to come clean in the case, and Western gov-ernments have also voiced increasing scepticism, pitching the world’s top oil exporter and a pivotal Middle East ally into a worsening crisis.

Erdogan said Turkey had more in-formation than it had shared so far about the killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi national and Washington Post col-umnist who was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

Khashoggi, who lived in the United States, was a critic of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler.

Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor on Thursday said the killing of Khashoggi was premeditated, contradicting a previous offi cial statement that it hap-pened accidentally during a tussle in the consulate.

Riyadh’s numerous shifting ac-counts of the killing have undermined Prince Mohamed’s stance in the West.

Turkish prosecutors seeking the ex-tradition accuse the 18 of “murder by premeditation, monstrous intent or by torture”. Riyadh previously arrested the 18 as part of its investigation into the case.

Those include a 15-man security team that Turkey says fl ew in hours before the killing and carried it out.

“Who gave this order?” Erdogan

said in a speech to members of his AK Party in Ankara. “Who gave the order for 15 people to come to Turkey?” he said.

Saudi offi cials initially denied hav-ing anything to do with Khashoggi’s disappearance after he entered the consulate, which he had visited to ob-tain paperwork for a planned marriage.

“The reasoning behind the extradi-tion request is that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey by Saudi na-tionals who travelled to Turkey for this specifi c purpose,” a senior Turkish of-fi cial said.

“It is clear that the judicial system in Turkey is better equipped to genuinely serve the cause of justice in this case.” To Page 9

Florida suspect arrested overbombs sent to Trump critics

FBI agents used DNA and a fi nger-print to identify the Florida man suspected of sending at least 14

bombs to critics of US President Don-ald Trump days ahead of congressional elections. Cesar Sayoc has been charged with fi ve federal crimes including threats against former presidents and faces up to 48 years in prison if found guilty, US At-

torney General Jeff Sessions said.He earlier said the suspect could face

58 years. “We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political vio-lence,” he said. Authorities are still in-vestigating whether other people were involved and did not rule out the possi-bility of further arrests or more explo-sive devices in the mail. Page 5

“Qatar hosts about 700,000 Indians who form the largest expatriate community in the country”

People protest against the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in London yesterday.

QATAR

Gulf Times Saturday, October 27, 20182

Role of ICJ in dispute resolution supportedQatar has renewed its sup-

port for the jurisdic-tion of the International

Court of Justice (ICJ) in the peaceful settlement of disputes, affi rming its commitment to the role played by the court under Article 33 of the United Nations (UN) Charter.

This came in a statement delivered by Qatar’s Perma-nent Representative to the UN, ambassador HE Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif al-Thani, at a session of the UN General As-sembly to discuss the ICJ report.

The ambassador said that over the past two decades, the eff orts of Qatar have contribut-ed to the prevention and settle-ment of numerous confl icts in the region and to the strength-ening of international eff orts to maintain international peace and security.

The ambassador added that Qatar’s record of going to the court and respecting its deci-sions is well known, as Qatar carried out, more than two decades ago, the decisions of the court in good faith, stress-ing the support of Qatar for the jurisdiction of the court to resolve disputes by peaceful means.

In line with this commit-ment, Qatar continued to use the mechanisms provided by inter-national judicial bodies, partic-ularly ICJ, to settle existing dis-putes and protect the rights of Qataris, the ambassador added.

In this context, she referred to the lawsuit fi led by Qatar be-fore the court against the UAE, concerning the application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination on July 23, 2018.

The ambassador reviewed the provisions of the ICJ order, which states: the reunifi cation of families that include Qataris separated by measures taken by

the UAE on June 5, 2017, allow Qatari students aff ected by the measures taken by the UAE on June 5, 2017 to complete their education in the UAE or to obtain their educational records if they wish to complete their studies elsewhere, and allow Qataris af-fected by measures taken by the UAE on June 5, 2017 to reach the courts of the UAE and its other judicial bodies.

Ambassador HE Sheikha Alya said that the purpose of the ICJ’s order is to protect the interests of Qataris and to avoid infring-ing on their rights as a result of these discriminatory measures taken by the UAE against Qa-taris. “It also affi rms Qatar’s

commitment to deal with the crisis and its implications for international peace and secu-rity as well as its humanitarian consequences under interna-tional law, international and bi-lateral agreements and interna-tional mechanisms for confl ict resolution,” she added.

The ambassador noted that the General Assembly’s keen-ness to hold an annual plenary meeting to hear the ICJ presi-dent and to give the member states the opportunity to express their comments and renew their support for the court’s mandate is a recognition of its crucial role in the peaceful settlement of disputes.

QNANew York

Traffi c diversion from today for Al Wakrah main road project

As part of Al Wakrah main road project, the Public Works Authority

(Ashghal) has announced that traffi c to Doha from Al Meshaf and Al Wukair areas, will be diverted from today until the fi rst quarter of 2020.

For traffi c from Al Wukair and Al Meshaf areas, road users can take a left turn at the signalised intersection of Saud Bin Abdel-rahman Street and Al Wakrah Parallel road towards Doha and Hamad International Airport.

Traffi c from adjacent areas for Fahes Al Wakrah and Wo-qod petrol station facilities can lead to reach Doha and Hamad International Airport via turning right at the junc-tion near Woqod petrol sta-tion and making a U-turn at Al Sadafa Roundabout.

Al Wakrah main road is scheduled to be completed in the second quarter of 2020. The construction will take place in three stages.

The fi rst stage starts from Barwa village, located at the Airport interchange in the north to Al Wakrah Road and Ras Bufentas station.

The construction extends over 1.8km on a three-lane stretch in both directions of Al Wakrah main road. The fi rst stage also includes 840m of subways north of the road.

The project’s second stage will extend from former Al Wakrah Roundabout up un-til Pearl Roundabout, with road works for approximately 1.9km. The project also in-cludes three lanes in each direction, and a 160m tun-nel located under the main Al Wakrah Qatar Rail Station.

The project’s fi nal stage starts about 1km from the former Pearl Roundabout and extends up to Woqod Petrol Station located towards the city of Mesaieed. The con-struction includes the de-velopment of the 5.5km road from Al Wakrah main road and converting three main round-abouts, namely Pearl Rounda-bout, Ooredoo Roundabout and Wadi Afj a Roundabout in Al Jabal area to signal-con-trolled intersections in addi-tion to the construction of a junction in Al Razi Street.

Al Wakrah main road serves a large number of neighbour-hoods, residential and com-

mercial complexes in Al Wak-rah, Al Wukair, Barwa City and Al Wakrah Market. One of the key projects in the southern area, it will ease movement of Al Wakrah residents directly towards Doha in the north and to Mesaieed in the south.

Al Wakrah main road up-grade is part of the express-way networks in Qatar, as it will make a positive impact on the traffi c fl ow in the southern area. The project will also con-tribute to reducing pressure on existing roads in other areas of Al Wakrah; thus, comple-menting the other accesses of the expressway networks, of which several parts have been recently opened such as the G-Ring Road and the southern part of Doha Express Highway “Al Wakrah Bypass”, which is connected to Al Wakrah Stadi-um, one of the stadiums host-ing the FIFA 2022 World Cup.

Al Wukair Road: Ashghal has reconstructed Al Wukair Road that links the Orbital Road with Hamad Port Road towards Al Wukair area for a distance of 10.5km. Ashghal turned the dual one-lane road into a highway with four lanes in each direction to cater for 8,000 vehicles per hour.

Southern Doha Expressway: The 11km highway connects G-Ring Road with Mesaieed Road. It will ease access to Al Wakrah, Al Wukair and Al Mashaf areas, and it is con-sidered an alternative route for Al Wakrah Main Road through its connection with Mesaieed Road and G-Ring Road.

Doha Expressway includes fi ve multi-level interchanges that will be completed in the next few months. The project also comprises 42km of pe-destrian and cycle paths.

Hamad Port Road: A 14km road that connects Hamad Port and G-Ring Road, and includes four lanes in each di-rection, easing the movement of trucks between Hamad Port and Industrial Area, enhanc-ing the movement of goods between the port and all areas of the country, especially since the road is considered a corri-dor to reduce journey time.

Hamad Port Road is expected to reduce travel time by more than 15% especially that the road capacity is 8,000 vehicles per hour in each direction.

Architect’s impression of a section of Al Wakrah main road.

Entrepreneur eyes European market to export handicraft

Many micro businesses in Qatar have benefi ted from public sector ini-

tiatives that promote and devel-op home-based companies, sup-porting them to penetrate new markets both locally and abroad.

One of such companies is Doha-based Brush 221, a micro business specialising in decor, furniture, and home accessories, which received much-needed exposure during the second in-stalment of ‘Made at Home’, organised recently by Qatar Development Bank (QDB).

Brush 221, according to Qatari entrepreneur Moza al-Mansoori,

not only supplies home décor and accessories to local restaurants and coff ee shops but also exports its products to Italy. The compa-ny plans to expand to other Euro-pean countries in the future.

Al-Mansoori, who runs the company’s operations, also con-ducts online training to Qataris and expatriates but plans to ex-pand her workshops later on to cater to a much wider audience.

She also lauded QDB and the Bedaya Centre for Entrepre-neurship and Career Develop-ment for the services they pro-vide to micro business owners and for developing home-based businesses in Qatar.

In 2015, QDD initiated the Home-based Businesses Na-tional Programme (HBBNP), in

By Peter AlagosBusiness Reporter

Brush 221 products may be found in some restaurants and coff ee shops in Doha . PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil

collaboration with Ministry of Labour and Social Aff airs), Social Development Centre, and Qatar Chamber, to further help develop and promote this thriving sector.

The development bank also launched the ‘Made at Home’ exhibition to provide more expo-sure to home-based businesses, which are seen as contributors to the development of Qatar’s economy.

Speaking to Gulf Times ear-lier, QDB executive director of Intelligence and Localisation,

Saleh Majid al-Khulaifi , said that ‘Made at Home’ helps create new marketing windows that could contribute to the diversifi cation of the national economy, support Qatar’s small and medium-sized enterprise industry, encourage new entrepreneurial pursuits, and empower micro businesses.

He said QDB’s new programme dubbed ‘Derwazaa’ aims to help micro businesses in the rebrand-ing, packaging, and market-ing of their products, as well as to provide them access to

local and international markets.Al-Khulaifi encouraged home-

based businesses to register so they can avail the services of ‘Derwazaa’, which includes 50% subsidy of rebranding and mar-keting costs of their products.

“QDB is committed towards the continuous support its of-fers to home-based businesses, which play a key role in acceler-ating Qatar’s economic growth, and contribute eff ectively to the sustainable development of the country,” al-Khulaifi said.

MEC concludes copyright training programme

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC) has concluded the ‘Training

Programme on Copyright, Re-lated Rights and Trademarks’ or-ganised by the GCC Intellectual Property Training Centre and the Swedish Patent Institute.

The programme aims to ac-quaint staff of the Intellec-tual Property Rights Protec-tion Department in the fi eld of copyright, related rights and trademarks, and exchange of ex-periences in this fi eld.

The programme falls within the framework of the ministry’s keenness to co-operate with various bodies to work on de-veloping the capabilities of its

employees, and to provide them with the required expertise to carry out their duties to the best of their ability and achieve suc-cess in their work roles.

The four-day training pro-gramme covered a number of topics, including a general in-troduction on copyright, re-lated rights and trademarks, the introduction of relevant inter-national intellectual property laws, treaties and conventions, a review of a number of copyright and trademark issues and legal solutions. The programme also included presentations by par-ticipants on a number of topics related to copyright and trade-marks. The off icials along with the training staff .

Qatar hair industry network joins international organisation CidescoThe general assembly of the Comite In-

ternational d’Esthetique et de Cosme-tology (Cidesco) voted and approved,

at its 72nd meeting held last month, the membership of the Qatar Hair & Beauty In-dustry Network during Cidesco’s 66th World Congress and Exhibition in Stockholm.

Cidesco aims to establish scientifi c and practical principles for the cosmetic industry through the development of educational and training curricula and certifi cation according to international standards.

The majority of 32 participating Cidesco sections, representing diff erent countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Australasia, discussed and approved the Qa-tar network’s proposal, according to a press statement issued in Doha by Nama – Social Development Centre.

The involvement of Qatar through mem-bership to the international organisation en-hances the contribution of the Qatar network

and its feedback to Cidesco, the statement notes.

“The establishment of the network aims to support the cosmetic industry and develop the cosmetic industry standards in Qatar.

“It also aims at exchanging skills and scien-tifi c knowledge of professionals, developing the health and safety criteria, in addition to professional ethics, upgrading national cur-

ricula and representing Qatar in the fi eld of education and vocational training at Cidesco.”

The Qatar International Beauty Academy (Tajmeel) is the only international vocational training academy in the Middle East.

Owned by Nama and accredited to deliver programmes and award Cidesco’s various qualifi cations, it set up the network in 2013 to connect all salon owners, health and beauty professionals.

The Qatar network’s membership includes 30 salons and spa owners, 12 Cidesco gradu-ates and one training academy, with hopes to achieve a 30% annual increase in members, the statement adds.

“Undoubtedly, Qatar’s interest in the net-work development and success to connect it as a global platform with Cidesco section members representing 38 countries around the world marks a new phase in which Nama seeks to develop standards of excellence in the fi eld.”

Off icials at the event in Stockholm.

QRCS provides drinking water for Syrian refugees in Lebanon

Qatar Red Crescent Soci-ety’s (QRCS) mission in Lebanon has launched a

new project that helps provide clean drinking water for the Syrian refugee camps in Arsal of the Beqaa Governorate.

The purpose of the three-month project is to address the

problems facing both the refu-gee and host communities, by distributing potable water to 36,000 persons per day, or the total populations of 63 camps.

Omar Katerji, head of QRCS mission in Lebanon, described the water projects as a top priority in QRCS’s

strategy for the coming years.He noted that the Arsal water

purifi cation plant is a replication of another project in Saadnayel, a town of the Zahle district.

He also revealed that QRCS is planning to launch a simi-lar third project in North Governorate.

A water purification plant being operated in Arsal.

REGION/ARAB WORLD

3Gulf Times Saturday, October 27, 2018

Five Palestinians killed in border fl are-up: ministryAFPGaza City

Five Palestinians were killed yesterday as fresh clashes broke out with

Israeli troops on Gaza’s border with the Jewish state, despite Egyptian-brokered truce ef-forts, the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave said.

The fi ve men, aged between 22 and 27, died in separate in-cidents along the border fence, the ministry said.

The violence came despite talk of progress towards an Egyptian-brokered deal to end the months of often violent protests along the border.

Israeli helicopters and planes later struck three bases of the Hamas in northern Gaza with-out causing injuries, the army said and witnesses said.

The army did not comment on the deaths but said around 16,000 people had gathered along the border, with some setting tyres alight and hurling rocks, fi rebombs and grenades towards soldiers.

Troops responded with “riot dispersal means”, a spokesman added.Three of the men were shot dead east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, while one was killed east of Jabalia in the north of the coastal territory, the health ministry said.

A fifth man died east of Bureij in central Gaza when a hand grenade he was holding exploded accidentally, wit-nesses said.

Palestinians have gathered for protests along the Gaza Strip’s border at least weekly since March 30.

At least 212 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza since the protests be-gan, according to figures col-lated by AFP.

The majority have died dur-ing protests, while smaller numbers have been killed by air strikes and tank fire.

One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper along the border in the same period.

The protesters are calling to be allowed to return to lands their families fled or were ex-pelled after a 1948 war sur-rounding the creation of Israel and which are now inside the Jewish state.They are also pro-testing over Israel’s crippling blockade of Gaza.

Israel accuses Hamas of or-chestrating the often violent demonstrations.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since 2008.

The fresh violence could also scupper hopes of a deal to end the months of protests.

Egypt and the United Na-tions have been brokering in-direct negotiations between Hamas and Israel with the aim of calming the situation amid fears of another war.

Last week, a rocket fired from Gaza hit an Israeli home, narrowly avoiding killing a family.In response the Israeli army carried out air strikes

on around 20 Hamas targets in Gaza.The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat reported yesterday that a deal had been reached that would see the protests end in ex-change for an easing of Israel’s blockade.

Hamas officials denied a deal had been struck but con-firmed to AFP that progress was being made.

“We expect to reach an agreement very soon,” a sen-ior Hamas official said earlier yesterday on condition of ano-nymity.

Israel also fully reopened its border crossings with the Gaza Strip this week following a week of relative calm. It al-lowed dozens of trucks of fuel paid for by Qatar into the strip, having previously banned their entry in response to the border violence. Israel says the decade-long blockade is nec-essary to isolate Hamas.

Palestinians gather at the Israel-Gaza border fence during a protest calling for lifting the blockade on Gaza, yesterday.

A relative of a Palestinian who was killed at the border fence, reacts at a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip.

Mattis to assure US role in Mideast stabilityAFPManama

US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is to reaffi rm America’s role as a guar-

antor of stability in the Middle East, in a policy speech before Arab leaders today.

Mattis, who arrived in Bah-rain yesterday, will address the Manama Dialogue at a time of strained US ties with Saudi Arabia over the murder earlier this month of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Mattis will reiterate “our long term commitment to ensuring and helping these partners and allies...re-instil stability in a very chaotic region”, said Princi-pal Deputy Secretary of Defence for International Security Aff airs Katie Wheelbarger.

He will call on Arab nations to “continue to look to the United states as your security partner of choice because you can rely on us and depend on us to be there long term”, Wheelbarger told journalists travelling with Mattis. The defence secretary’s speech comes as Russia keeps up its military intervention in Syria and Washington accuses Tehran of sowing instability across the region.

Wheelbarger did not say whether Mattis would directly address the Khashoggi murder in his speech.

A critic of Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mo-hamed bin Salman, Khashoggi was murdered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

On Thursday, CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed US Presi-dent Donald Trump on the latest developments in the investiga-tion after a fact-fi nding mission to Turkey.

Pro-government Turkish me-dia said that intelligence offi cers showed Haspel video images and audio tapes of Khashoggi’s kill-ing gathered from the consulate.

His murder has generated in-ternational outrage and under-mined relations with Riyadh.

Morocco decided yesterday to keep its clocks at summer time around the year, abandoning winter time which would have come into eff ect at the weekend. The government said Morocco would “maintain summer time to avoid repeated changes during the year and... repercussions at several levels”, the off icial news agency MAP reported. A government off icial confirmed that the transition to winter time will not take place. The North African state was due to switch tomorrow, from its current time of GMT+1. Avoiding the switch saves “an hour of natural light” and reduces electricity consumption, said the administrative reform minister, Mohamed Ben Abdelkader. The European Union said at the end of August that it will recommend the bloc’s member countries abolish the twice-yearly clock change.

Morocco to keep summer time year-round

POLICY

Jordan fl ash fl ood death toll rises to 21ReutersAmman

Rescuers combed the shores of Jordan’s Dead Sea early yesterday,

searching for survivors, after fl ash fl oods killed at least 21 people, most of them school children in a bus that was swept away.

The fl oods, which followed torrential rain, poured through valleys and deep ravines sweeping people, vehicles and livestock to the shores of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth.

Thirty-seven people were rescued in a major operation in-volving helicopters and divers, civil defence sources said.

Rescue operations continued for other possible survivors.

The school bus that was swept away carried 44 chil-dren and teachers who were on a school picnic trip in the popular tourist spot, police chief Brigadier General Farid al-Sharaa told state television.

The majority of dead were schoolchildren.

The dead also included three Iraqis and a 20-year-old wom-an who was with the children on the school bus, a civil de-fence source said.

King Abdullah described the disaster as a “huge tragedy that hurt all of us” and the national fl ag was lowered in mourning as public opinion and politi-cians began raising questions in local media outlets about the preparedness of emergen-cies services to cope with such a disaster.

Prime Minister Omar Razzaz said it appeared the school had

broken regulations by going ahead with the trip, which had been banned in the Dead Sea area because of bad weather.

He also called for an investi-gation into infrastructure in the area.

Health Minister Ghazi al-Zi-bn said most of the injured had left the hospital in the area near the Dead Sea.

At least eight people were still missing, a medical source said.

A bridge on one of the cliff s of the Dead Sea collapsed under the force of the rains, the fi rst such after the end of summer.

Neighbouring Israel sent search-and-rescue helicop-ters to assist, an Israeli military statement said.

The team, dispatched at Am-man’s request, was operating

on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea.

A Jordanian offi cial said Is-rael had off ered to help and the kingdom requested a heli-copter with the technology to fi nd buried bodies in mud that would accelerate the searches.

The kingdom, which shares the longest border with Israel and have a common peace trea-ty, has a long a history of co-operation with its neighbour in natural disasters.

Jordan helped Israel in 2016 with fi re-fi ghting equipment after a rash of fi res that burned for days, straining Israel fi re-fi ghters.

An Israeli helicopter pilot who participated in the search said that close to 10 Israeli air-craft and drones had been

deployed.

Civil defence members look for survivors after rain storms unleashed flash floods, near the Dead Sea, Jordan, yesterday.

One civilian killed ‘every three hours in Yemen’AFP Dubai

A civilian is killed every three hours in Yemen, Oxfam said yesterday,

calling on the United States, Britain and other European states to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

“One civilian has been killed every three hours in fi ghting in Yemen since the beginning of August, with many more peo-ple succumbing to disease and hunger,” Oxfam said in a state-ment. Citing data collected by

the Civilian Impact Monitor-ing Project, linked to the United Nations global protection clus-ters, the aid group said 575 ci-vilians were killed between Au-gust 1 and October 15, including 136 children.

“Oxfam is calling on the UK, US and other governments to suspend arms sales to the Sau-dis because of their disregard for civilian lives in the war in Yemen,” read the Oxfam state-ment.

Saudi Arabia leads a pro-government military alli-ance that has battled Yemen’s Houthi rebels since 2015, push-

ing the country to the brink of famine.

The UN categorises Yemen as the world’s worst humani-tarian crisis, warning Tuesday that 14mn people now face a serious threat of famine.

Following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — the Washington Post column-ist and Saudi critic killed in his country’s Istanbul consu-late this month — rights and aid groups have urged Western states to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is the number one buyer of weapons from the United States.

Syria pushes back on UN role in constitutional talks

Reuters United Nations

Syria wants the United Nations to simply facili-tate eff orts to rewrite the

country’s constitution and not choose a third of the committee that will undertake the job, out-going UN Syria envoy Staff an de Mistura told the Security Coun-cil yesterday.

De Mistura briefed the 15-member body after meeting Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem in Damascus this week. De Mistura wants to convene a constitutional committee in No-vember before he steps down at the end of the month, but he has accused the Syrian government of delaying the process.

“We do have a serious chal-lenge, let’s be frank. It is my in-tention to spare no eff orts to ad-

dress this challenge during the forthcoming weeks,” De Mistura told the council. Participants at a Syrian peace conference in Rus-sia in January agreed to form the 150-member committee to re-write the Syrian constitution with a third chosen by the government, a third by opposition groups and a third by the United Nations.

“Minister Moualem did not ac-cept a role for the UN in general in

identifying or selecting the...third list,” De Mistura said. “He under-lined that the Syrian constitution is a highly sensitive matter of na-tional sovereignty.”

He said Moualem indicated that Syria and Russia had recently agreed that the third list of partic-ipants should be decided by Syria, Russia, Turkey and Iran — the three countries pushing separate Syria political talks known as the

Astana process — and then given to the United Nations for facilita-tion.

British UN ambassador Karen Pierce questioned Russia’s mo-tives in trying to negotiate a po-litical solution given Syria’s eff orts to stall a constitutional committee meeting. Russian UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said there were “no grounds for establishing ar-tifi cial deadlines for the establish-ment of the constitutional com-mittee.”

De Mistura said he would at-tend a summit with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, France and Ger-many in Istanbul today.

De Mistura’s successor faces a tough battle to negotiate a politi-cal deal, which the West has said is needed to unlock its reconstruc-tion support and to encourage the bulk of the millions of refugees in Europe and the Middle East to

return.

Opposition ‘aims for dialogue’ with Russia

Syria’s opposition welcomes dialogue with Moscow to achieve a political settle-

ment of the years-long war, said their chief negotiator, Nasr al-Hariri, in Russia

yesterday. “Of course, Russia can do a lot and can facilitate the expansion of di-

alogue,” he told reporters before meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“We have strived and will continue to strive for dialogue and negotiations with

Russia to achieve a political solution,” said the head of the Syrian Negotiation

Commission. “Russia is a state that has major influence on the Syrian issue,”

he said, expressing hope that Moscow would seize “this historic moment” and

help broker a solution. that suited both the regime and the Syrian people.

AFRICA

Gulf TimesSaturday, October 27, 20184

Thousands rally in DR Congo against use of voting machinesAFP Kinshasa

Thousands of opposi-tion supporters rallied yesterday across DR

Congo seeking the withdrawal of electronic voting machines in a long-delayed election due at the end of December, saying they would be misused to rig the results.

The regime of President Joseph Kabila in a rare ges-ture authorised the protest but AFP correspondents said se-curity forces were deployed in strength in Kinshasa, the key eastern cities of Goma and Bu-kavu and Bunia in the northeast.

Unlike deadly protest march-es in the past which have seen security forces fi ring teargas and live bullets, yesterday’s ral-lies ended without incident.

Thousands marched in cen-tral Kinshasa shouting “We will fi ght to the death”, and “Voting machine equals cheating ma-chine,” an AFP journalist said.

“It’s a show of force by the Congolese people who don’t want these voting machines...and a parody of an election,” said Vital Kamerhe, a presi-dential candidate in the De-cember 23 vote. Former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba and regional baron Moise Katumbi have been barred from standing for the top job in a move that raised howls of protest from their powerful blocs of supporters.

Bemba had asked people to rally in droves to protest against “the greatest electoral fraud ever with electronic machines that have not been tested any-where in the world.”

Katumbi meanwhile in a vid-eo exhorted his supporters to

“stage a massive march to say no to the electronic machines and no to corruption.”

However the main opposition The Union for Democracy and Social Progress party, whose leader Felix Tshisekedi is run-ning for president, did not par-ticipate in yesterday’s march.

The opposition claims the South Korean machines will be used for massive fraud in the presidential, parliamentary and

provincial polls. The Democrat-ic Republic of Congo has never seen a peaceful transition of power since independence from Belgium in 1960.

Kabila, 47, has been in power since 2001. His second and fi -nal elected term in offi ce ended nearly two years ago, but he stayed on thanks to a caretaker clause in the constitution.

Kabila last month promised at the United Nations the coun-

try would hold a credible ballot.But the months before he said

he would step aside were marred by brutally repressed protests.

Critics worry Kabila is try-ing to make sure his favoured successor, Emmanuel Rama-zani Shadary, a hardline former interior minister, faces no seri-ous challenger. The governor of Kinshasa authorised yester-day’s rally after a meeting with organisers who agreed that it

would not end in the posh Go-mbe district, where many gov-ernment buildings, diplomatic missions and big businesses are located.

Kinshasa police chief Syl-vano Kasongo had called for an orderly march with “no blood-bath and the objective of zero deaths”.

After talks in Johannesburg, delegates from the fragmented opposition announced that they

would appoint a joint candidate by November 15. The electoral commission in January put the number of potential voters at more than 46mn, according to the International Crisis Group.

However, yesterday’s march-ers also called on the commis-sion to strike off more than 10mn names from the electoral roll because they were regis-tered without digital

fi ngerprints.

DR Congo policemen escort protesters during a march in Goma, yesterday.

Poor Ivory Coast students’ ray of hope: solar backpacksAFPAllepilla

The equatorial sun has been up for about an hour as a gaggle of children set off from the Ivorian

village of Allepilla on their hour-long trek to school.

Back home in the evening, eight-year-old Marie-France Amoandji Ng-bessoo does her homework by the light of her backpack’s LED — captured by solar panels on her way to and from school.

The light can run for three hours.With insects fl itting overhead,

Marie-France points to the pictures in her textbook, identifying them: “Or-ange, plane...”

Allepilla, some 100 kilometres north of the West African country’s econom-ic capital Abidjan, is a rural community centred on cocoa and coff ee produc-tion. A single pump supplies water to the village of around 400 inhabit-ants including 150 children, and, as is the case for thousands of villages and hamlets across the country — there is no electricity.

Instead, oil-burning storm lanterns and battery-powered torches are the only sources of light.

An Ivorian charity that promotes education for rural girls, Yiwo Zone, has raised funds to provide the back-packs — which cost 13,000 CFA francs (20 euros, $23) apiece — to schoolchil-dren across Africa. Computer sales-

man Evariste Akoumian had the idea for the solar backpack in 2015 when his car broke down as night was falling near Soubre, in the southwest of the country. “At the same time, children were returning home from school,” he recalls.”I said to myself, ‘We must give them light so they can study. It’s not normal for rural children to be unable to do so.”

The Ivorian government has set a target of ensuring electricity to 80% of the country.

“These rural children are poor. They use rice sacks or plastic bags to take their things to school,” Akoumian said. “The idea was to kill two birds with one stone: give them a backpack with a light to go with it.”

The entrepreneur stressed that the solar backpacks belong to the children:

“So Dad or Mum can’t come and take the light from them...to use while they are cooking or doing housework.”

Sales are brisk and have reached 55,000. Akoumian’s company Solarpak already sells the backpacks in Gabon, Madagascar and Burkina Faso, as well as to charities in France and Germany.

Striving to keep up with demand, Akoumian is seeking aid or loans so that he can set up an assembly plant in Abidjan and boost production.

“It may seem cheap, but these are large sums that the villagers don’t have,” said Anna Corinne Menet Ezin-lin, head of Ywo Zone.

“Here in this village some people can’t aff ord the school fees or even notebooks. Usually school is free, but there are always registration fees or (other) payments.”

Ivorian schoolchild Amondji Anin Lucienne studies next to her backpacks fitted with a connected lamp powered by solar panels, in a village in the southeastern Rubino district.

Zuma’s son to stand trial in MarchAFP Johannesburg

Duduzane Zuma, the son of South Africa’s graft-tainted former president

Jacob Zuma, will stand trial for culpable homicide in March over a fatal late night car crash in 2014, a magistrate said yes-terday.

Duduzane, 34, appeared be-fore the Randburg Magistrates’ Court in Johannesburg accom-panied by his father, who was flanked by security personnel.

He is accused of causing the death of Phumzile Dube after his Porsche hit a minibus she was travelling in.Three others were injured and one passen-ger, Nankie Mashaba, died in hospital weeks later.

Magistrate Heidi Barnard told the packed court that there would be a pre-trial hearing in January.

“I want you to avail yourself as well on March 26, 2019, that will be your trial date,” she said.

In a separate case, Dudu-zane Zuma is also due in court on January 24 on corruption charges over allegations of a bribe offered to former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas.

Jacob Zuma, 76, was forced to resign in February over al-legations centring around the Gupta business family, who reportedly held such sway that they chose some cabinet min-isters. Duduzane was previ-ously employed by the Guptas.

Jacob Zuma, who has five wives and at least 20 children, has also been charged with 16 counts of graft linked to an arms deal before he became president.

Africa’s biggest crafts fair opens in Burkina FasoAFPOuagadougou

Africa’s largest crafts fair opened yesterday in the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou under the

shadow of growing terror and militant attacks in the West African nation.

The 10-day Salon International de l’Artisanat de Ouagadougou (SIAO) has attracted more than 2,500 exhibitors from 25 countries this year and hopes to draw about 300,000 visitors.

It was opened by Burkinabe President Roch Marc Christian Kabore and Cana-

dian Governor General Julie Layette, a former astronaut. It comes at a time of “a diffi cult international and national con-text,” said Commerce Minister Harouna Kabore, adding that his country was being increasingly “targeted” by militants.

In 2015, Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries, joined a string of Sahel nations to come under pressure from militants.

Rebels began staging cross-border raids in the north of the country from neighbouring Mali. Over 130 people have been killed in three years and hun-dreds of schools and town halls in the volatile north have been closed.

Gabon president hospitalised in Riyadh

Gabonese President Ali Bongo

has been hospitalised in Riyadh,

Saudi state media said, without

giving more details. Saudi Crown

Prince Mohamed bin Salman

visited Bongo in Riyadh’s King

Faisal hospital and “inquired after

the health of the president”, the of-

ficial Saudi Press Agency said in a

brief dispatch on Thursday. Bongo,

59, was scheduled to appear

Wednesday on a panel at the flag-

ship Future Investment Initiative

forum in Riyadh, but he was not

seen during the discussion and or-

ganisers of the conference off ered

no explanation. But in a separate

dispatch, SPA said Bongo attended

a speech by Prince Mohamed at

the conference later Wednesday.

AMERICAS5Gulf Times

Saturday, October 27, 2018

A group of 20 US states and several major cities have urged the Trump admin-

istration to abandon a proposal to freeze fuel effi ciency standards after 2020 and strip California of the ability to impose its own ve-hicle emissions rules.

The states, including Cali-fornia, New York, Illinois, Mas-sachusetts, and Pennsylvania, called the Trump administration proposal “unlawful” and “reck-

less” in a 143-page document reviewed by Reuters ahead of its fi ling later in the day.

The states have vowed to sue if regulators move forward with the proposal.

Also joining the eff ort are the District of Columbia, Los Ange-les, New York, and San Francisco, which argue the proposal “would deal a substantial blow in the fi ght against climate change”.

Separately, a group represent-ing major automakers yesterday, including General Motors, Toyota Motor, and Volkswagen, said that it urged “the federal government

to set achievable future stand-ards that continue to advance environmental and energy goals while recognising marketplace realities”.

Automakers have said that they do not back freezing the standards but nearly all have not specifi ed how much they want requirements to rise.

They are pressing Califor-nia and the federal government to retain nationwide emissions rules and avoid a prolonged legal battle.

Honda Motor said yesterday that it “believes strong standards

– on the order of 5% per year an-nual improvement – paired with policy incentives that support a transition to future vehicle elec-trifi cation, can provide a bal-anced solution”.

The proposal has set up a ma-jor battle between the Trump administration and Califor-nia over whether the largest US state, which has made reducing greenhouse gas emissions a ma-jor priority, will continue to have authority to oversee vehicles.

In separate comments fi led yesterday, California said the proposal “would worsen air

quality for the most vulnerable, waste billions of gallons of gaso-line, forfeit our best chance to fi ght climate change and result in years of uncertainty in the mar-ketplace”.

Yesterday was the deadline for the fi ling of comments on the ad-ministration’s proposal, which details a number of potential al-ternatives.

The Trump plan’s preferred alternative would freeze stand-ards at 2020 levels through 2026 and hike US oil consumption by about 500,000 barrels per day by the 2030s, but reduce automak-

ers regulatory costs by more than $300bn.

The proposal would bar Cali-fornia from requiring automakers to sell a rising number of electric vehicles.

California has suggested the US Transportation Department and the Environmental Protec-tion Agency (EPA) “contrived the proposal to support the presi-dent’s impulsive and uninformed direction to ‘cancel’ the pro-gramme”.

The Obama administration had adopted rules calling for a nearly 5% annual increase in fuel

effi ciency requirements over that period.

The Trump administration ar-gues the new rules will save up to 12,700 lives over the coming dec-ades because they lower the price of new vehicles, prod people into buying safer newer vehicles fast-er, and result in motorists driving less because gas-guzzling vehi-cles will cost more to operate.

A memo released in August from the EPA said some offi cials believed the plan would actually increase traffi c deaths from 2036 through 2045 because of increas-ing vehicle travel.

20 US states, major cities urge Trump to drop fuel effi ciency freezeReutersWashington

Federal Bureau of Investiga-tion (FBI) agents arrested a 56-year-old man in Florida

yesterday, suspected of send-ing more than a dozen parcel bombs to high-profi le critics of US President Donald Trump days ahead of congressional elections, authorities said.

Agents who took Cesar Sayoc into custody in Plantation, near Fort Lauderdale, also hauled away a white van that was plas-tered with pro-Trump stickers, the slogan “CNN SUCKS”, and images of Democratic fi gures with red crosshairs over their faces.

A federal law enforcement source said the van belonged to Sayoc.

Two witnesses told Reuters they heard a loud blast as he was detained in the parking lot of an auto parts store.

Announcing the arrest by the FBI to a cheering audience at the White House, Trump said such “terrorising acts” were despica-ble and had no place in the United States.

“We must never allow political violence to take root in America – cannot let it happen,” Trump said. “And I’m committed to do-ing everything in my power as president to stop it and to stop it now.”

No one claimed responsibility for the parcel bombs addressed to former president Barack Obama and others, which authorities denounced as terrorism.

The episode came less than two weeks before US congres-sional elections that could alter the balance of power in Wash-ington.

Sayoc’s home address was

listed in public records as an up-scale gated apartment complex in the seaside town of Aventura, Florida.

According to the records, he is a registered Republican with a lengthy criminal past – including once making a bomb threat – and a history of posting infl amma-tory broadsides on social media against Trump’s political foes.

Sayoc was being held at an FBI processing centre in Miramar, Florida, CNN said.

He was expected to be taken to the Federal Detention Centre in downtown Miami and will likely make his fi rst appearance before a judge on Monday, according to former Assistant US Attorney David Weinstein.

A federal law enforcement source said charges would likely be brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Sayoc trans-ferred to New York City.

Four more suspicious packages were found yesterday, according to offi cials and media reports, bringing the total to 14.

None of the devices has deto-nated, and no injuries have been reported.

The intended recipients of packages discovered yester-day were Democratic US Sena-tor Cory Booker of New Jersey, former US director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Democratic US Senator Kamala Harris of California, and Demo-cratic donor Tom Steyer.

Hours after a federal law en-forcement offi cial said the inves-tigation’s focus on Florida had intensifi ed, police closed roads around the parking lot of an Au-toZone store in Plantation where Sayoc was arrested, and helicop-ters fl ew overhead.

A man named Dre, a manager at a used car dealership next door to the AutoZone, said that he

heard a loud noise that sounded like an explosion shortly after 11am.

“I opened the door and saw the FBI there,” Dre, who declined to give his full name, said in a tel-ephone interview.

A woman who lives nearby and declined to give her name said she was in her yard weeding yes-terday morning when she heard a loud bang, saw smoke and heard a lot of shouting.

TV images showed investiga-tors there using a blue tarp to cover Sayoc’s van before remov-ing it on a truck.

All the people targeted by the suspicious packages have been maligned by right-wing critics.

Packages that surfaced ear-lier in the week were addressed to Obama, former vice-president Joe Biden, former secretary of

state and presidential candi-date Hillary Clinton, billionaire Democratic Party donor George Soros, Representative Maxine Waters, former attorney general Eric Holder, former CIA director John Brennan, and actor Robert De Niro.

Trump’s critics charged that his infl ammatory rhetoric against Democrats and the press created a climate for politically motivated violence.

“If we don’t stop this politi-cal mania, this fervour, rancor, hatred, you’ll see this again and again and again,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told MSNBC. “We have to get to the genesis, and the genesis is an overheated, vitriolic political di-vision in this country and it starts with the leaders, and it starts with the president.”

Trump’s supporters accused Democrats of unfairly suggesting that the president was to blame for the bomb scare.

After fi rst calling for unity at the White House event, Trump lamented attacks against him and again pointed at the media.

“I get attacked all the time ... I can do the greatest thing for our country, and on the networks and on diff erent things it will show bad,” he told the crowd, acknowledging an attendee who shouted “fake news”.

The devices were believed to have been fashioned from bomb-making designs that are widely available on the Internet, accord-ing to a federal law enforcement source.

Still, investigators said that they were treating the devices as “live” explosives, not a hoax.

Suspect arrested in parcel bombs caseReutersPlantation, Florida

In this still image taken from a video courtesy of television station WPLG, an FBI off icer prepares a van to be towed in Plantation, Florida, in connection with the case of pipe bombs and suspicious packages mailed to top Democrats.

President Donald Trump claimed yesterday that the explosive devices

mailed to his rivals were slow-ing Republican “momentum” ahead of November’s mid-term elections, with polls showing Democrats boosting their ad-vantage.

“Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this ‘Bomb’ stuff happens and the momen-tum greatly slows – news not talking politics,” Trump tweet-ed. “Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!”

Authorities have intercept-ed at least 11 packages sent to Trump’s opponents and critics.

While offi cials and politi-cians on all sides have branded the mailings acts of domestic terrorism, Trump’s placement of the word “Bomb” in quota-tion marks was immediately seized on by critics as a bid to downplay the threat.

Republicans are seeking to hold on to their majorities in the US Senate and House of Representatives in the Novem-ber 6 mid-terms.

However, Democratic en-thusiasm and grass roots or-ganisation and frustration with Trump among core constitu-encies like suburban women and Latinos have led forecast-ers to predict a likely Demo-cratic takeover of the House.

Trump is not on the ballot but two-thirds of registered voters see him as a factor in the election, according to an NPR/Marist poll released yesterday.

And 47% of voters said their opinion of Trump makes them more likely to vote for a Demo-crat for Congress, compared to 34% who said their opinion of him makes them more likely to vote for a Republican.

Democrats are leading Re-publicans 50% to 40% in the generic ballot, which addresses who voters will vote for Con-gress in their district.

The fi gures align with an NBC News/Wall Street Jour-nal poll that shows Democrats with a nine-point lead, 50-41, over Republicans among likely voters.

On November 6 Americans will pick their representa-tives for all 435 seats in the US House, and 35 seats in the 100-member Senate, in addi-tion to state legislatures and governors’ mansions.

Bomb alerts harming Republican election‘momentum’: TrumpAFPWashington

Trump: Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this ‘Bomb’ stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows.

Defence Secretary Jim Mat-tis has authorised the use of troops and other military

resources at the US-Mexico border, US offi cials said yesterday, bolster-ing President Donald Trump’s bat-tle against migrants trekking toward the United States.

The Pentagon did not immediate-ly respond to requests for comment.

The offi cials, who spoke on con-dition of anonymity, said Mattis’s authorisation did not include a spe-cifi c number of troops, something that would be determined at a later

point, and was not itself a “deploy-ment order”.

US offi cials told Reuters on Thurs-day that the Trump administration was considering deploying between 800 and 1,000 troops to the border with Mexico.

They would not be engaged in any law enforcement activities, some-thing that is prohibited under US law, and instead focus on support roles in areas like infrastructure and logistics.

Trump has hammered away at the issue of illegal immigration two weeks ahead of congressional elec-tions.

Taking aim at the caravan of Cen-tral American migrants, Trump

wrote on Twitter on Thursday that he was “bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped!”

US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in an interview with Fox News Channel on Thurs-day that her department had asked the Pentagon for help to bolster its capabilities as it polices the border, including asking for “some air sup-port ... some logistics, planning, ve-hicle barriers, engineering”.

The migrants appeared unde-terred on Thursday night as sev-eral thousand of them bedded down more than 1,000 miles (1,610km) from the US border, in the town of Pijijiapan in Mexico’s southern Chi-

apas state, after hiking hours from their last stop.

Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to make the caravan and immigration into major issues before the November 6 elections, in which Republicans are battling to keep control of Congress.

Trump pledged during the 2016 presidential race to build a wall along the southern US border with Mexico.

But the funding for his signature campaign promise has been slow to materialise.

In April, frustrated by lack of progress on the wall, Trump ordered the National Guard to help secure the border.

Mattis approves US troops for border with MexicoReutersWashington

A group of Canadian doctors are to begin prescribing trips to an art gallery to help pa-

tients suff ering a range of ailments become a picture of health.

A partnership between the Fran-cophone Association of Doctors in Canada (MFdC) and the Mon-treal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) will allow patients suff ering from

a number of physical and mental health issues, along with their loved ones, to take in the benefi ts of art on health with free visits.

The project is unprecedented glo-bally, according to its organiser.

The project will see participating physicians prescribe up to 50 vis-its to the MMFA during treatment, each pass valid for up to two adults and two minors.

So far 100 doctors have enrolled to take part over the course of one year, Nicole Parent, head of the MFdC,

told AFP on Thursday.The numbers off er proof that

doctors have “a sensitivity and openness to alternative approaches if you want” Parent said, citing sci-entifi cally proven benefi ts of art on health.

The benefi ts are similar to those patients can get from physical ac-tivity, prompting the secretion of a similar level of feel-good hormones, and can help with everything from chronic pain to depression, stress and anxiety.

The pilot programme will allow organisers to gather data and ana-lyse results, allowing for the devel-opment of protocol for identifying patients.

Parent said she hopes other mu-seums in Canada will follow the lead of the MMFA.

“I am convinced that in the 21st century, culture will be what physi-cal activity was for health in the 20th century,” MMFA director Nathalie Bondil said. “Cultural experiences will benefi t health and wellness.”

Doctors to start prescribing visits to museumsAFPMontreal

ASIA


Lanka president sacks PM, installs RajapakseMaithripala Sirisena in-

stalled Sri Lanka’s con-troversial former presi-

dent Mahinda Rajapakse as the country’s new prime minister yes-terday, the president’s offi ce said, in a surprise move announced moments after the incumbent premier was sacked.

Sirisena won elections against Rajapakse in 2015 on a platform of economic reform and account-ability for atrocities committed during his opponent’s 10-year rule at the close of Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war.

Colombo was on the verge of facing economic sanctions from Western nations over Rajapakse’s human rights record before his government lost offi ce.

Sirisena’s offi ce said late yes-terday that his former foe had been appointed prime minister, and a private TV channel loyal to Rajapakse broadcast a rushed swearing-in ceremony.

But questions remain over the legality of the move, as a constitu-tional amendment passed in 2015 had taken away the president’s power to sack the prime minister.

“The appointment of Ra-japakse as the prime minister

is unconstitutional and ille-gal. This is an anti-democratic coup,” Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera wrote on Twitter shortly after the appointment was announced.

The surprise move comes after disagreements between Sirise-

na and ousted Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe over eco-nomic policy and day-to-day administration of the government.

There was no immediate word from Wickremesinghe, who helped Sirisena defeat Rajapakse in the 2015 elections but has drift-

ed apart from the president since.The pair were reported to have

clashed in cabinet last week over government plans to lease a con-tainer terminal to neighbouring India.

Earlier this year, Sirisena re-neged on a pledge not to run for

re-election, sparking tensions with Wickremesinghe who is be-lieved to have his own presidential ambitions.

Sirisena is also believed to be behind a failed attempt to impeach Wickremesinghe in April.

Relations between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe’s political par-ties, who have governed in coali-tion since 2015, have soured since both suff ered humiliating losses in February’s local council elections.

Sirisena’s United People’s Freedom Alliance party quit the coalition yesterday, according to Agricultural Minister Mahinda Amaraweera.

Former president Rajapakse put down the decades-old Tamil Tiger separatist struggle in May 2009 through a military assault that killed up to 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians, according to rights groups.

Rajapakse’s iron-fi sted govern-ment was also accused of cor-ruption and murdering political opponents.

Sirisena had pledged account-ability for war atrocities, but has faced international criticism for being slow to deliver on justice.

International rights groups have called for the prosecution of both the military and the Tigers, who were notorious for suicide bombings and enlisting child soldiers.

AFPColombo

Former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse, left, handing over documents to Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena as Rajapakse is sworn in as new prime minister, in Colombo yesterday.

Top cop held over alleged plot to kill president

A top Sri Lankan police offi cial has been arrested over a suspected plot to kill President Maithripala

Sirisena, a police spokesman has said.The alleged plot briefl y threatened to

cause tension between Sri Lanka and In-dia, after an Indian newspaper report that Sirisena had accused India’s intelligence services of involvement - a claim New Delhi and Colombo have both denied.

“The Criminal Investigation Division of police today arrested Nalaka De Silva after fi ve days of questioning him,” police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said.

Gunasekara said Silva was accused of plotting to kill the president, several sen-ior police offi cials and a former defence secretary.

Magistrates ordered Silva, a deputy in-spector general of police, be detained until November 7.

A police informant made the allegations against Silva in a news conference. Inves-tigators are seeking access to deleted data from the informant’s mobile phone with the help of Huawei after a court granted permission to request the company’s help.

A Huawei spokesman said the compa-ny had received no such request from Sri Lanka and declined to comment further.

Silva’s lawyers were not immediately available for comment.

ReutersColombo

Myanmar journalists get bail in incitement case

A Myanmar judge yester-day freed on bail three journalists from the

country’s largest private news-paper detained on incitement charges after publishing an ar-ticle that raised questions over government spending.

Eleven Media’s chief re-porter, Phyo Wai Win, and two editors, Kyaw Zaw Lin and Nayi Min, were arrested on October 10 following a complaint by the regional government in the commercial capital of Yangon.

Their detention, in Insein prison on the outskirts of the city, marked the latest blow to press freedom in the country, where dozens of journalists have been prosecuted in recent months.

“As a reporter, I wrote my articles based on true informa-tion,” said Phyo Wai Win, as he walked free from the crowded courtroom in central Yangon’s Tamwe township yesterday. The next hearing has been scheduled for November 9.

Explaining her decision to grant bail, judge Tin War War Thein told the court the jour-nalists did not pose a fl ight risk.

“The punishment for the

section is not a life sentence but two years maximum, and the accused are working at a jour-nal based in Tamwe township, so they have no reason to run away,” she said.

The trio are facing charges under Section 505 (b) of the country’s colonial-era penal code, which prohibits publish-ing information that may “cause fear or alarm”, that could cause someone to commit an off ence, or disrupt “public tranquility”. The charges carry a maximum penalty of two years in prison.

Days before their arrest, they had published a story that in-cluded quotes from lawmakers questioning the city’s use of funds, including the overhaul of transport.

Yangon’s regional govern-ment is headed by Chief Min-ister Phyo Min Thein, a protégé of Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and a mem-ber of her National League for Democracy party.

Last week, media reported, Myanmar President Win Myint ordered regional authorities to try to settle the dispute through negotiations with Myanmar’s Press Council, which has said the case must be dismissed be-fore talks can start.

“According to that instruc-tion, the Yangon regional gov-

ernment should have dismissed the case today,” said defence lawyer Kyee Myint.

The chief minister’s assist-ant, Maung Maung Kyi, did not answer phone calls on Friday. Government spokesman Zaw Htay also could not be reached for comment. He recently said he would no longer respond to media requests, apart from in a biweekly press conference.

Human rights activists say press freedom in Myanmar has plummeted since Nobel lau-reate Suu Kyi took power in 2016 under a constitution that preserves the military’s role in politics while formally ending decades of army rule.

A total of 38 journalists have

faced charges under various laws since the start of her adminis-tration, freedom of expression group Athan said last month.

Two Reuters reporters were convicted last month of breach-ing the Offi cial Secrets Act and sentenced to seven years in prison, drawing global con-demnation. Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were detained last December while investigat-ing a massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslims that took place during a military crackdown in western Rakhine state.

Also last month, a former newspaper columnist who was harshly critical of Suu Kyi on Facebook was sentenced to sev-en years in prison for sedition.

ReutersYangon

Kyaw Zaw Linn, the editor-in-charge, and two other reporters from Eleven Media walk out of Tamwe court in Yangon yesterday.

Hanoi’s colonial-era railway doubles as selfi e hotspot

In the heart of Hanoi’s busy Old Quarter, French-built railroad tracks have become a hotspot

for tourists seeking the perfect Instagram selfi e, and for cafe own-ers serving up hot coff ee and cold beverages.

Though picturesque, they are also perilous: the tracks are still in use and most days visitors must scramble for safety as the daily train rumbles through the narrow streets.

But for many, the thrill of dodg-ing a speedy train is part of the appeal.

“It was amazing but scary in the same sense, a little bit over-

whelming being so close to the train,” Australian tourist Michelle Richards said.

The tracks were fi rst built by former colonial rulers France who used the railway to transport goods and people across Vietnam - then part of Indochina, along with Laos and Cambodia.

During the Vietnam War, parts of the railway were badly damaged by American bombs that rained down on the communist-ruled north.

Today the original metre-gauge tracks are still a mode of transport for tourists and travellers seeking a cheaper option.

But in the past few years, visi-tors to Hanoi have seized upon their photographic possibilities.

Hemmed in by houses and

AFPHanoi

cafes, the tracks off er a unique charm for budding travel photog-raphers - and a business opportu-nity for makeshift cafe owners who have set up shop.

“It’s got a really weird charm. You’ve got fl owers from the balco-

ny coming down, you’ve got build-ings which are very old and close to each other. You see people here liv-ing close to the train tracks,” Hong Kong tourist Edward Tsim said.

As the train rumbles into view, everyone clears the tracks and

pulls their phones out to capture the scene.

“It felt like waiting for Christ-mas... and when it arrived, wow, it was something else,” British tourist Paul Hardiman said.

“Well worth the wait.”

A group of tourists taking photo of a train passing through an old residential district in central Hanoi.

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA7Gulf Times


Singapore hangings spur fresh calls to scrap death penaltyReutersSingapore

Singapore yesterday hanged a Malaysian convicted of drug traffi cking, the latest

in what rights groups said was a series of executions prompt-ing them to renew calls for the wealthy city-state to abolish the death penalty. Singapore has some of the world’s tough-

est anti-drugs laws, and airport customs forms warn arriving travellers of “death for drug traf-fi ckers” in no uncertain terms.

Human rights group Amnesty International and the UN Hu-man Rights Offi ce have urged Singapore to halt executions and follow the example of neigh-bouring Malaysia, where a newly elected government has vowed to end capital punishment by year-end. “The execution was

an unlawful and brutal act, car-ried out in breach of due process and in defi ance of the appeals made by Malaysia,” N Suren-dran, the lawyer for the executed man, said in a statement.

Prabu N Pathmanathan, the Malaysian citizen, was hanged at dawn in the city state’s Changi prison, he added.

Malaysia’s foreign ministry said yesterday it had appealed to the Singapore government

for leniency in the case on hu-manitarian grounds, but that it respected the rule of law and due process in Singapore. Singa-pore’s Ministry of Home Aff airs did not immediately have com-ment.

Authorities in Singapore rou-tinely do not comment on ex-ecutions and only release data on executions in annual reports. A regional representative of the United Nations Human Rights

Offi ce urged Singapore to im-mediately ban the death penalty as a step towards its complete abolition.

“We are deeply dismayed that there has been a sharp increase in executions in Singapore in re-cent years,” said Cynthia Veliko, the UN offi cial.

“We understand that there have ... been a number of execu-tions to date in 2018, including a reported four this week alone.”

Amnesty International said the execution of another man, whose name had not been re-leased, was imminent, citing reports of another man executed this week and three on Oct. 5, all for drug-related off ences.

That compares with eight executions for drug-related of-fences in Singapore for all of 2017. Although 15 countries pre-scribed the death penalty for drug-related off ences in 2017,

Amnesty recorded executions in only four – China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Singapore, it said in a statement.

Pathmanathan was convicted of smuggling drugs from Malay-sia into Singapore in 2014, court documents show. “Yes, he broke the rules, but that doesn’t mean you have to kill him,” Magentrau Somalu, one of his close friends, told Reuters. “He deserved a second chance.”

Freed Japan hostage arrives home to joy, but also criticismAFPTokyo

A Japanese journalist freed from Syria this week ar-rived home to overjoyed

relatives and supporters, but also to vitriol from some who accuse him and other hostages of reck-less behaviour.

Jumpei Yasuda was kidnapped in Syria in 2015, and spent more than three years in conditions he described as “hell.” He arrived back in Japan on Thursday night, greeted by his delighted wife and parents, who had brought him homemade Japanese food to cel-ebrate.

But even before Yasuda set foot on Japanese soil, he was the target of angry criticism — most-ly online — ranging from accusa-tions of recklessness to claims that he was not even Japanese. “He is disturbing society,” wrote one Twitter user. “He’s an anti-citizen,” charged another.

Perhaps anticipating the criti-cism, Yasuda’s only statement upon arrival, read to reporters by his wife Myu, was dominated by an apology.

“I apologise for causing such trouble and worry, but thanks to all of you, I was able to come home safely,” he said.

The anger directed at Yasuda — author of books on the con-fl icts in Syria and Iraq, whose re-porting has appeared on Japanese television — is a far cry from the reception that journalism held hostage have received in other countries upon their release.

When four French journalists held by the Islamic State ter-ror group in Syria were released, then-French president Francois Hollande met the men as they arrived home. But in Japan, freed hostages have often met a mixed reception, with critics suggest-ing victims were responsible for getting themselves kidnapped.

“They are the victims, they haven’t broken the law, but they have to apologise. It’s strange, but it’s the mentality of a part of Japanese society,” said Toshiro Terada, a professor of philosophy at Sophia University in Tokyo. “The person is accused of having harmed society.”

In one of the more shocking examples of the reaction, three Japanese men held hostage in

Iraq and freed in 2004 arrived home to fi nd people at the air-port holding up banners reading “It’s your fault.” Their kidnap-pers had threatened to burn them alive if Tokyo failed to withdraw non-combat troops stationed in southern Iraq. But then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi re-fused the demands, and even de-clined to meet with the families of the hostages, a hardline posi-tion that was applauded in some quarters of Japanese society.

The government itself, sup-ported by right-wing media, described the men as “irrespon-sible youths” for having ignored warnings to avoid travel to Iraq, then an active war zone. One of the men, Noriaki Imai, said re-cently he received letters saying “die” or calling him “stupid.”

“Online, the bashing lasted 10 years,” he said. Yasuda has faced similar criticism for venturing to Syria, a country where sev-eral Japanese citizens were kid-napped and eventually executed.

Compounding the antago-nism is the fact that Yasuda was kidnapped once before, in Iraq in 2004, prompting some to de-scribe him as a “professional hostage.”

And detractors have claimed Yasuda is not even Japanese, partly as the result of a bizarre

hostage video showing him and another captive in Syria that emerged in August.

Despite speaking Japanese, he identifi ed himself as a South Ko-rean called “Omar”, apparently after his kidnappers banned him from revealing his identity or na-tionality.

“This guy isn’t even Japanese,” wrote one Twitter user. “He should go back to his country, South Korea,” added another.

A string of kidnappings of journalists in Syria at the height of the country’s war exposed dif-ferences in how governments and public responded. Some govern-ments paid ransoms, while oth-ers refused, and while countries celebrated their journalists as heroes, others quietly criticised them for taking unnecessary risks.

In Japan, mainstream media outlets and offi cials have largely avoided criticising Yasuda and other hostages, but the antipa-thy expressed online concerns journalists like Toru Tamakawa, a commentator for TV Asahi.

“In the case of Yasuda particu-larly, the argument that ‘it’s his fault’ must be fi rmly rejected,” he said this week.

“We need people who will risk their lives to go and get informa-tion on the ground.”

Japanese freelance journalist Jumpei Yasuda (front right), who was kidnapped in Syria three years ago, poses with his wife Myu and his parents, Sachiko (back left) and Hideaki (back right) upon his arrival at Narita Airport, in Chiba Prefecture.

In Japan, freed hostages have oft en met a mixed reception, with critics suggesting victims were responsible for getting themselves kidnapped

Visitors look at a fire fighting robot during a technology exhibition in Handan in China’s northern Hebei province yesterday.

Tech show

Inflight hiccup as Harry, Meghan’s plane aborts Sydney landing

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan returned to Australia yesterday from a tour of Pacific islands after their plane was forced to abort a first landing because another aircraft was in the way. Their Qantas plane charter flight QF6031, approaching Sydney, dropped to 125ft before perform-ing a “go-around”, according to FlightRadar24.In aviation terminology, a go-around is a when a pilot pulls out of a landing and makes another attempt after circling the airport. According to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority a go-around is a “common and very safe practice”. A Reuters witness on the plane

said the episode was calm. The pilot explained that a plane had been slower than anticipated rolling off the runway so they were going around and everyone would get another chance for a good look at the amazing views of Sydney Harbour. “The captain advised those onboard they’d be doing a go-around as there was another aircraft on the runway that took longer than expected to take-off ,” a Qantas spokeswoman said in an e-mail to Reuters. They landed safely at around 6pm, she added. In Australia, more than 800 stand-ard go-arounds are performed in a typical year.Today, the royal couple will attend

the closing of the Invictus Games, which are being held Sydney. The games founded by Harry are an in-ternational paralympic-style event for military personnel wounded in action. They will then visit New Zealand as part of their 16-day Commonwealth tour. Earlier yes-terday, the pair donned garlands of red flowers and handmade wrap skirts called ta’ovala, given as a traditional sign of respect, to tour the island nation of Tonga. They met Tongan Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pōhiva at a government building, funded by China but named the St George Building, in the capital, Nuku’alofa. On the way in, Harry stopped to embrace a small boy

holding a sign which said “Free hugs!” Tonga, a country of some 170 reef-fringed tropical islands and 108,000 people, is a former British colony.The couple, who are expecting a child of their own in the spring, were serenaded by students at Tupou College, and called in at the Royal Palace, feted everywhere by excited crowds waving flags and signs celebrating the visit. They laughed when boys from the college sang about mosquitoes, complete with dance moves, at a ceremony to dedicate two forest reserves on the campus, where they also inspected a caged black parrot.

China leads way as world’s billionaires get even richer

China produced around two new billionaires a week last year as the fortunes of the world’s ultra-rich soared by a record amount, a report said yesterday. Billionaires’ wealth enjoyed its “greatest-ever” increase in 2017, rising 19% to $8.9tn shared among 2,158 individuals, said the report by Swiss banking giant UBS and auditors PwC. But Chinese billionaires expanded their wealth at nearly double that pace, growing by 39% to $1.12tn. “Over the last decade, Chinese billionaires have created some of the world’s largest and most suc-cessful companies, raised living standards,” said Josef Stadler, head of Ultra High Net Worth at UBS Global Wealth Management. “But this is just the beginning. China’s vast population, technology in-novation and productivity growth combined with government sup-port, are providing unprecedented opportunities for individuals not only to build businesses but also to change people’s lives for the better.” The report said China minted two new billionaires a week in 2017, among more than three a week created in Asia. In the Americas region, the wealth of billionaires increased at a slower rate of 12%, to $3.6tn, with the United States creating 53 new billionaires in 2017 compared to 87 five years ago. Currency appreciation saw European billionaires’ wealth grow 19% although the number of bil-lionaires rose by just 4.0% to 414. Wealth transition from just five families accounted for 30% of the continent’s wealth expansion, the study said. It warned of lower economic growth in the United States and China if the trade war between the two countries escalates. “US and Asia ex-Japan equities could fall by 20% from their mid-summer 2018 levels.”

‘Big dry’ drags on as Australia sets up drought-proof kittyAFPSydney

Australia is setting up a billion-dollar fund to “future proof” the

country against droughts, Prime Minister Scott Morri-son said yesterday, as farmers struggle with a “big dry” fore-cast to continue for months.

Eastern Australia has been hit by a crippling drought — in some areas for several years — that has forced graziers to hand-feed their stock, sell them or even shoot them dead to stay afl oat.

The severe conditions are expected to continue, with more areas further south dry-ing out as the country heads into the southern hemisphere summer season, according to Bureau of Meteorology fore-casts. The unfolding crisis has sparked a raft of support measures from the govern-ment, including A$1.8bn (US$1.3bn) in fi nancial aid for farmers and local communi-ties launched in August.

Morrison said a new fund with a kitty of A$3.9bn would be established to pay for drought resilience and water projects in the coming decade. “(It) means we better future-proof against drought over the next 10 years and beyond,” Morrison told commercial broadcaster Channel Nine ahead of a summit with agri-cultural leaders to discuss the drought. “We are doing a lot to back the farmers in the rural communities. Focusing on re-

lief, but also on recovery, build resilience into the future.” The government’s Australian Bu-reau of Agricultural and Re-source Economics (ABARES) said at the summit that the drought, while severe, cov-ered a smaller area compared to a previous extreme dry in 2002-03.

But the bureau added that in the east, home to important areas for livestock and crops, rainfall was 40% lower than the 20-year average. Even so, farm incomes were less likely to plunge as signifi cantly as in previous drought periods amid “more favourable economic circumstances and other fac-tors” such as improved produc-tivity, ABARES said.

The drought, coupled with damaging frost in some areas, is set to produce the smallest winter grain crop in 10 years, according to a forecast from Rabobank, a specialist agri-business bank. “The 2018/19 winter crop will go down as one of the worst in eastern Australia’s history,” it said in a report this week.

The weather bureau mean-while forecast that the next three months would be drier and warmer than average, meaning “a low chance of re-covery for drought-aff ected areas of eastern Australia”.

Farmers have received some rain relief over the past month, but experts say the wet spell is not enough to break the drought after the extended dry period, and the heaviest downpours mostly fell in less aff ected areas.

Europe’s biggestarchaeologicaldig beginsalong HS2 routeGuardian News and MediaLondon

Archaeologists on the HS2 rail link between London and Birmingham have be-

gun work on the UK’s biggest ever excavation, cutting an “unprec-edented” slice through 10,000 years of British history.

The mammoth archaeological project, taking in more than 60 separate digs along the 150-mile route, is the fi rst stage in con-struction of the controversial rail line ahead of main building works starting next year.

The developers have now re-vealed some of their early fi nds including a prehistoric hunter-gatherer site on the outskirts of London, a Wars of the Roses bat-tlefi eld in Northamptonshire, a Romano-British town near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire and an Iron Age settlement in Staff ordshire.

Their discoveries include pre-historic fl int tools, a Romano-British cremation urn and two late Victorian time capsules dug up close to Euston station in London, containing rolled-up newspaper tied with twine, calling cards and leafl ets promoting temperance.

More than 1,000 archaeolo-gists, bone specialists, scientists and conservators will be working on the sites until 2020, making the excavations the largest ar-chaeological dig ever undertaken in Britain and potentially in Eu-rope, according to Helen Wass, the project’s lead archaeologist.

As part of their initial surveys, the developers put together a Lidar (light detection and rang-ing) map – based on laser scan-ning – of the entire route, and archaeologists have carried out ground-penetrating geophysi-cal surveys of the equivalent of 14,000 football pitches.

At Colne valley, to the west of London, archaeologists have been examining evidence of herds of horses and reindeer which roamed the fl oodplains during

the early Mesolithic period (from 11,000-8,000 BC), and of the humans who occupied the valley continuously from that date until the medieval period.

A very diff erent excavation in Fleet Marston, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, has revealed a Romano-British town at the junction of a number of Roman roads. “We have roadways, the re-mains of buildings, animal enclo-sures and fence lines,” said Wass, “and you can get a really great picture of how people at that time lived and worked and moved around the country”.

In Handsacre in Staff ordshire, a dig has uncovered the remains of an iron age house and a pit align-ment, thought to have been used as a farming boundary during that period in the same way as hedges are today.

And in Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, the ruins of an Anglo-Saxon church and burial ground will allow scientists and historians to study bodies dating back to the 12th century, to build a picture of the history of the vil-lage and its inhabitants over al-most 1,000 years.

Asked if she had a personal favourite discovery, Wass men-tioned the site of the Battle of Edgcote, in Northamptonshire, where the armies of the Earl of Pembroke were defeated in 1469 by a rebel force led by Robin of Redesdale during the Wars of the Roses.

“It just looks like a fi eld,” said Wass. “It wasn’t a period of history I knew a huge amount about, but by reading the research that our specialists have undertaken about that time in our history when we were moving towards the Tu-dors, you have Welsh poets writ-ing about the battle, you have the armies of various people moving across the landscape, and some of those markers are still there today. So that is one of our exciting sites.

“But there really is going to be something for everybody, be-cause we do cover the entire range of history.”

EU must prepare to delayBrexit, Khan tells BarnierGuardian News and MediaLondon

Sadiq Khan has told Michel Barnier the EU must pre-pare to delay Brexit given

the lack of support in parliament for a deal, and growing support for a second referendum.

The mayor of London said he “quite forcefully” made the point during an hour-long meeting with the EU’s chief negotiator that Brussels must be ready for the UK to stay as a member state beyond March 29 next year.

An extension of the two-year negotiating period, allowed un-der Article 50, would need the unilateral support of the 27 other member states, which Khan sug-gested the European commission needed to start work on.

The mayor, a former Labour MP, said there was no majority in

the Commons for a deal and that the “politicians had failed”. Extra time, he said, would be required to allow a second referendum to be staged on the terms of the UK’s deal with the EU.

“The point I made to Barnier, really quite forcefully, is that there is a possibility of the British parliament rejecting the deal that May secures from the EU,” Khan told the Guardian. “There is a very real possibility of there being either a general election, which I think is less likely, or a referen-dum. In those circumstances I suggested the EU should begin preparatory work on the exten-sion of Article 50.

“Because what would not be a good thing in my view is if we managed to get a referendum but it was too late because we had left the EU or the EU had not made preparations for an Article 50 ex-tension.”

Khan added: “Whatever Theresa May brings back will probably be rejected by Cabinet, almost certainly rejected by the party, and if not will defi nitely be rejected by parliament

“That’s why I said to Barnier: listen, you need to start preparing for the possibility of extending Article 50 because if that is the case we will need time to have a referendum.”

Khan cautioned Labour MPs not to fall for the narrative that the only options are a no-deal Brexit or the limited free trade agreement that is being negoti-ated by Brussels and Downing Street.

Earlier this year, Sir Mark Boleat, a former policy chairman at the City of London Corpora-tion, said Brexit could result in the loss of 75,000 jobs in the City of London and up to £10bn in an-nual tax revenue once the full re-

percussions of the free trade deal being negotiated become clear.

The deal so far off ered by the EU does not provide any security for the City’s fi nancial services sector that they will be able to continue to operate across Eu-rope from London after Brexit, with many being forced to estab-lish continental operations.

Khan said: “The point I made to Barnier is the same point I make to parliamentarians who will be voting shortly on this. It is a false choice to think that the only options are a bad Brexit deal or a no deal. My concern is that because a no deal is so cata-strophic that MPs will think the only sensible option is to vote for the deal that Prime Minister May has negotiated which is a bad Brexit deal.

“It would be bad for the UK and London, but it would be bad for the EU too. Nobody should

presume that jobs that leave Lon-don in the fi nancial sector are go-ing to Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid. They are more likely to go to New York, Singapore and Hong Kong.”

Khan also said he believed it would be a poor decision to leave the EU without clarity over the terms of a future deal.

He suggested he could end up supporting an option be-ing pushed by the Tory MP Nick Boles for the UK to emulate Nor-way by being a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade As-sociation (Efta) for a period after Brexit, should a general election or second referendum not ma-terialise. Under the proposal the UK would also continue with current customs arrangements.

He said: “If it is the case that we can’t get a public vote or a general election then that’s the next best thing.”

Universal credit ‘not solereason for food bank rise’Guardian News and MediaLondon

Universal credit cannot be solely blamed for the rise in food bank use in areas

where the benefi t is being rolled out, the minister for employment has said.

Alok Sharma was responding to a report from a committee of MPs that found the department for work and pensions (DWP) had a “fortress mentality” that prevented it from tackling the “unacceptable hardship” cre-ated by the switch to universal credit.

With the chancellor under in-tense pressure to act in his budg-et next Monday to cushion the impact of the new system, the public accounts committee said the government had ignored the concerns of those aff ected.

Universal credit is the most radical change to Britain’s wel-fare system in decades, rolling six benefi ts into one, which is paid in arrears to mimic a monthly wage packet.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s To-day programme, Sharma insisted the message he was getting from job centre staff and claimants was that they were much happier with universal credit.

However, he refused to com-ment when told that a report by a charity that runs more than 400 food banks had found they were four times as busy in areas where the full universal credit service had been in place for 12 months or more.

The Trussell Trust recorded an average 52% increase in the number of three-day emergency food packages distributed.

Asked about it three times, Sharma said another report by MPs had suggested there were “very many reasons” why peo-ple used food banks and they could not be attributed to just one factor.

Sharma rejected claims that his boss, Esther McVey, had been ducking out of media appear-ances, and said he was responsi-ble for the government’s benefi ts policy, which he claimed was working because “cliff edges”

that had previously put people off working had been removed.

He said he had been visiting job centres, most recently in Harlow, Essex, adding: “There are absolutely brilliant people in DWP working as work coach-es and they tell me that for the first time in their lives they are doing what they came in to do, which is to provide that one-to-one support which wasn’t available under the legacy sys-tem, and that’s a message I get from claimants when I talk to them.”

Separately, analysis by the campaign group 38 Degrees claimed that as many as 39 Con-servative MPs, including Sharma, could lose their seats as 4mn peo-ple have their income reduced be-cause of the benefi t changes.

The group highlighted the constituencies where the number of people who could be moved on to UC was signifi cantly higher than the majority held by the incumbent MP. In 39 seats it was at least double the majority; in 23 of those seats, it was fi ve times higher.

Cot designer jailedover baby’s deathGuardian News and MediaLondon

A cot designer has been jailed for more than three years after a baby boy died

in a bed he made.Seven-month-old Oscar Ab-

bey was found with his head trapped in the holes on the side of the £655 cot bed.

Craig Williams, the owner of the company that sold the bed to the boy’s parents, Charlie and Shannon Abbey, admitted on Wednesday to fraud and failing to discharge an employer’s gen-eral duty. He has been jailed for three years and four months.

During a two-week trial at Leeds crown court, jurors heard that Oscar’s parents found his body after he got his head stuck while trying to crawl through a gap in the bed in November 2016.

Williams, who designed and built the bespoke cot bed, has been on trial for manslaugh-ter by gross negligence and for fraud. The 37-year-old owner of Sheffi eld-based Playtime Beds had denied both charges after the boy’s death. On Wednesday a jury was asked to return a not

guilty verdict to the manslaugh-ter charge as Williams entered two guilty pleas.

The trial heard how Oscar’s parents, from York, bought the bunk bed for Oscar and his two-year-old brother, Maxwell, in October 2016. But fi ve days after Oscar started using the bed, on November 3, 2016, the incident happened.

Judge Martin Spencer, sen-tencing, told Williams he had a “signifi cant responsibility” for Oscar’s death, adding: “You should bear the brunt of that re-sponsibility for the rest of your life.” He said the defendant had shown a “fl agrant disregard” for safety standards and committed a “wicked fraud” by continuing to sell beds after the boy’s death.

During the trial, jurors heard a statement from Charlie Ab-bey in which he described the moment he discovered his son’s body. He said: “I instantly real-ised he’d gone. It looked like he’d tried to crawl out backwards but his head was stuck.” In her own statement, Shannon Abbey said: “I heard Charlie shouting and screaming: ‘He’s not breathing.’ I ran to the landing and Charlie was holding Oscar in both arms.”

Lightpool Festival

Ballroom dancers perform underneath an illuminated art installation entitled ‘Museum of the Moon’ by artist Luke Jerram in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, as part of the Lightpool Festival of visual arts in the centre of Blackpool, northern England yesterday. The annual festival features a mix of live performance and light-based art installations at various locations throughout the town.

8 Gulf TimesSaturday, October 27, 2018

BRITAIN/IRELAND

The Queen’s last corgi is dead. The little dogs with pointy have been a constant presence in Queen Elizabeth II’s court, following her from room to room in Buckingham Palace and featuring prominently in official photos. But Willow, the last corgi the Queen reared herself, died in April. And now Whisper, a 12-year-old she adopted after the death of its owner — a former gamekeeper of one of the royal estates — is no more, leaving the Queen “deeply saddened”, The Daily Mail reported. Media reports in 2015 said the 92-year-old British monarch had stopped raising corgis so as not to leave them orphaned after her death.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has given birth to a baby boy – saying she and partner Jen Wilson are “delighted”. Davidson said her son had been named Finn Paul Davidson, and weighed 10lb 1.5oz when he was born yesterday. Announcing the birth on Twitter, she said: “Welcome to the world, little one. Know that you are loved”. Davidson started her maternity leave earlier this month, but is due to return to work in the spring. She and Wilson announced in April that they were expecting a child after undergoing a successful IVF procedure, with Finn being born at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary yesterday morning.

Ryanair yesterday defended its handling of an incident in which a passenger shouted racist abuse at an elderly black woman, saying the cabin crew had not been aware of the nature of his comments until after the flight. The police opened an investigation after footage of the man’s tirade went viral over the weekend, with the airline facing criticism because flight attendants moved the woman to a diff erent seat and allowed the man to fly. But in a statement, the Irish airline said cabin staff were at the time working on the assumption that they were dealing with an argument between two passengers, and did not know the man had used racist language.

Outspoken Irish singer Sinead O’Connor has announced she has converted to Islam and changed her name to Shuhada. Having adopted the name Magda Davitt last year, the 51-year-old is now called Shuhada Davitt. She also changed her Twitter profile picture to a black-and-white image of the Nike Swoosh logo and the slogan: “Wear a hijab. Just do it.” “This is to announce that I am proud to have become a Muslim. This is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey,” she tweeted. “All scripture study leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant. I will be given (another) new name. It will be Shuhada.”

A 45-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of trying to steal an original copy of the 1215 Magna Carta from Salisbury cathedral, police said yesterday. Alarms were activated when an attempt was made on Thursday evening to smash the glass box containing the priceless medieval charter. “A man matching the description given by witnesses was arrested on suspicion of attempted theft, possession of an off ensive weapon and criminal damage..,” Wiltshire police said in a statement. The parchment, one of only four original copies still surviving, was not damaged in the incident, they added.

Queen ‘deeply saddened’by pet corgi’s death

Ruth Davidson givesbirth to baby boy

Ryanair defends crew’shandling of racist incident

Singer Sinead O’Connorconverts to Islam

Man arrested over bidto steal Magna Carta

ROYALTYANNOUNCEMENTCONTROVERSYPEOPLECRIME

European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier (left) meets with London mayor Sadiq Khan at the EU headquarters in Brussels yesterday.

EUROPE9Gulf Times


Mother and two daughters foundmurdered on Greece-Turkey border

Three women found dead on the Greece-Turkey border earlier this month were a mother and two daughters whose throats were slit after they were tied up, a Greek police source said yesterday.The bodies were found on October 10 near the River Evros between Greece and Turkey, an area that is a major crossing point for refugees and migrants trying to get into the EU.Authorities are still investigating what happened to the three women of Asian origin although Greek media has reported they may have been killed as a “punishment” by migrant traff ickers.The latest results of the investigation confirmed the victims were a mother around 35-years-old and her two daughters, 17 and 15.They are believed to be Asian but neither their nationality nor identity has been confirmed.It was not immediately clear whether they were migrants or refugees.The bodies were found by a farmer in a field on the banks of the Evros, where increasing numbers of migrants and refugees are seeking to cross following a border crackdown by eastern European states.

After uproar, Finland to increase prison sentences for child rape

Finland’s government has presented tougher laws against child rape to parliament, following outrage at a court’s ruling last year that sex with a 10-year-old was not rape.Considered one of the world’s most gender-equal societies, Finland has come under fire for its legal definition of rape which requires a victim to prove violence was used, or that they were in a state of fear and helplessness.Anger at the country’s response to sexual assaults came to a head last year when a 23-year-old man who had sex with a 10-year-old was given a sentence of only two years after he was convicted of sexual abuse but not rape.Judges ruled the child had not opposed intercourse with the man, and that the perpetrator had not used violence.The sentence was subsequently upheld on appeal.Lawmakers and charities slammed the court’s verdict, and Justice Minister Antti Hakkanen launched a review of rape sentencing in Finland.Under the proposed measures, which could come into force early next year, the maximum sentence for statutory rape – sexual activity with a minor – would be increased from four to six years.The proposal will now be debated in parliament.

France triggers disaster fund for farmers hit by severe drought

France, Europe’s biggest grain producer, announced aid yesterday for farmers hit by the severe drought that has aff licted the country since the summer, along with much of northern Europe.The government will tap an agricultural disaster fund for farmers as part of a broader aid package unveiled by Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume during a visit to eastern France, where he met grain and livestock producers.Unusually hot and dry summer weather parched land, dried up rivers and ravaged crops across France, parts of Germany and Scandinavia, leaving water levels extremely low.Autumn harvests of crops such as maize and sugar beet have been badly hit, while dry soils threaten to hamper planting for the next season.Rain forecast for coming days in parts of the country off ers little respite, as meteorologists and farmers say several weeks of heavy rainfall are needed to compensate for the accumulated shortages.The rainfall deficit continued into September, when it stood at 70%, according to forecaster Meteo France.Even before the drought, financial strains were blamed for suicides among French farmers, reportedly averaging one a day.

More than 2,300 homes flooded in southern Russia, at least six dead

More than 2,300 homes have been flooded in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region, with six people dead and one missing, authorities said yesterday.Rivers overflowed as the region experienced rainfall this week amounting to the regular two-month average.The region, which includes the city of Sochi, hosted many of the events of the 2014 Winter Olympics.Flooding has aff ected about 30 population centres, the emergency situations ministry said in a statement.News reports showed heavy flooding around Sochi.A highway bridge collapsed in a western part of the city, cutting off traff ic.Federal investigators have opened criminal negligence cases into the deaths of an elderly man and woman believed to have died because of the flooding.Investigations are under way to establish the cause of death of four others who died amid the inundation, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.Another elderly woman has been reported missing, the committee said.

Brussels Airport flights cancelledas baggage handlers go on strike

Brussels Airport cancelled 184 flights yesterday after baggage handlers complaining about working conditions went on strike.The strike, which had not been called by the unions in advance, began on Thursday evening and initially led to the cancellation of 50 flights.Brussels Airport laid on beds for some 300 people who were forced to spend the night there, a spokeswoman for the airport said.She said the tally of cancelled flights yesterday was 184 – 116 departures and 68 arrivals – with a further 40 flights rerouted to other airports.The airport normally handles about 800 flights per day.The strike of workers at Aviapartner aff ected 29 airlines, including Ryanair and KLM, but did not have an impact on Belgium’s main carrier Brussels Airlines, which uses a diff erent operator to handle luggage.The strike is scheduled to end at 6am (0400 GMT) today.Aviapartner workers were complaining about a staff shortage which had resulted in increased work pressure.

Balkan chefs cook up 14,186 pancakes in attempt to beat Russian record

A team of Balkan chefs rustled up a world record number of pancakes yesterday, making 14,186 in eight hours at Sarajevo’s tourist fair.Using 300 litres of oil, 600kg of flour and 400 litres of milk, the 140 cooks from Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovenia kept the frying pans turning in an improvised open-air kitchen under autumn sunshine as 15 judges watched.Many of the pancakes were served to visitors to the fair and organisers – who must await ratification of their claim from Guinness World Records – said that they would hand the rest to volunteers organisation for distribution to vulnerable groups.The existing off icial record of 12,716 pancakes was set in Moscow in 2017.

Russia failed yesterday to get the UN General As-sembly to consider calling

on Washington and Moscow to preserve and strengthen an arms control treaty that helped end the Cold War and warned that if the United States quits the pact, it could raise the issue in the UN Security Council.

President Donald Trump said on October 20 that Washington planned to quit the Intermedi-ate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty which Mikhail Gorbachev,

the last Soviet leader, and Ronald Reagan had signed in 1987.

It eliminated all short- and intermediate-range land-based nuclear and conventional mis-siles held by both states in Eu-rope.

Washington has cited Russia’s alleged violation of the treaty as its reason for leaving it, a charge Moscow denies.

Russia in turn accuses Wash-ington of breaking the pact.

Russia had proposed a draft resolution in the 193-member General Assembly’s disarma-ment committee, but missed the October 18 submission deadline.

Yesterday it called for a vote on

whether the committee should be allowed to consider the draft, but lost with only 31 votes in fa-vour, 55 against, and 54 absten-tions.

“In a year, if the US withdraws from the treaty and begins an un-controlled build-up of weapons, nuclear-capable weapons, we will be confronting a completely diff erent reality,” Andrei Belous-ov, deputy director of Russia’s Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, told the com-mittee.

He questioned whether the United States was preparing for a war, asking: “Why is it then ... do they want to leave the treaty?

Why do they want to build up their nuclear capability?”

Belousov said if the United States follows through on its threat to withdraw, then Rus-sia could raise the issue in the 15-member Security Council.

However, such a move would not lead to action as both coun-tries have veto powers.

US Disarmament Ambassador Robert Wood told the committee that Washington had spent some fi ve years trying to engage Mos-cow on the issue of compliance and that Russia had “denied hav-ing produced or tested a ground-launch cruise missile”.

“It’s only recently that they

admitted to having produced a ground-launch cruise missile but then maintained that it did not violate the range limits of the treaty,” he said. “The US has been extremely patient with Russia and our hope is that Russia will do the right thing and destroy that ground-launch cruise mis-sile.”

European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organi-sation (Nato) urged the US on Thursday to try to bring Russia back into compliance with the treaty rather than quit it, diplo-mats said, seeking to avoid a split in the alliance that Moscow could exploit.

Russia, US clash over nuclear arms treaty at UNReutersUnited Nations

A powerful earthquake shook western Greece early yesterday, damaging

a port and a 15th century mon-astery, but causing no major in-juries, offi cials and local media said.

The quake sent out tremors felt as far afi eld as Libya, Italy, Malta and Albania.

Greek authorities initially is-sued a tsunami warning then withdrew the alert.

The magnitude 6.4 quake struck in the Ionian Sea, 50km (31 miles) south of the island of Zakynthos, also known as Zante, Greece’s Geodynamic Institute reported.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) rated the magnitude at 6.8.

Three people were taken to hospital on the island, two of them slightly injured, a spokes-man for Greece’s civil protection agency said.

A series of aftershocks, the highest at 5.6, rattled the island and power was briefl y disrupted.

Tremors damaged a 15th-cen-tury monastery on the nearby is-

lands of Strofades, local media in Zakynthos reported.

They also left large cracks in the port of Zakynthos, though authorities there said operations would continue as usual.

“We are not facing any partic-ular problems,” Zakynthos May-or Pavlos Kolokotsas told Greek state broadcaster ERT. “Calm is being restored.”

Extensive damage was avoided because quake-prone Zakyn-thos had adopted seismic pro-tection codes in construction, said Efthymios Lekkas, head of Greece’s Earthquake Planning and Protection Organisation said.

“The energy unleashed, based on the angle of the faultline, fanned out towards Italy,” he added.

Italy’s Il Messaggero online news site said the quake was felt hundreds of kilometres away in southern Italy.

Firefi ghters in Calabria, Puglia and Sicily received thousands of telephone calls from worried lo-cals.

Zakynthos was all but de-stroyed in a 6.8 tremor in 1953.

More than 140 people were killed in an earthquake north of Athens in 1999.

The quake was fairly shal-low, according to the USGS, just 14km (8.7 miles) below the sea-bed, which would have amplifi ed shaking.

The earthquake struck at

1.54am (2254 GMT on Thursday).Greece straddles two tectonic

plates and often suff ers earth-quakes.

The EMSC European quake agency said sea levels had risen

slightly, by about 20cm (7.87 inches), but the increase could be higher locally.

It later tweeted sea level changes were also observed in Italy.

Earthquake shakes western GreeceReutersAthens

This picture shows damage in the harbour of Zante, after powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake. A powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck off Greece yesterday and was felt strongly in the tourist hotspot island of Zante, causing structural damage but no injuries, off icials said.

Turkey wants extradition of 18 Saudi suspectsFrom Page 1Saudi Arabia has also sacked

fi ve senior government offi cials as part of the investigation.

Khashoggi’s Turkish fi ancee, Hatice Cengiz, said she did not accept an invitation from US President Donald Trump to visit the White House after Khashog-gi’s murder because she thought it was aimed at infl uencing pub-lic opinion in his own favour.

In her fi rst television interview since the killing, Cengiz recount-ed the events leading up to their visit to the consulate on October 2 where Khashoggi handed her his two mobile phones and went in-side while she waited outside for him to emerge.

“Trump invited me to the United States but I perceived it as a statement to win public fa-vour,” Cengiz told broadcaster

Haberturk, pausing at times during an interview and more than once breaking down in tears.

Cengiz said Khashoggi was concerned tensions would arise when he visited the consulate for the fi rst time on September 28, but he was treated well at that visit, which appeared to reassure him, she said.

“He thought Turkey is a safe country and if he would be held or interrogated, this issue would be swiftly solved,” she said.

How Western allies deal with Riyadh will hinge on the extent to which they believe responsibility for Khashoggi’s death lies directly with Prince Mohamed and the Saudi au-thorities.

Prince Mohamed, who casts himself as a reformer, has said

the killers will be brought to jus-tice.

Erdogan said he had spoken with Prince Mohamed. “I also told the crown prince.

I said, ‘You know how to make people talk. Whatever happened between these 18 people, this dodgy business is among them. If you are determined to lift sus-picion, then the key point of our co-operation is these 18 peo-ple.’”

Turkish offi cials suspect Saudi agents killed Khashoggi, 59, inside the consulate and dis-membered him.

Turkish sources say authori-ties have an audio recording documenting the murder.

Scarlett Johansson

A still image taken from a video shows Hatice Cengiz, fiancee of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, during an interview with Turkish broadcaster Haberturk’s anchorman Mehmet Akif Ersoy in Istanbul yesterday.

Merkel: No arms until Khashoggi case is clarifi ed AFPPrague

German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed yesterday that Berlin would not ex-

port arms to Saudi Arabia until the murder of dissident journal-ist Jamal Khashoggi is clarifi ed, a stance French President Em-manuel Macron dubbed “pure demagoguery”.

“The case of journalist Khashoggi is, of course, some-thing incredible, I told the Saudi king yesterday in our telephone conversation,” Merkel said at a press conference with Czech prime minister Andrej Babis.

“We need to clarify the back-ground of this horrible crime and until that, we will not sup-ply weapons to Saudi Arabia,” she added, reiterating comments made earlier this week.

The stance led to a clash with France’s Macron who told report-ers in the Slovak capital Bratis-lava yesterday that stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia would be “pure demagoguery”.

The sale of weapons “has nothing to do with Mr Khashog-gi. One shouldn’t mix everything up,” he said.

Merkel also insisted yesterday that “Saudi Arabia must do eve-rything to solve the urgent hu-manitarian situation in Yemen, there are currently millions of hungry people, we are witnesses of one of the greatest humanitar-ian catastrophes.”

Germany last month approved 416mn euros ($480mn) worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia for 2018. In the past, military exports by Berlin to Saudi have mostly consisted of patrol boats.

Germany and Saudi Arabia only returned their ambassadors

in September after 10 months of frosty relations following criti-cism from Berlin of what it said was Saudi interference in Leba-nese aff airs.

The Khashoggi case has opened a serious new rift with European partners Britain, France and Ger-many jointly calling for Riyadh to clarify how Khashoggi died inside its Istanbul consulate, and for its account to “be backed by facts to be considered credible”.

After a fortnight of deni-als, Saudi authorities admit-ted Saturday that Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and prominent critic of powerful Crown Prince Mohamed bin Sal-man, was killed after entering the consulate in Turkey on October 2.

But it has faced a growing chorus of incredulity over its belated ex-planation that he died in a “brawl”, as world powers demand answers and the location of his body.

Johansson turned down fi lm funding from MbS

Guardian News and MediaLondon

Scarlett Johansson report-edly vetoed funding from the Saudi Crown Prince,

Mohamed bin Salman (MbS), for her next fi lm about Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario.

Addario, who won the Pulitzer for her work in Pakistan, told the New York Times that when Jo-hansson found out the initial set of funders included MbS, she re-jected his involvement.

“Scarlett Johansson said abso-lutely not,” Addario told the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof. “She said: ‘This guy is perpetuating the war in Yemen. He has women in prison’.”

She added: “This was before the killing of Khashoggi, when he be-came one of the main people who wanted to fund the movie.”

MbS has been in the news of late over the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who died in the Saudi embassy in Turkey.

“I didn’t meet with him person-ally,” Addario said. “But my sense is that he probably – my movie got folded into this huge charm

campaign. And that fact that he wanted to show the west that he was into Hollywood, he was into all the great things of the west … Do I want him associated with this movie? Obviously not. And thank God he’s not.”

In April, the crown prince headed to Hollywood to meet with studio heads and stars, including Dwayne Johnson. It was a visit that led to protests and last week CNN reporter Oliver Darcy tweeted a screen grab of an Instagram post from Johnson at the time stating it was a “pleasure” to meet him.

“Such a silly, clickbait post, Ol-iver,” Johnson fi red back. “I’m sur-prised you’d post this. Go back and really read my words. I listened and learned then. As I listen and learn now. C’mon man.”

Addario’s work has focused on global confl icts and particularly the eff ect they have had on women.

INDIA


Kerala needs Rs310bnpost-floods: UN reportIANSThiruvananthapuram

Kerala will need about Rs-310bn for recovery and reconstruction following

the century’s worst fl oods, ac-cording to a UN report presented to the chief minister by UN resi-dent co-ordinator in India Yuri Afanasiev.

Afanasiev presented the Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) report to Chief Minis-ter Pinarayi Vijayan here yes-terday. This is the first time the UN has prepared such a report in India.

The report assessed the dam-age and loss incurred due to the devastating fl oods in the state in August. It said the state would need about Rs310bn for recovery and reconstruction.

The highest amount would be needed for reconstruc-tion of roads and transporta-tion (Rs100.46bn), followed by housing (Rs54.43bn), agri-culture, fi sheries and livestock

(Rs44.98bn), employment and livelihood (Rs38.96bn), other in-frastructure (Rs24.46bn), irriga-tion (Rs14.83bn) and water and sanitation (Rs13.31bn).

The report highlighted the in-ternational examples and models for building back a better Kerala in 16 sectors.

It suggested that Kerala could become the fi rst green state in the country by building on the four pillars of integrated water resources management; eco-sensitive and risk informed approaches to land use and planning; inclusive and peo-ple centred approaches; and by adopting knowledge, innovation and technology.

Chief Minister Vijayan thanked the UN for providing support to the state for fl ood response and developing the PDNA. He sought UN technical support in developing sectoral recovery plans, bringing interna-tional models and new technolo-gies to Kerala and in strength-ening the recovery committees with experts.

The chief minister sought UN support for mobilising resources for the state within and outside the country.

Kerala Finance Minister Tho-mas Issac thanked the UN for its assistance in mobilising grants for reconstruction. “This would reduce the amount of borrow-ing.”

The PDNA is the global meth-odology developed by the UN, the World Bank and the Euro-pean Union to assess damage and loss in the wake of disaster and to recommend the recovery needs and strategies.

In all, 76 experts from 10 UN agencies and EU across 13 sec-tors collaborated to develop the report in 20 days.

The UN agencies included UNDP, Unicef, Unesco, UN Women, UNFPA, UNEP, WHO, WFP, ILO and FAO and adopted reports of three sectors from World Bank and ADB.

Besides, two experts on inte-grated water resources manage-ment from the Netherlands also provided support.

An explosion at a firecracker factory in the Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh yesterday killed seven people just days before the festival of Diwali, police said. The explosion in Badaun destroyed the factory which had a licence to manufacture firecrackers, the district police chief said. “There was an explosion at the factory. We have confirmation of about seven deaths,” Ashok Kumar told reporters, adding that fire brigade and ambulance services were carrying out rescue operations. Firework use hits a peak across the country during the festival, although the Supreme Court has been trying to restrict sales to tackle mounting pollution.

The crackdown on protesters who prevented women from entering the Sabarimala temple in Kerala has crossed 2,000 arrests in just two days, police said yesterday. In the last 12 hours, over 700 people from Pathanamthitta district – where the temple is located – as well as Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Ernakulam and other places have been arrested. A total of 2,061 people across the state have been arrested since Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan ordered the action to begin on Thursday. A total of 452 cases have been registered against 2,300 people for defying the September 28 order of the Supreme Court allowing women of all ages to visit the temple.

The Congress yesterday demanded that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government in Goa prove that Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is suff ering from advanced pancreatic cancer for nearly eight months and has not been seen in public since October 14, is fit to govern. Congress party spokesperson Jitendra Deshprabhu said the party would have to approach the court to seek directions to the government to issue a medi-cal bulletin specifying the health of the former defence minister. “At least they should release a video showing Parrikar walking, speaking and working. There is no bulletin or any doctor speak-ing on his health condition,” Deshprabhu said.

Hearing on two appeals pertaining to two poaching cases against Bollywood actor Sal-man Khan were deferred to December 18 by a sessions court in Jodhpur yesterday due to lack of time. “There are two appeals pending in the sessions court – one each by the government against acquittal of Salman in the Arms Act case and one by Salman himself challenging the conviction in a poaching case,” said actor’s counsel Mahesh Bora. Both were deferred due to “unavailability of enough time with the court”. Before this, hearing on the two applica-tions moved by prosecution against Salman was also deferred till November 29.

Pattali Makkal Katchi founder S Ramadoss yesterday urged the Madras High Court to sum-mon the concerned minister and all officials and condemn them for hiking the property tax rates much more than the undertaking given to the court. In a statement in Chennai, Ramadoss said the Corporation of Chennai had increased property tax rates up to 518% as against an undertaking to the court that the rates would not be increased beyond 50%. Ramadoss said the High Court had ordered the government to revise upwards the property tax rates and also said it would take care of the political leaders criticising the hike.

Fireworks factoryexplosion kills seven

Over 2,000 Sabarimala protesters arrested

Release Parrikar’s videoto show he is fit: Congress

Salman’s poaching case hearing deferred to Dec 18

PMK blasts 518%property tax rates hike

TRAGEDY LAW AND ORDERDEMAND LEGAL ANGER

Govt trying to silence critics,claims Amnestyafter offi ce raidsReutersNew Delhi

Indian authorities have fro-zen the bank accounts of Amnesty International after

a raid on its country offi ce, the human rights watchdog said yes-terday, accusing the government of treating rights groups “like criminal enterprises”.

The enforcement directorate, India’s fi nancial crime inves-tigating agency, searched Am-nesty’s Bengaluru offi ce for 10 hours on Thursday on suspicion that it had violated foreign direct investment guidelines.

“Amnesty had received Rs360mn foreign funds till date from overseas in violation of the Foreign Direct In-vestment (FDI) guidelines,” said the ED in a statement.

Prime Minister Narendra Mo-di’s nationalist government has tightened surveillance on non-profi t groups over the past four years, saying they act against In-dia’s interests.

Thousands of foreign-funded groups have had licenses cancelled or suspended on charges such as misreporting of donations.

Amnesty, which regularly ac-cuses India of human rights violations in Kashmir, said more than fi ve offi cials from the en-forcement directorate raided its offi ce, ordered employees to stay put and searched their desks.

Employees were told to close their laptops and were not al-lowed to use their phones to call friends and families, Amnesty said, adding it fully co-operated.

“Government authorities are increasingly treating human rights organisations like criminal enterprises,” Aakar Patel, execu-tive director at Amnesty India, said in a statement.

“As an organisation committed to the rule of law, our operations in India have always conformed with our national regulations. The principles of transparency and ac-countability are at the heart of our work,” he said.

“Most of the documents asked for during the search were avail-

able in the public domain or were fi led with the relevant authori-ties,” Patel said.

Saying the ED’s questioning was the relationship between its two entities – Amnesty Inter-national India Pvt Ltd (AIIPL) and Amnesty International India Foundation (AIIF), Patel said de-tails of the organisation’ struc-ture were available on its website since 2014.

“Ahead of the raids, the In-dian authorities leaked a cache of their internal documents marked ‘secret’ that appear to cast our operations as a dark web of in-trigue,” added Patel.

The ED said that of the Rs360mn Amnesty received from abroad through commercial route, Rs100mn was placed in Fixed De-posit (FD) as a long-term loan and the balance was deposited in two bank accounts of AIIPL as ‘con-sultancy services’.

A government spokesman did not reply to an e-mail request for comment.

A source close to Amnesty said the group was considering legal action against the government for freezing the bank accounts, which could delay salaries and limit Amnesty’s activities.

Enforcement directorate spokesman A K Rawal said the investigation could take three months to complete, but he de-clined to comment further.

Since Modi took offi ce in 2014, the government has cancelled the registration of nearly 15,000 non-governmental organisations under the Foreign Contribution Regula-tion Act (FCRA), according to the ministry of home aff airs.

Critics say the government has been using the foreign fund-ing law as a tool to silence non-profi t groups which have raised concerns about the social costs of India’s rapid economic devel-opment or questioned its human rights record.

A Greenpeace India spokes-woman said the Amnesty raid “seems to be part of a larger de-sign to muzzle democratic dis-sent in the country that began in 2014.”

Ex-judge to overseeprobe against CBI chiefIANSNew Delhi

The Supreme Court yes-terday directed the cen-tral vigilance commission

(CVC) to complete its inquiry into allegations against Central Bureau of Investigation director Alok Verma and appointed one of its former judges, justice A K Patnaik, to supervise the probe for which it gave two weeks while restraining interim chief M Nageshwar Rao from taking any policy or major decisions.

Making it clear that prolong-ing the inquiry was not in the nation’s best interest, a bench of chief justice Ranjan Gogoi, justice Sanjay Krishan Kaul and justice K M Joseph said the in-quiry would be conducted on the allegations contained in the cabinet secretary’s August 24 note to the CVC.

“The enquiry in ... the alle-

gations made in the note/letter of the Cabinet secretary dated August 24, 2018, as regards the present director, Central Bu-reau of Investigation (CBI) Alok Verma shall be completed by the central vigilance commission (CVC) within a period of two weeks from today”, the court or-dered.

Directing that the inquiry would be conducted under the supervision of Justice Patnaik, the court requested him to ac-cept the assignment and ensure that the enquiry is completed within the time frame fi xed by the court.

The court order came while dealing with the petition by Ver-ma and NGO Common Cause challenging the October 23 order divesting the former of his re-sponsibilities and giving charge to joint director M Nageswara Rao.

After attorney general K K Venugopal told the court that

the inquiry should not be on the allegations against Verma alone but also on the charges raised against CBI special direc-tor Rakesh Asthana, chief justice Gogoi said: “We are only con-cerned with Verma.”

The court also asked the of-fi ciating director M Nageswara Rao not to take any policy or major decision. It directed all decisions taken by Rao “after taking over charge on October 23 till this hour” to be submitted to the court in a sealed envelope by November 12.

Initially chief justice Gogoi directed the CVC to complete the inquiry in 10 days but after solicitor general Tushar Mehta’s appeal for an extension, it was extended to 12 days.

Initially not inclined to give more time, Chief Justice Go-goi said, “No, Mr. SG we don’t want this to go on. This is not in the interest of the country.” As senior counsel Mukul Ro-

hatgi appearing for Rakesh The court also clarifi ed that

the “entrustment of supervi-sion of on-going enquiry by the CVC to a former judge of the court was a one-time exception

which has been felt necessary by the peculiar facts of this case and should not be understood to be casting any refl ection on any authority of the government of India.”

Rights activists’bail plea dismissedIANSPune

A special court here rejected the bail pleas fi led by three human rights and civil

liberties activists, accused of in-volvement in the Elgaar Parishad and the Koregaon-Bhima caste riots of January 1, following which two of them were re-ar-rested yesterday.

The special judge of the Un-lawful Activities (Prevention) Act Court, K D Vadane, passed a common order declining the bail applications of Sudha Bharad-waj, Vernon S Gonsalves and Arun T Ferreira in the case fi led against them by the Vishramg-baug police station here.

Shortly after the verdict, law-yers for Gonsalves and Ferreira moved fresh applications seeking extension of their house arrests by one week, but that too was not al-lowed by special judge Vadane.

“Since their pleas were not granted by the court, we have ar-rested them (Gonsalves and Fer-reira) and taken them into custody. We are now working on arresting

Bharadwaj,” joint commissioner of police Shivajirao Bodkhe said.

Gonsalves and Ferreira shall be produced before a court for remand today before continuing further investigations, he added.

The three were placed under house arrest along with two other co-accused, as per an earlier Su-preme Court directive, in a public interest litigation fi led by historian Romila Thapar and others.

During the investigations into the Koregaon-Bhima riots, the Pune Police had raided and arrest-ed fi ve accused including Bharad-waj, Gonsalves, Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha (now released) and P Varavara Rao (currently under house arrest in Hyderabad).

Earlier in June, the Pune Po-lice had nabbed activists Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale, Shoma Sen, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut and Rana Jacob in the Kore-gaon-Bhima case.

Besides the Koregaon-Bhima violence, the police claimed that they harboured links with Maoist terror groups and were allegedly planning to carry out a high-level political assassination in a ‘Rajiv Gandhi-style operation’.

Rescue operations underway at the site where at least four persons were killed and nearly 24 injured after a bus travelling from Patna to Bihar’s Samastipur district overturned near Patna yesterday.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi takes part in a protest near the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) headquarters in New Delhi yesterday.

Bus crash kills four

Rahul leads protest attacking Modi

The Congress, led by its presi-dent Rahul Gandhi, yesterday hit the streets across the country over the government’s move to divest the powers of CBI director Alok Verma, slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying he can run but cannot hide from truth in the Rafale deal. In a mas-sive protest joined by opposition leaders such as TMC’s Rajya Sabha member Nadimul Haque, the CPI’s D Raja and the Lok-tantrik Janata Dal’s Sharad Yadav, the Congress leaders courted arrest. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi is finishing every institu-

tion of the country because he wants to hide corruption in the Rafale deal. He is attacking the CBI, the election commission and other institutions,” Rahul said in a brief address to a crowd of Congress workers outside the CBI headquarters in Lodhi Road area in south Delhi. Linking the government’s action of divesting CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers, duties and functions with the controversy over the Rafale contract, the Congress president alleged a businessman had ben-efitted to the tune of Rs300bn through this deal.

LATIN AMERICA11Gulf Times


Haddad needs‘fraud’ to winBrazil elections,says BolsonaroAFPBrasília

Brazil’s right-wing presi-dential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro boasted that

leftist opponent Fernando Hadd-ad could only beat him by “fraud” in Sunday’s decisive election run-off . The former army captain heads into this weekend’s second round with a seemingly unbeat-able lead in opinion polls, the lat-est of which by Ibope showed him leading Haddad by 57% to 43%.

“He can get there by fraud, but through the vote he won’t make it. I’m sure of that,” Bolsonaro, 63, said in a video posted on Fa-cebook.

He also suggested Haddad’s Workers Party may be trying to “manipulate Ibope’s numbers” and warned his supporters to re-main “wary” of the opinion polls.

Bolsonaro’s suspicions were piqued by Ibope’s poll published on Tuesday, which said Haddad had cut his opponent’s lead from 18 to 14 points. That poll said that in Sao Paulo, where Haddad was mayor from 2013-16, the leftist was ahead by 51% to 49%.

Yet Bolsonaro pointed to the October 7 fi rst round results from Brazil’s biggest city, where Hadd-ad garnered only 19% compared to the former’s 44%.

It’s not the fi rst time he has brought up the possibility of fraud, having done so 10 days be-fore the fi rst round of voting, be-fore subsequently backtracking.

However, when the results were announced, he then denounced “problems” with the electronic urns and blamed them for deny-ing him an absolute majority.

Earlier, going back on a prior

pledge to follow the pullout by US President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro said he was not set on leaving the Paris climate accord if elected.

Bolsonaro’s decision marks a surprising about-face for a can-didate who enjoys strong support from Brazil’s powerful agribusi-ness lobby and has called conser-vation eff orts a threat to Brazilian sovereignty.

Speaking at a news conference in Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro also said he that he wanted to work with the United Nations to deal with a large infl ux of Venezuelan refugees in Brazil’s north.

He said he did not want confl ict with the neighbouring country, whose socialist government he has repeatedly criticised.

Brazil’s most polarised election in a generation has stirred political violence and threats against jour-nalists, while Bolsonaro’s policy pledges have raised alarm among many, including environmen-talists. But Bolsonaro has been adopting a more moderate tone as he nears an increasingly likely vic-tory in Sunday’s run-off election

against Haddad.Bolsonaro had previously said

that, if elected, he would pull Bra-zil out of the Paris climate accord due to disagreements over how the Amazon rainforest should be pro-tected.

Trump pulled the United States out of the accord in June 2017.

Bolsonaro has now said he would respect the accord as long as he got assurances that Brazil would not cede sovereignty to na-tive tribes or international juris-diction over the Andes mountains, Amazon rainforest and Atlantic Ocean — the so-called Triple A region.

“Let’s put on paper that the Triple A isn’t in play and neither is the independence of any in-digenous land, and I’ll uphold the Paris Agreement,” Bolsonaro told journalists.

This month, a group of non-governmental organisations in-cluding Greenpeace and WWF-Brasil signed an open letter saying that Bolsonaro’s proposals present a serious threat to Brazil’s environ-ment that could lead deforestation “to explode.”

19 bodies found inunmarked graves

Peru opposition vows to halt clashes as leader faces jailtime

AFPMexico City

At least 19 bodies have been discovered in a fi eld in Mexico’s western state of

Jalisco, scene of some of the worst violence in the country, local pros-ecutors said.

The corpses have been identi-fi ed as belonging to 16 men and three women, who are believed to have been killed about four months ago, the offi cials said.

Two skulls were also recovered but it was not clear if that meant two more victims, or if the skulls belonged to people already de-clared dead.

The number of murder victims in Mexico has exploded in recent years in spiralling violence linked to the country’s powerful drug cartels.

The fi rst human remains were found on Monday in Lagos de Moreno, a part of Jalisco state near the border with Guanajuato state.

Investigators then pursued a search in the area on Tuesday and Wednesday, allowing prosecutors to announce the fi nal tally.

Authorities said they could not

say if the victims were local resi-dents, where several disappear-ances had been recorded in recent months, or if their bodies had been relocated from elsewhere.

Just over a week ago, 16 bodies were found in an unmarked grave outside Guadalajara, the state capital of Jalisco and the country’s second-most populous city.

Since the government deployed the army to fi ght the country’s powerful drug cartels in 2006, Mexico has been hit by a wave of violence including more than 200,000 murders.

Last year, the country registered a record 28,702 homicides.

Mass graves are regularly dis-covered containing dozens or even hundreds of unidentifi ed bodies.

Nearly 4,000 such corpses have been found since 2007, accord-ing to the National Human Rights Commission.

Violence in Guadalajara has skyrocketed since March 2017, when a power struggle erupted at the heart of the brutal Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

In late September, authorities found the remains of 278 mur-der victims in a refrigerated truck in Guadalajara, after the city’s morgues overfl owed.

ReutersLima

Peru’s most powerful con-servative party has vowed to stop engaging in disputes

with other political groups, a dra-matic opposition shift that could help President Martin Vizcarra pass legislation.

Once emboldened by its solid

Congress majority won in the 2016 election despite losing the presi-dency, the party, Popular Force, is in crisis as its leader Keiko Fujimori faces three years in jail over charges she denies.

Fujimori has tasked an “emer-gency committee” with rebuilding the party after a handful of its top leaders resigned this week.

In a rare mea culpa, Popular Force Congresswoman Ursula

Letona, a panel member, said the party should have focused more on lawmaking in the past two years, which were marked by hostilities between the executive and legisla-tive branches that led the former president to resign in March.

“We did many things, but we also fell into the confrontation game and that was a political mis-take we acknowledge,” Letona said, without mentioning specifi cs.

“We aim to return to the path we started in Congress of pro-posing a series of reforms for Peru, an agenda.” But it was un-clear who would lead Popular Force if a judge orders this week that Fujimori, 43, be jailed before trial for up to three years to en-sure she does not fl ee or obstruct a criminal inquiry.

It was time for Fujimori step down as party president, said One

Popular Force lawmaker, Rolando Reategui, who admitted this week to being an informant for prosecu-tors.

A twice-defeated presiden-tial candidate and the daughter of former autocrat Alberto Fujimori, Fujimori denies prosecutors’ al-legations that she used Popular Force to launder money for Brazil-ian builder Odebrecht during her 2011 campaign.

She has described her legal troubles as political persecution but said she would never fl ee. “I’ll face this process in the name of the truth, in the name of my party and in the name of my fam-ily,” Fujimori told the court on Thursday.

An unfavourable ruling could dash Fujimori’s chances of win-ning the presidency in mid-2021 elections, opening the way for

outsiders to sweep to power in the world’s No.2 copper producer and one of Latin America’s strongest economies.

The judge assigned to the case, Richard Concepcion, has ordered two former presidents to so-called “preventive prison,” or pre-trial detention in connection with Ode-brecht, which has been at the cen-tre of Latin America’s biggest graft scandal.

UK has pledged not toextradite Assange: QuitoReutersQuito

The United Kingdom told Ecuador in August that WikiLeaks founder Julian

Assange would not be extradited if he left the country’s London embassy, where he has lived under asylum since 2012, Ecuador’s top government attorney said.

In a written response to queries from Ecuador, the UK explained that it had not received any extra-dition request, and said Assange’s jail time in the UK for violating bail terms by seeking refuge in the embassy would not exceed six months, Inigo Salvador, who rep-resents the Ecuadorean govern-ment in court proceedings, told reporters.

Salvador said Ecuador passed on the UK’s response to Assange’s lawyers, but noted that if Assange stayed in the embassy Ecuador would put new conditions on his stay. “Assange had a choice be-tween turning himself in to British authorities with those assurances, or staying in the embassy of Ecua-

dor, but given that the asylum had lasted six years with no signs of immediate resolution we were go-ing to place certain rules,” Salvador said at a news conference.

It was unclear if the UK’s assur-ances were still valid.

Assange’s legal team did not im-mediately respond to a request for comment.

The UK Foreign & Common-wealth Offi ce referred to Foreign Offi ce Minister Alan Duncan’s June statement that Assange would be treated “humanely and properly” if he left the embassy.

Assange took refuge in the em-bassy after British courts ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual molesta-tion case.

That case has been dropped, but supporters have said that Assange fears he could be extradited to the US if he leaves the embassy.

WikiLeaks, which published US diplomatic and military secrets when Assange ran the operation, faces a US grand jury investigation.

The relationship between As-sange and Ecuador has grown in-creasingly tense in the past year.

Assange fi led a lawsuit in an Ec-uadorean court last week claiming the new asylum terms, which re-quire him to pay for medical bills and telephone calls and to clean up after his pet cat, violate his rights.

Ecuador says the rules are con-sistent with international asylum standards.

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister, Jose Valencia, said earlier this week that he was “frustrated” by As-sange’s decision to fi le suit, and said the South American country would no longer intervene on his behalf in talks with Britain over his situation, a break from previous practice.

On Thursday, Salvador refuted Assange’s claims in the suit that Ecuador prevented him from re-ceiving visitors, denied him coun-sel and cut off access to communi-cations, noting that he received 62 visits between July and October, including some from his lawyers.

An initial hearing in the case had been scheduled for yesterday, but the presiding judge suspended it after the videoconference that was supposed to beam Assange into the courtroom faltered.

Legal bid toblock SQMstake saleto Tianqidismissed

ReutersSantiago

Chile’s Constitutional Court has rejected a lawsuit to block Chinese miner Tian-

qi Lithium Corporation’s $4.1bn purchase of a stake in Chilean lithium miner SQM, all but clear-ing the way for the transaction to close.

In a 3-2 ruling, the court said the lawsuit was “inadmissible” and lifted its suspension of the sale to Tianqi of a 24% holding in SQM, the world’s No 2 lithium miner.

In a joint statement, Tianqi and Canadian fertiliser producer Nutrien Ltd, which is selling the stake, said they were “satisfi ed” with the ruling and would press ahead with completing the sale by the end of the year.

Lawyers for Julio Ponce Lerou’s Pampa Group, which is SQM’s majority shareholder, did not re-spond to a request for comment.

Lithium has become one of the world’s most in-demand com-modities because of the rising popularity of electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries.

The initial lawsuit, brought by Ponce, was intended to scuttle an agreement struck between Chile’s antitrust regulators and Tianqi.

Ponce’s lawyers argued the deal had been struck “practically in se-cret” and that it failed to protect SQM’s corporate secrets from top competitor Tianqi.

Nutrien must sell its SQM shares by April 2019 in order to comply with regulatory require-ments put in place by Indian and Chinese authorities following a prior merger.

The court’s decision is fi nal and not subject to appeal, but one legal hurdle remains.

Pampa fi led an additional ap-peal earlier this month with Chile’s antitrust court.

Nutrien previously argued that the “real objective” of Ponce’s le-gal manoeuvres was to block the sale to Tianqi and force Nutrien to “miss its deadline with Indian and Chinese regulators.”

Ecuadorean government attorney Inigo Salvador arrives for the press conference in Quito.

Central American migrants, part of a caravan trying to reach the US, walk along the road as they continue their journey, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, yesterday.

Heading to US

Bannon endorses far-right presidential candidateFormer Trump White House adviser and conservative firebrand Steve Bannon yesterday said he was endorsing Brazil’s far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, hoping he could win tomorrow’s vote and contribute to a global populist tide. “Captain Bolsonaro is a Brazilian patriot, and I believe a great leader for his country at this historic moment,” Bannon said about the former military

off icer. Bolsonaro’s team has courted Bannon’s support and his son Eduardo tweeted in August about a visit with him in New York. “We had a great conversation and we share the same worldview,” wrote Eduardo Bolsonaro. He said they planned “to join forces, especially against cultural Marxism.” Opinion polls point to a decisive win for Bolsonaro in the run-off vote against his leftist rival Fernando Haddad tomorrow.

PAKISTAN


Pakistan’s Task Force on Aus-terity and Restructuring is planning the redesign of the

federal government with initial idea of reducing the number of ministries and abolishing the tier of section offi cer.

According to offi cial sources here, the task force under Dr Ishrat Hussain intends to have the rules of business amended to make the government leaner, cost-eff ective, and effi cient.

“A breakthrough is expected in the next few days,” an offi cial says.

According to him, the restruc-turing in the federal government would impact the administrative systems in provinces, which are also expected to adopt measures that can make them lean, automat-ed and effi cient.

He said that the idea at present is to empower the cabinet, allowing the prime minister to concentrate on major issues rather than having to approve each and every fi le sent to him for the fi nal go-ahead.

The plan is to empower the cabi-net to decide on day-to-day mat-ters of all federal subjects through the cabinet secretary, instead of the existing practice of sending all fi les for approval of the prime minister

to his secretary or principal secre-tary.

Another item under considera-tion is to abolish the offi ce of sec-tion offi cer, and give the deputy secretary the responsibility of ini-tiating fi les.

Under this plan, each depart-mental edifi ce would be reduced to just three tiers – secretary, ad-ditional secretary, and deputy sec-retary.

At present, section offi cers initi-ate fi les in all government depart-ments.

“The diffi cult issue at hand is how to absorb section offi c-ers already in service, as this post (should) be abolished without ren-dering anyone jobless,” the offi cial said.

He said the task force intends to cut the number of federal govern-ment ministries.

According to this idea, every ministry would have a minister and a secretary, with multiple divisions of related subjects.

Each division would be headed by an additional secretary.

Files would be initiated by dep-uty secretary under the additional secretary.

The offi cial said that the scheme would help the government save funds it currently has to spend on staffi ng so many ministries.

It may be mentioned here that the federal government has already started the automation of its de-partments to make them effi cient, and to know who is doing what.

Pakistan plans to reduce the number of ministries

InternewsIslamabad

Plans are also afoot to abolish a key administrative tier – that of the section off icer

Govt terminates envoys in major capitals

The government has decided to appoint “career diplomats”

in key world capitals, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood

Qureshi said yesterday, doing away with “political appoint-

ments” in London, Washington, and Riyadh.

The minister said that Nafees Zakaria would be the new Pa-

kistani high commissioner to London, while Dr Asad Majeed

will be appointed the ambassador to the United States.

He, however, said that the appointments will take some time,

adding that the matter has already been discussed with

Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Qureshi further said Raja Ali Aijaz is to be posted in Riyadh

as the new ambassador.

He said that all appointments included “career diplomats”.

Hamid Asghar Khan will be appointed ambassador to Rabat

and Shehryar Akbar Khan in Serbia, the minister said further.

Qureshi added that Sahibzada Ahmed Khan will discharge

diplomatic responsibilities in Havana, whereas Ahmed Am-

jad Ali will be appointed consul general in Dubai.

Pakistan’s Federal Investi-gation Agency (FIA) has established its sub-offi c-

es in Greece and Iran to check increasing activities of organ-ised criminal networks and il-legal movements of Pakistani migrants.

FIA offi cials say that one sub-offi ce each in Greece and Iran had been established.

The offi cial said that one deputy director along with his subordinates would be posted in each country to check legal or illegal movements of Paki-stani migrants and to look after their other issues.

The FIA teams had already visited Turkey, Iran, and Greece to fi nalise the setting up of sub-offi ces there.

The plan to set up a sub-of-fi ce in Turkey has been delayed, however, due to fi nancial diffi -culties.

The decision to establish FIA offi ces abroad was taken after a smugglers’ boat with mostly Pakistanis on board capsized off the coast of Libya on January 31 this year, leaving several people drowned.

The FIA offi cial said the sub-offi ces in Greece and Iran would specifi cally look into the issues of Pakistanis, including those languishing in detention cen-tres.

He said the most common land route chosen by human

smugglers is from Pakistan to Turkey, and then Greece.

Iran and Turkey, he said, served as transit countries where a network of human smugglers had been actively working and they had been in contact with their agents in Baluchistan and other parts of Pakistan.

He said it is important to stop young people from going abroad, especially to Europe, by boat because of the risks.

The FIA offi cial said a cam-

paign should be launched to advise youths not to go abroad illegally.

He said that whenever illegal immigrants are arrested and put in detention centres, Paki-stan’s embassies make arrange-ments for their deportation and provide them with the required documents.

He said that soon after funds are made available, the FIA would establish its sub-offi ce in Turkey and send the staff to Greece and Iran.

FIA sets up offi ces in Iran, GreeceInternewsIslamabad

It is mid-afternoon. You step into a café in Karachi, Paki-stan’s largest city by the sea.

The aroma of freshly brew-ing coff ee, milk, chocolate and vanilla hits the spot even before you place your order.

The combined sounds of bub-bling water and its going down the drain, along with the sound a straw makes when one sips the last drops of juice from a tall glass and whispered conversa-tions intermingled with giggles and chuckles from the customer tables, add to the ambience of the place.

The young barista with the sweet smile hears nothing, how-ever, as she goes about her work.

Meet Tabassum Nasir, the Pakistan’s fi rst female deaf and mute barista, according to a re-port published in Dawn news-paper.

Happily pouring coff ee into a broad latte cup, she picks up a silver jug containing frothy steamed milk for texturing and presentation.

Mixing the milk with circular movements, she drops a little onto the centre of the cup before

pulling the trickle through it to make a perfect heart.

A perfect latte made with love.Tabassum suff ers from “pro-

found deafness”, meaning she is totally deaf.

A student of the Deaf Reach School, she was recently part of a week-long Family Education Services Foundation (FESF) pro-gramme, where she got a chance to train with baristas of diff er-ent coff ee houses, e.g., Coff ee Waghera, Del Frio, Espresso, Es-quires, Floc, Kookie, and Mocca.

Having received the required training and certifi cates, she now feels confi dent enough to step into the world of coff ee her-self.

Tabassum had never even tasted coff ee until quite recently.

She got a chance to do so dur-ing an exhibition when she vis-ited a stall with some other stu-dents.

“I got to have mocha coff ee there, which I really enjoyed,” she tells Dawn through a sign language interpreter.

“When I came home, I tried to make it myself, but I couldn’t really replicate that taste or tex-ture as I didn’t have an espresso machine,” she shrugs, smiling.

Tabassum was admitted to Deaf Reach School and Training

Centre at the nursery level.The school was set up by Ri-

chard Geary and wife Heidi, who are parents of a diff erently-abled child.

The school is focused on not just education but also empow-ering and training students in skills that will enable them to earn their living after complet-ing their education.

“We started in the early 2000s with some 90 deaf and mute students from Baldia Town. We off ered them a pick-and-drop service so that their parents had no issues sending them to school,” says Geary, adding that Tabassum was one of their fi rst students from Baldia.

The school, which now has a number of branches across the country, has some 225 students in Karachi.

In Karachi, it is about to intro-duce further courses at the col-lege level.

Tabassum will be one of their fi rst senior students to enter the third year after she completes her intermediate studies.

During a tour of the institu-tion with the school’s principal Mehrin Abrar, one notices the walls and corners decorated with beautiful paintings, deco-ration pieces and art models.

“Fine arts come naturally to deaf and mute students as they feature visual learning. They are all basically experiential learn-ers,” she says.

One also fi nds students tak-ing interest in computer pro-gramming, handicraft, dress designing, tailoring and cooking classes.

Tabassum says that during her childhood, she used to wonder about what she would do in life.

“I was thinking of becoming a teacher until I had that mocha coff ee. I also enjoyed watching the barista at work at that stall,” she says.

“I like to think that I am a good artist. So I wanted to try my hand at making hearts, tulips, and rosetta,” she adds through her interpreter.

But her parents were worried when she spoke about her plans to be a barista.

“They were concerned, but since they didn’t want to restrict me, they let me train at coff ee houses,” she smiles.

During training she was able to impress the baristas teaching her, as she easily picked up dif-ferent techniques while getting used to operating commercial espresso machines.

Asked how she would com-municate with other staff ers and customers, Tabassum explains that she communicate through her eyes and actions.

“I am quite expressive, haven’t you noticed? I doubt that I will have much of a prob-lem,” she says.

Her principal laughs.“This confi dence she gets

from her school. And seeing her so upbeat, her parents are also fi ne with her working as a ba-rista. She already has several job off ers. So be prepared to fi nd her as a full-time barista soon at a café near you.”

Barista quietly serving up quite an impression in Karachi caféInternewsKarachi

Tabassum communicates with customers through her eyes and actions. (Picture courtesy of Dawn)

Twenty-three Pakistan universities have been named in the top 500

higher education institutes of Asia in the latest QS Asia Uni-versity Rankings 2019.

According to the details shared by QS website, the an-nual ranking by world leading ranking authority Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has been ex-panded this year to include the top 500 universities in Asia.

In this year’s rankings, Pa-kistan’s performance has improved, as the number of universities in the top league climbed to 23 from previous year’s number of 16.

The National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) was again declared the

top university in Pakistan.Besides leading the Pakistan

brigade, the NUST also attained individual improvement by climbing four places, moving up to 87 on the list from last year’s 91th position.

The NUST also happens to be the 417th best university in the world, according to QS global rankings.

The NUST’s research output is rated “very high” and it scored high marks for faculty-student ratio and employer reputation.

The second position in the list for Pakistan went to Lahore University of Management Sci-ences (LUMS), placing 95th in the ranking.

The LUMS also went up the ranking; it was previously placed at the 103rd spot.

The NUST and the LUMS are the only two Pakistan universi-ties among the top 100 in the QS

Asia University Rankings 2019.Quaid-e-Azam University

(QAU) Islamabad was at the third position for Pakistan, placing 109th among the top 500 Asian universities.

It was followed by the COMSATS Institute of Infor-mation Technology (CIIT) at the 135th spot, and the Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS) at the 146th.

The UET Lahore, the Univer-sity of Punjab, and the Aga Khan University were the other three Pakistani universities among the top 200 institutes in Asia, claiming the 171st, 193rd and 195th positions, respectively.

Besides the 16 universities that were included in the 2018 list, there were seven new en-trants from Pakistan in the QS Asia University Rankings 2019.

These included the Bahria

University Islamabad and the International Islamic Univer-sity Islamabad (IIU) in 351-400 band, and the University of Sargodha and the University of Sindh in the 401-450 band.

The Lahore College for Wom-en University, the University of Central Punjab, and the Univer-sity of Management and Tech-nology Lahore in the 451-500 band.

However, accompanied with the reassuring news of new names making into the exclusive list were bad indicators of sev-eral universities slipping down the rankings when compared to their last year’s place on the list.

In fact, almost half of the Pa-kistan universities featured in 2018 list saw their ranking de-cline.

The National University of Singapore was named as the top university in Asia for 2019.

23 Pakistani universities on top 500 listInternewsIslamabad

No request from China for military access to Gwadar

ReutersBeijing

China has not asked for military access to Paki-stan’s Chinese-funded,

deepwater port of Gwadar, a senior Pakistani rear admiral said yesterday, amid persistent speculation in India and the US that it could become a Chinese naval base.

Gwadar, in the Baluchistan, is the crown jewel of China’s $60bn investment in Belt and Road Initiative projects in Paki-stan.

The grand plan is to turn Gwa-dar into a trans-shipment hub and megaport to be built along-side special economic zones from which export-focused in-dustries will ship goods world-wide.

A web of energy pipelines, roads and rail links will connect Gwadar to China’s western re-gions.

Last year the Pentagon singled out Pakistan as a possible loca-tion for a future Chinese military base, though China has said that that is pure speculation.

Diplomatic and security sources see Gwadar as the likely location.

Speaking at the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, which China styles as its answer to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore, Rear Ad-miral Javaid Iqbal, the Secretary of the Pakistan Navy, said that Gwadar is a “signifi cant addition to the regional maritime land-scape”.

“Let me emphasise that the Gwadar port is purely a com-mercial venture and has no military overtones,” he told the forum.

Speaking later to Reuters, he said he was very specifi c about the non-military nature of the port.

“The Gwadar port has no military dimension. It will be just a commercial port,” Iqbal said. “The Pakistan navy will maintain a presence to ensure maritime security, to ensure the security of the port.”

“The geopolitical debate that somehow goes on in the media about Gwadar being used as a foreign military base is not cor-rect at all,” he added.

Asked whether China had specifi cally asked for military access, Iqbal answered: “No, not at all.”

China opened its fi rst overseas military base, which it formally calls a logistics facility, in the Horn of Africa country Djibouti last year.

Djibouti’s position on the northwestern edge of the Indian Ocean has fuelled worries in In-dia that it would become anoth-er of China’s “string of pearls” of military alliances and assets ringing India, including Paki-stan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.

Imran to visit five capitals in 8 weeks

Prime Minister Imran Khan will visit five countries in the coming eight weeks, off icial sources here say.Diplomatic sources say that Khan will visit the United Arab Emirates after returning from China in the second week of next month.He has been invited by the UAE President Khalifa Zayed al-Nahyan.The prime minister will also visit Malaysia next month on the invitation of his counterpart Mahathir Mohamed.The capitals of Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan will also be his destinations in the subsequent weeks.Sources say he has been invited for visits by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iranian President Dr Hassan Rouhani, and Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani.

Pakistani artwork sold for Rs34mn

Artist Rashid Rana’s work, the Red Carpet Series, fetched the highest price of Rs34.4mn (£200,000) among other artwork by Pakistanis at an auction of modern and contemporary South Asian art at Bonham’s this week.The second highest sale was an untitled work by the late Sadequain, which was sold for Rs12mn (£75,000), according to a press release.Other notable works sold were Abdur Rehman Chughtai’s The Saqui for £48,000, and a drawing by Gulgee for £5,000.Rana holds the record for the highest price ever paid – $623,000 – for a work of art from Pakistan.Despite his acclaim on the international stage, he remains virtually unknown at home.Rana emerged on the art scene during the early 2000s with a piece that drew praise for exploring new ideas and bold imagery.

Supreme Court orders inclusionof column for Sikhs in census form

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has issued directives for inclusion of a separate religion box for the Sikh community in the population census form, and directed the authorities concerned to submit a compliance report.A three-member bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar heard a petition filed by the Sikh community seeking inclusion of a box for them in the population census this week.During the hearing, the elders of Sikh community submitted before the court that a separate religion box was not available to them in the population census form.They contended that by getting their religion box in the census form, they will at least know the exact number of Sikhs across Pakistan and receive recognition for their services.

Measures on smuggled ‘DTH’ devicesThe Supreme Court of Pakistan has ordered the formation of a special committee to suggest measures to curb the unchecked availability of smuggled Indian “direct-to-home” (DTH) devices, one of the reasons behind Pakistan’s revenue losses.Court off icials said that the directive was issued by a three-judge court bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar, which had taken up a case relating to easy availability of Indian DTH or “magic box” in Pakistani markets.The DTH satellite TV is the latest technology to deliver digital TV to households.

PHILIPPINES

13Gulf Times Saturday, October 27, 2018

Govt opens cleaner Boracay to touristsAFP Boracay

Tourists landed by the boatload yesterday on the Philippines’ Boracay

island, which re-opened with a slew of new rules after a six-month shutdown aimed at un-doing the impact of years of be-ing loved to death by millions of holidaymakers.

President Rodrigo Duterte shuttered the tiny white-sand island in April, declaring it a “cesspool” where businesses fl ushed raw sewage into the once pristine turquoise waters and trash soiled its beaches.

Among the fi rst to land after the government threw open the doors just past dawn were fi rst-timers attracted by the prospect of a spruced up, less crowded island.

“When I saw pictures of tour-ists in Boracay lying like sar-dines in a can, I didn’t want to come here,” German visitor Josef Fuchs, 61, said. “Now I expect to have a few good days here.”

Tourists like him were greeted with new restrictions that cap the number of visitors as well as a beachside boozing ban and eff orts to build up island infra-structure.

Once a quiet hideaway fa-

voured by backpackers, the tiny island was transformed by over-development into a mass desti-nation seeing some 2mn visitors per year.

Under the new regime, the beachfront is cleared of the mas-seuses, vendors, bonfi res and even the builders of its famous photo-op sandcastles it was once crowded with.

All water sports save for swimming are also banned for the time being, while Boracay’s

three casinos have been perma-nently shut down in line with Duterte’s wishes.

Buildings were bulldozed and businesses pushed back to create a 30-metre buff er zone from the waterline. Away from the wa-ter the sound of machinery and hammering echoed in the air as resorts made improvements to appease government inspectors and crews toiled away on a wid-ened main road.

Boracay, which major tourist

magazines consistently rate as among the world’s best beaches, measures a mere 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres). Yet it was seeing up to 40,000 sun worshippers at peak times, with tourists spend-ing $1bn a year but also leaving mountains of garbage and an overfl owing sewer system.

The new rules say 19,200 tourists will be allowed on the island at any one time, with the government aiming to enforce that by controlling the number

of available hotel rooms.Scores of hotels and res-

taurants were ordered to close because they did not meet standards, while just under 160 tourism-related businesses have been approved to re-open.

Drinking and smoking are banned and the huge multi-day beach parties dubbed “LaBo-racay” that drew tens of thou-sands of tourists during the May 1 Labour Day weekend will be a thing of the past.

The Boracay Foundation, the main business industry group on the island, said the sector sup-ports the new regulations aimed at cleaning up the resort.

“The rules and ordinances are really perfect... it’s just a matter of implementation,” its execu-tive director Pia Mirafl ores said.

“For a long time we’ve been asking for the political will to implement the rules and regula-tions,” she added.

However, some hotel owners were sceptical about whether the changes would stick in a place that suff ered from lax en-forcement even before the slate of new regulations.

“This is maybe just for the shock eff ect. You know how things work in the Philippines,” said Vicky Salem, whose fam-ily owns a hotel on the island. “Nothing is forever here.”

Tourists arrive at the island of Boracay, yesterday.

Workers install temporary drainage pipes at the island of Boracay.

Anti-graft watchdog opposes Lapena’s promotionBy William DepasupilManila Times

A private-sector anti-corruption group urged President Rodrigo Du-

terte yesterday to shelve the “promotion” of former Bureau of Customs (BoC) commis-sioner Isidro Lapena to director general of the Technical Edu-cation and Skills Development Authority (Tesda).

The Coalition Against Cor-ruption (CAC), in a news con-ference, said it was “prema-ture” that Lapena should be rewarded with a promotion to a Cabinet-level rank while in-vestigations into his alleged role in the smuggling of P11bn worth of shabu in August (not P6.8bn as previously estimat-ed), were in progress.

“In fact, Lapena’s reassign-ment and promotion, without first being cleared of culpabil-ity, undermines the president’s avowed policies of ‘zero toler-ance’ and ‘not even a whiff’ in the war on drugs and corrup-tion. Illegal drugs and other syndicated crimes can only flourish in an environment of unmitigated corruption,” it said.

Partnering with the Presi-dential Anti-Corruption Commission in the war on

corruption from discovery to prosecution and conviction of corrupt officials, encouraged whistleblowers to surface to help prosecute crooks in the government.

In the news conference on Thursday, Lourdes Manaoang, who had blown the whistle on Lapena, accused the sacked BoC commissioner of incom-petence.

The National Bureau of In-vestigation, the Senate and the House of Representatives are separately investigating Lap-ena’s supposed role in the smug-gling of the P11bn shabu in Au-gust.

Lapena, a former military of-ficer, has accepted his appoint-ment as the new Tesda chief.

“Yes of course (he has ac-cepted it). As the president said, he’s transferring General Lapena to Tesda,” BoC spokes-man and Port of Manila Col-lector Erastus Sandino Austria said in a text message to Manila Times.

He confirmed that the presi-dent and Lapena had a private talk but did not elaborate on what transpired during the meeting.

Lapena was replaced by Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) administrator Leon-ardo Guerrero, a retired Armed Forces chief.

The president announced Lapena’s transfer to Tesda a day after he admitted before a joint hearing of the House Com-mittees on Dangerous Drugs and of Good Government that he was now inclined to believe that magnetic lifters found in Cavite nearly two months ago

contained shabu. Earlier on Thursday or before Duterte’s pronouncement, Mangaoang, former chief of the X-ray In-spection Project of the BoC and now Customs deputy collec-tor, accused Lapena of being a member of a drug syndicate that brought in billions of pe-

sos worth of shabu hidden in four magnetic lifters.

Lapena denied a cover-up, saying earlier evidence had shown that the lifters found in General Mariano Alvarez (GMA) in Cavite, did not hold shabu.

As Lapena has instructed, the bureau will pursue charges against former Customs intel-ligence officer Jimmy Guban and assist the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in dis-mantling the “drug syndicate that pervades the government.”

The BoC will also file cases against Gorgonio Necessario and Joseph Dimayuga.

Perjury cases will be filed against Miguela “Meg” Santos and the proprietor of SMYD, Marina Signapan.

Signapan and Santos and broker Katrina Grace Cuasay will face charges for illegal im-portation.

The Palace said yesterday the president appointed Lap-ena to Tesda because he wanted to spare the ex-Customs chief from “intrigue.”

In a radio interview, Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said Duterte had been planning the reassignment of Lapena but made the sudden announce-ment because the latter’s rep-utation had been besmirched amid controversies plaguing

the BoC. Lapena will fill up the post vacated by former Tesda chief Guiling Mamondiong, who stepped down to run for governor of Lanao del Sur in the 2019 mid-term elections.

The decision to transfer the BoC chief also came just a day after the president expressed belief in the integrity of Lap-ena, who had served him while he was mayor of Davao City in southern Mindanao.

The president also ordered the “freezing” of all section, department and unit heads at the BoC amid the multi-billion-peso drug smuggling scandal.

Lapena’s reassignment was criticised by some lawmakers.

Bayan Muna representative Carlo Zarate said that not only did the transfer “foster incom-petence,” it also showed that Duterte’s “militarisation” of the Cabinet was expanding.

Party-list Representatives Antonio Tinio and France Cas-tro also hit Lapena’s reassign-ment and promotion.

“It looks like Lapena was giv-en a reward for a job well done, for letting P11bn worth of sha-bu enter the country. But what can a former military official do in an education-related agency (Tesda)?” Castro asked.

Akbayan representative Tom Villarin also questioned Du-

terte’s decision and compared it to victims of extrajudicial killings who were linked to il-legal drugs in the country.

“When it’s an ordinary Fili-pino, the command is to kill him immediately, but when it is a friend, he is given a second or third chance and is even pro-moted. Public office no longer becomes a public trust,” he said.

Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said she agreed with the appointment of military men as they have an advantage under the Duterte Cabinet.

“They are literally good sol-diers, that’s why,” she told re-porters in a chance interview in Sasmuan, Pampanga.

Arroyo refused to comment on the new leadership at the BoC.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson also yesterday expressed hope that Guerrero would “not suffer the same fate” of Lapena.

Opposition Senators Antonio Trillanes 4th and Francis Pan-gilinan questioned the presi-dent’s motive in “promoting” Lapena.

Pangilinan said: “When in-competence or corruption go unpunished and those linked to irregularities are rewarded with other top-level posts, then both incompetence and corruption will just get worse.”

Isidro Lapena: under scrutiny

Aussie nun’s visa downgraded to temporary visitorBy Catherine A ModestoManila Times

The Bureau of Immigra-tion (BI) has downgrad-ed Sister Patricia Fox’s

missionary visa to a temporary tourist visa that is valid for only 59 days.

“Downgrading reverted her status to a temporary visitor, and she is given 59 days from the day her missionary visa ex-pired, which was September 5,” BI spokeswoman Dana Krizia Sandoval said.

The order was signed on Wednesday and released to the media yesterday.

Sandoval said reverting the nun’s status to a temporary visitor was necessary as failure to do so might result in another deportation order against the Australian missionary, who began her work in the Philip-pines in 1990.

Sandoval said immigration offi cers needed to wait for a fi nal decision before acting on her deportation order.

Fox’s camp welcomed the October 24 BI decision, saying this meant “she can still stay in the Philippines to face the de-portation charges against her.”

“We intend to still exhaust all remedies possible to let

Sister Fox stay,” Fox’s lawyer Maria Sol Taule said in an in-terview.

Sister Fox’s camp is also waiting for the decision of the Department of Justice (DoJ) on her deportation case, she said.

Taule said Fox could still ap-peal to the Offi ce of the Presi-dent should the decision be “adverse.”

The BI served Fox a de-portation order on July 19 for supposedly violating her visa terms by engaging in political activism and attending pro-test rallies and “fact-fi nding missions.” Fox fi led a petition against the July 19 order, which has been under review by the DoJ since September 3.

On April 23, the BI’s Board of Commissioners ordered the forfeiture of Fox’s mission-ary visa, downgrading it to a tourist visa and ordering her to leave the country within 30 days from receipt of the order.

She fi led a motion for recon-sideration, but it was denied by the commissioners.

On May 25, Fox fi led a peti-tion for review against the bu-reau’s April 23rd order before the DoJ.

The DoJ gave Fox a tempo-rary reprieve after it reversed the BI’s visa cancellation order for “lack of legal basis.”

Three soldiers and seven rebels killed in new Sulu clashesBy Al JacintoManila Times/Zamboanga City

Three members of the Philippine Marine Corps and seven Abu

Sayyaf Group (ASG) members were killed in an encounter yesterday morning in Patikul, Sulu.

Lt Col. Gerry Besana, spokesman for the military’s Western Mindanao Com-mand (WesMinCom), dis-closed that three other Ma-rine troops were wounded while 12 were arrested in the fighting that broke out in Barangay Timpook during an assault on an ASG hideout.

Three Marine companies — 62nd, 61st, and 64th — en-gaged the pro-Islamic State bandits under Abu Sayyaf sub-leaders Alnijar Ekit and Aldi Alun in a running gun battle that also left a still un-determined number of en-

emies wounded. “Based on human intelligence, initial results of the ongoing fire-fight include a number of se-verely wounded bandits who could probably have died due to loss of blood. And while pursuing the Abu Sayyaf, troops recovered one dead body of the enemy killed with his M14 rifle and seven maga-zines,” said Brig. Gen. Divino Rey Pabayo, commander of the Joint Task Force-Sulu.

“On the government side, three marines were killed and three others incurred minor injuries,” he added.

Besana said the ASG ban-dits were “forced” to with-draw and escape while pur-suit operations were ongoing.

The Abu Sayyaf leaders have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and are fighting along with other extremist groups actively operating in the troubled region for the establishment of a caliphate.


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Plant-based diets forbetter health andplanet? Not so fast

Forget all those loud calls to eat less meat and more plants for better health and a stronger planet — new research shows the world is not producing nearly enough fruit and vegetables to feed everyone.

Canadian researchers compared global agricultural production with the sort of diet backed by nutritionists — and favoured by environmentalists — and said they found a “fundamental mismatch” between what is being produced and what the world’s population would actually need.

“We simply can’t all adopt a healthy diet under the current global agriculture system,” the study’s co-author Evan Fraser said in a statement.

“Results show that the global system currently overproduces grains, fats and sugars,” added Fraser, director of Arrell Food Institute at University of Guelph in Ontario.

But it is short of fruit and veg, he said.Recent research has urged consumers to eat less meat as

a way of feeding the world’s growing population without causing irreparable damage to the environment.

Livestock are responsible for about 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and scientists say

eating less meat could help.The world risks sweltering

heatwaves, extreme rainfall and shrinking harvests unless unprecedented eff orts are made to keep temperature rise to 1.5C (2.7F), according to the United Nations.

The Canadian study, published this week in the scientifi c journal PLOS ONE, calculated how much food was being grown compared to what is recommended by the

Harvard University’s “Healthy Eating Plate” guide.The guide recommends fruits and vegetables should form

half of any diet, whole grains 25% and protein, fat and dairy make up the rest.

It broke down food groups into portions and found the world currently produces 12 servings of grains per person instead of the recommended eight; fi ve servings of fruits and vegetables instead of 15; and four servings of sugar instead of none.

If neither diet nor farming practices change, the world would need 12mn more hectares of arable land and some 1.3bn more hectares of pasture land by 2050 to feed a projected population of 9.8bn, the study added.

Lawrence Hadad, executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), said fruits and vegetables were becoming more expensive due to thin demand, low productivity and high losses in storage and transport.

“To change this dynamic, fruits and vegetable consumption would have to be given a high priority by governments in nutrition and health plans,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Governments worldwide have promoted a range of healthy-eating policies, urging increasingly obese populations to replace sugary and starchy processed food with more fruit and vegetables to increase longevity and improve overall health.

Fruits and vegetables are central to combating all forms of malnutrition but nearly all of agriculture research and development is focused on cereals, added Hadad, co-winner of this year’s World Food Prize, founded in 1986 by Nobel laureate Norman Bourlag and dubbed the Nobel for agriculture.

“The global system currently overproduces grains, fats and sugars”

Why Italy is the latest toquestion policy orthodoxyBy Mohamed A El-Erian Paris

Global markets, policymakers, and risk managers are watching the budget skirmish between Italy’s

government and the European Commission closely. The episode highlights a growing tendency among governments in both advanced and emerging economies to question economic policy orthodoxy. As this trend intensifies, economists and market participants need to think harder about, and communicate much better, the implicit tradeoffs of conventional economic and financial policymaking under challenging circumstances.

Having been elected with a mandate to promote faster, more inclusive growth, the Italian authorities are pursuing a more expansionary fiscal stance. Their budget, however, has been “rejected” by the European Commission for its “non-compli-ance” with EU deficit rules. As a result, Moody’s has since downgraded Italy’s sovereign credit rating to just one notch above junk level, citing worries about the country’s debt stock and the government’s overoptimistic growth projections.

With Italy’s leaders insisting that they have “no Plan B,” spreads on Ital-ian government debt have risen back to levels not seen since the dark days of euro crisis. And as both public- and private-sector borrowing costs in-crease, some observers are starting to worry about the implications for the Italian financial system. In fact, some have even gone as far as to argue that Italy poses an existential threat to the eurozone. Others, however, dismiss this as dangerous hype, given that Italy still has a manageable short-term debt-servicing profile, a primary

budget surplus and a current-account surplus, as well as considerable eco-nomic potential.

Italy’s longstanding growth chal-lenge is being amplified by Europe’s recent loss of economic momentum, regional fragmentation pressures, and the gradual reduction in liquidity injections by the European Central Bank. To counter these factors, Italy is resorting to fiscal policy to try to stimulate growth through both demand and supply channels. In other words, the government wants to run a larger budget deficit now in order to generate higher actual growth and higher potential growth.

Meanwhile, the pressure on Italian risk spreads has been accentuated by a shift in global markets. The past several years have been characterised by unusually low market volatility and an appetite for higher risk, owing to ample, repeated, and predictable li-quidity injections from central banks. But markets are now moving toward greater risk aversion and higher vola-tility as monetary policies tighten and as growth – particularly in advanced economies outside the US – slows and becomes more divergent.

Looking ahead, much will depend on whether Italy’s big policy bet can be reconciled with the rules and guid-ance of the European Commission. But make no mistake: global fac-tors will also play a role, not least by determining how much time Italy and the Commission will have to sort out their differences.

Precisely how regional and in-ternational factors evolve will have important implications for Italian sovereign spreads. An orderly policy transition would provide breathing space for the government’s eco-nomic strategy to evolve, whereas an abrupt shift would create significant headwinds in the form of tightening financing conditions for the Italian

government and private sector.This is not the first time that a

newly elected government has chal-lenged economic orthodoxy in the advanced world (the phenomenon is usually associated more with emerg-ing economies). Upon taking office in January 2015, Greece’s Syriza govern-ment signalled its departure from the conventional approach adopted by its predecessors, even going back to the electorate for re-affirmation in a nationwide referendum. In the end, though, the threat of losing eurozone membership forced it back to policy orthodoxy.

In the United States, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans pushed through a late-cycle fiscal stimulus, cutting taxes and raising government spending at a time when the US economy is already growing rapidly due to higher con-sumption and business investment. Normally in an ageing expansion, the government looks for ways to increase its policy flexibility as preparation for a possible future downturn. But, here, pro-cyclical policies were ac-companied by a more confrontational approach to trade. Needless to say, this, too, runs counter to economic orthodoxy which regards trade as mu-tually beneficial, and protectionism as unnecessarily costly.

Likewise, Turkey has been busy re-writing the rules of crisis management. So far, at least, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has managed to overcome a currency crisis without aggressively raising interest rates or seeking fi nancial support from the International Monetary Fund.

These unorthodox policy approach-es are fundamentally challenging the conventional wisdom on how eco-nomic policies should be sequenced. For example, both Italy and Turkey have dispensed with the dictum that macroeconomic stability must come

before growth-promoting fiscal and monetary stimulus. Or, as the old saying goes: Macroeconomic stability isn’t everything; but without it, there is nothing.

The increasing appeal of unortho-dox policy approaches is the direct result of years of slow and insuf-ficiently inclusive growth, coupled with mounting concerns about the inequality trifecta (income, wealth, and opportunities). These factors have undercut advanced economies’ actual and future potential, alienated significant segments of the popula-tion, eroded the credibility of the establishment and expert opinion, and fuelled the politics of anger.

Rather than dismiss the reaction out of hand, experts should be more open-minded when grappling with the factors behind the new unortho-doxy. Specifically, the tradeoffs that are implicit in conventional ap-proaches need to be carefully quanti-fied and clearly communicated . And those approaches should be updated for a world in which anaemic growth seems to have become a struc-tural feature of a growing segment of economies.

In a world of self-reinforcing expectations and multiple equilibria, careful efforts to jump-start econo-mies might facilitate the success of more durable structural reforms. In the case of Italy, then, the EU should remain flexible. But the Italian gov-ernment must also demonstrate that it is a lot more serious about imple-menting the supply-side changes needed to sustain faster growth in the long term. – Project Syndicate

Mohamed A El-Erian, Chief Economic Adviser at Allianz, was chairman of US President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council and is the author of The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse.

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The global economy’s three gamesBy Jean Pisani-FerryParis

Chess masters are able to play simultaneously on several boards with several partners. And the more time passes,

the more US President Donald Trump’s international economic strategy looks like such a match.

There are three major players: the United States, China, and a loose coali-tion formed by the other members of the G7. And there are three games, each of which involves all three players. Unlike chess, however, these games are interde-pendent. And no one – perhaps not even Trump – knows which game will take precedence.

On Trump’s fi rst board is the break the rules of trade game. Many in his administration regard the World Trade Organisation’s principles and procedures as an obstacle to bilateral negotiations. They would prefer to clinch deals with partners one by one, without be-ing bound by the obligation to apply liberalisation measures across the board and without being forced to abide by the rulings of the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism. Their aim is to restructure the trade relationships along a hub-and-spoke model, with the US at the centre.

The underlying reasoning is fairly simple: multilateral rules always protect the weakest players. Why should the US refrain from using its overwhelming bargaining power? The recent United States-Mexico-Canada agreement (US-MCA) shows the way, by imposing US-determined national content obligations on the other two countries and restrain-ing their own trade policy options. More such deals should follow.

Europe, Japan, and China have all crit-icised the US stance and portray them-selves as champions of multilateralism. This is only half true: Europe has built its own web of trade agreements, and China, itself a fairly transactional power, regards global rules as an embodiment of yesterday’s Western dominance. But on this issue (as on climate change), there is currently more commonality among non-US partners than there is between them and the US.

On the second board is the discipline China game. For a decade or so, many in the US have claimed that China’s categorisation as a developing country, and the resulting favourable treatment it enjoys at the WTO, do not refl ect the true strength of an economy whose goods exports amount to $2tn, or 11% of world trade. As Susan Schwab, President George W Bush’s Trade Representative, put it back in 2011, in trade discussions elephants were hiding behind mice. The Trump administration now wants to trap the Chinese elephant.

The internal heterogeneity of China’s economy is indeed exceptionally high for a developing country. Parts of China are poor, and parts wealthy. Some industries are unsophisticated, while others are at the cutting edge of innovation. The latter shouldn’t hide behind the former.

America’s grievances regarding China’s behaviour, from its treatment of intellectual property to its implicit and explicit subsidies and policy-motivated takeovers of foreign industrial jewels, are essentially shared by its G7 partners. Many Chinese experts also agree that ending the wholesale subsidisation of industrial behemoths and letting market signals play a stronger role in investment choices is in their country’s best interest.

More generally, China’s partners argue that trade rules conceived for market economies are not adequate when deal-ing with a centrally-directed economy. This claim is more contentious, because leaders in Beijing regard state ownership of enterprises as a matter of sovereign choice, and do not want to renounce big industrial policy endeavours. But there is room for discussion. All in all, the disci-pline China game is one in which the US, Europe, Japan, and Canada are largely aligned. All look forward to a robust negotiation with the Chinese.

This makes the discipline China game very diff erent from the third contest, the roll back China game. This game is not about the enforcement of trade rules, or

their design, but about the sheer geo-political rivalry between the incumbent superpower and a rising challenger. As Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, noted in a remarkable speech a few weeks ago, the US security establishment has become convinced that strategic engagement with China has not paid off and should give way to strategic competition – a stance that would encompass all dimensions of the bilateral relationship. In early October, a particularly harsh speech by US Vice President Mike Pence illustrated Rudd’s point.

Europe, Japan, and Canada are not part of this rivalry – they simply do not matter in the same way that the US and China do. But they are inevitably part of its diplomatic, economic, and, for Japan at least, security components. If the ten-sion between the two powers dominates global politics in the decades to come, they won’t be able to avoid taking a stance. And, for all their reluctance, they may well end up aligned with the US, for two reasons: a hardening of the rivalry with the US would drive the Chinese leadership further from Western values, and they ultimately depend on the US for their own security.

The problem, however, is that it is still not clear in which game President Trump intends to score a victory. Does he intend to play a long game? And, if so, what are his aims? Nobody really knows.

For the non-US G7 countries, this uncertainty creates a dilemma. Should they engage with China on WTO reform and the strengthening of the associated disciplines? This is a topic on which they could help pave the way for an eventual global compromise. The risk, however, is that if China fears that the US really aims at winning the rollback game, and expects the rest of the West to fall in line eventually, it will refuse to make mean-ingful concessions.

Alternatively, the rest of the G7 could align with the US, at the risk of antago-nising China and eventually being stra-tegically demoted if Trump ultimately settles on a bilateral deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping. If that game pre-vails, the non-US G7 will end up being the losers.

Absent a no-risk strategy, Europe, Japan, and Canada might well choose to wait and see. This would be the sur-est way to be sidelined in all possible circumstances and provide a demon-stration that only the US-Chinese “G2” matters. What these countries are facing is a test of leadership, which they may pass or fail. There is no third possibility. – Project Syndicate

Jean Pisani-Ferry, a professor at the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin) and Sciences Po (Paris), holds the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa chair at the European University Institute and is a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think-tank.

There are three major players in the global economy: the United States, China, and a loose coalition formed by the other members of the G7.

Gulf Times Saturday, October 27, 2018 15

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LEGAL HELPLINE

Trade mark registration renewal every 10 years

LEGAL SYSTEM IN QATARAccording to Article 15 of Criminal

Procedure Code, the period for the expiration of the criminal action shall be interrupted by the investigation procedures, accusation, trial, criminal order, or evidential procedures conducted against the suspect, or the procedures of which he has been offi cially notifi ed. The new period shall be applied as from the date of interruption. If there are multiple interrupted procedures, the period shall be calculated as from the date of the last procedure.

If there are many defendants in a crime, the interruption of the period as to any of them shall result in interruption for the others, even if no conclusive actions with regard to the period were undertaken against them.

As per Article 17, conciliation may be conducted in cases of violation. The competent investigation offi cer or the Public Prosecution member shall, when drafting the minute, off er conciliation to the suspect or his agent, and record this in the minutes and in his own records. The suspect may request conciliation in the former case. The suspect who accepts conciliation shall pay, within fi fteen days as from the day of the off er of conciliation, or upon the approval of the Public Prosecution of its off ered conciliation, an amount equal to one quarter of the maximum fi ne prescribed for the violation, or the minimum fi ne prescribed for it, whichever is greater. The payment shall be made to the court treasury, the Public Prosecution or to any other

public offi cer authorised by the Public Prosecutor.

The right of the suspect to the conciliation shall neither lapse by reason of the expiry of the payment time, nor by reason of the referral of the criminal action to a court with jurisdiction, if a payment of an amount equivalent to half of the maximum fi ne prescribed for the violation, or the minimum fi ne prescribed for it, whichever is greater, is paid. The criminal action shall expire upon payment of the conciliation amount. In the event of conciliation, the execution of the criminal penalty shall be suspended after the issuance of the court ruling

and all the related criminal eff ects shall be removed.

The victim may, in cases of the misdemeanors to which conciliation is applicable in the Penal law or any other law, request the Public Prosecution or the court considering the case, as the case may be, to prove his conciliation with the suspect. The request for conciliation in this case shall be submitted by the victim or the suspect or by the attorney of any of them, subject to the complaint’s domestic procedural provisions in this Law.

The criminal action shall expire in this case by conciliation. The Public Prosecutor may, in crimes against the national economy, for the requirements of the public interest, after the conclusion of the investigation, and before the referral of the criminal action to court, accept a compromise including the suspect returning the money, the subject matter of the crime, and any achieved gain or benefi t he obtained, as well as due compensations. After the execution of the compromise, the Public Prosecutor shall issue an order that the institution of the criminal action is groundless.

According to Article 19, whoever suff ers direct personal damage from the crime may claim civil rights against the suspect during the investigation or before the court considering the criminal action at any stage of the action up to the closing arguments. The same shall not be permitted before the Court of Appeal.

By Dr Nizar KocheryDoha

Question: Once a trade mark is registered in Qatar, won’t that be for an indefi nite period? Is it mandatory that a renewal is required for continuing protection? If someone fails to renew the registration inadvertently, what are its impacts? We have registered a trade mark but we are not currently in Doha.

BST, Doha

Answer: According to Article 18 of the Trademark Laws, the duration of the protection of a mark shall be 10 years from the date of fi ling the application for registration. The owner of the mark shall have the right to the continuation of the protection for further consecutive periods of 10 years each by a renewal of the registration. The renewal shall be eff ected merely by paying the renewal fees. The fee must be paid in the course of the fi nal year of the current protection period. A grace period of six months shall be granted for the payment of the renewal fee after the expiry of the current protection period with prescribed additional fee. A mark which is not renewed cannot be registered by a third party in respect of identical or similar goods or services until at least three years have elapsed after it was not renewed.

Procedure fornotice to accusedQ: I have fi led a criminal case against my neighbour but he has not received any notice on that case. How does the police take action on such complaints? When I enquired they said the case has been transferred to public prosecution. What is the procedure as per law for appearance of the accused? Will he receive any notice for appearance? Please advise.

AK, Doha

A: According to Article 104 of the Criminal procedure code, the Public Prosecution may issue an order for the suspect to be present at a specifi ed time, or to be arrested and summoned. Each order shall include the details of the suspect, the attributed charge, the date of the order, the name of the Public Prosecution member and with signature, and the offi cial stamp of the Public Prosecution’s offi ce. Orders shall be notifi ed to the suspect by the public authority offi cers, with a copy thereof to be handed to the suspect. The arrest warrant and summons shall also include the instruction to public authority offi cers to arrest the suspect and bring

him before the Public Prosecution by force if he refuses to come voluntarily.

Company refusesto pay overtime

Q: Our company refused to pay the overtime benefi ts stating that we have signed the contract for working 11 hours a day and in such a case, we are not entitled for overtime benefi ts. Does signing the contract waive the right to get overtime benefi ts? What is the law in this regard? Please advise.

SS, Doha

A: It is illegal for a company to ask a worker to put in extra hours without paying additional remuneration. The employer shall pay to the worker for the additional working hours and employees have the right to claim remuneration for

overtime. As per Article 73 of the Labour Law, the maximum working hours shall be eight hours per day and the worker shall not be asked to work for more than two hours a day after the normal hours unless the work is necessary for the prevention of gross loss or dangerous accident or for the repair or alleviation of the consequences of the said loss or accident.

Payment claim bysubcontractors

Q: We are subcontractors for a construction project in Doha and the work was completed without delay. Now the contractor is refusing to pay the money stating baseless reasons. In the present situation, our company faces diffi culty to pay our creditors. We came to know that the employer

has not paid the contractor because of some other issues and in such a case, can we approach the employer directly for the payment? Please advise.

SJ, Doha

A: Under Article 702 of the Qatar Civil Code, the subcontractors, employees and labourers are entitled to claim payment directly from employers if the amount claimed does not exceed the amount owed by the employer to the main contractor at the time the claim is fi led. The subcontractors must establish that the sum is due for payment and unpaid by the main contractor. The employer may not be obliged to pay such sum if the sum has already been paid to the main contractor. In such a situation, the subcontractor should consider the other remedies available against the main contractor. Please send your questions to [email protected]

A zero-carbon economy is within reachBy Adair TurnerBeijing

When the Paris climate agreement was concluded in December 2015, almost all the world’s countries committed to limit

global warming to well below 2C relative to pre-industrial levels, and have submitted “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs) describing how they will either contain or reduce emissions over the next decade. Global investment in renewable power now far exceeds investment in fossil fuel plants; battery costs are falling, and electric vehicle sales rising; and even in President Donald Trump’s America, coal-fi red power stations continue to close.

But despite this progress, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contains a chilling prediction: on current trends, the world is heading toward 3C of global warming by 2100, to a level not reached for more than a million years. The harm to human welfare is likely to be catastrophic.

The IPCC report makes it clear that the ideal target should be to limit warming to 1.5C. Above that level, the adverse consequences become ever more extreme. But to achieve that goal, global carbon dioxide emissions would have to reach net zero by about 2055, and still earlier if, as is unfortunately inevitable, emissions remain at current levels for several more years.

The precise implications for acceptable emissions from power stations, industrial plants, transport networks, and heating systems depend on how rapidly emissions caused by land-use change such as deforestation can be eliminated, and how rapidly emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases (for example, methane or nitrous oxide) can be reduced.

But it’s clear that unless we get to net zero emissions from energy use and industry by around 2060 – and earlier in developed economies – we will have to rely on the risky assumption that land-use changes can deliver large negative emissions in the late 21st century. Failing that, warming will rise signifi cantly above 1.5C.

Getting to net zero emissions in just four

decades will be a huge challenge. But as a forthcoming report from the Energy Transitions Commission argues, the good news is that it is undoubtedly technically possible, and at an acceptably low cost to the global economy. Moreover, we already know the key technologies we need to achieve this objective.

All feasible paths to a low-carbon economy and, eventually, net zero CO2 emissions require a massive increase in the role of electricity. The share of electricity in fi nal energy demand will have to grow from around 20% today to around 60% by mid- to late century, and total

global electricity generation will have to rise dramatically, from around 25,000 TWh today to as much as 100,000 TWh.

That electricity must come from low-carbon sources. And while nuclear power and gas generation off set by carbon capture may play a role, the lion’s share will have to come from renewable sources – 70-80% in the IPCC’s scenarios. But there is plenty enough land in the world to support renewable expansion on that scale, and enough time to make the necessary investments as long as we act fast.

Three other sets of technologies will also

be essential. First, hydrogen, ammonia, and perhaps methanol must be used as energy carriers in transport and industrial applications and as chemical feedstock inputs. All three will eventually be produced synthetically, using clean electricity as the ultimate energy source.

Second, biomass could provide low-carbon aviation fuel, or feedstock for plastics production. The total scale of use, however, will need to be carefully managed to avoid harmful impacts on ecosystems and food supply.

Third, there should be at least some role for carbon capture, and either storage or use,

in key industrial processes such as cement production, where viable alternative routes to decarbonisation are currently unavailable.

Building a zero-carbon economy will of course require massive investment in power production and transmission, new industrial plants, and more effi cient equipment. To achieve the 1.5C objective, the IPCC estimates that the required additional global investment, from 2015 to 2050, could be $900bn per year. That may seem like a startlingly high fi gure; but, assuming 3% annual economic growth, global GDP, which stands at almost $100tn today, could reach $260tn by 2050. This implies that the world needs to invest less than 0.6% of its income over the next four decades to avoid potentially catastrophic harm to human welfare.

China alone currently invests more than $5tn each year, a signifi cant proportion of which is wasted on the construction of apartment blocks which will never be occupied in cities which face static and eventually declining populations. By redirecting investment, China could build a zero-carbon economy without any sacrifi ce of consumption. For the world as a whole, the impact on living standards of achieving net zero emissions will be trivial.

But while a zero-carbon economy is undoubtedly technically feasible and easily aff ordable, it will not be achieved without strong public policies and forward-looking business strategies. Governments must deliver carbon pricing and product regulation and support key technologies and infrastructures, and companies in the energy-producing and main energy-using sectors must develop strategies focused on how to achieve zero emissions by mid-century and how to begin the transition today.

The alternative is another decade of only incremental progress, which will put us on a catastrophic path toward 3C warming within the lifetime of today’s children. – Project Syndicate

Adair Turner, Chairman of the Institute for

New Economic Thinking and former Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority, is Chair of the Energy Transitions Commission.

Getting to net zero emissions in just four decades will be a huge challenge.

WARNINGInshore : Expected thundery

rain on some areas associated with sudden strong wind

Offshore : Expected thunder rain associated with strong wind and high sea.

WEATHERInshore : Partly cloudy to cloudy

at times with scattered rain maybe thundery associated with blow-ing dust at places at times.

Offshore : Partly cloudyWINDInshore : Southeasterly 10-20 KT

Gusting to 40 KT Offshrore : Southeasterly-North-

easterly 05-15/38 KT Visibility : 4-8/2 KMOffshore : 2-4/13 FT

TODAY

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16 Gulf TimesSaturday, October 27, 2018

QATAR

Local designers in the limelight at Heya 2018By Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

A series of fashion shows featuring a collection of abayas, jalabiyas and

evening gowns highlighted the opening of 14th Heya Arabian Fashion Exhibition yesterday at the Doha Exhibition and Con-vention Centre.

The fi ve-day event, under the patronage of Qatar Museums chairperson HE Sheikha Al Ma-yassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, is showcasing a total of 230 brands from 14 countries, including 170 from Qatar – the largest display of local designers to date.

The works from countries such as Kuwait, Oman, India, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Italy, Morocco, Hong Kong, Lebanon, China, Spain, Belgium, and the US, are also on display at this year’s edition of Heya, which will conclude on October 30.

Leading fashion brands glo-bally such as Antonia Serena, Bouret, Lucia de Miguel and In-unez from Spain; Alter Era from Belgium; Luna Italia from Italy; and Toska New York from the US, as well as Noon Design, Farasha, Closhe Couture, Sharifa Style, Hamdah and Bride Atelier from Qatar; and Caftan Lella Salma from Morocco showcased their latest designs at the fashion shows.

Qatar Chamber executive board member Ibtihaj al-Ah-madani, along with Qatar Tour-ism Authority’s (QTA) acting communications and marketing director Jawaher al-Khuzaei and Design Creationz spokesperson

Esraa Abel, led the opening of the exhibition and toured each of the stalls.

“We are proud of the contin-ued growth of this exhibition. Empowering the Business Events sector continues to be a key part of our strategy to develop the tourism industry and draw in-ternational visitors,” al-Khuzaei said in a press statement.

“We are particularly pleased to see that Heya has given rise to niche and professional exhibition organisers and suppliers over the span of its 14 editions,” the senior QTA offi cial added.

Apart from the fashion shows, the event also is holding a number of fora on women’s em-powerment in fashion and the arts.

The fi rst day included Toska New York, world renowned US celebrity designer on ‘Running a very tough competitive fash-ion business’ and led by its co-founder Marion Milenovic, as well as a forum by Alter Era from Belgium on ‘What has Belgium fashion achieved from Antwerp Six to the present and how does their brand represent their coun-try,’ led by co-founders of the

Belgian brand, Alicia Declerck and Zhanna Belskaya. Renowned Kuwaiti infl uencer and make-up artist Abeer Alyaseen conducted a make-up workshop, off ering tips and advices for visitors, in addition to several workshops designed to support aspiring en-trepreneurs.

Organisers said that an hour-long fashion will take place today (October 27) at 7.30pm to show-case the latest designs by QLa-bel from Qatar, as well as Sharifa Style and Al Bacarrat.

Asma al-Thani, who recently made history by becoming the

fi rst Qatari to ski to the North Pole, aims to inspire and em-power women in a forum titled ‘Breaking Boundaries: Simply Women’ at 6.40pm today.

“Heya has evolved over the years, as people not only visit to shop and complete their collec-tions but also to learn about cul-ture and modest fashion trends,” Abel said.

She noted that the event also allotted a huge space for local talents, recording a 65% increase in the number of exhibitors com-pared to the previous autumn/winter show in 2017.

Modest apparel on display at the fashion show. PICTURES: Jayan Orma

A collection of abayas, jalabiyas and evening gowns by leading fashion brands globally on centre stage yesterday at 14th Heya Fashion Exhibition.

Diff erent abaya collections showcased at the fashion show.

Qatar Chamber executive board member Ibtihaj al-Ahmadani tours each of the stalls at the event.

Works from Kuwait, Oman, India, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Italy, Morocco, Hong Kong, Lebanon, China, Spain, Belgium and the US, are on display at this year’s edition of Heya.

Over 600 healthcare experts attend Al Ahli seminar

By Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

Al Ahli Hospital started a two-day symposium on oesophageal disorders

yesterday at Ezdan Palace Ho-tel with the participation of over 600 healthcare professionals. The event will discuss various advancements in the technolo-gies and treatment of oesopha-geal disorders and will have sev-eral talks and presentations by international and local experts.

The symposium was opened by Khalid al-Emadi, CEO, Al Ahli Hospital and Medicare Group, who welcomed the participants and highlighted the importance of the symposium. Dr Abdul Azim Abdul Wahab Hussain, chief of medical staff , told that the symposium had a huge re-sponse from the healthcare pro-fessionals in the country.

“We had planned for about 500 participants but we had about 700 registrations. How-ever, we had to stop at around 600 due to various reasons and we are sure that the participants will have a great learning experi-ence throughout the conference,”

noted Dr Hussain. “The experts will discuss several oesophageal disorders. Gastroesophageal re-fl ux is becoming very common disorder. Other oesophageal disorders that will be discussed are heartburn, cancer, and eosi-nophilic oesophagitis. We will also discuss the non-immersive treatment options to cure many of the disorders,” explained Dr Hussian.

“This is the second such sym-posium organised by Al Ahli Hospital. The symposium dis-cusses several matters related to gastroesophageal refl ux. We have a number of international ex-perts to discuss various aspects

of the topic. We will discuss the most recent research in the fi eld as well as the technological ad-vancements,” said Jamal Saleh Hammadi, deputy CEO and di-rector of projects.

The academic part of the sym-posium started with a presenta-tion by Dr Chrisitan Madl, pro-fessor of gastroenterology and head, Department of Internal Medicine, Rudolfstiftung Hos-pital, Vienna, on the topic, ‘Gerd: Pathophysiology and Epidemiol-ogy.’ “Gerd (gastroesophageal re-fl ux disease) is the most common

diagnosis in outpatient clinics. In the US, it is estimated that 15 to 20% of adults are aff ected by Gerd. There is also clear evidence that the disorder is increasing in most developing countries,” not-ed Dr Madl.

The most common problem with the oesophagus is Gerd, which is caused by a muscle that does not close properly. This al-lows stomach contents to leak back, or refl ux, into the oesopha-gus and irritate it. Over time, Gerd can cause damage to the oesophagus.

Dr Chrisitan Madl

Al Ahli Hospital off icials along with the participants of the symposium at the opening ceremony. PICTURES: Shemeer Rasheed

French embassy, Al Wakrah Municipality hold tree-planting activity for third year

The French embassy and Al Wakrah Municipality organised a tree-planting activity at the Al Wakrah Municipal Garden for the third consecutive year aimed at protecting the environment and fighting climate change. Held on Thursday, such initiative, the embassy noted, forms part of the 3rd edition of the Sustainable Development Week in Qatar. In 2016, a major clean-up operation of Al Wakrah beach was also held while a paper and cardboard recycling process for the entire embassy was set up the following year. In a press statement, the French embassy said that First Counselor Florian Cardinaux, accompanied by Doha Accueil Association president Valerie Boscherel, were welcomed by Al Wakrah Municipality director Mansour al-Boenain at the garden. “They symbolically planted trees to illustrate the importance of the fight against deforestation,” the embassy added.Al-Boenain thanked all the organisations who took part and supported this 3rd edition of the Sustainability Week, launched this year by Al Wakrah Municipality and the Qatar Green Building Council. “I would also like to express special thanks

for the Embassy of France and the French community, they’re key partners of Al Wakrah during this week, and their continued involvement in the protection of the environment has a significant impact in supporting Qatar Vision 2030,”

he added. “They are our partners in accompanying the city of Al Wakrah in its green transition, especially that it is the first city in the Gulf region to have acquired a permanent seat in the Unesco Global Network of Learning Cities.”

French embassy’s First Counselor Florian Cardinaux and Al Wakrah Municipality director Mansour al-Boenain led the tree-planting activity in Al Wakrah Municipal Garden on Thursday. PICTURE: Nasar T K

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