Arab FMs warn Iran against interference

INDEX
QATAR
2 – 7, 28
8, 9
REGION
9, 10
ARAB WORLD
INTERNATIONAL
11 – 25
26, 27
COMMENT
BUSINESS
1 – 6, 12 – 16
CLASSIFIED
7 – 11
SPORTS
1 – 12
SPORT | Page 1
QDB, QIB join hands
to support small and
medium enterprises
Qatar
target
win
over
China
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
has surged to third place in alltime global box office receipts,
overtaking Jurassic World after a
blockbuster debut in China, Disney
said yesterday. The company said
the seventh installment of the Star
Wars saga made an estimated
$145.9mn over the weekend,
including $53mn in China. Disney
said the China numbers put the
film’s global total over $1.73bn,
behind only Avatar ($2.79bn) and
Titanic ($2.19bn).
Strong wind and dusty conditions have been forecast at places inshore in Qatar today. Some parts of the country, including
Doha’s West Bay, experienced blowing dust yesterday. Today’s forecast for offshore is strong wind and high seas. The
maximum temperature of 23C is forecast at Al Khor, followed by 22C in Doha, 21C at Mesaieed and Wakrah and 19C at
Ruwais, Dukhan and Abu Samra. The minimum temperature of 14C is forecast in Doha and at Mesaieed, Wakrah, Al Khor and
Abu Samra, followed by 15C at Dukhan and 17 at Ruwais. PICTURE: Sajin Orma
BRITAIN | Scheme
Lessons on
child-rearing
All British parents will be
encouraged to take governmentrun parenting classes under plans
due to be announced by Prime
Minister David Cameron, The
Observer said yesterday. Page 17
AFGHANISTAN | Peace
Four-country talks
on Taliban to begin
Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and
the US are set to begin talks today
aimed at reviving the Afghan peace
process and eventually ending 14
years of bloodshed fighting Taliban
insurgents. Page 23
Minister promises strict
enforcement of labour laws
QNA
Doha
T
he government will strictly enforce its labour laws in line with
Qatar’s National Development
Strategy 2011-2016, HE the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Dr
Abdullah Saleh Mubarak al-Khulaifi
promised yesterday.
He was speaking at the opening of
a training session for inspectors at
the ministry. The session, held in cooperation with Arab Labor Organisation, began yesterday and would end
on January 21.
An important role of the ministry,
al-Khulaifi said, was to find jobs for
legal expat workers.
He highlighted the Law No 1 of
2015 issued by HH the Emir Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani last year,
amending some provisions of the labour regulations related to protecting
wages.
The law made it binding on employers to transfer each worker’s salary to his or her account at any of the
financial institutions in the country.
HE al-Khulaifi speaking at the opening of a training session for labour inspectors.
The minister said the law came into
force in November with “marked success”.
He also noted that HH the Emir had
issued Law No 21 for 2015 in October
last year to regulate the entry and exit
of expats into the country.
The law, which comes into effect
this year, replaces the kafala (sponsorship) system with a contract-based
one.
Under the new law, there will be
a job contract to be signed by every
expatriate worker with his employer
which will rule the relation between
the two sides.
The minister said that there were
a total of 350 labour inspectors at the
ministry. “All of them are young people who are keen to implement the international and Arab standards of the
labour market,” said the minister.
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GULF TIMES
Windy, dusty weather forecast for today
DOW JONES
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BUSINESS | Page 1
MONDAY
Vol. XXXVI No. 9964
January 11, 2016
Rabia II 1, 1437 AH
www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals
Arab FMs
warn Iran
against
interference
The Arab League sets up a
committee to follow up on the row
with Iran
Reuters
Cairo
A
rab foreign ministers yesterday
condemned attacks on Saudi
diplomatic missions in Iran and
warned that Tehran would face wider
opposition if it continued its “interference” in the internal affairs of Arab
states.
Iranian protesters had stormed the
Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad recently, prompting
Riyadh to sever relations.
Other Arab countries have recalled
envoys to Iran and the United Arab
Emirates downgraded relations in solidarity with Saudi Arabia.
“Iran has to decide what kind of
neighbour it wants to be: a good
neighbour or a chaotic neighbour and
so far it behaves like the latter,” UAE
Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin
Zayed al-Nahyan said following an
emergency Arab League meeting in
Cairo.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel alJubeir said cutting commercial and
diplomatic ties was a first step, and
that his country would discuss potential further actions against Iran with
its regional and international allies.
He gave no further details.
If Iran continues to support “ter-
rorism, sectarianism and violence”, it
would face opposition from all Arab
countries, Jubeir told a news conference following the meeting.
In a closing statement distributed
after the meeting, the Arab League
also referred to the discovery by Bahrain of a militant group that it said
was backed by Iran’s Revolutionary
Guards.
All members of the Arab League
voted in favour of the statement, with
the exception of Lebanon, where Iranian-backed Hezbollah is a powerful
political force.
The Arab League set up a committee comprising its secretary general
and representatives from Egypt, the
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia
and Bahrain to follow up on the row
with Iran.
They are expected to meet again on
January 25 in the UAE, Arab League
secretary-general Nabil al-Arabi said
at the news conference.
The diplomatic row erupted following Saudi Arabia’s execution on January 2 of 47 people convicted of plotting and carrying out terrorist attacks.
The Arab League said Iran’s reaction
to the executions was “flagrant interference” in Saudi affairs.
On Saturday, the GCC Ministerial
Council denounced Iran’s “blatant
interference” in the internal affairs of
Saudi Arabia. The council’s 42nd extraordinary meeting, held in Riyadh,
voiced support to the measures taken
by the kingdom to fight terrorism.
Riyadh supports efforts to resolve Syria conflict
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir
yesterday insisted his country supports
efforts to resolve the Syria conflict, despite
its diplomatic dispute with Iran. “We have
previously stated our support for the
Syrian opposition and for efforts to find a
peaceful solution in Syria,” Jubeir said at a
meeting of Arab League foreign ministers
in Cairo. “This is still the case, we believe
in this and we fully support (the peace
process) despite our differences with Iran,”
he said.
Ooredoo, QU and Tamuq in pact for research project
By Joey Aguilar
Staff Reporter
O
oredoo has partnered with Qatar University (QU) and Texas
A&M University at Qatar (Tamuq) for a three-year, $650,000 research project to support innovation
and development in the country and
across the region.
At the agreement-signing yesterday, Ooredoo Qatar CEO Waleed alSayed said they would support a range
of projects that will be conducted by
groups of students and researchers selected by the two universities.
These include fast deployable wireless communication systems for
disaster and emergency response,
innovations of green radio access
technologies in wireless communications, tele-health and applications,
wireless communications for nextgeneration power grids and stadium
communications.
The result of this initiative is expected to make a significant contribution in making Qatar one of the bestconnected countries in the world and
a hub for “smart solutions”, according
to al-Sayed.
“This major research partnership
will provide important insights for
the people of Qatar and will support
our young students on their academic
journey,” he said.
Ooredoo, QU and Tamuq officials at the agreement-signing ceremony for a three-year research project to support innovation and development in Qatar.
PICTURE: Thajudheen
Ooredoo has been collaborating with QU and Tamuq on several
projects from 2005 that include research into third-generation (3G),
fourth-generation (4G) networks, and
HSPA-LTE (high-speed packet access/long-term evolution) for nextgeneration networks, technologies and
services which was the first-of-itskind in the Middle East.
“We are prioritising research
projects that have a social, economic,
and educational impact on the wider
community,” al-Sayed noted.
“By partnering with these globally
respected institutions, we are helping
place Qatari students at the cutting
edge of research and development in
the field of wireless communication,”
he added.
Ooredoo will build two entertainment zones at QU and Tamuq as part of
the project which will be called “Ooredoo Majils”. The zones will provide a
set of services such as television, entertainment, digital gaming and Wi-Fi
connectivity for students.
QU president Dr Hassan Rashid alDerham echoed al-Sayed’s statement,
saying the latest agreement with Tamuq and Ooredoo highlighted their
ongoing efforts to promote a better
understanding of network technology.
He believes such research projects
inspire their students to produce cutting-edge smart solutions that will
benefit the Qatari society.
“Our collaboration with these wellrenowned partners will provide our
students and researchers with opportunities to enhance their skills towards
becoming leaders who will contribute to advancing quality research and
development in the field of wireless
communication systems,” al-Derham
said.
Tamuq interim dean and chief operating officer Dr Ann Kenimer stressed
the importance of academic and industry partnerships “which cannot be
underestimated”.
She said such research partnership
will have a tremendous individual impact on students by giving them a realworld engagement with the telecom
industry.
“In today’s world, next-generation
wireless networks are providing the
foundation for a new range of smart
solutions that transform homes, communities and even nations,” Dr Ann
Kenimer noted. “A number of these
solutions will be green and sustainable.”
Ooredoo hopes to produce the country’s future leaders who are equipped
with hands-on knowledge of nextgeneration technology such as 5G and
even faster networks.
2
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
QATAR
First Qatar business solutions exhibition opens
U
nder the patronage of the
Ministry of Economy and
Commerce, the First Qatar International Exhibition for
Support Services and Business
Solutions was officially inaugurated yesterday by Qatari Businessmen Association chairman
HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim
al-Thani at the Doha Exhibition
and Convention Centre (DECC).
Manateq CEO engineer Fahad
Rashid al-Kaabi, Qatar Chamber vice chairman Mohamed bin
Ahmed bin Towar al-Kuwari,
Bedaya Centre general manager
Reem Saleh al-Suwaidi, Sedeer
Media chairman Dr Mohamed bin
Nasser al-Attiyah and a number
of other dignitaries were present.
Local and international companies have showcased at the
three-day event the latest technology in the business solutions
and support services fields, in
addition to the young entrepreneur’s projects.
After the opening ceremony,
HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani inaugurating the exhibition yesterday. PICTURES: Jayan Orma
HE Sheikh Faisal stated that
the exhibition supports Qatari
youth and especially those entrepreneurs who have ideas for
projects and need help, in addition to knowing about the best
opportunities, and how they can
develop their work in a good way.
He also expressed his admiration for the event Sedeer Media,
especially the management team,
which consists of a group of am-
bitious young people who are
seriously seeking to achieve their
goals in growth and development.
“As a businessman with long
experience in establishing businesses and entrepreneurship
HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani interacting with some of the exhibitors.
I offer my full support to such
initiatives in the field of business and investment,” HE Sheikh
Faisal added.
The first Qatar International
Exhibition of support services
Exchange houses brace for
brunt of oil price slump
By Peter Alagos
Business Reporter
E
xchange houses in Qatar
are bracing for the effects
of sliding oil prices and
inflation, among other market
factors, which are expected to be
felt further in the first and second quarter of 2016, an expert
has said.
Similarly, he added that government austerity measures and
downsizing by some major companies, particularly in the oil and
gas sector, have also affected the
performance of exchange houses
here.
“Within three to six months,
we will be feeling the effects of
these measures and ultimately,
exchange houses will feel the
impact of this cycle. Most of
the companies here have started downsizing their workforce
and this will affect the amount
of remittances sent,” the source
explained.
Asked about the overall performance of Qatar-based exchange houses in 2015, the
source said “there were no is-
sues” despite the oil price slump,
“but it may affect our operations
further if the crisis will continue
this year.”
“Generally, the market was
affected by the oil crisis. When
oil prices went down, obviously
the economy had shrunk, which,
overall, had created an impact on
the market,” he said.
On the other hand, he also
stressed that many people have
gained from weakening expatriate currencies.
This was echoed by Al Zaman
Exchange operations manager
Zubair Abdul Rahman, who told
Gulf Times yesterday that the
devaluation of currencies did
not affect their operations.
“The devaluation of some
currencies has encouraged more
remittances from Qatar-based
expatriates. Foreign exchange
rates have remained favourable
to expatriates,” he said.
However, the source said
population growth, higher living costs, rent inflation, and rising costs of education are among
the factors that will affect remittances in 2016.
“The effects of inflation and
similar factors such as job security will be felt more this year
as prices of commodities, rents,
and cost of education have gone
up.
He added: “Many people used
to take out loans and take advantage of weakening currencies in order to send money back
to their home countries. But the
situation now is different and
many people have opted to play
it safe.
“They are taking lesser loans
or none at all because they are
not sure of their job security. Instead, many expatriates attempt
to repay their loans as soon as
possible to reduce the risk burden.”
He also said budget cuts in
the government “will also make
everyone cautious” thus, changing consumers’ spending habits.
“When there is a budget cut,
everyone will be cautious and
this will affect even the spending habits of people. We are in
the business of foreign currency
exchange and it is mainly used
by people who travel, either for
business or for leisure. Even that
will be affected,” he said.
Yesterday’s foreign exchange rates.
and Business Solutions combine
various economic disciplines
and business initiatives under
one roof.
The exhibition also includes
various leading international
companies from different parts
of the world. They are showcasing the latest technology, systems, solutions, products and
services that will make a difference in world of business.
Qatar Airways
‘Travel Festival’
offers ‘dream deals’
Q
atar
Airways
has
launched a first-ofits-kind ‘Travel Festival’ offering travellers an
“exceptional choice of dream
deals” suited for a variety of
travel needs.
The Qatar Airways Travel
Festival has something for
everyone, with exclusively designed packages including ‘2for-1 companion’ premium offer
and discounts of up to 40% off
on all-inclusive economy Class
fares and much more. In addition, Privilege Club members
will earn triple bonus Qmiles
during the Travel Festival.
The Travel Festival will be
available for sale from January
11 to 17 for travel from January
19 to December 15. Offers are
applicable on return airfares to
more than 150 places including
Europe, the Middle East, Indian Sub-continent, Asia Pacific, Africa, and the Americas.
Passengers may book online at
qatarairways.com/travelfestival or by visiting any Qatar
Airways’ sales office or appointed travel partners.
Qatar Airways chief commercial officer, Dr Hugh Dun-
leavy said, “The Qatar Airways
Travel Festival is an amazing
opportunity for travellers to
choose the best deal for themselves among a variety of exclusively designed packages.
At Qatar Airways, we aim to
inspire travellers to go beyond
the ordinary. We offer our
customers a chance to go anywhere they dream and to do it
with the world’s best airline.”
Last month Qatar Airways
“The Qatar Airways
Travel Festival is an
amazing opportunity for
travellers to choose the
best deal”
unveiled a new global brand
positioning encapsulated in
the engaging tag line ‘Going
Places Together’. The fresh direction was a conscious move
to put passengers at the heart
of the airline’s service and inspire customers to reach higher, go further and achieve more
through travel and connection.
The Travel Festival promotion
launched today does exactly
that, inviting everyone to benefit through travel.
Signalled intersection near
Duhail military camp
Qatari projects in Gaza Strip to be speeded up
L
C
eabaib roundabout (previously Radar roundabout) near the military
camp in Al Duhail has been
turned to a signal-controlled
intersection,
Ashghal
announced yesterday.
With the partial opening, vehicles can now pass through
all directions except to go west
towards Al Shamal Road due
to ongoing excavations for the
construction of sewer lines and
manholes.
The remaining closed lane
is expected to open within the
next three months. Throughout
the period, the road users are
required to head north, make a
U-turn at the next intersection
to return to Leabaib Intersection
and then make a right-hand turn
(as shown in the map).
The project also includes converting Jaryan Njeimah roundabout, located adjacent to College
of the North Atlantic - Qatar to
a signal-controlled intersection.
Work is progressing and the intersection is expected to open
to traffic in the first half of next
month.
QNA
Doha
hairman of the Qatari
Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza
Strip Mohamed Ismail alEmadi has met with Palestinian Minister of Public Works
and Housing Dr Mufid alHassain, and Minister of Labour Mamoun Abu Shahla, and
briefed them on the progress
of work in the Qatari projects,
and the mechanism of entry of
construction materials and accessories for reconstruction of
these projects.
During the meeting which
was held on Saturday at the
Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction headquarters in
Gaza City, al-Emadi confirmed
that all Qatari projects carried
out in the Gaza Strip, whether
through the donation of HH
the Father Emir Sheikh Hamad
bin Khalifa al-Thani which
amounted to $407mn or the
$1bn special reconstruction
grant donated by the State of
Qatar during the donors’ conference held in Cairo in October 2014, were now taking
place at an accelerated pace in
light of the facilities obtained
by the committee from various
related parties.
The Palestinian ministers
praised the Qatari projects
which, they said, meet
the various needs of the
citizens of the Gaza Strip
Al-Emadi who arrived in the
Gaza Strip last Wednesday,
accompanied by a high-level
Qatari medical delegation,
said that HH the Father Emir
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa alThani Hospital for Artificial
Limbs will operate over the
next few months, according to
international standards being
practiced at the Hamad Hospital in Doha. He added that
the medical delegation which
is currently visiting the Gaza
Strip will meet with all the relevant authorities for running
the hospital.
The Palestinian ministers
praised the Qatari projects
which, they said, meet the
various needs of the citizens
of the Gaza Strip including infrastructure, housing, roads,
health and sports projects,
which are characterised by
high quality and speed in implementation.
The two ministers called for
holding another donor conference in Doha in order to speed
up the pace of the commitment
of all donors to implement their
pledges towards the reconstruction process.
Doha to host conference on human rights in Arab region
QNA
Doha
T
Qatar-Kuwait panel to meet today
The fourth session of the Joint Higher Committee for co-operation
between Qatar and Kuwait will be held in Doha today. The Qatari
side will be chaired by HE the Minister of Foreign Affairs Khalid bin
Mohamed al-Attiyah, and the Kuwaiti side by the First Deputy Premier
and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Sabah al-Khaled al-Hamad alSabah. The meeting, to be held in the Doha Sheraton Hotel, will witness
the signing of a number agreements and memoranda of understanding
between the two countries.
he National Human Rights
Committee
(NHRC)
and the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human
Rights (UNHCHR) will organise,
in co-operation with the Arab
League and the Doha- based
Arab Network For Human rights
Institutions (ANHRIs), a regional conference on “UNHCHR’s
Role in The Promotion And Protection Of Human Rights in The
Arab Region.”
The two-day event, being
held under the patronage of HE
the Prime Minister and Minister
of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin
Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, will
take place in the Ritz-Carlton
Hotel on Wednesday and Thursday.
The conference aims at defining the extent of the international system of human rights’
response including its technical
and organisational components
for the promotion and respect of
human rights in the Arab region.
It will also review the approaches of relevant United Nations systems of human rights,
especially the role of the High
Commissioner
for
Human
Rights in the promotion and
protection of human rights in
the context of the current situation in the Arab region and how
to develop mechanisms of the
bodies according to the United
Nations agreements.
A particular objective of the
conference as well is to review co-operation between
the Arab countries and the
United Nations human rights
mechanisms, exchange lessons
learned and good practices in
this regard, as well as discuss
and find a common understanding on some human rights
priorities in the region, including freedom of expression and
association and education in
the field of human rights.
The event will also address the
fundamental problems of human
rights in the region in the context
of wars and conflicts, as well as
support the UNHCHR’s efforts
to protect and promote human
rights in the Arab region.
The event will also address
the fundamental problems
of human rights in the
region in the context of
wars and conflicts
The conference will serve as a
platform for interactive dialogue
about the roles, achievements
and progress, best practices
and expectations of the various
stakeholders in relation to the
promotion and protection of human rights in the Arab region. It
will also offer the opportunity
to discuss the UNHCHR’s plans
in the region and push forward
structural reforms within it,
which were announced by the
High Commissioner for Human
Rights in his first speech to the
Human Rights Council last year.
It also provides a platform to
look at many issues, including
the Arab member states’ co-operation with the United Nations
human rights system and UNHCHR, the status of ratification
of the core human rights treaties
and means of participation with
the UN human rights mechanisms including the established
bodies under the treaties and
procedures for the implementation of the UPR recommendations.
A number of workshops will
take place during the event
mainly on the UNHCHR’s response in the Arab region in particular through the UN mechanisms for protection of human
rights in addition to a workshop
on “The Problems Facing Human Rights in The Region and
The Aspirations Of National
Human Rights Institutions on
UNHCHR’s Role.”
The conference, the first of
its kind in the region, will bring
together about 200 Arab and international human rights organisations and more than 40 highlevel officials in the human rights
field and the regional offices in
Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen,
Libya and Geneva along with 17
Arab foreign ministries and human rights offices, human rights
and legal committees in parliaments and consultative councils
in the Arab region, NOGs, the Gulf
Co-operation Council (GCC), the
Arab League and a number of Arab
and international personalities
headed by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al
Hussein.
The convening of this important event in Doha underlines
the international confidence in
Qatar and its role in promoting
human rights system on the national, regional and global levels.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
3
QATAR
GCC citizen sentenced to
death for killing Qatari man
A
GCC citizen has been
sentenced, in absentia,
to death by firing squad
for killing a Qatari man in a revenge saga dating back 32 years,
local Arabic daily Arrayah reported yesterday.
A Doha Criminal Court convicted the defendant after investigations revealed that the
man had admitted his crime
and cited the details on his
Twitter account.
He had mentioned the details
of the weapons used and the
place where he left the vehicle
used in the crime. The court
decided to delay the execution
of the verdict until the nine
children of the victim reaches
legal age to decide whether they
Some members of the research team during the Stars of Excellence Awards ceremony held by HMC.
Heart Hospital research
article gets high readership
A
piece of research conducted by Heart Hospital, a member of Hamad
Medical Corporation (HMC), is
one of the most highly accessed
research articles on the website of BMC Anaesthesiology,
an open access, peer-reviewed
journal.
The research entitled “Association of Time in Blood Glucose
Range with Outcomes Following
Cardiac Surgery” is currently in
the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric, which
measures the attention that a
scholarly article has received
from various sources.
The research work, which
was published on the website in
January 2015, recently won the
researchaward at HMC’s annual
Stars of Excellence Awards ceremony.
Dr Amr Salah Omar, Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit
consultant at Heart Hospital
and the head of the research
team explained that both diabetic and non-diabetic patients
who are admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) are often at
risk of high blood glucose levels
as a result of the tension they
experience, increased levels of
some hormones, and infections
associated with being in intensive care as well as those caused
by exposure to an artificial heart
device.
“A high level of blood glucose
could delay discharge from the
ICU, which means that patients
could be exposed to bacterial in-
fections or severe complications,
such as renal failure and atrial fibrillation, and consequently, to
increased length of stay in the
ICU,” he said.
“Global trends show us that it
is important to have control over
a patient’s blood sugar levels after an operation, hence at Heart
Hospital we developed a protocol, in collaboration with the
American Diabetes Council in
Texas, to better control patient
blood glucose levels,” continued
Dr Omar.
Dr Omar pointed out: “We
created a way to measure what
we termed as ‘time in range’ to
assess post-operative glycemic
control in cardiac patients by
recording time and the blood
glucose range. We divided the
patient cohort into two groups
- the first group’s blood sugar
was under control for more
than 80% of the total length
of their stay in intensive care,
while the second group’s blood
sugar was controlled less than
80% of their stay.”
“In order to improve further,
we suggested that we try to add
more control measures for patients who suffer high glycated
hemoglobin, by postponing
their surgery until their blood
sugar is brought under control in
the ICU,” Dr Omar said. He noted that the new measurement
method he and his team introduced was met with great acclaim by international reviewers
from the University of Colorado
in the US.
seek capital punishment for the
victim or blood money.
The defendant planned his
crime meticulously, according to the police investigations,
as he travelled from his home
country to Qatar and stayed in
a hotel in Doha. He rented a vehicle and prepared the weapons
and drew up a plan to kill the
victim.
One day at the afternoon
prayer, the defendant followed
his victim into a mosque at Ain
Khalid Area. After prayers he
walked behind the victim slowly and shot him several times
on the chest and head in a corridor of the mosque. Forensic
evidence reports affirmed that
the victim died due to the gun
shots.
The defendant then left the
country and posted the details
of the crime on his Twitter account, which was widely shared
by many users on social media.
Accordingly, police tracked the
vehicle used in the crime and
recovered an AK47 rifle, a pistol and a number of bullets, the
daily added.
Court fines reckless driver
QR10,000, suspends licence
A
Doha Criminal Court
has fined an Iranian expatriate man QR10,000
and ordered the suspension of
his driving licence for a month
because of his reckless driving
injuring two persons.
Local Arabic daily Arrayah
reported yesterday that the
convicted motorist was also
ordered to pay in collaboration
with the insurance company
concerned a sum of QR30,000
for the first injured man, who
sustained a 30% physical disability due to the incident and
QR20,000 to the other for sustaining 10% disability.
Based on investigations
and the traffic police report,
the defendant crossed the
road with his vehicle from a
byroad without taking the
necessary precautions and
crashed into the vehicle of
the victims and caused them
severe injuries.
Misdemeanour court acquits Arab man
A
Doha
Misdemeanour
Court has acquitted an
Arab man of the charges
of annoying his ex-wife and
causing her discomfort through
phone calls and messages.
Local Arabic daily Arrayah
reported yesterday that after
the couple divorced, the defendant started to call his exwife and send her several SMS
with the intention of reconciliation.
However, she saw this as an
annoyance and infringement
on her privacy.
The court reject her complaints and claims and acquitted the man, stressing that he
only meant to get things back to
normal but she was not willing.
4
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
QATAR
Mercedes-Benz GT Class model of 2015 recalled
The Ministry of Economy
and Commerce (MEC), in
collaboration with Nasser
Bin Khalid Automobiles,
has announced the recall
of Mercedes-Benz GT Class
Model of 2015.
The recall is to replace the
cover above the radiator
and retrofit side covers
and update the AMG
suspension, engine and
transmission control units
software.
The Ministry said the
recall campaign comes
within the framework of its
ongoing efforts to protect
consumers and ensure that
car dealers follow up on
vehicles’ defects and repair
them.
The Ministry will coordinate with the dealer
to follow up on the
maintenance and repair
works and communicate
with customers to ensure
that the necessary repairs
are carried out.
Doha Bank launches
new payment solution
D
oha Bank has
launched a new
innovative
payment solution, the mobile
Point-Of-Sale (mPOS),
which allows merchants
across Qatar to accept
credit and debit card
payments using a smartphone connected to a secure card reader.
In a statement, Doha
Bank said the new mPOS
is another demonstration
of its commitment to provide innovative payment
solutions to customers.
The new solution, according to the bank, promises to redefine the payments ecosystem in Qatar,
offering merchants a cutting-edge card acceptance
service that brings about
higher levels of efficiency,
flexibility, and convenience.
“The world of payments
is undergoing a fundamental transformation.
Merchants of all sizes even those that previously
did not accept card payments - are increasingly
turning to mobile PointOf-Sale solutions to expand their customer base
and drive new revenue.
Doha Bank’s new mPOS
solution allows them to do
precisely that,” said Dr R
Seetharaman, Doha Bank
Group CEO.
He added: “Doha Bank
has been at the forefront
of the e-Commerce and
m-Commerce
revolutions sweeping across
Qatar, and our new mPOS
solution is designed to
bridge the gap between
businesses and consumers across the country,
making it possible for
merchants to sell practically anywhere.”
Merchants across Qatar can now accept credit and debit
card payments using a smartphone connected to a secure
card reader with Doha Bank’s new mobile Point-Of-Sales
payment solution.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
5
QATAR
Many of the shopkeepers say they will not be able to pull on for long.
Road works hitting our
business, say grocers
By Ramesh Mathew
Staff Reporter
I
nfrastructure development works
in many areas have severely hit several neighbourhood groceries, say
shopkeepers.
While lamenting the drastic fall in
their revenues, many of the affected
feel they would be unable to pull on for
long.
“Road development and other infrastructure works have been going on in
our area since July last year and there is
no end in sight even now,” said an aggrieved shopkeeper in Najma. The situation in the area, he claims, is so bad
that he is not able to generate sufficient
revenues to pay even the monthly rent.
Other groceries also have similar
grievances. Some of them said they
have not only lost their regular customers in large numbers but even suppliers who make deliveries of goods are
also forced to skip the area now because
of the apparently never-ending works.
The staff at two shops in the same area
complained that some of their customers
had vanished from the locality without
settling their dues. It is estimated that
at least 40% of the businesses at most of
the neighbourhood groceries are done on
“credit” to customers.
“At a time when we are hard-pressed
for revenues, customers evading payment of their dues also have an adverse
effect on our business,” said a grocery
owner.
Some of the shops are unable to stock
essential items such as even bottled
drinking water as delivery vehicles are
not reaching the streets. Even the vans
delivering LPG cylinders are not entering the area.
Even after the arrival of large hypermarkets and supermarkets, most of the
smaller groceries managed to remain in
business mainly owing to such attractions as ‘credit facility’ and home delivery in the neighbourhood.
“However, we are unable to make any
home delivery these days as road works
have virtually stalled that service too,” said
a salesman of a small grocery in Najma.
A number of groceries on the western side of the Doha Industrial Area,
where road and infrastructural development works are going on, face the
same situation.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
7
QATAR
Former TAMUQ
student returns as
faculty member
D
r Nayef Alyafei, a
Qatari national and
a former student of
Texas A&M University in
Qatar (TAMUQ), a partner
university of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science
and Community Development (QF), has joined the
university as an assistant
professor, making him the
first TAMUQ graduate to
return as a faculty member.
A student of petroleum
engineering at TAMUQ,
Dr Alyafei completed his
master’s and PhD from Imperial College London and
returned to Qatar to take up
teaching.
Dr Alyafei credits QF for
helping him achieve his
goals. “I think Qatar Foundation has created a great
education cycle that caters
to students from as early as
six months all the way up
to doctoral candidate level.
By engaging with individuals at every stage of their
academic lives, QF is able
to promote a culture of research and innovation from
a young age.”
He added: “I am one of
those people who took that
knowledge and completed
my postgraduate studies, and
then came back to use what
I have learned to help fulfil
the potential of my students.
I feel it is my duty to do this,
so many of my students have
huge potential.”
Dr Nayef Alyafei: “Time to give back to my country.”
Dr Alyafei pointed out
that he returned to Qatar
because it was time to give
back to his country. “Over
the years Qatar has made
tremendous progress with
the infrastructure of research and teaching. Qatar Foundation, along with
other national education
institutions, has raised the
academic bar for the nation,
as well as helping to instil a
culture of knowledge and
innovation. It was this process of continued growth and
achievement that I was keen
to be involved in.”
He said that he came back
to TAMUQ as he had thoroughly enjoyed his time as
a student at the university.
“Since joining the TAMUQ
faculty, a lot of students
look at me as a role model.
It is extremely rewarding to
inspire people and send out
the message that everyone
can achieve whatever they
want with enough effort and
hard work.”
As for choosing teaching
as a career, Dr Alyafei said
that he grew up teaching his
siblings and friends. “I have
always been someone that
people come to for help with
their homework. I think it is
ingrained in me as my father is a university professor at Qatar University and
my mother is a retired high
school teacher.”
He also felt that research
is an important aspect that
every student must take
care of and Qatar is very
much on the right path in
research.
“Research is about solving a puzzle and finding an
unknown answer; and that
really excites me. A culture
of research is very important in Qatar. I think we
have succeeded in it as we
are focused on accuracy as
opposed to speed. Qatar is
showing its capabilities and
producing high-performing students; setting high
standards that others in the
region, and globally, can
follow,” he said.
Dr Alyafei feels that both
TAMUQ and Imperial College London, trained him
to work to extremely high
standards and to deliver
top-notch work. He noted
that young people should
pursue their goals and make
use of all the facilities and
support available to them.
“If you are passionate about
pursuing a career in science and research, then
I strongly encourage it, I
have no doubt you will be
satisfied with your decision. I recommend that,” he
concluded.
8
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
REGION
UAE court jails Indian
five years for ‘spying’
AFP
Dubai
A
top United Arab Emirates court
yesterday sentenced an Indian
citizen to five years in prison
after he was convicted of spying for
his home country, a newspaper reported.
The Federal Supreme Court in Abu
Dhabi convicted the man, identified
as Manar Abbas, of “spying for the
Indian intelligence services,” Gulf
News reported on its website.
“Abbas was found guilty of passing
on sensitive information about movement of military vessels at Abu Dhabi
ports to officers at the Indian embassy
in Abu Dhabi,” the daily said, citing
the charge sheet.
It gave no further details and the
Indian embassy could not be immediately reached for comment.
Abbas will be deported after serving his sentence.
In 2014, the UAE announced the
arrest of an Asian resident suspected
of spying for a foreign country by providing sensitive military information
deemed threatening to the Gulf nation.
But neither the man’s identity nor
the country for which he was allegedly working were named at the time.
The suspect had allegedly been “exploiting his job at one of the country’s
ports and was seeking to illegally obtain military information considered
among the national security secrets”
of the UAE, prosecutors then said.
In September 2013, an Emirati
court jailed a Pakistani man for three
years for spying for an unnamed foreign country.
Iran warns
of reciprocal
measures in
US visa row
AFP
Tehran
Yemenis gather around the remains of a rocket during a protest in front of the UN
office in Sanaa yesterday, calling for an end to the military operations carried out
by the coalition.
Missile hits
Yemen clinic
killing four
AFP
Dubai
A
id agency Doctors Without Borders condemned a missile strike
on one of its clinics yesterday in
northern Yemen, saying it had killed at
least four people and wounded 10 others.
Three MSF staff members are among
the wounded and two are in “critical
condition”, the agency said in a statement, adding that toll could rise as several buildings have collapsed.
“The numbers of casualties could
rise as there could still be people
trapped in the rubble,” MSF added.
The missile struck the medical facility in the Razeh district of Saada
province, the agency said. All staff and
patients were evacuated, with patients
being transferred to another MSF-supported hospital in Saada, it said.
MSF could not specify whether the
medical facility was hit in an air strike
by the Saudi-led coalition or by a rocket fired from the ground.
MSF director of operations Raquel Ayora denounced the missile strike and repeated that the agency constantly shares
the co-ordinates of its medical facilities
with warring factions in Yemen. “All
warring parties are regularly informed of
the GPS coordinates of the medical sites
where MSF works,” said Ayora.
Saada is the heartland of the Iranbacked Shia Houthi rebels that the coalition has been bombing since March in
support of Yemen’s beleaguered government.
The Saudi-led coalition bombing
rebels in Yemen denied yesterday renewed accusations of dropping cluster
munitions in the country after UN chief
Ban Ki-moon said their use may be a
“war crime”.
I
ran’s parliament speaker
said yesterday that new US
visa regulations amounted
to “harassment” and reciprocal
steps would be taken if the plans
are implemented.
The rules, approved by Congress last month, would bar
people from 38 mainly European
countries from travelling to the
US without a visa if they have
visited Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan
since 2011.
Dual nationals of those countries would also be banned from
using the Visa Waiver Programme (VWP).
“Recently some US representatives have put some plans
together which can only be referred to as harassment,” parliament speaker Ali Larijani told
lawmakers.
“If they don’t amend it, there
will be reciprocation from the
Iranian side.”
He did not specify what reciprocal measures might be
taken. Iran recently simplified its visa entry rules, seeking to boost tourism, but the
US, Britain and Canada are
among 11 countries whose
citizens cannot obtain a visa
on arrival.
The US plan came after calls
from lawmakers and authorities to reduce security vulnerabilities after November’s
deadly militant attacks in
Paris.
Iran recently consulted with
European countries and said
the visa plan went against the
spirit of the July 14 deal struck
with world powers led by the
US over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
9
REGION/ARAB WORLD
Iraq drone strike kills
nine anti-IS fighters
Reuters
Baghdad
N
ine fighters from a Shia Muslim
militia battling Islamic State were
killed in northern Iraq when an Iraqi
army aircraft fired at them in error, security
and militia sources said yesterday.
The fighters were responding to an Islamic State attack west of Camp Speicher,
a former US base outside the city of Tikrit,
said Ahmed al-Assadi, spokesman for the
Hashid Shaabi, a coalition of mostly Shia
militias fighting the militants alongside
Iraq’s military.
More than a dozen fighters were wounded, he said.
Colonel Mohamed al-Assadi, spokesman
for the joint police and military operations
command in Salahuddin province, said that
at 10:30pm (1930 GMT) on Saturday, an
Iraqi army aviation drone opened fire due to
mistaken co-ordinates.
Assadi said the drone was being fired at
from the ground and “fired on the advancing Jund al-Imam forces, killing nine and
Cast members act in Al Faris or The Knight, a musical set to poetry penned by Dubai’s monarch Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, during its
premiere in Dubai on January 6.
Dubai musical celebrates
Arab values and culture
By Noah Browning/Reuters
Dubai
A
fantasy musical set to poetry
by Dubai’s ruler seeks to explain the secret of one of the
Arab world’s most compelling success stories, promoting a style of
government that creates wealth and
ensures stability while avoiding political strife.
Lebanese director Marwan Rahbani insists the play, Al Faris or
The Knight, which premiered this
month, describes general ideals of
leadership and is not about Sheikh
Mohamed bin Rashid al-Maktoum
himself.
“The city is not Dubai, and the
knight is not his highness Sheikh
Mohamed. Anyone can have these
attributes,” he said.
But the government-sponsored
production is certainly in keeping
with the public devotion to the rulers of the Gulf.
The Dubai musical, which ran
for four days at Sheikh Rashid Hall,
adopts a more traditional form of
celebrating family rule, showing an
idealised Arab leader as a poet and
horseman, both highly prized skills
among Arabs.
The main character, who resembles Sheikh Mohamed, wends his
way through a make-believe universe of clanging sword battles and
Arab folk dances in pursuit of a
sweetheart abducted by jealous villains.
Soothsayers liken the poetprince’s quest to his desire to build
his kingdom into a paragon of diversity and peace.
Like Dubai over the last decades,
the glowing projected backdrop
gradually morphs from a few stone
minarets and candle-lit windows to
a tidy highrise cityscape.
This is a homage to Dubai’s transformation from desert backwater
to a global financial hub, for which
Emiratis still express gratitude to
their ruling families, crediting them
with putting an end to the harsh existence of their forebears.
“The play is a message of peace
from Dubai to the world and reflects
noble Arab values and tolerant Islamic culture,” Mona al Marri, director of Dubai’s media centre, said on
state media.
“It presents a call to the entire
world to revive such values that can
help nations overcome the difficult
challenges they are facing today,”
she added.
Dubai’s rise is largely credited
to 66-year-old Sheikh Mohamed.
During his 10-year reign, state funds
were successfully used to jump-start
the trading and banking industries,
which turned the city into a tourist
and business centre where expatriate workers outnumber locals almost
9 to 1.
In this time, Dubai has also had its
share of problems.
The emirate was forced to announced a debt standstill accord
with creditors for $25bn, and faced
criticism by campaigners demanding the repeal of what they consider
oppressive labour laws affecting
guest workers from Asia.
But the emirate prospered regardless, and the “Dubai model” became
the envy of Arab states, especially as
“Arab Spring” protests led to raging
civil wars - something Gulf rulers
were determined to avoid at home.
In 2013, the United Arab Emirates
convicted 56 of its citizens in a mass
trial for plotting to overthrow the
government. Apart from this there
has been little political strife in the
seven-member federation, and as
the play seeks to show, expatriates
from a patchwork of less fortunate
lands continue to thrive there.
Inspired by a visit to the market
where the prince is serenaded by
twirling foreign traders plying their
wares - spices from India, fruits
from Syria and fabric from Lebanon
- Al Faris orders his chief merchant
to welcome them.
“Sir knight, our people everywhere are full of sadness and worry,
and collapse under the weight of hatred and strife!”
“Their troubles are our troubles,
and what ails them ails us,” the knight
retorts, insisting that they together
build “a city teeming with life and
creativity, where there are no bandits,
no monopolies, war or hate.”
The audience, a sea of hundreds of
black and white robe-clad Emiratis
daubed in woody Arabic perfume,
applauded.
“I’m so happy that a play like this
could be brought together in Dubai,”
said Ahmed Awad, a Dubai policeman.
“It showed how a city can be built
and made civilised.”
US releases video showing
Iran rockets near its warships
The US Navy released blackand-white video on Saturday it
said was taken by an American
helicopter showing an Iranian
Revolutionary Guards vessel
firing unguided rockets on Dec
26 near warships including
the aircraft carrier USS Harry
S Truman in the Strait of
Hormuz.
Iran on Dec 31 denied that
its Revolutionary Guards
vessels had launched the
rockets as the US claimed,
with a Revolutionary Guards
spokesman saying the “false”
accusation was “akin to
psychological warfare.”
The US Navy said the infrared
radar footage showed an
Iranian “fast inshore attack
craft” launching several
rockets on Dec 26 “in close
proximity” to the Truman,
the guided missile destroyer
USS Bulkeley, the French
naval frigate FS Provence and
commercial ships in the busy
waterway.
The dispute underscored the
ongoing tensions between
the US and Iran despite last
year’s international agreement
to curb Iran’s nuclear
programme.
The video, taken by a Seahawk
helicopter, runs about 30
seconds. The Navy said the
rockets were fired “within an
internationally recognised
maritime traffic lane” as the
Truman and the other ships
were passing through the
Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf.
wounding around 15,” he added, referring to
the militia.
Spokesmen for Iraq’s defence ministry
and joint operations command were not immediately available for comment.
Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a powerful Iranianbacked militia that is part of the Hashid,
condemned the incident and blamed it on
the US-led coalition bombing Islamic State
targets in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
“The American coalition renewed its attacks on the Hashid Shaabi resistance factions when an American drone bombed
the headquarters of Kataib Jund al-Islam
at Camp Speicher,” spokesman Naim alUboudi said in a statement.
But the coalition said in a daily statement it had not bombed any targets in the
area, and its Baghdad-based spokesman, US
Army Colonel Steve Warren, denied coalition aircraft were responsible.
“It was Iraqi for sure,” he said by phone.
The fight against Islamic State is testing
a thorny arrangement that puts the US-led
air campaign on the same side as Iranianbacked militias supporting Iraqi forces on
the ground.
10
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
ARAB WORLD
Iraqi forces evacuate civilians from Ramadi
AFP
Baghdad
I
raqi forces evacuated 635 civilians from Ramadi yesterday as
they continued to clear the city
two weeks after declaring victory
against the Islamic State group,
security officials said.
Federal forces retook the strategic government compound in
the centre of the capital of Anbar
province late last month but they
have yet to assert full control over
the city.
“Forces from the counterterrorism service and the Anbar
police evacuated 635 civilians,”
said Major General Sami Kadhem
al-Aredhi, a commander of elite
troops in Ramadi.
He said they had been trapped
in areas where IS fighters are still
present in Sichariyah and Sufiya,
on the eastern outskirts of Ramadi.
They were taken to a camp in
Habbaniyah, east of Ramadi, to
join hundreds of other families
displaced from Ramadi by the
fighting.
Aredhi said his forces and the
Anbar police also detained 12 suspected IS members who tried to
slip out of Ramadi by blending in
with evacuated civilians.
“The suspects were moved to
a facility to be investigated as we
attempt to identify all the people
of Ramadi who got involved with
those gangs (IS),” Anbar police
chief Hadi Irzayij said.
One of the areas of Ramadi
which Iraqi forces most recently
cleared is the sprawling southeast-
ern neighbourhoods of Malaab.
“Bomb disposal teams there
have already defused more than
250 IEDs (improvised explosive
devices,” a bomb specialist in the
police said.
Dozens more were defused or
remote-detonated in the Albu
Faraj district in northern Ramadi, a
colonel in Anbar operations command said.
IS fighters had planted thousands of roadside bombs and booby traps across the city, slowing
the advance of ground forces vastly outnumbering them and supported by air strikes from the Iraqi
air forces and US-led coalition.
Saudi, Iran
say dispute
won’t hurt
Syria talks
Agencies
Tehran
S
audi Arabia and Iran said
yesterday that an escalating dispute between the
two countries would not affect
international efforts to end the
war in Syria, even as a large Syrian rebel group cast doubt on the
UN-led peace process.
The UN envoy for Syria,
Staffan de Mistura, said in a
statement after meeting Iranian
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in
Tehran that Iran had assured him
that the row would not upset
talks set for later this month.
“The Saudi foreign minister
assured me that there would be
no impact from their point of
view.... In Iran I got the same assurance,” de Mistura told reporters in Tehran after talks in Riyadh
earlier this week and in Iran yesterday.
He said the severing of diplomatic relations between Riyadh
and Tehran had been his main
concern ahead of his trip.
But talks on Syria scheduled
in Geneva on January 25 can still
“start in the right atmosphere”
de Mistura said, shortly after
meeting with Zarif.
“I can refer to you from minister Zarif that there is no inten-
tion to see the current tensions
affect the current engagement in
the Vienna momentum, of which
they (Iran) are very much part,”
de Mistura said, referring to international talks launched in the
Austrian capital last year.
Nor will the row “affect their
commitment and engagement in
supporting the UN attempts to
have a constructive beginning on
January 25 of the Syria talks,” the
envoy added.
“The Saudi foreign
minister assured me that
there would be no impact
from their point of view....
In Iran I got the same
assurance”
Saudi Arabia said yesterday its
cutting of diplomatic and commercial ties with Iran was a first
step and it could take more action if Tehran does not change its
policies, but did not expect the
dispute to affect efforts to end the
war in Syria.
Speaking at a news conference after an Arab League meeting, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel
al-Jubeir said his country would
discuss any potential further
actions against Iran with its regional and international allies
but gave no details on what those
measures might involve.
Jubeir said some countries
had offered to mediate but that
required Iran to be serious about
the efforts. “With regards to mediation, there are some states
that have expressed their readiness to conduct this, but the important thing is seriousness with
regards to the Iranian position,”
he said.
Syrian opposition officials
have expressed misgivings about
the peace talks, citing the need
to see goodwill measures from
the government side including a
ceasefire, a detainee release and
the end of blockades on besieged
areas before starting negotiations.
Islam Army (Jaysh al-Islam),
part of a newly formed council to
oversee the negotiations on the
opposition side, said in a statement that it was unacceptable
to talk about a political solution
to the war while people died of
hunger and bombardment.
The group said the “best way
to force the regime to accept the
(political) solution and stick by
it” was to allow states that back
the opposition to supply rebels
with anti-aircraft missiles.
The statement, sent by the
Islam Army’s spokesman overnight, said it would guarantee the
missiles would not reach groups
that would use them “illegally”.
A general view taken yesterday shows members of Egypt’s new parliament meeting during their inaugural session in Cairo.
Egypt’s first parliament in
three years is sworn in
AFP
Cairo
E
New speaker to push through Sisi laws
gypt’s new parliament
convened yesterday, in
its first session in three
years, after a legislative election
dominated by pro-government
candidates in the absence of any
opposition.
Analysts have said the new
596-member parliament is expected to strengthen the hand
of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
and government decisions.
It was elected last year in two
phases with a low turnout of just
28.3% after authorities launched
a deadly crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood movement of
ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi.
At yesterday’s inaugural ses-
Meeting for the first time in
more than three years, Egypt’s
new parliament yesterday
elected a constitutional expert
as its speaker, a key position as
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
looks to push through more
than 200 laws issued by executive decree while the assembly
was suspended.
Ali Abdelaal, a French-educated
sion, the new parliamentarians
took the oath one at a time, some
of them holding Egypt’s flag,
before beginning the process of
electing a new speaker and his
two deputies.
Deputies going into the heavily secured parliament building
in Cairo said the first task ahead
Emirati gets death
for joining IS
AFP
Abu Dhabi
A
court in Abu Dhabi
yesterday
sentenced to death
an Emirati convicted in
absentia of having joined
both the Islamic State
group and Al Qaeda’s
branch in Syria, a newspaper reported.
The Federal Supreme
Court of the United Arab
Emirates also found Khalfan Sultan al-Suwaidi
guilty of recruiting fighters for IS and the Qaedaaffiliated Al Nusra Front,
Gulf News reported on its
website.
Suwaidi, whose current
whereabouts remain unknown, would be granted
a retrial if he appears in
court, based on UAE law,
according to the daily.
The top court in the
UAE also sentenced two
other Emiratis, Fares Abdulaziz and Mohamed
Awad, to seven years in
prison each after convicting them of having
joined “terror groups in
Syria”.
A third defendant was
handed a three-year
prison sentence after being convicted on similar
charges, the daily said.
In July, the UAE executed an Emirati woman
for the militant-inspired
murder of an American
school teacher in a toilet
of an Abu Dhabi shopping
mall in late 2014.
Also yesterday, the Abu
Dhabi court jailed a Palestinian for three years for
“insulting UAE leaders
and promoting the terrorist ideology” of IS, Gulf
News said.
The court will meanwhile announce its verdict in the trial of 41
people allegedly seeking
to overthrow the government to set up an IS-style
“caliphate” in the Gulf
state on March 6.
Syrian refugee invited to
Obama’s State of Union address
A newly arrived Syrian refugee with a harrowing story and
a Muslim former US soldier will be among the White House
invitees at President Obama’s final State of the Union address tomorrow. The White House yesterday announced
the names of the guests invited to join Michelle Obama in
the gallery of the House of Representatives when legislators, Supreme Court justices and other dignitaries assemble
to hear the president lay out his chief goals for the year.
lawyer who helped draft the
constitution and election law,
is a member of the “Support
Egypt” coalition, an alliance of
over 400 MPs loyal to Sisi.
As speaker, Abdelaal is now
first in the line of succession in case of the death or
permanent incapacity of the
president, until new elections
are held.
was to deal with hundreds of bills
that need to be ratified.
“The most important thing
is to deal with more than 300
(draft) laws and we have to do
that in the next 15 days,” said MP
Saeed Hassasein.
“We have agreed among parliamentarians to work day and
night until we ratify those laws,”
he added.
The bills have accumulated
since the last Brotherhooddominated parliament was dissolved by the constitutional
court in June 2012.
MP Osama Heikal also said
that 15 days were needed to review the bills and ratify them.
Lawmakers were elected under a complex system of independent candidates and party
lists.
All party list seats went to the
For Love of Egypt coalition, an
alliance of parties and groups
that support Sisi, the army chief
who deposed Mursi before winning a presidential election in
May 2014.
The individual seats went to
a mix of party-affiliated candidates and independents.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
11
AFRICA
Note links
Al Qaeda
splinter to
Bamako
hotel siege
Reuters
Bamako
M
ali’s chief prosecutor has
said that it has evidence that
jihadist group Al Mourabitoun, led by veteran militant leader
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, was behind a
November attack on a luxury hotel
that killed 20 people.
Two Islamist militants stormed the
Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali’s capital
Bamako on November 20, killing six Russians, three Chinese and an American
among others, in their bloodiest strike in
the West African country in years.
Boubacar Sidiki Samake said that a
scrap of paper with an Arabic inscription was found on the bodies of the
two men, later killed by Malian Special Forces.
The note sought the release of two
prisoners who are members of Al
Mourabitoun held in neighbouring
Niger and Mauritania, he added.
“These factors lead us to think that
effectively Al Mourabitoun was at the
origin of this attack,” Samake said on
Malian state television late on Saturday.
Details of Mali’s investigation have
been slow to emerge and until now the
prosecutor has not said which of three
jihadist groups to have claimed the
attack was the most likely author and
security experts disagree.
Al Mourabitoun together with close
ally Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM) jointly claimed it as did Mali’s
Massina Liberation Front.
Sahara-based Al Mourabitoun
is led by Algerian Islamist leader
Belmokhtar with a long history of
leading insurgencies across north Africa and the Sahara.
Libya said last year that he was
killed in a US air strike, although
fighters have repeatedly denied this.
In the latest sign of worsening
violence in Mali, gunmen abducted
a Swiss missionary from her home
in Timbuktu last week, nearly four
years after she was taken hostage as
militants seized major urban centres
with the help of Tuareg rebels. French
troops pushed them back into the
desert in 2013 where they continue to
pursue the militants.
Voodoo festival
King Daagbo Hounon (in green top hat) walks through the streets in Ouidah, Benin, during the annual Voodoo Day celebration yesterday. Benin’s voodoo
festival is held every year and is the west African country’s most vibrant and colourful event. Officially declared a religion in Benin in 1996, Voodoo and the
Voodoo festival attracts thousands of believers and tourists for a day filled with ritual dances and goat slaughtering.
Presidential party wins landslide in Madagascar vote
AFP
Antananarivo
T
he party of Madagascar’s president has won an overwhelming
victory in last month’s senatorial elections, held six years after the
upper house of parliament was dissolved because of a coup, the electoral
commission said.
According to preliminary results
published yesterday, President Hery
Rajaonarimampianina’s HVM party
Museveni urges voters to re-elect ‘old man’
AFP
Lusaka
U
gandan President Yoweri Museveni has said he needs more
time to develop the country
as he looks to enter a fourth decade in
power, urging voters to re-elect the
“old man.”
As a younger man he said leaders
who “overstayed” in power were the
root of Africa’s problems, but 30 years
later he is still in charge and hoping
to win a fifth term in elections next
month.
“Those who say, ‘let him go, let him
go’, they need to know that this is not
the right time,” Museveni said at an
election rally in the western Ntun-
gamo district on Saturday, according
to reports in yesterday’s Daily Monitor
newspaper.
“This old man who has saved the
country, how do you want him to go?
How can I go out of a banana plantation I have planted that has started
bearing fruits?”
Seven opposition candidates are vying to end Museveni’s 30-year rule in
the February 18 poll.
“We must concentrate on development, my time will come and I will go,”
he added, according to the Monitor.
Museveni successfully changed the
constitution in 2005 abolishing a twoterm limit.
In power since 1986, Museveni will
face his stiffest opposition from Kizza
Besigye, a three-time loser for the Fo-
rum for Democratic Change (FDC),
and Amama Mbabazi, a former prime
minister and ruling party stalwart now
running for the new Go-Forward party.
Mbabazi has said if he wins he would
restore term limits to the presidency.
“When he (Museveni) told me that
he will not retire and requested me to
support his continuity, I said ‘no’ and
here I am,” Mbabazi said at a rally over
the weekend, according to the statebacked New Vision newspaper.
“In the first 100 days of my presidency, we shall restore term limits
in the constitution - and we will lay
everything possible to make sure that
in the first five years we bring whatever it takes to be done to prepare the
young generation to take over power in
Uganda.”
Somali refugees walk in the Ifo-extension of the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.
Cholera kills 10 Somali refugees in Kenya
AFP
Nairobi
A
t least 10 people have died and
over 1,000 fallen sick with
cholera in an outbreak among
Somali refugees in the world’s largest
refugee camp in Kenya, UN officials
said over the weekend.
The outbreak began in November in
the Dadaab camp complex in northeastern Kenya, home to some 350,000 Somali
refugees, said Osman Yussuf Ahmed,
from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
Aid workers say they are working to
stop the outbreak spreading.
“The most important thing is hygiene,” Ahmed said, describing how aid
workers were spraying chlorine across
the camp and distributing soap. “We
are not leaving anything to chance.”
Cholera is transmitted through contaminated drinking water and causes
acute diarrhoea, and the outbreak has
been exacerbated by weeks of heavy
rains in Kenya.
The refugees in Dadaab have come
to Kenya in waves since 1991, propelled
by civil war and famine.
won more than 60% of the vote in each
of the country’s seven provinces.
Nearly 13,000 “grand electors” - the
former French colony’s mayors and
city councillors - cast ballots for 42 of
the senators in the notoriously unstable island nation, while another 21 are
to be appointed by the head of state.
Despite concerns raised by the opposition and observers, the electoral
commission told the press Saturday it
had accomplished its mission in holding a successful vote.
The results have been forwarded to
the Constitutional Court to determine
the number of seats awarded to each
party.
The upper chamber was dissolved
after Antananarivo mayor Andry Rajoelina ousted President Marc Ravalomanana in the 2009 coup, which ushered in years of turmoil in the Indian
Ocean archipelago.
Rajoelina headed up a “transitional”
regime until finally a presidential election was held in 2013, won by Hery Rajaonarimampianina and deemed free
and fair.
With the Senate in place, the president will be able to dissolve the lower
house national assembly and call snap
polls.
The president and his government,
currently with no support in the lower
house, have weathered two attempts
by the MPs to unseat him last year for
alleged constitutional violations and
general incompetence.
Madagascar remains one of the
world’s poorest countries, heavily dependent on foreign aid that was virtually cut off following the 2009 coup.
12
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
AMERICAS
Trump backers
‘are supporting
hateful rhetoric’
By Karen Brooks, Reuters
Fort Worth, Texas
A
US Muslim woman, who was ejected
from a Donald Trump rally in South
Carolina while engaging in a silent
protest, said on Saturday she wanted to make
the Republican presidential candidate’s
backers recognise they are supporting “hateful rhetoric.”
Rose Hamid, a 56-year-old flight attendant
from North Carolina, stood up silently in the
stands directly behind Trump during Friday
night’s rally when the billionaire businessman suggested that refugees fleeing violence
in Syria were affiliated with Islamic State
militants.
“I get why he’s popular: he’s an entertainer,
he’s engaging, there are certainly aspects that
appeal to certain parts of society. He even has
valid points in some cases,” Hamid said in a
telephone interview with Reuters from her
home in Charlotte.
“But they have to recognize what they’re
supporting,” Hamid said, referring to
Trump’s supporters. “His ramping up of his
hateful rhetoric is just not what America is,
and it’s not who we are as a country.”
At the rally, Hamid was wearing a white
head scarf and a blue T-shirt made by her son
emblazoned with the words, “Salam, I come
in peace.”
Hamid, who called herself a registered
Democrat, said she came to the rally because
she had a day off from work and wanted
Trump supporters to meet a Muslim in real
life. Hamid said she told herself she would
stand up quietly if Trump said anything hateful about any group, not just Muslims.
As she stood, people in the crowd around
her at the rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina
started yelling “Trump! Trump!” as organisers earlier had instructed them to do.
Soon afterwards, security officers showed
up at her seat and, with little explanation,
told her and a friend they had to leave the
premises, she said.
“They didn’t even tell us we were causing a
disturbance,” she said. “They just said, ‘Come
with me, come with me.’ I was asking, ‘Why?
Why?’ and they just said, ‘Come with me.’”
Hamid said she was later told she was trespassing at a private event.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group, on
Canadian PM condemns pepper
spray attack on Syrian refugees
AFP
Ottawa
C
anadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on
Saturday condemned an attack on Syrian
refugees who were pepper-sprayed during
a welcome event in Vancouver, an incident police
are treating as a hate crime.
The group of newly-arrived Syrians, which
included children, was sprayed by an unknown
bicyclist as they gathered outdoors Friday for a
welcome function at the Muslim Association of
Canada Centre, Vancouver police said.
“This isn’t who we are - and doesn’t reflect the
warm welcome Canadians have offered,” Trudeau
wrote on Twitter Saturday.
“I condemn the attack on Syrian refugees in
Vancouver,” he added.
Police said “a number of people” were treated
by paramedics and the Vancouver Fire and Rescue
Service for pepper spray exposure.
Public broadcaster CBC pegged the number of
Suspect is charged in
Philadelphia shooting
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during his speech at the Bridge
View Center in Ottumwa, Iowa.
Saturday called on Trump to apologise after
the incident, which ignited a firestorm on social media and prompted criticism by at least
one fellow Republican.
“The image of a Muslim woman being
abused and ejected from a political rally sends
a chilling message to American Muslims and
to all those who value our nation’s traditions of
religious diversity and civic participation,” said
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Ohio Governor John Kasich, another Republican presidential hopeful, said the
crowd’s response at Trump’s rally was inappropriate.
“We don’t need to be shouting and booing
and scaring somebody who decided to stand
up and have some sort of silent protest,” Kasich told reporters on the sidelines of a poverty summit in South Carolina on Saturday.
Hamid said some Trump supporters may
not be looking past his showy campaign to see
the damage he is doing.
“His supporters really need to look at what
it is that he’s proposing, and the type of bully
mentality that he has of disrespecting people
to such a tremendous degree,” Hamid said.
She said she hopes the other Republican
White House hopefuls will decide it is better
to leave what she called hateful speech out of
their campaigns instead of emulating Trump.
“I think that rest of the pack is looking at
what Trump is doing and then doing whatever it is they think will get them higher in
the (poll) numbers,” she said. “Hopefully,
his numbers will drop, and that will give the
message to everybody else that the fearmongering is not the way to go.”
Hamid said she was leaning toward supporting Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders,
who is seeking the Democratic presidential
nomination in November’s election. That
said, she said she had not made a decision on
who would get her vote.
Hamid is president of a group called Muslim Women of the Carolinas, but she said it is
a social organisation, not a political one, and
was not involved in her action on Friday.
At a rally on Saturday in Ottumwa, Iowa,
Trump cited last month’s San Bernardino
massacre and the shooting of a Philadelphia
police officer on Friday by a man who police
said pledged allegiance to Islamic State as examples of Muslim anger toward Americans.
“The hatred is so incredible,” Trump said.
“And the danger, when we have people willing
to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center
and many other things, we’ve got to solve it.”
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the Hamid incident.
A man claiming allegiance to Islamic
State militants was charged on Saturday with attempted murder in the
shooting of a Philadelphia police
officer this week, the prosecutor said.
Edward Archer, of Philadelphia,
is accused of ambushing an officer
in his squad car shortly before
midnight on Thursday.
He is also charged with several
other crimes and is being held without bond, the Philadelphia District
Attorney’s Office said on its Twitter
account.
Police released still images from
surveillance video that showed the
gunman dressed in a long white
robe walking toward the car and firing, eventually getting close enough
to shoot at point-blank range
through the window.
The city’s police commissioner
said on Friday that Archer told
authorities he ambushed the patrol
car “in the name of Islam.”
“He has confessed to committing this cowardly act in the name
of Islam,” Richard Ross told a news
conference, adding that the 30-yearold assailant also referenced Islamic
State militants.
A top US Muslim advocacy group
said it had found no evidence that
Archer was an observant Muslim.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney,
a Democrat sworn in last Monday,
said after the shooting he did not
believe Archer’s actions reflected
Islamic thinking.
“In no way, shape or form does
anyone in this room believe that
what was done represents Islam,”
Kenney said. “This was done by a
criminal with a stolen gun.”
affected people at as many as 30. “Although the
motive for the pepper-spraying is unknown at
this time, investigators are treating it as a hatemotivated crime, until determined otherwise,”
the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) said in a
statement.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson tweeted
that the incident “was a disgusting display of hate
- and Vancouver won’t stand for it.”
The VPD is carrying out an investigation and
searching for the perpetrator, who is thought to
have been wearing a white hooded sweatshirt.
No arrests have been made, it said.
“This is an act of cowardice condemned by all
Canadians of conscience,” said board chair for the
National Council of Canadian Muslims, Kashif
Ahmed, in a statement.
The Canadian government said it welcomed
more than 6,000 Syrian refugees by the end of
2015 but fell short of its pledge to take in 10,000.
It vowed, however, to meet that target in January.
Canada takes in an average of 250,000 refugees
from around the world each year.
White House official
says Obama to fulfil
Guantanamo pledge
Reuters
Washington
P
resident Barack Obama will make good on a promise to close the US naval prison in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, his chief of staff Denis McDonough said on
“Fox News Sunday.”
Obama will first present a long-awaited plan to Congress about how to close the facility, and seek its approval,
McDonough said in an interview. If Congress fails to act,
the White House will determine what steps to take, he
said.
“He feels an obligation to the next president. He will
fix this so that they don’t have to be confronted with the
same set of challenges,” McDonough said.
Obama pledged during the 2008 presidential election
campaign that he would close the military prison, which
housed foreign terrorism suspects after the September 11,
2001, attacks on the US.
That pledge, still unfilled, has been a feature of his annual State of the Union addresses to the nation ever since.
Obama has said the facility has been used as a recruiting tool in propaganda from groups like Al Qaeda, and
also is far too costly to maintain. There are 104 detainees
left at the prison.
Where possible, his administration has transferred detainees to other countries. But there is a small number of
detainees who the administration says it would like to detain in a US facility for national security reasons.
Congress has explicitly banned the transfer of detainees to the US.
McDonough declined to say whether Obama would
close the prison using his own executive powers if Congress rejects his plan.
“I’m not an if-then guy,” he said.
No winner in Powerball draw,
jackpot at a whopping $1.3bn
AFP
Washington
T
he jackpot for the US Powerball lottery yesterday rose to a
whopping $1.3bn after organisers said there was no winner in the
weekend draw.
The Powerball prize rocketed
to $950mn on Saturday, fuelling a
frenzy of lotto ticket buying across
the US.
Numbers were drawn and announced late Saturday at 10:59 pm
(0359 GMT yesterday) - but hours
later lottery officials said there was
no winner.
“There was NO JACKPOT WINNER in tonight’s #Powerball. We
are OFFICIALLY #InSearchofaBILLIONAIRE ($1.3bn)!” the lottery of
the District of Columbia, where the
US capital is located, wrote on Twitter around 0700 GMT yesterday.
According to the rules, the winner
can choose to be paid the full jackpot
in annual instalments over 29 years or
take a lower one-off payment in cash.
The cash for the new jackpot
would amount to $806mn before
taxes, according to the official Powerball site.
Drawings for the Powerball jackpot
began on November 7, and despite a
new series of numbers announced
every Wednesday and Saturday
since, no winner has been declared.
Americans with dreams of lifechanging riches have been flocking
for days to buy lottery tickets and a
chance at winning a tsunami of cash.
Powerball tickets are sold in 44
states as well as the District of Columbia, the commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin islands.
In the Powerball game, five
white balls are drawn from a drum
containing 69 balls. One red one is
Host Sam Arlen speaks as the winning Powerball numbers are about to be drawn at the Florida Lottery studio in
Tallahassee, Florida on Saturday night.
pulled from a drum with 26 balls.
The late Saturday winning numbers were 32-16-19-57-34 and the
Powerball was 13, organizers said.
To win, all six numbers on the
lottery ticket must be correct, with
the first five in any order. The final
number, however, must be the Powerball number.
The current prize shatters the previous record for a US lottery jackpot
of $656mn, scooped by three winning tickets in North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Texas in March 2012.
Gloria Mackenzie, 84, from Flor-
ida holds the record for the largest single Powerball jackpot win,
$590.5mn, on May 18, 2013.
The next drawing is scheduled for
Wednesday, organizers said.
Powerball starts its jackpot at
$40mn and lets it grow if there are
no winners.
In the US, small-prize scratch
lottery cards are popular, while two
prizes – Mega Millions and Powerball - offer eye-popping payouts.
Both games are organized by the
Multi-State Lottery Association, a
non-profit group owned by lotteries
from 34 states as well as the District
of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the
Virgin Islands.
Individual lotteries keep the profits and use them for projects approved by local legislatures, usually to include some money going to
education.
The world’s richest lottery is
Spain’s annual Christmas “El Gordo,” which in 2015 handed out 2.2bn
euros ($2.4bn) but which capped individual wins at 400,000 euros and
handed out thousands of smaller
prizes.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
13
ASEAN
Rubber farmers threaten
protest over income slump
The threat is an unusual
challenge because rubber
farmers have typically
supported the conservative
royalist establishment
championed by the
generals, who outlawed
political gatherings of more
than five people seized
power in mid-2014
T
T
was treated for similar illnesses
in September.
The revered and ailing king
has spent most of the last six
years in hospital. He turned 88
on Dec 5 but was not seen publicly during nationwide birthday celebrations, although he
did make a rare public appearance on Dec 14.
The king’s health and the
succession are of huge public
interest but cannot be openly
discussed in the kingdom because the royal family is shielded by one of the world’s toughest lese-majeste laws. Crown
Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn
does not command the same
devotion as his father.
Prosecutions of those accused of defaming the royals
have increased dramatically
and sentences have become
harsher under the military
government that seized power
in a coup in May 2014.
The palace issues notices
on the king’s health and keeps
tight control over news about
the royal family.
Thailand’s rubber farmers will meet to call for help from the military government tomorrow, to deal with a slump in their incomes.
rubber farmer networks said in
a statement issued yesterday.
That amounts to $1.65 per kg.
The government should
move quickly to strengthen domestic rubber prices, the statement said, suggesting it terminate a plan to sell rubber stocks
of 360,000 tonnes and task the
Rubber Authority of Thailand
to overhaul the industry.
Stocks accumulated through
previous subsidies and support schemes have weighed on
the market, further depressing
prices to multi-year lows last
week as concern over the health
of China’s economy hammered
international financial markets.
Thailand’s benchmark un-
smoked rubber sheet (USS3) as
at 33.40 baht/kg on Friday, the
lowest since dropping to 32.7
baht in December 2008, according to Rubber Authority of Thailand data.
Last week, Prime Minister
Prayuth Chan-ocha said his
government did not have enough
money to assist rubber farmers
Displaced by deforestation
This picture taken yesterday shows a sun bear or honey bear (Helarctos Malayanus) in Solok, West Sumatra. The
eight-month-old sun bear was moved by villagers from a forest nearby their village and handed over to Indonesia’s Nature
and Conservation Agency who will put the bear into a protected forest area. The sun bear has been listed as vulnerable by
IUCN due to the large-scale deforestation that has occurred throughout Southeast Asia over the past three decades.
Homeless man’s death
blamed on camera pole
Agencies
Bangkok
F
Reuters
Bangkok
hailand’s
88-year-old
King Bhumibol Adulyadej is recovering from
a blood infection and swollen
lung, the Royal Household Bureau said in a statement yesterday.
The world’s longest-serving
monarch has been in hospital
since the end of May and received treatment for several illnesses. Nervousness over his
health and the succession has
played into a decade of bitter
political division in the Southeast Asian nation.
The king has had fever for
more than two weeks and a recent X-ray showed swelling in
his lung and right knee, the palace statement said. He has also
received antibiotics for a blood
infection, it said.
His temperature has fallen but he has had quickened
breathing for some time, the
statement said. The monarch
Reuters
Bangkok
hailand’s rubber farmers will meet to call for
help from the military
government tomorrow to deal
with a slump in their incomes
and threaten open defiance of
its ban on protests if their demands are not met.
The threat is an unusual challenge because rubber
farmers have typically supported the conservative royalist establishment championed
by the generals, who outlawed
political gatherings of more
than five people seized power
in mid-2014.
Thailand, the world’s top
rubber producer and exporter,
has already rolled out several
measures to support farmers
whose income has been slashed
due to a fall in international
prices of the commodity to a
seven-year low.
But those measures have
stopped short of doing what
the farmers want and what
previous more populist governments reviled by the military have done -- spend state
money to guarantee a selling
price to farmers.
“We call for rubber prices at
60 baht per kg. If the government can’t do that, we are ready
for a big protest,” the group of
Thai king recovering
from infection and
swollen lung: palace
ormer Democrat list-MP Watchara Petchthong has demanded
Bangkok governor Sukhumbhand
Paribatra take responsibility for the
death of an unidentified homeless man
believed to have been electrocuted by a
security camera pole on Phahon Yothin
Road.
A man aged 35-40 years was found
electrocuted near a pole which houses a
CCTV camera owned by Bangkok Metropolitan Administration at the mouth
of Soi Phahon Yothin 47 in Chatuchak
district early Saturday morning,
Bangkok Post reported.
Preliminary unofficial results from
the autopsy released yesterday by the
Institute of Forensic Medicine under
the Police General Hospital found the
man died from sudden cardiac arrest
due to electrocution.
His hands had sustained burns, said
Pol Maj Gen Dr Pornchai Sutheerak-
hun, the institute’s director. However,
Taweesak Lertpraphan, director of the
BMA’s Traffic and Transport Department, told Manager Online that officials had checked the pole and an initial
examination found the electric wire
connected to the CCTV camera had no
electrical leakage and resistance standards met the Metropolitan Electricity
Authority’s criteria.
Watchara yesterday blasted the BMA
for its negligence, saying residents had
informed Chatuchak district office
about the danger but the victim’s death
clearly showed the problem had not
been fixed.
“I want to see the BMA take responsibility for the death and whether it
will examine leakages of current of all
CCTV poles. Sukhumbhand must create confidence in the safety of CCTV
poles for Bangkokians,” he said.
Thanapon Yongmei, 20, who was the
first person to see the victim’s body,
told Bang Khen police that he found
the man kneeling and his hands holding the pole at about 5.30am. He poked
his back but the man did not move. He
then touched the pole and shuddered
from an electrical shock.
Vichian Khankaew, 63, a motorcycle
taxi driver, said he and people living in
this area had known for about a year
that the pole had electrical leak. They
had installed a warning sign and alerted
the Chatuchak district office.
“The officials did not sit idly by.
They came to check the pole, but after
checking it they said it had ‘no problem’,” Vichian said.
Taweesak said BMA and MEA officials would conduct a more thorough
check of the pole and wait for the official autopsy results from the Institute
of Forensic Medicine. He said if it was
concluded the man died of electrocution, city hall would offer assistance
but did not elaborate.
Pol Maj Gen Dr Pornchai said the official autopsy results should be released
in a few days. He added the victim’s
identity was not known and no one
who might be related had contacted the
hospital yet.
with another direct subsidy, but
was looking for a sustainable solution to the problem.
Saksarit Sriprasart, a rubber
farmer leader in the southern
province of Trang, told Reuters
yesterday he would go on hunger
strike next week if the government fails to solve the problems
of small rubber farmers.
File photo shows Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej attending
a ceremony in Bangkok on December 14, 2015, in this still image
taken from Thai TV Pool video.
14
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA
US flies B-52
over S Korea in
show of force
Reuters
Seoul
T
he United States deployed
a B-52 bomber on a lowlevel flight over its ally
South Korea yesterday, a show
of force following North Korea’s
nuclear test last week.
North Korean leader Kim Jong
Un maintained that Wednesday’s
test was of a hydrogen bomb and
said it was a self-defensive step
against a US threat of nuclear
war.
North Korea’s fourth nuclear test angered both China, its
main ally, and the United States,
although the US government
and weapons experts doubt the
North’s claim that the device was
a hydrogen bomb.
The massive B-52, based in
Guam and capable of carrying
nuclear weapons, could be seen
in a low flight over Osan Air Base
around noon (0300 GMT).
It was flanked by two fighter
planes, a US F-16 and a South
Korean F-15, before returning to
Guam, the US military said in a
statement.
Osan is south of Seoul and
77km (48 miles) from the Demilitarised Zone that separates the
two Koreas.
The flight was “in response
to recent provocative action by
North Korea”, the US military
said.
“The United States remains
steadfast in its commitment
to the defence of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and
to maintaining stability on the
Korean Peninsula, to include
extended deterrence provided
by our conventional forces and
our nuclear umbrella,” said US
Lieutenant General Terrence
O’Shaughnessy.
After the North’s last test, in
2013, the United States sent a pair
of nuclear-capable B-2 stealth
bombers over South Korea.
At the time, the North responded by threatening a nuclear
attack on the United States.
The United States is also considering sending a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to waters off
the Korean peninsula next month
to join a naval exercise with
Seoul, South Korea’s Yonhap
news agency reported without
identifying a source.
However, US Forces Korea officials said they had no knowledge
of the plan.
The two Koreas remain in a
technical state of war after their
1950-53 conflict ended in a truce,
not a peace treaty, and the United
US soldiers watch a US B-52 Stratofortress being escorted by a South Korean F-15K fighter jet as it flies
over the Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul. The US sent a heavy bomber over South Korea
yesterday in a show of force as North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un insisted his country’s latest nuclear test
was carried out in self-defence.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during a visit to the
ministry of the people’s armed forces on the occasion of the new
year, in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central
News Agency (KCNA) yesterday.
States has about 28,500 troops
based in South Korea.
An editorial in the North’s
Rodong Sinmun newspaper yesterday called for a peace treaty
with the US, which is the North’s
long-standing position.
“Only when a peace treaty is
concluded between the DPRK
(North Korea) and the US can
genuine peace settle in the Kore-
an Peninsula,” state news agency
KCNA quoted it as saying.
The United States and China
have both dangled the prospect
of better relations, including the
lifting of sanctions, if North Korea gives up its nuclear weapons.
Earlier yesterday, KCNA quoted Kim as saying no one had the
right to criticise the North’s nuclear tests.
“The DPRK’s H-bomb test ...
is a self-defensive step for reliably defending the peace on the
Korean Peninsula and the regional security from the danger
of nuclear war caused by the USled imperialists,” it quoted Kim as
saying.
The North’s official name is the
Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (DPRK).
“It is the legitimate right of a
sovereign state and a fair action
that nobody can criticise,” he
said.
Kim’s comments were in line
with the North’s official rhetoric
blaming the US for deploying nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula to justify its nuclear programme but were the first by its
HK protesters march to demand
release of missing booksellers
AFP/DPA/Reuters
Hong Kong
T
housands of protesters
marched through central
Hong Kong yesterday,
demanding the release of five
missing booksellers who are
feared to have been detained by
authorities in mainland China.
The five are from Hong Kong’s
Mighty Current publishing
house, known for books critical
of Beijing.
Their disappearance has
fuelled fears that freedoms in
the semi-autonomous Chinese
city are being eroded.
The US State Department and
European Union have expressed
concern.
The latest to vanish is Lee
Bo, 65, last seen in Hong Kong
on December 30. Three others
earlier went missing in southern
China and one in Thailand.
Lee, a well-known bookseller
who holds a British passport,
was known for publishing books
critical of mainland politicians.
But there was a twist last
week, when Lee’s wife withdrew
her missing person’s report to
police saying he had been in
contact.
There is widespread speculation that she was forced to withdraw the statement.
A video of Lee has also reportedly emerged at the weekend
saying he was safe and asking
Hong Kongers not to protest.
Other publishers and book
vendors are unnerved by the
mysterious disappearances, and
in some cases they have pulled
books critical of Beijing’s lead-
Protesters call for the release of booksellers missing from Hong
Kong’s Mighty Current publishing house – known for books critical
of Beijing – during a march down the streets of Hong Kong
yesterday.
ers from their shelves.
In three bookstores selling political books visited by
Reuters, owners declined to be
interviewed, citing the fear of
mainland anger.
“Nobody is safe in Hong
Kong now,” said Bao Pu, who
published the secret memoirs
of Zhao Ziyang, a former Communist Party general secretary
who was purged after the 1989
Tiananmen Square crackdown.
His father, Bao Tong, was the
most senior Chinese official
jailed over the protests in Beijing.
As of Thursday, over 500
publishers, writers, booksellers
and members of the public had
signed an online petition pledging to: “Not fear the white terror
and uphold the principle of publication freedom”.
White terror is a term used
to describe periods of political
persecution by authoritarian regimes.
Pro-democracy lawmakers,
activists and some residents believe Lee was kidnapped in Hong
Kong by mainland authorities.
They accuse China of trampling on the “One Country,
Two Systems” agreement under
which Hong Kong has been governed since its return by Britain
in 1997.
This is intended to preserve
Hong Kong’s freedoms and way
of life for 50 years. Chinese law
enforcers have no right to operate in the city.
“We demand the Chinese
government immediately explain the situation of the five
and release them,” Richard Tsoi,
an organiser of the march, told
protesters through loudspeakers before the rally started at the
city government’s headquarters.
“No to political kidnap!”
demonstrators shouted, some
holding banners reading “Where
are they?” as they marched towards China’s representative
office in Western district.
Organisers said 6,000 people
took part while police put the
number at 3,500.
The US State Department
said on Friday that it was “disturbed” by the reports of disappearances, while the European
Union described the lack of information as “extremely worrying”.
The issue has sent shockwaves across Hong Kong as fears
grow that Chinese control is
tightening.
“We are here to march for
freedom and security for the
people of Hong Kong,” lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan told reporters.
“This is a political kidnap... One
Country, Two Systems has been
damaged.”
“This is a matter of utmost
gravity and concern to Hong
Kong,” said lawmaker Alan
Leong, who took part in the
march. “How can you say there
is one country two systems if
someone who has been practising his freedom of expression
can be spirited away ... from
right in the middle of the city.”
Chinese officials have not
commented on the case, but
state-run Global Times said
that the bookshop was making a
“profit by political provocation”.
China’s Foreign Minister
Wang Yi skirted a direct question on whether the men were
under Chinese detention at a recent press conference.
The Guangdong and Shenzhen Public Security Bureaux,
and the Hong Kong and Macau
Affairs Office in Beijing, have not
responded to repeated Reuters’
requests for comment.
Abe aims for constitutional revision with opposition help
Reuters
Tokyo
J
apanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe said yesterday
that he aimed to get a twothirds majority from his ruling
bloc and like-minded opposition parties at an upper house
election this summer to enable
him to revise the constitution.
Abe has made clear he wants
to revise the US-drafted, pacifist constitution, but formal
amendment requires approval
by two-thirds of both houses of
parliament and a majority in a
referendum.
Abe’s Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP) and its junior coalition partner, the Komeito party,
already command a two-thirds
majority in the lower house, but
only hold a simple majority in
the upper chamber.
“It will be very difficult for
the ruling bloc alone to win a
two-thirds majority,” Abe told a
TV news programme. “Besides
the LDP and Komeito, I aim to
form a two-thirds majority with
those positive and responsible
people who are thinking of a
constitutional revision.”
Abe mentioned “Osaka Ishin
No Kai”, or the Osaka Innovation
Party, as one possible partner
backing the revision.
Admirers view the constitution as the source of Japan’s
peace, prosperity and democracy.
Many of Abe’s conservative
backers, who have long wanted
to rewrite the constitution but
lacked the political means, consider it as a shoddy document
written, in the words of one
commentary, “with malice and
vengeance” to keep Japan forever subdued.
A change proposed by the LDP
would make clear Japan has the
right to maintain a military and
deploy it at home and abroad,
but Abe said debate would probably deepen as to which chapter
of the constitution should be
revised.
leader since Wednesday’s blast.
The United States has said
it has no nuclear weapons stationed in South Korea.
Kim noted the test was being held ahead of a rare congress
of its ruling Workers’ Party later
this year, “which will be a historic
turning point in accomplishing
the revolutionary cause of Juche”,
according to KCNA.
Juche is the North’s homegrown state ideology that combines Marxism and extreme nationalism established by the state
founder and the current leader’s
grandfather, Kim Il Sung.
KCNA said that Kim made the
comments on a visit to the country’s Ministry of the People’s
Armed Forces.
South Korea continued to conduct high-decibel propaganda
broadcasts across the border into
the North yesterday.
The broadcasts, which include
“K-pop” music and statements
critical of the Kim regime, began
on Friday and are considered an
insult by Pyongyang.
A top North Korean official
told a rally on Friday that the
broadcasts had pushed the rival
Koreas to the “brink of war”.
Daily life was mostly as normal
on the South Korean side of the
border yesterday.
A popular ice fishing festival
near the border attracted an estimated 121,300 people on Saturday and another 100,000 yesterday, Yonhap reported.
China formally arrests
four labour activists
Reuters
Beijing
C
hina has formally arrested
four labour activists who
have helped workers fight
for their rights, lawyers for two
of them said yesterday, as the
government steps up a crackdown on activists pressing for
change within the system.
Rights groups say the current
clampdown on dissent is the
most sweeping in two decades in
China, where a slowing economy
has led to a surge in labour disputes, particularly in the southern manufacturing powerhouse
of Guangdong.
Zeng Feiyang, director of
the Panyu Migrant Workers
Centre in the southern city of
Guangzhou, was charged with
“disturbing social order”, said
Cheng Zhunqiang, his lawyer.
Zeng is one of China’s most
prominent labour activists,
many of whom have campaigned
for the legal rights of workers,
such as proper work contracts
and social insurance contributions.
Two other activists, Meng Han
and Zhu Xiaomei, have also been
arrested on the same charge,
said Yan Xin, Meng’s lawyer, and
Cheng.
He Xiaobo was arrested on
a charge of embezzlement, according to New York-based
rights group China Labour
Watch. The lawyers for Zhu and
He could not be reached for comment.
Both Cheng and Yan told Reuters by telephone that prosecutors in Guangzhou told them of
the arrests of Zeng and Meng on
Friday, but did not give any reason for the charges.
Both lawyers said they had
been unable to meet their clients
since their detentions, in contravention of Chinese law.
Prosecutors in Guangzhou’s
Panyu district did not answer
Reuters’ repeated telephone calls
to seek comment.
The Guangdong government
did not respond to a faxed query.
A formal arrest usually leads to
a trial.
Last
month,
police
in
Guangzhou detained seven labour activists, sparking criticism
from rights groups. Two of them
have since been released, Cheng
said.
At the time, state media accused the seven detained labour
activists of “inciting workers to
go on strike”, accepting foreign
funding and “disturbing social
order”.
They also said the married
Zeng had “at least eight longterm lovers”, a charge that Zeng’s
supporters call a smear against
him.
The number of strikes in China
surged to a record 2,774 last year,
or double the figure for 2014,
Hong Kong-based advocacy
group China Labour Bulletin said
last week.
Louis Vuitton sues Taobao sellers
French luxury goods firm Louis Vuitton is seeking damages from
three people convicted of offering counterfeit versions of its clothing,
shoes and handbags on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s popular Taobao
shopping website, a Beijing court said.
A district court in Beijing accepted the lawsuit filed by Louis Vuitton,
owned by LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury group, last Monday,
according to a statement on the court’s website.
The company is taking the three defendants, two of them surnamed
Liang and the other surnamed Han, to court, “asking them to stop
infringing on its trademark and is seeking compensation of economic
losses of 250,000 yuan ($37,900)”, according to the court statement.
Louis Vuitton could not be reached for comment.
It was not possible to reach the three defendants for comment.
Vanuatu on alert over Cyclone Ula
Residents of Vanuatu are taking shelter as a category four cyclone
brings heavy rain and strong winds to the same area devastated by the
largest cyclone in the South Pacific island nation’s history last year, aid
workers said yesterday.
Disaster management authorities have issued a red alert for islands in
Tafea, the southernmost of Vanuatu’s six provinces, a spokesman of
CARE Australia told Reuters.
16
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
BRITAIN
LAW AND ORDER
CRIME
PEOPLE
WINDFALL
VERDICT
Suspect in actress, two
sons killing held in Ghana
Teenager stabbed to
death at birthday party
Cheryl Fernandez-Versini
‘set to divorce husband’
Two winners share
£66mn lottery prize
Albanian man jailed
for sex attacks on buses
Police in Ghana said they had tracked down and
arrested the partner of a British actress whose
body was found in the garden of her London home
this week along with those of their two young sons.
Arthur Simpson-Kent is wanted in connection with
the murder of Sian Blake, a former actress in the
popular soap opera EastEnders, and the two boys,
Zachary and Amon. The family had been reported
missing in mid-December. “The suspect has been
arrested by police and I can confirm his identity,”
a police spokesman said. “He was at a hideout
in western region. With the kind of collaboration
between the police and public that we have, we
managed to nab him there.”
A 16-year-old boy has been stabbed to death
at a friend’s birthday party in an east London
park. Emergency services were called to
Ashton Playing Fields in Woodford at 9.40pm
on Saturday night. The boy was then taken
by ambulance to hospital where he was later
pronounced dead. The victim is believed to have
been at a female friend’s 16th birthday party,
attended by about 100 people, at a social club
in the playing fields. Police said there was then a
confrontation outside between four male youths
and the victim, who was alone. One of the males
then stabbed the victim before all four made off
on foot towards Chigwell Road, officers added.
Cheryl Fernandez-Versini is to divorce her French
restaurateur husband after just 19 months of
marriage, according to reports. The singer and
X-Factor judge has begun legal proceedings which
cites “unreasonable behaviour” between her and
second husband Jean-Bernard, the Sun On Sunday
said. A decree nisi application expected to be
lodged in the next few weeks, the paper added.
The pair married in a small ceremony on Mustique
in the Caribbean in August 2014, just three months
after they met in Cannes, France. The Sunday
Mirror claimed the pair secretly split five months
ago, and that she had realised they had married
too soon after a whirlwind romance.
Britain’s biggest-ever national lottery win was
shared by two players, organisers said after huge
numbers of tickets were sold for the £66mn
tax-free jackpot. The Saturday night UK national
lottery draw attracted many more players than
normal, and came the same day as Americans
flocked to get tickets for a record jackpot of
more than $900mn in the US’ Powerball draw.
The previous biggest British national lottery
jackpot was £22.6mn more than 20 years ago.
British winners of the pan-European Euromillions
lottery draw have received far more in recent
years. The biggest win came in 2011 when a
Scottish couple collected £161mn.
An Albanian man has been jailed after admitting
a series of sexual attacks against women and
at least one teenager on buses in east London.
Giorge Zhukas, 47, sexually assaulted nine females
on buses in Walthamstow and Ilford between
August 11 and October 16 last year, Scotland
Yard said. One of his victims was a 13-year-old
girl, while the oldest was 43. He was arrested on
October 20 after police identified him from CCTV
footage on one of the buses. Zhukas, of no fixed
abode, was jailed for 18 months at Snaresbrook
Crown Court after pleading guilty to nine counts
of sexual assault on buses in Waltham Forest and
Redbridge, the Met said.
Windfarm
operator
eyes £6bn
investment
Starlings spectacle
Paris attacks
ringleader ‘met
other militants
in UK last year’
Guardian News and Media
London
D
ong Energy, the biggest operator of offshore
windfarms in Britain has
said it plans to spend a further
£6bn in the UK by 2020, convinced that the government is
serious about supporting wind
power.
Vattenfall, another significant
UK windfarm operator, says it
too is “optimistic” about 2016
and is hoping to proceed with a
turbine testing site off Scotland
this summer.
The statements of intent are a
major boost to Amber Rudd, the
secretary of state for energy and
climate change, who has been
under fire for cutting subsidies
to solar and other low-carbon
sectors despite signing up to the
Paris climate change accord.
Brent Cheshire, Dong’s UK
division chairman, said he had
harboured concerns about government policies as little as two
months ago, but had since been
reassured by recent firm commitments to offshore wind.
“It was a concern that it took
as long as it did (for ministers to
recommit to offshore wind) but
we have now got it. I think there
is the clarity we need to commitment to new investment,” he
explained.
Cheshire said it made more
sense for the government to back
offshore wind than the Hinkley
Point C nuclear power station,
which was going to prove a lot
more expensive.
But he also warned it would
take time for companies to cut
their offshore windfarm costs,
and that hopes that this arm of
the renewable sector could become subsidy-free as early as
2023 were “not realistic”.
Vattenfall has for years being
trying to build a European offshore wind deployment centre
off the Scottish coast in Aberdeenshire, but has faced legal
opposition from American billionaire and Republican presidential hopeful, Donald Trump.
The British supreme court has
now ruled the project can go
ahead.
Guardian News and Media
London
T
Large flocks of starlings fly at dusk over the Somerset Levels near Glastonbury in Britain.
Despite a steady decline in annual winter visiting numbers of the migratory bird in recent
years, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds estimates that approximately half a
million are currently roosting in this area of south west England, providing spectacular daily
murmurations as they arrive and leave their roosting spots.
he Islamic State commander who planned the
terror atrocities in Paris
entered the UK by ferry earlier
last year to meet other militants,
the Guardian has learned, in the
latest border security blunder to
emerge on Theresa May’s watch.
The revelation adds to the
pressure on the home secretary,
who is already facing demands to
explain how a terror suspect, Abu
Rumaysah - who is thought to be
the masked figure who appeared
in an Isis propaganda video earlier this month - managed to flee
Britain after being arrested and
bailed by police.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud was a
wanted terrorist at the time of his
visit, which took place under the
noses of Britain’s security services and police last year. He went
on to lead November’s attacks in
Paris, which killed 130 people.
While in the UK, Abaaoud met
other suspected terrorists and
took pictures of British landmarks on his phone.
Counter-terrorism officials are
still assessing whether the purpose of his trip to the UK was to
plan an atrocity in Britain.
Abaaoud entered the UK
through a Kent ferry port, believed to be Dover, according to
security sources. Ferry ports are
seen as more vulnerable and less
secure than airports.
Abaaoud’s visit raises questions for the government, which
has made repeated promises
that border security has been
strengthened.
The Home Office declined to
BNP removed from
list of political parties
Guardian News and Media
London
T
he British National Party
has been struck off the UK’s
register of political parties,
the electoral commission has confirmed.
The commission said the BNP,
which won two seats in the European parliament in 2009, had
failed to meet the annual requirement to submit its registration details on time.
All political parties are required
every year to confirm with the
commission that their details are
accurate and pay a pre-registration fee of £25, which the BNP
failed to do.
The electoral commission said:
“The last date when a notification
can be submitted to the commission is six months after the deadline for submission of a party’s
statement of accounts.
“The BNP’s statement of accounts was due on July 7, 2015.
Their annual confirmation of registered details was therefore due
on or before January 7, 2016.
“The electoral commission did
not receive the notification by this
date and is required by law to remove the BNP from its register of
political parties in Great Britain.”
It means the party’s name, descriptions and emblems cannot
be used on ballot papers unless it
submits a fresh application to be
considered a recognised party.
BNP spokesman Stephen Squire
said it was a “clerical error on our
part” and that the party would
submit the necessary paperwork
within the next few days. “It’s a little bit embarrassing,” he said, but
insisted it would be “business as
usual” for the BNP, which intended to contest the London mayoral
election and some council seats.
“We’ve been overwhelmed by
the number of phone calls we’ve
had from people concerned we
might be disappearing,” Squire
added. The BNP, which had
more than 50 council seats and
two MEPs in 2009, has been in
steep decline for several years and
fielded only eight candidates at the
general election, down from 338
in 2010. The former BNP leader
Nick Griffin, who during an electoral meltdown in 2014 accepted
that the BNP could be considered
“racist”, was later expelled for allegedly “trying to cause disunity”
in an attempt to destabilise the organisation.
Adam Walker replaced him after the election defeat. Walker had
said in a statement that his “primary focus is reconnecting the
BNP with the ordinary person in
the street”.
He said he was known in the
party for leading street protests
and demanding the restoration of
capital punishment for the killers
of Lee Rigby. The party has been
mired in financial difficulty. The
commission fined the BNP £2,700
for the late delivery of its statement of accounts for 2010.
The BNP was on the brink of
bankruptcy that year when Marmite owner Unilever launched high
court proceedings after the party
unveiled an election broadcast
that ripped off the food brand’s
“love it or hate it” strapline, according to Marketing Week .
comment on the apparent security breach at the UK border, citing
national security as the reason for
its silence.
Keith Vaz, the Labour MP who
chairs the influential home affairs committee, told the Guardian the government had vital
questions to answer: “It is remarkable that this terrorist entered and exited the country. He
must have been on a watch list.
Serious questions need to be answered so that we can prevent a
repetition of what actually happened.”
“Both the home secretary and
the head of the Border Force
were asked if any of those involved in the Paris attacks had
recently been to the UK and they
declined to answer. The entry
and exit of terrorists in a matter
of great concern. There should
be full co-operation between
EU partners and 24/7 monitoring of any contacts they makes.
It would be helpful to have a full
explanation”.
Abaaoud, a 27-year-old Belgian, was killed in a shootout
with French security forces days
after he led the Paris attacks in
November; digital material recovered from his possessions
revealed the British trip. He was
the head of an Isis unit set up to
send European militants back to
their home countries to carry out
terrorist attacks.
On Abaaoud’s phone were
photographs of his UK visit, including landmarks, which some
in the European intelligence
community have interpreted as
being taken for the purpose of
planning a terrorist attack. Others are less convinced. The pictures were taken while Abaaoud
and the phone were physically in
the UK.
Abaaoud’s history may provide context or clues to the purpose of his UK trip. By the time
of the visit he was strongly believed by western counter-terrorism officials to be a senior Isis
figure involved in assisting attacks against European targets.
Abaaoud is thought to have
met militants in Birmingham
and London - some known to
him already, though it is not certain if any were with him in Isiscontrolled areas of Syria.
These UK-based suspects are
under investigation by MI5 and
police counter-terrorism units.
They are suspected of having
both the intention and capability
of planning or assisting terrorist
activity in the UK.
But despite Abaaoud’s seniority in Isis, security officials did
not know of his UK visit until
his body was recovered and possessions examined by French investigators, months after he had
been in Britain.
It is understood that the pictures of British “landmarks” lack
certain features associated with
attack planning, such as a focus
on security features, and seem
more similar to photos a tourist
may take. But some officials are
more sceptical.
Abaaoud had boasted in Isis
propaganda of his ability to travel unnoticed into and through
Europe. Despite being wanted
by intelligence agencies he was
thought to be using false documents to travel in and out of Europe. One theory is that he used
a false passport; another that he
used the European passport of
another Isis recruit.
Reshuffle made party
stronger, says Corbyn
Agencies
London
J
Corbyn: accused of ‘incompetence’
eremy Corbyn has insisted
his reshuffle made Labour
“stronger” despite being hit
by a fresh resignation and accusations of “incompetence”.
The Labour leader defended
the shake up of his top team as it
emerged that Alison McGovern
was stepping down from heading a
party poverty review.
The Wirral South MP has been
infuriated by shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s jibe that the
Progress group - which she chairs
- is “hard right”.
She is set to spell out her reasons in an interview on the BBC,
potentially fuelling a row between
the Labour leadership and the
broadcaster. Corbyn’s office has
filed a formal complaint after accusing the BBC of “orchestrating”
the on-air resignation of Stephen
Doughty from the front bench just
before Prime Minister’s Questions
on Wednesday. However, shadow
civil society minister Anna Turley has said she had “no problem”
with the corporation’s actions.
Jonathan Reynolds and Kevan
Jones also quit as shadow ministers citing policy differences with
the leader and unfair treatment
of sacked Europe spokesman Pat
McFadden and shadow culture
secretary Michael Dugher.
In an interview with The Sunday
Times, McFadden accused Corbyn
and McDonnell of an “attempt to
demonise and delegitimise people
and stop other voices being heard”.
“The use of rhetoric like that is
not what Jeremy promised when
he took over. He said he would
practise a kinder politics without
personal attacks.” McFadden said
Corbyn’s world-view treated terrorists like “children” and undermined British values.
“This view of the world seems
to separate the world into adults
and children, and the adults are the
west and the others - the children
- are anti-West,” he said. “That’s
not the way the world works.”
The promotion of Emily Thornberry to shadow defence secretary,
replacing Maria Eagle, who supports the nuclear deterrent, has
fuelled speculation that Corbyn is
planning to bring the party’s position in line with his own unilateralist view.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
17
BRITAIN
UK set for worst wage growth since the 1920s: Labour research
Guardian News and Media
London
T
he 10 years between 2010
and 2020 are set to be
the worst decade for pay
growth in almost a century, and
the third worst since the 1860s,
according to new research.
Research from the House of
Commons Library shows that real-terms wage growth is forecast
by the Office for Budget Responsibility to average at just 6.2% in
this decade, compared with 12.7%
between 2000 and 2010.
The figures show that realterms wage growth was lower only
in the decades between 1920 and
1930 and between 1900 and 1910.
Wage growth averaged at 1.5% in
the 1920s and at 1.8% in the 1900s.
Shadow work and pensions
secretary, Owen Smith, who
commissioned the research, said
that a “Tory decade of low pay”
would see “workers’ pay packets
squeezed to breaking point”.
“Even with this year’s increase
in the minimum wage, the Tories
will have overseen the slowest pay
growth in a century and the third
slowest since the 1860s,” he said.
George Osborne has justified
cuts to in-work benefits by arguing that the government is transitioning the UK from being “a
low-wage, high-welfare economy
to a high-wage, low-welfare economy”, a claim that Smith said was
contradicted by wage growth figures.
In the autumn statement,
George Osborne abandoned plans
to cut £4bn from working tax
credits, under pressure from the
opposition and many backbench
Tory MPs.
However, Labour has pointed
out there will be cuts to in-work
benefit payments for new claimants put on the new Universal
Credit system - championed by
the Work and Pensions Secretary,
Iain Duncan Smith - which rolls at
least six different benefits into one.
According to the IFS, the cuts to
Universal Credit, which are due to
take effect later this year, will mean
2.6mn working families become an
average of £1,600 a year worse off.
Smith said that poor wage
growth meant that planned cuts
to the incomes of working families through Universal Credit were
“indefensible”.
“The government is clearly failing to make work pay and that will
get much worse if ministers press
ahead with their cuts to Universal
Credit,” said Smith. “The DWP
has already conceded the first 200
hours of extra work by those affected will be to ‘recoup losses’
and, by 2020, 2.6mn working
families will be made an average of
£1,600 a year worse off.
“Workers are being served a
raw deal under the Tories. With
the smallest pay rises in a century, further cuts to the incomes of
working families are indefensible.
That’s why Labour is calling on
the government to reverse cuts to
in-work support before they take
effect later this year.”
A government spokesman said:
“This is typical scaremongering.
The truth is wages are continu-
ing to grow strongly and Universal Credit is ensuring that work
always pays. We are also seeing
record levels of employment, with
analysis clearly showing Universal
Credit claimants are more likely to
be in work and earning more than
under the old system.
“With the introduction of the
new national living wage from
April, millions will benefit from
a pay rise. Around 1.7mn people
will see their pay increase in the
first year alone, with almost 6mn
workers set to benefit in total.”
Golf club
members
rue Chinese
takeover
Reuters
London
L
ondon has been cosying
up to Beijing in recent
years in the hope of attracting Chinese investment,
but in one leafy corner of England the love-in has turned to
acrimony.
Long-time members of
Wentworth, a hallowed golf
club in the affluent county of
Surrey just west of London,
accuse the new Chinese owners of using an eye-watering
fee hike to get rid of them and
turn the club into a preserve of
the global ultra-rich.
The dispute has caused diplomatic ripples, with interventions from Foreign Secretary
Philip Hammond, who represents the local area in parliament, and from the Chinese
embassy in London.
At issue is a plan by Beijingbased property and investment
firm Reignwood Group, which
bought Wentworth in 2014,
that would require members to
pay £100,000 to remain part of
the club and double maximum
annual fees to £16,000.
“My own personal feeling is
that they don’t want us,” said
Michael Fleming, a local dental
surgeon and Wentworth member for 28 years who has just
ended a term as club captain.
As for many members, the club
has been central to his family’s
social life.
The club says it plans to invest
an initial £20mn to improve facilities, with £10mn being spent
in the next two years, as it pursues its vision to make Wentworth “the world’s premier private golf and country club”.
“We are absolutely clear on
the important role the club plays
within the community and we
know that it has generated multiple friendships over the years.
We very much want this to continue,” it said in an e-mailed response to questions.
Home to three 18-hole courses and to a striking crenellated
clubhouse, Wentworth is famed
throughout the golfing world for
an old association with the Ryder Cup and as the venue for the
annual BMW PGA Championship on the European Tour.
It has about 4,500 members,
mostly wealthy locals with a
smattering of British TV celebrities and professional sportspeople like former England
cricketer Kevin Pietersen.
Fleming said he expected
about 90% of members to leave
the club if Reignwood’s changes come into force as planned
in April 2017, and a significant
number had already left.
One member of 18 years,
who did not wish to give his
name because he did not want
public attention, said Wentworth was already exclusive by
most people’s standards and he
could not fathom what Reignwood were trying to achieve.
In December, Fleming delivered a petition signed by over
500 Wentworth members to
the Chinese embassy in London.
In a response seen by Reuters, embassy official Jin Xu
wrote that Reignwood had “established itself as a responsible
investor in the UK”, concluding
that “the group has assured me
that their plans for Wentworth
Club will serve the long-term
interest of its members and local
community”.
But Hammond, writing in
his capacity as the area’s member of parliament, described
Reignwood’s plans as “very
disappointing” in a letter to a
club member.
Prime Minister David Cameron speaks on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday.
Will make EU exit work if
public vote for it: premier
Reuters
London
I
t would not be the “right answer” for Britons to vote to
leave the European Union,
but the government will have to
make it work if they do, Prime
Minister David Cameron said
yesterday.
An opinion poll published on
Thursday showed that a majority
of Britons who have made up their
mind would back leaving the EU
in a referendum due by the end of
2017.
Cameron said he hoped voters would back staying in the EU
if he achieves his planned reforms
to Britain’s relationship with the
bloc.
“The public will make their
decision. We must obey that decision whatever it is,” he told the
BBC’s Andrew Marr show. “I don’t
think that (exit) is the right answer
... Were that to be the answer, we
would have to do everything necessary to make that work.”
Asked whether the government
was making contingency plans for
a possible exit, Cameron said it
had plans for the renegotiation and
referendum.
“The civil service is working
to help me deliver those things.
Now, if we fail to deliver them and
we have to take a different stance,
then that is a new situation,” he
said.
Arron Banks, co-founder of
‘out’ campaign group Leave.EU
said Cameron would not be taken
seriously in his renegotiation if
he was not prepared to walk away
from the bloc.
“David Cameron’s lack of a plan
for withdrawal tells the EU, and
voters, that he has no intention of
leaving, guaranteeing that the deal
he does finally produce won’t be
worth the paper it’s written on,”
he said.
Cameron, who travelled to Germany and Hungary last week to
hold talks on his proposed reforms,
said he was confident a deal could
be reached on what has proved the
biggest sticking point - his plans to
curb welfare payments to EU migrants.
He said he believed the “massive
prize” of reforming Britain’s relationship with the 28-nation bloc
and staying a member was closer
F
actions in the British Medical Association
(BMA) risk putting lives
on the line by peddling “misinformation” in a politicised bid
to fuel his row with junior doctors, Jeremy Hunt has claimed.
The health secretary accused
some on the union’s council of
viewing the dispute over weekend working hours as a “political opportunity to bash a Tory
government that they hate” and
said looming strikes would be
“the worst possible thing for
the NHS”.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Hunt said patients must be put before politics. The department of health
is hoping to reduce weekend
mortality rates which, according to some figures, mean
11,000 extra patients die each
year after being admitted to
hospital over the weekend.
However some junior doctors
argue that the proposed change
to work patterns will amount to
a 30% pay cut and result in doctors working dangerously long
shifts.
Talks between the DoH and the
BMA broke down after just one
hour when doctors walked out,
claimed Hunt, who has been accused of spin in the debate.
A series of three strikes is due
to start tomorrow, when junior
doctors will only provide emergency care for 24 hours, potentially causing delays to elective surgeries. If negotiations
fail they will stop providing all
care, including emergency procedures, in a walkout on February 10 from 8am to 5pm.
Hunt told the newspaper
junior doctors were the “backbone” of an NHS already under
strain from seasonal increases
in admissions, that have seen
many declare they are struggling with demand.
He said: “I think it’s really
important that the BMA leadership rein in any elements who are
looking at this strike in that way
because that would be the worst
possible thing for the NHS.”
He added: “It is unprecedented
for doctors to say that they will
be withdrawing emergency care.
That is basically saying that you
won’t be there for your patients
even in life-threatening situations.”
It was in the long-term interest
of doctors to accept the plans in
order to protect patients, he explained.
There were “too many” studies that highlight soaring fatality
rates over weekends, including a
29% hike in cancer surgery deaths,
a 20% increase in stroke mortality, an 11% rise in general surgery
deaths and a 7% increase in mortality rates for newborn babies,
Hunt said.
Under the new contract, 99% of
doctors would have their pay protected, he claimed, adding: “One
of the most disappointing things
about this dispute has been the
amount of misinformation that
has gone around about what the
government is trying to do.”
The BMA has insisted it is “apolitical” and the strikes “demonstrated the strength of feeling
amongst the profession”.
referendum, when polls suggested
that the people of Scotland might
vote for independence, the prime
minister did privately draw up a
resignation letter. It was widely
felt in Downing Street that his position would have been untenable
had he lost the referendum. But he
did not want to give any public hint
of his thinking.
The prime minister expressed
confidence in his Marr interview
that he was making progress in
his negotiations with Britain’s EU
partners. He said: “It is hard work.
But the areas that I have identified
are the things that drive us up the
wall about Europe that we need to
deal with. Let’s make sure we are
not part of an ever closer union. I
think we are on the way to getting
that fixed”.
Parents set to be given
child-rearing lessons
Factions in BMA ‘risking
lives’ with misinformation
Agencies
London
than it had been and he was hopeful of striking a deal at a meeting of
EU leaders next month.
The Conservative Party leader,
who has said he will not seek a
third term at a national election
due in 2020, also repeated a comment made earlier this week that
he did not plan to stand down as
prime minister if he loses the referendum.
The prime minister said his authority rested on holding the vote,
not the result.
Cameron was keen in his interview with Marr to repeat the tactic
he deployed in the Scottish referendum. This was to kill of any attempt to link his future to the referendum result by saying he would
remain in office even if he lost.
In the final weeks of the Scottish
AFP
London
A
Jeremy Hunt: ‘patients must be put before politics’
ll parents will be encouraged to take government-run parenting
classes under plans due to be
announced by Prime Minister
David Cameron, The Observer
reported yesterday.
A previous scheme to educate
parents from under-privileged
backgrounds after the 2011
London riots flopped, attracting around 15% of the expected
intake.
But the government believes
that opening the scheme to all
parents will rid it of its stigma,
helping it become as ingrained
as antenatal classes, the newspaper reported.
“In the end, getting parenting and the early years right
isn’t just about the hardest-toreach families; it’s about everyone,” Cameron was expected
to say today, according to The
Observer.
“Of course they (children)
don’t come with a manual...
we all have to work at it. And if
you don’t have a strong support
network - if you don’t know
other mums or dads - having
your first child can be enormously isolating.”
Parents receive support immediately after the birth, but
the prime minister said that
needed to be extended.
“What about later on, when
it comes to play, communication, behaviour and discipline?
We all need more help with this
- the most important job we’ll
ever have,” he said.
“So I believe we now need to
think about how to make it normal - even aspirational - to attend parenting classes.”
The 2011 CanParent pilot attracted just 2,956 parents, despite the government budgeting for 20,000.
The £5mn scheme ended up
costing £1,088 per parent, although a study of attendees
found high degrees of satisfaction.
Poorer parents could receive
vouchers to attend the courses
while funding for relationship
counselling classes is set to
double, according to extracts of
Cameron’s speech published in
yesterday’s newspapers.
18
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
EUROPE
Paris police station attacker lived in German refugee shelter: report
AFP
Berlin
A
man who tried to attack
a Paris police station last
week had lived in a centre
for asylum seekers in Germany,
German investigators said, a
finding likely to fuel criticism of
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal stance towards war refugees.
The man was shot dead by
French police on Thursday after
he tried to storm the police station in northern Paris, brandishing a meat cleaver and wearing a
fake suicide vest.
The assault took place exactly
one year since the start of a series of jihadist attacks in France,
beginning with the murder of
12 people at the Charlie Hebdo
satirical magazine on January 7
2015.
On Saturday, German investigators assisting the probe into
the attempted police station attack raided an apartment at a
shelter for asylum-seekers in
Recklinghausen, in the west of
the country.
Their statement said the man
had lived at the shelter but gave
no further details.
No other attacks appeared to
have been planned, it added.
A source close to the matter
told AFP that the suspect had
been registered as an asylum
seeker.
But French Interior Minister
Bernard Cazeneuve cast doubt on
the German claim.
“I cannot confirm this, quite
simply because I am not at all
sure that it is correct,” Cazeneuve
told France’s iTele, and called on
the media to exercise the “greatest care” in reporting the man’s
identity.
The news site Spiegel Online
reported, meanwhile, that the
man had already been classed by
German police as a possible suspect after he posed at the refugee
centre with an IS flag, but he disappeared in December.
The head of North RhineWestphalia’s criminal police
service, Uwe Jacob said that the
suspect had travelled to Germany in 2013 for the first time
from France, where he had lived
illegally previously for about five
years.
He had gone under seven different identities and given at
least three nationalities on separate occasions – Syrian, Moroccan or Georgian, Jacob said, according to national news agency
DPA.
“We are not sure who he really
was,” said Jacob, adding that the
man had already been imprisoned on several occasions for
offences relating to illegal arms
possession, drug trafficking and
assault.
Welt am Sonntag said that the
man had drawn a symbol of the
Islamic State organisation on
the shelter’s wall and had filed
for asylum using the name Walid
Salihi.
But French investigators said
on Friday that the suspect appeared to have been identified
by his family and was said to be a
Tunisian named Tarek Belgacem.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins had said the man was carrying a mobile phone with a
German SIM card, with French
media reporting that it contained
several messages in Arabic, some
of which were sent from Germany.
In Tunisia, a woman who
claimed to be the man’s mother
confirmed that he had been living
in Germany but denied he had
any links to extremist groups.
She told a Tunisian radio sta-
tion that her son had rung her
to ask her “to send him his birth
certificate. He was in Germany”.
The link to the refugee shelter
in Germany, and the apparent
ease with which the subject was
able to register with the authorities, risks further inflaming a
debate over the 1.1mn asylumseekers that the country took in
last year.
Mindful of the political sensitivity surrounding the issue,
Recklinghausen’s mayor Christoph Tesche said it remains “our
humanitarian and legal duty to
provide shelter for those who flee
their homes”.
But it was also equally important to work “intensively with
relevant authorities to ensure
Charlie Hebdo march is
remembered a year on
that people with such intentions
cannot hide in our institutions”,
he stressed.
The latest link to the attacker
in France risks fanning fears that
would-be attackers are slipping
into Europe’s biggest economy
amid a record refugee influx.
Such concerns were already
raised when it emerged that two
of the suicide bombers in the November 13 attacks in Paris were
carrying passports that had been
registered as they arrived on a
Greek island with a group of migrants in October.
However, French investigators
are not convinced that the two
men, who blew themselves up
near the Stade de France stadium,
were the men in the passports.
Poland
‘politely’
summons
German
envoy
AFP
Paris
Reuters
Warsaw
A
oland’s foreign minister
summoned the German
ambassador to a meeting
yesterday over what his department called “anti-Polish comments by German politicians”,
the conservative Warsaw government’s latest broadside at
Berlin.
Foreign ministry spokesman
Artur Dmochowski said German
envoy Rolf Nikel had received a
“polite invitation” to a meeting
with Foreign Minister Witold
Waszczykowski at midday today.
“It’s not about one concrete
comment, there are quite a few
of them,” he told TVN24 news
channel.
Poland’s relations with both
Germany and the European Union (EU) have deteriorated since
the Law and Justice (PiS) party
won elections last October on a
platform advocating conservative Catholic values and euroscepticism.
The PiS has sought to put
public media under direct government control and change the
makeup of the constitutional
court, prompting protests and
accusations from rights activists
that it is undermining democratic checks and balances.
European Parliament President Martin Schulz compared
the actions of the Polish government with those of Russian
President Vladimir Putin in
comments to German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
“The Polish government sees
their election success as giving
them a mandate to put the will of
the successful party, whether on
policy or personnel, above that
of the interest of the state. That
is a type of Putin-style managed
democracy, a dangerous ‘Putinisation’ of European politics,” he
said.
A week ago, Gunther Oettinger, the German EU commissioner responsible for the digital
economy and society, said that
Warsaw should be put under the
EU’s rule-of-law supervision.
On Saturday, Poland’s justice
minister dismissed Oettinger’s
call as “silly” in a confrontational letter, questioning Berlin’s
own record on media freedoms
and alluding to Nazi Germany’s
occupation of Poland in World
War II.
The European Commission
is to hold a “political debate”
on the rule of law in Poland on
January 13, reflecting growing
concern the PiS government is
eroding democracy in the EU’s
largest eastern member state.
year after 1.5mn people
thronged Paris in solidarity with the victims of the
attack on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the few thousand who
attended the anniversary ceremony vowed that France would
not be intimidated.
After submitting to two security checks to get into the Place
de la Republique for the event,
many said they had been determined to attend despite a lingering sense of fear after France was
repeatedly targeted by Islamic
militants in 2015.
“It’s a little scary to live under a state of emergency,” said
Jacques Clayeux, a 54-year-old
museum technician.
But Katelyn Kiner, a 20-yearold student from Chicago, said
that she was determined to
overcome her fear.
“Every time I go out it’s in direct defiance (saying) ‘I’m not
going to let those evil men take
away my lifestyle – it means too
much to me’,” she said.
Twelve people were killed
in the January 7, 2015, assault
on Charlie Hebdo, which had
been in the militants’ sights
since publishing cartoons of the
Prophet Muhammad in 2006.
The next day, another extremist, Amedy Coulibaly, shot
dead a policewoman and went
on to kill four people at a Jewish
supermarket.
Yesterday’s event was also
dedicated to the victims of the
November 13 jihadist rampage
across Paris targeting ordinary
people enjoying a night out,
which left 130 dead.
New violence on Thursday
added to the jitters when a Tunisian man was shot dead by police
as he approached a Paris police
station wielding a meat cleaver
and a fake explosives vest, on the
exact anniversary of the Charlie
Hebdo attack.
He was carrying a handwritten letter claiming he was acting
in the name of the Islamic State
(IS) group.
“What happened on Thursday
brought it all back,” said Kiner.
The thwarted attack underlined official concerns that another terror assault remains
highly likely in France.
After presiding over yesterday’s ceremony, French President Francois Hollande made an
unannounced visit to the main
Paris mosque for “a moment of
friendship and fraternity over a
cup of tea”.
Mosques
across
France
opened their doors to the public this weekend in a bid by the
P
Above: French Prime Minister
Manuel Valls, French
President Francois Hollande
and Paris’ mayor Anne
Hidalgo attend the event at
Place de la Republique
Left: A man holding a placard
reading ‘I am afraid but I am
here’ during a gathering.
A teddy bear is lodged on the relief at the base of the statue of Marianne at Place de la Republique.
Muslim community to build
bridges following the attacks.
Hollande responded to the
November massacre by vowing
to crush IS, and French jets have
been bombing the group in Syria
and Iraq.
Yesterday’s event was a far cry
from January 11, 2015, when 4mn
citizens rallied across France,
in the biggest demonstrations
since the end of World War II.
The outpouring of support
for freedom of expression at the
time was crowned by a march
in Paris that included German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and Palestinian
leader Mahmud Abbas, with the
world rallying around the slogan
“Je Suis Charlie”.
Yesterday Hollande led a programme of music and readings
dedicated to the victims and the
city of Paris.
Johnny Hallyday – the
72-year-old rocker known as the
French Elvis – sang Un Dimanche de Janvier (A January Sunday) that he penned in honour of
last year’s massive march.
“We came without fear and
without hatred to remember our
heroes of ink and paper,” sang
the artist who was a frequent
target of Cabu, one of the slain
Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.
The singer, accustomed to
thunderous accolades at soldout concerts, drew only polite
applause for the performance.
“I’m like Cabu, I can’t stand
Johnny,” laughed 60-year-old
Yvette at the event. “There are
fewer people here because of the
‘state of war’ – I’m using Hollande’s term,” the financial compliance officer said.
A Cameroonian secondary
schoolteacher, Germaine Lipeb,
who normally takes her children to church on Sundays but
skipped it this week, said that
A woman in a coat with the names of the victims of the 2015 attacks.
“everyone is very scared”.
She said she had been at the
national stadium on November
13, where the jihadist attacks
began.
“If I hadn’t been at the stadium I would have been at a cafe”
near the Place de la Republique
where diners and drinkers were
gunned down, Lipeb said.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo
acknowledged yesterday’s disappointing turnout with a quip,
saying that “Parisians are not
really morning people”.
Even the singing of the national anthem La Marseillaise
was muted, with few members
of the public joining in.
Historian Pascal Ory, in his
just-published Ce Que Dit Charlie (What Charlie Says), theorises that the trauma of the past
year has created a “mass of individualists” with individual ways
of dealing with a country under
attack from militants.
Muslims meanwhile remain
anxious over being associated
with militants.
“People generalise, they mix
everything up,” said Ahmed
Arkiz, a 59-year-old company
chauffeur from Morocco who
stayed away from yesterday’s
event.
Catalonia’s MPs meet to choose leader
Doctor caught on camera flooring patient with deadly punch
Spanish princess goes on trial
Catalonia’s parliament met yesterday to choose a new head of
government following a last-minute deal between the separatist
parties the previous day.
Carles Puigdemont – the agreed candidate after the Together for
Yes (Junts pel Si) alliance ceded to the demand of the leftist CUP
party that its acting President Artur Mas step down – was expected
to present his plans for government before a vote was to be
conducted.
Puigdemont, a former journalist and mayor of the Catalan town of
Girona, must be voted in as premier before midnight to avoid fresh
elections.
Catalonia had been without a government since elections in
September 2015 until the separatist parties hammered out a deal on
Saturday.
The separatists have said they would like to declare independence
from Spain with 18 months.
Russia opened an investigation on Saturday after a
hospital doctor was captured on video punching a
patient, knocking him to the floor and killing him.
The shocking video of the attack in the southern city
of Belgorod was aired repeatedly on state television
and went viral on YouTube, while Russian media
nicknamed the attacker “the boxer doctor”.
The incident raised questions over a cover-up culture
in state medicine, with investigators only announcing
the probe several days later, after security camera
footage was released online and shown on television.
In the video, the strongly-built doctor in medical
clothing drags the bare-chested male patient from the
examination table, asking him “why did you touch the
nurse?” and pushes him out of the doorway.
When the patient returns, the doctor deals him a
Spain’s Princess Cristina, the sister of King Felipe VI, and her
husband will go on trial today for corruption in a high stakes
case that is likely to further damage the Spanish monarchy’s
image.
The highly anticipated trial of the royal couple and 16 other
accused will run until June at a court in Palma, on the
Mediterranean island of Mallorca, where the Spanish royal
family has a seaside holiday home.
Cristina, 50, will be the first direct member of the royal family
facing criminal charges since the monarchy was reinstated
following the death of dictator General Francisco Franco in
1975.
The case is centred on the shady business deals of the Noos
Institute, a charitable organisation based in Palma which her
husband, former Olympic handball player Inaki Urdangarin,
chaired from 2004 to 2006.
single blow to the face and a crash can be heard as the
middle-aged man falls backwards onto the floor.
Meanwhile the doctor continues to scuffle with
another man accompanying the patient, and it is only
minutes later that the medics notice the patient lying
motionless and attempt unsuccessfully to revive him.
Belgorod’s Investigative Committee said on Saturday
that the incident took place on December 29.
The doctor hit the patient in the face after he “kicked a
nurse during a procedure”, the investigators said.
“The cause of death of the victim was trauma to the
skull and brain from hitting the back of the head on the
hard surface of the floor.”
Russian media named the doctor as Ilya Zelendinov, a
surgeon at the hospital, and the patient as 56-year-old
Yevgeny Bakhtin.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
19
EUROPE
Immigrants struggling to integrate in France
AFP
Paris
F
rance is struggling to integrate its immigrant population, despite newcomers
identifying with their adopted
homeland, according to a major
study released on Friday.
“Integration is a one-way
street”, whereby immigrants
want to be a part of the French
social fabric only to be regarded as perpetually foreign and
to suffer discrimination, Cris
Beauchemin, the study’s author,
told AFP.
The issue of the integration
of its immigrant population is
under the microscope in France
following a string of jihadist attacks, some carried out by young
men who grew up in France but
whose parents came from North
Africa or West Africa.
Beauchemin said the in-depth
study by INED and the National
Statistics Institute (INSEE) that
looked at 22,000 case studies
showed that second-generation
immigrants often fared less well
than the first generation.
Asked if they or their offspring
“feel French” or “feel at home in
France”, 93% of second-genera-
tion respondents said that they
did.
Yet Beauchemin, a researcher
at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED), said
many felt the French often left
them in no doubt as to their
“otherness” status.
“Frenchness is not attributed
on the basis of nationality or cultural codes such as language” but
visually, to the degree that “they
look French”.
That is a drawback for “visible
minorities” such as Africans and
Asians, unlike most descendants
of Europeans.
More than half of immigrants
from Africa, even following naturalisation, “think people do not
regard them as French”, the study
found.
This created an identity disconnection which “persists, or
even deepens, as generations go
by”.
Such findings go against previously accepted assimilation theory suggesting that “immigrants
suffer stigmatisation but eventually that goes away”.
“No,
it
doesn’t,”
says
Beauchemin.
That was why second-generation immigrants did less well
than their parents.
On the socio-cultural side,
comprising factors such as family and language, “we are seeing
progress from one generation to
another”.
“But in socio-economic aspects where there are barriers,
such as school or employment,
there is a sense of things getting
worse,” Beauchemin said.
The phenomenon is especially
true of boys.
“Several indicators show that
the sons of migrants as being in
inferior situations to those of
the migrants themselves,” says
the study, although the reverse is
true for girls.
The study underlines the importance of schooling in integration.
Among “visible minorities”, a
third of boys leave school without basic secondary school qualifications.
They are then “highly disadvantaged” in the labour market,
says Beauchemin.
Although not giving a reason
why, the researchers detected a
“discriminatory” approach by
schools towards boys “based on
their origin”.
They drew similar conclusions
for working life with men of migrant origin often earning less
Scale of Cologne attacks
against women grows
Reuters/DPA
Frankfurt
T
he mass attacks on women
in Cologne and other German cities on New Year’s
Eve have prompted more than
500 criminal complaints, with
Cologne investigations focused
largely on asylum seekers or illegal migrants from north Africa,
police have said.
The attacks, mostly targeting women and ranging from
theft to sexual molestation, have
prompted a highly-charged debate in Germany about its opendoor policy to migrants and refugees, more than one million of
whom came to the country last
year.
In Cologne, police said that
379 criminal complaints had
been filed by individuals or
groups, while police in Hamburg
said 133 similar complaints had
been lodged in the north German
city.
Frankfurt also registered complaints, although far fewer.
German Justice Minister Heiko
Maas believes that the attacks on
women in Cologne on New Year’s
Eve were organised, according to
comments in yesterday’s edition
of the Bild newspaper.
“When such a horde meets to
commit crimes, it seems to have
been planned in some way. Nobody can tell me that it wasn’t
co-ordinated or pre-prepared,”
Maas was quoted in the popular
tabloid as saying.
Maas was also not prepared to
rule out a connection between
the Cologne attacks and those on
women in other German cities on
the same night.
“All links must be very carefully examined. The suspicion
seems likely that a certain date
and the number of people to be
expected were selected,” he told
Bild.
Maas was echoing comments
he had made earlier in the week.
At the same time Maas warned
people not to draw conclusions
about how law-abiding migrants
are from the attacks.
“To infer from someone’s
background that he is more likely
to commit a crime or not, I find to
be risky,” he said.
He also said it was totally
wrong to make any connection
between the excesses of New
Year’s Eve in Cologne and the arrival of over 1mn refugees in Germany in 2015.
than their French counterparts.
However, there was less of a
gap between earnings for French
women and their immigrant
counterparts.
The study further found “more
frequent” racism and discrimination towards male immigrants.
The investigation showed 47%
of migrants of sub-Saharan origin, 32% of Moroccans and 30%
of Algerians said they had suffered discrimination.
The study, based on figures
from 2008 and 2009, does not
look at third-generation migrants, who are more difficult to
quantify.
Police arrest man
for smuggling
migrant by boat
Swedish police arrested a man
early yesterday as he allegedly
tried to smuggle a migrant into
the country aboard a rubber
dinghy, the first such case since
Sweden imposed systematic ID
checks, police said.
“This is the first arrest in southern
Sweden for suspected human
trafficking since the ID checks
were introduced” on January
4 for travellers arriving from
Denmark, police spokeswoman
Kim Hild said.
A Norwegian sea rescue team
had observed the dinghy leaving
the Danish town of Helsingor
and informed the Swedish coast
guard, Hild said.
Swedish police arrested the two
men when they came ashore
near Helsingborg.
Both were suspected of stealing
the dinghy, while one of the men
was also arrested on suspicion
of human trafficking for trying
to smuggle the other into the
country.
“One of the men in the boat
showed Norwegian documents
identifying him as 24 years old.
The other man did not have any
documents but said he was 27
years old,” Hild said.
Swedish minister
says conscription
could help crises
“Of course there are among
the more than 1mn people those
who commit crimes, but there is
no indication that the number
of crimes has risen disproportionately since the influx,” Maas
added.
The Cologne attacks also heated up debates on immigration in
neighbouring Austria and Switzerland.
“What happened in Cologne is
unbelievable and unacceptable,”
Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, a member of
the conservative People’s Party
that is junior coalition partner to
the Social Democrats, told newspaper Oesterreich.
There had been a handful of
similar incidents in the border
city of Salzburg.
“Such offenders should be deported,” she said, backing a similar suggestion by German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Swiss media contained numerous stories about sexual assaults
on women by foreigners, fuelling
tensions ahead of a referendum
next month that would trigger
the automatic deportation for up
Above: Pegida supporters are seen in this picture taken on Saturday
demanding the resignation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel
during a rally in Cologne. The placard on the left reads ‘Thank you
Merkel and Co. Constitutional state KO’.
Left: A migrant woman and her child wait for a bus at a transit camp
in southern Serbian town of Presevo.
Below: A rescue worker aids a migrant, who was part of a group of 45
intercepted aboard a makeshift boat, upon arriving at Arguineguin
port in the Canary Island of Gran Canaria, Spain.
to 15 years of foreigners convicted
of some crimes.
In Cologne, around 40% of the
complaints included sexual offences, including two rapes, police said, as a 100-strong force of
officers continued their investigations.
No one has yet been charged.
“There have been arrests and
we will continue to make arrests,”
a spokeswoman for the Cologne
police said yesterday.
She said police had increased
the number of officers on patrol. “It is then to be determined
whether or not these people were
involved on New Year’s Eve.”
In an earlier statement, the
city’s police had said the suspects
in the focus of their investigation
“come largely from north African
countries” and the investigation
“concerns largely asylum seekers and people who are staying in
Germany illegally”.
Gathering evidence is difficult,
given the chaotic and crowded
scenes on the night, when police
were overwhelmed by the mass
assaults.
The attacks triggered demon-
strations in Cologne on Saturday, one of which was organised
by the anti-Islam Pegida movement.
The far-right has seized on the
alleged involvement of migrants
in the Cologne attacks as proof
that German chancellor Merkel’s
welcoming stance to migrants is
flawed.
Some in that crowd threw bottles and fire crackers at officers,
and riot police used water cannon to disperse the protesters.
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot
Wallstrom said yesterday
that she would welcome the
reintroduction of military and
civilian conscription, saying
it could make a difference in
tackling crises like the massive
influx of refugees from the
Middle East.
“I am among those who welcome
a modernised, gender-equal
version of conscription, with
both military and civilian
components,” Wallstrom told a
defence conference.
“Imagine if we had civilians in
reserve this autumn and they
could have been called on
to reinforce the immigration
agency,” she said in a speech
widely quoted in local media,
adding conscripts could also help
out with natural disasters.
Sweden took in around 160,000
refugees last year in a country
of 10mn people, the highest
per capita rate in Europe. But
authorities have struggled to
cope with the huge numbers.
Sweden abolished compulsory
military service in 2010 but polls
show a majority of voters would
like it reinstated.
The military has also said it is
short of soldiers, at a time when
tensions with Russia remain high.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan
Lofven and Finnish Prime
Minister Juha Sipila wrote in
a joint article published in
newspapers in both countries
yesterday that the two
neighbours needed to co-operate
more closely on defence.
In Norway, migrants get courses on local culture
AFP
Oslo
S
exual advances or just
friendly gestures? In a bid
to prevent violence against
women, Norway is offering asylum seekers courses in how to
interpret mores in a country that
may seem astonishingly liberal to
them.
A debate on integration has
flared in Germany after New
Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne,
where hundreds of women reported being sexually assaulted
or robbed by men described as
being of Arab or North African
origin.
Questions are also being raised
about how to integrate men from
patriarchal societies into Europe,
where emancipated women dress
skimpily, go out, and drink and
party.
“Our aim is to help asylum
seekers avoid mistakes as they
discover Norwegian culture,” explained Linda Hagen of Hero, a
private company that runs 40%
of Norway’s reception centres for
asylum seekers.
“There’s no single cultural
code to say what is good or bad
behaviour because we want a free
society,” she said. “There has to
be tolerance for attitudes that
may be seen as immoral by some
traditional or religious norms.”
After what she called a “wave
of rapes” committed mostly by
foreigners in the southwestern
town of Stavanger between 2009
and 2011, Hero launched a course
at some of its centres that touches on cultural differences regarding women.
The course, which Hero has
tacked onto the immigration
agency’s broader, mandatory introduction programme to Norway, addresses the problem of
sexual assault, using concrete
examples for the participants to
discuss.
“It could be an 18-year-old guy
who says he’s surprised by the
interest some Norwegian girls are
showing in him. He assumes they
want to sleep with him,” Hagen
said. “So the group leader will ask
him: Who are these girls? Where
do you meet them? How do you
know it is sex they want? Not all
women in Norway are the same.”
To avoid stigmatising immigrants, the role of sexual predator in these scenarios may be assigned to a Norwegian.
“We turn the roles around a
bit because there are rapists in all
ethnic groups,” Hagen said.
Xenophobic blogs are however rife with reports of violent
attacks allegedly committed by
foreigners, including a November
incident in which a 12-year-old
girl was physically molested by
two underage asylum seekers.
“This programme can only
have a short-term effect, given the attitudes abroad where
women are oppressed,” said Hege
Storhaug of the anti-immigration group Human Rights Service.
“To put an end to these at-
titudes, immigration has to first
be restricted, then you have to
concentrate on the newly-arrived immigrants and the second
generation to assimilate them to
our basic values, such as gender
equality,” she said.
While on a much smaller scale
than the Cologne assaults, other
incidents have been reported involving foreigners on New Year’s
Eve in Helsinki and Zurich, in
countries that have opened their
doors to migrants to a much lesser extent than Germany.
“I fear that problems like this
are going to increase in intensity in the coming years,” said
Storhaug, who said she has observed an “extremely sexualised
and degrading” view of women.
“Women’s freedoms are al-
ready on the decline in Europe.”
However, awareness programmes for migrants are not a
cure-all.
“I don’t think a course on its
own can protect us from things
that depend so heavily on social
structures,” admitted psychologist Per Isdal. “To prevent sexual
assaults by men, you have to provide good living conditions, such
as a job and housing, and combat
poverty.”
Together with the Alternative
to Violence (ATV) foundation, Isdal has devised another, broader
programme of “dialogue groups”
focused on preventing violence,
including sexual attacks, which
were run as a nationwide experiment in 2013 and 2014.
In these classes too, rather
than having a teacher instructing students, the emphasis is on
groups holding discussions and
exchanges of ideas, moderated by
specially-trained ATV employees.
“The first reactions were
partly negative among ... some
reception centre employees who
wanted to defend the asylum
seekers.
“They were worried that the
project would be stigmatising,”
Isdal said. “But the asylum seekers themselves found these dialogue groups very helpful.”
Norwegian migration authorities, whose capacities have been
strained by the influx of migrants
last year, have yet to decide
whether to pursue the dialogue
groups.
20
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
INDIA
Tamil Nadu
Roundup
By Umaima Shafiq
Swiss dentist
catalogues
groves of
Tamil Nadu
Stephen Gottet, a Swiss dentist
and history buff has begun
cataloguing the ancient temple
gods and groves of Tamil Nadu.
His book Heilige Haine - Blicke
auf Mysthische Tongfiguren
Sudindiens (Sacred groves:
Views on Mythical Clay Figures
in Southern India) will be
published in March.
Gottet says the 15 groves that
he has catalogued in this book
prove that Tamil Nadu was
the peak of Indian civilization.
“Like Greece in Europe, which
practised polytheism and had
the best scholars, in India,
Tamil Nadu has had the best
of ideologies and arts. That’s
why, when I came here for the
very first time in 1995, it felt like
I was returning home. And yes,
both Greek and Tamil cultures
share the idea of sacred
groves,” he said.
He has also done most of the
photography in the book and
will publish a second volume
in 2017.
India is a tolerant country, says Tasleema Nasreen
IANS
New Delhi
I
ndia is a tolerant country
with a few intolerant people
and it is time to focus not just
on Hindu fundamentalists but
on Muslim fundamentalists as
well, controversial Bangladeshi
author Tasleem Nasreen said.
“I think India is a tolerant
country, but some people are intolerant. In every society, there
are some people who are intoler-
ant,” the self-exiled author said
at an event here, while referring
to the recent violence in Malda in
West Bengal.
She said while there was talk
about Hindu fundamentalists,
one has to talk of Muslim fundamentalists as well.
Nasreen said absolute freedom
of speech was necessary even if it
offended some people.
“I think we should have freedom of expression even if that
offends some people. If we do
not open our mouths, society
will not evolve. Of course, we
should fight against misogyny,
religious fundamentalism and all
kinds of evil forces only to make
the society a better one.”
The writer was participating in a discussion on ‘Coming
of the Age of Intolerance’ at the
ongoing Delhi Literature Festival
at Dilli Haat here on Saturday
evening.
The author had drawn the ire
of fundamentalists in Bangladesh for her controversial books
like Dwikhandito and was forced
Yoga camp
Country still lags behind some
of its poorer neighbours on
child nutrition
Tamil Nadu celebrated January
6 as veshti dinam, instituted
by the Tamil Nadu Handloom
Weavers Co-operative Society
(Co-optex) two years ago.
On that day, hundreds of men
wore the veshti or dhoti to
work while male students wore
them in schools and colleges.
Veshti or dhoti, an unstitched
piece of white cloth about 4.5m
long, is ethnic menswear worn
tied around the waist. Until the
1960s wearing the veshti, with
a Western coat, tie and turban
was considered formal attire.
However with time, the veshti
was relegated for religious
occasions and functions.
In 2014 a veshti-clad judge was
denied entry into Chennai’s
Tamil Nadu Cricket Association
Club and a day was constituted
to popularise the garment. Its
fans swear that the garment
is eco-friendly, comfortable,
sweat absorbent and skin
protective. Film stars and
politicians are also regular
users of veshti.
AFP
Patna
A
Police step up
security after
bomb scare
Man commits
suicide after
killing family
S Vetrivel, 46, a farm owner
in Serumulli village killed his
wife, daughter and two dogs
before taking his own life in
Coimbatore last week.
Vetrivel left a suicide note
which said he was unable to
pay a loan of Rs2mn he had
taken to buy his home and
farm seven years ago. His note
said he first strangulated his
wife and daughter with a rope
and poisoned the two dogs and
finally hanged himself.
Police said that the note was
first discovered by a classmate
of Vetrivel’s daughter who
alerted them.
School children attend a yoga session on the last day of the 10-day-long camp in Ahmedabad,
Gujarat yesterday.
Kerala to open up higher
education sector in big way
By Ashraf Padanna
Gulf Times Correspondent
Thiruvananthapuram
K
erala state, whose record
in higher education is
nowhere near its achievements in universal education
and quality of life index, is gearing up for a major initiative to
attract investments in the sector.
The state will host Global
Education Meet (GEM) in association with the Federation of
Indian Chambers of Commerce
and Industry (Ficci) on January
29 and 30 in the beach resort of
Kovalam here.
Representatives from over
150 leading higher educational
institutions, including those
responsibility,” he said.
Kulkarni said India as a country was “essentially tolerant”
and that the debate must not be
politicised.
“We should neither exaggerate nor belittle the incidents of
intolerance. We should never
politicise this debate, making it
out as if it is between political
parties. It is not that intolerance
has begun in May 2014 (when
the Narendra Modi government
came to power),” Kulkarni said.
In September last year, a de-
bate over what many writers
said was a “growing climate of
intolerance” saw over 40 writers and filmmakers returning
their awards to protest the killings of rationalists and writers
like Narendra Dabholkar and M
M Kalburgi and the lynching on a
Muslim man in Dadri over suspicion that ate beef.
He also said a certain kind of
marginal intolerance has always
been present in Indian society
and so it was not right to blame
“this party or that party” for it.
As population
soars, India
battles to tame
malnutrition
‘Veshti day’
celebrated on
January 6
A hoax call that a bomb had
been placed in a school in
suburban Chennai forced the
city police to step up security
last week.
Parents picked up their
children early from many
schools and they were
mollified only when police
sent a placatory WhatsApp
message.
Meanwhile in Madurai,
panic prevailed when crude
kerosene bombs were hurled
at two places last week.
The first bomb fell near the
eastern tower of the heritage
Meenakshi Amman temple
and led some rubbish lying on
the busy road catching fire.
Though it was soon put out,
police have tightened security
and launched a search for the
culprits. The second bomb was
hurled at state minister Sellur K
Raju’s house in SS Colony.
Police suspect business rivalry
behind both incidents.
to leave Bangladesh in 1994 for
allegedly hurting religious sentiments with her novel Lajja.
On the other hand, Bharatiya Janata Party ideologue and
writer Sudheendra Kulkarni said
absolute freedom could only be
exercised with responsibility.
“There is no freedom whatsoever to show any religion in bad
light, knowing that it will hurt
sentiments and insult others. I
completely disagree that writers
should have absolute freedom.
Freedom must be exercised with
from foreign universities, will
participate in the event aimed at
attracting investments.
Kerala wants to establish
an academic city as a quality
education hub of international
universities and international
higher education zones (IHEZ)
in different parts of the state
“by leveraging its vast educational infrastructure and resources base”.
IHEZs will function on the
lines of special export processing zones (EPZ) facilitating foreign direct investments. Academic City Authority to be set
up will act as a single window
authority for promoting and
regulating both the academic
city and the IIHEZs.
The state government will get
25% of the fee revenue of these
institutions to provide scholarships to meritorious students.
“We have made tremendous
leaps in general education, but
we still face many hurdles in the
higher education,” Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said.
Roundtable meetings on international collaboration with
world experts, exchange of ideas on Academic City and IHEZs,
an exhibition of higher education facilities in the state and
networking sessions are part of
GEM.
The authorities expect the
state’s universities also to improve their standards to meet
the challenges from the presence of leading international
universities here.
s another dangerously underweight toddler balances
precariously on his set of
scales, Dr Om Prakash knows he
has to move fast to avert tragedy.
“The children who are severely
malnourished can die between a
few hours to a few days,” says the
doctor during a shift at an intensive care unit exclusively for children in Bihar.
“For the health of any person,
nutrition is the first requirement.
When nutrition is affected, all
of the body’s functions are deranged.”
The 30-bed hospital at Darbhanga teems with children with
protruding bellies and sunken
eyes - telltale signs of wasting and
stunting, owing to severe malnutrition.
While its economy is growing
at a healthy rate, India still lags
behind some of its poorer neighbours on child nutrition with
more than 40mn stunted children, according to a recently released report.
Despite
the
government
spending billions of rupees on
tackling the scourge, it has yet to
make a serious dent in a problem
perpetuated by poverty, gender
inequality, and disease.
“India actually houses the
largest number of malnourished
children in the world, larger than
in sub-Saharan Africa,” Sashwati
Banerjee, managing director, Sesame Workshop India said.
These children, if they survive,
will grow up shorter and weaker,
with their brains and immune
systems compromised, more vulnerable to illness.
Between 2006 and 2014, stunting levels in children under five declined from 48% to 39%, according to the Global Nutrition Report.
But it still far exceeds a global
average of 24%, found the report,
which was overseen by the International Food Policy Research
Institute.
Shrivelled and scrawny, the
children at the Bihar centre are
weighed in bright blue plastic
tubs, normally used to carry water or laundry.
There are no toys or drawings
on the walls, only the sound of
children wailing while others sit
motionless and stare, dazed.
Doctors feed them a special
concoction of sugar and milk
based on how much they weigh.
“It would be a disaster if normal food was given to them. So
we give them food that has lower
calories and is easily digestible,”
said Prakash.
“Over time we increase the
amount, then we switch to semisolid food and gradually to the locally available food.”
Zalumun Khatoon’s four-yearold grandson Shahadat Hussein
weighs 8kg, just half of the normal weight for his age.
“He was on medication for
nine months, then he had a fever
all the time and he started to lose
weight,” she said, as doctors and
nurses busily zipped in and out of
the facility.
While overall levels of malnutrition are on the slide, eradication efforts are also being undermined by the rapid rise in India’s
population which is expected to
surpass China’s by 2022, according to UN projections.
Bihar, which already has a
population of 104mn, has one of
the fastest rates of growth in the
country with the average woman
giving birth to four children. Often this is more mouths than they
can afford to feed.
The impoverished, largely rural
state also has one of India’s highest rates of malnutrition.
The mothers, often poor and
illiterate, are undernourished
themselves - women’s lower status means they lose out on limited
food resources, leading many babies to be underweight from birth.
A lack of awareness means they
switch to cow or buffalo milk instead of breastfeeding, making
their children prone to various illnesses.
In addition, high rates of open
defecation in India contribute to
the problem.
The World Health Organisation, together with Unicef and
USAID issued a report in November 2015 which they said demonstrated a link between a lack of
sanitation and malnutrition.
Open defecation increases the
spread of diarrhoea, multiple episodes of which can permanently
alter a child’s gut, preventing the
absorption of essential nutrients
leading to stunted growth.
In addition, intestinal parasites
such as roundworm, and hookworm, are transmitted through
contaminated soil in areas where
open defecation is practiced.
Hookworm is a major cause of
anaemia in pregnant women,
leading to malnourished, underweight babies, Unicef said.
Purnima Jha, director of the Janani family planning centre, says
the situation in Bihar is exacerbated by a traditional resistance
and ignorance when it comes to
family planning.
“We can’t force everyone to
have a sterilisation so the basic is
that we should educate them, that
two children is okay,” said Jha.
“In the schools, at least in high
and secondary schools, contraception has to be taught.”
The Bihar unit was set up last
year with help from French charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF
or Doctors Without Borders) and
authorities are hoping to open
dedicated wards for malnutrition
in every government hospital in
the state in the near future.
Malnutrition poses a threat to
India’s growth - a study by British charity Save the Children estimates that the economic impact
of malnutrition on the country
could be $46bn by 2030.
Prakash says that while the
specialist centres play a key role,
long-term success would depend
on efforts to educate mothers
about both nutrition and hygiene.
“Awareness is what is needed
more than a drug,” he said.
Manipur earthquake victims
slam government apathy
IANS
Imphal
A
week after an earthquake
jolted Manipur, people
in the northeastern state
have started criticising the government’s apathy, despite repeated assurances that they would be
provided relief materials.
Both the state and the central
governments appear to be fumbling while most of the victims,
rendered homeless in the icy
winter, said they were compelled
to stay at temporary relief camps
without any government help.
The lucky few are relying on their
relatives and friends.
The earthquake measuring 6.8
on the Richter scale hit Manipur
and neighbouring northeastern
states on January 4. Nine people
were killed and over 110 left injured. Many families were rendered homeless.
The quake-hit viewed the response from the government as
short of public expectation.
“Though the earthquake hit the
state on January 4 morning, it was
only on January 9 evening that
Governor V Shammuganathan
visited the damaged women’s
market which is less than 50m
away from his residence,” said S
Apabi, a vendor.
Manipur Chief Minister Okram
Ibobi and others are yet to visit
the quake victims.
Deputy
Chief
Minister
and state Congress president
Gaikhangam is the only elected
member who visited the affected
tribals in Tamenglong district,
from where he was elected to the
state assembly.
Meanwhile, hundreds of women vendors have started selling consumer items, handloom
clothes and other items on the
footpath.
“We are daily wage earners.
When we return home with a
morsel of rice, our children are
waiting for us,” said Sakhitombi, a
greengrocer.
“As we have to earn money for
supporting the family, we are sitting here. As and when we are
allowed, we will shift to the temporary market earmarked by the
government,” said Bina, who sells
handloom clothes by the roadside.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
21
INDIA
MYSTERY
TRAGEDY
CRIME
POLITICS
AWARENESS
Couple, son found
murdered in Delhi
Three children die
in Delhi slum fire
One held with fake
currency in Bihar
Stop defaming Bihar,
Tejaswi tells opposition
Road Safety Week to
be held across country
A middle-aged couple and their son were found
murdered in their house early yesterday in central
Delhi, police said. The bodies of Jyoti Sunariya, 48,
and her son Pawan Sunariya, 21, were discovered
by their domestic help around 9am. Police later
found the body of Jyoti’s husband Sanjay Sunariya,
51, from a cupboard. “The murders seem to have
been committed on Saturday night. We have begun
questioning the victims’ relatives, neighbours and
family friends,” Joint Commissioner of Police S K
Gautam said. Police said the house was ransacked
though no valuables were found missing,
indicating robbery was not the motive. “Since there
was no forced entry, it seems the family was known
to the culprits,” the officer added.
Three siblings were burnt to death and
another child suffered serious injuries in a
fire that broke out in a New Delhi slum, the
Delhi Fire Service (DFS) said yesterday. The
casualties occurred on Saturday night in New
Usmanpur area in east Delhi. The firefighters
took an hour to douse the blaze that broke
out around 11.30pm. “At least 25 shanties were
gutted. The fire possibly broke out due to an
electrical short circuit. We sent 12 fire tenders
that doused the flames by 12.30am,” said a
DFS official. The official said the firefighters
found the burnt bodied of Reena, 10, Meena,
7, and six-month-old Mubarak from one of the
gutted shanties.
A man was arrested yesterday in Bihar’s West
Champaran district for allegedly possessing fake
Indian currency notes with a face value totalling
Rs400,000, police said. A Directorate of Revenue
Intelligence (DRI) team arrested the man from
Bakhriya village in the district, which is some
230km from Patna. “The man was arrested while
on his way to deliver the counterfeit notes to
someone,” district police official Harishchander
Thakur said. Police refused to disclose the
identity of the man immediately. DRI officials
were questioning the accused for information
about others involved in the fake currency racket.
The fake currency notes had come from either
Nepal or Bangladesh, the police official said.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav
yesterday asked the Bharatiya Janata Party-led
opposition to stop its political propaganda to
defame the state on the law and order issue.
“Stop the negative politics against Bihar.
The Grand Alliance government led by Chief
Minister Nitish Kumar is committed to the
rule of law, governance and development.
We have a clear-cut agenda to take Bihar
forward and transform it into a developed
state,” Yadav told the media in Patna. He asked
leaders of the BJP and its allies whether they
will use the words ‘aatank raj’ (reign of terror)
for the country after a terror attack either in
Pathankot in Punjab or elsewhere.
The Road Safety Week this year will be organised
throughout the country from today to create
public awareness about improving safety on
roads, the road transport ministry said. “During
the week, awareness about various causes of road
accidents and measures to prevent them will be
highlighted by organising various activities with
school/college students, drivers and all other road
users,” it said in a statement. “The ministry has also
organised a walkathon from India Gate today, in
association with Delhi police and Society for Indian
Automobile Manufactures (SIAM) to solicit their
active participation in the road safety movement,”
the statement said. Road Safety Week is observed
throughout the country in January every year.
Winter festival
Government
to press ahead
with reforms,
says Jaitley
IANS
Visakhapatnam
F
inance Minister Arun Jaitley yesterday said the government would continue
with the economic reforms with
a single-minded focus.
Speaking at an event this
coastal city in Andhra Pradesh,
Jaitley said the government
would continue with reforms
which it failed to pursue in recent months.
“Some of our reforms, which
we have missed out on in the last
few months, have to be pursued
with a single-minded focus. We
cannot afford a change in direction, and in these circumstances,
every state has to contribute,”
the minister said.
Stating that the world economy was going through an extremely difficult and challenging
time and difficulties, he said this
had “spilled over into our system
also”.
Jaitley pointed out the World
Bank has lowered the global
growth forecast to 2.9% while
the growth rates of economies
across the world are hovering
around extremely low figures.
“Many of our competing
economies are facing extremely
serious challenges. In an integrated economy, a large number
of those challenges and difficulties get spilled over.
“So because of the integrated
economy, what happens in China, what happens in oil prices,
impact our markets. Our revenues also get impacted, when the
price regimes are low because
nominal GDP gets reduced,” he
said.
Jaitley, however, said even under the trying circumstances the
Indian economy was doing well.
“India continues to remain
the fastest growing economy in
the world. So our 7-7.5% growth
rate stands out amongst the
larger economies as a bright spot
among global economy.”
The minister said he believed
that India can convert these circumstances into an opportunity
because some of the factors adversely impacting the world suit
the country.
Jaitley said after Start Up India, the government will launch
Stand Up India, which will be
available to only to women and
the SC/ST entrepreneurs.
“Every public sector and private sector bank, each branch
in the country has to fund one
SC,ST and one woman entrepreneur,” he added.
Lauding the reforms initiated
by Andhra Pradesh, he said the
state was recording double-digit
growth and it would be one of
the key engines of growth.
Responding to a request made
by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Jaitley promised all help to the state
in dealing with the post-bifurcation challenges.
He noted that Andhra Pradesh
has many assets to become an
investors’ destination because of
its dynamic leadership and ecosystem.
Jaitley hailed competition
among states, which have been
holding investors’ meets to attract investment, and claimed
that Prime Minister Narendra
Modi was successful in converting co-operative federalism into
competitive federalism.
He suggested states improve
ease of doing business as investors look for stability of policy
and business eco-system.
Spectators watch clowns performing during last day of Winter Festival in Kolkata yesterday.
Tewari under fire over
troop movement claim
Former army chief says
Congress leader is jobless
IANS
New Delhi
C
ongress leader Manish
Tewari yesterday defended his claim on a
2012 controversial troop movement towards Delhi, even after
the party pulled him up and
central minister V K Singh, the
then army chief, came out with
an emphatic denial.
“Whatever I said yesterday
(Saturday), I have nothing more
to add or subtract to that,” Te-
wari told reporters yesterday, a
day after commenting that the
news report on the troop movement that had created a stir was
true.
V K Singh, the minister of
state for external affairs who
was the target of the 2012 report, yesterday dismissed Tewari’s statement, saying the
Congress leader was “jobless”.
Tewari said at a book launch
on Saturday that he was a member of the parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence
when the reported incident took
place. The report, he said, was
“unfortunate but true”.
“...at that point in time I used
Sonia supporter in finger sacrifice
AFP
Bengaluru
A
businessman cut off one
of his fingers as a gesture
of thanks to the gods after
Congress leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi were granted bail in a
court case, a report said yesterday.
Induvalu Suresh, 35, hacked off
his little finger last month before
wrapping it in a rupee note and
dropping it in a Hindu temple donation box in the country’s south,
according to the Times of India.
The owner of a granite business, from Ramanagara near Ben-
galuru, said he had vowed to make
the unusual gesture of gratitude
if the mother-son duo were given
bail.
“I wrapped the finger in a
Rs1,000 note with a letter thanking God for granting bail to Sonia
and Rahul and dropped it in the
hundi (donation pot),” Suresh told
the newspaper.
“I did not feel the pain when
I cut my finger. Later, I went to
the hospital adjacent to the temple and told the doctor that I lost
my finger while repairing the AC
compressor of my car,” he said.
The Congress president and
vice president were summoned to
court last month over allegations
they misused funds of the National Herald newspaper once run
by the family. The pair were given
bail in the case brought by ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader
Subramanyan Swamy.
The paper was launched by
India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and closed in 2008.
Sonia Gandhi later became the
chief patron of the trust that ran
the publication.
A Congress lawmaker has reportedly thanked Suresh for the
finger sacrifice but stressed the
party was not keen on “sycophancy of pain”.
to serve in the Standing Committee on Defence. It’s unfortunate but the story was true,
story was correct.”
This drew a sharp reaction
from Singh.
“Manish Tewari is jobless
these days. I have written a
book, tell him to read it,” Singh
told reporters in Ujjain.
Contacted by IANS, Singh
said he had “no comments” on
the issue.
Tewari responded on Twitter that he would love to read
Singh’s book “provided he
promises to read mine - in offing!”
The Congress not only dis-
Will continue
my fight: Azad
Suspended Bharatiya Janata Party MP
Kirti Azad yesterday said he would
continue to fight against corruption
in the Delhi and District Cricket
Association. Azad said he had sought
an appointment with Prime Minister
Narendra Modi on the issue. “No one
can stop me... I will go on fighting
corruption,” he told reporters in New
Delhi. “I am happy that the BJP is soon
going to hold a parliamentary party
meeting on this (issue). I have been
in the party for 24 years now. I really
don’t know what wrong I have done,”
the BJP Lok Sabha member said.
“I have written 200 letters and 500
e-mails to (former DDCA chairman
and present finance minister) Arun
Jaitley. I am not raising this issue
against anyone as my aim is to fight
corruption,” Azad said.
Selfie craze not a laughing matter: experts
IANS
New Delhi
I
f the disturbing news of two
selfie deaths - in Mumbai and
Kashmir this weekend - shattered your Sunday morning, it is
time to pause and see if your young
ones are not trying a dangerous pose
for a selfie to impress their peers.
A college girl who fell into the
swirling Arabian Sea while clicking a
selfie off a rocky part of the Mumbai
beach and a youth who plunged into
the water to save her on Saturday
were both swept away, police said.
And in Jammu and Kashmir’s
Reasi district, an attempt to take a
selfie atop a fort proved fatal for a
youth as he fell backwards and died,
police said.
“There have been cases where
youngsters have put themselves at
unnecessary risk to take that one
good picture. It is crucial that you
draw a line between habit and obsessive behaviour,” Dr Ashish Mittal,
consultant psychiatry at Columbia
Asia Hospital in Gurgaon, said.
In November, a 14-year old
schoolboy, who was trying to take
a selfie on his mobile phone atop a
stationary train wagon, was elec-
trocuted and died in Mumbai.
“Parents should intervene as it
is no more a laughing matter. Their
‘selfie crazy’ children may require
expert help. Else, they may put their
lives at risk for a mere picture,” he
added.
The craze for a perfect selfie shot
has taken many young lives globally
in the past year.
In neighbouring Pakistan, a
22-year-old man was killed while
trying to take a selfie in front of a
moving train in Rawalpindi city in
December.
In the same month, two teenagers
were killed in Turkey after they lay in
the middle of a road to try for a selfie
with a plane in the background.
In another tragic instance, a
17-year-old schoolboy fell from the
roof of a nine-storey building while
trying to click an “extreme selfie”
in Russia in September last year.
“Not only in India but worldwide,
people should be careful for taking selfies in dangerous situations.
The habit needs to be discouraged,”
added Dr S Sudarsanan, senior consultant at BLK Super Specialty Hospital in the capital.
Ironically, clicking a selfie proved
to be more lethal than getting
mauled by a shark in 2015.
tanced itself from Tewari’s
statement but - using strong
words - advised him not to
comment on the incident which
was said to have taken place
when the United Progressive
Alliance was in power. It added
that Tewari was not an official
spokesman of the party.
“When this alleged incident
regarding the army is supposed
to have taken place, senior
ministers had even then clarified, and I am now clarifying,
that there is absolutely no truth
in the allegation,” Congress
spokesman Abhishek Singhvi
said here.
“In fact, it was also clarified
(then) that some troop movements are necessary, inbuilt
and inevitable part of a defence
mechanism. But to read into it
all the other elements is completely wrong,” he said.
Singhvi pointed out that Tewari was never a member of
any decision-making body on
defence, nor was he a party
spokesperson or spokesperson
on issues pertaining to external
affairs and defence.
“He is neither the authorised
spokesperson of the party, nor
the spokesperson on foreign or
defence affairs, nor privy to any
of the committees or decisionmaking group,” he said.
22
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
LATIN AMERICA
US mulls ending programme that lures Cuban doctors to defect
Reuters
Washington/Havana
T
he US government is
considering putting an
end to a programme that
encourages Cuban doctors and
nurses on overseas assignments to defect, a senior aide to
President Barack Obama said,
in a gesture emblematic of im-
proving US-Cuban relations.
The Cuban Medical Professional Parole Programme, which
started under president George
W Bush in 2006, targets one of
Cuba’s proudest achievements:
sending doctors, nurses and other medical professionals abroad,
either on missions of mercy or
to raise cash for the Communist
government.
The programme grants US offi-
cials discretionary authority to allow Cuban medical professionals
into the US, providing assistance
at US embassies in the countries
where the doctors are posted. It
is open to more than 50,000 Cuban medical professionals in more
than 60 countries.
The programme has now been
placed under review, said Ben
Rhodes, a deputy national security advisor to Obama who was
part of the negotiating team that
reached detente with Cuba a year
ago after 18 months of secret talks.
“It’s an unusual policy, and
I think as we look at the whole
totality of the relationship, this
is something that we felt was
worth being in the list of things
that we consider,” Rhodes said.
The US has approved 7,117 applications since 2006. The numbers have grown in recent years,
Moves to
extradite
Guzman
to begin
M
Reuters
Mexico City
A
Soldiers gather next to the entrance of a drain, from where Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaped before
being captured at Jiquilpan Boulevard, in Los Mochis, in Sinaloa state, Mexico.
Billionaire in graft case
‘escaped ban years ago’
Reuters
Brasilia
F
ive years before his arrest in a political corruption scandal, billionaire
financier Andre Esteves was
nearly banned from banking
in Brazil due to irregular trading, according to a central bank
document reviewed by Reuters.
Central bank investigators
recommended in October 2010
that Esteves, who founded and
ran investment bank Grupo
BTG Pactual SA until last November, should have been
barred from managing financial
institutions for six years due to
“serious infractions” of banking rules between 2002 and
2004, the document showed.
The severe punishment under consideration was eventually reduced to fines for Esteves
and the bank, but it showed
Brazil’s most influential dealmaker attracted regulators’
scrutiny for more than a decade
before his downfall last year.
Esteves declined to discuss
Cuban foreign ministry officials
were unavailable to comment on
Washington’s review of the programme, which has not been previously reported. A senior administration official said a decision on
whether to end the programme
was due early this year.
The programme dates to a
period of lingering Cold War
animosity, but relations changed
dramatically with the detente
that Rhodes helped negotiate.
Obama and Cuban President
Raul Castro announced in December 2014 they would seek to
normalise relations. By July, diplomatic ties were restored after
a 54-year rupture. The two governments have since reached accords on environmental protection and the resumption of direct
mail service and scheduled commercial airline flights.
Silver screen
dreams led to
Mexican drug
lord’s downfall
AFP
Mexico City
exican authorities announced they will begin the process of extraditing drug kingpin Joaquin
“El Chapo” Guzman to the US,
as his lawyer vowed a tough legal
battle.
President Enrique Pena Nieto’s government had balked at
extraditing Guzman prior to his
prison break in July but the administration has changed tack
after recapturing him on Friday.
The attorney general’s office
said it received two US extradition requests last year on a slew
of charges, including drug trafficking and murder, and that it
later obtained arrest warrants to
ship him across the border.
“With Guzman Loera’s recapture, the respective extradition
proceedings will have to start,”
the office said in a statement,
though it did not indicate when
the hearings would start.
Lawyers for Guzman will have
three days to file objections and
20 more days to prove them,
though that timeframe can be
extended, prosecutors said,
vowing to fight any appeals.
Once a judge rules on the extradition, the decision is sent to
the foreign ministry, which will
have 20 days to validate it. Guzman would have another chance
after that to legally challenge the
decision.
One of Guzman’s attorneys,
Juan Pablo Badillo, vowed to
take the case up to the Supreme
Court if necessary.
“A legal battle has begun in the
constitutional framework that
will be very serious, very tough,”
Badillo told reporters outside the
Altiplano prison near Mexico
City, where Guzman was sent
following his arrest.
“He shouldn’t be extradited
because Mexico has a fair constitution,” he said.
US President Barack Obama’s
administration did not publicly
indicate whether it would press
Pena Nieto to extradite Guzman.
US politicians called for his
immediate extradition as he faces charges in a half-dozen states.
reaching a record 1,663 in fiscal
year 2015, according to data from
the US department of homeland
security, which administers the
programme jointly with the state
department.
Cuba has been openly scornful of the programme, calling it
a “reprehensible practice” that
is designed to “deprive Cuba and
many other countries of vital
human resources.”
the case while BTG Pactual
referred inquiries to securities
filings at the time.
Central bank director Sidnei Correa Marques, who ruled
against the proposed ban, said
in an interview he considered
the crucial role of the bank and
its CEO in the financial system
when making his decision.
Esteves was arrested in November and charged with obstructing a corruption probe at
state-run oil company Petrobras by conspiring to help a
Petrobras executive who was a
potential prosecution witness
flee the country.
He denied any wrongdoing
but stepped down as chief executive and chairman of BTG
Pactual and passed control over
Latin America’s biggest independent investment bank to
seven partners.
After spending three weeks
in prison, Esteves was released
on house arrest last month
pending trial.
The investigation from a
decade ago that could have derailed his banking career years
earlier focused on nearly $3.8bn
of trades between the bank,
known then as Banco Pactual
SA and Delaware-based Romanche Investment Corporation LLC.
Romanche was created 15
years ago as a limited liability corporation, without public
disclosure of its ownership, and
the law firm at its registered address declined to comment. The
company did not file annual tax
reports in Delaware as required
and still owes $1,004 there, according to public documents.
The securities regulator
CVM found in a separate probe
that the trades served to transfer Banco Pactual’s profits out
of the country and potentially
reduce the bank’s tax bill.
The central bank and CVM
investigated alleged banking and securities infractions,
leaving assessment of the tax
impact to Brazil’s federal revenue service, which declined to
comment on the case. Reuters
could not determine how the
bank’s tax payments were affected by the transactions.
secretive meeting that
Hollywood star Sean
Penn orchestrated with
Joaquin ‘Chapo’ Guzman in
a jungle hideout late last year
helped Mexico’s government
catch the world’s most wanted
drug lord, sources said.
Guzman, the infamous boss of
the Sinaloa drug cartel, was arrested in northwest Mexico on
Friday morning, and sent back to
the prison he broke out of in July
through a mile-long tunnel that
led straight into his cell.
Penn’s rare access to the capo
was assisted by Mexican actress
Kate del Castillo. They were
driven some of the way to the
hideout by Guzman’s son, who
the Hollywood star says was
waved on by soldiers when they
apparently recognised him.
Another leg of the day-long
trip through central Mexico to
meet Guzman was on a light aircraft allegedly fitted with equipment to evade radar detection,
Penn said in a story published in
Rolling Stone magazine.
Penn said in the article that he
was sure the Mexican government and the US Drug Enforcement Administration was tracking him.
Two senior Mexican government sources said they were
indeed aware of the October
meeting and monitored his
movements.
That helped lead them days
later to a ranch where Guzman
was staying, one of the sources
said. Mexican forces used helicopter gunships to attack Guz-
Macri meeting sought
man’s ranch during a siege that
lasted days.
The kingpin narrowly escaped, with what he told del
Castillo was a minor leg injury,
but the raid in the northern state
of Durango was a major breakthrough in the manhunt.
Guzman was finally recaptured on Friday in the northern city of Los Mochis after a
bloody action movie-like shootout. Mexican marines pursued
the wily kingpin through storm
drains before intercepting his
getaway in a hijacked car.
Penn’s seven-hour encounter
with Guzman came about after
Guzman became interested in
making a movie of his life when
he was inundated with requests
from US movie studios following
his 2014 capture, the film star said.
Guzman’s lawyer approached
del Castillo about the possibility
of making a film but the project
was dropped in favour of a magazine interview, Penn said.
The encounter adds a new
twist to the long and largerthan-life career of Guzman,
whose
nickname
“Chapo”
means “Shorty”.
Penn unsuccessfully tried to
set up a formal follow-up inter-
Mexico seeks to quiz Sean Penn
Mexican authorities yesterday
sought to actor Sean Penn over his
interview with the Mexican drug
kingpin. A federal official said the
attorney general’s office wants
to talk with Penn and Mexican
actress Kate del Castillo about their
secretive meeting with Guzman in
October, three months before his
capture. “That is correct, of course,
it’s to determine responsibilities,”
the official said on condition of anonymity, declining to provide more
details. A second federal official
said it was unclear whether Penn
and del Castillo, who brokered the
meeting, committed a crime. While
a reporter could interview a drug
cartel suspect, “they’re not journalists,” the official said.
Salvador ex-minister
deported from US
AFP
Washington
T
Members of human rights organisations Abuelas y Madres
de Plaza de Mayo and HIJOS demonstrate at the former
Mechanics School of the Navy, the most emblematic
clandestine detention centre in Argentina during the
dictatorship, in Buenos Aires. The organisations are
demanding an audience with President Mauricio Macri to
express their “concern about the situation of uncertainty of
the National Memory Archive”.
view. Instead, as Mexican security forces closed in on Guzman,
Penn and del Castillo persuaded
him to film a 17-minute tape answering pre-written questions,
and ship them the footage.
The video clips show the drug
lord in a colourful shirt and black
cap at a different hideout, musing about his contribution to
the narcotics trade and US consumption. Rolling Stone called it
the drug lord’s first-ever interview outside an interrogation.
A senior Obama administration official told television news
shows yesterday morning that
Guzman’s boasting about his
heroin empire in the interview
was “maddening.”
“One thing I will tell you is that
this braggadocious action about
how much heroin he sends around
the world, including the US, is
maddening,” White House chief
of staff Denis McDonough said on
CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’
“We see a heroin epidemic,
an opioid addiction epidemic, in
this country,” McDonough said.
“We’re going to stay on top of
this with our Mexican counterparts until we get that back in the
box. But El Chapo’s behind bars
- that’s where he should stay.”
he US has deported a
former Salvadoran defence
minister who was accused
of human rights crimes during
his country’s 1980-1992 civil war.
Jose Guillermo Garcia, 82,
was seen arriving at San Salvador’s international airport with
131 other Salvadorans forcibly
expelled from America, to cries
of “murderer, murderer” from
waiting rights activists.
The US embassy in El Salvador
informed authorities that Garcia, a retired general who served
as minister from 1979 to 1983,
was deported after his application to stay in the US was rejected by an immigration appeals
court.
A US judge had signed his deportation order for his role “in
the commission of human rights
violations during El Salvador’s
civil war,” it said.
El Salvador’s military government at the time was backed
by the US in a conflict against
leftwing guerrillas who were
supported by the Soviet Union
and Cuba. More than 75,000
people died in the war and more
than 7,000 went missing.
A co-ordinator for El Salvador’s Human Rights Commission, Miguel Montenegro, said
Garcia was minister when a San
Salvador archbishop, Oscar
Romero, was murdered during mass in 1980, and when the
Salvadoran army massacred 800
people in the village of El Mozote
the following year.
“He would have much to confess in court,” Montenegro said.
However that prospect is removed in El Salvador under a
1993 amnesty law pardoning
those who committed rights
crimes during the civil war.
In April last year, the US deported another former Salvadoran defence minister from the
civil war period, Carlos Eugenio
Vides, who was in office from
1984 to 1989. Other retired Salvadoran military officers also
went to America after the war.
A colonel who was minister
for public security between 1989
and 1992, Inocente Orlando
Montano, is in a US prison serving 21 years for migration fraud
and perjury.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
23
PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN
OFFENSIVE
Four-country talks on Taliban to begin in Pakistan
Four-nation talks to start
today in Islamabad; Taliban
not expected to attend talks;
Afghanistan suffered bloody
year in 2015
Reuters
Islamabad
A
fghanistan,
Pakistan,
China and the United
States are set to begin
talks today aimed at reviving the
Afghan peace process and eventually ending 14 years of bloodshed fighting Taliban insurgents.
Officials from the four countries will meet in Islamabad,
Pakistan foreign office sources
said, in what they hope will be
a first step towards resuming
stalled negotiations. The Taliban
are not expected to attend the
talks.
The militants have stepped
up their violent campaign in the
last year to oust the government
in Kabul, which has struggled
since most foreign troops left at
the end of 2014.
High-profile suicide attacks
in the capital and major territorial losses in southern Helmand
province have underlined how
far the country remains from
peace without major Taliban
factions on board.
A previous fledging peace
process last year was stopped
after the Taliban announced that
its founder, Mullah Omar, had
been dead for two years, throwing the militant group into disarray and factional infighting.
The Taliban said in a statement this week that it wanted
to maintain good relations with
other countries even as it wages war against what it called
“American occupation”, but it
did not mention the peace talks.
“(We) want to have good relations with all nations and further
expand them. It will be better to
have direct contact with each
other and exchange views regarding our goals and values,” it
said in the statement, which was
published online.
Kabul has been trying to limit
expectations of a breakthrough
at today’s talks, and has said the
aim is to work out a road map for
peace negotiations and a way
of assessing if they remain on
track.
Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai and Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz
Chaudhry will attend the talks
on Monday, Pakistani foreign office sources told Reuters.
Besides an official from China,
the US Special Representative to
Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson or the US ambassador
would attend from the United
States, a State Department official said.
“It’ll be an opportunity to
further our partnership with Afghanistan, Pakistan and China
in support of an Afghan-led,
Afghan-owned reconciliation,
which is what we’ve said all
along we want to see,” State Department spokesman John Kirby
said.
“We’re obviously looking forward to ... trying to make some
progress here on what has been a
very difficult issue.”
Afghanistan
last
month
turned to Pakistan, with which
it shares a porous border from
where the Taliban operate bases
on both sides, for help in reviving the peace talks.
The insurgents, who are fight-
ing to restore strict Islamic rule
in place before the group was
ousted from power in 2001, are
split on whether to participate in
any future talks.
Some elements within the
Taliban have signalled they may
be willing to send negotiators at
some point, but other factions
remain opposed to any form of
negotiation with Kabul.
Afghanistan suffered one of its
bloodiest years on record in 2015.
The number of civilians killed is
expected to have surpassed the
record high of more than 3,180
Afghan civilians killed in 2014,
the United Nations said, which
brought the number killed since
2009 to more than 17,000.
Pakistan vows to
bring out truth in
India airbase raid
Pakistan Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif has told US that
his country is eliminating
terrorism from its soil and
would not allow anyone
to use it to carry out terror
operations abroad
AFP
Islamabad
P
akistan’s Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif has assured US
Secretary of State John Kerry that his country is investigating
the deadly attack on an Indian air
force base and will soon “bring out
the truth”, officials said.
Indian
officials
suspect
the January 2 attack on the
Pathankot base, which left seven
soldiers dead, was carried out
by the banned Pakistan-based
group Jaish-e-Mohamed.
The incident has overshadowed plans for talks between the
two rival nations later this week.
“We are swiftly carrying out
investigations in a transparent
manner and will bring out the
truth,” Sharif told Kerry, according to a statement from his office
late Saturday following Kerry’s
call earlier in the day.
“The world will see our effectiveness and sincerity in this
regard.”
Sharif said Pakistan was eliminating terrorism from its soil
and would not allow anyone to
use it to carry out terror operations abroad.
The attack — a rare targeting
of an Indian military installation outside disputed Kashmir — threatened to undermine
improving relations with Paki-
stan, with talks between the two
countries’ foreign secretaries set
to be held on January 15 in Islamabad.
It came about a week after
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a surprise visit to
Pakistan, the first by an Indian
premier in 11 years.
Modi has urged his Pakistani
counterpart to take “firm and
immediate action” against those
behind the attack, adding that
New Delhi had passed on “specific and actionable information” about the incident.
Kerry hoped that talks between
both the countries would continue in the interests of regional
stability, the statement said.
Jaish-e-Mohamed staged a
2001 attack on the Indian parliament which brought the two
countries to the brink of war.
The Pathankot also attack
coincided with a 25-hour siege
near an Indian consulate in Afghanistan that left at least one
policeman dead and 11 others
wounded.
Some analysts believe the
militants could have been acting
independently to try to exercise
a veto over the peace process.
Govt urged to use its intelligence network
Pakistan must use its
intelligence network to find
out who in this country were
spoken to over telephone by
the terrorists who attacked an
Indian Air Force base in Punjab,
a newspaper said yesterday.
“At the very least, Pakistan can
use its extensive intelligence
network to find out who made
the calls that were reportedly
made from the handlers from
this side of the border,” The
Nation said in an editorial.
“It can crack down on areas
where the calls were made from
to flush out any terrorist cells,”
it added.
But the editorial noted that
Islamabad was seeking more
evidence than what had been
provided by New Delhi on the
so-called Pakistani links to the
January 2 terror attack on the
IAF base in Pathankot.
While India believes the
information it has provided
was “actionable intelligence”,
Pakistani officials do not deem
the leads sufficient enough
to act on at this moment, The
Nation said.
“Obviously, the nature of the
information provided has
not been made clear, but it
seems the two governments
are already on different pages
regarding the attack,” it said.
“India (wants) arrests made,
weapons found and links
discovered and Pakistan wants
more evidence in order to do
those things,” it said.
“Reportedly, there are demands
from this side of the border
for further evidence, including
DNA samples of the attackers.
“These should be taken
seriously, and both
governments should keep the
other in the loop regarding the
investigation.”
US drone strikes
kill at least 28
militants
At least 28 Islamic State and
Taliban militants were killed in US
drone strikes in two provinces in
Afghanistan and a restive tribal
region in Pakistan at the weekend.
“Twenty Daesh affiliates have
died in drone strikes by Nato in
Achin district,” said Hazrat Hussain
Mashriqiwal, police spokesman
in the eastern Afghan province
of Nangarhar, yesterday, using an
Arabic acronym for the Islamic
State extremist militia. At least
three foreign militants died in
Kunar province on Saturday when
a drone ... hit them in ... Shegal
district,” said Abdul Latif Fazli, a
provincial council member from
the eastern Afghan province of
Kunar. On Saturday, five militants
were killed in Pakistan’s restive
tribal region in a drone strike that
targeted a rebel hideout in the
mountainous Shawal valley area
of North Waziristan.
CONTROVERSY
Kashmir opposes
plan to convert GB
into province
Pakistan’s Army Chief General Raheel Sharif meets Deputy Crown Prince and Defence Minister of
Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salman al-Saud, in Rawalpindi yesterday. Matters related to regional
security and defence co-operation were discussed.
Pakistan assures Saudi
of continued support
DPA
Islamabad
P
akistani leaders yesterday assured Saudi Arabia
of their solidarity, but
gave no indication of joining
the kingdom’s 34-nation military alliance to fight terrorism
in the Islamic world.
“The people of Pakistan
would always stand with the
people of Saudi Arabia against
any threat to the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of the
kingdom,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said at a meeting
with Saudi Defence Minister
Mohamed bin Salman al-Saud.
Salman is thought to be the
architect of the alliance of
Muslim countries the kingdom
had proposed last month.
Pakistan had indicated that
it would participate, depend-
ing on the details of the plan.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin
Ahmed al-Jubeir visited Islamabad this week to do just that.
Salman also met Pakistan’s
powerful military chief Raheel
Sharif.
“Any threat to Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity would
evoke a strong response from
Pakistan,” a statement issued
by the army quoted Sharif as
telling the visiting minister.
Afghan forces recapture district on Tajik border
Afghan forces yesterday wrested control of a
northern district bordering Tajikistan from the
Taliban, officials said, two months after its capture
stoked fears the jihadists’ violence could spread to
Central Asia.
The rare positive news for the Afghan military
comes as the Taliban are expanding their 14-yearinsurgency with an unprecedented winter surge,
which analysts suggest is aimed at increasing their
leverage before planned peace talks.
Afghan army, police and special forces units
launched a fierce offensive on Friday to recapture
Darqad in Takhar province. They defeated the
Taliban after two days of intense fighting that left
many militants dead or wounded, the defence
ministry said in a statement yesterday. “The
district has been entirely captured by the Afghan
forces,” it said.
The government of Pakistan
administered Jammu and
Kashmir has decided to “put up
strong resistance” against alleged
moves by Islamabad to convert
Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) into a province
before a settlement of the Jammu
and Kashmir dispute. The government was also contemplating
expressing its “indignation” at the
alleged plans through a resolution in the next session of the
Legislative Assembly, apart from
creating awareness through different means among the public on
its repercussions, ruling People’s
Party leaders said yesterday.
“Constitutionally and legally, the
territory of Gilgit-Baltistan is part
of the state of Jammu
and Kashmir and any attempt to
secede it from the disputed region
will deal a blow to the stand of
Pakistan and Kashmiris regarding
the longstanding dispute,” said
Sardar Abid Hussain Abid, AJK
Minister for Information.
POLITICS
Imran Khan
summons rare
party meeting
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)
Chairman Imran Khan has
summoned a rare meeting of
party’s members of Parliament
and the provincial assemblies on
January 12 (Tuesday) to take up
a host of matters, including its
future strategy inside and outside
the legislatures and intra-party
election. Party leaders from the
provinces will also be part of the
proceedings, to be presided over
by Imran. “We intend to have a
brainstorming session on how
to move forward as a strong opposition and as a political party,”
said a Lahore-based senior PTI
leader. He claimed it was quite
likely that after the meeting, the
PTI chairman might decide to lead
his party in the National Assembly
with a renewed vigour.
‘If India moves a yard, Pakistan will move even more’
IANS
New Delhi
A
s Pakistan Army joins Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif in condemning the Pathankot attack,
former Pakistan’s foreign minister
Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri claims Pakistan Army is on board with Sharif in
the new peace effort and a serious dialogue must commence between both
the countries.
He suggests a give-and-take between the two to resolve outstanding
issues. Excerpts from an e-mail interview with IANS:
Q. What do you make of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to
Pakistan?
A. I wholeheartedly welcome the
resumption of the dialogue between
Pakistan and India. For those trying to
understand the immediate motives of
the Indian PM’s visit to wish PM Nawaz Sharif on his happy birthday, it
would be instructive to refer to the recent speech of Indian Minister for External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj that war
with Pakistan was not an option. It is
not an option for Pakistan either. Her
statement is all the more significant
because she had developed the reputation of a hardliner on Pakistan.
Another lesson is that simply flexing your military muscles doesn’t always win elections. The recent defeat
in Bihar elections could be one reason,
among many, for PM Modi’s sudden
and surprising visit.
Q. Can it lead to a dramatic
breakthrough in ties?
A. I do expect a serious and a sincere
dialogue because Modi has put a lot at
stake by his surprising visit to Lahore.
I believe that even a dramatic breakthrough cannot be ruled out because
the Kashmir framework that Pakistan and India evolved during 2004 to
2007, after detailed negotiations on the
back-channels, provides a ready road
map for those in charge now.
Q. People in India are asking
whether this would lead to less firing across the Line of Control and
less cross-border terror attacks on
India?
A. I do expect lessening of tensions.
I will be surprised if it didn’t happen.
The efforts during our tenure helped
to usher in a period of ceasefire on the
LOC in 2003 which lasted for almost
10 years. This is in great contrast to the
state of hostilities on the LOC in more
recent years. As far as, acts of terrorism in India are concerned, I sympathise with India, particularly, after the
recent attack at Pathankot. In fact,
we had agreed to an anti-terrorism
mechanism in 2006 at Havana. Both
countries have now agreed to discuss
terrorism at the level of National Security Advisors.
Q. Will any talk between the two
without discussing Kashmir bear
any positive result?
A. Why should be one scared of
dealing with the real issues between
Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri
India and Pakistan. India has for a long
time felt that terrorism needs to be discussed, Pakistan has for a much longer
period (almost since independence)
felt that Kashmir needs to be resolved.
There is no doubt that a large part of
the Kashmiri population is unhappy
with the current situation. Even leaders like late Mufti Mohamed Sayeed
and Mehbooba Mufti of the PDP and
President of the National Conference, Omar Abdullah have emphasised
that the status of Jammu and Kashmir
needed to be resolved by Pakistan, India and the Kashmiris. It would deprive
the terrorists of a major propaganda
weapon.
Q. Do you think the Modi government’s efforts to keep Hurriyat
away from talks is a positive thing?
A. I think it is counter-productive.
Prime Ministers Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh must have obviously
considered it worthwhile when they
decided to talk to the APHC (All Parties Hurriyat Conference). We feared
that unless we kept them broadly
aware of the framework, they could
well reject it outright. This would
affect Pakistani public opinion very
negatively. I have repeatedly indicated in my book ‘Neither a Hawk, nor a
Dove’ that we wanted the Kashmiris
to be sitting at the negotiating table.
India would not just accept it. Our
whole purpose in interacting with
Kashmiris was to sound them out
regarding the slowly evolving framework in the back channel on Kashmir
so that they would not reject the proposals on the grounds that they had
not been consulted.
Q. India and Pakistan foreign
secretaries are starting talks on
January 15th. Do you think without
track II initiative, any progress is
possible?
A. I strongly believe that civil society and people-to-people contact can
play a positive role. If by track II you
mean efforts by eminent and experienced citizens of the two countries
who have had experience in the past
(political, military or administrative
spheres), I would wholeheartedly welcome it.
Q. Do you think the Pakistan
army is on board with Sharif in
the new peace effort, especially in
view of the history of Kargil after
Vajpayee’s initiative?
A. I was not foreign minister at the
time of Kargil. I recently met somebody who ought to know and who told
me that Kargil had actually started
before and not after PM Vajpayee’s
visit, the famous bus yatra, to Lahore.
Either PM Nawaz Sharif did not know
or if he did, he did not think it was serious enough at the initial stages and
may have felt such activities has been
going on routinely between Pakistan
and India for a long time. Later on ,the
scale of Kargil operations surprised
the Indian establishment and it may
have surprised PM Nawaz Sharif as
well.
I would like to say that the time has
moved on and Kargil may well have
taught both sides some important lessons. The NSA, Lieutenant General
(retd) Naseer Khan Janjua, is considered to be very close to current COAS
Gen. Raheel Sharif. His appointment
is significant and should also remove
any doubts that Pakistan Army is, per
se, opposed to a serious peace process
with India. I have heard reports (from
very credible sources) that the meeting in Bangkok was a success and that
the two NSAs got along very well indeed.
Q. Do you think it is US pressure
was behind Modi’s Lahore visit?
A. Pressure may be the wrong word.
Persuasion or facilitation may be better words. Both India and Pakistan are
very large countries to be pressurised
by anybody. Even when Pakistan was
a very close ally with US in the ‘war
on terror’ , it defied American pressure on the Iran-India-Pakistan gas
pipeline. I have no doubt if Pakistan
can withstand US pressure so can India. The US, along with other Western
countries, has a strong interest in the
stability of Afghanistan. The last thing
it would want is a proxy war between
Pakistan and India in Afghanistan. The
US thus serves its own interests as well
in facilitating talks between two countries.
Q. What would be your advice on
the next steps needed to enhance
India-Pakistan ties?
A. Unfortunately, in Pakistan and
India mature political culture has not
been developed yet. Political parties say and do different things when
they are in power or in the opposition.
I urge both to approach the coming
talks not just tactically but strategically. From my experience I can predict that if India gives nothing, Pakistan will give nothing either and
the current dialogue process may be
short-lived. But if India moves a yard,
Pakistan will move even more. There
is a lot of low-hanging fruit that could
be harvested. The improvement in
their relationship can be quite speedy
and very dramatic.
24
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
PHILIPPINES
Two dead and hundreds
hurt at religious festival
More than a million
people turned out for
the festival of the Black
Nazarene on Saturday,
one of the world’s
largest religious gatherings
DPA
Manila
A
AFP
Manila
T
wo people died and hundreds were injured during
a huge religious festival
in the Philippines, where barefoot crowds hurled themselves
at a statue of Jesus believed to
have healing powers, authorities said yesterday.
More than a million people
turned out for the festival of
the Black Nazarene on Saturday, one of the world’s largest religious gatherings, to see
the life-sized statue wheeled
through the streets of Manila.
Risking life and limb, shoeless men and women chanting
“Viva!” (Long Live) ran over
heads and shoulders to touch
the icon as it made its way
through the capital of Asia’s
most fervently Catholic country.
Father Douglas Badong,
rector of the Manila church
where the statue is based, said
one of the street vendors at the
festival suffered a fatal heart
attack.
“Because of the crowd, the
heat, his body couldn’t take
it,” he said.
Another 27-year-old man,
who was reportedly suffering
from a liver ailment, passed
out after helping to drag the
statue’s float and could not be
revived, Badong added.
Thousands of devotees gather outside Quiapo church as an image of Black Nazarene arrives after more than 20 hours of the annual procession in Manila.
Police said at its height,
about 1.5mn people took part
in the seven-kilometre parade,
which runs to the icon’s home
inside the downtown Quiapo
church.
Many believe the Black
Nazarene has miraculous powers and sick people will often
resort to desperate measures
to try to touch it.
Philippine Red Cross secretary-general
Gwendolyn
Pang said her agency, which
Palace ‘should come clean
over Mamasapano deaths’
By Jefferson Antiporda
Manila Times
M
Gun ban
imposed
ahead of
May 9
elections
alacanang — if it really has nothing to hide
— should welcome the reopening of the
Senate inquiry into the January 25, 2015
Mamasapano incident that killed more than 60
people, including 44 Philippine National PoliceSpecial Action Force (PNP-SAF) commandos, Sen.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr said yesterday.
“It is unfortunate that instead of awaiting the
outcome of the investigation, Malacanang insinuates bad faith in the reopening of the Mamasapano
probe,” Marcos, an independent candidate for vice
president, said in a statement to the media.
The senator was reacting to an earlier comment by President Benigno Aquino that politics
could be behind the reopening of the Mamasapano probe.
“So, if Malacanang really has nothing to hide, it
should welcome the reopening of the investigation.
I believe majority of the Filipino people sincerely
want answers and would be discerning enough to
recognise any attempt at grandstanding merely to
score political points,” the chairman of the Sen-
ate Committee on Local Government said. Marcos
is one of many senators who backed the reopening of the Mamasapano inquiry initiated by Senate
Minority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile in a privileged
speech delivered in October 2015. Enrile was not
able to participate in past Mamasapano hearings
because he was in detention when Sen. Grace Poe’s
Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous
Drugs conducted the probe.
Poe, after conducting 10 hearings, came up
with a draft committee report signed by 21 senators stating that the president was ultimately
responsible for the outcome of the Mamasapano
mission.A crucial piece of information learned
by her committee during its investigation was
a decision of Aquino to allow then-suspended
Philippine National Police chief Alan Purisima,
a close friend of the president, to be in charge
of the operation that led to the death of the SAF
men.
Poe has set the reopening of the probe for January 25, the first anniversary of the massacre.
But Senate Majority leader Alan Peter Cayetano
has called on his colleagues who are running for
higher position in this year’s polls, to follow his example and inhibit themselves from the inquiry.
had a field hospital at the site,
treated almost 1,600 people
who were injured during the
festivities.
Some 55 of them were “major cases”, such as fractures
caused by the huge crush of
people or strokes caused by
stress, more than double the
number last year.
Many of them were already
ill, she said, adding: “They
probably thought if they take
part in the procession, they
would get better.” Manila’s
civil defence chief Johnny Yu
said the procession was “a
successful event”, despite the
deaths and injuries, some of
which he said was down to sick
people taking part.
five-month ban on guns
has been imposed in the
Philippines ahead of national elections in May.
The ban went into effect yesterday and will last for 150 days,
covering the election period.
Elections in the Philippines
have traditionally been marred
by violence despite such a ban
being in place in the run-up to
the polls.
Under the ban, no civilian
can carry or transport firearms
in public places, even if they are
licensed to posses the guns, unless they are given an exemption
by the election commission.
“This is important because it
will allow us to achieve the ideals
of free and fair elections,” said
Elections Commissioner Luie
Tito Guia.
In the last polls held in 2013, at
least 50 people, including candidates and security forces, were
killed in election-related violence, according to police.
The police and military also
set up checkpoints nationwide
under the commission’s supervision to deter people from carrying firearms.
“These serve as deterrents to
the movement of people carrying firearms and private armed
groups,” said military spokesman Colonel Restituto Padilla.
More than 18,000 positions
are up for grabs in the May 9
elections, including president,
vice president, senators, congressional representatives, provincial governors, city and town
mayors and vice mayors.
1,000 cops to be deployed
during polls in Masbate
By Rhaydz B Barcia
Legazpi City/Manila Times
T
he Philippine National
Police-Bicol Region office (PNP-Bicol) will
deploy 1,000 cops including
one battalion of elite force
Special Action Force (SAF) in
the island province of Masbate, dubbed as the “wild
west” of the Philippines, following the bloody election
violence in the past.
Malu Calubaquib, PNPBicol regional spokesperson,
told Manila Times that the
police office in the region will
deploy one battalion of elite
force and 800 cops in Masbate.
“The PNP regional command will be deploying 800
policemen to augment the
present police force in Masbate. Aside from 800 cops
from our regional command,
one battalion of the elite Special Action Force will also be
deployed to help our policemen for security measures,”
she said.
“Task Force Masbate” will
be headed by Senior Supt. Lito
Pitallano while Senior Police
Insp. Art Gomez, former chief
of police of Malinao, will serve
as public information officer
of the task force.
Masbate has been placed
under the control of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) during polls following
high incidence of election related violence since time immemorial because of warring
political camps, presence of
goons and a high number of
loose firearms and killing incidents related to politics.
In 2010 and 2013 elections,
PNP-Bicol recommended to
the Commission on Elections
to place 601 villages across
the region under the list of
election hotspots following
violence related to polls and
activities by communist insurgents.
Meanwhile, 26 towns in Bicol are classified as hotspot
areas that prompted the police
and military to recommend
these areas to be placed under
the control of the poll body.
The island province of Masbate topped the list with 69
villages placed under Category
1 and 103 villages as Category 2
hotspots.
In Sorsogon, 61 villages
were placed under Category
2 hotspots with Gubat town
having the most number with
13 followed by Sorsogon City
with 10 villages.
Under Category 1, towns
and villages experience election related violence because
of intense political rivalries,
killings and the existence of
private armed groups during
the past two elections. Under
Category 2 are areas that are
threatened by rebels and other
election related incidents.
Besides the PNP-Bicol and
Comelec office in Region 4,
the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Catholic church officials and Parish Pastoral
Council for Responsible Voting are working together to
ensure honest and clean elections in 2016 in the region.
Court ruling likely to keep Poe in presidential ballot
By Jomar Canlas
Manila Times
T
File photo shows Senator Grace Poe displaying her Certificate of Candidacy (CoC) for president, after filing at
the Commission on Elections in Manila.
he Supreme Court (SC) en banc is inclined to include the name of Senator
Grace Poe-Llamanzares in the ballot
as presidential candidate in the May 2016
elections, and may soon confirm the temporary restraining order (TRO) issued earlier against the move to disqualify her, highly
placed sources have said.
An overwhelming majority of the justices
will confirm the TRO issued by Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno on December 28
against the Comelec’s move to delist Poe
from the ballot because of pending questions
about her citizenship and residency, the High
Court sources told Manila Times on condition of anonymity.
“The case is not yet about the merit of the
case itself, it is only a TRO that the en banc
will confirm, because without the TRO, that
will already make the case moot and academic,” one of the SC sources said.
A second source at the High Court said
there are at least eight justices who are inclined to confirm the TRO in Poe’s favour.
The merits of the case will remain pending.
Some of the justices who at this point have
not weighed the merits of her disqualifica-
tion case may still give her a chance to remain
among the presidential candidates given that
the TRO only covers the delisting of her name
from the ballot.
The TRO is expected to be confirmed tomorrow, when the SC resumes its en banc
session and the first session for 2016.
Among the noted justices who are seen
likely to vote in favour of the TRO are Sereno,
along with Associate Justice Marvic Leonen
and Mariano del Castillo—who are both ponentes of the two disqualification cases filed
against Poe by the Commission on Elections
(Comelec).
Both Leonen and del Castillo recommended the TRO, which was later issued by Sereno
during the Christmas break.
Other justices appointed by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and who are
expected to vote in favour of Poe are Jose
Portugal Perez, Jose Catral Mendoza, Martin
Villarama Jr and Presbitero Velasco Jr.
The justices appointed by President Benigno Aquino who are inclined to vote for
the confirmation of the TRO are Bienvenido
Reyes and Francis Jardeleza. Sereno and Leonen were also Aquino appointees.
In the meantime, senior justices of the SC
who were asked by Poe to stay out of her disqualification cases will stand their ground
not to inhibit themselves from the cases now
with the High Court, particularly those emanating from the Comelec. Senior SC justices
Antonio Carpio, Teresita Leonardo-de Castro and Arturo Brion are expected to stand
firm in participating in the deliberations over
the cases at the High Court.
In particular, the source said the three justices will participate, deliberate and vote in
the cases emanating from the Comelec, disqualifying Poe for her American citizenship
and her lack of the required length of Philippine residency.
The two Comelec cases that have reached
the SC are: GR No 221697, entitled ‘Poe vs
Comelec and Estrella Elamparo’ and GR No
221698-700 ‘Poe vs Comelec, Francisco Tatad, Antonio Contreras and Amado Valdez.’
These cases seek to disqualify Poe as a presidential candidate for the May 2016 elections
because of her American citizenship and lack
of residency.
The only case from which Carpio, de Castro and Brion have inhibited themselves was
the case of Rizalito David vs Poe and the Senate Electoral Tribunal, since the three magistrates participated and ruled for the ouster
of Poe as a sitting senator, on account of her
American citizenship. In this case, the senator was the respondent since she won the
case before the electoral tribunal with a vote
of five against four.
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
25
SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL
Bangladesh PM: ‘Zero
tolerance’ to terrorism
By Mizan Rahman
Dhaka
R
eiterating her government’s firm stance and
‘zero tolerance policy’
against terrorism and militancy,
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
said none would be allowed to
use Bangladesh’s soil for insurgency activities against any
country.
“We won’t tolerate any sort
of insurgency in Bangladesh ...
we want a peaceful atmosphere
in this region,” she told visiting
Indian state of Tripura’s power
minister Manik Dey when the
alter called on her in Dhaka
yesterday.
Briefing reporters, PM’s
press secretary Ihsanul Karim said Prime Minister Hasina
expressed happiness to know
that the officials of Bangladesh and India finalised tariff
and other issues on importing 100 megawatt of electricity by Bangladesh from Tripu-
ra. She hoped that both sides
would also complete remaining formalities on power purchase and supply at an earliest time to start the supply of
electricity.
In this connection, Hasina mentioned that Bangladesh needs more power to
meet its growing demand of
electricity.
Referring to exchange of enclaves following the historic
land boundary agreement between the two countries, the
prime minister said the issue
has been settled in a peaceful
manner.
Hasina said Bangladesh is
now the most attractive destination of investment and her
government has undertaken
steps to establish 100 economic zones to boost further
industrialisation and generate
employment in the country.
In this regard, she also mentioned setting up of border
bazaars along BangladeshIndia frontier, saying such
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina talks to Manik Dey, a minister of Indian State of Tripura, in
Dhaka yesterday.
move is playing a significant
role in boosting bilateral trade.
Putting emphasis on connectivity, Hasina said Bangladesh
wants to reopen the rail routes
connecting Bangladesh and In-
Lanka proposes
new constitution
to devolve power
Reuters
Colombo
S
ri Lanka’s new government
has presented its plan for a
new constitution aimed at
devolving power and preventing
the sort of ethnic tensions that
led to a long and bitter civil war
that ended in 2009.
The move comes as reformist
President Maithripala Sirisena’s administration takes some
steps to promote post-conflict
reconciliation and address alleged war crimes committed
during the 26-year conflict between government troops and
Tamil Tiger rebels.
Sirisena, who unseated former
leader Mahinda Rajapakse in a
bitterly contested poll last year,
promised a new constitution to
strengthen democracy and fundamental rights.
According to the document
presented to parliament yesterday, the government intends to
strengthen democratic rights,
promote national reconciliation and establish a political
culture that respects the rule
of law.
“The main idea is to
devolve power to the
grassroot level and
strengthen democracy
in order to prevent
another war”
The new constitution will
also guarantee fundamental
rights and freedoms that assure
human dignity and promote responsible and accountable government, it said.
“The main idea is to devolve
power to the grassroot level and
strengthen democracy in order
to prevent another war,” a ruling party legislator who is close
to the president told Reuters,
asking not to be named.
Some opposition members,
however, have alleged that the
new constitution has been
drafted to please some Western nations and to dilute the
main religion, Buddhism, in Sri
Lanka. The government has rejected such accusations.
Ethnic minority Tamils were
often favoured for higher government positions under British colonial rule. After independence in 1948, many lost
their positions as successive
governments pursued language
and other policies favouring the
majority Sinhalese population.
Tensions erupted into a
fully-fledged armed conflict
in 1983 that only ended when
government forces seized the
last areas controlled by the
separatist Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
“The extremists in the south
and the north have caused the
loss of thousands of young
lives ... We must ensure reconciliation and harmony so that
we will never go back to war. I
believe now, through our past
bitter experiences, we must
prepare ourselves for future
challenges,” President Sirisena
told the parliament.
dia which remained closed since
the 1965 war.
Highlighting the potentiality of the Chittagong seaport,
she said India could use the
port for enhancing bilateral
N
epali bureaucrat Pradip Raj Kandel yesterday clinched the title
of Integrity Idol, a television
talent show-styled initiative that awards honest civil
servants.
The contest, in its second
year, saw over 50,000 people cast their votes via text
message and social media in
a bid to encourage honesty
in the corruption-ridden
Himalayan nation, where
many citizens are forced
to pay bribes for essential
services.
The chief district officer of
Gulmi in mid-eastern Nepal,
Kandel won votes for his people-centric approach to bring
positive changes in the district.
“I feel proud today and feel
that I am representing many
hard-working civil servants of
Nepal,” Kandel said after winning the title, which does not
come with any prizes. “Initiatives such as this inspire us to be
responsible and accountable.”
Pradip Raj Kandel, right, during the awards ceremony in Kathmandu
yesterday.
Kandel has run several successful campaigns in Gulmi
to improve literacy, promote
hygiene and cleanliness and
ensure the efficiency of his
office.
He beat four other finalists — a women rights worker,
a conservation officer, and
two educators — who were
shortlisted after non-profit
group Accountability Lab Ne-
The Sri Lankan police have
arrested a woman legislator of
the ruling United National Party
(UNP) over the abduction of a
34-year-old man in a suburb of
Colombo recently, a media report
said.
Hirunika Premachandra was
arrested after attorney general
Yuwanjana Wanasundera
Wijayathilake on Friday
asked the police to take her
into custody in relation to
an abduction last month in
Dematagoda, said police
spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera.
Premachandra’s security staff
had used her jeep to abduct the
man. Although the six security
personnel were promptly
arrested and later released on
bail, pressure mounted on the
police to arrest the legislator.
The man told the police that he
was taken to Premachandra’s
office to be seen by her after
being abducted.
After a long delay, the police
acted on the advice of the
attorney general to arrest
Premachandra.
The abduction has come as
an embarrassment for the
government which has been
complaining about highhandedness of the previous
Mahinda Rajapakse regime.
Home journey
Bangladeshi devotees leave on an overcrowded train after taking part in Akheri Munajat, or final prayers, at the Biswa Ijtema, or World
Muslim Congregation, at Tongi, some 30km north of Dhaka, yesterday. Muslims joined in prayer on the banks of a river in Bangladesh
as the world’s second largest annual Islamic congregation ended.
Top district bureaucrat
wins ‘Intergrity Idol’
AFP
Kathmandu
trade and commerce.
The Bangladesh PM recalled
the invaluable contribution of
India and its people during the
War of Liberation in 1971 and
expressed gratitude to the then
Indian premier, government and
people, particularly the Tripura
state government and people.
The Tripura minister appreciated Bangladesh’s impressive
success in socioeconomic field
under the leadership of Prime
Minister Hasina.
“Bangladesh achieved unprecedented development in
road connectivity,” he said.
He recalled the visit of Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina to
Tripura in January 2012 and
her address at a rally in front
of nearly 100,000 people in
Agartala.
In this connection, Dey also
mentioned the Bangladesh premier’s announcement of importing 100 megawatt electricity
from Tripura at the rally. “The
supply of that electricity (from
Tripura) would start soon,” he
said.
The Tripura minister also said
the state government is constructing a power plant at Monarchar in Tripura near Comilla
border of Bangladesh.
Lawmaker
held over
abduction
pal launched a nationwide
campaign last April.
As the nominations were
underway, a devastating earthquake hit the country, killing
nearly 9,000 people and leaving
thousands homeless.
“A lot of money has been
directed towards earthquake
response, and we hope to see
officials who have used those
funds correctly to benefit the
quake victims among the next
finalists,” the charity’s Nepal representative Narayan
Adhikari said.
Gyan Mani Nepal, an education official in eastern Panchthar district, was crowned the
first Integrity Idol last year.
“We want to organise this
every year. This initiative aims
to reward honest individuals
and inspire others to join the
civil service,” Adhikari added.
Nepal is ranked 126th out
of 175 countries in anti-graft
watchdog Transparency International’s global corruption
perception index.
Liberia also held the contest
this year, with Jugbeh Tarpleh
Kekula, a government nurse,
taking home the title.
Nepal elected Unicef executive
board member for 2016-18
IANS
Kathmandu
N
epal has been elected a
member of the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) executive board, representing the
Group of Asia-Pacific States for
2016-18, officials said yesterday.
Nepal’s Permanent Representative of to the UN, Durga
Prasad Bhattarai, was also unanimously elected vice-president
to the Bureau of the Executive
Board of Unicef for 2016, representing the Asia-Pacific region,
reports Xinhua news agency.
“With this election, Nepal is
availed yet another global stage
to contribute to the work of
the UN, this time in providing
strategic guidance to its agency
specializing in the children’s
causes,” read a statement issued
by Nepal’s Permanent Mission
to UN in New York.
CALL FOR DIALOGUE:
Voicing deep concern over Nepal’s current humanitarian and
political situation, a top UN official has encouraged the country’s leaders to resolve differences on the new Constitution
through inclusive dialogue and
parliamentary process.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman made this call
for dialogue as he concluded
a two-day visit to Nepal on
Saturday aiming to encourage
maximum flexibility to resolve
the current political situation
in the Himalayan nation, that
also witnessed two powerful
earthquakes last year.
He met with a number of the
country’s political and civil society leaders, including President Bidya Devi Bandari and
Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli.
Nepal has been at the scene of
a violent agitation led by Madhesis, who are largely Indianorigin, for months over the new
Constitution that divides their
ancestral homeland and are demanding more representation in
Parliament. They have also imposed a blockade of key border
trade points with India as part
of their protest that has claimed
over 50 lives.
According to a statement
from his office, Feltman expressed “deep concern about
current developments that
are adversely affecting Nepal’s humanitarian situation,
economic performance and
reconstruction efforts”.
“Commending Nepalis on
their resolve to address these
issues with a spirit of flexibility
and compromise, Feltman encouraged political leaders to
overcome urgently current differences on constitutional arrangements through inclusive
dialogue and parliamentary
process,” the statement said.
He also underscored the importance of rebuilding trust
amongst different groups, including through agreement on
the modalities of the process to
delineate internal borders.
Feltman, on behalf of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,
conveyed the United Nations’
appreciation for Nepal’s unwavering commitment and contribution to the organisation’s
work in its 60 years of membership, citing in particular Nepal’s role in UN peacekeeping
operations and in representing the concerns of landlocked
developing countries.
“In turn, Feltman assured
Nepal of the UN’s unwavering
partnership in its recovery following the devastating earthquakes of 2015 as well as in
addressing broader humanitarian and development needs,” the
statement said.
26
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
COMMENT
Chairman: Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah
Editor-in-Chief : Darwish S Ahmed
Production Editor: C P Ravindran
P.O.Box 2888
Doha, Qatar
editor@gulf-times.com
Telephone 44350478 (news),
44466404 (sport), 44466636 (home delivery)
Fax 44350474
GULF TIMES
A glimpse
of the future
at CES 2016
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) without fail
highlights some products that redefine the way the
world utilises technology. CES 2016 was no different.
Going by the recommendations of tech writer Brad
Reed on www.bgr.com there are products that we need
to take note of.
One of them is the new Wi-Fi standard 802.11ah
which will enable better communication among all
the different devices we have in our homes. It promises
to double the reach of current Wi-Fi radios while also
using even less power. In short, this standard will
be the glue that holds the smart home of the future
together.
The 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, unveiled by General
Motors, generated quite a buzz at CES 2016. The
car can get an estimated 200 miles per charge and
is priced at $30,000 in the US after government
incentives.
LG turned a lot of heads at CES 2016 with the
unveiling of an 18-inch flexible display that the
company says can be rolled up like a newspaper, taking
innovation to a whole new level.
Drones were a big hit at CES this year. And one of the
most impressive came
from manufacturer
Parrot which unveiled
its new Disco drone.
Unlike most drones on
the market, the Disco
is a full fixed-wing aircraft and it can fly at speeds of
up to 50 miles per hour, staying in the air for up to 45
minutes at a time. Parrot says the drone is also able to
intelligently fly itself and avoid crashing into objects
that may be in its path.
The Razer Blade Stealth and Core is a brilliant idea
for a PC gaming rig that can also serve as an everyday
laptop. The easily portable sleek ultrabook turns into a
powerful gaming PC when plugged into the Core dock
that gives all the processing power for gaming.
This year at CES, a Chinese company called EHang
unveiled the first aerial drone that is large enough
for you to ride inside. The EHang 184 is loaded
with sensors that are designed to help it avoid any
potential dangers while in the air and the device can be
controlled manually from inside using a simple tablet
interface.
Samsung at CES 2016 unveiled its new flagship
SUHD TV line that will begin rolling out later this year
and will be available in sizes ranging from 49 inches
to 88 inches. What makes these TVs really distinctive
is their curved bezel-free displays that will offer 4K
resolution.
Yet another offering that turned heads was Samsung
Portable SSD T3, offering up to 2TB of storage encased
in a device the size of one’s palm and that weighs less
than two ounces. Also warranting a special mention
is the new LG Signature OLED TV that measures in at
just 2.5mm.
Mentioned above are some of the products and
technologies that could not even be imagined a few
years ago. But, then that is how technology evolves. It
is not a long wait until CES 2017, after all.
Drones were a
big hit at CES this
year
To Advertise
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2014 Gulf Times. All rights reserved
The key differences between
Qatar Labour Law and QFC
Employment Regulations
The Qatar Financial Centre
is an exempt entity with its
own unique employment
regulatory regime
By Emma Higham and
Yasser Shabbir
Doha
T
he terms of employment of
the majority of employees
currently working in Qatar
are governed by Law No 14
of 2004 (Labour Law) except those
individuals and entities which are
expressly excluded, including the
employees of the Qatar government
and Qatar Petroleum amongst others.
These employees are often subject
to employment laws and regulations
which are materially different than
those set out in the Labour Law, e.g.
they receive additional allowances,
longer holidays and may be subject to
different termination provisions.
Whilst the excluded employees are
aware of which regulations govern
their employment there would appear
to be a general misconception in Qatar
as to how the Labour Law exclusions
are applied, i.e. to which entities
and employees, which often leads
to questions being raised as to why
one employee working for one entity
receives one benefit when another
working for another entity does not.
This article will now try to address
some of the questions which are often
raised in relation to the employment
provisions of the Qatar Financial
Centre (QFC) in the context of those
of the Labour Law. The QFC is an
exempt entity with its own unique
employment regulatory regime.
The QFC employment provisions
are set out in the QFC Employment
Regulations No 10 of 2006 (QFC
Employment Regulations) and
apply to the employees of the Qatar
Financial Centre Authority and the
employees of its licensed entities
and institutions in addition to the
employees of the Qatar Financial
Centre Regulatory Authority, the
Civil and Commercial Court and the
Regulatory Tribunal.
This article initially considers the
key differences and then provides
further details in relation to additional
matters of interest.
KEY DIFFERENCES
Minimum requirements of an
employment contract
Labour Law: a written employment
contract, attested by the Labour
Department of the Ministry of Labour
and Social Affairs, should be executed
for each employee. The employment
contract must comprise of three
copies with one copy delivered to
each of the parties and the third
copy to be deposited with the Labour
Department.
The employment contract must
specify terms including, the name
of the employer and place of work,
details regarding the employee (name,
nationality, profession, residence and
proof of identification), the nature and
type of the work, the employee’s start
date, the period of the contract and
the agreed salary information.
Notwithstanding the requirement for
an employment contract, the Labour
Law states that where an employment
contract does not exist an employee
can evidence his employment term by
whatever means, e.g. payslips.
QFC Employment Regulations:
an employment contract under
the QFC Employment Regulations
should contain a broader scope of
terms including, the name of the
employer and employee, the date
of commencement of employment,
the employee’s salary or method of
calculation of salary, job title, whether
the employment is for a specified or
unlimited duration, the place of work,
terms and conditions relating to hours
of work, annual leave and sick leave,
reference to disciplinary rules and/or
grievance procedures.
An employment contract is not
subject to the approval of the QFC or
any associated body.
Practical issues on termination
Labour Law: an employer is under
no obligation to issue an employee
with a no objection certificate
(“NOC”) in the State. If an employer
refuses to issue an employee with
a NOC, the employer is obliged to
repatriate the employee to his/her
country of domicile with 14 days of
termination.
QFC Employment Regulations: the
QFC Employment Code issued in
February 2010, also applicable to all
QFC employees, includes the obligation
for the employers to permit their
employees, whether sponsored or not,
to transfer to another employer in the
State, whether in the QFC or not.
This includes providing the
employees with all documentation
required under State or QFC
requirements, including all NOC
letters and consents. There is no
corresponding obligation in the QFC
to repatriate an employee. If the
employee decides to leave Qatar, he/
she will be responsible for their own
repatriation.
End-of-service benefit
Labour Law: subject to the
completion of one year’s continuous
service with the employer, each
employee is entitled upon termination,
to an end of service gratuity payment
which is calculated on the basis of
an employee’s final basic wage. The
method of calculation is three weeks of
the employee’s final basic wage for every
completed year of service. Fractions of
service, i.e. parts of years, are to be paid
to the employee pro-rata.
QFC Employment Regulations: there
is no corresponding obligation in the
QFC to provide any form of end of
service gratuity, the provision of any
such payment would be a contractual
arrangement between the parties.
Payment of salary
Labour Law: all salary payments for
employees must be processed through
the Wages Protection System (WPS).
The effect of WPS is that all salary
payments must now be transferred
electronically directly from an
employer’s local Qatari bank account
into a Qatari account in the name of
the employee. The salary payment
must be made in Qatari Riyals.
QFC Employment Regulations:
there is no corresponding obligation
to comply with WPS in the QFC.
Salary and other payments due to
the employee should be paid in the
currency stated in the employment
contract or any currency agreed
between the employer and employee.
FURTHER DIFFERENCES
Probationary period
Labour Law: an employer can
subject the employee to a single
probation period of not more than
six months. During this period,
the employer may terminate
the employment contract if it is
determined that the employee is
incapable of carrying out the work by
giving three days’ written notice.
QFC Employment Regulations:
again a single probation period of not
more than six months is permitted.
An employee shall not be subjected to
more than one probation period by the
same employer except for cause; there
is no definition of cause within the
QFC Employment Regulations.
During the probation period, if the
employee is not capable of carrying
out the work, the employer can
terminate the employment contract by
giving two weeks’ written notice.
Both the Labour Law and the QFC
Employment Regulations remain
silent on the ability of an employee to
terminate the employment contract
during the probationary period; such a
right would be contractual.
Restrictive covenants
Both the Labour Law and the QFC
Employment Regulations permit the
inclusion of restrictive covenants
in the employment contract. In
order for the restrictions to be valid,
they must be reasonable, must not
constitute an unreasonable restraint
of trade and must be appropriate to
the circumstances of the employee’s
employment with the employer. In
any event, under the Labour Law, the
period of restriction cannot be longer
than two years.
Termination with notice
Labour Law: if the term of the
employment contract is unlimited,
each party may terminate it, once
probation has been successfully
completed, without giving reasons.
The notice period shall be not less
than one month if the period of service
is five years or less. If the period of
service exceeds five years, the period
of service shall be two months.
QFC Employment Regulations:
employment may be terminated by
each party for any lawful reason at
any time. The notice periods shall be
one month if the period of service is
less than five years and three months
if the length of service is more than
five years. Interestingly, the QFC
Employment Regulations permit the
parties to waive the right to notice.
Termination without notice
Labour Law: prescribes a list of
10 instances for which an employer
may dismiss an employee for gross
misconduct without notice and
without the payment of end-ofservice gratuity.
QFC Employment Regulations:
prescribes a list of 11 instances under
which an employer may terminate an
employee’s contract of employment
without notice.
In both instances, given termination
is without notice, it is important for
the employer to be certain that the
employee’s actions fall within one of
those instances.
Working hours
Labour Law: provides for a
maximum working week of 48 hours,
eight hours a day, with Friday being
the weekly day of rest. In Ramadan,
this is reduced to a maximum of six
hours per day and is applicable to both
fasting and non-fasting employees.
The Labour Law also details how
overtime should be paid.
QFC Employment Regulations: also
provide for a maximum working week
of 48 hours. In Ramadan, an employee
who is observing the fast shall not be
required to work in excess of six hours
per day. There is no provision for the
calculation of overtime in the QFC
Employment Regulations.
Sick leave
Labour Law: an employee is entitled
to a period of 12 weeks of sick leave
for every year of service. The sick
leave shall not be granted until the
completion of at least three months
service and is subject also to the
production of a medical certificate
from a physician approved by the
employer. The employee should
receive full pay for the first two weeks
of the sickness absence; half pay for
the next four weeks with the final six
weeks being unpaid.
An employer is entitled to terminate
an employee after the 12th week of
sickness absence if it has been proved
by a report issued by a competent
physician that the employee is unable
to resume work.
QFC Employment Regulations:
the maximum annual sick leave
entitlement without a medical opinion
certifying an appropriate medical
condition is 30 days and up to 90 days
with such certified medical opinion.
If an employee takes an aggregate of
90 days in any 12-month period, the
employer may terminate the employee
immediately with written notice.
Maternity leave
Labour Law: a female employee who
has been employed by an employer
for a complete year shall be entitled
to maternity leave with full pay for
a period of 50 days. Such maternity
leave shall include the period before
and after the delivery provided that
the period following the delivery shall
not be less than 35 days.
QFC Employment Regulations:
a female employee who has been
employed for a complete year
preceding the eighth week before the
expected week of childbirth is entitled
to be paid maternity leave for a period
of three months. Such paid maternity
leave shall include the period before
and after the delivery.
Note: Qatari laws (saved for those
issued by the Qatar Financial Centre to
regulate internal business) are issued
in Arabic and there are no official
translations, therefore for the purposes
of drafting this article we have used our
own translations and interpreted the
same in the context of Qatari regulations
and current market practice.
zIf you would like any further
information and or guidance, please
contact Emma Higham
(emma.higham@clydeco.com)
or Yasser Shabbir
(yasser.shabbir@clydeco.com)
Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
27
COMMENT
A global city with global values
If Hong Kong were an
animal, it’d definitely be a
night owl
By James Williams
CNN
H
ong Kong. It’s a frenetic
mix of sky-high views,
even higher prices and
what is arguably the most
breathtaking cityscape on Earth. This
month’s episode of CNN’s new travel
series In 24 Hours explores the most
exclusive and elusive experiences the
city has to offer.
The city with its name translating
to “fragrant harbour” is a swirling
mix, where old China mingles with
old England, and the resulting brew
collides head on with new China. It’s
been over 18 years since the British
handover – and Hong Kong is seen
by many of its current inhabitants as
having a somewhat uncertain future.
With many locals unsure of not only
where the island is heading politically,
but also culturally and socially, the
real question is: where does it stand
between East and West?
Politics aside, nowhere is the city’s
struggle to discover its identity better
demonstrated than in the changing
nature of its favourite pastime:
exploring the city after dark. If Hong
Kong were an animal, it’d definitely be
a night owl.
For me, the evening begins with
the cultural: a visit to the Hong Kong
Chinese Orchestra. Yet even here,
change is sweeping through.
Its 85 members fuse traditional
Chinese instruments like the stringed
Jinghu, with some of their own
creations. Like the “Eco-gehu”, which
looks like a rather odd bass guitar
and drum mix. They meld the old
and the new together, and while still
playing the Chinese classics, have
Hong Kong’s skyline gleams from the top of Victoria Peak, a popular tourist destination. Hong Kong has an identity that is distinctly its own. Chaotic and cosmopolitan,
historic and still history-making, it’s charting its own path.
recognised that the future lies in more
contemporary music.
As conductor Chew Hee-chiat
explains: “We base a lot of our music
on the traditional repertoire, and we
have to be good at it too because you
can’t let this route go. Yet at the same
time we must broaden our repertoire
and our skills to fit with society’s
progress. It should be an orchestra for
the whole world.”
From entrepreneurs to the upwardly
mobile, bar staff to students, it’s the
basis of the message I heard over
and over again. Think of it as the
millennial’s message. This is a global
city, with global values – and they
don’t want that to change.
And while Hong Kong may now be
Chinese land – many here consider it a
country unto herself.
Someone who doesn’t share in
any pessimism, is quintessential
Hong Kong “It girl” Lindsay Jang.
Entrepreneur, restaurateur and tattoo
aficionado, she runs one of the most
achingly hip spots on the island –
Yardbird.
It’s been difficult to get a table here
since it opened in 2011, and not much
has changed since. It offers dishes like
“KFC”, Korean fried cauliflower.
To Lindsay, Hong Kong is in safe
hands. “When the British gave Hong
Kong back to China, they didn’t know
what was going to happen, and then
they realised that Hong Kong is fine.
It’s safe. It’s a Special Administrative
Region.”
The city’s next generation,
Cantonese-speaking yet Western
educated millennials, have studied
abroad and now returned home
with a heightened expectation for
their night time exploits. “They are
demanding a new level, places that
remind them of where they hung out
when they went to school in New
York, Boston, LA or London,” claims
Jang.
A desire, which has blended well
with the city’s long history of private
members clubs, a carryover from the
days of British colonial rule. Some
of the most famous are of course the
Hong Kong Club and the Foreign
Correspondents’ Club, but today, a
new generation of upstarts has begun.
Such as Kee Club – creating old world
opulence, for new media creatives.
Think of it as a harbour side Soho
House.
Perhaps I’ve been asking the wrong
question all along. Hong Kong’s future
is neither truly with China or Britain,
old or new: it’s both and yet at the
same time, neither.
Hong Kong has an identity that
is distinctly its own. Chaotic and
cosmopolitan, historic and still
history-making, it’s charting its own
path.
“There’s so much passion in
Hong Kong, with so many different
people bringing so much to the
table. Hong Kong is one of – if not
the most – international city in
the world,” states Jang’s friend,
Raphael Holzer matter-of-factly.
Cheers to that!
zJames Williams is host of In 24
Hours on CNN International
Weather report
Letters
Three-day forecast
TODAY
Concern over
tribunal verdicts
Dear Sir,
Bangladesh’s war crime tribunal
has upheld the death sentence of
Jamaat-e-Islami leader Motiur
Rahman. Several Jamaat leaders are
on death row after the tribunal’s
formation. Amnesty International
and human rights organisations
have shown serious concern over the
establishment of the tribunal and its
harsh decisions.
Despite the growing tension
between the government and
opposition, Sheikh Hasina’s
government is trying very little to
calm the situation. The sentence of
the Jamaat leader and the house arrest
of opposition leader Khaleda Zia have
fuelled anger. Public protests and
general strikes are becoming a daily
routine in the country.
Opposition parties claim that the
government is trying to divert peoples’
attention from real issues. Only last
year more than 1,000 people lost their
lives when a garment factory collapsed
during working hours. In a separate
incident, 10 people lost their lives due
to fire in another garment factory. The
European Union has expressed serious
concern over poor safety standards in
Bangladesh’s textile industry which
is the backbone of the country’s
economy. The government should
focus its attention on issues like these
instead of frittering away its energy on
less important matters.
Khawaja Umer Farooq
kufarooq2@gmail.com
Learning to
cope with change
Dear Sir,
The article “Tips for adapting to
change” (Gulf Times, January 10) was
highly instructive. Change is part of
our existence. Nothing is permanent
in the world. But changes are often
met with resistance. Sometimes,
facing them causes stress.
Some people even quit their jobs
if they are posted to new places and
some students leave their new schools
or colleges because of not being able
to adapt to change. Only those who are
able to cope with changes can come
up in life.
Life is to expect the unexpected.
Change is unavoidable in everyone’s life.
The sooner we realise that, the better.
C Robinson
robin_son_ch@yahoo.co.in
End of
an era
Dear Sir,
An era comes to an end with the
death of Jammu and Kashmir Chief
Minister Mufti Mohamed Sayeed. He
was a great statesman who strove for
conciliation in the conflict-torn state.
In his political journey of several
decades he won many friends and
admirers. His death leaves behind a
huge void.
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Live issues
Men should discuss their emotions
By Judi Light Hopson, Emma H
Hopson and Ted Hagen
Tribune News Service
D
o you discourage your sevenyear-old son from crying
when he’s hurt? Or, do you
ignore the emotions of your
teenage son who’s agonising over a
breakup with a friend?
It can be tempting to tell any
male, whether young or old,
that emotional outbursts are
unacceptable.
Throughout the ages, men are told
to toughen up and put a lid on their
pain.
The bad part of telling men and boys
to stop feeling their true emotions is
that they cannot access appropriate
emotions when they need to.
“I find that I can feel extreme anger,
and sometimes, I feel like bawling like
a baby,” says a 50-year-old man we’ll
call Brandon. “My dad lectured me on
toughness anytime I got hurt as a little
boy. I had to stuff my feelings into a
little box, and every time I need to
feeling something now, I feel sick and
out of control.”
“The real question is whether men
can own their feelings and still be
men,” says a psychologist we’ll call
William. “As a society, we worry that
our sons may feel too much pain, too
much fear. Then, when they need to
protect the family or march into battle,
they’ll freeze.”
William says he believes nothing
could be further from the truth.
“I know that having a full range
of emotions is necessary to be
mentally healthy,” he insists.
“Emotions help us navigate with
more clarity and calmness, if we
learn how to feel the hurt and react
appropriately.”
One reason Williams believes he
is right about this involves years
of counselling males, include male
veterans, from all walks of life.
“Pushing your emotions away
doesn’t mean they go away,” says
William. “Any man I’ve ever worked
with can access pain from 60 years
ago. All of us remember a sibling
shoving us down or a schoolmate
hurling a rock.”
A father we know, whom we’ll call
Mike, says he always allowed his three
sons to discuss feelings, feel anger at
their siblings, cry when they were hurt
and talk about how badly an incident
with a teacher or classmate made them
feel. Mike says his sons are now strong
men physically and emotionally,
thoughtful toward others, and very
successful in their careers.
“All my sons are brave when other
people are getting picked on, and all
three have served in the military,” says
Mike. “When they were kids, I kissed
their hurt knees and agonised with
them when they fell off their bikes.
And, I honestly can say they identify
pretty well with their wives’ feelings,
too.”
Mike says one of his sons had to
confront a domestic violence situation
recently. “My son pulled a man off
his wife in the middle of a physical
altercation,” Mike explains. “But,
when it was over, my son talked to the
man and helped him sort his feelings
out. My son even helped this guy get
into an anger management class.”
Male rage and anger, which are often
acted out in society, are likely the
culmination of pent-up emotions that
intensified over time. If we take a step
back and encourage males to cry, vent,
and share feelings all along the road
of life, it’s likely we’ll diffuse some of
this rage.
zJudi Light Hopson is the executive
director of the stress management
website USA Wellness Cafe at
www.usawellnesscafe.com. Emma
Hopson is an author and a nurse
educator. Ted Hagen is a family
psychologist
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Gulf Times
Monday, January 11, 2016
QATAR
An interior view of the DECC, venue for Project Qatar 2016.
Project Qatar expo set to
explore industry trends
P
roject Qatar 2016, the 13th
International
Construction Technology & Building
Materials Exhibition, will be held
under the patronage of HE the
Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser
bin Khalifa al-Thani, at the Doha
Exhibition & Convention Centre
(DECC) from May 9-12 .
“In order to ensure the most
favourable exhibition experience and accommodating the
exponentially growing needs of
the event for both visitors and
exhibitors, the upcoming edition of Project Qatar has been
moved to the DECC, one of the
largest and most important
regional and international exhibition locations in the Gulf
region,” IFP Qatar’s general
manager George Ayache said
yesterday.
“Moving to the DECC, which
offers a pillar-free venue, a
modular wall system, hightech meeting and conference
rooms, a VIP hosting suite and
an underground parking for
3,000 cars, represents a real
landmark for this year’s edition.
“Located in the lively West
Bay area, the epicentre of Qatar’s business district in the
capital of the country, the new
venue will definitely guarantee
more visitors, better amenities
and less road traffic,” Ayache
explained.
In its 13th edition, Project
Qatar is now a UFI approved
event, regarded as a solid indicator of a show’s popularity,
service quality and level of internationalism. Project Qatar is
the first construction industry
exhibition in the country to be
associated with UFI.
The organisers had assigned
global auditing major KPMG, to
audit and certify the key exhibition figures for Project Qatar.
“We initiated the process of
bringing total transparency in
our operations with the independent audit. The ‘UFI approved’ label will provide an
assurance to Project Qatar exhibitors and visitors who will
benefit from a professionally
planned and managed event,”
Ayache said.
The 13th International Construction Technology & Building Materials Exhibition will
be held concurrently with Qa-
tar Stone Tech 2016, the fifth
International Stone and Stone
Technology Show, Heavy Max
2016, the 13th International
Exhibition for Heavy Machinery, in addition to three new
events, Qatar Smart Technologies 2016, the first international innovative smart construction solutions show, Qatar
Sports Infrastructure 2016, the
first international exhibition
for Sports Infrastructure, and
Qatar Transport & Logistics,
the first international transport & logistics exhibition.
In collaboration with the Qa-
Project Qatar 2015 attracted 32,167 professional visitors, who networked
with 1,130 exhibitors from 40 countries.
tar Chamber, Project Qatar will
also organise specialised construction related workshops,
offering attendees a comprehensive education programme
with classes emphasising industry issues and trends, management and applied technology, among others.
Project Qatar 2015, the 12th
International
Construction
Technology & Building Materials Exhibition, had attracted
32,167 professional visitors, who
networked with 1,130 exhibitors
from 40 countries, occupying
41,500sqm of exhibition space.
“At Project Qatar 2016, exhibitors and visitors alike will
witness the immense unveiling of all the newest equipment,
technology and product breakthroughs in construction under
one, unified experience. From
ground-breaking innovations to
earth-moving machinery, it is
all assembled in one place to help
industry professionals obtain
everything they need under one
roof,” the official added.
Cultural festival
kicks off at Katara
K
Officials of Tawar Mall, Spar and Al Siddiqi Holding at the signing ceremony. PICTURE: Shemeer Rasheed
Dutch hypermarket among top
brands to open at Tawar Mall
By Joseph Varghese
Staff Reporter
D
utch hypermarket Spar
and a premium family
entertainment centre Kaboom of Al Siddiqi Holding, will
be part of the Tawar Mall which
is expected to be operational by
the last quarter of this year.
Both these organisations are
making their maiden entry to the
Qatari market.
Commercial lease agreement
to this effect was signed yesterday by the officials of the organisations in Doha yesterday. Tawar
Mall owner Jassim Tawar alKuwari, general manager Pedro
Ribeiro, Spar’s international
retail and development direc-
tor David Michael Moore, and Al
Siddiqi Holding CEO Aly Delawar were present at the event.
Spar has been described as a
highly regarded global organisation, with outstanding service
in fresh food and the company
aims to provide its customers
with high quality products at
good value.
Kaboom is a new concept
family entertainment centre
from Al Siddiqi Holding that
aims to provide an enticing atmosphere, with fun, educational
and socially interactive attraction elements.
Al-Kuwari said: “Retail developers are always competing
to build the biggest mall, but we
take a different view of what’s
important to consumers. Deliv-
ering quality and choice is much
more valuable than measuring
square feet.”
“Consumer choice has grown
steadily in Qatar,” noted Ribeiro,
“but we have taken the creation
of a completely new offering as
our guiding principle throughout the planning process. Today’s announcement is the first
of many as we pursue our strategy to create a truly unique shopping destination.”
Ribeiro explained that the demand for retail units at the mall
has gone up. “ We are now offering more than 91,000sq m of
retail space across 312 units on
four floors and two basements.
Earlier, we had plans only for
about 290 units. With a focus on
consumer choice and commu-
nity engagement, Tawar Mall is
set to provide a unique customer
experience within Qatar’s retail
sector,” he noted.
Spar official Moore said: “We
have 2,500 stores in 41 countries, including Oman and the
UAE. As for Qatar, we have been
looking for suitable retail space
as well as the right partner and
that has been realised now. We
expect to expand in the country
once we are operational.”
“The Kaboom entertainment
centre with an area of 4,302sqm,
will feature video games, theme
park rides, a chocolate factory
as well as a karaoke booth with a
20,000-song library. There will
also be educational activities using Lego as well as a science lab
at the centre,” added Delawar.
atara, the Cultural Village Foundation, in
collaboration with the
United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) Doha Office,
inaugurated yesterday the cultural diversity festival at Katara
Drama theatre.
The festival features participation of over 20 countries
with their artistes showcasing
their traditions and heritage.
The opening ceremony featured a folklore performance
by a Qatari band. A band from
Philippines will perform today
at Katara esplanade, in front of
the amphitheatre.
The event kicked off in the
presence of Katara general
manager Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim
al-Sulaiti, Ministry of Education and Higher Education undersecretary Rabia Mohamed
al-Kaabi, Unesco Doha Office
director Anna Paolini and International Organisation of
Folk Art vice president Ali Abdullah Khalifa. Representatives
of diplomatic missions in Doha
were also present during the
opening ceremony of the diversity festival.
In his opening speech, Dr
al-Sulaiti expressed pride in
the fact that Katara is a prom-
The festival will feature performances by troupes from 20 countries.
inent cultural edifice in the
Middle East, by establishing
an international cultural vision vividly displayed through
hosting grand cultural events
and festivals from all over the
world.
“Katara has always been
distinguished for organising
local traditional events that
sought to revive the original
Qatari heritage. We are looking forward to implement
more international cultural
partnerships and mainly with
Unesco.” Al-Kaabi said the
festival that will continue for
six months, will definitely
contribute to fostering cultural, human interaction and
A local folk troupe performing at the opening ceremony.
dialogue. Paolini described
the festival as a great opportunity to promote cultural diversity. “I am really delighted
to see this edition of the festival here in Qatar. On behalf of
Unesco, I would like to extend
gratitude to Katara for their
contribution to the organisation and preparations for the
festival.”
She noted that Unesco is
committed to protect tangible
cultural heritage, which is a
treasure inherited from the ancestors. The festival will have the
participation of countries such
as Argentina, Kenya, Turkey,
Spain, Jordan, India, Bahrain,
Serbia, Singapore, and Jordan.