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DOW JONES
THURSDAY Vol. XXXVII No. 10023
March 10, 2016
Jumada II 1, 1437 AH
www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals
Deputy Emir meets Chubu chief
Qatar to
get tough
on litter
In brief
AMERICA | Rights
Trump’s rhetoric hurts
US global ‘standing’
Comments by Republican
frontrunner Donald Trump in
support of waterboarding and the
torture of terror suspects have
damaged the US’ global standing,
a UN expert said yesterday. Juan
Mendez, the UN special rapporteur
on torture, made the comments
a day after briefing the UN rights
council in Geneva. “I think the...
standing of the US as a law-abiding
nation and as an example to other
states to fight crime and terrorism
within the strictures of the rule of
law is very seriously damaged by
this kind of rhetoric,” Mendez said.
T
Page 15
EUROPE | Crisis
HH the Deputy Emir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani met at the Emiri Diwan office yesterday with the President
of Japan’s Chubu Electric Power Company, Akihisa Mizuno, and his accompanying delegation. During the meeting,
they reviewed areas of co-operation and prospects of developing them.
Balkan nations slam
shut migrant route
Migrants hoping to trek from
Greece towards northern Europe
found their path blocked yesterday
after a string of western Balkan
nations slammed shut their
borders, exacerbating a dire
humanitarian situation on the
Macedonian border. Slovenia
and Croatia, two of the countries
along the route used by hundreds
of thousands of people in recent
months, barred entry to transiting
migrants from midnight. Serbia
indicated it would follow suit. Page 20
SCIENCE | Board game
Computer draws first
blood in Go challenge
A Google-developed
supercomputer stunned South
Korean Go grandmaster Lee Se-Dol
by taking the first game of a fivematch showdown between man
and machine in Seoul yesterday.
After about 3-1/2 hours of play, Lee,
one of the greatest players of the
ancient board game in the modern
era, resigned when it became clear
the AlphaGo computer had taken
an unassailable lead. “I was shocked
by the result,” Lee acknowledged.
EAST ASIA | Military
North Korea boasts
miniature N-warhead
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un
said his country has successfully
miniaturised a thermo-nuclear
warhead, as Pyongyang yesterday
continued to talk up its nuclear
strike capabilities amid rising
military tensions on the Korean
peninsula. Page 17
Saudi could ‘turn page
if Iran changes policies’
AFP/QNA
Riyadh
S
audi Arabia and other Gulf
states could turn a page and
build strong relations with Iran
if it respects them and stops “meddling” in their affairs, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said yesterday.
“If Iran changes its way and its policies, nothing would prevent turning
a page and building the best relationship based on good neighbourliness,
with no meddling in the affairs of
others,” he told reporters in Riyadh.
“There is no need for mediation”
in such a case, said Jubeir, whose
country severed all links with the
Islamic republic in January after
crowds attacked the kingdom’s diplomatic missions in Iran.
Jubeir said relations with Tehran
had deteriorated “due to the sectarian policies” followed by Iran and “its
support for terrorism and implanting of terrorist cells in the countries
of the region”.
“Iran is a neighbouring Muslim
country that has a great civilisation
and a friendly people, but the policies followed that the revolution of
(Ayatollah) Khomeini have been aggressive,” he said.
Jubeir was speaking after a meeting for Gulf foreign ministers and
Emir to attend North
Thunder Exercise
HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad al-Thani will leave for the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia this morning to attend the closing manoeuvre
of Raad al-Shamal’ (North Thunder)
Exercise, and the military parade,
which will be held at the King Khalid
Military City, Hafr Al Batin , northern
region of Saudi Arabia.
their counterparts from Jordan and
Morocco.
Qatar’s Foreign Minister HE
Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman
al-Thani took part in the meeting.
In a joint statement, ministers
meeting in Riyadh urged Iran to respect the landmark nuclear deal it
reached with world powers, including curbs on ballistic missiles, as Tehran defiantly fired two more missiles yesterday.
The ministers “stressed the importance of implementing the (UN)
Security Council Resolution 2231
concerning the nuclear deal, including what concerns ballistic missiles
and other weapons,” it said.
US Vice President Joe Biden said
yesterday that the US would take action against Iran if the missile tests
were confirmed.
Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf nations also accuse Iran of supporting
Shia rebels in Yemen, as well as attempting to destabilise their own
regimes.
They also support rebels in Syria’s five-year-old war while Tehran
openly backs the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Gulf nations had recently classified Iran-backed Lebanon’s Shia
Hezbollah movement, classifying
the militia as a terrorist group.
Saudi Arabia recently blocked
$3bn in military aid to Lebanon and
urged its citizens to leave the country.
Jubeir said Lebanon is now run by
Hezbollah.
“What is disturbing in the Lebanon question is that a militia that is
classified as terrorist controls decision-making in Lebanon,” he said.
The ministers stressed the need to
deal firmly with the dangerous phenomenon of terrorism and terrorist
movements, praising the efforts of
their countries in this regard at all
international and regional levels.
They also praised Saudi Arabia’s
initiative to form an Islamic military
alliance to fight terrorism and extremism, stressing the importance
of this alliance to strengthen international efforts to combat terrorism.
Page 11
Rains disrupt traffic movement
By Ramesh Mathew
Staff Reporter
R
ains that lashed Qatar yesterday for several hours left
several roads waterlogged
and temporarily slowed down infrastructural development works in
different locations, especially those
in Doha and its neighbourhoods.
Visibility was substantially low
across the city mostly throughout
the day. Visits to some of the affected areas in the morning found severe
waterlogging along the streets, including some of the roads built in recent years. Among those roads badly
affected by the downpour were those
in the Industrial Area, where even
a short spell of rain disrupts traffic
movement owing to the bad conditions of most of the streets.
As feared by some of the residents and frequent commuters to
A number of tankers were deployed in Ain Khalid and surrounding areas to
pump out water from some of the waterlogged streets. PICTURE: Jayan Orma
the Industrial Area the other day,
the rains compounded their woes
yesterday by severely curtailing the
movement of heavy vehicles, especially trailers and other large goods
and equipment movers.
There was massive flooding of
over 100m in front of Barwa City in
Mesaimeer on the road towards the
Industrial Area. Smaller vehicles
were seen inching through the inundated stretch which serves as a vital
link between Wukair and Industrial
Area. At the entrance of the Barwa
City too there was extensive waterlogging.
The impact of rain was severer in
Ain Khalid and its surroundings. A
number of tankers were deployed
in the area to pump out water from
the streets which experienced severe
flooding.
Though the impact of the rain
in the city locations was minimal
compared to those witnessed in late
November last year, there were a few
low-lying areas which experienced
waterlogging yesterday. Doha Jadeed
was one of them.
There were also reports of infrastructural development works in
southern parts being affected in the
wake of rains. However, most of such
works resumed in the afternoon, it is
learnt. Page 31
he Cabinet yesterday gave its nod
to a draft law on public hygiene
that prohibits littering on roads
and in other places.
The draft law will replace Law No. 8 of
1974 on public hygiene as part of efforts
undertaken to keep legislation updated,
the official Qatar News Agency reported.
The draft law prohibits “dumping,
abandonment and waste disposal in public places, squares, roads, streets, lanes,
alleys, pavements, courtyards, public
gardens and parks, beaches, land space,
rooftops, walls, balconies, skylights, corridors and yards, facades of houses and
buildings and their car parks and other
places, whether public or private”, according to the report.
It also prohibits leaving or dumping
waste in areas not allocated by the municipality concerned, as well as leaving
animals or birds in places not licensed to
breed them.
The competent municipality undertakes the implementation of matters related to public hygiene in all its forms,
including waste collection, transfer, discharge, disposal and recycling. The municipality may also let a contractor carry
out all or some of these operations in accordance with the provisions of the law.
The contractor will be responsible for
the garbage collectors.
After the weekly Cabinet meeting presided over by HE the Prime Minister and
Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin
Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani at Emiri Diwan yesterday, HE the Deputy Prime
Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid
al-Mahmoud said the Cabinet also approved the establishment of a technical
committee to involve the private sector in
economic development projects.
It also reviewed the Advisory Council’s
recommendations on the measures involved in licence issuance for different facilities by the General Directorate of Civil
Defence and decided to refer them to the
competent authorities for further study.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet reviewed a
memorandum by HE the Minister of Finance on a study’s results regarding Qatar
and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and a memorandum by HE the Minister of Administrative Development, Labour and Social
Affairs on the outcome of the fourth session of the Dubai Government Summit
- on foreseeing future governments - in
February and took the appropriate decision.
4
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
QATAR
Ashghal now PMI’s registered education provider
T
he Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has
obtained accreditation from the Project
Management Institute (PMI), which is one
of the largest international project management
institutions, as a Registered Education Provider
(REP), with effect from January 1, 2016, according
to a statement from the works authority.
Institutions which have the REP accreditation
from the Project Management Institute (PMI) can
provide educational services for those preparing
to work as project managers.
They would also qualify to obtain certificates
for Project Management Professional (PMP) and
Programme Management Professional (PgMP),
in addition to other certificates. These institutions have met the strict quality standards of the
Project Management Institute (PMI) to design the
content of the training courses, trainer qualifications, and designing teaching and training method based on the PMI’s standards.
Human resources manager in Ashghal, Saif Ali
A map of the diversion
Three-month
diversion on
Aziziya Street
A
temporary diversion will be in place on both
eastbound lanes of Al Aziziya Street for a distance of approximately 300 metres from Salwa
Road to Ibn Aamir Street (as shown in the attached
map).
The diversion will start tomorrow (March 11) and
will last three months.
During the period, traffic on the closed section of
Al Aziziya Street will be diverted to the opposite side
of the street (westbound lanes), which was divided to
contain one lane in each direction.
Parking on either sides of Al Aziziya Street in the vicinity of the construction works will be limited while
access to Leslaimi Street will be maintained.
This diversion is required to initiate the road widening and reconstruction works, as part of the roads and
infrastructure project in Aziziya East (Phase 4).
Ashghal will install road signs to advise motorists of
the diversion.
al-Kaabi, said Ashghal is the only government entity in Qatar that has obtained this
accreditation from the Project Management
Institute (PMI) as a REP which gives the employees of the authority the opportunity to
participate in the project management programmes accredited by PMI, and also receive
high-level training in several cognitive fields
related to project management, in addition to
obtaining accreditation for Project Management Professional.
By achieving this accreditation, training
and development section in the human resources department will be able to reduce the
training cost by holding training courses and
workshops in the field of project management.
Training hours attended by the employee
can be recorded on the Project Management
Institute’s website for employees interested
in performing the exam for Project Management Professional (PMP).
6
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
QATAR
The minister with the Canadian official.
Canadian official meets
Minister of Public Health
H
E Dr Hanan Mohamed alKuwari, Minister of Public
Health, met with Dr Andrew
Padmos, CEO, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, during
the celebratory event to launch Qatar’s
National Continuing Medical Educa-
tion/Continuing Professional Development (CME/CPD) programme.
HE Dr al-Kuwari and Dr Padmos
discussed enhancing postgraduate
education and training for healthcare
professionals to raise and maintain
competency levels. They discussed
collaborations to enhance the national
standard for the development and delivery of accredited continuing professional development (CPD) activities
that will help deliver greater excellence
in healthcare to patients and their
families.
Qatar CPD programme to be discussed
at global conference in San Diego
By Joseph Varghese
Staff Reporter
T
he National Continuing Medical
Education/Continuing Professional Development (CME/CPD)
programme launched by Qatar Council
for Healthcare Practitioners (QCHP)
will be a topic of discussion in the upcoming World CPD Congress, said a
senior Canadian official.
Speaking at the launch of the CME/
CPD programme held at Sheraton Doha
on Monday, Dr Craig Campbell, direc-
tor, Continuing Professional Development Office of Specialty Education,
Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Canada, said: “In the World CPD
Congress to be held in San Diego next
week, the Qatar CPD programme will
be discussed in a workshop. Under the
title, ‘CPD Accreditation without Borders’ the workshop will focus on the
salient features of the programme. The
contributions of Qatari CPD programme
evaluation model will surge in several
publications to make important contributions in CPD programmes in future.”
Dr Campbell also stated that Dr Sa-
mar Aboulsoud, acting CEO, QCHP and
chair of Qatar CPD Accreditation Committee will be a member of the international CPD accreditation board.
The official highlighted that the
CME/CPD programme is a transformative change in healthcare in Qatar. He
explained: “Pursuing transformative change is always a challenge. The
results are not always guaranteed. A
transformative change to be successful,
needs compelling vision. It should resonate with every healthcare institution
and every practitioner and that is what
is happening in the case of Qatar.”
8
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
QATAR
HMC dept promoting better
awareness of eye health
Mall of Qatar
seals deal with
Azadea Group
T
o mark World Glaucoma
Week, Hamad Medical
Corporation
(HMC)’s
Ophthalmology Department is
encouraging the public to take
steps to protect their eye health.
The recommendations are to
understand the eye health history of the family, have regular eye examinations, and have
more frequent eye screening for
those at risk of developing glaucoma.
World Glaucoma Week, observed from March 6 to 12, aims
to create greater awareness of
the eye disorder involving progressive damage to the optic
nerve, a part of the eye that carries visual information from the
retina to the brain.
Glaucoma has no known
cause but is often associated
with a build-up of pressure inside the eye.
M
all of Qatar has signed
a lease agreement with
Azadea Group Holding, a fashion and lifestyle retail
company that owns and operates
more than 50 leading international franchise concepts across
the Middle East and North Africa.
Under the agreement, Azadea
Group will feature 15 of its most
renowned global brands, which
include an assortment of fashion,
homeware, F&B and sportswear,
across more than 10,000sq m of
space within the mall.
Mall of Qatar general manager
Rony Mourani signed the agreement with Azadea Group chief
executive Said Daher.
Set to open on August 23,
visitors to Mall of Qatar can experience Azadea’s new concept
stores offering them a range of
international brands, according
to a statement.
These include Zara, Zara
Home, Massimo Dutti, Oysho,
Pull & Bear, Bershka, Virgin
Megastore, Paul Café, Intimissimi, Calzedonia, Kiko, Salsa, I
am, Peal Juice and a new entry
into Qatar’s market: Eataly, the
largest Italian marketplace in
the world, comprising a variety
of restaurants, food & beverage
counters, bakery, retail items and
a cooking school, the statement
notes.
If left untreated, glaucoma
can cause gradual but irreversible loss of vision, first affecting
the peripheral or sideways vision, then moving progressively
to the central vision.
Symptoms include headaches, blurred vision and pain
in the eye.
According to the World
Health Organisation (WHO),
glaucoma is the second leading
cause of blindness worldwide,
after cataracts.
People with glaucoma require careful lifelong treatment
to slow the progression of the
disease.
“Regular comprehensive eye
examination is important to
help detect glaucoma in its early
stages. There are only a few
symptoms of glaucoma so people may not notice that they are
losing their vision. We recom-
mend that people with a high
risk of developing glaucoma
undergo screening every year
or two after the age of 35,” said
Dr Zakia Mohamed al-Ansari,
glaucoma specialist at HMC’s
Ophthalmology Section.
People at high risk for glaucoma include those with medical conditions such as diabetes,
heart disease, high blood pressure and sickle cell anaemia;
those with a family history of
glaucoma; those who have previously sustained an eye injury;
and people of African or Hispanic descent.
Wearing protective eyewear
when playing sport or using
power tools can help prevent
serious eye injury that can lead
to glaucoma.
Regular, moderate exercise
may also help prevent glaucoma
by reducing eye pressure.
Bone and Joint Centre goes live
on Sunday with CIS programme
T
Mall of Qatar: expected to ‘transform the retail landscape’.
Commenting on the agreement, Mourani said: “While
choosing a retail partner, we
ensure that it is in line with our
promise of getting top brands
that will add real value to Mall of
Qatar. Azadea Group is exactly
the right fit as it will showcase
a large variety of choices and
brands – all under one roof.
“With the Azadea Group on
board, we are confident that this
world-class retailer will offer a
unique shopping experience to
discerning Qatar shoppers.”
Daher added: “We have a
strong belief in the development
strategy of the State of Qatar and
are proud to be part of its promising vision. At Mall of Qatar, we
are sure that we will grow further
with our partners and hopefully
stand out as a primary fashion,
F&B and lifestyle provider.”
he Clinical Information
System (CIS) is going
live at the Bone and Joint
Centre, part of Hamad Medical
Corporation (HMC), from Sunday, March 13.
The Centre will replace its
existing paper patient clinical
records system with a new electronic CIS.
This is part of a planned rollout across HMC and the Primary Health Care Corporation
( PHCC).
Once the CIS implementation is complete, all patient
records will be stored and accessed electronically across the
two organisations.
This roll-out follows the suc-
cessful CIS implementation
at seven HMC hospitals, some
paediatric emergency centres,
some dialysis centres and a
number of PHCC health centres
across the country.
The CIS is a comprehensive
system-wide implementation
that has been designed in collaboration with clinicians.
As this is such a large project,
a period of transition is expected, during which staff and
patients will adjust to the new
system.
Healthcare personnel will
need to gather more information from the patients to register them in the new system and
this may mean that appoint-
QC, QNCC and QFC to
sponsor youth conference
Q
atar Charity (QC), the Qatar
National Convention Centre
(QNCC), and Qatar Financial
Centre (QFC) are sponsoring the eighth
edition of the annual Empower Youth
Conference.
Entitled “Innovation in Youth Social Entrepreneurship Conference”, the
event scheduled from March 17 to 19 is
organised by Reach Out To Asia (Rota),
a member of the Qatar Foundation for
Education, Science and Community
Development.
QC will be Rota’s humanitarian partner, QFC the brand partner and the
QNCC the hospitality partner of Empower 2016.
Rota community development manager Abdulla al-Bakri has lauded the
sponsors.
Ali Atiq al-Abdulla, QC’s director
of Community Development Centre,
said that the conference aligns with the
mission to invest in Qatar’s youth.
QNCC senior business development
manager Abdulrahman al-Ajail said his
organisation’s collaboration with Rota
for Empower is rooted in common values and a joint commitment in providing the youth with the needed tools to
become responsible global citizens and
future young leaders.
Yousef Fakhroo, QFC chief marketing
and corporate communications officer,
expressed confidence that “Empower
2016 will provide tomorrow’s leaders
with the tools to grow and continue to
develop our community in line with the
Qatar National Vision 2030”.
The conference has attracted more
than 1,400 applicants from over 60
countries.
ments take a little longer than
usual.
Bone and Joint Centre medical director Dr Mohammed alAteeq said: “My team and I are
excited about the implementation of the CIS system, which
will standardise processes and
provide the best and safest patient care that we aspire for and
are always working to achieve.”
The importance of an electronic medical records system
was set out in the National
Health Strategy for Qatar,
launched in 2011.
To address this new national
strategy, HMC and the PHCC
launched the CIS programme
in 2012.
New Shahry
promotion
Ooredoo has announced a new
promotion for Shahry Smart
post-paid option, offering a mix of
data, talk-time and SMS.
Customers who subscribe or
upgrade to a Shahry Smart 55
or 100 Pack will get one month
of unlimited mobile data for free
while those who subscribe to
the 150 or 250 Packs will get two
months’ unlimited free data.
Customers who subscribe or
upgrade to a Shahry Smart
450 or 750 Pack will get three
months’ of unlimited data free.
Plus, every customer who
chooses a Shahry Smart Pack of
55 or above will receive Nojoom
reward points worth 20% of the
value of the Shahry Smart pack
over the next 12 months.
Customers who select the Shahry
Smart 750 Pack will receive
5,000 Nojoom Points every
month. The offer is valid until
April 7, 2016.
Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge unveiled
By Joey Aguilar
Staff Reporter
S
amsung and Intertec Group unveiled yesterday the Galaxy S7
and S7 Edge, two of the technology giant’s first smartphones with dust
proof and water resistant features.
“The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge will
be available in Qatar from March 14,”
Samsung Gulf Electronics’ mobile division Information Technology head
Tarek Sabbagh told Gulf Times on the
sidelines of the launch.
The 5.1” S7 is priced at QR2,499
while the 5.5” S7 edge will cost
QR2,799.
Both handsets feature dual pixel
camera (12 megapixels) that deliver
high quality images even in low light
conditions.
“The S7, which offers cutting edge
technology, is the outcome of feedback
from consumers,” Sabbagh stressed.
There are rubber seals for the USB
port, SIM tray and headset jack of the
phones to protect them from dust and
water immersion for up to 30 minutes
in 1.5m depth.
Having a brighter lens with wider
aperture, bigger pixel, faster shutter
speed, and a more accurate auto focus,
the S7’s rear and front cameras can
produce clear and sharper images even
in low light conditions.
The front camera can use the screen
as a flash to give more light, especially
when taking selfies in the dark.
Samsung added a “motion pano-
Samsung and Intertec officials at the unveiling of Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.
PICTURE: Nasar T K
rama” camera mode which brings
movement to traditional panoramic
photos, giving the user a completely
immersive visual experience.
Battery life has been improved by
41% either when calling, texting,
browsing online or watching videos,
according to Sabbagh.
Both the S7 and S7 Edge feature fast
wired and wireless charging technology.
“Within the first 30 minutes on
putting the phone from zero, it can
reach to above 60%,” he added.
The S7 also uses liquid-cooling
technology that prevents the battery
from overheating, particularly when
playing games or using the phone
longer.
For more storage, users can insert
microSD card for up to 200GB to the
handset’s hybrid SIM card tray.
In some countries, the tray can be
used with a dual SIM card.
Sabbagh said that using Samsung’s
high-speed microSD will not affect the
phone’s speed and performance.
“Class-leading camera technology,
a longer-lasting battery, cutting-edge
processors and optimisation for gaming are some features will make these
the most innovative smartphones
you’ve ever owned,” he noted.
One of the devices’ features include
the “Always-On Display”, which gives
users a simplified, zero-touch experience designed to prevent missing important calls or notifications.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
9
QATAR
Filmmakers advised to
learn value of patience
T
he master class by award-winning Japanese filmmaker Naomi
Kawase at Qumra evolved as a
spiritual and philosophical journey
into her life and outlook, as she highlighted her experience of making films
after being challenged by the two existential questions: “Who am I?” and
“What is my purpose?”.
These questions seeded her journey
into filmmaking despite living in Nara,
a close-knit old township in Japan with
a heritage of over 1,300 years but removed from the bustling industry and
limelight of Tokyo.
A Qumra Master, whose film The
Mourning Forest was earlier shown as
part of the Modern Masters Screenings
at the annual industry event of Doha
Film Institute, Kawase said she did not
grow up watching films nor did she
have the environment that would have
nurtured her into a filmmaker.
“Even being born into this world was
a miracle,” said Kawase, narrating how
her parents divorced when her mother
was pregnant with her. “Now that I was
here in the world, I wanted to live it and
leave behind a trace of my presence.
The God of filming came to me...cameras and film came to me. I wanted to
know myself and that is how I started
making films.”
Kawase’s films have a strong autobiographical element and her earlier
works included documentary tributes
to her grandmother, who raised her.
Stating that she did not see her films
as a diary, Kawase said how anyone responded to these situations was unique
to individuals. That is why she is candid in admitting that she does not have
a direct answer to what moments from
her own life she would want to show on
film.
While noting that she was a tough
taskmaster to her actors, Kawase said
she went by instinct and also gave
enough leeway to the cast while shooting.
She advised filmmakers to learn the
value of patience in filming. “After all,
if you want to watch a cherry blossom,
you have to wait till spring.”
Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase has said “there is no guarantee of monetary
success for films.”
Kawase also said the reason she
made films was not driven by money.
“There is no guarantee of monetary
success for films, and if a film does not
bring returns, a director can be out of
work for five to six years. But that is a
risk worth taking.”
Having launched a film festival in
Nara, Kawase said she is telling the
young generation of the world that
they can also do something in their
own hometown.
“That is similar to what you are doing here in Doha with Qumra; you have
filmmakers from all over the world. But
why here? That is because we want
to hand down culture to our young
generation.”
10
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
QATAR
Official
Defence Minister meets Saudi military attache, Bosnian envoy
Message from
Ukrainian
defence minister
HE the Minister of State for
Defence Affairs Dr Khalid bin
Mohamed al-Attiyah has received
a message from Ukrainian
Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak
connected with various aspects
of co-operation between Qatar
and the Ukrainian republic.
The message was handed over
by Ukraine’s ambassador to
Qatar Yevhen Mykytenko during
a meeting yesterday with alAttiyah.
A number of ranking armed
forces officers attended the
meeting.
Education
Minister meets
Omani official
HE the Minister of Education and
Higher Education Dr Mohamed
Abdul Wahed Ali al-Hammadi
met the Undersecretary
of the Omani Ministry of
Education for Administrative
and Financial Affairs Mustafa
bin Ali bin Abdullatif and his
accompanying delegation, who
are currently visiting Qatar
yesterday.
They discussed bilateral relations
and ways of enhancing them.
Lekhwiya to hold
exercises
The General Command of the
Qatari Armed Forces yesterday
announced that the Internal
Security Force (Lekhwiya) will
carry out exercises at the Labsir
camp on March 29 from 7am to
11am.
The General Command has
advised visitors the area to take
precautions.
HE the Minister of State for Defence Affairs Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah held separate meetings with the ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Qatar, Tarik Sadovic and Saudi Arabia’s Military Attache
Lieutenant Colonel Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman al-Da’aj, in Doha yesterday. Views on bilateral relations and means of boosting them were exchanged.
Consumer protection ‘main pillar of economic policy’
QNA
Doha
T
he Ministry of Economy
and Commerce has enhanced the role of its
administrative departments
in charge of protecting the
interests of consumers, HE
the Minister of Economy and
Commerce Sheikh Ahmed bin
Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani
has said.
Inaugurating an international
workshop on effective protection for consumers and competition through cross-border
co-operation, organised by the
Ministry of Economy and Commerce, the GCC general secretariat and the US Federal Trade
Commission, Sheikh Ahmed
bin Jassim bin Mohamed alThani said the Ministry has
enhanced the role of the committee on consumer protection
and prevention of monopolistic
practices.
Experts and specialists in
consumer protection and competition protection are taking
part in the two-day workshop.
HE Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim said organising the workshop comes as part of the
Ministry’s commitment to
employing the best regional
and global practices in supporting consumer rights and
benefiting from successful experiences in the protection of
competition.
The Minister said the two
Ministry recalls
Suzuki motorbike
T
he Ministry of Economy and Commerce,
in collaboration with
Teyseer Motors, has announced the recall of Suzuki
motorbike SFV 650 models
of 2013 over contamination
between the tappet and cam.
The MEC 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 MEC will
co-ordinate with the dealer to
follow up on the maintenance
and repair works.
HE the Minister of Economy and Commerce Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani speaking at the workshop.
aspects are among the most
important pillars of Qatar’s
economic policy and constitute a strong base for com-
prehensive development that
the country aims to achieve in
line with Qatar National Vision
2030.
competition and will be an opportunity to benefit from the
best practices in the region and
globally in this regard.
The minister said the workshop will help in enriching Qatar’s experiences in the
protection of consumers and
Leading Italian shipbuilding group
is diamond sponsor of Dimdex 2016
T
he Organising Committee
of the Doha International
Maritime Defence Exhibition
and Conference (Dimdex) recently
signed a sponsorship agreement
with leading Italian shipbuilding
group Fincantieri as the diamond
sponsor for Dimdex 2016, to be held
at the Qatar National Convention
Centre from March 29 to 31. Dimdex
2016 is held under the patronage of
HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.
Brig Dr (Eng) Thani A al-Kuwari,
chairman, Dimdex, said: “The
strength of our partnership with
Fincantieri is reflected in their continued commitment to Dimdex as
one of our most prominent returning exhibitors. We are proud that
key organisations like Fincantieri
are so strongly maintaining their
support to Dimdex as it continues
to grow, bringing together this year
an even greater number of participants.”
Headquartered in Trieste, Italy,
Fincantieri is one of the world’s
largest shipbuilding groups, leading
in cruise ship design and construction. It has among its clients the major cruise operators, the Italian and
the US Navy, several foreign navies,
and it is partner of some of the main
European defence companies within
supranational programmes.
Achille Fulfaro, vice-president,
Fincantieri Middle East Market
Development said: “Fincantieri is
proud to be a sponsor and exhibitor of Dimdex, a world class exhibition and conference that creates a platform for international
defence industry leaders to share
knowledge as well as showcasing innovative maritime defence
technologies. We are delighted
to continue to support Dimdex in
Brig Dr (Engineer) Thani A al-Kuwari,
chairman, Dimdex.
this effort to inspire the advancement of the defence industry globally”
Dimdex 2016 is set to be the largest specialised maritime naval defence and security exhibition in the
Mena region. Several new countries
will be partaking this year as well as
new exhibitors demonstrating the
latest technologies. Dimdex 2016
also sees an expansion in the event’s
scope to cover new sectors such as
maritime aviation, naval base security, unmanned aerial vehicles,
maritime patrol aircraft and coastal
surveillance systems.
With sale to date of almost 98%
of the total space reserved for exhibitors this year, Dimdex is forging
ahead in its commitment to support Qatar’s vision of becoming the
most sought world-class hub within
the Middle East, bringing together
industry experts from all over the
world to share cutting edge technologies to meet the maritime security
needs of the region.
Top UK universities to take part in higher education fair
M
ore than 30 top
British universities, English language course providers, and
other education institutions
will take part in the two-day
“Study in the UK” higher
education fair on March 13
and 14 at La Cigale hotel.
As part of the ‘Great British Festival Qatar 2016,’
the annual event will open
its doors from 4.30pm to
8.30pm to students, parents
and educators who are interested in pursuing higher
education in the UK.
Admission to the event
is free, but online registration is recommended to gain
faster access.
Those who register online
will also be entered into a
competition to win a free return trip to the UK, courtesy
of Qatar Airways, complete
with a “Shakespeare Experience.”
Sponsored by the British
Council International English Language Testing System, the exhibition also provides detailed information
for professionals seeking to
advance their careers, parents interested in a UK university education for their
children, as well as educators and Qatari scholarship
providers.
The two-day event will
include a number of semi-
nars and invite attendees to
explore the wide range of
courses available in the UK
including the University
of Cambridge, University
Those who register
online will also
be entered into a
competition to win a
free return trip to the
UK
College London, the Uni-
versity of Manchester and
the University of St Andrews.
Over the past few years,
the number of Qatari students studying in the UK has
grown year-on-year.
The embassy recorded
a 20.4% increase in the
number of Qatari students
travelling to the UK to study
between 2014 and 2015.
Since 2010, the number has
doubled.
Qatar for enhancing right to freedom of religion, opinion
QNA
Geneva
T
he State of Qatar has
underlined the importance of promoting the right to freedom
of “religion or belief” and
“opinion and expression.”
It stressed its keenness
to adopt this constructive
approach through efforts
of the Doha International
Centre for Interfaith Dialogue.
This came in a speech delivered by HE Sheikh Khalid
bin Jassim al-Thani, Director of the Human Rights
Department at the Foreign
Ministry, at the 31st session
of the UN Human Rights
Council, being held from 29
February to 24 March, under
item (3) titled: “Interactive
dialogue with the Special
Rapporteur on freedom of
religion or belief.”
Sheikh Khalid bin Jassim
al-Thani said: “We agree
with the report by Heiner
Bielefeldt, Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, on the close
relationship between the
right to freedom of religion or belief and the right
to freedom of opinion and
expression,” stressing that
the positive practice for
both the rights can contribute to strengthening
both of them.
He noted that the Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, which aims
to combat intolerance and
discrimination and incitement to violence, which
resulted in the formation
Istanbul Initiative is an
active framework, adding
that Qatar had supported
this initiative and hosted
the fourth meeting of the
initiative of Istanbul, which
was held in Doha in March
2014, and actively participated in the fifth meeting
of the Istanbul initiative,
which was held at the Organisation of Islamic cooperation in Jeddah in June
2015, he added.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
11
REGION
GCC meet
Saudi, Yemeni
rebels agree to
prisoner swap
AFP
Riyadh
Y
emen’s Houthi rebels have agreed
to a prisoner swap and an apparent truce along the border following unprecedented talks with Saudi
Arabia, the Riyadh-led military coalition
intervening in Yemen said yesterday.
The talks marked the first direct negotiations between the Iran-backed
rebels and Saudi Arabia, which a year
ago launched an air war in support of
Yemen’s government after the Houthis
seized large parts of the country.
Analysts said the agreement was the
first time an important step had been
taken in finding a resolution to the conflict, which the UN says has killed more
than 6,000 people.
The coalition said the agreement had
been reached with a Yemeni tribal delegation during a visit to Saudi Arabia.
The coalition said it had “responded
positively” to a request from the delegation “to create a state of calm on the
Yemeni border adjacent to the kingdom
to make way for the entry of medical and
relief materials”.
Under the agreement a Saudi soldier,
Corporal Jaber al-Kaabi, was handed
over in exchange for seven Yemenis detained by Saudi authorities at the border, said the statement published by the
official Saudi Press Agency.
The coalition welcomed the “continuing state of calm” following the agreement, and said it would contribute to
UN-brokered peace efforts.
Saudi Arabia and several of its Sunni Arab allies launched air strikes on
March 26 last year after the Houthis, a
Shiite group from Yemen’s north, seized
control of large parts of the country including the capital Sanaa.
Backed by the strikes and some coalition ground troops, forces supporting
President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi
have retaken areas in Yemen’s south but
have been unable to retake the capital.
The Houthis have launched crossborder attacks against Saudi Arabia in
retaliation for the intervention, with
more than 90 people - both military and
civilian - killed on the Saudi side of the
frontier by shelling and in skirmishes.
There was no immediate confirmation from rebel sources of a border
ceasefire, but analysts said the apparent
deal represented an important step.
“This is one of the most significant
breakthroughs” since coalition operations began, said Adam Baron, a visiting
fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Baron said there appeared to be increasing pressure on Saudi Arabia to
compromise as civilian suffering grows
and militant groups take advantage of
the conflict.
“Key Saudi allies have grown anxious
regarding the deepening humanitarian
crisis and the - so far - virtually unchecked spread of Al Qaeda and other
extremist groups in areas where the
Houthis have been pushed out,” Baron
said.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,
the militant network’s powerful Yemeni
affiliate, has taken control of some parts
of the country and a local branch of the
Islamic State group has also emerged as
a new threat.
Yemeni authorities have blamed IS
for an attack on a care home in Yemen’s
main southern city of Aden last week
that killed 16 people including four foreign nuns.
The UN has been pursuing efforts at
peace talks but the UN’s envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, said last
month that “deep divisions” were preventing any progress.
Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN,
Abdallah al-Mouallimi, said this week
that he hoped talks could resume by
March 15.
The Saudis are “clearly looking for a
way out” of the conflict, said Farea alMuslimi, a Yemeni specialist and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East
Centre.
He said it was doubtful that the war
could end soon but that the talks and
border agreement were “definitely a
step in the right direction”.
Saudi Arabia, which is also taking
part in the US-led air campaign against
IS in Syria and Iraq, is facing financial
pressure at the same time as its costly
military interventions.
The collapse in oil prices since mid2014 has dealt a major blow to Saudi
state revenues, with the kingdom projecting a budget deficit of $87bn this
year.
Qatar’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, HE Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, participates in the 138th
session of the GCC Ministerial Council in Riyadh yesterday. The meeting discussed ways of enhancing GCC joint
action in all areas, in addition to the latest regional and international developments, particularly the security situation in Yemen, Syria, Libya and Iraq.
Riyadh Metro ‘on schedule’
despite govt spending cuts
Reuters
Dubai
T
he $23bn Riyadh Metro will be
completed on schedule in 2019
and its budget is ring-fenced, a
senior official said yesterday, quashing speculation the project could be
scaled back or delayed following a
slump in Saudi Arabia’s oil revenues.
Since late last year, the government has clamped down on spending
to curb an annual budget deficit of
about $100bn, slowing or suspending work on some projects. In some
instances, contractors and their employees have not been paid.
Yet the 176km Riyadh Metro is unaffected, said Alwalid Alekrish, Director of Construction Development
Projects and Project Director of the
Riyadh Metro, Arriyadh Development Authority (ADA).
“A lot of people are asking are we
going to cut the project back, take
something out,” Alekrish told Reuters
when asked if the oil price drop had
affected the metro.
“Up to now, we’re working as we
have since the beginning. Our payments are being done in the contractual period. It’s business as usual for
us.”
He predicted all six lines and 85
stations would be operational as
planned in 2019. These will be served
by electric, driverless trains in what
officials describe as the world’s largest public transport system currently
under development.
“We’re very confident that is still
the date,” Alekrish said in an interview. “That’s the contractual target.
We have not had any instruction to
do any sort of reduction.”
In mid-2013, three multi-billion
dollar construction contracts were
awarded to consortiums headed by
US construction giant Bechtel Corp,
Spain’s Fomento de Construcciones
y Contratas and Italy’s Ansaldo STS
respectively. Work began the following year.
Downpour shuts UAE schools, flights affected
AFP
Abu Dhabi
S
chools were ordered shut,
flights suspended and the
stock market was closed
down yesterday in the United
Arab Emirates as rare heavy rain
hit the desert Gulf state. Education authorities said schools will
stay closed today as more thundery weather is forecast.
Flights at Abu Dhabi airport
resumed yesterday afternoon after being suspended for several
hours, and Dubai International
also experienced delays, aviation
authorities said.
The rains disrupted the Abu
Dhabi Air Expo held at the capital’s Al Bateen airport.
Abu Dhabi’s stock market said
it suspended trading and cancelled all morning deals after
many traders could not reach the
bourse.
Images posted on social media
showed vehicles half-submerged
in flooded streets in Abu Dhabi
and gusty winds lashing through
palm trees lining the city’s
streets.
Others showed shades and
construction barriers that had
collapsed on cars.
In Dubai, police registered
more than 250 road accidents by
midday, local media reported.
The weather agency in the
UAE, which ranks among the
world’s 10 driest countries, said
more rain is expected today.
The country’s annual rainfall
stands at 78mm, more than 15
times less than the amount for an
average year in Britain.
But the National Centre for
Meteorology and Seismology
said some 240mm of rainfall was
recorded yesterday near Al Ain.
Social media user expressed
mixed feelings about the unusual
weather.
“Not #london or #dublin, this
is Dubai today after heavy rain!”
wrote Andrea Colonnelli on
Twitter posting a video of cars
wading through a flooded street.
Another video posted on the
micro-blogging site showed a
man kayaking through a flooded
residential area.
“2 days of rain in #Dubai, my
neighbour is kayaking,” read one
comment.
People push a car through a flooded street in Dubai yesterday.
12
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
REGION/ARAB WORLD
Iran test-fires
more missiles
AFP
Dubai
I
ran yesterday fired two more longrange ballistic missiles as it continued military tests in defiance of
US sanctions and fresh warnings from
Washington. The missile tests, described by Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards as a show of force in the face
of US pressure, come just weeks after
the implementation of Iran’s historic
nuclear deal with world powers.
After similar tests on Tuesday,
Washington had warned it could raise
the issue with the UN Security Council
and take further action after US sanctions were imposed in connection with
Iran’s missile programme in January.
US Vice President Joe Biden said yesterday that the US would take action
against Iran if the missile tests were
confirmed.
“All their conventional activity outside the (nuclear) deal, which is still
beyond the deal, we will and are attempting to act wherever we can find
it,” Biden said during a visit to Israel
and the Palestinian territories. He said
Washington was also ready to act if Iran
breaks the nuclear agreement.
The hard-fought deal, which saw
international sanctions lifted in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, did not extend to its missile
programme.
Yesterday’s tests saw two Qadr-H
and Qadr-F precision missiles fired
from launcher trucks tucked in the Alborz mountain range in northern Iran,
hitting targets about 1,400km away
in the southeastern Makran area, the
Guards said.
“Our enemies have come to understand that increasing security pressures and sanctions will not affect the
enhancement of our capabilities so
they seek to limit us in the missile arena
through imposing economic sanctions,” said Guards chief Major General
Mohamed Ali Jafari.
“Enemies of the Islamic revolution
and regional security must fear the
roar of the Guards’ missiles,” he added,
quoted by the Guards’ official website.
The Guards’ deputy head General
Hossein Salami said the missile tests
were to demonstrate Iran’s “defence
and deterrent power”.
“We have massive stockpiles of ballistic missiles waiting for orders and
ready to hit targets at any moment from
various points across the country,” Salami said.
Ballistic missile tests have been seen
as a way for Iran’s military to demonstrate that the nuclear deal will have no
impact on its plans, which it says are for
domestic defence only.
Previous UN resolutions have aimed
at stopping Tehran from developing
missiles capable of carrying a nuclear
warhead, although Tehran has always
denied seeking the capability.
US State Department spokesman
John Kirby said Tuesday that if the latest missile tests were confirmed “then
we’ll have every intention of raising the
matter to the UN Security Council”.
Kirby warned that the US could take
unilateral action “to counter threats
from Iran’s missile programme”.
This week’s series of tests have in-
A long-range Qadr ballistic missile being launched in the Alborz mountain range in northern Iran.
cluded short, medium and long-range
precision guided missiles with ranges
of between 300km and 2,000km, state
media reported.
“The reason we have designed these
missiles with such a range - 2,000km - is to
be able to hit our remote enemies, the Zionist regime,” said General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the Revolutionary Guards’
aerospace wing, referring to Israel.
“But there is no need to fire missiles
to destroy the Zionist regime as it will
gradually collapse. Our main enemy is
the US,” he said.
News agencies Fars and Tasnim, both
close to the Guards, said the phrase
“Israel must be wiped off the face of
earth” was inscribed in Hebrew on the
missiles, recalling a famous quote by
the late revolutionary leader Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini.
However, no writing was visible on
the missiles shown in video footage or
pictures published by local media.
President Hassan Rouhani, a cleric
close to moderates, pursued the nuclear
deal in a bid to end Iran’s international
isolation. Less than two weeks ago, his
moderate and reformist allies scored
key gains against conservatives and
hardliners in elections.
But the Revolutionary Guards report
to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, not Rouhani, and their influence dwarfs that of the army and
other armed forces.
UN outlines Libyan push for unity government stalls
timetable for
Syria talks F
Reuters
Tripoli
AFP
Geneva
A
new round of talks aimed at ending the war in Syria
will begin in Geneva on Monday and will last no longer
than 10 days, the UN mediator said yesterday. Staffan
de Mistura said participants would begin arriving in the coming days and that he would be having some informal talks
over the weekend.
“But the substantive deeper part of it... will be on Monday,” he said, saying the negotiations would “last not beyond March 24”, when there would be a break. “There will
a recess of a few days, a week perhaps, 10 days” before the
talks resume, he said. “Having a timetable and a time limit is
healthy for everyone.”
The UN is hoping to restart peace talks that collapsed last
month, building on a ceasefire that has led to the first significant decline in violence in Syria’s nearly five-year civil war.
The truce between President Bashar al-Assad’s regime
and non-militant rebels is part of the biggest diplomatic effort yet to resolve Syria’s conflict, which has killed more than
270,000 people and displaced millions.
The partial truce, which was negotiated by Washington
and Moscow and which does not apply to the Islamic State
group or the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, has largely held
since it began on February 27.
“The cessation of hostilities... is still holding, and it is
making a direct impact on the lives ofmns of Syrians inside
the country,” UN humanitarian coordinator for Syria Yacoub
El Hillo told reporters. As in the previous round, the negotiations will take the form of “proximity talks” with de Mistura
shuttling between the different sides.
Yesterday there was a meeting of another task force monitoring efforts to increase humanitarian aid deliveries to nearly half-million people in besieged areas and another 4mn in
hard-to-reach areas. In the past four weeks, 536 trucks had
reached 238,845 people - 150,000 of them in besieged areas,
de Mistura said.
His special adviser Jan Egeland meanwhile hailed the fact
that 10 out of 18 besieged areas had been reached, some with
multiple convoys. “The bad news is that we still have not
reached six important besieged areas,” Egeland said, referring to areas such as Daraya, Douma, besieged by government
forces, and Deir Ezzor where some 200,000 people are under
siege by IS militants.
The aim is to reach a total of 870,000 people in hard-toreach areas by the end of April, el Hillo said.
ive years after the uprising
that overthrew Muammar
Gaddafi, Tripoli is on edge,
somewhere between peace and
war.
There is a semblance of normal life in the Libyan capital and
glimpses of the unexpected - kite
surfers zip across choppy waves
and a group of amateur cyclists in
matching kit pedal along a seafront
highway.
Yet the armed groups that control the city are an unsettling presence. Gunmen in balaclavas staff
checkpoints on key roads, and
armed brigades have been flexing
their muscles in late-night parades.
It is here that a unity government nominated abroad under a
UN-backed plan is hoping to set
up shop.
But two months after the deal
was signed with limited Libyan
support, Reuters interviews with
residents and officials, and a string
of recent incidents, show that resistance from hardliners in both
Tripoli and the east is still getting
traction, shrinking the space for
the plan to succeed.
The hardliners in Tripoli present
themselves as the true guardians
of the uprising, protecting Libya
against a counter-revolution and
foreign meddling. Those in the
east claim to be saving the country
from Islamist extremism.
Both speak for some of the
armed factions that hold real power in Libya, and are scared of losing
influence, protection and access
to the country’s rapidly dwindling
financial resources in a political
transition.
In Tripoli’s Martyrs’ Square,
where families stroll past dozens
of men saying prayers at sunset,
some support the unity government, saying they are fed up with
violence, cash shortages and rising
prices.
“We’ve had enough,” said Fardous Boukhatwa, whose family
was displaced by fighting in Benghazi and was visiting Tripoli with
three of her children. “There is
only one solution - reconciliation
and forgiveness.”
But others echo the criticism of
the Tripoli hardliners. “The UN did
not play the role of mediator, it was
biased towards the east,” said Abdulkarim Sadiq, a retired teacher
from the suburb of Janzour. “They
cannot bring peace to Libya - they
just add fuel to the fire.”
A group of teenage boys mention photos they saw on Facebook
of Prime Minister-designate Fayez
Seraj meeting the commander of
Libya’s eastern military forces,
Khalifa Haftar, a former Gaddafi
ally deeply mistrusted in the west.
For nearly two years, Tripoli has
been under the control of armed
factions that formed an alliance
known as Libya Dawn to seize control of the capital.
They reinstated the old parliament, the General National Congress (GNC), and the newly elected
chamber moved east to Tobruk.
The Dawn alliance has now
splintered. Key brigades have said
they will provide security for the
unity government, but the situation is volatile.
Under the UN-backed plan,
the GNC is meant to form a consultative chamber, and a few dozen moderates have been holding
meetings in preparation.
After their third session was disrupted by protesters last week, one
of those attending, Bilqasem Eggzait, said they might have to consider meeting in a different city.
The same day, a group that regularly protests against the unity
government in Martyrs’ Square
appeared on a popular TV station
to proclaim the unity government
“illegal” and warn of “bloodshed
and a fire of sedition” in the capital.
Last Friday, the man nominated to head the State Council said
rocket-propelled grenades were
fired at his Tripoli office.
The UN envoy to Libya swiftly
condemned the incident, though
the property later appeared undamaged.
On Sunday, three members of
the committee tasked with preparing security in Tripoli for the new
government were briefly detained,
drawing further UN condemnation.
The chances of major clashes
if the unity government came to
Tripoli were small because a majority of Libyans support it, said
Eggzait.
But with a unified security force
to build and oil revenues at a frac-
tion of their former value, the government would need to cut salaries
for brigades of former rebels who
added tens of thousands of men to
the state payroll after the revolution, and this would be difficult.
“Politics in Tripoli is not about ideology, it’s about money,” he said.
While recent violence in Tripoli
has been limited to occasional
gunfights and isolated clashes,
Benghazi, Libya’s second city, has
been a battleground for Haftar’s
forces and a collection of armed
groups including Islamic State.
After previous promises to “liberate” the city came to nothing,
over the past two weeks the military has taken control of several
key areas, allowing some residents
to return to their homes and start
repairing war-torn streets.
In the recently secured neighbourhood of Laithi, 42-year-old
father of four Khairy Mohamed alQatrani said he had been able to return to his house “thanks to Khalifa Haftar, whose Karama (Dignity)
operation has thwarted the plans
of Islamic State to take control of
Benghazi”.
Qatrani said he hoped the army
would be a neutral force in the
future, but the military deadlock
was broken as Haftar’s allies in
the eastern parliament, the House
of Representatives, continued to
block approval of the unity government, which includes Mahdi
al-Bargathi, a Haftar rival, as defence minister.
The recent military push “very
much has to do with Haftar’s need
to reassert himself as the saviour
of the east in the face of challenges
within his own camp,” said Issandr
El Amrani, North Africa director
for International Crisis Group.
A majority of House of Representatives members signed a declaration of support for the new
government, but complained that
hardliners had resorted to threats
and physical force to prevent a vote.
A “crisis of trust” in the Tobruk
chamber meant that voting to approve the government there had
become impossible, lawmaker Ayman al-Nasr told Reuters.
Western diplomats, who say
they can only provide sustained
support for the fight against Islamic State in Libya at the request
of a unity government, have looked
on with growing exasperation.
The extremist group is in control
of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte
and has expanded to several other
cities. This year it has launched
a series of attacks on facilities in
Libya’s coastal “oil crescent”.
Diplomats may now have to
accept a return to negotiations,
which could be complicated by the
military advances in Benghazi and
Haftar’s enduring popularity.
Critics of the unity government
plan say it was pushed through
prematurely, before Libya’s powerful armed factions were brought
on board.
Unless this happens, with help
from the regional powers that have
backed both sides, Libya’s conflict
will not be resolved, said Amrani.
“The political guys who stand
in as proxies cannot negotiate for
them at the end of the day,” he said.
Power-starved Gazans turn to the sun
By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters
Gaza
F
aced with power blackouts
lasting anything from eight
to 12 hours a day, residents
and businesses in Gaza are increasingly turning to the sun to
supply their energy needs.
Not only are solar panels more
reliable and cheaper in the long
run, but in some cases, including
that of Tamer al-Burai, they have
become essential to staying alive.
“To me, power is not just about
lights or entertainment, it’s a matter of life and death,” said Burai,
40, who suffers from a severe sleep
disorder that affects his breathing
and has to be hooked up to an oxygen ventilator at night.
Burai used to spend around
18,000 shekels ($4,600) a year on
fuel to run a generator that helped
make sure he could weather the
daily blackouts. Now he has invested in solar panels, making the
long-run costs much cheaper.
“I paid $5,000 to get solar energy for the entire house and that
will provide relief for years to
come,” the father of four told Reuters proudly.
Whereas three or four years ago
only a handful of Gaza’s 1.95mn
people could afford to think about
A Palestinian worker installs solar panels on the roof of a medical centre in Gaza City.
solar panels, in the past couple of
years, as prices have come down, it
has become a much more accessible option.
Schools, hospitals, shops, banks
and even mosques have started to
install panels on their roofs across
the Gaza Strip, a self-governing
Palestinian enclave which suffered
considerable damage in 2014 during a seven-week war between Is-
rael and Palestinian armed groups
based in the territory.
Nabeel Marouf, the general
manager of the Gaza-based Renewable Power Engineering and
Contracting Company, said he had
been overwhelmed with orders.
Two years ago, he might have
had a dozen clients, he said, but
now it’s in the thousands.
“People have lost hope for a so-
lution to the power crisis, and on
top of that there’s the fuel crisis,”
he said, explaining that the regular
power supply, interrupted for years,
was a mess and fuel for generators
was costly and problematic.
Looking across the rooftops of
downtown Gaza City, it is clear
solar is catching on, with glinting
panels on almost every building.
New technology even allows peo-
ple to hang panels over the edge of
their balconies.
Most of the equipment, including batteries and controllers, is
imported from China, where they
are made by US, Canadian or German companies, said Marouf. They
are imported via Israel, which allows them into Gaza via one of its
crossings.
Costs for a system range from
$1,500 to $30,000, depending on
the amount of energy people need.
Gaza has three usual sources of
power: around 60 megawatts generated by the enclave’s only power
plant, 30MW imported from Egypt
and 120MW that is supplied from
Israel.
Solar power - abundant the
year-round in Gaza, perched as it
is on the edge of the southeastern
Mediterranean between Israel and
Egypt - may provide the territory
with a degree of energy independence.
In Khan Younis, a town in the
southern Gaza Strip, Mohamed
Abu Jayyab watched workers as
they installed panels on his home.
“It has become clear that there
are no solutions (to the energy crisis) in the near future,” said Abu
Jayyab, a local economist. “The
situation became tragic, so we
resorted to an alternative - solar
power.”
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
13
ARAB WORLD
Fresh clashes at border
town as Tunisia mourns
AFP
Jerusalem
U
AFP
Tunis
F
resh clashes yesterday in Tunisia’s
Ben Guerdane area near the Libyan
border left 10 militants and a soldier
dead as thousands attended funerals for
victims of a major assault.
The assault, launched Monday on army
and police posts and blamed by authorities on the Islamic State group, and ensuing unrest has left 46 militants, 13 members of security forces and seven civilians
dead.
IS has taken advantage of Libya’s chaos to gain an important foothold in the
country and there are fears of its influence
spreading into neighbouring Tunisia.
After fighting off Monday’s fierce assault, Tunisian security forces have been
hunting and clashing sporadically with
militants in the area, where a nighttime
curfew has been in effect since Monday.
Two “terrorists” and a soldier were
killed yesterday when fighting erupted
after militants tried to raid a building site
in search of provisions, officials said. Another militant was shot dead while hiding
in a house in the city.
Late on Tuesday security forces killed
another seven militants hiding out in a
house in the town of 60,000.
The defence ministry warned that
those entering a designated buffer zone
along the border without permission
would be dealt with “firmly”.
Authorities would respond “with force
against anyone” who does not cooperate,
the ministry warned.
“This is to prevent terrorist threats
that could target our country through attempts at infiltration,” it said.
There was a heavy security presence in
Ben Guerdane and the border with Libya
has remained closed since Monday.
Thousands turned up for funerals of
the victims of Monday’s attacks, as the
bodies of 11 people were buried in the
town cemetery in an area newly designated ‘The Martyrs of March 7’.
Biden criticises
‘failure to condemn’
Palestinian attacks
Mourners gather around a coffin of a person killed during Monday’s attack on army and police posts in Ben Guerdan, Tunisia.
Mourning took place nationwide,
and schools across the country held a
minute’s silence in memory of the civilians and members of the security forces
killed in the assault.
At the Lenin school in central Tunis,
pupils sang the national anthem and saluted the national flag before the solemn
ceremony. “It is vital to show students
the importance of defending the nation,
that the blood of martyrs did not flow for
nothing,” teacher Sonia El Kefi told AFP.
“We will not allow terrorists to influence
the minds of children.”
One of the pupils, Aziz, said: “This is
for the martyrs” and so the police “are
aware that if they die, there will still be
people standing behind them”.
The authorities said Monday’s attack
was an “unprecedented” assault by IS
aimed at setting up a new stronghold in
the country across the border from Libya.
Prime Minister Habib Essid has said
about 50 extremists were believed to have
taken part in the attacks.
The apparent aim of the operation was
to establish a “Daesh emirate” in Ben
Guerdane, he said, using an Arabic name
for IS.
Analysts said the coordinated attacks
showed militants are keen to spread their
influence from Libya to Tunisia and to set
up a new stronghold in the country.
Residents of the town said the assailants appeared to be natives of the region.
They stopped people, checked ID cards
apparently to seek out members of the security forces, and announced their brief
takeover of Ben Guerdane as “liberators”.
Michael Ayari of the International
Crisis Group think tank said there was a
danger that too strong of a crackdown by
security forces could backfire.
“Security forces should react in a
measured manner when questioning Ben
Guerdane residents who may have lent
logistic or other support to the IS raiding
party,” he said.
“The scale of the attack means they
could number in the hundreds. A wave of
mass and indiscriminate arrests accompanied by police brutality could polarise
families, feed into residents’ frustrations
and increase support for IS in the future.”
S Vice President Joe Biden
yesterday implicitly criticised Palestinian leaders for not condemning attacks
against Israelis, as an upsurge in
violence marred his visit.
Six separate attacks took
place shortly before or after Biden’s arrival Tuesday, including
a stabbing spree on Tel Aviv’s
waterfront by a Palestinian who
killed an American tourist and
wounded 12 people.
The stabbings in the Jaffa port
area took place as Biden met
former Israeli president Shimon
Peres about a kilometre away late
on Tuesday.
Biden said his wife and grandchildren had been having dinner
on the beach not far from the site
of the stabbings.
“The US condemns these acts
and condemns the failure to
condemn these acts,” Biden said
while meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The kind of violence we saw
yesterday, the failure to condemn
it, the rhetoric that incites that
violence, the retribution that it
generates, has to stop.”
Biden offered his condolences to the family of the American victim, 29-year-old Taylor
Force, whom he noted served in
the military in Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly
called for peaceful resistance
against the Israeli occupation,
but has not specifically condemned a wave of knife, gun and
car-ramming attacks that erupted in October.
Islamist movement Hamas,
which runs the Gaza Strip, often
praises such attacks.
A large number of the attackers have been young people, in-
cluding teenagers, who appear
to have been acting on their own.
Many analysts say Palestinian
frustration with Israeli occupation and settlement building in
the West Bank, the complete lack
of progress in peace efforts and
their own fractured leadership
have fed the unrest.
Israel blames incitement by
Palestinian leaders and media
as a main cause of the violence,
which has killed 188 Palestinians
and 28 Israelis since October.
Most of the Palestinians were
killed while carrying out attacks,
Israeli authorities say. Others
were shot dead by Israeli forces
during clashes or demonstrations.
The number of attacks had
somewhat diminished recently
and Israeli security forces were
probing whether the flare-up
was connected to Biden’s visit.
Two Palestinians, 19 and 21,
yesterday shot at a bus from their
car in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of northern
Jerusalem, police said. A driver
returned fire at the assailants before they fled.
Later they opened fire again
just outside Jerusalem’s Old City.
A 50-year-old man, thought to
be a Palestinian from east Jerusalem, was seriously wounded.
Israeli authorities first attributed his injury to the assailants,
but said later they were investigating whether it was the result
of police gunfire. The two assailants were shot and killed by
police.
In a separate incident later
in the morning, a 16-year-old
Palestinian tried to stab Israeli
forces at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank and was shot
dead, the army said.
Three other attacks occurred on
Tuesday in addition to the stabbings that killed the American, including two in Jerusalem and one
in Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv.
14
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
AFRICA
AU studies
forming
force to
tackle Mali
Reuters
Dakar
T
Somali policemen gather near the wreckage of a car at the scene of an explosion following an attack in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu.
Shebaab stronghold
raided by US forces
Shebaab’s total collapse may be
imminent
AFP
Nairobi
U
S troops took part in a helicopterborne special forces raid against
Shebaab insurgents in Somalia, a
US official said yesterday.
The official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, described the operation overnight Tuesday to Wednesday as a “US
partnered raid” with US troops accompanying Somali forces.
The raid came just days after a US warplanes and drones killed an estimated 130
Shebaab fighters training for a major operation, according to the Pentagon.
Special forces operatives in two helicopters targeted the Shebaab-controlled
town of Awdhegele, about 50km west of
Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, Somali gov-
ernment officials and a Shebaab spokesman said.
“We have reports Shebaab militants
suffered casualties,” local district commissioner Mohamed Aweys told reporters.
It was not immediately clear what the
objective was, but helicopter raids in the
past have been hostage rescue missions,
such as a US commando operation in 2012
to free two aid workers who had been held
for three months by the group.
Shebaab has stepped up their attacks
since the start of the year.
The Shebaab group confirmed the overnight raid, saying they had fought off the
troops.
“Armed forces on two military helicopters raided Awdhegele town last night,
but they have lost and returned without achieving their objective,” Shebaab
spokesman Sheik Abduasiz Abu Musab
said in a speech broadcast on the group’s
Radio Andalus.
“The helicopters landed outside town
and the ground forces entered, there was
heavy fighting and they were forced to
flee.”
The Shebaab said they did not know
what country the troops were from, but
said they were not Somali and spoke a foreign language. It was not clear what they
were targeting.
Witnesses reported hearing loud blasts
during the night, saying the Shebaab had
boosted security during the morning.
“There were several load explosions
near the Shebaab base in Awdhegele late
last night,” local resident Abdikarim Nure
said.
“The fighters were patrolling the area
this morning, and people are not allowed
to go close to the area.”
Foreign special forces have periodically
launched raids to rescue their captured
nationals, including one in 2012 by US elite
commandos who swooped in by helicopter to free two aid workers held for three
months.
French special forces also staged a raid
in January 2013 in an unsuccessful bid to
free intelligence agent Denis Allex.
The Shebaab was chased out of
Mogadishu in 2011 but remains a dangerous threat in both Somalia and neighbouring Kenya where it carries out regular attacks.
In a separate incident, a car bomb detonated outside a tea shop in Mogadishu
yesterday morning, killing at least three
police officers.
The three were drinking tea when the
blast occurred and the driver of the car was
“seriously wounded,” Mogadishu police
commissioner Ali Hersi Barre said. The
driver was taken into custody.
And Monday, six people were wounded
when a laptop bomb exploded at an airport in Beledweyne, a town 325km north
of Mogadishu, where last month Shebaab
insurgents claimed a bomb attack which
ripped a hole in a passenger plane shortly
after takeoff.
he African Union will
send a mission to
northern Mali in the
next few weeks to look into
setting up a counter-terrorism force to support vulnerable UN peacekeepers, sources
familiar with the matter said.
The Bamako government,
as well as some officials of the
UN force in Mali, MINUSMA,
have called for more help in
fighting Al Qaeda-linked insurgents, who have become
increasingly active despite the
efforts of French, Malian and
UN troops.
French forces drove the
militants out of northern Malian cities in 2013 but they have
regrouped, and in November,
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb attacked a luxury hotel in
Bamako, killing 20 people in a
demonstration of their ability
to strike beyond their desert
bases.
Critics
say
the
10,000-strong UN force’s
ability to bring peace to Mali
is hamstrung by its lack of an
aggressive counter-terrorism
mandate, meaning it cannot
hunt down militants and is
vulnerable to attack.
At least 20 Malian and UN
troops from Africa have been
killed this year, according to
Reuters estimates.
While an expansion of the
Building collapse
toll hits 30 in Lagos
AFP
Lagos
T
Morgan, a male bull in his 30s, in Kenya’s coastal Tana River Delta.
An elephant returns to Somalia’s
badlands after 20 years
AFP
Nairobi
A
n elephant marched hundreds of
kilometres and briefly crossed into
Somalia this month marking the
first time the animal has been seen in the
country in 20 years, conservationists said
yesterday.
Morgan, a male bull in his 30s, was fitted with a tracking collar in December
in Kenya’s Coastal Tana River Delta, but
in mid-February began an unexpected
march northwards to Somalia, reaching
the border nearly three weeks later.
His march has excited conservationists
who say it shows the elephant remembered ancient routes after decades of absence due to war.
“He obviously had something in his
mind about where he’s going,” said Iain
Douglas-Hamilton of Save the Elephants,
a conservation organisation that has put
tracking collars on hundreds of African
elephants.
Morgan’s journey suggests that the
Kenya-Somalia border area is becoming
less dangerous and that if security were to
return to southern Somalia so might the
exiled elephants.
From Tana River, Morgan trudged 20km
on the first night and then hid in thick
forest the following day, before continuing his march under cover of darkness.
He maintained this pattern for the next
18 days.
“He’s adopted this extreme form of
survival strategy to traverse one of the
most dangerous places for elephants in
their African range,” said Douglas-Hamilton.
African elephants are threatened everywhere by criminal poaching gangs and
armed groups, who kill them for their
tusks, the ivory fetching around $1,100
per kg in China.
At least 20,000 elephants were killed
last year, according to figures released
this month by the Convention on the
Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), an
international organisation.
In some parts of Africa elephants are
being killed quicker than they reproduce, but Kenya has seen recent successes with the number of elephants
poached in 2015 falling to 93 from 164
the previous year.
In the early 1970s it is estimated there
were as many as 20,000 elephants in
Kenya’s coastal area, but that number has
fallen to 300 at most today.
Some credit a Kenyan security operation in the area with suppressing poaching.
“We’re seeing more elephants now,”
said Charles Omondi, a commander in
the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) which
is patrolling the Lamu area alongside
Kenyan soldiers and police deployed to
defend against regular deadly attacks by
Islamic militants.
There have been no confirmed sightings of elephants in Somalia in two decades, since soon after the start of a civil
war that has continued in different forms
ever since.
Despite the time that has elapsed, Mor-
gan appeared to have remember the old
migration routes.
“A mature bull like Morgan is not wandering aimlessly. He’s likely following a
route that he learnt earlier in his life, one
that has been used by elephants for generations,” said Ian Craig, conservation director at the Northern Rangelands Trust,
a Kenya-based conservation group that
establishes reserves across the country,
including in the area where Morgan lives.
In the end, after walking 220km Morgan spent just less than 24-hours actually
in Somalia — and only went 3km over the
border — before turning back, presumably after failing to find any willing females
with whom to mate.
But the fact of his journey is what excites the conservationists.
“Out of all the tracking we’ve done in Africa, these movements — and these circumstances — are exceptional,” said DouglasHamilton. “The wandering of this one bull
across the entire expanse of Lamu district,
from the Tana river to the Somali border,
no-one has seen anything like this before.”
UN mandate was discussed
during a Security Council
visit to Mali last week, some
permanent members such as
France say it is already sufficiently robust, although they
back additional resources for
the force.
The AU initiative is being
floated as an alternative route
to improved security, the
sources say.
“There is an (AU) mission
to assess the security threats
in northern Mali in the next
few weeks,” said one security
source familiar with the visit
who is not authorised to speak
publicly.
“This will allow the development of a plan for an international force in the fight
against terrorism,” he added,
saying the AU planned to seek
UN and Malian backing.
A Western diplomat said
the force’s remit would be
similar to an existing AU regional task force set up last
year to fight militant group
Boko Haram in the Lake Chad
Basin.
Planning is at an early stage
and details of troop numbers
and financing have not yet
been determined, the sources
said.
AU officials at the continental body’s headquarters
in Addis Ababa could not
be reached for comment. A
spokesman for the Malian
defence ministry declined to
comment.
hirty people have now
died in the collapse of
a five-storey building
under construction in an upmarket area of Nigeria’s biggest city Lagos, a rescue official said yesterday.
“We have so far recovered
30 corpses and the number of
those rescued alive still stands
at 13,” Ibrahim Farinloye, from
the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), told
AFP. A total of 12 bodies were
recovered since rescuers resumed work yesterday morning, he added.
The fatal collapse happened after heavy rains in the
early hours of Tuesday in the
southeastern district of Lekki,
which is home to some of the
most expensive real estate in
the city.
Lekki, made up of sprawling
estates of gated communities
of US-style suburban homes,
has developed rapidly in recent years into a preferred location for wealthier Nigerians
and expatriates.
Some detached houses can
sell for millions of dollars.
Building collapses happen
frequently in densely populated areas of Lagos, which is
home to some 20mn people.
Poor workmanship and materials, and a lack of official
oversight are often blamed.
But collapses are rarer in
wealthier districts.
The Lagos State government said in a statement that
preliminary reports indicated
work on the building was illegal but the order had been
flouted.
“The collapsed building
was served (a) contravention
notice for exceeding the approved floors” and was sealed
by the Lagos State Building
Control Agency, it added.
The owners of the building
and promoters of the Lekki
Gardens development, Lekki
Worldwide Estate Limited,
“criminally unsealed the property and continued building
beyond the approved floors”.
The government called the
owners’ actions “a brazen act
of defiance and impunity” and
said “integrity tests” should
be conducted on all projects
being handled by the company.
All work has been ordered to
stop at the site and the owners told to report to the police
within 24 hours or face arrest, Lagos State information
commissioner Steve Ayorinde
said.
“The State Government will
no longer tolerate the action(s)
of unscrupulous owners and
builders who challenge its
supervisory control thereby
endangering the lives of Lagosians,” he added.
Rally marks abduction of activist
Hundreds rallied in Zimbabwe’s capital yesterday over the shadowy
disappearance of an opposition activist a year ago, as the United
States led calls for a probe into “politically motivated violence”.
Zimbabwe’s 92-year-old ruler Robert Mugabe, who has led the
country since independence from Britain in 1980, has been accused
by critics at home and abroad of cracking down on opponents and
smothering democracy. Protesters including opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai demanded that Mugabe release information
on how Itai Dzamara, a former journalist and harsh regime critic,
was seized by unidentified men. Dzamara was the leader of an
anti-government campaign group that sought to force Mugabe
to resign over the collapse of the economy, largely sparked by
the seizure of white-owned farms which led to a dramatic fall in
agricultural production. On March 9 last year, Dzamara was bundled
into an unmarked car while coming out of a barbers shop and he
has not been seen since. “Why should the regime resort to violence
whenever the people want to express themselves?” Tsvangirai
told the rally in Harare’s African Unity square, where Dzamara
had staged sit-in protests and was once beaten by pro-Mugabe
supporters. “We will hound this government forever and ever until
they bring Itai to us alive or dead.”
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
15
AMERICAS
Sanders
campaign
sues Ohio
over
youth vote
Trump racks up wins as
Sanders ‘stuns’ Clinton
Reuters
Washington
Reuters
Detroit
B
epublican
front-runner
Donald Trump racked up
primary wins in the big
prize of Michigan as well as Mississippi and Hawaii on Tuesday,
brushing off a week of blistering
attacks from the party’s establishment and expanding his lead
in the White House nominating
race.
In the Democratic contest,
Bernie Sanders stunned frontrunner Hillary Clinton in a narrow Michigan primary upset,
giving his upstart campaign new
energy.
Clinton won in Mississippi,
but Sanders’ victory is seen as
likely to ensure a prolonged fight
to pick a candidate for November’s general election.
Trump’s convincing win in
Michigan restored his outsider
campaign’s momentum and increased the pressure on the party’s anti-Trump forces to find a
way to stop the brash billionaire’s
march to the nomination ahead
of several key contests next week.
The 69-year-old New Yorker
built his victories in Michigan, in
the heart of the industrial Midwest, and Mississippi in the Deep
ernie Sanders’ Democratic
presidential campaign has
sued Ohio’s secretary of
state in federal court over what
it calls an unconstitutional attempt to prevent young people
from voting in the state’s March
15 primary election.
“It is an outrage that the secretary of state in Ohio is going
out of his way to keep young
people – significantly AfricanAmerican young people, Latino
young people – from participating,” the US senator from
Vermont said in a statement released on Tuesday.
The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Columbus and
joined by six Ohio 17-year-olds,
alleged that a directive by Republican Secretary of State Jon
Husted would “arbitrarily discriminate” against young voters.
Citing US Census figures, it
said that such voters were more
likely to be black or Latino than
older groups of voters.
Sanders, who is seeking the
Democratic nomination for the
November 8 election, has attracted support from young voters but has lagged behind rival
Hillary Clinton in winning votes
among minorities.
Ohio is one of more than 20
states where 17-year-olds who
will be 18 by the time of the
general election are allowed to
vote in primaries, the campaign
statement said.
Husted ruled last December that those voters would not
be allowed to participate in the
presidential primary.
He denied there had been any
changes to voting rules.
“We are following the same
rules Ohio has operated under
in past primaries, under both
Democrat and Republican administrations. There is nothing
new here,” Husted said on Twitter. “If you are going to be 18 by
the November election, you can
vote, just not on every issue.”
He said that 17-year-olds were
“not permitted to elect candidates, which is what voters are
doing in a primary when they
elect delegates to represent them
at their political party’s national
convention”.
R
South with broad appeal across
many demographics.
He won evangelical Christians,
Republicans,
independents,
those who wanted an outsider
and those who said they were
angry about how the federal government is working, according to
exit polls.
Trump said in several television interviews yesterday that
he was drawing new voters to the
Republican Party and the establishment figures who are resisting his campaign should save
their money and focus on beating
the Democrats in November.
“If this party came together
... nobody could beat it,” Trump
told NBC’s Today programme.
Asked on ABC if he was ready
to wrap up the nomination, he
said: “I’d like to.”
The results were a setback for
rival John Kasich, governor of
Ohio, who had hoped to pull off
a surprise win in neighboring
Michigan, and for Marco Rubio,
a US senator from Florida who
has become the establishment
favourite but lagged badly in both
Michigan and Mississippi and
appeared unlikely to win delegates in either.
Speaking at a news conference
in Jupiter, Florida after Tuesday’s
voting, Trump said Rubio’s re-
cent attacks on him backfired.
“Hostility works for some
people; it doesn’t work for everyone,” the real estate magnate
said.
Trump, a former reality TV
star, has peppered his campaign
with put-downs of rivals and
critics.
Many mainstream Republicans have been offended by his
statements on Muslims, immigrants and women and alarmed
by his threats to international
trade deals.
Trump has dismissed criticism that his statements would
be harmful to US interests.
Ted Cruz, a 45-year-old US
senator from Texas whose recent
victories have positioned him as
the prime alternative to Trump,
won the party’s primary in Idaho.
But Trump suggested his rivals
had little hope going forward,
and took particular aim at Cruz.
Asked if he would consider Rubio as potential vice-presidential
running mate to help coalesce
his Republican support and attract Hispanic voters, Trump told
MNSBC “Sure”, but added he was
not yet ready to make that decision.
“Ted is going to have a hard
time,” Trump said of Cruz. “He
rarely beats me.”
Sanders greets supporters after speaking on the night of the Michigan, Mississippi and other primaries at
his campaign rally in Miami, late on Tuesday.
UN expert: Trump’s
torture support hurts
US global ‘standing’
Trump: Hostility works for some people; it doesn’t work for everyone.
Trump continues to enjoy a
wide lead nationally in the Republican race, although Cruz
has been climbing over the past
week.
Among those who identify as
Republicans, Trump has settled
in at about 40% support, according to a five-day rolling average ending on Tuesday in the
Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Cruz at 23% and Kasich at 11%
have been on the rise, largely at
Rubio’s expense.
The Michigan victory sets
Trump up for a potentially decisive day of voting next week.
On March 15, Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina – like Michigan, states rich
in the delegates who will select
their party’s nominee at July’s
Republican National Convention
– cast ballots.
The Republican contests in
Florida and Ohio award all the
state’s delegates to the winner.
If Trump could sweep those
two states and pile up delegates
elsewhere next week, it could
knock home-state favourites Rubio and Kasich out of the race and
make it tough for Cruz to catch
him.
Anti-Trump Super PACS have
spent millions of dollars on advertisements designed to attack
Trump’s character in Florida.
But Trump’s relentless antifree trade rhetoric and promise
to slap taxes on cars and parts
shipped in from Mexico resonated in Michigan, which has lost
tens of thousands of manufacturing and auto industry jobs.
“The biggest takeaway is that
the Republican establishment
is in its death throes. The only
Canada plans to lead Haiti peacekeeping: media
AFP
Montreal
C
anada is planning to take
over command of the
UN stabilisation mission
in Haiti and replace the bulk of
troops on the ground from Brazil
with its own, according to a report yesterday.
During a visit to Ottawa by
UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon last month, Canadian
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
signalled his willingness to re-
new Canada’s engagement on the
world stage, including increasing
its participation in UN peacekeeping missions.
There are currently 36 Canadian soldiers deployed on United
Nations peacekeeping missions
in Haiti, Jerusalem, South Sudan,
Cyprus, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Korea, down from a reported 3,000
troops at its peak in 1993.
French speakers in the Canadian military, Trudeau said in February, are in demand in hotspots
in some former French or Belgian
Shooting suspect held
AFP
Washington
A
man suspected of repeatedly firing at a pastor who led prayers at a
rally for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz was arrested outside the White House
on Tuesday, authorities said.
Kyle Odom is accused of
shooting and wounding Tim
Remington in the parking lot
of his church in Coeur d’Alene,
Idaho, on Sunday, a day after
the pastor appeared at a campaign event for Cruz in the
northwestern state.
He fled the scene, sparking a
manhunt.
Odom, a 30-year-old former
marine, was taken into custody
after he threw “unknown material” over the south fence at
the White House, the US Secret
Service said in a statement.
A database search revealed
Odom was wanted for attempted first-degree murder by the
Coeur d’Alene police and he
was arrested.
Coeur d’Alene police say
they believe Odom planned the
attack on Remington but his
motive remains unclear.
The Secret Service did not
reveal what Odom had thrown
over the White House fence,
saying only that it was “determined to be non-hazardous”.
NBC News, citing Coeur
d’Alene police chief Lee White,
reported that the material included a “manifesto” mentioning the names of US lawmakers and Israeli government
officials but no specific threats.
The broadcaster also cited
White as saying that Odom is
believed to have an unspecified
mental illness.
The shooting is one of a
spate in the US, where gun violence is responsible for some
30,000 deaths annually.
colonies, including Haiti and the
Central African Republic.
In addition to expressing a
desire for a seat on the Security
Council, the prime minister said
that he wanted Canada to play a
larger role in preventing and mediating global conflicts, as well as
post-war reconstruction.
According to the daily Le Devoir, Canada wants to send 1,000
to 2,000 police officers and soldiers to Haiti to shore up security in the poorest nation in the
Western hemisphere, and take
over command of the UN mis-
sion from Brazil after its mission
mandate expires in October.
Canadian officials were not
immediately available to comment.
The UN mission, MINUSTAH,
was launched in April 2004 following the departure into exile
of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The force was bolstered after
the powerful January 2010 earthquake that toppled buildings
across the country and killed tens
of thousands of people.
There are currently 2,370 sol-
diers, 2,600 police officers, and
1,500 civilian officials on the
ground in Haiti, both domestic
and foreign, including five Canadian soldiers and 90 police officers.
Haiti has long been a priority destination for Canadian humanitarian aid.
More than half C$500mn has
been committed for reconstruction and development of Haiti
over the past decade, according
to government figures.
There is also a large Haitian diaspora living in Canada.
Obama leaner and healthier since
2014 due to diet, exercise: doctor
DPA
Washington
U
S
President
Barack
Obama’s latest check-up
shows him in excellent
health, his personal physician
said on Tuesday.
“The president’s overall health
remains excellent and is improved from his last formal assessment,” Dr Ronny Jackson
said in a statement issued by the
White House.
“His adherence to a healthy
diet and a consistent exercise
programme has resulted in an
improved lean body mass and
lower cholesterol level. All clinical data indicates that the president is currently very healthy
and that he will remain so for the
duration of his presidency.”
Obama, 54, took office in 2009
Obama: in good shape.
and will leave office on January 20, 2017, after two four-year
terms.
He weighs 79kg at 1.87m tall.
Obama has a resting heart rate
of 56 beats per minute, and a
relatively low blood pressure of
110/68, according to the statement.
The check-up in February was
his first since June 2014.
Jackson said that Obama has
20/20 vision and normal organ
systems from head to toe.
He gets a seasonal influenza
vaccination and takes daily vitamin D.
A former smoker, Obama
makes “occasional use” of nicotine gum and takes Nexium as
needed to treat occasional acid
reflux.
He takes malarone, an antimalarial drug, when traveling in
areas subject to the mosquitoborne disease.
Jackson said that Obama
“continues to exercise daily with
a focus on aerobic fitness and resistance weight training”.
“The president continues to
focus on healthy lifestyle choices,” Jackson wrote. “He eats a
healthy diet, remains tobacco
free, and only drinks alcohol occasionally and in moderation.”
remaining candidates are 100%
anti-establishment,” said Mark
Meckler, an early founder of the
conservative Tea Party movement.
Trump said that he and Republican US House of Representative
Speaker Paul Ryan recently spoke
by phone, telling MSNBC that “it
was a smart call”, in a sign that he
would be willing to work with the
Republican congressional leader.
In the Democratic race, Sanders told reporters in Florida that
the results in Michigan were a
repudiation of the opinion polls
and pundits who had written off
his chances in the state.
Opinion polls had shown Clinton with a double-digit lead going into the primary.
The US senator from Vermont,
a democratic socialist, said that
the win showed his political revolution was “strong in every part
of the country. Frankly, we believe our strongest areas are yet
to come”.
Clinton’s campaign signaled
ahead of Michigan that the race
could be tight.
Clinton, her husband, former
president Bill Clinton, and
daughter Chelsea Clinton all
campaigned in the state over the
past few days trying to garner
last-minute votes.
US Housing Secretary Julian
Castro, often seen as a potential
running-mate for Hillary Clinton, said he does not expect to be
the Democratic vice-presidential
pick.
“There’s been no conversation
whatsoever,” Castro told reporters yesterday at the Democratic
National Committee Hispanic
caucus summit in Miami.
Comments by Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in support
of waterboarding and the torture
of terror suspects have damaged
the United States’ global standing,
a UN expert said yesterday.
Juan Mendez, the United Nations
special rapporteur on torture,
made the comments a day after
briefing the UN rights council in
Geneva.
“I think the ... standing of the
United States as a law-abiding
nation and as an example to other
states to fight crime and terrorism
within the strictures of the rule
of law is very seriously damaged
by this kind of rhetoric,” Mendez
said.
Although he did not use Trump’s
name, Mendez was responding to
a question about the real-estate
mogul, who has said during the
Republican campaign that he supports waterboarding and other
extreme interrogation techniques
that are a “hell of a lot worse” and
said he had “no problem” with
the targeting of terror suspects’
families.
Trump pledged over the weekend
to abide by US laws but suggested
that they should be changed to
permit the torture of terror suspects and targeting their family,
allowing the US to play “on the
same field” as the Islamic State.
Speaking to reporters, Mendez
said his remarks on the US election campaign were made “as
a citizen”, not in his official UN
capacity.
“If any of these candidates gets
elected and reinstates waterboarding or any of the other
harsh techniques – euphemistically called enhanced interrogation tactics – that is going to be
illegal,” he said.
“They are illegal as a matter of international law, they are illegal as
a matter of constitutional law in
the United States, they are illegal
as a matter of military law. The
uniform code of military justice
(in the United States) expressly
prohibits torture,” Mendez said.
Mendez, a lawyer and Argentinian
national, was arrested and tortured by the military dictatorship
that ruled the country in the late
1970s and early 1980s.
Government seeking accomplished
woman to feature in new banknote
Canada will feature a woman on an upcoming banknote and the
country is seeking nominations from the public on which iconic
female should receive the honour, the government said on Tuesday.
Although the Queen of England is featured predominantly on
Canada’s currency, the new note will showcase a Canadian –
either by birth or naturalisation – who has shown leadership or
achievement in the service of the country.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau in making the announcement noted
that, with the exception of the queen, women have “largely been
unrepresented” on Canada’s banknotes.
Celine Dion need not apply – to the chagrin of at least one Twitter
commentator – because candidates also must have been deceased
for at least 25 years.
Nominations submitted to the Bank of Canada will be reviewed by
an independent advisory council made up of academics and other
experts that will draw up a short list to be submitted to the finance
minister.
The new note will be issued in 2018.
Following the announcement, which coincided with International
Women’s Day, the Bank of Canada tweeted that the first name
submitted was Canadian suffragist Nellie McClung, who died in 1951.
The Bank of Canada did not specify which banknote would feature
the iconic woman.
The move follows in the footsteps of the United States, which
last year announced it would feature the face of a woman on a
redesigned $10 bill to be unveiled in 2020.
Public film producer pledges equality
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has announced that it will
allocate at least half its production spending to movies directed by
women within the next three years.
“There have been good years and lean years for women’s
filmmaking at the NFB. No more,” the agency’s head Claude
Joli-Coeur said on Tuesday. “Today, I’m making a firm, ongoing
commitment to full gender parity, which I hope will help to lead the
way for the industry as a whole.”
Announcing its plan to coincide with International Women’s Day, the
country’s public filmmaker also said at least half its productions will
be directed by women.
Films directed by women will already receive half the agency’s
spending on production during the current fiscal year, Joli-Coeur
said.
“In 2016-2017, the numbers are projected to be well above that,” he
added.
As recently as 2013-2014, women represented only 17% of directors,
22% of writers and 12% of cinematographers, the NFB said, citing a
report that sampled 91 feature-length films.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a self-proclaimed feminist, has made
pushing for gender parity in politics and business a priority for his
Liberal government.
Asked why he appointed a cabinet with equal numbers of men and
women after taking power in November, he said: “Because it’s 2015.”
16
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
ASEAN
Celebrations as
total solar
eclipse sweeps
across Indonesia
AFP
Ternate
A
total solar eclipse swept
across the vast Indonesian archipelago yesterday, marked by ecstatic sky
gazers cheering the spectacle,
devout Muslims kneeling in
prayer and tribespeople performing rituals.
The moon began to move
between the Earth and sun at
6:19am (2319 GMT Tuesday),
and about an hour later a total
eclipse became visible in western parts of the country.
The sun then went entirely
dark in a broad arc right across
the world’s biggest archipelago
nation, which straddles three
time zones, before the eclipse
swept out across the Pacific
Ocean. Partial eclipses were also
visible over other parts of Asia
and Australia, and astronomy
enthusiasts across the region
gathered on rooftops, beaches
and in observatories to witness
the phenomenon.
Tens of thousands of foreign
and Indonesian tourists flocked
to the best viewing spots, and
special events were organised,
from a festival to fun runs and
dragon boat races.
“It was spectacular,” said
Daniel Orange, a 52-year-old
American tourist from California, who was watching the total
eclipse on the small western island of Belitung.
“It was very beautiful, there
are a lot of people here and
when the totality hit, everybody
cheered. I got goose bumps.”
In Ternate, in the eastern
Maluku Islands, thousands of
people yelled “Glory to God”
as the total eclipse became visible, while on the small Mentawai archipelago in the west of
the country, hundreds cheered,
This photo combo shows the moon passing in front of the sun (top left to bottom right) during a total solar eclipse in the city of Ternate, in
Indonesia’s Maluku Islands yesterday.
School children watch a partial solar eclipse at the Planetarium in Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia yesterday.
prayed and hugged one another
during the spectacle.
The whole eclipse lasted
around three hours in Indonesia, but the total eclipse was
visible for between just one
and a half and three minutes,
depending on location.
The weather stayed clear in
many popular viewing spots,
although clouds obscured
views in some places.
For some of Indonesia’s
tribes, the eclipse is viewed
with apprehension.
Thai junta in
fresh ‘influential
people’ purge
AFP
Bangkok
T
hailand’s military junta
ordered a fresh sweep of
6,000 corrupt “influential people” yesterday, the
latest move by a regime that
has touted a tough anti-graft
stance, but with limited success.
The kingdom is known for
its nexus of graft-tainted officials, underground mafia and
shady patronage networks,
something the ruling junta has
vowed to tackle, even though
the military has long been
tarred by such allegations.
Intelligence officers across
the country have now compiled a list of some 6,000
“influential people” — a Thai
phrase used to describe mafia bosses and other powerful figures dealing in illegal
trades.
The blacklisted, which include government and security officials, are suspected of
aiding a variety of crime syndicates, deputy prime minister General Prawit Wongsuwon told reporters yesterday,
without elaborating on the
nature of the crimes.
“There are 6,000 people
in these networks, some are
government officials,” he
said, adding that the crackdown would be wrapped up
in the next two months.
The generals that grabbed
power in a 2014 coup have
sought to burnish a reputation as crime-busters,
trumpeting periodic — and
often short-lived—crack-
downs on everything from
gambling rings to drunk
drivers. The regime has also
suppressed free speech,
detained scores of political dissidents and sidelined
allies of the government it
toppled.
But Prawit stressed that
the latest clampdown on
“influence” was aimed at
criminals, not critics.
“The crackdown is not
concentrated on a particular
group of politicians,” he said.
Many in Thailand’s top
echelons of power are tainted
by some history of graft.
As relations sour and political winds shift, sudden
purges can see senior figures
fall from grace with a swiftness often baffling to observers.
Paul Chambers, a Thailand-based academic and
expert on the military, said
the junta’s latest purge suggests a growing “siege mentality” as the administration
seeks to rationalise its continued grip on power two
years after the coup.
“The economy is tanking,
there are droughts across the
northeast, there are so many
difficulties, so they are perceiving enemies on all sides,”
he said.
The junta assumed control
of the country amid antigovernment protests in May
2014 vowing to end 10 years
of political turmoil.
But critics say the regime
is more concerned with
maintaining the military
elite’s political influence in
the kingdom.
In Palangkaraya, on Borneo
island, Dayak tribesmen performed a special ritual to ensure that the sun, which they
view as the source of life, did
not disappear entirely.
As the total eclipse hit, the
tribal chief — dressed in a traditional costume — began to
chant loudly and was answered
by even louder chants from
other members of the tribe.
For many in the world’s most
populous
Muslim-majority
country, it was a spiritual ex-
Passengers watch the total solar eclipse onboard the Indonesian cruise ship KM Kelud near the island of Belitung in Indonesia. Right: Thai Muslim
people offer prayers during a solar eclipse in Narathiwat, southern Thailand yesterday.
perience, and large numbers
flocked to mosques to say special prayers. Foreign scientists
also descended on Indonesia.
A four-strong team from
Nasa was in Maba, a small town
in the Malukus, to observe the
eclipse. Other parts of Southeast Asia witnessed substantial
partial eclipses.
A crowd of about 400 people, including students and
families, gathered at a university sports field in Singapore to
watch the eclipse, while groups
of enthusiasts also converged
on beaches and outside their
highrise apartments to gaze upwards.
In the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, 1,000 school students witnessed the eclipse at
the national planetarium and in
the Philippine capital Manila,
dozens of people carrying telescopes jostled for space on the
roof deck of the country’s only
space observatory.
“People were howling with
excitement. For many of them,
it’s their first time to see a solar
eclipse,” said Philippine state
astronomer Allan Alcaraz.
A partial eclipse was also visible in northern Australia, with
a handful of astronomy enthusiasts watching the event in
Darwin. The total eclipse swept
across 12 out of 34 provinces
in Indonesia, which stretches
about 5,000 kilometres from
east to west, before heading
across the Pacific.
It passed over the major islands
of Sumatra, Borneo and Sulawesi,
Suu Kyi party mulls rethink
over China-backed dam
AFP
Yangon
A
ung San Suu Kyi’s incoming government is
considering a rethink of
a controversial Chinese-backed
dam in Myanmar and looking
for ways to end a military conglomerate’s “privileges”, according to her party’s economic
adviser.
Her new government, which
is expected to take office in early
April, faces a raft of economic
challenges, not least the continued financial clout of Myanmar’s military, while needing to
manage delicate relations with
China, its biggest trading partner.
Critics of the former junta
long argued that Myanmar’s
military elite grew wealthy off
a cosy relationship with Beijing
that granted the giant northern
neighbour lucrative concessions with little trickle down
benefit. Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy
(NLD) have offered few policy
details, beyond a broad manifesto, in the lengthy transition period since winning last
November’s elections with a
thumping mandate.
But Hantha Myint, the head
of the NLD’s economics committee, said voters were expecting tangible change.
“The people have very, very
high hopes and then if we
misbehave in some way... the
people’s expectations will be
crushed,” he said during an
interview at the party’s headquarters in Yangon.
While underlining that Suu
Kyi would make the ultimate
decision on policy, he said a po-
Hantha Myint, head of the National League for Democracy (NLD)
party economics committee speaks during an interview held at
the NLD headquarters.
tential redesign of the multibillion dollar Myitsone hydropower project in northern Kachin
State was on the cards — comments likely to reverberate in
Beijing.
The trained engineer raised
fears over its proximity to an
active earthquake fault line,
but said a compromise could be
made to reduce risk.
“If we refuse to build a dam
at Myitsone we can build other
dams upstream,” he added.
Myitsone was halted in 2011
by President Thein Sein amid
widespread protest and the collapse of a 17-year ceasefire with
local ethnic minority rebels.
On Tuesday Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi insisted
that the dam had gone through
“full approval procedures” and
put recent controversy down to
“growing pains”.
Hantha Myint also said it was
time for Myanmar Economic
Holdings Limited (MEHL) — a
military conglomerate that runs
business interests as diverse
as construction, transport and
brewing — to “compete at a lev-
el playing field”. “The privileges
given to MEHL by the previous
government, we will not be able
to give them those privileges,”
he said.
Myanmar Economic Corp,
the military’s other main conglomerate, remained outside of
civilian control, he added.
Suu Kyi is banned from becoming president but she has
vowed to rule through a presidential proxy, with the NLD expected to announce their candidate for the job today.
She has shown a pragmatic
streak in dealing with both Myanmar’s powerful military and
controversial Chinese-backed
projects. She led an inquiry
into the Letpadaung copper
mine in central Monywa - a
joint venture between MEHL
and China’s Wanbao - following a violent police crackdown
on protesters including monks
in 2012. The probe attracted
the ire of activists after it recommended construction be allowed to continue.
But it also made a host of other
recommendations for reducing
the impact of local communities
that Hantha Myint said the new
government would revisit.
Wanbao plans to start production in May, in a move likely to
pose an early challenge for the
NLD government. A spokesman
for the firm told AFP last month
that the next government would
be expected to handle continued
protests by angry local farmers,
adding “only they can solve it”.
Ye Htut, a spokesman for the
outgoing administration, said
that the government had suspended a further 68 projects
recently, which like Myitsone
were “for the next government to
decide”.
before sweeping over the Malukus
and out into the ocean.
The last total solar eclipse
occurred on March 20, 2015,
and was only visible from the
Faroe Islands and Norway’s
Arctic Svalbard archipelago.
Total eclipses occur when the
moon moves between the Earth
and the Sun, and the three bodies align precisely. As seen from
Earth, the moon is just broad
enough to cover the solar face,
creating a breath-taking silver
halo in an indigo sky.
Suspected
home-made
bombs
destroyed
DPA
Kuala Lumpur
P
olice yesterday successfully destroyed two suspected
home-made bombs left at
a car park near a popular shopping area in the Malaysian capital, a police official said.
The suspected explosives,
contained in two plastic bottles,
were seized at a car park at the
Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre and successfully destroyed
by police bomb experts, according to Kuala Lumpur Police Chief
Tajudin Isa.
A civilian had informed security personnel about the presence of the suspicious package,
Tajudin said.
Malaysian police have been on
high alert since terrorist attacks
in the Indonesian capital Jakarta
in January killed several people,
including the attackers.
On Tuesday, Interior Ministry officials revealed that local
sympathisers of the Islamic State
plotted to kidnap Prime Minister
Najib Razak and two other senior
officials last year.
Federal Territories Minister
Adnan Mansor warned in February that local Islamic State
sympathisers were planning to
launch terrorist attacks in public and tourist areas in Kuala
Lumpur.
Malaysia, a country of over
30mn people, has not experienced a deadly terrorist attack.
Malaysian police have arrested more than 100 local Islamic
State supporters since it began a
crackdown on the militant group
in early 2014.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
17
AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA
N Korea has ‘shrunk
nukes’ to fit missiles
N Korea has responded to expert
opinion that it did not have the
requisite technology
Reuters
Seoul
N
orth Korean leader Kim Jong Un
said his country has miniaturised
nuclear warheads to mount on ballistic missiles and ordered improvements
in the power and precision of its arsenal,
state media reported yesterday.
Kim has called for his military to be prepared to mount pre-emptive attacks against
the United States and South Korea and stand
ready to use nuclear weapons, stepping up
belligerent rhetoric after coming under new
UN and bilateral sanctions last week for its
nuclear and rocket tests.
US and South Korean troops began
large-scale military drills this week, which
the North called “nuclear war moves” and
threatened to respond with an all-out offensive.
Kim’s comments were his first direct
mention of the claim, made repeatedly in
state media, to have successfully miniaturised a nuclear warhead, which has been
widely questioned and never independently verified.
“The nuclear warheads have been
standardised to be fit for ballistic missiles
by miniaturising them,” KCNA quoted
Kim as saying as he inspected the work
of nuclear scientists, adding “this can be
called a true nuclear deterrent”.
“He stressed the importance of building
ever more powerful, precision and miniaturised nuclear weapons and their delivery
means,” KCNA said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un meeting with scientists and technicians.
Responding to the KCNA report, a
US state department spokeswoman,
Katina Adams, repeated a call on North
Korea to “refrain from provocative actions and rhetoric that aggravate tensions”.
Kim also inspected the nuclear warhead
designed for thermo-nuclear reaction,
KCNA said, referring to a miniaturised
hydrogen bomb that the country said it
tested on January 6.
Rodong Sinmun, official daily of North
Korea’s ruling party, carried pictures of
Kim in what seemed to be a large hangar
speaking to aides standing in front of a silver spherical object.
They also showed a large object similar
to the KN-08 intercontinental ballistic
missile (ICBM) previously put on display
at military parades, with Kim holding a
half-smoked cigarette in one of the images.
South Korea’s defence ministry said after the release of the images that it did not
believe the North has successfully miniaturised a nuclear warhead or deployed a
functioning ICBM.
That assessment is in line with the views
of South Korean and US officials that the
North has likely made some advances in
trying to put a nuclear warhead on a missile, but that there is no proof it has mastered the technology.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi,
speaking by telephone to US secretary of
state John Kerry, described the situation
on the Korean peninsula as “very tense”
and called for all parties to remain calm
and exercise restraint, China’s foreign
ministry said.
North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test on January 6 but its claim to have
set off a miniaturised hydrogen bomb has
been disputed by the US and South Korean
governments and many experts.
Following on from the UN sanctions,
South Korea on Tuesday announced further measures aimed at isolating North
Korea by blacklisting individuals and entities that it said were linked to Pyongyang’s
weapons programme.
China also stepped up pressure by barring a North Korean freighter from one of
its ports.
But a UN panel set up to monitor sanctions under an earlier Security Council
resolution adopted in 2009 said in a report
released on Tuesday that it had “serious
questions about the efficacy of the current
UN sanctions regime”.
North Korea has been “effective in evading sanctions” by continuing to engage in
banned trade, “facilitated by the low level
of implementation of Security Council
resolutions by member states”, the Panel
of Experts said.
“The reasons are diverse, but include
lack of political will, inadequate enabling
legislation, lack of understanding of the
resolutions and low prioritisation,” it said.
Serving the party
Backlash
over Nazi
remark in
Canberra
AFP
Sydney
A
ustralia’s immigration
minister
yesterday
brushed off calls to
apologise after his department chief used “allegedly”
to describe experiences in
Nazi Germany during a defence of the government’s
hardline asylum seeker policies.
Canberra’s tough measures
against boatpeople — which
involve detaining them in
remote Pacific island camps
while their refugee applications are processed — have
attracted strong domestic
and international criticism
from rights groups.
Doctors and whistleblowers have also said the detention of asylum seekers, particularly children, has left
some struggling with mental
health problems.
But a statement by immigration department head
Michael Pezzullo — meant to
counter a Sydney psychiatrist’s criticism of the policies
in the Australasian Psychiatry journal — drew fire when
he used the term “allegedly”
to describe experiences under
Nazi rule in Germany.
“Recent comparisons of
immigration detention centres to ‘gulags’; suggestions
that detention involves a
‘public numbing and indifference’ similar to that allegedly experienced in Nazi
Germany; and persistent
suggestions that detention
facilities are places of ‘torture’ are highly offensive, unwarranted and plainly wrong
— and yet they continue to be
made in some quarters,” the
statement released Tuesday
said.
Immigration minister Peter
Dutton yesterday slammed
critics of his department
chief, saying in a statement
that “any suggestion that Mr
Pezzullo deliberately sought
to deny or qualify the crimes
of the Nazi era is patently ludicrous”.
After the backlash on social media, the immigration
department had issued a
follow-up statement saying
“any insinuation the department denies the atrocities
committed in Nazi Germany
are both ridiculous and baseless”.
It also accused critics of
distorting the text to “create
controversy”.
“Any suggestion that Mr
Pezzullo deliberately
sought to deny or qualify
the crimes of the Nazi era
is patently ludicrous”
The row reflects the controversial nature of the government’s policies, which
Canberra has long defended
as necessary to stop deaths
at sea while securing the nation’s borders.
Opposition Labor immigration spokesman Richard
Marles had urged Dutton to
formally withdraw the remarks and apologise, saying
the second statement only
compounded the problem.
“The reputation of the department is at stake, indeed
the reputation of Australia is
at stake,” said Marles, whose
party supports the offshore
detention regime.
But Dutton accused Marles of
seeking to “join the rabid voices
of twitter and sections of the
media”. He called for an apology
from his Labor counterpart for
“impugning (the) integrity” of
immigration officials.
The uproar came a day after two Iranian refugees held
at a detention camp in Nauru
in the Pacific before being
resettled in Cambodia, returned home, sparking fresh
criticism about a Aus$55mn
($40mn) scheme between
Canberra and the Southeast
Asian nation.
Japan court orders
two N-reactors to
halt operations
Reuters
Tokyo
An attendant walks out of the Great Hall of the People during the 2nd plenary session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing. China’s Communist-controlled
parliament opened its annual session on March 5 and is expected to appove a new five-year plan to tackle slowing growth in the world’s second-largest economy.
US in talks to place long-range
bombers in Australian bases
AFP
Sydney
W
ashington is in talks to station
its strike bombers in Australia,
according to a US general, amid
concern about China’s military expansion
in the South China Sea.
General Lori Robinson, commander of
US Pacific air forces, said negotiations
were under way to have American B-1
bombers and aerial tankers temporarily
stationed in northern Australia.
“We’re in the process of talking about
rotational forces, bombers and tankers out
of Australia and it gives us the opportunity
to train with Australia,” she said according
to national radio aired yesterday.
“It gives us the opportunity to strengthen the ties we already have with the Royal
Australian Air Force and it gives the opportunity to train our pilots to understand
the theatre and how important it is to
strengthen our ties with our great allies,
the RAAF.”
A B-1B Lancer over the Pacific Ocean.
The US has been pursuing a foreign policy “pivot” towards Asia, which has rattled
China, and already stations marines in
Australia’s north.
Beijing said it was “concerned” by reports of the US-Australia talks.
“To seek peace, co-operation and development is an important trend in the
region and what all people aspire for,” said
Hong Lei, a spokesman from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Relevant co-operation among countries should serve the purpose of safeguarding regional peace and stability.
“Such co-operation should not target
the interests of a third party”.
Last May, assistant defence secretary
for Asian and Pacific security affairs David Shear raised the prospect of B-1 bombers in Australia when he appeared before
the US senate foreign relations committee.
But his comments were played down by
Australia’s then prime minister Tony Abbott, who said Shear had “misspoken”.
Current prime minister Malcolm Turnbull would not be drawn on the specifics
of the discussions when asked about the
bombers.
“Well, we have rotation of American military forces through Darwin and
through Australia all the time,” he said
yesterday. “So we have a very, very close
defence relationship with the US.
“I’m not going to comment on a particular element of that, but I can just assure
you that everything we do is in this area is
very carefully determined to ensure that
our respective military forces work together as closely as possible in our mutual
national interests.”
Beijing claims almost the whole of the
South China Sea, through which a third
of the world’s oil passes, and tensions
have been rising as it asserts its territorial
claims.
A US official last month said Beijing
had deployed surface-to-air missiles on
Woody Island in the disputed Paracels
chain. Reports also surfaced recently of
probable radar installations on reefs in the
nearby Spratly islands.
Washington has in recent months sent
warships to sail within 12 nautical miles —
the usual territorial limit around natural
land — of a disputed island and reef transformed into an artificial island.
Robinson said the United States would
continue to fly above and sail through the
disputed waterway and encouraged “anybody in the region and around the world”
to follow suit to assert freedom of navigation.
A
Japanese court yesterday ordered Kansai
Electric Power to halt
operations at two nuclear reactors at its Takahama plant,
disrupting Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe’s efforts to restore
atomic power five years after
the Fukushima crisis.
The move could potentially
throw government energy
policy into disarray, with the
nuclear industry only recently starting to get reactors back
online amid widespread public scepticism after the meltdowns at Fukushima in 2011.
The order by the Otsu District Court, a copy of which
was seen by Reuters, demands the halt of the No 3
and No 4 nuclear reactors at
Takahama and takes immediate effect. This is the first
injunction issued in Japan to
halt a nuclear plant that is
under operation.
Kansai said it will shut the
No 3 reactor, which restarted
in January, today.
Kansai Electric had been
working to restart the Takahama No 4 reactor this month
after an unplanned shutdown
due to a technical problem
last week.
Japanese lower courts
sometimes hand down contentious verdicts that are
then overturned by higher
courts, where judges tend to
be more attuned to political
implications, judicial experts
say.
Kansai Electric said it
would not accept the verdict
and would quickly appeal the
injunction, but it could mean
months or possibly a year of
delays and extra costs for oil,
gas or coal to replace the nuclear generation.
“This is a wake up call for
nuclear industry and the
government. They can no
longer take for granted that
the judiciary will follow the
old ways,” said Mutsuyoshi
Nishimura, a former Japanese
government official and chief
climate change negotiator.
Japan’s chief government
spokesman Yoshihide Suga
said that there was no change
in Tokyo’s stance on safety at
the Takahama reactors or in
its policy of promoting the
restart of reactors that meet
new safety standards.
A Kansai Electric spokesman said it has now become
extremely difficult to enact a
reduction in the power fees
that it charges customers
planned for May that would
have passed on the fuel cost
savings from the Takahama
restart.
Kansai, which in January
projected its first profits in
five years for this business
year as a result of the Takahama plant restart and lower
energy prices, said it cannot
estimate the impact on earnings.
Kansai is aiming to restart
two reactors at its Ohi nuclear plant, which is close to
clearing the regulator’s safety
checks, after a separate court
decision in December paved
the way for the restart of the
Takahama and Ohi plants.
18
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
BRITAIN
INVESTIGATION
DECISION
DATA
DONATION
COMMENT
Human remains found
near petrol station
More housing costs to be
included in inflation data
104,000 more workers
on zero hours contracts
Soho heiress gives
£125,000 to small theatres
Economic recovery
built on sand: Corbyn
Police are investigating after human remains were found in undergrowth next to
a supermarket petrol station. The discovery was made at around 11am yesterday in
undergrowth near the Tesco Extra in North
Harbour, Porstmouth. A spokeswoman for
Hampshire Police said: “We were called to
Clement Attlee Way at Cosham shortly after
11am following the discovery of what appears
to be human remains. Officers are currently
at the scene and a cordon has been put in
place. At this time we are unable to confirm
any further details as investigations are at a
very early stage.”
The Office for National Statistics plans to shift
the focus of its inflation data to a new measure
which includes more housing costs by around
the end of the year, assuming it can overcome
data problems in the next six months. The
consumer prices index (CPI), which the Bank of
England has used for its inflation target since
2003, will continue to be published, but the
ONS’s chief statistician said he would encourage people to use the newer, more housingheavy CPIH. The ONS first published CPIH as
an official statistic in 2013 but the body which
supervises the ONS said in 2014 that it fell
below acceptable quality standards.
The number of workers on zero hours contracts
has increased by 104,000 to 801,000. The
figure is the highest since records began on the
contracts, under which workers do not know from
one week to the next how many hours’ work they
will be offered. Data from the Office for National
Statistics showed that 2.5% of the employed
UK workforce were on zero hours contracts in
the quarter to last December, up from 2.3% in
the same period of 2014. It showed there were
around 1.7mn contracts that did not guarantee a
minimum number of hours in November, confirming that many workers are on more than one
zero hours contract.
Soho property heiress Fawn James yesterday
announced she would honour the memory of
her late grandfather Paul Raymond by giving
away £125,000 to help London’s “small theatres
thrive”. James, 30, whose grandfather built a
£75mn fortune from strip clubs, adult magazines and property in central London, made the
six-figure donation to the Theatres Trust. She
said: “My family has a shared history with some
of the most iconic theatres and entertainment
venues in the heart of London. Our support for
the London Theatres Small Grants Scheme reflects our continuing commitment to London’s
arts scene.”
Britain’s economic recovery is built on sand with a
construction sector in recession, Jeremy Corbyn
has warned. The Labour leader pleaded with
David Cameron to invest in construction apprenticeships and house-building and rule out cuts
which affect women, the young and vulnerable
people at next week’s Budget. But the prime minister insisted the strength of the economy means
he can commit to large infrastructure projects
such as HS2 high-speed rail and “huge” projects in
energy. The pair clashed at Prime Minister’s Questions as Chancellor George Osborne entered the
final stages of drafting his Budget to be delivered
next Wednesday.
Gove in row
over claim
that ‘Queen
backs Brexit’
‘Fifth
Beatle’
George
Martin dies
aged 90
Reuters
Los Angeles/London
G
eorge Martin, known as
“the fifth Beatle” for his
work in shaping the band
that became one of the world’s
most influential music forces,
has died at the age of 90.
He was considered the most
successful music producer ever,
cited in the Guinness Book of
Records for having more than 50
No. 1 hit records over five decades in the US and Britain alone.
He helped score, arrange, and
produce many of the band’s biggest hits, including I Wanna
Hold Your Hand, A Day in the
Life, Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby
and Love Me Do.
“I’m so sad to hear the news of
the passing of dear George Martin,” Beatle Paul McCartney said
in a statement yesterday.
“If anyone earned the title of
the fifth Beatle it was George.”
A statement from Martin’s
family confirmed he had died
peacefully at his home on Tuesday evening.
Earlier, Ringo Starr, the
Beatles’ drummer, had announced his death on Twitter.
Martin served as producer,
collaborator and mentor to
Beatles John Lennon, George
Harrison, McCartney and Starr.
Lennon was shot dead in New
York in 1980. Harrison died of
cancer in 2001.
Tributes from the music world
poured in on Twitter. “RIP to my
musical brother George Martin.
We were friends since 1964, & I
am so thankful 4 that gift,” said
American music producer Quincy
Jones.
Lenny Kravitz said: “The legends are really going home!” Boy
George said: “George Martin.
Gentleman and legend”, while
Mark Ronson said Martin was
“the greatest British record producer of all time.”
Prime Minister David Cameron said on Twitter: “George
Martin was a giant of music working with the Fab Four to
create the world’s most enduring
pop music.”
London Evening Standard
London
C
Workers walk with a floral tribute to producer George Martin at the Abbey Road recording studio in
London yesterday.
Deutsche Bank, UBS
lose bonus tax case
Agencies
London
B
anking giants UBS and
Deutsche Bank have lost a
marathon legal battle over
bonus schemes totalling £183mn
that were designed to avoid tax.
The Supreme Court ruled in
favour of HM Revenue and Customs over the case dating back 12
years, which centred on “Houdini”
schemes that were set up to take
advantage of laws exempting certain types of pay-outs from tax.
Judges found it was “hardly
likely that Parliament intended
it (the exemption) to apply to tax
avoidance schemes” and ruled in
favour of HMRC.
The tax authority said the
schemes were designed to avoid
around £135mn in tax. It said
it would now pursue a further
£30mn in tax from 27 other users
of similar schemes.
Business Secretary Sajid Javid
was a managing director at Deutsche Bank at the time its scheme
was set up in 2004. A spokesman
for Javid said he was paid with
all tax deducted already and that
“he received no benefit whatsoever from this scheme”.
The case went through two
tribunals and up to the Court of
Appeal which found in the banks’
favour before its decision was
unanimously overturned by the
Supreme Court.
David Gauke, financial secretary to the Treasury, said: “This
is an important victory and confirmation from the UK’s highest
court that tax avoidance is simply unacceptable.”
The case centred on bonus
schemes worth £91.9mn and
£91.3mn set up by Swiss bank
UBS and Germany’s Deutsche at
the end of the 2003-04 tax year.
HMRC was claiming tax and
national insurance payments totalling £50mn in relation to each.
The UBS scheme covered 426
employees and Deutsche’s 300,
according to court papers.
These schemes took advantage
of laws meaning that share awards
to employees would be exempt
from tax if they were subject to a
condition that made them liable
to be given up in certain circumstances – such as performance
targets not being met.
But in these cases – which were
test cases for a number of similar
schemes – the contingencies put
in place were ones which were unlikely to occur. The shares could
then be redeemed for cash.
Giving the lead judgment,
Lord Reed said the cases were
of the same nature of other
schemes a judge in a previous
case had described as “the most
sophisticated attempts of the
Houdini taxpayer to escape from
the manacles of tax”.
Deutsche said in a statement:
“We note the decision and can
confirm that all tax and national
insurance due as a result have already been paid.”
UBS said: “While we are disappointed with the outcome, we
are grateful to the Supreme Court
for their careful consideration of
the issues.”
abinet Minister Michael
Gove was yesterday at
the centre of a furious storm over the leaking of a
private conversation with the
Queen which sparked claims
that she is a “Brexiteer”.
Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy
Heywood was urged to probe
who revealed a version of an exchange between the Queen and
the then deputy prime minister
Nick Clegg.
The Queen is said to have told
Clegg that the EU was heading
in the wrong direction and to
have left ministers at the lunch
at Windsor Castle in 2011 in no
doubt about her views on the
union.
Gove, who was education
secretary, Clegg, Cheryl Gillan,
the then Welsh secretary, and
Lord McNally, who was justice
minister, attended a council at
12.40pm at Windsor Castle on
April 7, 2011, according to the
court circular.
There is no evidence to suggest who leaked details of the
conversation with the Queen
or proof that the account published in yesterday’s Sun newspaper is accurate.
However, many MPs are likely to see Gove as the most likely
suspect given that he is one of
the leading Out campaigners.
Labour yesterday asked the
Cabinet secretary to investigate the matter. A party source
said: “Labour is writing to the
Cabinet secretary to ask him to
urgently investigate the serious
matter of how alleged conversations between the Queen and
Mirror image
ministers at a private meeting
were leaked to the press.”
Former Liberal Democrat
leader Clegg dismissed the Sun
story as “nonsense”, adding:
“I’ve no recollection of this
happening and it’s not the sort
of thing I would forget.”
None of the three other ministers at the council on April 7
could be contacted. Buckingham Palace insisted the Queen
is “politically neutral” in the EU
referendum campaign.
“I’ve no recollection of
this happening and it’s
not the sort of thing I
would forget”
Buckingham Palace, meanwhile, said it had launched an
official complaint with the
press watchdog over the newspaper report.
“The Queen remains politically neutral, as she has for
63 years,” the palace said in a
statement. “We will not comment on spurious, anonymously sourced claims. The referendum is a matter for the British
people to decide.”
It said aides had taken the
rare step of writing to the chairman of the Independent Press
Standards Organisation to
complain, citing a clause of the
editors’ code of conduct relating to accuracy.
Opinion polls show voters are
College removes
African cockerel statue
AFP
London
A
The mountain Buachaille Etive Mor is reflected in water
near Ballachulish, Scotland, yesterday.
divided over membership ahead
of a June 23 referendum so even
the perception that Elizabeth,
who must remain above politics
under Britain’s unwritten constitution, may favour an exit
from the 28-member bloc could
be damaging for the campaign
to keep Britain in.
In June last year, a speech by
the Queen in Germany was interpreted by some as expressing
a pro-EU view. During a banquet in Berlin in the presence
of German chancellor Angela
Merkel and David Cameron, the
Queen said “division in Europe
is dangerous”.
No 10 declined to comment.
The newspaper, British’s
best-selling daily which has
repeatedly criticised Britain’s
EU membership, also said the
monarch told lawmakers at a
separate meeting that she did
not understand Europe.
“The Sun stands by its story,
provided by a very credible
source,” a spokesman said in
response to the palace denials.
Less than a week before the
2014 Scottish independence
referendum, the Queen said she
hoped Scots would think carefully about the future, a comment which was interpreted as
giving support to those seeking
to preserve the United Kingdom.
The Queen is not the first
royal to have been pulled into
the increasingly febrile EU debate.
Her grandson Prince William
was criticised by some papers,
including the Sun, over a speech
he gave to British diplomats last
month about the importance of
Britain working with other nations.
Cambridge
University
college has removed a
bronze statue of an African cockerel from display following a campaign by students
amid an increase in activism
against symbols of Britain’s colonial past.
Jesus College said it was taking
down the statue known as “Okukor” from the former kingdom
of Benin, which is now part of
southern Nigeria, and was looking at the possibility of its repatriation.
“Jesus College acknowledges
the contribution made by students in raising the important but
complex question of the rightful
location of its Benin bronze, in
response to which it has permanently removed the Okukor,” a
college spokeswoman said.
“The college commits to work
actively with the wider university and to commit resources to
new initiatives with Nigerian
heritage and museum authorities
to discuss and determine the best
future for the Okukor, including
the question of repatriation,” she
said.
Last month, Jesus College’s
student union passed a motion
that said the statue was looted
by British troops in 1897 during a
“punitive expedition”.
The students’ “Benin Bronze
Appreciation Committee” said
it was in contact with a Nigerian
government minister who supported its repatriation, according to minutes of the meeting on
the union website.
“Considering the moral case
and the positive benefits outlined in the proposal the time is
now right to repatriate the cockerel to the Royal Palace of Benin
in line with existing protocol,”
the motion said.
Students at Oxford University launched a campaign last
year for the removal of a statue
of British imperialist and donor
Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College.
The college said it would
remove a plaque honouring
Rhodes, a white supremacist like
many builders of the British empire, but would keep the statue in
place.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
19
BRITAIN
UK to face growing range of security threats: defence report
Guardian News and Media
London
B
ritain could become increasingly vulnerable to
attack from an array of
novel threats including “swarm
attacks”, genetic weapons, cyber-attacks and new pathogens
as hostile powers and extremist
groups obtain more lethal weap-
ons, a study by a ministry of defence (MoD) thinktank warns.
The study, an attempt to spot
future military trends called Future Operating Environment 2035
, also warns that the UK, “will
face a broad range of natural and
man-made threats” and it will be
“increasingly difficult to distinguish between threats from state
and non-state actors”. It concludes
than even “limited tactical nuclear
Fight for light
threatens
to stall £1bn
skyscraper
London Evening Standard
London
A
n increasingly desperate
“fight for light” in central
London is threatening to
kill off a £1bn plan for the City’s
tallest ever skyscraper.
The developers behind the
62-storey block have warned they
may have to abandon the scheme
because of the risk of court action from the owners of dozens of
overshadowed buildings. The legal
row is thought to be the biggest of
its kind in Britain.
New figures show there has
been a dramatic intensification of
London’s tower-building “gold
rush”, increasing the likelihood
of more light loss disputes. There
are 436 structures of 20 storeys or
more in the pipeline, a rise of 119
in a year, according to think tank
New London Architecture.
Campaigners warn the “absolutely horrific” volume of planned
towers means tens of thousands of
residents and office workers face
loss of light. Clem Cecil, of heritage group SAVE, said: “There is a
real danger that large areas of London are going to be in darkness a
lot of the time.”
Property company Lipton
Rogers is behind the plan for the
295-metre glass and steel tower
at 22 Bishopsgate, which would
be three times the height of Big
Ben. The scheme is under threat
after months of stalled “rightto-light” talks with the owners of
neighbours including Tower 42,
the Baltic Exchange and St Helen’s
church.
Lipton Rogers is so concerned it
has asked the City of London Corporation to use emergency “Section 237” planning powers to override the rights of other freeholders
to block the scheme in the courts.
Developers of the 1.4mn sq ft tower have told officials that without
swift progress they will struggle
to meet projected completion date
for of spring 2019.
The agenda for today’s meeting of the corporation’s planning
and transportation committee
states “the owners have advised
that there is a significant threat to
progressing the scheme”, and there
are “very large numbers of parties
who may wish to bring claims”.
Just 17 out of 90 neighbours have
so far signed agreements to “release their right to light”.
Barbara Weiss, co-founder
of the Skyline Campaign, said:
“Light is a big, big issue.”
Cecil added: “It is a real issue for
people and should not be skirted
around by the planning system. I
think people are only beginning to
wake up to the fact that their environment is going to be strongly affected by losing light and they can
object.”
Section 237 of the 1990 Town
and Country Planning Act allows
local authorities to take temporary
ownership of a development and
effectively forces objectors to accept compensation for loss of light
rather than allow them to block
the scheme altogether through an
injunction.
Another developer, Land Securities, is requesting a similar solution for its 510,000 sq ft office and
shops scheme 21 Moorfields, centred around a plaza above Moorgate Crossrail station.
Land Securities has already
spent nearly £80million and told
officials the project is “at risk due
to the inability to settle and conclude legal agreements in respect
of a significant number of remaining rights of light claims”.
Today’s meeting comes days after Mayor Boris Johnson scrapped
a public hearing to decide the fate
of the Bishopsgate Goodsyard development in Shoreditch.
Campaigners said the “wall of
towers”, ranging from 26 to 46 storeys, would “block light for thousands of people”. No reason was
given for the postponement but
potential “right to light” claims
are thought to have been a major
factor.
exchanges in conventional conflicts” cannot be ruled out.
The report also contains an
analysis that is likely to be seized
on by people campaigning for Britain to stay in the EU. It concludes
that Britain will need to co-operate
even more closely with its continental European neighbours, stating that the EU was likely to play a
“greater defence and security role”
than it does currently and that
F
ive men involved in a daring London heist that drew
comparisons with the film
Ocean’s Eleven - albeit with
pensioners filling the lead roles were jailed for a combined total of
34 years yesterday.
Prosecutors called the raid on
Hatton Garden, London’s jewellery district, the “biggest burglary in English legal history”,
netting £14mn worth of booty
including jewellery, gold and
cash. A jury at Woolwich Crown
Court in southeast London last
month convicted Carl Wood, 59,
and William Lincoln, 60, of conspiracy to commit burglary, and
also conspiracy to conceal, convert or transfer criminal property.
Hugh Doyle, 48, was also
found guilty of concealing, converting or transferring criminal
property.
Another four men - John Collins, 75, Daniel Jones, 61, Terrence
Perkins, 67 and Brian Reader,
77 - earlier pleaded guilty to one
count of conspiracy to burgle.
Ringleaders Collins, Jones,
Perkins and Lincoln were each
jailed for seven years and Wood
for six.
Reader will be sentenced later
after suffering a stroke in London’s Belmarsh prison. Doyle was
given a 21-month sentence, suspended for two years.
On sentencing, judge Christopher Kinch said the burglary
“stands in a class of its own in
the scale of the ambition, the detail of the planning, the level of
preparation and the organisation
of the team carrying it out, and
in terms of the value of the property stolen.” Lawyer Ed Hall of
the Crown Prosecution Service
(CPS) said the four main ringleaders were “a close-knit group
of experienced criminals”.
The group broke into the vault
on April 2 last year, and over
three days forced open 73 secure
boxes where many jewellers had
left their stock over the Easter
holiday. The press had compared
the robbery to Hollywood heist
flicks, but the reality was much
less glamorous with the seven
ing from rigorous trend analysis,”
it says.
On the use of nuclear weapons,
the study states: “Limited tactical
nuclear exchanges in conventional
conflicts by 2035 cannot be ruled
out, and some non-western states
may even use such strikes as a way
of limiting or de-escalating conflict.”
The study, which was published
in December but has not been re-
ported publicly, adds: “If isolated
military targets are subject to nuclear attack, any land-based nuclear response could be seen as an
unjustified escalation, in light of
the nature of the weapon, civilian
casualties and its impact on the
environment.” The North Korean
leader, Kim Jong-un, last week said
he would revise his country’s military posture and be ready to launch
pre-emptive nuclear strikes. And
Nato last month accused Moscow
of dangerously blurring the lines
between conventional and nuclear
conflict after Russian officials said
missiles deployed in Kaliningrad
were dual use.
The study continues: “Future
threats may also come from groups
who - due to their dispersed locations - cannot be the subject of a
nuclear counterstrike, such as terrorists or cyber-criminals”.
Junior doctors stage strike
Junior doctors protest with banners outside St Thomas’ Hospital in central London yesterday against proposed new conditions and pay rates for working unsociable
hours. Thousands of operations and procedures across England have been cancelled as a result of the 48-hour strike which began yesterday.
70 children go missing in
London every day: study
London Evening Standard
London
A
n average of more than
70 London children are
being reported missing
to Scotland Yard every day, research has revealed.
The shocking tally sparked
warnings from child protection
experts who say under-18s going missing, particularly those
in care, are increasingly at risk of
child sexual exploitation unless
support services are stepped up.
The report, based on Freedom of Information requests to
the Metropolitan Police and 32
London local authorities, reveals
Scotland Yard recorded 25,622 incidents of children going missing
Gang jailed for 34 years
over Hatton Garden heist
AFP
London
“the key global economic powers”
will be the US, China and the EU.
The study has been drawn up by
the MoD’s Development, Concepts
and Doctrine Centre (DCDC). It
says its findings and deductions do
not represent the “official policy”
of the ministry or the government
and that it does not seek to predict
the future. “Rather, it describes
the characteristics of plausible
operating environments, result-
convicted men boasting a combined age of 447.
Disguised as gas workers and
fitted with hard hats, the group
rappelled down an elevator shaft
then used a diamond-tipped industrial drill to bore three large
holes in a concrete wall 50 centimetres thick.
Prosecutors said that they
hatched their plan while drinking
at the “Castle” pub in Islington,
north London.
The court also heard that they
watched videos on YouTube to
learn about drilling techniques.
Police even found a book entitled “Forensic Science for Dummies” at the home of Jones.
Two-thirds of the loot has not
been found and a red-headed
suspect known as “Basil” is still
on the loose.
There is a £20,000 reward for
information leading to his arrest
and the recovery of outstanding
stolen property, said Scotland
Yard, London’s police headquarters.
So far, just over £3.7mn worth
of gold and jewellery has been recovered.
from care or their home in the last
complete financial year, the most
recent data available.
Separate figures from London
town halls suggest child sexual
exploitation is the biggest danger facing vulnerable young
people, with up to 24% at risk.
Up to 17% were identified as being at risk of falling into crime
with up to 5% at risk of getting
drawn into gangs.
The fresh statistics, contained
in a report by The Children’s Society, show the scale of the challenge facing social services and
police across London.
Larger proportions of young
people are at risk in the capital,
according to the charity, due to
higher levels of deprivation, with
children most likely to run away
from home or be placed in care after being exposed to domestic violence, parental alcohol and drug
use or other forms of violence and
abuse.
The report found around 60%
of children looked after by London local authorities are placed in
care outside their home borough,
prompting the charity to call for
more to be placed within their
home local authority.
It added that, despite local
authorities having a statutory
responsibility to conduct “return interviews” within 72 hours
of a child being located, not all
children who go missing receive
them. They often do not receive
them if classified as “absent”
rather than missing. It called for
all local authorities to adopt the
WOW festival
strategy to better identify the
risks every vulnerable young person faces.
The Met said on average it investigates up to 43,000 missing
people cases every year, around
22,000 of which are under-18s.
A spokesman said: “Each report of a missing person is recorded, risk assessed and investigated.
They are graded as high, medium
or low risk, which determines the
level of response and resources
allocated. Investigations start as
soon as a report is made and the
majority of missing people are
located within one day, safe and
well. Those that are not remain
as open cases and are subject to
regular review and action.”
Sherry Peck, London director
at The Children’s Society, said:
Palestinian actress to
make debut via Skype
London Evening Standard
London
A
Camilla, the duchess of Cornwall, president of WOW, poses
for a photograph with guests following a reception for the
Women of the World Festival (WOW) at Clarence House, in
central London, yesterday. Women of the World Festival
is the largest women’s festival in the world with events
involving 1mn people across five continents. The festival
began on International Women’s Day, March 8, and runs until
March 13.
“Without action to provide better help early on, more children
will go missing, exposing them
to increasing risk of sexual exploitation and other crimes. Too
often the issues they are running
from do not get addressed early
enough.
“On the streets young people
are more likely to be befriended by
adults who appear to offer what
they want and give them an escape, but in reality they are looking to exploit them.”
Scotland Yard records children
as absent for a maximum of 24
hours before they are upgraded to
missing. All under-13s are recorded as missing. The report found
each missing person investigation
costs police on average between
£1,325 and £2,415.
Palestinian actress is set
for her London theatre
debut - without leaving her home town in the Middle
East.
Maisa Abd Elhadi, 30, will
appear via Skype from Nazareth
in a new play by Hannah Khalil,
a graduate of the Royal Court’s
young writers programme, at
the Arcola Theatre in Dalston
next month.
Abd Elhadi plays a young
graffiti artist in Scenes From
68* Years, which also stars
West End veteran Peter Polycarpou.
Director Chris White said:
“The play has two scenes where
a character in the UK is having a
Skype call with their cousin in
Palestine.
“We could have played the
scene with a theatrical version
of Skype or found some way of
using sound or staging to suggest it but we thought there was
an opportunity here.
“Knowing there are plenty of
actors in Palestine we wouldn’t
be able to bring over for financial or visa reasons, (we
thought) this might be an interesting way of bringing Palestine into the play.”
Abd Elhadi, who was named
best actress at the Dubai Film
Festival in 2011, joins a cast
of six UK actors in the play. It
is made up of about 30 short
scenes that move between locations and eras, stretching
back to 1948, and focuses on
domestic life in the middle of
a conflict. White said it would
show “little glimpses of people’s lives without the ideology
or partisan aspect”.
Abd Elhadi said: “As a Palestinian actress, this play reflects
and represents my thoughts
and it holds a message for the
whole world about my people.
It’s going to be a great experience.”
She auditioned for the part
online and will rehearse in the
same way. White said: “She
joined us on the first day of rehearsals via Skype for a couple
of hours so she could virtually
meet the rest of the cast and
then I will find time to rehearse
directly with her.”
20
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
EUROPE
Polish judges rule against govt reform of top court
Reuters
Warsaw
P
oland’s top court ruled
yesterday that the government’s planned overhaul
of the tribunal was illegal, deepening a constitutional crisis that
has stirred concerns about democracy and the rule of law in the
European Union’s largest eastern
member.
The ruling right-wing Law and
Justice party (PiS) has approved
a law increasing the number of
judges needed to make rulings
and changing the order in which
cases are heard.
It also rejected court appointments made by the previous government.
The government’s critics say
that the changes undermine the
court’s effectiveness, while the
European Union and the United
States have also expressed concerns.
PiS says that the changes are
needed to reflect the new balance
of power in Poland after its landslide election win last year.
“Dramatically limiting the
court’s ability to function independently and thoroughly
contravenes Poland’s (political)
system and cannot be tolerated,”
Judge Stanislaw Biernat said, announcing the ruling at the end of
a two-day court sitting.
The government swiftly rejected the ruling.
“The judges’ verdict is not legally binding. If we accepted it,
we would have to breach the constitution,” Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro told a news conference.
“The Polish constitution says
that the mode of the court’s operation is defined by a (separate)
bill,” Ziobro added.
The timing of the verdict is politically sensitive.
The Council of Europe, a human rights body, is due to issue
an opinion this week on Poland’s
legal changes.
A leaked draft of the opinion
said the reform of the constitutional court threatened the rule
of law in Poland.
The European Commission,
the EU executive, has said it
wants to see that opinion before
making its own assessment of
Poland’s adherence to EU standards on the rule of law.
Critics say that the changes,
which prompted Brussels to
Balkan nations slam
migrant route shut
AFP
Ljubljana
M
igrants hoping to trek
from Greece towards
northern Europe found
their path blocked yesterday after a string of western Balkan
nations slammed shut their borders, exacerbating a dire humanitarian situation on the Macedonian border.
Slovenia and Croatia, two of
the countries along the route
used by hundreds of thousands of
people in recent months, barred
entry to transiting migrants from
midnight.
Serbia indicated it would follow suit.
EU member Slovenia said it
would make exceptions only for
migrants wishing to claim asylum in the country or for those
seeking entry “on humanitarian
grounds and in accordance with
the rules of the Schengen zone”.
Prime Minister Miro Cerar said
that the move meant that “the
(Balkan) route for illegal migrations no longer exists”.
Croatia’s Interior Minister
Vlaho Orepic called it a “new
phase in resolving the migrant
crisis”.
As the 28-nation EU battles
the worst migration crisis since
World War II, the fresh measures
ramped up the pressure on the
bloc to seal a proposed deal with
Turkey to ease the chaos.
Austria’s decision in February
to cap the number of migrants
passing through its territory had
already led to a gradual tightening of borders through the western Balkans – and a backlog in
Greece.
“This is putting into effect
what is correct, and that is the
end of the ‘waving through’ (of
migrants) which attracted so
many migrants last year and was
the wrong approach,” Austrian
Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz
said.
Authorities in Greece, the
main entry point into the EU
across the sea from Turkey, said
yesterday that nearly 36,000 migrants were now stranded there.
Police said a further 4,000
were unaccounted for.
The UN refugee agency estimated yesterday that there were
also as many as 2,000 migrants
stuck in Serbia.
There are fears that some will
turn to people-smugglers and try
their luck getting into Albania,
and from there to Italy, or into
Bulgaria.
Meanwhile, more than 14,000
mainly Syrian and Iraqi refugees
have camped out on the GreeceMacedonia border crossing –
many of them for weeks – at a
muddy, squalid camp.
Macedonia has not let anyone
enter since Monday.
“We are hoping a miracle will
happen,” said Ola, a 15-year-old
from war-scarred Aleppo who
has lived in a tent at Idomeni
with her mother and two young-
T
A woman walks in the rain yesterday at the Greek-Macedonian border, near the Greek village of Idomeni,
where thousands of refugees and migrants are stranded by a Balkan border blockade.
er brothers for two weeks. “We
thought Germany wanted us.
That’s why we took the boat and
came here.”
Yesterday Greek officials were
trying to coax refugees to leave
Idomeni for migrant centres
elsewhere in the country.
Many are reluctant to do so,
however, fearing that this would
mean the end of their journey
north.
Hungary, which last year
of the Ottoman Empire, to Erdogan, I should even say
maybe to Sultan Erdogan.
“He shall now decide on the entrance to the European
Union.”
Manfred Weber, the leader of the biggest group in the
European Parliament, the centre-right European People’s Party, said that the EU should not give a “blank
cheque” to Turkey.
He also condemned the “unacceptable” crackdown
by Turkish authorities on the country’s leading antiErdogan newspaper.
Socialist leader Gianni Pittella meanwhile said that
talks on migration “must not be mixed” with negotiations on Turkey’s long-stalled EU membership process,
which EU leaders have agreed to speed up under the
deal.
German minister can
keep ‘Dr’ title: school
Reuters
Berlin
T
Von der Leyen: no pattern of
misconduct
not strip the (doctorate) title.”
Although von der Leyen was
found to have plagiarised some
portions, the committee found
this to be an “error but not
misconduct”.
“It’s an error in the form
of plagiarism in which paragraphs of text were used without correct identification of
the authors,” said Baum, adding however that “the pattern
of plagiarism does not point to
deliberate deception”.
The school’s president also
added these errors did not
compromise the “scientific
value” of the thesis.
EU, take back all illegal migrants
landing in Greece.
Ankara proposed an arrangement under which the EU would
resettle one Syrian refugee from
camps in Turkey in exchange for
every Syrian that Turkey takes
from Greece, in a bid to reduce
the incentive for people to board
boats for Europe.
In return though, Turkey
wants €6bn ($6.6bn) in aid, visafree access to Europe’s passportfree Schengen zone and a speeding up of Ankara’s efforts to join
the EU – demands that go too far
for some.
European Commission chief
Jean-Claude Juncker called the
plan a “real game-changer” but
there are questions about its legality, while the UN refugee chief
Filippo Grandi and NGOs have
raised concerns.
In the European Parliament
yesterday, Liberal group leader
and former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt accused
the EU of giving the “keys to
the gates of Europe” to Turkey’s
“sultan” president, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan (see accompanying report).
Turkey PM moves to remove
pro-Kurdish MPs’ immunity
Reuters
Ankara/Istanbul
G
ermany’s
Hanover
Medical School said
yesterday that Defence
Minister Ursula von der Leyen
plagiarised parts of her thesis,
but allowed her to keep her
doctorate because there was no
“deliberate deception”.
Von der Leyen had been
caught in a political storm over
media reports that she plagiarised portions of her doctoral
thesis, a charge that had previously brought down other
high-level German politicians.
In a bid to clear her name,
she had asked the Hanover
Medical School, where she
obtained her doctorate in the
1990s, to reevaluate the paper.
After months of examination, however, the medical
school’s president Christopher
Baum said yesterday: “The
Senate decided ... with a majority of seven to one votes to
sealed its southern borders with
razor wire and fences, extended
its “migration state of emergency” yesterday to cover the whole
country, readying more police
and troops to send to the frontiers if needed.
More than 1mn people have
crossed the Aegean Sea into
Greece since the start of 2015,
many from Syria, Afghanistan
and Iraq and most aiming to
reach wealthy Germany, Austria
and Scandinavia.
This has caused deep divisions
among EU members about how
to deal with the crisis and put
German Chancellor Angela Merkel under severe pressure domestically for her open-door asylum
policy.
Merkel, heading for a bruising
in regional German elections on
Sunday, hopes that a controversial deal discussed with Turkey
at an EU summit on Monday, and
due to be finalised on March 1718, will be the answer.
The accord would see Turkey,
currently hosting 2.7mn refugees
from the five-year-old Syrian
civil war and the main springboard for migrants heading to the
urkey’s prime minister applied to parliament yesterday to lift the immunity of
senior pro-Kurdish opposition
deputies to prosecute them on
charges of belonging to an armed
terrorist group.
Such a step could further inflame tensions in the mainly
Kurdish southeast which has
been hit by the worst violence
in two decades since a two-year
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
ceasefire collapsed in July.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly called for
Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP)
deputies to face prosecution, accusing them of being an extension of the PKK.
Lawmakers in Turkey are normally protected from prosecution.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s office filed a submis-
sion requesting immunity from
prosecution be lifted from HDP
co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas
and Figen Yuksekdag and deputies Selma Irmak, Sirri Sureyya
Onder and Ertugrul Kurkcu, parliament officials told Reuters.
They deny the accusation of
belonging to an armed terrorist
organisation and provoking hatred.
“The attitudes of those who
exploit ‘podium immunity’ and
offend the shared conscience
cannot be assessed within (the
framework of) immunity,” Davutoglu told reporters.
The Kurdish conflict in Nato
member Turkey has been further
complicated by the activity of
armed Kurdish groups across the
border in Syria.
Syrian Kurds have been a close
ally of the United States in fighting Islamic State but Ankara regards them as a partner of the
PKK and a terrorist grouping.
Demirtas alone is the subject
some 60 dossiers in parliament
calling for the lifting of his immunity, including some related
to calls for protest marches.
As yet, there have been no
moves in the assembly to open
the way for his prosecution.
“Erdogan is personally angry
with us, especially me and a few
other friends. He is ... driven by
feelings of revenge,” Demirtas
told reporters this week, attributing this to HDP election successes last year that chipped at
the power of the AK Party Erdogan founded.
Demirtas says he opposes violence and wants a negotiated end
to a three-decade conflict with
the PKK, deemed a terrorist organisation by the United States
and the EU as well as Turkey, that
has cost some 40,000 lives.
In 1994, at the height of the
conflict, lawmakers had their
immunity revoked after speaking
Kurdish in parliament.
Four MPs spent a decade in
prison, sparking condemnation
from Turkey’s Western partners.
The leader of the liberal group
in the European Parliament,
former Belgian premier Guy Verhofstadt, urged Prime Minister
Beata Szydlo’s government to respect yesterday’s verdict.
“It was absurd and Kafkaesque
for the Szydlo government to expect that the court would assess
the constitutional compliance of
secondary legislation while already applying this legislation,”
Verhofstadt was quoted as saying
in a statement.
Students protest
in France as anger
against planned
labour law grows
AFP
Paris
EU parliament lawmakers slam Turkey deal on migrant crisis
European Parliament lawmakers have accused the
EU of giving Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
the “keys to the gates of Europe” through a migration
crisis deal with Ankara.
At a summit on Monday European Union leaders
agreed to work for an agreement with Turkey that
would include a ‘one-for-one’ swap of Syrian refugees
and a doubling of aid for Ankara to €6bn.
But European Parliament Liberal group leader and
former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt told
MEPs in Strasbourg, France that the deal was “hugely
problematic”.
“It is a deal with Turkey in which we outsource our
problems,” Verhofstadt said. “A deal in which we are
giving in fact the entrance keys, the keys to the gates
of Europe, in the hands of Turkey, of the successors
launch the rule of law procedure
for the first time in its history,
have paralysed the court’s work,
making it difficult for judges to
review, let alone challenge the
government’s legislation.
The government said before
yesterday’s ruling that it would
not publish the court’s verdict
in the official journal – a legal
requirement – arguing that the
tribunal’s proceedings were unlawful as they did not follow rules
outlined in the new law.
housands of French
high school students
and workers protested
against labour reforms yesterday, heaping pressure on President Francois Hollande’s already unpopular and fractured
Socialist government with
presidential elections looming
in 14 months.
Teenagers and students
threw eggs and firecrackers as
they marched in Paris chanting slogans such as “El Khomri,
you’re beat, the youth are in the
street” in reference to Labour
Minister Myriam El Khomri.
The youth are among the
most vocal demonstrators
against reforms they fear will
make their future more uncertain, even as the government
vows that the changes are in
their favour.
Dozens of schools were
blocked as protests took place
around the country, compounded by a rail strike for better working conditions that left
many commuters stranded.
France’s government has
faced massive pushback – including from within its ranks –
over the proposals that would
give bosses more flexibility in
hiring and firing.
“This law is absurd: night
work, abusive firings ... it is
distressing to see this, especially from the Socialists,” said
Lucie Ferreira, 21, an IT student.
The reforms aim to bring
down a record 10.2% unemployment rate, with youth joblessness more than twice that.
The proposed new law also
cuts overtime pay for work beyond 35 hours – the working
week famously introduced in
the 1990s in an earlier Socialist
bid to boost employment.
In some sectors, young apprentices could work 40 hours
a week.
“Like many students I work
to pay for my studies. This law
will prevent me from limiting
my work hours,” said Flora, 20,
a history student protesting at
the Place de la Republique in
Paris.
“When will I have time to
study? This law is completely
irrational. In reality, nobody
really works 35 hours a week
anymore, it is 40 or more to
make a living. How much will
it end up being with this law?”
An online petition against
the draft law has attracted
more than 1mn signatures,
while a poll showed seven in
10 people were opposed to the
planned changes.
Hollande, who campaigned
on a promise to improve prospects for young people, said
on the eve of the protests that
he wanted to help them “have
more job stability”.
“We must also give companies the opportunity to recruit
more, to give job security to
young people throughout their
lives, and to provide flexibility
for companies.”
Prime Minister Manuel Valls
on Monday kicked off three
days of talks with unions in a
bid to salvage the law, after the
chorus of opposition derailed a
plan to submit the proposals to
the cabinet this week.
The turmoil created by the
proposals has struck yet another blow to Hollande and
Valls, who have come under
attack from leading members
of the Socialist party for being
too pro-business and shifting
to the right.
Whether over economic
reforms or plans to strip convicted terrorists of their nationality, the government has
faced howls of protest from the
left flank of the party at almost
every turn.
Those backing the reforms
believe they are essential to
reviving a stagnant economy,
creating jobs and remaining
competitive, and El Khomri
has argued that much of the
opposition to her law is the
result of misinformation and
false rumours.
Outspoken Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron told
French radio on Tuesday
that unemployment had not
dropped below 7% in 30 years.
“Have we tried everything?
Let us look outside France.
What has happened elsewhere? They have all evolved,
they have all done things,” he
said.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, whose country has
adopted similar reforms – as
has Spain and Britain – said
on Tuesday after talks in Venice with Hollande that the
French “should not be afraid of
change”.
French employers are reluctant to take on permanent
workers because of obstacles
to laying them off in lean times.
Young people leaving university find themselves working temporary contracts for
years at a time or doing internship after internship while
hoping to secure a job.
Along with tweaks to working hours, the reforms identify
precise conditions such as falling orders or sales, or operating
losses, as sufficient cause for
shedding staff.
However, those protesting
do not believe the proposed reforms will improve their prospects.
“Young? Yes. Stupid? Maybe. Slaves? Never” read one
poster in Rennes where local
government officials said some
4,500 protested. In Toulouse
police estimated a crowd of
10,000.
A student offers a heart-shaped paper cutout to a French riot
police officer during a demonstration against the labour law
proposal in Lyon, France, as part of nationwide labour reform bill
protests by students and union members.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
21
INDIA
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, BJP veteran L K Advani and Finance
Minister Arun Jaitley attend the parliamentary party meeting in New Delhi yesterday.
Congress wants
to take credit for
everything: PM
IANS
New Delhi
P
rime Minister Narendra Modi
attacked the Congress yesterday, comparing it with “death”
which he said never gets criticised,
even as he urged the opposition to pass
bills in the Rajya Sabha.
Replying to a debate on the motion
of thanks on the president’s address to
parliament, Modi asked the opposition
in the upper house to support the bills
passed by the lower house Lok Sabha.
But the appeal did not stop him from
taking potshot at the Congress, saying
the country’s opposition party felt it
was “above criticism”. This, he said,
was not true for opposition parties.
And Modi used “death” to underline
his point.
“Death has a blessing... It’s above
criticism... No one criticises death.
People say someone died of cancer…
of old age... The cancer and old age are
blamed but not death...
“Sometimes I feel the Congress is
also blessed (like death)... Whenever
we criticise the Congress, the media
says the opposition is under attack.”
The Congress, he implied in his
90-minute speech, wanted to take
credit for everything.
Unlike on previous occasions, the
proceedings have gone on smoothly in
the ongoing budget session.
Modi quoted slain prime minister Indira Gandhi as saying that there
were two kinds of people - one who
worked and the other who always took
credit. “Try to be the first kind.”
The Congress, Modi said, was “trying to take credit for all the projects
and initiatives of my government”.
He invoked Jawaharlal Nehru, the
country’s first prime minister, to call
for co-ordination between the two
houses of parliament.
“Co-ordination between the tow
houses is important. Any lack of coordination will increase problems and
obstruct work - this was said by Nehru.”
“Give importance to this, and all
pending bills will be passed. It will be
a big role the house of elders will play,”
he said, mentioning the goods and
services tax bill which has been pending in the Rajya Sabha where the government is in a minority.
Modi said while he was not an economist like his predecessor Manmohan
Singh - who was present in the house,
“I have worked with farmers and know
some things”.
He strongly defended his government’s ambitious promise to double
farmers’ income by 2022.
The prime minister countered the
opposition criticism on minimum educational qualifications for contesting
panchayat polls in Gujarat and Rajasthan and challenged the Congress to
field “illiterate people” in the coming
assembly elections in four states.
22
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
INDIA
ACCIDENT
CONTROVERSY
HONOUR
TRAGEDY
POLITICS
Bodies of Odisha boat
accident recovered
Opposition demands
minister’s resignation
Indian’s artwork displayed
in London museum
Indian student dies
after attack in Russia
TRS bags Warangal,
Khammam corporations
The bodies of six people who went missing after a
boat sank in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district have been
recovered, an official said yesterday. Rescuers
fished out two bodies yesterday while four were
recovered on Tuesday evening, Kamakhyanagar
sub-divisional police officer Abdul Rahim official
said. Police have filed a complaint against the
boatman, who fled after the accident. Meanwhile,
the district collector has submitted a preliminary
report to the special relief commissioner, who
has ordered a probe. The state government
announced a compensation of Rs400,000 for the
families of the victims. The boat sank late Monday
evening as 30-35 villagers of Surapratappur were
on way to Lord Daudeswar’s temple in Gondia.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
yesterday demanded the resignation of a
Bihar minister for meeting convicted former
MP Mohamad Shahabuddin, who is serving
life imprisonment in connection with criminal
cases including murder. BJP leader Prem
Kumar demanded the resignation of Minority
Affairs Minister Abdul Ghafoor, who met the
former Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) at Siwan jail.
“Ghafoor should resign. It is a mockery of rule
of law in the state,” he said. Ghafoor along with
ruling party RJD legislator Harishankar Yadav
met Shahabuddin in the jail on March 6, and
a photo of that meeting has reportedly gone
viral on social media.
A painting by an Indian artist, depicting an
elderly woman threading a needle, has been
included in the collection of Victoria and Albert
Museum in London, the artist’s husband said
yesterday. “A painting by my wife Archana
Shastri was found by my son Chetan Shastri in
the collection of Victoria & Albert Museum,”
Shastri Ramachandaran, a former senior editor
of The Times of India and The Tribune, said.
He said it was only recently that the museum
included this painting in its online catalogue.
Delineated in ink, the minutely drawn painting
was made in 1989, says Victoria and Albert
Museum. Artists say a museum like V&A doesn’t
“buy” but “acquires” a work of art.
An Indian medical student, who was in a state
of coma after being attacked by unidentified
men in a Russian city, has died, External Affairs
Minister Sushma Swaraj said yesterday. “I am
pained to inform that Yasir, an Indian medical
student from Srinagar, has succumbed to his
injuries in Russia,” Swaraj tweeted. In a series of
tweets late Tuesday, she said an Indian doctor
was treating Yasir at a trauma centre. She
said this after an SOS was tweeted that Yasir,
studying in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan,
was attacked by “local goons”. According to
the tweet, Yasir was in a state of coma after
the attack and had lost all his money and
documents.
Telangana’s ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi
yesterday registered a clean sweep in elections to
Warangal and Khammam municipal corporations
and one nagar panchayat in the state. In
Warangal, the second biggest city in the state
after Hyderabad, the party won 44 seats in the
58-member municipal corporation. The Congress
won four, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and
Communist Party of India (Marxist) one each.
Eight independent candidates were also elected.
The ruling party secured a clear majority by
winning 34 seats in the 50-member Khammam
municipal corporation. The Congress won two
seats, the Communist Party of India, the CPM and
YSR Congress Party bagged two seats each.
Mallya flees
as banks seek
to recover
$1bn in loans
Supreme Court issues notice
seeking a response from the
liquor baron
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is accompanied by Trinamool Congress leaders as she arrives to attend an election campaign
rally in Malda yesterday.
Agencies
New Delhi
Netaji’s grandnephew to take T
on Mamata in W Bengal polls
IANS
New Delhi/Kolkata
N
etaji Subhas Chandra
Bose’s
grandnephew
Chandra Kumar Bose
will be the Bharatiya Janata
Party candidate for the Bhowanipore assembly constituency where he will take on West
Bengal Chief Minister Mamata
Banerjee in the upcoming state
assembly elections.
Announcing this, Human
Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani said the full list
for candidates of the 294 seats
would be declared later.
Asked whether Bose will be
the party’s chief ministerial candidate, BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya said: “It has not been
decided but he will be contesting
against Mamata Banerjee.”
The 55-year-old Bose, grandson of Netaji’s elder brother
Sarat Chandra Bose, on January 25 formally joined the BJP in
the presence of party president
Amit Shah at a public rally in
Kolkata’s neighbouring Howrah
district.
The Congress has decided to
name its state unit general secretary and Jadavpur University
professor Om Prakash Mishra
against Banerjee, who is the Trinamool Congress supremo.
Meanwhile in Assam, in a development that might benefit
the ruling Congress ahead of the
April elections, the BJP and the
Asom Gana Parishad split over
their recent alliance resulting in
two new parties.
While the disgruntled faction of the AGP, who opposed
the tie-up with BJP, has decided
to form a new party titled AGP
Jatiyatabadi Mancha (AGP Regionalist Forum), the section of
BJP leaders who had opposed
the alliance has formed the Trinamool BJP.
“We cannot have any understanding with the BJP. The BJP
is a party who do not respect
the Assam Accord. A total of
855 martyrs have sacrificed their
lives during the Assam Movement, which resulted in the
historical Assam Accord. We
cannot accept the AGP having
an understanding with the BJP
as we have differences,” said Su-
nil Rajkonwar, president of the
AGP Regionalist Forum.
“How can AGP leadership
have an understanding with a
party like the BJP that has murdered the Assam Accord by legalising the Hindu infiltrators
from Bangladesh? The Assam
Movement and Assam Accord
were against the illegal Bangladeshi infiltration be it Hindu
or Muslim. So we have decided
to float this new forum and we
are going to put up candidates in
those 24 constituencies where
the AGP and BJP are having an
understanding,” he added.
On the other hand, grassroots
workers of BJP from different
districts of the state who have
floated Trinamool BJP are also
planning to put up candidates
in the 24 constituencies which
the party has decided to leave
for AGP.
“We have opposed the move
of the party leaders to leave
those constituencies to AGP
where we have a strong mass
base. However, the party leadership did not listen to us forcing us to float this new party. We
are going to contest our candi-
dates in those 24 constituencies, which the BJP had left for
the AGP,” said Biswajit Phukan,
convener of the Trinamool BJP.
“The alliance with the AGP is
not going to benefit the BJP. So we
have opposed the alliance. Unfortunately, the party leadership
did not believe us and went ahead
with the alliance. We are sure that
the people of Assam will accept
Trinamool BJP as an alternative
to the corrupt governance of the
Congress,” he added.
Assam holds polls on April 4
and 11.
While the ruling Congress is
allied with the United People’s
Party (UPP), a regional outfit
with some base in four districts
of the Bodoland Territorial Areas Districts (BTAD), the BJP has
tied up with the AGP and the regional Bodoland Peoples Front
(BPF), which runs the Bodoland
Territorial Council (BTC), the
administration of the districts.
The All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), on the
other had announced that they
would not contest in 66 seats in
a bid to help the Congress and
defeat the BJP and its allies.
he heavily indebted liquor
baron Vijay Mallya has fled
the country, the Supreme
Court heard yesterday, as banks
lined up to try to recover more than
Rs70bn ($1bn) in unpaid loans.
A group of mainly state-run
banks had asked the Supreme
Court to prevent the flamboyant businessman, who is known
for his extravagant lifestyle, from
leaving India.
But Attorney General Mukul
Rohatgi said the 60-year-old
had left on March 2 after stepping down as chairman of United
Spirits, the Indian arm of Britain’s
Diageo, following allegations of
financial lapses.
“Agencies and the CBI (Central
Bureau of Investigation) have told
me he left the country on the second of March,” said Rohatgi, representing the banks in court.
“Please ask Mr Mallya to come
back and appear in the Supreme
Court and disclose all his assets.”
Rohatgi said the state was not
looking to take action against
Mallya, who is thought to be in
London, but wanted him to settle
debts worth more than Rs90bn
($1.3bn).
The court has asked Mallya
to reply to a notice issued to him
within two weeks, after which it
will hear the case again. Details of
the notice were not made public.
Rohatgi said that the secured
assets which Mallya has pledged
are not even 1/15th of more than
Rs90bn which he had taken for
Kingfisher Airlines.
Court summons Kejriwal
in Jaitley defamation case
IANS
New Delhi
A
New Delhi court yesterday
issued summonses to Delhi
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and five others in a criminal
defamation case filed by Finance
Minister Arun Jaitley in over the
Delhi and District Cricket Association controversy.
The court said the “allegations
levelled by the Aam Aadmi Party
leaders are derogatory in nature
and amount to slander and libel.”
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate
Sumit Dass issued summonses
to Kejriwal and other AAP leaders Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh,
Sanjay Singh, Raghav Chadha and
Deepak Bajpayee, and asked them
to appear before it on April 7.
In its 30-page order, the court
said the “reputation of a man
is his greatest asset and it takes
years to builds one’s reputation”.
“No one knows or realises this
fact better than the people who
hold public office or aspire for the
same,” the court said.
“Summing up the statement
- to call a person as corrupt/
dishonest, one who indulges in
financial bungling and having
embezzled/siphoned off money
to the tune of Rs57 crore, calling
him/equating him/drawing parallels with person who is involved
in criminal cases, casting aspersions about his integrity, are not
legitimate acts of criticism, but
downright and per se defamatory
in nature.”
“The allegations are not only
insulting but jeeringly taunting
and provocative,” the court said.
The court also said that the
freedom of speech and expressions is not an absolute right, but
one that is hedged with reasonable restrictions, with the law of
defamation being the primary
one.
“The language of public disclosure ought to be within the
confines of decency; if it transgresses those limits and becomes insulting, offensive, and
laced with innuendos, the same
may amount to defamation and
become actionable at the end of
the person aggrieved,” the court
said.
“The statements have exposed the complainant (Jaitley)
to ridicule, hatred and contempt
amongst the right thinking members of society and lowered his
reputation.”
The court noted that sharing
of the statements also strengthens charges of common intention
against the AAP leaders and said:
“ ...the defamatory statement allegations as levelled on the Facebook post and print media were
intended to be read/shared by the
maximum number of persons, the
allegations resonating through
the social media by tweets and
re-tweets, all points out to the
synchronised pattern, in quick
succession of time and which also
probabilise the existence of common intention.”
Jaitley, who filed the complaint
against Kejriwal and other AAP
leaders, told the court on January
5 that they had given “false and
defamatory” statements against
him in the DDCA case, thereby
harming his reputation.
Mallya: under pressure
As the court asked how the
banks could advance such a huge
loan without matching securities, Rohatgi said they were given
against the brand and logo of
Kingfisher Airlines which at that
point of time was huge but now
has collapsed.
Repeated calls to Mallya’s mobile and those of his representatives went unanswered yesterday.
He announced last month he
planned to move to Britain to be
closer to his children.
But in an e-mailed statement
to media on Sunday he said he
had no plans to run away from his
creditors and was hurt the press
was painting him “as an absconder”.
Mallya was known as the “King
of Good Times” before the 2012
collapse of his Kingfisher Airlines,
which left thousands of workers
unemployed and millions of dollars in unpaid bills.
As his liquor business flourished he diversified into other
areas and in 2005 launched Kingfisher Airlines, named after his
company’s best-known beer.
His profile rose further when
he acquired a stake in the Force
India F1 team and ownership of
the Royal Challengers Bangalore
cricket team. His fortune reached
a peak of $1.6bn in 2007, according to Forbes.
But he was unable to stop
Kingfisher from haemorrhaging
cash, and following a pilots’ strike
over unpaid wages the airline was
grounded in 2012 having never
made a profit.
On Monday an Indian tribunal
blocked a $75mn severance payout from Diageo to Mallya at the
request of the group of banks that
are seeking the money.
The consortium, led by the
State Bank of India, has also
sought Mallya’s arrest and confiscation of his passport. But the
debt recovery tribunal and the
Karnataka High Court, where a
separate petition has also been
filed, have yet to rule on those requests.
The lenders are under pressure from Reserve Bank of India
Governor Raghuram Rajan to deal
with Rs8tn of soured debt. He has
ordered them to clean up their
balance sheets by March 2017 by
increasing provisioning, resulting
in the largest-ever losses.
Mallya’s creditors will also auction the Mumbai office of Kingfisher Airlines on March 17, more
than three years after financial
stress forced the carrier to ground
its planes and default on payments to employees, airports, lessors and banks.
At his height, the liquor baron
was nicknamed “India’s Richard
Branson”, but his empire later began to crumble under the weight
of Kingfisher’s losses.
Last year, the SBI declared the
tycoon a “wilful defaulter” for not
repaying loans made to Kingfisher
Airlines.
Girl dies after being
raped, set on fire
AFP
Lucknow
A
The sister of the girl who was raped and set on fire cries out
during the funeral in Greater Noida near New Delhi yesterday.
16-year-old girl who was
raped and then set on fire
on the roof of her home
has died, police said yesterday,
the latest in a string of horrific
sexual crimes in India.
The teenager, who sustained
more than 90% burns in Monday’s attack, died in hospital
early yesterday, the investigating
officer said.
“Unfortunately she could not
be saved despite the best efforts of the medical staff,” said
Ashwani Kumar.
“We have arrested the accused, who is 19 years old and
sent him to judicial custody.
“An investigation is on to find
out more about the motive and
details of the crime,” he said.
The accused has been charged
with a slew of offences including
rape and murder, Kumar said.
“The body has been sent for
postmortem. We are waiting for
the report.”
Media reports quoted the girl’s
father as saying the suspect lived
nearby in their village in Uttar
Pradesh and that he had been
harassing his daughter for a year
despite several warnings.
The fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in Delhi in 2012
shone a global spotlight on the
frightening levels of violence
against women in India.
Her death from injuries sustained during the brutal assault
sparked some of the biggest
demonstrations in India’s recent
history, which intensified after
being broken up by heavy-handed police tactics.
Last month, police arrested
two men for shooting dead a
14-year-old girl who resisted
their advances in the same state.
Also in February, a teenage
rape victim was sexually assaulted for a second time while
in hospital receiving treatment
for the initial attack in eastern
Jharkhand state.
Women’s rights activists accuse police of often overlooking
complaints of stalking, which
they say only emboldens the perpetrators.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
23
INDIA
Birds bid early adieu to Kashmir as temperature rises
IANS
Srinagar
H
undreds of migratory
birds are bidding an early
adieu to Kashmir this
year because of unusually hot
temperatures and scant rain and
snowfall.
“Normally, the migration back
to summer homes from the Valley by the migratory bird species
starts by the middle of March,
but due to unusual rise in temperatures and scant precipitation during the winter months,
these avian visitors are leaving
earlier this year,” Imtiyaz Ahmad
Lone, wildlife warden (Wetlands
Kashmir), said.
Lone said many species of migratory birds including Pintails,
Mallards, Pochards, Wigeons and
Shovellers have already left the
Valley for their summer homes in
Russian Siberia, Eastern Europe,
the Philippines, China, central
Asia and other places.
The warden said last year
567,000 migratory birds including Greylag Geese, Mallards,
Teals, Pochards, Wigeons, Shovellers, Gadwalls and Pintails
came to spend the winter months
in the bird sanctuaries and other
water bodies of Kashmir Valley
to ward off the extreme cold of
their summer homes.
“This year, we fear the number
of avian visitors would be much
less,” said Lone.
Srinagar city recorded a maximum of 20.4 degrees Celsius on
February 24.
Sonam Lotus, director of the
local weather office, said this had
happened after 76 years.
For bird lovers and wildlife
wardens like Lone, this is real
bad news.
“There are multiple factors
responsible for lesser number
of birds visiting the Valley this
year. The biggest of course is the
climate change, but shrinking
areas of our bird reserves, pollution of water bodies because of
discharge of effluents contribute
heavily to affect the health of our
water bodies,” said Lone.
In addition to the migratory bird species that live here
permanently during the winter
months, there are many species
which come for a while.
“There are many birds of passage like the Cormorants and
Sandhill cranes which spend
some time in the Valley both in
the beginning of the winter season and towards the end of this
season,” he said.
The birds then move on to Indian plains spending some more
time in the Valley on return journey to their summer homes.
“This year, due to early spring
setting in the Valley, the birds
could very well overshoot our
water bodies by deciding not to
spend any time here at all”, the
warden said.
The Valley’s best known bird
sanctuaries are the Hokarsar on
the outskirts of Srinagar city,
Hygam and Mirgund in Baramulla district and Shallabugh in
Ganderbal district.
“Very few Greylag Geese came
to the Valley this year. The Geese
need much bigger water spaces
for feeding and spending time,”
he said
As water bodies shrank in the
Valley this year, most of the migratory bird sanctuaries hosted
fewer numbers of Geese this
winter.
The Wullar Lake hosted comparatively better numbers of
Geese this season, but nowhere
like the flocks that have been
seen in the past.
In unprotected water bodies like
the Wullar Lake and many others,
poachers are reportedly shooting the migratory birds as the local
wildlife department is understaffed.
“We are taking all steps to
check poaching outside the bird
reserves and we have seized
many weapons and lodged cases
against poachers. There is absolutely no chance of any poaching
in the protected water bodies,”
the warden said, adding that any
poaching would be happening in
unprotected water bodies.
Navi Mumbai
airport to be
operational in
2019: governor
IANS
Mumbai
T
he
proposed
Navi
Mumbai International
Airport is expected to
be operational in three years
and the first flight is targeted
to take off from there in 2019,
Maharashtra Governor C V
Rao said here yesterday.
“The Navi Mumbai International Airport has received
excellent response in the qualifying round of global tenders.
It is targeted that the first flight
take off from there in 2019,” Rao
announced in his address to a
joint session of the Maharashtra
legislature at the beginning of
the budget session which began
yesterday.
In preparation for the new
international airport, the CIDCO will develop a Smart
City, NAINA, which comprises 30 towns around the
airport, he said, adding this
will focus on work areas pertaining to education, medical, entertainment, logistics,
commerce, science, industry,
etc, and the government has
already notified an area of 600
sq km for it.
Simultaneously,
CIDCO
will invest Rs350bn to develop
the South Navi Mumbai as a
brownfield Smart City covering seven towns over an area of
around 7,700 hectares.
In this, the main focus
would be on projects like affordable
housing,
metro
corridors, economic and infrastructure
development
projects along with Port City
Development, scheduled for
completion by 2019, Rao said.
Supplementing these would
be other major infrastructure
projects in and around Mumbai
and elsewhere in Maharashtra,
including construction of the
new bridge across Thane Creek
to ease congestion between
Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.
The proposed coastal highway project in Maharashtra
will promote industries, tourism and defence requirements,
and this year work will start on
the ambitious Mumbai-Nagpur Super Communication
Expressway which will be the
longest greenfield expressway
in India, Rao said.
Maharashtra State Road
Development
Corporation (MSRDC) will be the
implementing agency for
the Thane-Borivali Tunnel
Road,
Thane-Ghodbunder
Road, Kon-Kalyan-Dombivali-Shilphata elevated road,
four-laning of Wakan-PaliKhopoli Road and 27 railway
overbridges in Vidarbha.
Elsewhere in the state, the
government has completed
over 263,000km of a targeted
337,000km of roads under
the development programme
of 2001-20021, including
converting 6,800km of state
highways into national highways, the governor said.
The government plans to
form “Maharashtra Railway
Infrastructure Development
Company” as a joint venture
with the railways ministry to
expedite implementation of
railway projects in the state.
The government will participate by way of equity in
port-rail connectivity projects
for Jaigad Port and Dighi Port
and also buy 26% shares in
satellite port project of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust at
Wadhwan.
Of the Belapur-Pendar Metro
Project, 11km in Navi Mumbai
will be completed in July 2017,
and work on the Mumbai Metro
Rail Line 3, Nagpur Metro and
Pune Metro projects will commence soon, Rao said.
Out of 118km Metro Rail
Project planned for next
three-four years, the Dahisar
to Dadabhai Nauroji Nagar
route of 18.5km and the Dahisar (East) to Andheri (East)
route of 16.5km with an estimated cost of Rs120bn crore
have been approved, the governor said.
Workers erect scaffolding to build a stage at the venue of World Culture Festival on the banks of the river Yamuna in New Delhi.
Green court gives its
nod for Sri Sri event
The National Green Tribunal
fines the Art of Living
Foundation Rs50mn to help
restore the area as activists
express outrage
Agencies
New Delhi
I
ndia’s environment court
yesterday gave the green signal to a huge cultural festival
to be held on the floodplain of
Yamuna river from tomorrow
but imposed Rs50mn fine on the
Art of Living Foundation of spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,
the organisers of the event.
But environmentalists warned
that the event, and the 3.5mn
visitors expected, will devastate
the area’s biodiversity.
The “World Culture Festival”, is being organised by spir-
Hindustan Unilever settles
row over mercury poisoning
AFP
New Delhi
T
he Indian arm of global
consumer giant Unilever yesterday said it had
reached a deal with hundreds of
former employees to end a longrunning dispute over allegations
of mercury poisoning at one of
its manufacturing plants.
Hindustan Unilever Limited
(HUL) was forced to shut its
thermometer factory in 2001 after Tamil Nadu authorities found
the company was contaminating
the environment by dumping
tonnes of toxic waste.
The company said it signed
the settlement agreement with a
workers association, representing 591 ex-employees and their
families from the now defunct
factory.
“We have worked hard over
many years to address this and
find the right solution for our
former workers. We, alongside
all involved, are glad to see an
outcome to this long-standing
case,” HUL executive director for
legal and corporate affairs Dev
Bajpai said in a statement.
The company has agreed to
provide an undisclosed ex-gratia
payment as part of the deal, the
statement said.
The company said the association had agreed to withdraw
a 10-year-old petition from Madras High Court after reaching
the settlement.
The workers’ union alleges 45
employees and 18 children died
due to the toxic effects, a claim
denied by the company.
The union had demanded
compensation, saying many
victims are still suffering from
renal, brain and neurological
disorders.
HUL moved the thermometer
plant from New York to India in
1984 over environmental concerns before it was shut following the discovery of a 7.4 tonne
stockpile of crushed glass thermometers laced with mercury in
2001.
Last year environmental activists launched a global campaign to force Unilever to clean
the toxic waste from the site
close to a wildlife sanctuary.
Nityanand Jayaraman, one of
the activists engaged in the decade-long campaign said they are
relieved with the decision but
their fight is not over yet.
“We are celebrating but we
will make sure that Unilever
cleans the area of the toxic
waste,” Jayaraman said.
Kodaikanal Won’t!, a rap song
about the crisis by a 27-year-old
Indian activist Sofia Ashraf to
the tune of Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda, went viral with more than
3mn views on Youtube and support from Minaj.
itual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,
spreads across 1,000 acres on
the banks of the Yamuna. It features a 7-acre stage for 35,000
musicians and dancers, newly
built dirt tracks and 650 portable
toilets.
Green groups accuse organisers of ripping up vegetation and
ruining the river’s fragile ecosystem by damaging its bed and disrupting water flows. They want
authorities to cancel the event
and avert further harm.
“This land is not meant for
any of those things. The biodiversity of the land has been
completely destroyed,” said
Anand Arya, one of several environmentalists who petitioned
the National Green Tribunal, India’s top green court.
“Where will the sewage and
the excrement go? All across
the floodplains!” he said, add-
ing that the waste left by visitors
would endanger a nearby bird
sanctuary.
The NGT yesterday ruled that
the event could go ahead but
fined the Foundation Rs50mn to
help restore the area.
The tribunal also imposed
fines of Rs500,000 on the Delhi
Development Authority (DDA)
and Rs100,000 on the Delhi
Pollution Control Committee
(DPCC).
The NGT, headed by Justice
Swatanter Kumar, described the
DPCC as “incompetent”, saying
it had failed to discharge its duty.
Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, a yoga devotee like Ravi
Shankar, was due to attend tomorrow’s opening, but it is not
clear whether he will do so after
the event sparked such uproar
- and not just among environmentalists.
Court appearance
Delhi police have warned of
“utter chaos” at the event unless
safety lapses are tackled, citing a
March 1 letter to the federal government saying the stage lacked
a structural stability certificate.
Farmers who plough the banks
of the river amid Delhi’s urban
sprawl also accused organisers of
forcing them off the land.
Ravi Shankar, who enjoys a
cult following, has rejected the
criticism, saying he should be
rewarded for hosting the event
beside one of India’s most polluted rivers.
Saraswati Akshama Nath,
the lawyer for his organisation,
said approvals, including safety
certificates, had been given in
December before construction
began, and the structures would
be removed after the three-day
festival ends.
“Consent was given to us by all
SC extends bail of
Teesta, her husband
IANS
New Delhi
T
Trinamool Congress leader Madan Mitra flashes a victory sign
as he is taken to be produced in a Kolkata court in connection
with the multi-million rupee Saradha chit fund scam yesterday.
Mitra is contesting from the Kamarhati constituency in the
upcoming state assembly polls.
the authorities,” she said. “We have
only used eco-friendly material.”
The issue also figured in the
parliament as opposition members asked how the army was
involved helping the three-day
private event.
“There is this person (Ravi
Shankar) who is saying he is doing
a cultural festival, and you put the
army there to construct bridges.
The government should shut this
down immediately. In 1,000 acres,
they are doing this. It will destroy
Yamuna,” Janata Dal-United (JDU) leader Sharad Yadav said.
At the site, builders were
scrambling to complete what
they say is the world’s biggest
ever performing stage. It can
accommodate a symphony orchestra of 8,500 and 20,000
performers, said Prasana Prabhu, a trustee of Ravi Shankar’s
foundation.
he Supreme Court yesterday extended the
interim bail granted to
social activists Teesta Setalvad
and her husband Javed Anand.
They have been accused of
misusing funds collected by
their NGO Sabrang Trust for
setting up a museum at Gulbarga Society which witnessed
one of the worst carnages during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Extending the interim protection till April 28, the bench
of Justices Anil R Dave, Fakkir
Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla
and V Gopala Gowda also directed the registry of the court
to place the matter before
Chief Justice T S Thakur for its
listing before a regular bench.
Setalvad and Anand were
granted interim bail by the court
on February 19, 2015, as it restrained the Gujarat police from
arresting them. The couple had
moved the court challenging
the Gujarat High Court’s February 12 verdict declining them
anticipatory bail in the alleged
misuse of funds case.
On January 28, the court
had extended the protection
till March 18.
The court is also hearing a plea
by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which has challenged the August 11, 2015 Bombay High Court order granting
anticipatory bail to the couple,
holding that the documents being sought by the agency relates
to accounts and therefore it does
not require custodial interrogation and both were unlikely to flee
the country.
The apex court on December 1, 2015, had issued notice
to the CBI on Setalvad’s plea
also challenging that part of the
Bombay High Court on August
11, 2015 verdict which said that
they were in breach of Foreign
Contribution Regulation Act.
24
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
LATIN AMERICA
PEOPLE
DATA
OBITUARY
DECISION
WILDLIFE
Brazilian music legend
Gil leaves hospital
Brazil inflation
dips to 10.36%
Leader of Chile’s
‘Death Caravan’ dies
El Salvador mulls rights
suspension as crime spikes
Frog with yellow eyebrows
discovered in Colombia
Brazilian music legend Gilberto Gil left a Sao
Paulo hospital yesterday following two weeks
of treatment for blood pressure and kidney
problems, a spokesman said. “He has already
left,” Gilda Mattoso, a spokeswoman for the
Syrian-Lebanese Hospital in the city, said. Gil,
73, had been hospitalised in Sao Paulo since
February 25 after doctors discovered high blood
pressure during a routine visit. They also treated
a kidney crisis. Gil and Caetano Veloso shook the
foundations of Brazilian music in the 1960s with
Bossa Nova, a fusion of samba and jazz. A former
Brazilian culture minister, Gil has also made an
international name for himself.
Brazilian inflation rose 0.9% in February, a relatively
gentle increase in prices that gave breathing
space to Latin America’s biggest economy in the
middle of a tough recession, government statistics
showed yesterday. The annual rate now is 10.36%,
the IBGE statistics bureau said. In January inflation
jumped 1.27%, reaching a 12-year high of 10.71%.
Officials said the latest prices rises were driven
partly by education, up 5.9%. Food was up 1.06%,
well under January’s 2.28% price rises. Keeping
the overall price trends down were air travel, down
15.83%, and electric energy, down 2.16%. Officials
said last week that the economy shrank 3.8%, the
biggest contraction in 25 years.
A retired Chilean general who led an army
death squad that killed 75 opponents of dictator
Augusto Pinochet died yesterday. Sergio
Arellano Stark, the leader of the so-called
“Caravan of Death” that executed opponents of
Pinochet’s 1973 coup, died at age 94 in a nursing
home, his family said. Under Pinochet’s orders,
Arellano led an army unit that crisscrossed Chile
by helicopter in the weeks after the overthrow of
Socialist president Salvador Allende, executing
at least 75 people seen as hostile to the new
regime. Arellano was sentenced to six years in
prison in 2008, but never served time because
he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
El Salvador could declare a state of emergency,
suspending some constitutional rights, to fight the
alarming wave of gang violence that has pushed
murder rates to record levels, the government
said. Leftist President Salvador Sanchez Ceren met
with the Supreme Court, legislature and public
prosecutor’s office to discuss the legal viability
of actions such as prohibiting meetings and free
movement, or tapping into mail, phone calls and
social media, officials said. The small, impoverished
Central American state ranks among the world’s
most violent, with criminal gangs controlling
chunks of territory. Murders jumped 120% in the
first two months of this year compared to 2015.
A new species of terrestrial frog with yellow
eyebrows has been found in Colombia’s East
Andes, researchers announced. The Pristimantis
macrummendozai was discovered in the Iguaque
Merchan paramos, an Alpine ecosystem, north
of the town of Arcabuco, according to the
Humboldt Institute, which worked on the study in
collaboration with the environment ministry. The
discovery “places Colombia among the five most
biodiverse countries in the world,” said Andres
Acosta, curator, Humboldt Institute. Researchers
said the frog has a skin with folds that retain
humidity, and that its dark colour helps it blend well
with the rocky soil of this mountainous region.
Phone app to
forecast risk
of crop failure
in Brazil
Reuters
Sao Jose dos Campos
D
espite years of experience, Charlei Sousa
finds himself struggling to grow maize. A lack
of rain took half his last crop,
and he says uneven rainfall
has for years become a worsening problem in his fields in
Montes Claros.
“We don’t know anymore
how and when to grow,” said
Sousa, a family farmer who
plants about 30 hectares of
maize in the north of Minas
Gerais state, which lies within
a semi-arid region of Brazil.
Changes in weather patterns linked to climate change
are challenging the traditional
knowledge of family farmers
in Brazil, particularly those in
traditionally dry areas of nine
northern states, where land is
used mainly to grow subsistence amounts of maize, rice,
beans and cassava.
But help may be on the way.
This season, Sousa will take a
new ally to the field with him:
a smartphone app. Used as a
sort of in-field diary, it will
record what is planted and
when, how much fertiliser is
used, geographical data about
the field, photos and other
details.
A few hundreds kilometres
away, in Sao Jose dos Campos,
in Sao Paulo state, scientists
receive the data in real time.
The information produced by
Sousa and other family farmers will feed a new system designed to monitor the risk of
crop failure in Brazilian semiarid areas.
“There is no such monitoring being done in real time,
with information coming
directly from the producer,”
said Ana Paula Cunha, a researcher at National Centre for Monitoring and Early
Warning of Natural Disasters
(Cemaden).
The centre, together with
Applied Systems Analysis and
the National Institute of Science and Technology, developed the app called Agrisupport.
With the help of farmers,
scientists at Cemaden say
they will be able to predict
up to two months in advance
whether the semi-arid region
faces a risk of crop failure.
Alongside the information
from farmers, researchers
will rely on measurements of
humidity, temperature, wind
and solar radiation coming
from monitoring equipment
installed in nine states.
Those will be fed into
mathematical models that
researchers run on the institute’s computers, and turned
into forecasts for farmers and
others in Brazil.
“We want to provide information about the crop
productivity loss for all municipalities of the semi-arid
region,” said Regina Alvala,
a co-ordinator at Cemaden.
The first report is expected
to be available by the end of
2016.
The forecasts are expected
to be particularly important
for the federal government.
Since 2003, Brasilia has offered financial compensation for family farmers from
semi-arid regions who lose at
least 50% of their crop. This
type of insurance is known as
“crop-guarantee”.
“For the decision maker,
information on the risk of
crop failure is vital because
it is possible to have a better
view of how much will be paid
for insurance,” Alvala said.
“But the information is also
relevant to the producer,” she
said. “For example, if a farmer
wants to extend the planted
area but the forecast shows
the weather conditions won’t
be good enough for the type
of crop raised, the farmer can
save the seeds.”
Lula receives constitution copy
Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva receives a copy of the country’s constitution from senator Renan Calheiros after a meeting with senators of the Brazilian
Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) in Brasilia, Brazil, yesterday. Lula da Silva was a member of the constituent assembly that promulgated the current Brazilian Constitution
on October 5, 1988.
Obama visit ‘not to
alter Cuba’s ideals’
AFP
Havana
C
uba said it would welcome President Barack
Obama to Havana later
this month, but the Communist
government had no intention of
changing its policies in exchange
for normal relations with the US.
In a long editorial yesterday
in Communist Party newspaper
Granma and other official media,
Cuba demanded Washington
YPF chief forced to
quit by Macri govt
Reuters
Buenos Aires
T
he head of Argentina’s
state oil firm YPF has
resigned at the request
of the government, the company said, as the country’s new
leader continues to get rid of
officials who defended the previous president’s interventionist policies.
Chief
executive
officer
Miguel Galuccio yesterday said
his resignation will take effect
at the end of April, coinciding
with YPF’s next stockholders
meeting.
He was appointed in 2012 by
then-president Cristina Fernandez after she seized control
of the company from Spanish
oil giant Repsol.
Mauricio Macri, elected
president in November on an
open markets platform, has
pledged to get Argentina’s
economy moving in large part
by ditching Fernandez’s pro-
tectionist policies. He has already forced out the heads of
the central bank and the national communications regulator, both Fernandez loyalists.
State news agency Telam
said Galuccio was asked to step
down “due to a restructuring”
at the company. The government has not said who will replace him.
“Time has come to allow
others to continue the path that
the company is on,” Galuccio
said in a statement.
YPF last week reported a
fourth-quarter loss, hurt by a
depreciating peso currency and
a cut in the price of domestically produced oil.
Since his December inauguration Macri has lifted trade
and currency controls, cut
grains export taxes and floated
the peso currency, allowing for
a 36.6% devaluation to 15.5 per
US dollar.
Macri is hoping to attract
foreign investment, especially
in the energy sector. Argentina
sits atop one of the world’s biggest shale oil and gas formations, but foreign companies
were scared off by Fernandez’s
policies.
US President Barack Obama
will make an official state
visit to Buenos Aires later
this month to discuss energy
among other topics. Fernandez had a frosty relationship
with Washington, but bilateral
relations have thawed since
Macri’s election.
Argentina pulled in less than
one-quarter of the foreign direct investment that went to
Chile in 2014 and less than
one-half the amounts that
went to Uruguay and Colombia, according to the United
Nations.
Argentina is now in a position to draw foreign direct and
portfolio investments worth
5% of gross domestic product, equivalent to some $25bn
annually, said local brokerage
Puente.
cease meddling in its internal
affairs and said Obama could do
more to change US policy.
The March 20-22 visit from
Obama comes 15 months after he
and Cuban President Raul Castro
agreed to end more than five decades of Cold War-era animosity
and try to normalise relations.
They have restored diplomatic
ties, and Obama has relaxed a series of trade sanctions and travel
restrictions, leading Republican
opponents and even some of the
president’s fellow Democrats to
question whether Washington
was offering too much without
any reciprocation from Havana.
But the editorial made it clear
that Cuba still has a long list of
grievances with the US, starting
with the comprehensive trade
embargo. Obama wants to rescind the embargo but Republican leadership in Congress has
blocked the move.
Cuba also objected to US support for its political dissidents,
whom some Americans consider
champions human rights but
Venezuela unrest
whom the Cuban government
views as an unrepresentative
minority funded by US interests.
“(The US) should abandon the
pretense of fabricating an internal
political opposition, paid for with
money from US taxpayers,” the
nearly 3,000-word editorial said.
The editorial came during Cubans’ growing anticipation of
the Obama visit, only the second
by a US president and the first
since the 1959 revolution led by
Fidel Castro that overthrew a
pro-American government.
Argentina debt deal
clears Congress hurdle
Reuters
Buenos Aires
A
Riot policemen are deployed as students set barricades during
a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in
San Cristobal, Venezuela, yesterday. Venezuela’s opposition
called for the “largest movement that has ever existed” to oust
Maduro, vowing to pursue all means to force him from power,
including a referendum and protests.
The editorial said Cuba was
working to build a new relationship with the US, but no one
should assume it had to “renounce any of its principles or
cede the slightest bit in its defence” to do so.
The two countries have also
negotiated greater co-operation
on law enforcement and environmental issues and agreed
to resume scheduled commercial flights and postal services.
Obama has removed Cuba from a
list of state sponsors of terrorism.
bill aimed at stopping
Argentina’s economic
decline by ending its
14-year banishment from the
global bond market passed its
first legislative hurdle when a
Congressional committee sent
the measure to the full house of
representatives.
President Mauricio Macri,
elected in November on a freemarkets platform, wants Congress to approve a deal to pay
$4.6bn in cash to the biggest
holders of defaulted debt.
The pact is the cornerstone of his plan for attracting investment to an economy
battered by heavy currency
controls under the previous
government. Access to financing would help Macri close
a wide fiscal deficit without
the kind of harsh budget cuts
that have gotten other leaders
thrown out of office.
If he gets it right, Argentina
could become a bright spot in
the generally troubled emerg-
ing markets asset class.
The full house will debate
the proposal next week. If approved there, it would go to the
Senate.
The bill was amended by the
committee to say money raised
by issuing sovereign bonds
would go only to bondholders suing the country over its
2002 default. Additional borrowing would be capped by
limits written into the national
budget.
The government said it
plans three international debt
sales next month, if Congress
approves the pact.
Lawmakers are being asked
to repeal two laws blocking
settlement of the debt case.
The New York judge hearing
the case said the laws must be
scrapped for the deal to take
effect.
Most holders of Argentine
bonds accepted about 30 cents
on the dollar in the country’s
2005 and 2010 debt restructurings. A small group of New
York hedge funds held out for
better terms and sued in the
US courts.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
25
PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN
Son of slain governor
reunites with family
AFP
Islamabad
T
he kidnapped son of a slain
Pakistani governor was
reunited with his family
yesterday, declaring it was “good
to be back” after nearly five years
in Taliban captivity.
Sporting a freshly-trimmed
beard and long hair in images
released by the military, Shahbaz
Taseer appeared healthy as relatives greeted him at Lahore airport just over a week after his father’s Islamist killer was hanged.
“We’re very, very, very happy
and this is the start of a new life
for us,” his sister Sanam Taseer
told AFP over the phone. “It’s a
beautiful day.”
“We’re so happy,” added his
aunt Ayesha Tammy Haq.
Taseer later posted a public
message on Facebook via his wife
Maheen’s account. “I dont know
my facebook password. But good
to be back dude!- shabby,” he
wrote, signing off with his nickname.
The circumstances surrounding Taseer’s freedom from captivity remain murky.
On Tuesday authorities announced they raided a compound in the Kuchlak district
of restive southwestern Balochistan province, where they
found Taseer alone. It was not
immediately clear when the raid
took place.
Taseer had been abducted by
Islamist gunmen from Lahore
in August 2011, months after his
father was killed for opposing
the country’s controversial blasphemy laws.
The governor’s assassin,
Mumtaz Qadri, was hanged on
February 29 in what analysts
described as a “key moment” in
Pakistan’s long battle with extremism.
The execution, together with
Shahbaz’s release, have come as
welcome news to Pakistan’s long
beleaguered liberals, under fire
since an Islamist insurgency rose
up against the state more than a
decade ago.
The official account of a raid
on a compound has been contradicted by two brothers who own
a roadside restaurant in Kuchlak.
Speaking to AFP yesterday,
the younger brother said Taseer,
looking unkempt with a straggly beard, had walked in about
5:30pm on Tuesday, appearing
nervous and repeatedly asking to
borrow a phone.
“I refused because he looked
suspicious and I did not want
any trouble,” the owner said.
The young man then approached a group of Pashtun
men whom he spoke to in their
native Pashto language.
“He then went outside and
looked like he was waiting for
someone. I think he was able to
borrow someone’s phone and
send out a message,” the owner
added.
A group of around a dozen
paramilitary troops and plainclothes officials arrived, and
Taseer was bundled into a fourwheel drive vehicle which then
sped off, he said.
During his custody, Taseer
was moved between locations in
the tribal areas and militant outfits, according to multiple rebel
commanders.
A Taliban commander in the
country’s northwest said late
Tuesday that Taseer was initially abducted by the Lashkare-Jhangvi sectarian group that
is mainly based out of Punjab,
which handed him over to the
Pakistani Taliban (TTP).
Taseer spent most of his time
with TTP fighters who kept him
in separate locations in North
and South Waziristan, and in areas close to the Afghan border,
he added.
Two other militant commanders said he was later handed over to the Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan which maintains
close ties to Al Qaeda.
They insisted he was treated
well. “Taseer liked to play cricket and so militants had provided
him a bat and ball,” one commander said.
Speculation has been rife that
Taseer was released as a result of
a ransom being paid to his Taliban captors, with some militant
sources placing the figure at tens
of millions of dollars.
But a senior intelligence official in Quetta, however, told
AFP Taseer had managed a daring escape. “He is a brave man
and fought well. We must praise
him,” he said.
P
akistan’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz
yesterday said the national
security was top priority of Islamabad and there would be no
compromise on the country’s
nuclear programme.
He made the remarks during
a debate on the statement of US
Secretary of State John Kerry
that Saudi Arabia could purchase
a nuclear bomb from Pakistan.
Aziz said the statement of the
US Secretary of State was misquoted by the media, Radio Pakistan reported.
Aziz said that Pakistan’s nuclear programme was for deterrence and the entire world
appreciated its command and
control system.
He said that during Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit
to the US and his own visit to
Washington, the US authorities were categorically told that
Pakistan would not accept any
restriction on its nuclear programme.
They were told that the con-
cept of deterrence is dynamic
and Pakistan would have to take
care of capacity and advances
being made by its rival. Aziz insisted that Islamabad would not
accept any unilateral curb on its
programme. Any reduction must
also apply to India and it must
address the conventional imbalance between the two countries.
He pointed out that Pakistan did
not have the resources to match
India’s ever-increasing arsenal
of conventional weapons and was
forced to depend on non-conventional means to defend itself.
Aziz said Pakistan with the
co-operation of China had successfully blocked India’s bid to
seek membership of the Nuclear
Supplier Group.
Meanwhile, days before a key
nuclear summit in Washington,
the United States has assured the
international community that
Pakistan is capable of protecting
its nuclear weapons.
At a joint news briefing with
Pakistani officials last week, US
Secretary of State John Kerry,
however, did stress the need for
ending the nuclear race in South
Asia.
He reminded Pakistan that the
US and Russia had reduced their
nukes from 50,000 to 1,500 and
were now working on further reductions.
Asked to comment on Secretary
Kerry’s statement, US State Department’s spokesman John Kirby
has said that this did not mean
the United States suspected Pakistan’s ability to defend its nuclear
arsenal. “We have said before that
we believe that the government of
Pakistan can and does provide the
necessary security that they need
for that arsenal,” he said.
“We have said before
that we believe that the
government of Pakistan
can and does provide the
necessary security that
they need for that arsenal”
Diplomatic
observers
in
Washington say that the two
statements do provide a window to the possible US strategy
for dealing with nuclear proliferation in South Asia during the
two-day summit, which begins
on March 31.
Unlike it did with Iran, the US
does not want Pakistan to shut
down its nuclear programme.
Agencies
Islamabad
P
Shahbaz Taseer, son of assassinated governor of Pakistan’s Punjab
province Salman Taseer, gesturing before boarding a chartered plane
in Quetta on his way to Lahore.
No compromise on Pakistan’s
N-programme, says Aziz
Agencies
Islamabad
Sharif in Saudi to
attend opening of
anti-terror alliance
But it does want Islamabad to
reduce the size of its arsenal, the
observers add.
Kirby addressed another key
point in Aziz’s statement that
the stakes were high for the next
round of Afghan reconciliation
talks and their failure will significantly increase violence and
insurgency this summer. “We
certainly share his assessment
that there is and should be a
sense of urgency around getting these talks up and running
and, in this case, resumed,” said
Kirby when asked to comment
on Aziz’s statement.
“And I don’t think we would
disagree either with his assessment we would - and the Afghan
Security Forces would - have to
prepare themselves for the potential for increased violence in
the spring and summer months,”
he said. “It would be irresponsible if we didn’t.”
Reminded that the Afghan
Taliban had already backed out
of these talks, Kirby said the Taliban had a choice: Continue to
fight or engage in a peace process. But the prospects for the
success of these talks were “fair”,
he added.
TV channels
urged to follow
‘code of conduct’
Internews
Islamabad
P
akistan’s National Assembly’s (NA) Standing Committee on Information has
said that TV news channels in
the country needed to train their
staff, especially anchors, to enable them to follow the ‘code of
conduct’ for media.
The NA committee met at the
head office of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra). Imran Zafar Leghari
was in the chair.
Briefing the committee, Pemra
Chairman Absar Alam asked its
members to extend their support
for effective regulation of certain
non-journalistic programmes,
like re-enactment shows, crime
shows and entertainment reports at news TV channels.
“Many things are not allowed
at news channels and that too
during prime time,” he said,
adding that many programmes
on news channels were crossing
even the censorship limits for
cinemas.
The members inquired about
action taken by Pemra against
news channels showing such
programmes.
akistan’s prime minister and military chief
arrived in Saudi Arabia
yesterday for the inauguration
of a proposed military alliance
of Islamic countries to fight
terrorism in the Muslim world,
officials said.
Premier Nawaz Sharif and
army chief Raheel Sharif flew
to the Gulf state amid confusion about the extent to which
Pakistan would support the
alliance.
Saudi leaders are expected
to formally announce the
opening of the alliance today
at a summit of leaders from
Muslim countries that might
join the initiative, Pakistani
officials said.
Troops from Pakistan and 23
other Muslim countries have
been participating in a demonstration of military might against
emerging threats from Islamic
State and regional rival Iran.
Pakistani intelligence officials said Islamabad’s role
would be limited to providing
training to troops from the
participating countries, sharing intelligence on terrorist
groups and helping member
states create counter-radicalisation initiatives.
Sharif is likely to define the
role Islamabad will play in the
34-nation counter-terrorism
alliance formed by the kingdom.
On Tuesday Sharif met his
top foreign policy, economy,
military and intelligence advisers before he and the army
chief General Raheel Sharif
left for Saudi Arabia, Dawn
online reported.
Sharif will attend the concluding ceremony of the multinational counter-terrorism
exercise – Raad al-Shamal.
Discussions on the shape
and scope of activities of the
Saudi-led alliance are also
expected to take place on the
sidelines of the ceremony.
Pakistan has kept its position on the alliance vague, but
government ministers have on
different occasions hinted that
it could help in intelligence
sharing, capacity building,
provision of military hardware
and formulation of counternarrative to extremist propaganda.
Anticipating a major return
for engagement with Saudi
Arabia in its venture, the government is pushing for a more
active involvement in the alliance.
The meeting, according
to a source, also discussed
the progress in investigation
into the involvement of Pakistan-based militants in the
Pathankot airbase attack and
the impending visit of the investigation team to India for
collecting further evidence.
The investigation team is
expected to travel to India in
the next few days.
Pakistan tipped off India
about a terrorist plot hatched
by Lashkar-e-Taiba for whose
execution it was said that a
team of 10-15 militants had
crossed the border.
In the domestic context, the
meeting discussed the Karachi
situation, terrorist attack on
the court complex in Charsadda and the last phase of
ongoing Shawal operation.
The statement said the
meeting had reaffirmed the
government’s commitment to
fighting terrorism.
“The meeting agreed that
elimination of terrorism from
our soil is a national resolve
and paid tribute to the personnel of law-enforcement
and security agencies who
embraced martyrdom while
fighting this menace of terrorism,” it said.
Riyadh initially said it wanted to create an alliance of 34
Muslim nations, but the idea
appeared to receive a halfhearted response from states
like Pakistan and Malaysia.
Iran, Syria and Iraq are not
included in the proposed alliance.
Islamabad announced it
would become part of the alliance but did not commit
troops to fight either in Yemen
or Syria, the two countries the
Saudis are possibly eying with
the initiative, Pakistani diplomatic and intelligence officials
said.
Afghan government investigates video
appearing to show police torture
Afghanistan’s interior ministry
is investigating video footage
that appears to show several
men in police uniforms
and other men with guns
torturing an alleged suicide
bomber, it said yesterday.
The footage shows the
armed men tying the man
to the back of a police truck
and dragging him along a
main road in the south of the
country. One man in police
uniform is then seen biting
the man’s arm while others
kick and punch him.
The video went viral on
social media on Tuesday. The
ministry said those involved
have not been identified.
“Several men whose identities
are not yet known, are
torturing an alleged suicide
bomber in Panjwai district of
Kandahar province,” it said in
a statement.
Kandahar is the birthplace of
the Taliban, insurgents whose
five years in power was ended
by a US-led coalition and
Afghan fighters in late 2001
in the wake of the Sept. 11
attacks on the United States.
Despite some progress,
torture and ill-treatment of
detainees remains rife in
Afghan prisons.
A UN report released on
February last year, showed
a 14 percent decrease in the
number of detainees tortured
or ill-treated in Afghanistan.
One-third of all prisoners were
found to have been tortured.
What’s new about Punjab’s pro-women law?
Internews
Islamabad
E
ven though laws to prevent
domestic violence already
exist in Pakistan’s four
provinces, none of these laws existing or proposed - has generated as much controversy and
opposition as the Punjab Protection of Women against Violence
Act, 2016 enacted last month.
This is surprising, say experts,
since the law contains little in
the way of new stipulations that
were not envisioned by previous laws. Its detractors, such as
the Council of Islamic Ideology
(CII), claim that by passing the
bill, the provincial legislature
has committed ‘a treasonous
act’.
According to Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan Chairperson Zohra Yusuf, “Violence
against women is so widespread
in Pakistan that this certainly
needed to be addressed.”
In her opinion, the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) already
provides remedies for violent
crimes against a person, be it a
man or a woman.
“But there are no laws to provide relief to women victims of
domestic violence. Therefore,
it was necessary to have special
mechanisms and interventions for
women and children,” says Punjab Commission on the Status of
Women chairperson Fauzia Viqar.
Unlike the Sindh law against
domestic violence, the Punjab
law does not criminalise domestic violence itself, but rather
provides civil remedies such as
fines or residence orders through
the courts. Violators can only be
imprisoned for a violation of a
court order, not for abuse.
Despite loud opposition, Pun-
jab domestic violence act contains few stipulations not contained in existing laws. But how
can a case be registered under an
act that does not criminalise domestic violence?
According to leading human
rights lawyer Asma Jahangir,
domestic violence is a “civil
matter” under the Punjab act
and complainants must turn to
a protection officer or the family
courts to register a case, not the
police.
The onus of proof is not as
high when it comes to proving
cases under acts such as this, she
said.
Recently, a case that was purportedly registered under the
new bill made headlines across
the country. However, since the
new domestic violence law is yet
to be activated, the case was, in
fact, filed under the relevant section of the Pakistan Penal Code,
and subsequently quashed on
the complainant’s request.
The law’s opponents also insist that drawing up legislation
that caters specifically to women
which is also what the Sindh law
does - is unfair to men.
“But there are no laws to
provide relief to women
victims of domestic
violence. Therefore, it
was necessary to have
special mechanisms and
interventions for women
and children”
A CII official hinted at the
reason behind their recent rejection of both the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Punjab bill.
The English draft of the law uses
the general term ‘aggrieved person’ and also defines the kinds
of aggrieved persons, which also
includes men.
“The translation of the KP law
that we received refers to the
‘aggrieved person’ as ‘mutasira’,
the feminine term for victim,”
he said. This indicates that those
opposing the law may not necessarily be clear on what exactly it
stipulates.
The Punjab law does feature
uniquely specific definitions.
Its explanation of psychological
violence “includes psychological deterioration of aggrieved
person which may result in anorexia [emphasis added], suicide
attempt or clinically proven depression”.
The law thereby identifies
connections between mental
health issues, such as anorexia or
depression, and domestic abuse.
The Punjab act has also made
the home a scrutable area. “Earlier, homes were treated as a
private space and domestic violence was again a private matter,
so now [the police] can enter a
home where reports originate
from,” Yusuf said.
However, she criticised the
provision that the defendant will
be asked to leave the house for two
days, saying it may be ineffective
if he is allowed to return and continued abusing the victim.
Similar to the acts that came
before it, the 2016 act also calls
for residence and financial support for victims.
However, where the Sindh
act states that a victim cannot
be evicted from the household
without consent, Clause 5 of the
Punjab act states that the court
can restore the position of a victim who has been wrongfully
evicted if “the aggrieved person
has right, title of beneficial interest in the house”.
What sets this law apart from
the rest is extensive enforcement mechanisms. According
to Mumtaz Mughal of the Aurat
Foundation, it is much more realistic to expect that the law will
be implemented and enforced
better than the laws passed by
other provinces.
The law calls for the constitution of Women Protection committees at the district-level,
which will consist of a police
representative, a social welfare
officer, a public prosecutor, civil
society representatives and a
district women protection officer who will act as the secretary.
Viqar of the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women explained that the district protection officer will be a paid officer,
and the government functionaries in the committee would already be drawing a salary from
the government, while members
who are from the civil society will
be working on a purely voluntary
basis.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
26
PHILIPPINES
Partial solar eclipse thrills sky gazers
Members of Astronomical League of the Philippines watch the partial solar eclipse in Taguig, Metro Manila. Right: A partial solar eclipse in seen in the sky in Manila yesterday.
Aquino denies militants
in south are linked to IS
The Philippine president
has said local groups
have been staging attacks
in the south to draw
attention to themselves
and raise funding
Reuters
Manila
P
resident Benigno Aquino denied yesterday that Islamic
State-linked militants are operating in the southern Philippines,
describing armed groups in the area
as mercenaries who are looking to
raise funds from abroad.
A handful of small but violent
militant groups in the south have
posted videos in social media pledging alliance to Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria and displaying the trademark black flag.
“It’s difficult to call them Islamic
State groups,” Aquino told reporters
Aquino: denying militant presence
at an air base south of Manila, adding the groups were not driven by
ideology nor religion.
“We believe it is mercenary reasons that are prompting them to do
this.” Aquino said local groups have
been staging attacks in the south to
draw attention to themselves and
raise funding from the Middle East,
especially from Islamic State.
Last month, the army and air
force fought a small rebel group,
which claimed to have links with
Islamic State militants, in Lanao del
Sur province. About 40 rebels and
five soldiers died in the nine-day
battle.
On Monday, Ebrahim Murad,
head of the main rebel group talking peace with government, warned
that Islamic State was trying to gain
a foothold in the Philippines by taking advantage of the non-passage of
a new Muslim autonomy law.
“We are concerned that they can
capitalise on this because of the
frustration of the people in the area
is now very strong,” Murad said at
a new conference in Kuala Lumpur,
where his group held talks with
government negotiators. The government’s chief peace adviser, Teresita Deles, shared the rebel leader’s
opinion about possible penetration
of Islamic State militants in the
south.
“We agree that the frustrations of
the people on the ground can lead to
recruitment for radical extremists,”
she said, adding the government
and the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front are working together to curb
the spread of extremism.
Security forces say there is no
evidence to show local rebel groups
have links with Middle East-based
extremists.
“There is no direct, verifiable and
credible presence of any international groups in the country,” military spokesman Brigadier-General
Restituto Padilla said.
Army arrests top rebel leader in Davao
By Al Jacinto
Manila Times/Zamboanga City
A
senior communist rebel leader
was arrested in a military operation conducted in the village of
Sirib, Calinan district in Davao City on
Tuesday.
Officials said Ruditha Rosete Gaylawan,
35, is the secretary general of Front Committee 54 of the Communist Party of the
Philippines (CPP).
Military raiders also seized from Gay-
lawan two hand grenades, a .45-caliber
pistol with fully loaded magazines and two
improvised explosives, as well as medicines and notebooks containing the names
of NPA rebels.Officials said the rebel leader
is facing a string of criminal cases, mostly
murder, filed before Davao del Norte trial
Binay focused on boosting
businesses, curbing poverty
By Joel M Sy Egco
Manila Times
V
ice President Jejomar Binay will take on the role as
“the enabler” once elected, focusing on improving the
country’s business environment
and eventually solve the problem of poverty that continues to
plague the nation, his camp said
yesterday.
“Under a Binay presidency,
the government’s role as an enabler will be played to the hilt.
He shall periodically meet with
and consult the business sector to get thoughts and insights.
Governance to the government,
business to the businessmen,”
former Finance secretary and
now United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) treasurer Margarito
“Gary” Teves said.
Teves, who also serves as
the economic adviser of Binay,
added they will employ Binay’s
experience in governing Makati
City (Metro Manila) during his
first 100 days in office and concentrate first on five issues: jobs,
income, food, infrastructure and
governance.
He said businesses in the
country will be able to enjoy
shorter business registration
process.
From 16 steps in 34 days, the
plan was to shorten the process
to six steps over eight days.
The Philippines currently ranks
103rd out of 189 economies in the
World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ report in 2016.
It is still easier to do business
in Malaysia, which ranked 18th,
Thailand (49th), Brunei Darussalam (84th) and Vietnam (90th).
Teves noted that despite claims
of economic growth, poverty is
still seen as the most pressing
problem in the country.
To solve this, he said, the Philippine economy would need a
sustained 7 to 8% gross national
product (GDP) growth per annum.
This, he said, is doable with the
right mix of economic and social
policies.
Binay, according to Teves, is
targeting to boost employment in
sectors that had previously been
neglected such as agriculture,
manufacturing and exports, as
well as micro small, medium enterprises (MSMEs).
He said a Binay administration
would also make necessary arrangements to open up the Philippines to foreign investors.
If Binay wins, he will convene
the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council to
tackle this issue, Teves said.
If the plan pushes through, he
added, the country will finally
be able to join the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, which will open
doors for expansion in manufacturing, textile and shipbuilding
industries.
Under a Binay presidency, Teves
said, at least 5% of the country’s
GDP will be devoted to an integrated countrywide infrastructure
development programme.
“We will aim to build one mega
project per region and one major
project per province,” he added.
Teves said they also want to
continue and enhance the publicprivate partnership strategy of the
government. Just as he had done
in Makati, the vice president seeks
to invest in human capital development by providing better education and health services, added
the UNA official.
Aside from continuing and improving the K-to-12 programme
by integrating an apprenticeship
component similar to the University of Makati’s dual training
system, Teves said Binay will implement a nationwide programme
similar to Makati’s globally-recognised Yellow Card programme,
which provides free maternal,
child and elderly care; free outpatient consultation and medicines;
and government-subsidised hospitalisation on top of PhilHealth
benefits.
courts. Her elder brother, Bobby Rosete, is
also a ranking rebel leader.
Neither the CPP nor the NPA issued any
statement on the capture of Gaylawan,
but it previously accused the government
of violating the immunity passes of other
rebel leaders involved in peace talks.
Government
to lease Japan
planes to patrol
disputed waters
AFP
Manila
M
anila will lease five military planes from Japan
to patrol Philippineclaimed waters and outcrops in
the disputed South China Sea,
President Benigno Aquino announced yesterday.
He said the leasing the TC-90
aircraft was part of government
efforts to protect Philippine territory, which also included previously stated plans to acquire
fighter jets and transport aircraft.
“Also lined up this year... is
the lease of five of Japan’s TC-90
training aircraft that would help
our navy patrol our territory,
particularly the West Philippine
Sea,” he said in a speech at an air
force base near Manila.
“All of these additional equipment are part of our (Philippine Air Force) Flight Plan 2028,
aimed at improving the capability of our air force to defend our
territory,” Aquino added.
The West Philippine Sea is
the government’s term for areas of the South China Sea that
it claims as part of Philippine
territory, including islands and
reefs in the Spratly island group
that it occupies.
Tensions in the South China
Sea -- through which one-third
of the world’s oil passes -- have
mounted in recent months since
China transformed contested
Spratly reefs into artificial islands capable of supporting military facilities.
China claims all of the Spratly
islands, including those currently occupied by the Philippines.
Aquino has ramped up the
upgrade of one of Asia’s most
badly equipped armed forces
amid what his government sees
as China’s “illegal” bid to claim
almost all of the South China
Sea, including waters close to the
coasts of neighbours.
Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and
Vietnam also claim all or part of
the Spratlys.
Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force is known to have
used the TC-90, a modified
version of King Air C90 manufactured by US-based Raytheon
Aircraft Co, as training aircraft.
Aquino’s announcement followed the signing of an agreement last year between World
War II foes Japan and the Philippines to transfer defence equipment to Manila.
Meanwhile a US general said
yesterday Washington is in talks
to station its strike bombers in
Australia amid concern about
China’s military expansion in the
South China Sea.
‘Racers found, left dead’
German drifting in yacht
AFP
Manila
S
ailors on a round-the-world race
found and left a dead German whose
body was discovered on a yacht adrift
off the southern Philippines, event organisers said.
The LMAX Exchange team saw the yacht
about 870 kilometres, west of Guam on January 31 and a crew member discovered the
decomposing body in the cabin, the Clipper
Round the World Race said in a statement.
“In the spirit of the Clipper Race and
the crew of team LMAX Exchange, we put
the racing aside in the hope of assisting the
stricken vessel and any fellow sailors marooned,” it said, quoting a statement put out
by the team.
Organisers relayed the discovery to the
US Coast Guard in Guam before instructing
the team to carry on racing as it could provide no further assistance, it added.
The boat then drifted for 25 days across
more than 1,200 kilometres of water before
Filipino fishermen found the dismasted and
listing white-hulled vessel off the east coast
of Mindanao island.
Filipino police said the by-then mummified body found slumped over a table in
the cabin was likely that of German national
Manfred Fritz Bajorat, the presumed owner
of the 13-metre yacht.
“(I)t was out of respect that we chose
not to publicise the full details of the find-
File photo shows the yacht owned by a German national Manfred Fritz Bajorat, anchored off
the town of Barobo in Surigao del Sur province, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao,
after it was discovered by residents drifting in February.
ing. We hoped to avoid causing unnecessary
alarm within the international sailing community by announcing the death of a then
unknown sailor,” the race organisers said.
The Clipper race announcement, published on its website on Tuesday, appeared
to put in doubt a Filipino police autopsy
findings the man had died of a heart attack
about a week before the fishermen found
him. The US embassy in Manila referred
AFP’s requests for comment to the US
Coast Guard in Hawaii, which did not immediately reply to emailed questions.
Philippine Coast Guard spokesman
Commander Armand Balilo said he was unaware of the case having been relayed by the
US authorities.
Bajorat was a 59-year-old veteran
yachtsman who left his native Germany two
decades ago and was then widowed several
years ago, Germany’s Bild daily earlier reported, quoting an old friend.
Bajorat had told the friend a year ago that
he wanted to go on another around-theworld trip, Bild added.
Police in Barobo town, where the yacht
was taken,said yesterday their superiors
were not available to discuss the case.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
27
SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL
Lanka PM seeks probe into
‘missing’ wartime gold
AFP
Colombo
S
ri Lanka’s prime minister yesterday called for a
probe into the whereabouts of vast quantities of gold
held by the army, years after it
was recovered from the island’s
former war zone.
The army seized jewellery left
behind by some 300,000 minority Tamil citizens who were driven out of their homes in the final
stages of Sri Lanka’s separatist
war, which ended in 2009.
About half the 150kg (330
pounds) of gold recovered by
the military during the war is
still in its hands, while some
has been deposited with the
central bank, Prime Minister
11 awarded death in
two murder cases
Eleven persons were yesterday
sentenced to death in two
separate cases of murder in
Bangladesh.
Of them, a tribunal in the
southeastern port city of
Chittagong yesterday sentenced
six people to death for killing a
teenage boy in 2011.
According to the prosecution,
the victim, Himel Das Supen, had
gone missing on May 8, 2011.
Himel’s body was recovered from
a hill in Bandarbban on May 14.
Two accused in the case
confessed that Supen’s uncle had
abducted him and then killed him
for property.
After examining the records and
witnesses, the tribunal handed
down the verdict.
Meanwhile, a court in Rangpur
district town yesterday sentenced
five people to death for killing a
mentally-challenged woman in
2006.
The additional district and
sessions judge sentenced five,
including brother of the victim, to
death for killing Anjila Khatun.
According to the prosecution, the
motivation for the murder was a
piece of land.
Ranil Wickremesinghe told
parliament.
But around 40 kilos were unaccounted for, he said, implying
that it may have been stolen.
“There are discrepancies.
There are conflicting accounts
of what happened to the gold.
We must investigate this,”
Wickremesinghe said.
He called on parliament to
set up a special panel to probe
the whereabouts of the missing
treasure.
The military claimed it found
the gold in abandoned homes
or buried in back gardens in the
conflict zone in the north of the
island, while more was found
at banks operated by Tamil
separatists.
For years Tamil political parties have pressed for the army to
Ranil Wickremesinghe: “There
are discrepancies; there are
conflicting accounts of what
happened to the gold and we
must investigate this.”
return the jewellery to citizens.
In 2014 the military said it
had identified 2,377 “legitimate
claimants” but only 25 of them
were given back their jewellery
under the government of former
president Mahinda Rajapakse.
Sri Lanka declared an end to
37 years of ethnic bloodshed
after crushing the Tamil Tiger
rebels in May 2009.
But the military campaign
has also triggered allegations
that some 40,000 civilians were
killed by troops, a charge the
government has vehemently
denied.
Sri Lanka’s new government,
which came to power in January
2015, has agreed to investigate
alleged war crimes.
CALL FOR ASSISTANCE:
The government has said it
would call for international investments and assistance to
develop the formerly war-torn
areas in the country.
Niroshan Perera, state min-
ister of national policy, said the
government would convene a
donor conference in 2016 to
seek technical and financial assistance for the war-torn regions and has requested Japan to
take the lead, Xinhua reported.
“When the prime minister
visited Japan, he requested the
government to take the lead.
They have been organising that.
Hopefully, we will have it in the
middle of the year,” Perera said.
“It will be to call for technical assistance plus financial assistance for the north and east
(worst-affected regions),” he
added.
Perera said the north was
one of the key areas that needed to be developed and the
government had already discussed with many countries
for investments in the area.
China is one of the countries
that have been invited to invest
in the north and the east, Perera
added.
Sri Lanka’s north and east
were the worst-affected in the
30-year civil war against Tamil
Tiger rebels with the north remaining as the stronghold of the
rebels till they were militarily
defeated by government troops
in May 2009.
Thousands
of
minority Tamils in those areas continue to languish without jobs
and a stable income and the
new government led by President Maithripala Sirisena aims
to create at least one million
jobs in the next five years with
the support of new foreign
investments.
Three dead in cargo plane crash
AFP
Dhaka
A
cargo plane crashed
off the coast of Bangladesh yesterday killing three Ukrainian crew
members and critically injuring one more, officials said.
The plane went down in
the Bay of Bengal minutes after taking off from the southeastern resort town of Cox’s
Bazar, killing three of the four
crew on board.
A team of Bangladesh navy
and coastguard ships and
patrol aircraft recovered the
bodies and took the injured
man to hospital, local police
chief Aslam Hossain said.
“The injured Ukrainian crew has been sent to a
top hospital in Chittagong
city. He is now in intensive
care,” Hossain said, adding
that the man was in critical
condition.
The An-26 cargo aircraft
Rescuers gather around the wreckage of a cargo plane that crashed into the sea off Cox’s Bazar yesterday.
was operated by private firm
True Aviation and carrying live
shrimp when it got into trouble shortly after take-off, the
manager of Cox’s Bazar airport,
Sadhon Kumar Mohanta, said.
“After it took off, the aircraft
tried to return to the airport for
an emergency landing but it did
not land,” Mohanta said.
“Moments later we lost contact with it and then we heard it
crashed some 10km (six miles)
from Cox’s Bazar town,” he
added.
The An-26 is a Ukrainian
twin-engined turboprop aircraft that is used worldwide
to transport both military and
civilian cargo.
Leaders
assure
gender
equality,
protection
of women
IANS
Colombo
S
ri Lankan leaders have assured gender equality and
protection,
recognition
and economic empowerment for
all women in the island nation.
In a statement to mark International Women’s Day, Sri
Lanka’s President Maithripala
Sirisena said that even though
Sri Lanka was blessed with
the first female prime minister
and the executive president in
the world, the women and female children in the country
were still facing issues of their
safety.
He said that in Sri Lanka women had become the main source
of earning foreign exchange as
expatriate workers, apparel industry employees and workers in the plantation sector, but
some of them were exploited and
faced insecurity in their careers,
reports Xinhua.
“There should be a broad social discourse to ensure that the
rights adopted through laws are
established in the society. The
International Women’s Day will
be an ideal platform to continue
this discourse on women,” the
president said.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that his government sought to create the kind of
setting that acknowledges gender equality and ensures protection, recognition and economic
empowerment for all women.
He said the nation had a collective responsibility to ensure that
women are assured of protection, appreciation and honour in
every aspect.
Issues such as rape and domestic violence against women
are reported in many parts of Sri
Lanka with more than 1,800 rape
cases reported in 2015.
The police said that out of the
1,854 cases, 1,501 victims were
below the age of 18.
Buddhist monk held Nepalis turn to bamboo for
for keeping elephant post-quake reconstruction
AFP
Colombo
S
ri Lanka’s police yesterday arrested a high-profile
monk for keeping an illegally captured baby elephant,
in violation of strict laws protecting the animal in the mainly
Buddhist nation.
The Buddhist monk, Uduwe
Dhammaloka, was taken into
custody by the Criminal Investigations Department on a charge
of possessing an elephant without a licence.
Elephants are regarded as
sacred in Sri Lanka and their
capture in the wild is illegal, although many people own domesticated elephants under
special permits, as a symbol of
wealth.
The monk, a popular
preacher and former member
of parliament, was presented
at the Magistrate’s Court in
Colombo, which ordered that
he be remanded in custody till
March 17, a court official told
reporters.
The authorities seized Dhammaloka’s baby elephant from his
temple in January last year and
it is being cared for at the country’s main elephant orphanage
in central Sri Lanka. He was arrested following an investigation.
The saffron-robed monk
last week told reporters that
he had found the two-yearold elephant abandoned at
his temple in Colombo in 2014.
“I did not capture the elephant, it was left at my temple,”
he said.
Wildlife officials say it is extremely rare to find a stray baby
elephant in the wild.
Poachers usually kill the
mother to snatch the young,
which can fetch over 10mn
rupees ($70,000).
Wild elephants are considered
state property and capturing
them is a criminal offence that
carries a prison sentence of up to
five years.
An elephant survey in August 2011 showed the country
had 7,379 elephants living in
the wild, including about 1,100
babies. The country boasted
12,000 elephants in 1900.
Thomson Reuters Foundation
London
N
epal is turning to bamboo, nicknamed “vegetable steel”, as it rebuilds homes and schools after
last year’s devastating earthquakes which left hundreds of
thousands homeless.
“Bamboo is a great material.
The biggest enemy (in a quake)
is weight so bamboo is perfect
because it is light, flexible and
very strong,” said Nepalese architect Nripal Adhikary.
“It can be as strong as steel,
but it’s much more ecological
because it doesn’t need energy to produce. People call it
‘vegetable steel’.”
Twin earthquakes in April
and May 2015 killed almost
9,000 people and destroyed
nearly a million buildings in
the Himalayan nation. Donors have pledged $4.1bn for
reconstruction, but rebuilding
has been delayed by a political
crisis.
Adhikary, speaking by phone
from Kathmandu, said the
government had recently approved the use of bamboo to
rebuild schools and was ex-
pected to approve its use for
reconstructing homes.
Bamboo is ideal for rebuilding
in Nepal’s mountainous terrain
because it grows widely and is
easier to transport than heavier
materials, said Adhikary, Nepal’s national co-ordinator for
the International Network for
Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR).
Building with bamboo is also
about 50% cheaper than with
other materials.
Technological advances have
improved its durability, he
added, while new systems for
joining bamboo lengths mean it
can be used to build larger span
structures than in the past.
INBAR is working with Nepal’s government and other
organisations on a $800,000
pilot project using bamboo to
build 150 homes and 10 schools
which they hope other agencies
will replicate.
Government ministers, aid
agencies and building experts
attended a workshop in Kathmandu last week to discuss
bamboo use in reconstruction
programmes.
Nepal is home to 54 bamboo
species with coverage estimated at 63,000 hectares. Experts
say its sustainable use will also
Bamboo is ideal for rebuilding in Nepal’s mountainous terrain
because it grows widely and is easier to transport.
help boost local employment
and economies.
Earthquake engineering expert David Trujillo said interest in building with bamboo
in quake-prone regions had
grown since a 1999 quake in his
native Colombia.
While many newer masonry
buildings collapsed, the older
bamboo buildings withstood
the tremor. Afterwards there
was a big effort to rebuild with
bamboo.
Trujillo, who worked on the
reconstruction effort in Co-
lombia, said bamboo was a very
sustainable material which
grew extremely fast, reaching 25 to 30 metres in only six
months.
It can be harvested three to
five years later compared to a tree
which might need 30 to 50 years,
said Trujillo, now a lecturer at
Britain’s Coventry University.
Ecuador, Peru, Philippines
and Mexico are among other
countries, along with Nepal,
that have studied Colombia’s
experience in using bamboo in
quake-prone locations.
‘Charter has enough laws on gender equality’
IANS
Kathmandu
S
Prison guards escort Buddhist monk Uduwe Dhammaloka, centre, to the main jail in Colombo yesterday, after
a magistrate ordered he be remanded in custody till March 17 for keeping a baby elephant without a licence.
peaker of the Nepali Parliament Onsari Gharti Magar
yesterday said the country’s
new constitution has enough provisions to ensure gender equality,
the media reported.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day
on Tuesday, Magar said the
preamble of the constitution mentions the principle
of inclusive representation
for economic equity, prosperity and social justice of
women by ending gender
discrimination.
Nepal promulgated its new
constitution on September 20,
last year, following which the
Himalayan nation elected its
first woman parliament speaker
Magar, Xinhua news agency
reported.
Magar, a former Maoist
fighter, said the day should be
celebrated to implement the
rights guaranteed in the new
constitution.
She said gender equity has
just begun in Nepal.
The new constitution guarantees fundamental rights for
women and massive awareness
is necessary to let the women know about their rights,
she said.
28
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
COMMENT
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Editor-in-Chief : Darwish S Ahmed
Production Editor: C P Ravindran
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editor@gulf-times.com
Telephone 44350478 (news),
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GULF TIMES
Sharapova fallout:
sponsors have no
tolerance for dope
In the day following Russian tennis star Maria
Sharapova’s admission that she failed a drug test,
sponsors Nike, Porsche and Swiss watchmaker Tag
Heuer dropped her like a hot potato.
Before social media demanded instant responses,
sponsors often waited weeks or months before
severing ties with an athlete, often giving them the
benefit of the doubt.
With so much invested in a global sponsorship
industry IEG estimates at $60bn, sponsors now
scramble to avoid the taint of scandal, so athletes
caught doping at the Olympics this summer should
also expect a quick end to their lucrative contracts.
“They don’t want to get caught sponsoring the
next Lance Armstrong,” said Brian Socolow, head of
the sports practice group at Loeb & Loeb law firm,
which has represented both athletes and companies in
endorsement deals, referring to the disgraced cyclist
who was stripped of seven Tour de France titles and
banned for life in 2012 after a US anti-doping probe.
Armstrong later admitted using performanceenhancing drugs in a television interview.
While Armstrong’s story took years to play out as
he initially denied reports of his drug use, Sharapova
quickly called a press conference to say she had tested
positive for meldonium, which she said she was taking
to treat diabetes and
low magnesium. The
drug was only banned
by the World AntiDoping Agency as of
January 1, 2016.
Sports apparel
giant Nike Inc and
German carmaker
Porsche, a Volkswagen
AG unit, responded
by suspending their sponsorship deals, while Tag
Heuer, owned by French luxury goods group LVMH,
ended talks to extend a contract that had expired in
December.
Sponsor decisions on whether to stick with a
spokesperson or team are driven by money, industry
officials said. If they feel the sponsorship can still
work, companies stand by their man, woman or
sports group, like many have done with soccer’s world
governing body FIFA or the International Olympic
Committee through their respective scandals.
Sharapova was smart to get in front of the news,
announcing the positive test herself and apologising
for her mistake. As a result, she will likely get a second
chance with the public and sponsors alike. However,
a lengthy suspension could in effect end her playing
career and damage her status as one of the highest
paid off-field female athletes. Forbes estimates her
off-court career earnings at more than $200mn.
Sharapova’s failed drug test at January’s Australian
Open, one of tennis’ four annual Grand Slam events,
will likely lead to a ban for the 28-year-old. Still
ranked among the top players, she has won five Grand
Slam titles in her career.
While some critics argue a double standard exists
for female athletes, several industry officials said
Tiger Woods’ sex scandal or the rape allegations
against Kobe Bryant in the past would both play out
differently in today’s social media-driven culture.
Issues companies may have waited out not long ago,
now demand immediate attention, and some believe it
being an Olympic year only raises the pressure to move
fast.
China’s five-year plan
may face reality check
China is expected to
finalise its economic and
social development blueprint
for 2016-2020 this month.
The plan aims at the right
targets but will be difficult to
implement
By Joanna Chiu/DPA
Beijing
I
n the run-up to the country’s
annual parliament, which
started over the weekend, China
devoted considerable resources to
promoting its “13th five-year plan.”
In October, it rolled out a singalong music video in English.
Animated characters, including
one that resembled David Bowie,
trumpeted the chorus line: “If you
want to know what China’s gonna
do, best pay attention to the shi san
wu [13-5]!”
The viral video announced that the
Chinese Communist Party’s social and
economic policies were going to be
finalised soon.
By the end of the ongoing
parliament session on March 16, the
National People’s Congress (NPC)
is expected to approve an economic
and social development blueprint for
2016-20 that will guide policy at all
levels of government and state-owned
enterprises.
After decades of growth at a
breakneck pace, China’s economy
grew by 6.9% in 2015, the slowest
growth in more than a quarter of a
century.
Earlier this month, Moody’s
Investors Service cut China’s credit
rating outlook from “stable” to
“negative,” citing rising government
debts, a fall in reserve buffers and
uncertainty about authorities’
capacity to implement reforms as
main reasons for the downgrade.
China’s leadership has indicated it
is well aware of the pressure it faces to
implement sound fiscal and monetary
policies.
Premier Li Keqiang delivered
a speech on economic policies to
some 5,000 congress delegates and
government consultants on Saturday.
“The larger the economy grows,
the greater the difficulty of achieving
growth,” Li said.
“Every percentage point of GDP
growth today is equivalent to 1.5
percentage points of growth five years
ago or 2.5 percentage points of growth
10 years ago,” Li told delegates in the
Great Hall of the People.
Li’s speech stressed the importance
of supply-side structural reform, of
addressing overcapacity in the steel
and coal industries, and of cutting
government red tape and encouraging
business startups.
The Communist Party of China’s
13th five-year plan draft, released on
March 5, set an annual growth rate
target of 6.5% until 2020.
Amid global financial problems
and slowing Chinese export growth,
the government is aiming for more
sustainable development driven by
domestic consumption.
If reforms fail, analysts say China
is in danger of succumbing to the socalled middle-income trap, in which
a country struggles to push past a
certain income level.
The draft plan calls for the creation
of more than 50mn new urban jobs,
improvements to expressways and
high-speed railways, and to have the
science-and-technology sector make
up 60% of economic growth.
Research and development
spending would make up 2.5% of gross
domestic product per year, according
to the plan.
It also reconfirmed pre-existing
targets to double per capita income
and gross domestic product by 2020
from 2010 levels.
Analysts had mixed expectations on
whether the 13th five-year plan would
bring about significant improvements.
“The plan will promote
decentralisation, but the reality is
likely to be greater centralisation.
More infrastructure will be built,
mainly to enhance intraregional
development - for example, around
Greater Beijing,” according to an
analysis published by McKinsey.
The plan aims to raise productivity
in the workforce, but there is concern
that “implementation will be left
to local administrators and that the
regions requiring the most help will
have the lowest amounts of money to
invest in reskilling the workforce,” the
article said.
Hu Xingdou, professor of
economics at the Beijing Institute of
Technology, also raised concerns that
local officials would be more likely to
exaggerate figures in order to please
the central government.
“The central government has
made local government officials
promise to get their jobs done. If
they can’t reach the goals, they
would lose their jobs. But whether
the numbers [local officials submit]
will be real could be the next serious
issue,” Hu said.
Other critics said the government’s
plan is too heavyhanded, and that
regulators should instead allow the
free market to play a greater role in
guiding the economy.
“The five-year plan is a heritage
from the [socialist] planned economy.
I don’t think it is meaningful,” said
Wu Qiang, professor of politics at
Tsinghua University in Beijing.
“The targets are also a bit
inconsistent with the [current
economic situation],” Wu said.
Although the National People’s
Congress is derided as a “rubber
stamp” parliament by critics, some
delegates do raise concerns, and admit
that China’s economic transition will
be difficult.
“In any society, monopolies
[such as those held by state-owned
enterprises] will prevent development.
So we should change this situation,”
said Li Mei, a delegate from
northwestern Shaanxi province.
“We should support small- and
medium-sized enterprises because
they are the real impetus for the
development in a society,” Li said.
Li also said China should welcome
foreign enterprises instead of
considering them a threat to its
economy.
“Through competition, there comes
motivation for development,” she said.
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should expect
a quick end to
their lucrative
contracts
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Is the perfect storm over for markets?
By Mohamed A El-Erian
Laguna Beach
E
arlier this year, financial
markets around the world
were forced to navigate
a perfect storm – a
violent disruption fuelled by an
unusual amalgamation of smaller
disturbances. Financial volatility
rose, unsettling investors; stocks
went on a rollercoaster ride, ending
substantially lower; government bond
yields plummeted, and lenders found
themselves in the unusual position
of having to pay for the privilege of
holding an even bigger amount of
government debt (almost one-third of
the total).
The longer these disturbances
persisted, the greater the threat to a
global economy already challenged
by structural weaknesses, income
and wealth inequalities, pockets of
excessive indebtedness, deficient
aggregate demand, and insufficient
policy co-ordination. And while
relative calm has returned to financial
markets, the three causes of volatility
are yet to dissipate in any meaningful
sense.
First, mounting signs of economic
weakness in China and a series of
uncharacteristic policy stumbles
there still raise concerns about the
overall health of the global economy.
Given that China is the second largest
economy in the world, it didn’t take
long for European officials to reduce
their own growth projections, and for
the International Monetary Fund to
revise downward its expectations for
global growth.
Second, there are still legitimate
doubts about the effectiveness of
central banks, the one group of
policymaking institutions that has
been actively engaged in supporting
sustainable economic growth.
In the US, doubts focus on the
willingness of the Federal Reserve
to remain “unconventional”;
elsewhere, however, doubts about
effectiveness concern central banks’
ability to formulate, communicate,
and implement policy decisions.
For example, rather than viewing
monetary authorities’ activism
as an encouraging sign of policy
effectiveness, markets have been
alarmed by the Bank of Japan’s
decision to follow the European
Central Bank in taking policy rates
even deeper into negative territory.
Third, the system has lost some
important safety belts, which have
yet to be restored. There are fewer
pockets of “patient capital” stepping
in to buy when flightier investors are
rushing to the exit. In the oil market,
the once-powerful Opec organisation
has stepped back from the role of
swing producer on the downside –
that is, cutting output in order to stop
a disorderly price collapse.
Each of these three factors alone
would have attracted the attention
of traders and investors around the
world. Occurring simultaneously, they
unsettled markets. Intra-day volatility
rose in virtually every segment of
global financial markets; adverse price
contagion became more common as
more vulnerable entities contaminated
the stronger ones; and asset-market
correlations were rendered less stable.
All this came in the context of a
US economy that continues to be
a powerful engine of job creation.
But markets were not voting on the
most recent economic developments
in the US. Instead, they were being
forced to judge the sustainability of
financial asset prices that, boosted
by liquidity, had notably decoupled
from underlying economic
fundamentals.
In the wake of this volatility,
markets have recently regained a more
stable footing. Yet the fundamental
longer-term challenge of allowing
markets to re-price assets to
fundamentals in a relatively orderly
fashion – and, critically, without
causing economic damage that
would then blow back into even more
unsettled finance – remains.
Indeed, the more frequent the bouts
of financial volatility in the months
to come, the greater the risk that it
will lead consumers to become more
cautious about spending, and prompt
companies to postpone even more
of their investment in new plant and
equipment. And, if this were to persist
and spread, even the US – a relatively
healthy economy – could be forced
to revise downward its expectations
for economic growth and corporate
earnings.
Durably stabilising today’s
markets is important, especially for
a system that has already assumed
too much financial risk. It requires
a policy handoff instigated by more
responsible behaviour on the part
of politicians on both sides of the
Atlantic – one that undertakes the
much-needed transition from overreliance on central banks to a more
comprehensive policy approach that
deals with the economy’s trifecta
of structural, demand, and debt
impediments (and does so in the
context of greater global policy coordination).
Should this handoff occur,
its beneficial impact in terms of
delivering inclusive growth and
genuine global stability would be
turbocharged by the productive
deployment of cash sitting on
companies’ balance sheets, and by
exciting technological innovations
that began as firm/sector specific
but are now having economy-wide
effects. If the handoff fails, the
financial volatility experienced
earlier this year will not only return;
it could also turn out to have been
a prologue for a notable risk of
recession, greater inequality, and
enduring financial instability. –
Project Syndicate
zMohamed A El-Erian, Chief
Economic Adviser at Allianz, is
Chairman of US President Barack
Obama’s Global Development Council
and author of the forthcoming book
The Only Game in Town: Central
Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the
Next Collapse.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
29
COMMENT
Empty promises and dead children
We must develop healthcare
and other interventions that
address the poverty,
vulnerability, and inequality
that place so many children,
and their mothers, at risk
By Kevin Watkins
London
B
uried among the 169 targets
contained in the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs)
– adopted by the UN last
September amid a blaze of glitzy
events, celebrity endorsements, and
back-slapping by world leaders,
aid donors, and non-governmental
organisations – was the vital pledge
to eliminate “preventable child
deaths” by 2030. It is a cause for our
generation – but one that will take a
lot more than UN communiqués to
advance.
The last set of international
development targets, the Millennium
Development Goals, certainly brought
about important progress; the number
of children who died before reaching
their fifth birthday dropped from
10mn in 2000, when the MDGs were
adopted, to 5.9mn in 2015. Some of
the world’s poorest countries have
registered some of the most significant
gains.
This progress was driven by several
factors, including falling poverty and
heavy investment in communitybased health systems. By deploying
nurses, midwives, and other health
workers, these systems extended the
availability of prenatal care, simple
obstetric interventions, clean cord
cutting, and post-natal care. Ethiopia,
for example, has deployed a small
army of some 38,000 health workers
over the last decade.
International co-operation was also
crucial. Aid for child and maternal
health has grown dramatically since
2000, and now stands at some $12bn
annually. Development assistance has
enabled the creation of communitybased health programmes, and
played a key role in supporting the
development and deployment of the
vaccines, mosquito nets, and medical
treatments that have cut child deaths
from the major killer infectious
diseases – pneumonia, diarrhoea,
malaria, and measles – by some 70%
since 2000.
Now for the bad news. In the time
it takes you to read this article, more
than 30 children will die from causes
that could have been prevented or
treated.
Every year, more than 1mn children
die the day they are born, and another
million die within their first week of
life. Almost half of all child deaths
occur in the neo-natal period (the first
28 days) – and the share is rising. The
vast majority of these deaths could be
averted. Yet, if progress continues at
its current rate, there will still be some
3.6mn such deaths per year by 2030.
To jump-start progress, we
must develop healthcare and other
interventions that address the poverty,
vulnerability, and inequality that place
so many children, and their mothers,
at risk. Making health services
more widely available is a starting
point. But, all too often, the poor are
excluded, even when the clinics exist.
Consider India, which accounts for
one-fifth of child deaths worldwide.
Nearly all women from the richest
20% of households enjoy prenatal
care and skilled attendants at delivery;
coverage rates for the poorest are
less than 10% – worse than in much
of sub-Saharan Africa. Surging
economic growth has done nothing to
reduce the disparity.
And India is just one example. Each
year, some 36mn women in low- and
middle-income countries give birth
Children worldwide face a lethal combination of inequality, injustice, and gender discrimination.
without a skilled attendant. An even
greater number of children do not
receive a post-natal health check. The
vast majority of these women and
children have one thing in common:
they are poor. Indeed, being born to
a low-income mother raises the risk
of child mortality by a factor of 2-3 in
much of South Asia and sub-Saharan
Africa.
Wealth-based disparities in
health outcomes extend far beyond
pregnancy and birth. Children born
to poor mothers are less likely to be
immunised or taken to clinics for
treatment of potentially fatal diseases,
such as pneumonia and diarrhoea.
Survey evidence points to cost as a
major barrier excluding poor women
and children from healthcare.
Forcing desperately poor women to
pay for maternal and child healthcare
Taking the new SAT (to task)
By Karin Klein
Tribune News Service
D
avid Coleman, president of
the College Board in the US,
wants everyone to know that
the new SAT, which students
recently took for the first time, is just
as good as the old test at predicting
who would do well in college. Of
course, he also wanted to be clear, in
introducing the SAT to a conference
of the Education Writers Association,
that his test was new and improved as
well. Left unmentioned: The revamp
might do more for the College Board’s
bottom line than for the needs of
colleges, universities and students.
That’s not to say the College Board
hasn’t improved the SAT. For one
thing, it makes the silly essay portion
of the test optional; it was both
gameable and, in terms of the way
it was scored, hardly an indicator of
who can write well. The new SAT also
reformats the testing of vocabulary,
eliminating the $4 words that required
weeks of drill-and-kill memorisation
and then would never be used again.
Plus, there’s no longer an extra penalty
for guessing wrong.
Also to its credit, the College
Board has added services to help the
students who can’t afford thousands
of dollars’ worth of private test prep.
Free online prep and practice tests are
available through the nonprofit Khan
Academy. And students whose income
is low enough to qualify them for free
test taking also automatically qualify
for waivers of college application fees,
which normally cost about $80 per
college, not an insignificant sum for
working families.
But most important is that the new
SAT is supposed to align with the
Common Core standards that have
been adopted to one extent or another
in 40-plus states. This includes a
heavier emphasis on reading – even
in the maths problems – and more
critical thinking skills. That’s what
colleges say they want, and what
students are lacking.
What Coleman didn’t spend much
time discussing are problems with the
SAT that haven’t been solved. The test
may require more critical thinking
skills, but it is still coachable; it isn’t
going to put an end to the big and
growing high-end test-preparation
industry that gives affluent kids a leg
up on the system. Poor kids get two
free shots at taking the SAT; kids with
more money can take the test five to
10 times, and some of them do. Then
many of the colleges allow them to
“superscore” – report only their best
scores on each section.
I recently met a sophomore who’s
taken the test five times. His mother
said she had spent $10,000 on test
preparation so far, and his scores had
risen by 300 points.
And what about Coleman’s
assertion that the test has its usual
utility for college admissions officers?
If the SAT is a reflection of the
Common Core lessons, and those
lessons reflect the skills that colleges
need to see in students, why isn’t the
new test a better predictor of freshman
college success than the old one?
It’s not that either test, old or new,
would do a bad job of identifying a
good student. Studies have shown
that the SAT is almost as good as a
student’s grades at predicting college
success during freshman year.
More important, using the
standardised test in addition to grades
gave admissions officers a better
picture than grades alone.
Beyond freshman year, however,
research on the SAT’s predictive
value gets mixed reviews. A study of
colleges that have gone test-optional
– applicants can report their scores or
not – found that students who didn’t
submit their scores fared just as well
throughout college as those who did,
though they might have opted for
easier courses.
A recent report by the Harvard
Graduate School of Education
suggested that at some schools, the
SAT might be a good predictor of
success – for instance, a mediocre
math score probably indicates a kid
who would struggle at MIT or Caltech
– but at others, it might not make
much of a difference.
One thing is certain: The new test
will help the College Board grow
its business. The SAT’s once-weak
competitor, the ACT, was chosen as
the required admissions test by 15 US
states that pay for the first sitting. But
the College Board recently managed
to peel off a couple of those states,
probably in part because of the SAT
overhaul.
More generally, our national
obsession with test scores and their
meaning of course redounds to the
College Board’s financial benefit.
Some states are starting to look
at whether they can reduce the
number of tests taken by high school
students by substituting the SAT or
ACT for other standardised tests.
That would dramatically expand the
reach of both organisations into the
increasingly lucrative kindergartenthrough-12th-grade testing – a big
incentive to rewrite the test around
Common Core.
The new SAT is probably a better
test than the last one, and admissions
officers may prefer it. Its greatest
value, however, is to the organisation
that produces it and the test-prep
industry as a whole.
is a prescription for inequality,
inefficiency, and child deaths.
Publicly financed universal health
coverage is the proven antidote. Yet
political elites in high-mortality
countries like India, Pakistan,
and Nigeria – the same elites who
have signed up to the SDGs – have
conspicuously failed to deliver.
If governments are sincere about
delivering on the SDGs’ promise on
child mortality, they must get serious
about ensuring equity in health care.
They could start by introducing
national targets to halve the difference
in death rates between the richest 20%
and poorest 20% over the next seven
years.
But targets not backed by finance
aren’t worth the communiqué paper
they’re printed on. Developingcountry governments should be
spending at least 5% of GDP on health,
eliminating charges on child and
maternal healthcare, and ensuring
that financial resources – and health
workers – are allocated in a way that
reduces inequalities in care.
Foreign aid also has a vital role
to play. Here, the emphasis should
be shifted from delivering diseasespecific interventions to building up
healthcare systems. We need a global
social compact on health to close the
financing gap – around $30bn – for
achieving universal health coverage,
which requires linking populations
to skilled health workers equipped to
provide effective care. Sub-Saharan
Africa alone will need to recruit
and train another 1mn community
health workers to deliver universal
coverage.
Any strategy for achieving the 2030
target for child mortality must go
beyond the health sector and focus on
the wider inequalities – for example,
in nutrition, education, and access to
clean water and sanitation – that fuel
child mortality. Girls will need added
protection, so that they are not forced
into early marriage and child bearing.
Children worldwide face a lethal
combination of inequality, injustice,
and gender discrimination. They
deserve better. The promise to
eliminate preventable child deaths by
2030 is our chance to ensure they get
it. – Project Syndicate
zKevin Watkins is Director of the
Overseas Development Institute.
Weather report
Three-day forecast
TODAY
High: 27 C
Low : 19 C
Misty at places at first and partly
cloudy with weak chance of scattered rain at places at first
FRIDAY
High: 26 C
Low: 22 C
M Sunny
SATURDAY
High: 26 C
Low: 21 C
Sunny
Fishermen’s forecast
OFFSHORE DOHA
Wind: NE-NW 08-15/25 KT
Waves: 2-4/7 Feet
INSHORE DOHA
Wind: NW 03-12 KT
Waves: 1-2 Feet
Around the region
Abu Dhabi
Baghdad
Dubai
Kuwait City
Manama
Muscat
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today
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tomorrow
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P Cloudy
M Sunny
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tomorrow
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Live issues
Baby talk beneficial for brain development
By Armin Brott
Tribune News Service
Q
: My wife and I have a
two-week-old baby and
I’ve noticed that many new
parents seem to spend a lot
of time talking to their babies. That
looks and sounds kind of cute, but I
honestly don’t see the point since the
kids can’t understand a word of what
people are saying. On the few times
I do talk to the baby, he ignores me
anyway. How important is it to talk to
the baby? And if it is important, what
should I talk about?
A: I get your frustration. But
even though your baby seems to be
ignoring you (he’s actually not) and
isn’t capable of engaging in witty
conversation, speaking to him is
incredibly important. During your
baby’s first three years, his brain is
growing at an incredible clip and
the kind of stimulation he gets now
will have a huge influence on how
successful he is later in life. One of the
best – and easiest – ways to stimulate
his brain development is to talk to him.
Researchers Todd Risley and
Betsy Hart found a direct correlation
between the number of words a child
hears before age three and his IQ. Kids
with the most talkative parents also do
better on tests of reading readiness. As
you can imagine, the larger a child’s
vocabulary, the easier it will be for him
to read – and the more you talk to (and
read to) your baby now, the larger his
vocabulary will be.
Since you have a boy, this is
especially important. Parents
(especially mothers) tend to talk
more to girls than to boys. All that
extra conversation may explain why
girls generally do better in school.
Right now, what you talk about isn’t
as important as how. Here are a few
steps to get you started.
zExpand and encourage. If your
baby says “ba-ba,” take that as a
conversation starter and respond with
a full sentence, something like, “do
you want your bottle?” or “yes, that’s
a sheep,” depending on what you think
he means. By responding this way,
you’re showing your baby that you’re
interested in what he has to “say,” and
you’re encouraging him to say even
more.
zIdentify. Ask, “Where’s your
tummy?” If he points to it or pats it,
praise him and ask another question.
If he doesn’t answer, point it out for
him (“here’s your tummy!”) and ask
another.
zTalk about differences. Point
to your nose, then point to his, and
then to a picture of an elephant’s
trunk. Tell him about how his is
smaller and yours and the elephant’s
are bigger. No, he won’t understand,
but that’s not the point. What’s
important is that he’s hearing your
voice and is getting to know the
rhythm of the language.
zExplain everything. If you’re
feeding him, talk about the food, the
colour, the taste, how messy his face
is. If you’re outside, talk about the
traffic, weather, trees, construction
sites, and everything else you come in
contact with during the day. They’re
all familiar to you, but to your baby, it’s
all brand new.
zKeep “No” and “Don’t” to a
minimum. It’s incredibly hard, but
try. First of all, they’re very broad.
If you say “No” or “Don’t” to your
baby he may not understand exactly
what you don’t want him to do.
All he really knows is that you’re
not happy. And too many Nos and
Don’ts will discourage creativity and
exploration. Instead, give him some
details. “Knives are sharp and they
aren’t for babies,” or “It’s not safe to
try to put mummy’s hair pins in the
electrical outlets.” Of course all your
outlets are safely covered up, but you
know what I mean.
Read. Make stories and books part
of your baby’s daily routine.
Around the world
Athens
Beirut
Bangkok
Berlin
Cairo
Cape Town
Colombo
Dhaka
Hong Kong
Istanbul
Jakarta
Karachi
London
Manila
Moscow
New Delhi
New York
Paris
Sao Paulo
Seoul
Singapore
Sydney
Tokyo
Weather
today
Sunny
Sunny
P Cloudy
S Showers
Sunny
Sunny
P Cloudy
P Cloudy
Rain
P Cloudy
T Storms
P Cloudy
M Cloudy
P Cloudy
Fog
M Sunny
P Cloudy
M Cloudy
S T Storms
M Sunny
S T Storms
P Cloudy
Clear
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18/11
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34/27
08/0
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17/10
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30
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
QATAR
QA announces 14 new
global destinations
Airline to operate world’s
longest flight between
Doha and Auckland from
December
Q
atar Airways has announced a “significant
network
expansion”
through the addition of 14 new
global destinations.
Spread across four continents, the new routes will further expand the reach of the
carrier’s network and include
the world’s longest flight, between Doha and Auckland, New
Zealand, the airline has said in a
statement.
The announcement was made
by Qatar Airways Group chief
executive Akbar al-Baker at a
press conference held on the
opening day of ITB Berlin, the
world’s largest international
travel fair, yesterday.
Al-Baker said: “These new
destinations are where our customers want to go, and where we
see the most opportunity to provide a best-in-class experience
at great value. We look forward
to growing our network and welcoming new passengers to Qatar
Airways.”
The new services include five
destinations in Europe. These
are Pisa (Italy), Sarajevo (Bosnia), Helsinki (Finland), Skopje
(Macedonia) and Nice (France).
Pisa, where flights will start
on August 2 with a daily nonstop A320-family service from
Doha, will be the fourth Italian
destination for Qatar Airways,
joining Venice, Rome and Milan.
Qatar Airways service to Sarajevo will begin on September 7,
with three flights per week on
A320-family aircraft.
Daily non-stop flights from
Doha to Helsinki will start on
October 10, offering new connections between oneworld
hubs, while a three-times-aweek service between Doha and
Skopje will begin in November.
Both new cities will be served
with A320-family aircraft.
Qatar Airways will return to Nice
by summer 2017, with five flights
per week with wide-body aircraft.
Qatar Airways has also an-
Qatar’s ambassador to Germany Abdulrahman bin Mohamed al-Khulaifi
with Akbar al-Baker at the new Qatar Airways stand at ITB Berlin.
nounced that it will begin services to six new destinations in
Africa: Marrakech (Morocco),
Windhoek (Namibia), Douala
(Cameroon), Libreville (Gabon),
Lusaka (Zambia) and Seychelles.
The airline’s service to Marrakech will begin in July, three
times per week, from Doha
on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner
aircraft.
A
four-flights-per-week
service between Doha and
Windhoek will begin on September 28, while a daily scheduled service to the Seychelles
will resume on December 12.
In January 2017, Qatar Airways will offer three flights per
week from Doha to Douala and
Libreville utilising one aircraft.
A non-stop service, running three times a week from
Doha to Lusaka, will begin by
summer 2017.
Meanwhile, the new Qatar
Airways destinations in Southwest Pacific/Southeast Asia are
Auckland (New Zealand), Krabi (Thailand) and Chiang Mai
(Thailand).
A daily service to Auckland –
the airline’s first route to New
Zealand and what will be the
world’s longest flight – will begin on December 3. Qatar Airways will use the Boeing 777
aircraft for this route.
Qatar Airways will begin four
flights per week to Krabi on
December 6 and three flights
per week to Chiang Mai, also
in December, enhancing the
overall connectivity to Thailand through four gateways.
Qatar Airways currently flies to
Bangkok and Phuket.
Abdulla Saleh al-Raisi, right, receiving the award from QU president
Dr Hassan Rashid al-Derham.
Commercial Bank
receives CSR award
C
and example have made the
most telling contribution in
the field of CSR.
On sponsoring the 2015
Qatar National Report for
Corporate Social Responsibility, al-Raisi stated that
CSR is integral to its business
strategy.
“As Qatar’s first private
bank, we have a longstanding commitment to acting as
a trusted and ethical partner
with the Qatari community
and to playing a role in the
development of Qatar’s human, social and sustainable
economic wealth,” he added.
ommercial
Bank’s
service to the community has been recognised by an excellence award
at the 2015 Qatar Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR)
Conference, hosted by Qatar
University (QU).
Commercial Bank CEO Abdulla Saleh al-Raisi received
the award from QU president
Dr Hassan Rashid al-Derham.
The event also marked the
release of the 2015 Qatar National CSR Report (Leaders’
Vision), compiled and published by QU, which honoured
individuals whose leadership
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars to host
pre-owned certified event
R
A view of the QTA pavilion at ITB Berlin 2016.
QTA pavilion showcases
Qatar tourism attractions
T
he Qatari ambassador
to Germany, Abdulrahman al-Khulaifi, officially opened Qatar Tourism
Authority’s (QTA) pavilion at
International Tourism Bourse
(ITB) Berlin 2016, Europe’s
biggest travel show.
The pavilion showcases Qatar’s tourism accommodation
options with many leading
international and local hotel
brands exhibiting their Qatar properties. These include
Ezdan, Four Seasons, Grand
Heritage,
InterContinental,
Melia, Ritz-Carlton, Sheraton,
The Torch, Wyndham Grand
Regency and Warwick, as well
as the Al Rayyan Hospitality
group.
Top tour operators and destination management companies also joined QTA at the
exhibition, including Arabian
Adventures, FAL Travelmart,
Qatar International Adventures and Travel Designer.
“The introduction of the
new Qatar destination brand
to Berlin is a milestone in our
drive to establish Qatar among
the world’s top premium destinations,” said Rashed alQurese, chief marketing and
promotions officer, QTA.
“Collectively, the Qatar
delegation at ITB will provide
trade visitors with a comprehensive insight into Qatar as
a destination and its many
attractions,” he noted.
Al-Qurese believes that the
wide range of hotels and other
tourism suppliers offer an effective ‘one-stop shop’ for
conducting business with Qatar’s tourism sector.
ITB Berlin, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary,
continues until March 13. The
annual trade show has attracted around 10,000 exhibitors
from 187 countries and territories this year, exhibiting the
latest products and trends in
global tourism.
Kerala developer holding road show
C
onfident Group from
Kerala is holding a twoday road show in Qatar
from tomorrow, presenting
apartments, villas and commercial space in the key cities
of the south Indian state.
The event at Movenpick Ho-
tel, Corniche Road, Doha, features projects in Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur and
Kozhikode. The prices of the
projects range between Rs32
lakhs and Rs1.62 crore.
Confident Floris Thiruvananthapuram,
Confident
Symphony next to Aluva Metro
Station, Confident Aries Thrissur and Confident Phoenix at
Kozhikode are the new projects.
As part of Confident Group’s
10th anniversary celebrations,
customers can avail special offers for spot booking.
olls-Royce Motor Cars
Doha will host its first
two-day event for the
ultra-luxury marque’s official
pre-owned certified programme
from tomorrow at its The PearlQatar showroom.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Doha
is the sole authorised dealer of
Rolls-Royce cars in Qatar.
“A carefully selected group of
customers and guests will have
the chance to see an exclusive
selection of Rolls-Royce motor
cars, chosen entirely to showcase the finest automotive excellence and craftsmanship created
at the home of Rolls-Royce in
Goodwood, for the discerning
clientele of Doha, Qatar,” according to a statement.
Ihab Allam, general manager
of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Doha,
said: “We are very much looking
forward to hosting the first ever
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Provenance pre-owned certified event
this coming weekend.
“With its combination of vi-
A carefully selected group of customers and guests will have the chance to see an exclusive selection of
Rolls-Royce motor cars.
sionary engineering and handcrafted build, purchasing a
Rolls-Royce should always be an
exceptional experience, regardless of its age – an experience
we look forward to showcasing
through this dedicated two-day
event.”
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ “uncompromising standards and
drive for excellence” ensure that
every Provenance vehicle not
only delivers total reassurance
but, combined with a minimum
two-year servicing and warranty
cover, is also a sound investment
for the future, the statement
notes.
“With its own distinctive style
and features, every Rolls-Royce
motor car is unique; which is
why the knowledgeable team at
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Doha
is on hand at all stages of the
purchase to guide customers
through their choice of vehicle
and assist in the selection of luxurious accessories, helping put
a personal stamp on each Provenance Rolls-Royce motor car as
well,” it adds.
One can visit the Rolls-Royce
Motor Cars Doha showroom
from 5pm until 10pm on Friday
and from 10am until 10pm on
Saturday.
Lobby lounge at City
Centre Rotana Doha
C
ity
Centre
Rotana
Doha has opened the
lobby lounge, Caramel.
It offers a variety of coffees
and teas as well as mocktails.
This is in addition to smoothies, shakes and a selection of
sandwiches and fresh salads
made available daily from 6am
until midnight, according to a
statement.
Lana Jwainat, cluster director
of marketing and communica-
tions at City Centre Rotana and
Oryx Rotana, said: “The restaurant features quiet sessions,
a calm ambiance, relaxing atmosphere and an upscale design,
making it the perfect choice to
experience handmade sweets,
cakes and cookies.”
Breakfast and lunch are also
served, besides all sorts of cakes
throughout the day.
“The service at Caramel is
accompanied by piano music
Caramel at City Centre Rotana Doha.
to provide a relaxing atmosphere, where guests can enjoy a quiet conversation at an
intimate table or relax in the
comfort of a couch while enjoying the lifestyle of City Centre
Rotana,” the statement added.
Caramel also features a collection of pâte à choux used to make
desserts like éclairs, Paris-brest,
St Honoré cakes, Croquembouche, religieuses and more.
British food festival opens at LuLu Group outlets
L
uLu Hypermarket Group
has launched a British
food festival in association
with the British Embassy and
British Council in Doha.
The event, running until
March 17 at all LuLu outlets, was
inaugurated by British ambassador Ajay Sharma at LuLu Hypermarket in Al Gharrafa yesterday.
LuLu Group regional director Shaijan M O, senior officials
from LuLu Qatar Region, dignitaries from British Council and
UK Trade and Investment, and
senior executives from the leading business groups in the retail
industry and other walks of life
were present.
“LuLu Group has been organ-
ising British food festivals for
many years in succession, and
the response every year is overwhelming,” the company said in
a statement.
A wide range of British products, from categories such as
grocery, fruits and vegetables,
delicatessen, dairy products,
frozen foods, bakery products,
fish, hot food, household and
health and beauty are being
showcased at the festival.
LuLu Group as a global player
in the retail sector had launched
their operations in Birmingham, UK with the inauguration
of Y International (UK) in 2013.
The major activities of this full
owned subsidiary are procure-
Ambassador Ajay Sharma and LuLu Group officials tour the LuLu Hypermarket in Al Gharrafa after the
opening of the British food festival yesterday. PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil
ment, consolidation and export
of British products to their 123
retail stores.
LuLu Group has chosen Birmingham as the centre for procurement, consolidation and
export of food, non-food, chilled
and frozen products of UK origin, and leased a high quality
food standard warehouse at the
Industrial Park in a bid to accelerate and streamline their logistics. The group has been importing from the UK for decades.
This year LuLu Group has
launched two new major British
product lines - Harrogate Water and Oxford range of biscuits,
chocolates and specialty tea. The
products will be available exclusively at LuLu outlets across all
the regions.
Harrogate Spa Water is one of
the oldest bottled water manufacturers in Britain, dating back
to the 16th century when the
first springs were found to be
therapeutic.
The vision of the LuLu Group
is to set new benchmarks in the
retail operations by tapping new
opportunities, widening the
network, expanding the range,
innovating new promotion strategies and ultimately improving the service standards to the
customers by providing the best
quality merchandise from across
the world. This venture has already employed 180 staff, including those recruited through
the apprentice programme at
Metropolitan College.
LuLu Group, with over 35,600
employees from 37 nationalities, serve 650,000 multi-ethnic
shoppers daily in the GCC region, and has an annual turnover
of $6bn globally.
Gulf Times
Thursday, March 10, 2016
QATAR
After rainy spell, stable
weather expected now
T
he weather is expected to
stabilise gradually over
today and tomorrow, the
Qatar Met department has said.
This is due to the “extension
of a ridge of a high-pressure system”, the weather office said in a
post on social media yesterday.
Doha and other parts of the
country received scattered to
heavy rain yesterday, leading
to waterlogging at a number of
places.
The situation, though, was
much worse in neighbouring
GCC countries like the UAE,
where torrential rain and a strong
storm disrupted normal lives.
Heavy rain affected life in parts of
Oman as well.
Qatar’s Met department issued a statement that people
should not heed rumours and
obtain information only from
official sources. “The country will not be affected by the
convective clouds that affected
neighbouring countries east of
Qatar on Wednesday, which will
continue moving eastward,”
it said. “Therefore, the Qatar
Met department urges all to get
information
from
official
sources only and not listen to
any rumours.”
Meanwhile, today’s forecast
for Qatar shows there are no
weather alerts for inshore areas and conditions will gradually
stabilise. Offshore areas, though,
are expected to see isolated thunderstorms and gusty winds in the
early hours of the day.
The wind speed may go up to
25 knots in these areas during the
thunderstorms. Partly cloudy to
cloudy conditions are also likely
in the offshore areas, along with
a chance of scattered rain.
Inshore areas, meanwhile, will
Workers engaged in draining a flooded area in Doha yesterday.
PICTURE: Nasar T K
be misty in some places in the
early hours. Partly cloudy conditions are also expected and there
is a weak chance of scattered rain
in some parts at first.
Visibility may drop to 2km
Children having fun in the rain. PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil
or less in some places at first.
The minimum and maximum
temperatures today are expected
Rain disrupts flights between Qatar, UAE
S
ome flights between Doha and
Dubai were cancelled after a
strong storm hit the emirate yesterday.
Qatar Airways website showed three
of its flights to Dubai – QR1000, 1012
and 1064 - were cancelled yesterday.
Consequently, the following three
flights to Doha – QR1025, 1013 and
1065 - were also cancelled.
Emirates cancelled two of its flights
between Dubai and Doha – EK851 and
852 - yesterday.
Some of the flights from the UAE
were also delayed, reports suggested.
Abu Dhabi International Airport,
home to Etihad airline, was forced to
suspend a number of flights yesterday
due to the rainstorm in the UAE capital.
Air traffic was also delayed at the
airport in Dubai, the UAE’s largest city,
where long-haul carrier Emirates is
based.
Brigadier al-Kharji announce details of the GCC Traffic Week programmes yesterday in Doha as other officials look on.
GCC Traffic Week to be
inaugurated on Sunday
By Ayman Adly
Staff Reporter
T
A view of waterlogging following rains in the Ain Khalid area
yesterday. PICTURE: Jayan Orma
Vehicles caught in severe flooding near Barwa City in Mesaimeer yesterday. PICTURE: Jayaram
he 32nd GCC Traffic Week will
be inaugurated at Darb Al Saai,
near Sports Roundabout, on
Sunday afternoon.
The activities will continue until
March 19.
While the events from 8am to noon
are reserved for official visits, schools
and students of different categories, all
events from 4pm to 10pm are open to
the public daily, with various activities
for different age categories focusing on
traffic awareness.
“More than 60 government and
non-government entities are taking
part in the activities,” Traffic Department director Brigadier Mohamed
Saad al-Kharji announced yesterday.
While traffic officers and officials
from the other GCC countries will be
present in Doha for the activities, Qatari traffic officials will take part in the
Traffic Week programmes in other GCC
states, aiming to exchange experiences
and benefiting from the best practices.
Brigadier al-Kharji stressed that the
Traffic Week’s ultimate purpose is to
give a direct message to all road users to
adopt safe practices and abide by traffic rules. The topic this year, the same
as last year, “Your decision determines
your destiny”, is an implementation of
the decision of traffic department directors of the GCC countries to adopt
the same motto for two years.
More than 60 government and
non-government entities are
taking part in the GCC Traffic
Week activities, which continue
until March 19
Traffic Awareness Department director Colonel Mohamed Radi al-Hajri
said this year’s Traffic Week will see
more participation from the private
sector and civil society organisations
in the various activities involved, such
as the traffic exhibition, daily awareness lectures and forums and workshops.
The Traffic Department offices outside Doha will feature a number of
similar awareness activities simulta-
neously. Schools and various entities
will be invited to visit Darb Al Saai.
Citing a Bahrain University study
on the impact of the previous GCC
traffic weeks, Colonel al-Hajri said
the number of road fatalities in 2015
had dropped compared to the previous years. He also pointed out that
social media would be utilised during
the week to enhance direct awareness efforts.
Traffic Awareness Department assistant director Major Jabir Mohamed
said there are many sections and activities in this edition of the Traffic
Week that blend fun with awareness,
addressing different categories of people. There will be theatrical shows,
competitions and quizzes, lectures,
workshops, a miniature Souq Waqif
and a play area for children, besides
the exhibition.
Traffic Culture and Awareness Section head Captain Riad Ahmed said the
organisers of the Traffic Week are keen
to attract families, children, young
people and new drivers to engage them
in interactive activities to raise their
degree of responsibility on the road.
to be 18C and 27C, respectively,
with the forecast for Doha being
19C and 27C.
Dark rain clouds hover over Mesaieed around 6.45am yesterday.
PICTURE: Gulf Times reader Swati Badheka
31