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SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022 / SHAWWAL 14, 1443 AH emergency number 112 NO. 17986 16 PAGES 150 FILS

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SHEIKH MOHAMMED BIN ZAYED AL NAHYAN NEW PRESIDENT

UAE’s Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed diesAmir condoles passing, congratulates new President ... 40 days of mourning

KUWAIT CITY, May 14, (Agencies): His Highness the Amir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah Friday expressed heartfelt condolences on the death of President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, saying Arab and Islamic nations lost “a great leader” who dedicated his life for service of his people, defending Arab and Islamic causes.

His Highness the Amir extended deepest condolences on behalf of the government and people of Kuwait in cables of condolences to UAE Vice-President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammad bin Rahsed Al-Maktoum, and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Su-preme Commander of UAE Armed forces Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, their families and the people of the UAE.

The State of Kuwait, in grieve over the demise of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, “will always remember his honorable positions towards the (Kuwaiti) just causes during the Iraqi invasion,” said His Highness the Amir.

He prayed to Allah the Almighty to bestow the UAE people with solace, and commended the development that took place during the reign of the deceased which contributed to advancement of the nation.

His Highness the Amir announced a 40-day mourning period, flags flown at half-mast and government departments would be off duty for three days starting May 13.

His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah sent cables of condolences to Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed and Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed over the passing away of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed.

His Highness the Deputy Amir and Crown Prince expressed condolences to the Emirati people, describing the deceased as “a great leader” who was a staunch defender of Arab and Islamic causes.

His Highness the Deputy Amir and Crown Prince also praised the “honorable” position of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed towards Kuwait’s just causes during the Iraqi invasion, and commended his contribution to the development of the UAE.

His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah sent similar cables.

The United Arab Emirates’ long-ailing ruler and president, died Friday, the government announced in a brief statement. He was 73.

Sheikh Khalifa oversaw much of the country’s blistering economic growth and his name was immortalized on the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, after bailing out debt-crippled Dubai during its financial crisis over a decade ago.

However, after suffering a stroke and undergoing emergency surgery in 2014, a decade after becoming president, he ceased having any involvement in the day-to-day affairs of ruling the country.

The last several years of his life saw his half-brother Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed rise to become the de-facto ruler and decision-maker of major foreign policy decisions, such as joining a Saudi-led war in Yemen and spearheading an embargo on neighboring Qatar in recent years. The crown prince, also the deputy supreme commander of the armed forces, shepherded the UAE’s budding ties with Israel after the two normalized relations in 2020.

The UAE announced a 40-day period of mourning and a three-day suspension

of work across the government and private sector, including flags to be flown at half-staff.

“The UAE has lost a loyal son, and the leader of its blessed empowerment jour-ney,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed wrote on Twitter after his brother’s death was officially announced on state media. “Khalifa bin Zayed, my brother, supporter and mentor, may Allah Almighty grant you eternal peace.”

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken described Sheikh Khal-ifa “as a true friend of the United States,” adding that the U.S. remains committed to its steadfast friendship and cooperation with the UAE. Vice President Kamala

Harris also expressed her condolences.Ties have been strained between the Biden administration and the leaders of

Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have not joined U.S. efforts in isolating Russia amid its war in Ukraine.

Messages of condolences also poured in from around the region and the world, foremost from leaders of Arab countries supported by Abu Dhabi. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said the country’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, also expressed condolences.

Continued on Page 2

In this photo by Emirates News Agency, WAM, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Abu Dhabi, (right), is greeted by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, (center), as Sheikh Humaid bin Rashid

Al Nuaimi, the ruler of Ajman, (left), looks on at Al Bateen Palace in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Sheikh Khalifa died Friday, May 13, 2022, the government’s state-run news agency announced in a brief statement. He was 73. (AP)

UAEARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

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This photo from Ministry of Presidential Affairs shows from left to right, Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammad Al Sharqi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Fujairah, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah, Dr. Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Humaid bin Rashid Al Nuaimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ajman and Sheikh Saud bin Rashid Al Mu’alla,

Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Umm Al Qaiwain pose for a photo as Mohammad bin Zayed accepts their condolences, Saturday, May14, 2022. (AP)

research. The UAE announced last year a net-zero emissions pledge by 2050, even as it expands investments in oil and gas for export.

He has been credited with overseeing the crea-tion and growth of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, now one of the world’s largest sover-eign wealth funds with close to $700 billion in assets, according to estimates by the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute.

Sheikh Khalifa was born in 1948 in the inland oasis of Al Ain, near the border with the sultanate of Oman. He was trained at Sandhurst, the royal military academy in England.

Armed forcesIn 1969, Sheikh Khalifa was named as Abu

Dhabi prime minister and chairman of the Emirate’s Department of Defense, which later became the core of the UAE’s armed forces.

Khalifa helped boost the UAE’s regional pro-file by bulking up its military with hefty purchases from U.S. weapons manufacturers. He set war-planes to the NATO-led mission against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya in 2011. In 2014, the Emirates became one of the most prominent Arab participants in U.S.-led airstrikes against the mili-tant Islamic State group in Syria.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. will honor Sheikh Khalifa’s legacy “through our strong defense partnership with the United Arab Emirates.” The head of U.S Central Command in the Mideast, Gen. Michael Kurilla, said “the strategic partnership between the armed forces of our two countries is ironclad.” He had a meeting in Abu Dhabi with its crown prince on Thursday.

Although the UAE’s ruling sheikhs hold near absolute power, Sheikh Khalifa began an experi-ment with elections by allowing limited voting - by a hand-picked electorate - for half the members of a 40-seat federal advisory body in 2006. Subsequent rounds of elections in 2011 and 2015 failed to attract even two out of five of those given a chance to vote.

The UAE saw none of the Arab Spring street protests that shook other parts of the region, though in the wake of that unrest, Sheikh Khalifa oversaw crackdowns on Islamists and other activ-ists in the country, drawing criticism from interna-tional rights groups. The UAE, which views Islamist movements as a threat to its ruling sys-tem, also supported efforts in the region to quash the Muslim Brotherhood, including in Egypt.

Under his presidency, the UAE joined Saudi Arabia in sending forces to Bahrain to quell an uprising there by the country’s majority Shiite population demanding greater rights from the island-nation’s Sunni leadership.

Sheikh Khalifa was believed to be among the world’s richest rulers with a personal fortune esti-mated by Forbes magazine in 2008 at $19 billion. He built a palace in the Seychelles, an island-chain nation in the Indian Ocean, and faced com-plaints there about causing water pollution from the construction site.

His personal life was not much in the public eye. Like many in the Gulf Arab states, he was passionate about the traditional sport of falconry and was said to enjoy fishing. He is known to have had eight children - two sons and six daughters - with his first wife, Sheikha Shamsa bint Suhail Al Mazrouei. He is also survived by several grand-children.

New President Rulers in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday

unanimously appointed Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan as the nation’s president, signaling both unity and stability in this key energy-rich country that hosts Western mili-taries.

The ascension of Sheikh Mohammed, 61, had been expected after the death Friday of his half-brother and the UAE’s president, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, at the age of 73. The transi-tion of power marks only the third time this U.S.-allied nation of seven sheikhdoms has selected a president since becoming an independent nation in 1971.

Under Sheikh Mohammed, who has been the nation’s de facto leader since Sheikh Khalifa suf-fered a stroke in 2014, the UAE had tried to pro-ject power militarily across the wider region as it joined a Saudi-led war in Yemen.

But since the lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic, Sheikh Mohammed and the wider UAE has tried to recalibrate its approach by largely pulling out of the war and seeking diplo-matic detentes with rivals. The UAE also diplo-matically recognized Israel, which shares Sheikh Mohammed’s longstanding suspicion of Iran. However, ties to the U.S. have strained in recent years.

The state-run WAM news agency described the vote at Al-Mushrif Palace in Abu Dhabi as unani-mous among the rulers of the country’s hereditar-ily ruled sheikhdoms, which includes the sky-scraper-studded city of Dubai.

“We congratulate him, and we pledge alle-

giance to him, and our people pledge allegiance to him,” Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, said on Twitter after the vote. “The whole country is led by him to take it on the paths of glory and honor, God willing.”

There had been only one death of a president before Friday in the country’s history, which saw Sheikh Khalifa take over for both his and Sheikh Mohammed’s father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, after his death in 2004. Sheikh Zayed, whose name graces a major highway linking the Emirates and whose face appears everywhere in the nation, widely remains viewed as the coun-try’s founding father.

The UAE as a whole is observing a three-day mourning period, which will see businesses shut across the country and performances halted in Sheikh Khalifa’s honor. Electronic billboards all showed the late sheikh’s image in Dubai on Friday night as flags flew at half-staff. A wider mourning period of 40 days will go on beyond that.

Sheikh Mohammed had been serving as the UAE’s de facto president since a 2014 stroke saw Sheikh Khalifa disappear from public view.

Known by the acronym MbZ, Sheikh Mohammed cultivated ties with the West that proved valuable for Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE that commands tens of billions of dollars in wealth funds from its oil and gas deposits. A U.S. diplomatic cable from 2004 released by WikiLeaks referred to him as “charismatic, savvy and very comfortable in the West.” He hosted then-Presi-dent George W. Bush in 2008 at his desert estate, a visit complete with Bedouin tents and falcons.

The country hosts some 3,500 U.S. troops, many at Abu Dhabi’s Al-Dhafra Air Base, from where drones and fighter jets flew missions com-bating the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Dubai also is the U.S. Navy’s busiest port of call abroad. Both France and South Korea also main-tained a military presence here.

Sheikh Mohammed trained at the British mili-tary academy at Sandhurst and is a helicopter pilot. His military-first approach saw the UAE join Saudi Arabia in their bloody, years-long war in Yemen that still rages to this day. Sheikh Mohammed has had a close relationship with neighboring Saudi Arabia’s own crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. However, the Emirates has largely withdrawn its troops from Yemen.

Sheikh Mohammed also long has been suspi-cious of both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, likely organizing a campaign targeting Islamists in the UAE after the 2011 Arab Spring and urging the West to take a harder line toward Tehran over concerns about its nuclear program and its support of paramilitary groups throughout the region. The UAE’s recognition of Israel in 2020, while open-ing new trade and tourism, also serves as a hedge in dealing with Iran.

Amir’s envoy Representing His Highness the Amir Sheikh

Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah and his accompanying dele-gation, on Saturday offered condolence to UAE President Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Al Nahyan family sheikhs over the demise of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Dr. Ahmad Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah has expressed heartfelt condolences to the leadership, govern-ment and people of the UAE on demise of President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.

The minister, in a condolence note at the UAE embassy in Kuwait on Saturday, expressed deep condolences and consolation on the president death, recalling his paramount role in the UAE prosperity and development as well his role in cementing the brotherly Kuwait-UAE relations.

Sheikh Dr. Ahmad Nasser also underscored his distinguished role as a Gulf-Arab-international leader, praying to Allah to bestow mercy upon his soul and aid the bereaved Al-Nahyan family and the UAE people with patience to cope with the great loss.

Kuwait’s First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Ahmad Nawaf Al-Jaber Al-Sabah Friday sent a cable of condo-lences to his Emirati counterpart Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al-Nahyan over the passing away of the UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

In the cable, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Nawaf recalled several achievements and comprehensive renais-sance made in all fields in the UAE during the tenure of Sheikh Khalifa, the ministry’s media department said in a press statement.

The Kuwaiti minister also remembered Sheikh Khalifa’s sincere efforts made in serving Arab and Muslim nations’ issues, it added.

Expressing his heartfelt condolences, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Nawaf prayed to Allah the Almighty to bestow his mercy on Sheikh Khalifa’s soul, and bring solace to his family and UAE’s people, according to the statement.

Kuwait’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defense

UAE’s Sheikh

Sheikh Khalifa was the eldest son of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, widely revered by Emiratis as the country’s founding father. The federation recently marked its 50th anniversary.

Though he had been out of public sight since his stroke, Sheikh Khalifa’s image was ubiqui-tous, gracing every hotel lobby and major govern-ment office across the country. On occasion, Emirati state media published rare photographs and videos of Sheikh Khalifa.

The president holds the most powerful position among the seven semi-autonomous city-states of the UAE, which stretches along the shores of the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Historically, the president is from Abu Dhabi, the largest and richest of the seven emirates. The vice president and prime minister is from Dubai, titles currently held by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Despite its size and wealth, Abu Dhabi often finds itself overshadowed by the glitzy emirate of Dubai, the commercial hub that showcases both the UAE’s bold visions and, at times, debt-fueled pipe dreams, including a massive palm-shaped man-made island that sits empty years after its construction.

The UAE’s regional power and influence, how-ever, emanates from Abu Dhabi, which has most of the country’s oil and gas reserves. Dubai pro-vides the UAE with a swirl of publicity and headline-grabbing lifestyle and entertainment sto-ries that rights groups say distract from controver-sial policies decided in Abu Dhabi.

As Dubai’s fortunes began to falter along with the global economy in 2009, Sheikh Khalifa led efforts to protect the federation by pumping bil-lions of dollars in emergency bailout funds to Dubai.

Sheikh Khalifa increasingly used Abu Dhabi’s oil wealth to attract cultural and academic centers, such as a branch of the Louvre Museum and satel-lite campuses of New York University and the Sorbonne. He also presided over efforts to move the OPEC country beyond its reliance on petro-dollars with investments in renewable energy

This photo made available by the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, shows from right to left, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan UAE National Security Advisor, Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler’s Representative in Al Dhafra Region, Sheikh Saif bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Min-ister of Presidential Affairs and Sheikh Mohamed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Executive Council Member, attend the funeral prayers for UAE president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, at Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed The First Mosque, Friday,

May 13, 2022. (AP)

This photo made available by the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, shows UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, ruler of Abu Dhabi, front right, and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs, front left, carry the body of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, with other members of royal family at Sheikh

Sultan bin Zayed The First Mosque, in Abu Dhabi, Friday, May 13, 2022. (AP)

This photo made available by the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, shows Sheikh Mo-hamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler of Abu Dhabi, (center left), with others, attends the burial of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emir-ates, with other members of the royal family at Al Bateen cemetery, in Abu Dhabi,

Friday, May 13, 2022. (AP)

Kuwait’s HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Sabah arrives in the UAE to of-

fer condolences.

PM Diwan photosHH the Prime Minister is seen off at the airport

before returning to Kuwait.

HH the Prime Minister arrives for offering the condolences.

Continued from Page 1

Minister Sheikh Talal Khaled Al-Sabah Friday expressed heartfelt condolences in cables sent to senior Emirati offi cials over the death of the UAE President Sheikh Khalifa.

Sheikh Talal Khaled sent the cables to UAE Vice-President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammad bin Rahsed, and the newly installed UAE president Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan as well as Minster of State for Defense Affairs Mohammad bin Ahmad Al-Bowardi.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden congratulated Saturday his “long-time friend” Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan on his election as President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) , says KUNA.

“As I told Sheikh Mohammad yesterday during our phone call, the United States is determined to honor the memory of the

late president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan by continuing to strengthen the strategic partnership between our countries over the coming months and years,” Biden said in a statement.

He affi rmed that the UAE is “an essential partner” of the US.

He added “Sheikh Mohammad, whom I met with several times as Vice President when he was the Crown Prince of Abu Dha-bi, has long been at the forefront of building this partnership.”

“I look forward to working with Sheikh Mohammad to build from this extraordi-nary foundation to further strengthen the bonds between our countries and peoples,” Biden remarked.

The Federal Supreme Council of the UAE unanimously elected Sheikh Moham-mad bin Zayed Al Nahyan as the UAE President.

A DIGEST OF PUBLIC OPINION

diwaniya‘Sherine will never be forgotten by Palestinian rights supporters’“‘I CHOSE the press to be close to the human being. It is not easy, per-haps to change reality, but at least I was able to convey that voice to the world. I am Sherine Abu Aqileh’. These words express the personality of the deceased, Sherine Abu Aqileh,” columnist Tariq Al-Darbas wrote for Al-Anba daily.

“We witnessed and lived through a new Zionist ter-rorist incident and a fl agrant violation of international humanitarian law, professional norms and media free-dom. The world woke up to the assassination of the Palestinian media reporter, Sherine Abu Aqileh, Al-Jazeera correspondent.

“The deceased has already conveyed her voice and message to the world, after the news of her assassina-tion broke out in the international media and on social media as the highest trending hashtag in the world.

“A heinous and brutal terrorist assassination is not surprising for the Zionist enemy usurping the Palestinian lands, which as-sassinates children before women, and the elderly before young men.

“Nor does it differentiate between Islamic or Christian religions, in full view of the silence of the international community about the attacks of this occupier.

“The suffi ciency with statements of denunciation without an Arab, Is-lamic and international political movement to form a lobby at the United Nations and the Security Council to impose the most severe penalties on this enemy and its terrorist crimes and the actual, realistic and practical move to liberate Jerusalem from the clutches of this tyranny.

“The terrorist crimes that this barbaric enemy is doing are being exposed day after day so that God will hasten the Day of Victory by liberating Al-Aqsa Mosque and expelling the occupying invaders, God willing, in the

near future.“Sherine Abu Aqileh has left this world, but she will remain fi rmly root-

ed in the minds of all those who support the Palestinian rights.”Also:

“A major economic crisis sweeping the world called infl ation is accom-panied by depression – and here no one knows about it, neither the govern-ment, nor parliament, nor the majority of the population – the prices of most commodities have risen and will rise more due to the Russian adven-ture in Ukraine, preceded by the “Covid” epidemic, as the prices of oil and wheat in particular have doubled during the past days and poor countries are the ones who suffer the most from the bitterness of infl ation and depres-sion,” columnist Hassan Al-Issa wrote for Al-Jarida daily.

“In Sri Lanka and other countries, the demonstrators came out of their de-spair, smashing cars and public stores, while the community here is very happy about the rise in the price of a barrel, and they imagine that they are sitting on a mountain that will protect them from the inevitably coming fl ood.

“They forget that the high oil incomes will not last long, as this rise will accelerate the efforts of the developed countries to develop alternative sources of energy, and their addiction to oil and its derivatives will decrease in the long run.

“Al-Shall report mentioned, a few days ago, an interesting topic, related to what is happening these days in the world, and although the report ap-pears to have been neglected that warned of laxity in confronting corrup-tion in Kuwait, so the front and excellent rewards and the purchase of vaca-tions and Eid holidays in the harshest conditions and deepened dependence on oil.

“The Gulf states are striving to reduce dependence on oil, while Kuwait, which is more dependent on oil than the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Coun-

cil countries, has not made anything worth mentioning, ‘Oh, a mountain that shakes you with the wind’. The state is still spending and behaving as if it forgot the collapse of the oil market in 2014.

“There is a direct correlation between the increase in waste and spend-ing on the issues mentioned in the Al-Shall report, for example, and root-ing corruption and erasing popular memory in cases of thieves of public money and indifference to them. Little power over us, unacceptable logic in a world of ideals and calculating the future, but it is the reality.”

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“The tension we are experiencing now is not due to the current circum-stances or the resignation of government figures, it is rather an inevitable result of the accumulation of political absurdity, its exacerbation, and the departure of wisdom and guidance from the entire scene, which can neither be resolved nor ended with the resignation of the government or even the dissolution of the National Assembly,” columnist Mohamad Al-Rowai-heil wrote for Al-Jarida daily.

“There is a devastating conflict for influential parties that used all their weap-ons in the political arena, which made the voice of truth. Despite the loud voice of truth, no one hears the loudness of conflicting voices and their tools. The path toward reform was lost at the stations of conflict in spite of its clarity.

“What we are going through requires firmness, determination, reason and wisdom, so that we can overcome this delicate and dangerous stage. This cannot be done without removing everyone who caused it or who was part of it from the political arena and centers of influence and decision.

“The resignation of the government is not a solution to the political ten-sion we are witnessing. There are two warring parties, so if one of them ac-cepts the next government, the opponent will not accept it and vice versa!”

— Compiled by Zaki Taleb

Tariq Al-Darbas

Long lines of expatriate workers standing outside in the sun waiting for their turn at a medical test centre.

Crowding at medical testingcenters causes traffic chaos

Company reps, ‘wasta’ aggravate situation

KUWAIT CITY, May 14: As the Minis-try of Health continues its preparations to open a new labor examination center at the Mishref Exhibition Grounds, the past few days saw hundreds, if not thousands of expatriate workers converged on the labor examination centers in Shuwaikh and Jah-ra causing traffic jams in the vicinity of the two centers, as well as the citizens facing a difficulty in completing their transactions, reports Al-Qabas daily.

To add insult to injury company representatives join the queue and that makes matters even worse because they come with a bunch of requests and there are those who push their way through wasta.

The visitors, through the daily, has called for an urgent inauguration of the new center in Mishref, to ensure that their transactions are completed quickly and eliminate long queues, which have become a chronic phenomenon that the labor examination centers suffer from.

The visitors said they have no option but arrive at the center early in the hope of getting their transactions com-pleted although they book an appointment via the pre-booking system, but there is weakness in the system. The visitors explained that the appointment booking system is currently under great pressure, which has led to the difficulty in getting appointments to the examination centers.

They added, no appointments are currently available until May 26, which is a long period that may expose the sponsor to a fi nancial fi ne, due to the delay in completing the medi-cal examination procedures and waiting for results of tests before the expiry of the entry visa.

According to the visitors, the duration of the last Eid holidays negatively affected the completion of transactions. They pointed out that accelerating the pace of results of tests is the best solution and the best way to end their suffering, especially with the onset of the summer season.

They explained, that some centers are witnessing a stum-bling block to complete the transactions for reasons beyond the control of the employees sometimes, such as the fail-ure of the computer system for a limited period, noting that the time factor is very important for the visitors so that they don’t automatically become violators of the residence law for no fault of theirs.

Offi cials in the Ministry of Health told the daily what hap-pened at the medical centers was expected because of the long Eid Al-Fitr holidays.

Ministry nudged PADA denies report onexpat ‘disability docus’Poultry prices may rise

KUWAIT CITY, May 14: A number of poultry companies have submitted a request to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to allow it to raise the selling prices of poultry in Kuwait, in line with the global rise in prices and increasing costs, reports Al-Rai daily.

The daily quoting sources reported that the compa-nies justified their request to raise prices citing the re-cent increase in feed prices which has reached about 40 percent, in addition to the effects left by Ukraine’s war on global markets and supply chains, indicating that the rise in frozen poultry prices has become tangible in some varieties.

The sources pointed out that Ukraine, which is the sixth largest exporter of poultry in the world, stopped exporting as usual, which caused an increase in demand on the Bra-zilian market, which witnessed a 10 percent rise in prices.

The sourced indicated that Brazil is one of the most important exporters of frozen poultry to Kuwait, the Gulf states and Europe, and prices are rising in light of the sharp competition between different countries to meet the needs of local markets, and the growing European orientation towards Brazil.

KUWAIT CITY, May 14: The Public Authority for Dis-abled Affairs (PADA) has denied rumors spread on social media platforms that an Egyptian has obtained disability documents from the authority, thereby, making him eligible for fi nancial support, reports Al-Jarida daily.

In a press statement, the authority pointed out that Article Two of law number 8/2010 on the rights of persons with dis-abilities limits granting fi nancial privileges to Kuwaitis who meet the conditions specifi ed in the relevant decision issued by the Ministry of Interior.

The authority clarifi ed that for non-Kuwaitis, it only is-sues proofs of disability and identity, without any other priv-ileges. It then called on the users of social media to verify information published on such platforms and to obtain cor-rect information from offi cial sources.

Meanwhile, the Legal Advice and Legislation Depart-ment has exempted some private schools from paying rent in government buildings during the lockdown period due to the Corona crisis — starting from the suspension of classes on March 1, 2020 until the implementation of the online education system on Aug 4 in the same year, reports Al-Rai daily.

KUNA photoDirector General of Kuwait Municipality Ahmad Al-Man-

fouhi talking to the press.

News in Brief

Kuwait condemns deadly attack: Kuwait Friday strongly condemned a “cowardly terrorist” attack on a security checkpoint in northern Sinai, Egypt, which killed and injured a number of servicemen.

The State of Kuwait expresses full solidarity with Egypt and supports all measures taken by the govern-ment of Cairo to preserve security and stability as well as confronting terrorism and extremism, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

It offered condolences for the families of the victims, Egyptian leadership and people, and wished speedy re-covery for the wounded. (KUNA)

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New appointments freezed: The Civil Service Com-mission has issued a circular to all government agencies, Wednesday, to freeze new appointments in all senior posi-tions, including at the supervisory level, reports Al-Rai daily.

The circular also calls for stopping all transfers.❑ ❑ ❑

31K transactions carried out: According to the quar-terly statistics issued by the government’s Sahel app, the number of transactions of the Public Authority for Housing Welfare (PAHW) was 31,634, reports Al-Anba daily.

These transactions included 1,247 building order certificate issuance services, 29,265 requests for “To Whom It May Concern” certificates, 89 requests for differences in rent allowance, 330 requests for connec-tion of electricity, 365 requests for opening housing files with rent allowance, 38 requests for opening hous-ing files without rent allowance, 98 applications for renewal of municipal and Ministry of Justice licenses, and 47 title deeds issuance requests.

Other transactions included 41 government housing documentation requests with mortgage, 18 plots docu-mentation requests with payment, 134 plots documen-tation requests with mortgage, nine re-registration re-quests for housing with rent allowance, and 2 requests to reactivate housing files without rent allowance.

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Oil firms to grant annual bonus: Oil companies have started the nomination procedures for granting an-nual bonus to employees for fiscal 2021/2022, which is expected to be disbursed within this month or in June, reports Al-Anba daily quoting sources.

Sources disclosed the bonus will be paid to 60 percent of the oil sector employees – about 13,000; indicating the employees must have a very good general rating in the job performance evaluation to be eligible for the bonus.

The daily obtained a copy of the circular stating that Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) started the nomination procedures on May 8. This came after the closing of the annual budget of Kuwait National Petroleum Corpora-tion (KNPC) and its subsidiaries. The amount of bonus ranges from one month to two and a half months salary.

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PIFSS board okays proposal: Minister of Finance Ab-dul Wahab Al-Rasheed said the Board of Directors of the the Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSS) approved the proposal to establish a company wholly owned by the institution to provide financing services to retirees after ob-taining the opinion of an independent body regarding the feasibility of the company, reports Annahar daily.

Tests conductedon tunnel fitnessKUWAIT CITY, May 14: The ministries of Public Works and Interior, in coordination with the Public Authority for Roads and Transportation (PART) and international consultants, conducted various tests in Derwaza Al-Abdul Razzaq Tunnel on Thursday in the presence of Minister of Public Works, Renewable Energy, Electricity and Water Eng Ali Al-Mousa, reports Al-Anba daily quoting sources.

Sources disclosed the team conducted a vibration test for the columns and other tests, indicating the team will soon present a comprehensive re-port on the results of these tests. Sources said Al-Mousa has instructed officials in the Ministry of Public Works and the team specialized in conducting tests to work with technical support ex-perts in order to expedite the completion of the report to pave way for the immediate reopening of the tunnel.

Top-level IAEA teamto visit Kuwait soonKUWAIT CITY, May 14: A high-level delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency will visit Ku-wait from May 16 to 18, including the deputy director general of the agency, director of the Nuclear Sciences and Applications Department, and head of the Asia and Pacifi c Division in the Technical Cooperation Depart-ment, reports Al-Qabas daily.

In a press statement, National Liaison Offi cer with the agency Dr Nader Al-Awadi revealed that the visit is within the context of strengthening technical coop-eration between Kuwait and the agency, during which the development of national capabilities and skills in areas related to the agency’s work will be discussed. This is in addition to preparing for future expectations that help in facing development challenges in economic and social fi elds.

The program for the visit includes a meeting with officials and specialists at Kuwait Institute for Sci-entific Research, tour of the institute’s laboratories, a meeting with specialists in the Ministry of Health to strengthen cooperation with the agency in medi-cal fields, a meeting with officials from the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development and Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, and a meeting with some officials in the Ministry of For-eign Affairs.

ARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022 3

VACCINE REGISTRATION WEBSITE: https://cov19vaccine.moh.gov.kw/SPCMS/CVD_19_Vaccine_Registration.aspx

Fajr ........ 03:28Sunrise .. 04:57Zohr ....... 11:44

Asr .......... 15:20Maghrib .. 18:32Isha ........ 19:59

Prayer Timings Expected weather for the next 24 hours:

By Day: Hot with light to mod-erate north westerly wind to light variable wind with speeds of 08-35 km/h.

By Night: Mild with light vari-

able wind changing to light to moderate north westerly wind later on with speeds of 08-28 km/h.Station Max Exp Min RecKuwait City 35 26Kuwait Airport 36 26

Abdaly 36 25Jahra 36 24Salmiyah 33 26Ahmadi 34 27Nuwaisib 36 23Wafra 37 24Salmy 34 20

Weather

LOCALARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

4

Envoy announces re-opening ofEthiopian embassy in 2 months

Some of embassy’s employees back in Kuwait: Tajo

KUWAIT CITY, May 14: Ethiopian Ambassador to Kuwait Hassan Tajo has an-nounced the reopening of his country’s embassy at full ca-pacity within two months, re-ports Al-Qabas daily.

Tajo made the announcement after several months since the issuance of the decision to close the embassy temporarily in compliance with the directive of the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the closure and reduction of its embassies and con-sulates around the world as per the austerity plan that started in Addis Ababa some time ago.

In his first statement to a local newspaper since his return to Kuwait, Tajo informed the daily that some of the embassy’s employees have returned to the country; while the rest of the staff will return once the embas-sy reopens. He said the embassy will resume all consular services as soon as it reopens.

Asked about the new embassy head-quarters, Tajo disclosed: “We are looking for a building to rent for the headquarters of the embassy.”

AusterityHe explained the decision to close

the embassy is part of the austerity plan due to the economic conditions during the Corona pandemic. Now, the Ethiopian economy has started to recover; so the decision was taken to reopen Ethiopian embassies in some important countries like Kuwait, he revealed.

He stressed that the decision to close the Ethiopian Embassy in the country did not affect the Kuwaiti-Ethiopian relations. He asserted “the Kuwaiti government understands the Ethiopian position and the difficult conditions in our country. The bilat-eral relations are strong and deeply rooted in history. Our relations with Kuwait are not only diplomatic; as we also have very good cultural, reli-gious, historical and economic rela-tions. My government and I will work towards strengthening relations in various fields, because Kuwait is an important country for us and for Africa as a whole, considering com-monalities in culture and history.”

Asked how Kuwait was informed about the reopening of the embassy, Tajo disclosed: “The Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the Kuwaiti government about the reopening of the embassy through a familiar diplomatic route. I was over-joyed when I was informed about my return to Kuwait, because it is a blessed country for me. Assuming my duties as Ethiopia’s ambassador to Kuwait coincided with winning an international competition, the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding for the year 2021 in the category of achieve-ment. This brought good tidings, so I was very sad when the embassy closed.”

On signing the domestic labor agreement with Kuwait, Tajo affirmed a memorandum of understanding regarding domestic workers will be signed soon, as there is a great under-standing between the two countries in various fields. He said Kuwait is a very good country for Ethiopian work-ers; taking into consideration the good treatment and hospitality they enjoy here, not to mention the common cul-ture.

He added there are about 25,000 Ethiopians residing in Kuwait and most of them are domestic workers, indicating this number is expected to double after signing the memorandum of understanding.

Al-Qabas photoPart of Mubarakiya Market destroyed by fi re.

‘Finance’ reviews its dev vision during the meeting

Reconstruction of fi re-destroyed Mubarakiya Market to be assigned to Kuwait MunicipalityKUWAIT CITY, May 14: The second meeting of the committee, which was formed to deal with the effects of the recent fire in Mubarakiya Market com-mercial area, ended with assigning the Kuwait Municipality to adopt the ini-tial vision for the reconstruction of the burned part of the Souq Mubarakiya, reports Al-Qabas daily.

During the meeting, the Ministry of Finance reviewed its development vision for Mubarakiya area.

It revealed the preparation of an economic study to invest in the site with an annual rental value of KD 3.6 million through B.O.T. projects and the recovery of the amounts paid in its reconstruction.

According to the Ministry of Finance, investment in the site may contribute to achieving an expected increase in the state’s revenues. It esti-mated the affected area to be approxi-mately 5,000 square meters out of the site’s total area.

The Kuwait Municipality and the Ministry of Justice were asked to iden-tify the private properties in the area. The application of the 1964 Expropriation Law for the Public Benefit was proposed in the event that the owners of private properties in Mubarakiya area refused to accept development.

UnregisteredUndersecretary of the Ministry of

Justice Omar Al-Sharqawi stated that the ministry coordinated with the Kuwait Municipality to search for the unregistered real estate properties in order to identify their owners using the automated number of each plot so that all information related to the owner-ship of those plots can be extracted.

Also, the Minister of Finance inquired about the owners of private properties with the right to object to the implementation of the reconstruc-tion plan in Mubarakiya area. The government of the State of Kuwait has the right to rebuild without referring to them, by applying the law of expro-priation for the public benefit and the

extent of the legality of this matter, given the length of time that it may take into account the data of those affected.

Al-Sharqawi said this issue will be discussed and reported.

Regarding commercial licenses, the Acting Undersecretary of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry Muhammad Al-Enezi explained that coordination with the Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) is ongoing to extract the automated numbers of the shops affected by the Mubarakiya fire so that they can obtain these licenses, pending the response of PACI in this regard. It also reported about the exis-tence of many suspended licenses and violating shops.

Musaed Al-Asousi, the Director-General of PACI, said they had been approached by the Kuwait Municipality with a request to provide them with the automated numbers of the damaged plots, as they were attached to the data of those plots and the sketch indicating their locations in Mubarakiya area.

He stressed that Kuwait Municipality was provided with the required auto-mated numbers, and the committee was also provided with this data in a flash memory.

Regarding the future vision for the development of Mubarakiya area, Al-Asousi suggested the distribution of checkpoints to supervise the violat-ing shops in Mubarakiya area in order to warn them, and then close those shops in the event of non-response.

The municipality indicated that there were previous discussions with the Ministry of Justice and the Kuwait Municipality to approve the automated numbers in all documents, and the Secretary-General of the National Council for Culture and Arts linked it to all parties.

In this regard, the Secretary General of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters (NCCAL) Dr. Essa Al-Ansari explained that the role of NCCAL in this matter is limited to supervision only, as it was previously stated that NCCAL does not have any

shops damaged in the Mubarakiya fire.He also confirmed that NCCAL is

fully prepared to support the rest of the authorities, and provide advice to them regarding the reconstruction of Mubarakiya area, and preserving its historical identity and distinctive architectural style.

ReportFurthermore, Deputy Director

General of the Projects Sector in the Kuwait Municipality Eng. Nadia Al-Shuraideh received a preliminary report from the Kuwait Municipality for the reconstruction of the burned section of the Mubarakiya market through the technical office PACE, due to the need for more time to carry out the survey plan and check it before circulating it to the rest of the authori-ties.

Nonetheless, after receiving the automated numbers from PACI, it dis-covered the existence of many fake commercial licenses. Accordingly, the Kuwait Municipality is awaiting the report of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in coordination with PACI, which will determine the real commercial licenses located in the buildings, and thus verify the validity of all information and its plans.

Through a study, the need to update the possibility of reducing the cost of rebuilding was found. The opinion of NCCAL will be taken to adopt the uni-fied nature of the shops. It suggested the work of the committee that was composed of several bodies to carry out periodic inspection of the violating shops.

Meanwhile, acting on information fi remen from the Hilali Firefi ghting Center rushed to the Mubarakiya Mar-ket and put out a limited fi re on the roof of a building, reports Al-Rai daily.

The daily quoting the Public Rela-tions and Media Department of the Public Fire Services Directorate said the fi re was caused by a short circuit in the unit.

The fi re did not cause any signifi cant damage.

Ambassador George with some of the offi cials during the event.

Envoy delivers keynote speech at event

Benefi t from Sahel update: Kazem

Embassy and IBN organize Indian mango fest at embassy premises

Steps simplifi ed for civil ID renewal forchildren, family members, employees

KUWAIT CITY, May 14: The Embassy of India in Kuwait and Indian Business Network (IBN) organized a Mango Festival last Thursday.

Ambassador of India to Kuwait HE Sibi George deliv-ered the keynote address at the event. Welcoming the invitees, ambassador recalled the various buyer seller meets and festivals held to promote Indian mangoes as part of India’s 3Ts campaign focusing on trade, technology and tourism.

The Indian envoy said the desire that every Kuwaiti family and Indian and foreigner in Kuwait enjoys the mango during the 60th anniversary of establish-ment of diplomatic relations between India and Kuwait and 75th anniversary of India’s inde-pendence, which the embassy cel-ebrated last year, has far exceeded the target.

The ambassador added India is the biggest producer of man-goes, producing more than half of the world’s mangoes of dif-ferent varieties and thanked the Agricultural Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), for their support to the embassy in promoting Indian mangoes in Kuwait.

The event witnessed enthusias-tic response with people from dif-ferent walks of life in Kuwait participating virtually as well as physically. More details about the event are available on the embas-sy website and social media han-dles.

The ambassador also took this opportunity to convey his greet-ings on the International Day of Nurses and remembered the role played by nurses and other medi-cal professions in the fight against Covid-19 pandemic.

KUWAIT CITY, May 14: The spokesman for the unified gov-ernment application for elec-tronic services (Sahel) Youssef Kazem announced a new update to the application, through which the Public Authority for Civil Information seeks to sim-plify the procedures for spon-sors to renew civil IDs of family members and their employees through the application, reports Al-Rai daily.

Kazem explained it is now pos-sible to use the civil ID renewal service for family members through the services of the Public Authority for Civil Information in (Sahel) in a more rapid and sim-ple way, as the head of the family can renew the civil IDs of his children and the workers on his sponsorship through a list of their civil numbers directly.

He added that the users of the application can benefit from this update by selecting the (Services) menu, then choosing the services of the Public Authority for Civil Information, then (Card Services) and then selecting (Card Renewal Service), and then the civil num-bers of individuals whose cards can be renewed directly by the

DGCA recruits

4,800 citizens apply for jobsKUWAIT CITY, May 14: Around 4,800 citizens applied for various jobs in the recent recruitment con-ducted by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), reports Al-Anba daily quoting sources.

Sources revealed these citizens applied for different posts in the ad-ministration fi eld.

Meanwhile, the Public Anti-Corruption Authority (Nazaha) is monitoring the appointments by the Minister of Social Affairs and Com-munity Development and the Min-istry of State for Housing Affairs, reports Al-Rai daily.

The sources indicated the monitor-ing process is still ongoing to ensure the extent to which the appointments comply with regulations and laws.

The sources stressed that “this fi le is subject to a careful study by the commission to ascertain what has been said about these appointments hold water.”

head of the family through the Sahel program.

LOCALARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

5

Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE to enjoy windfall gains

MEED highlights benefits of Russian-Ukrainian crisis for the oil sectorKUWAIT CITY, May 14: Ac-cording to a report in MEED magazine, the rise in oil prices to very high levels and the im-provement of the oil resources of the Gulf Cooperation Coun-cil countries can be considered as advantages that resulted from the war between Russia and Ukraine, reports Al-Anba daily.

In an analysis carried out by the former editor-in-chief Edmund O’Sullivan, it was stated that oil exporters in

the Gulf Cooperation Council countries can already consider themselves as one among the winners, as it is expected that OPEC’s oil production will rise this year, most of the increase will return to Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and that these countries will enjoy windfall gains of at least $100 billion in 2022, which could approach 10 percent of their projected GDP, due to the Ukraine crisis.

MEED reviewed what resulted

from the war that led to the rise in the price of oil above $130 per barrel in early March.

It explained that there is con-sensus that it will reach an aver-age of about $100 in 2022, i.e. 50 percent higher than the expecta-tions of the International Mon-etary Fund, compared to less than $70 last year. Demand is expected to slow, but it will still be above 100 million barrels per day in 2022.

Unless the war ends quick-ly, oil prices in excess of $90

may continue into 2023, boost-ing growth and export earnings across the GCC.

MEED stated that Saudi Ara-bia is the only one among the four countries that projected a budget defi cit this year.

The kingdom may be able to eliminate the defi cit and reduce government debt to less than 30 percent of GDP.

This comes as the European Union intends to reduce Russian gas imports, which means an in-crease in the demand for other

sources. Only Qatar can benefi t greatly from this development, but not in the near future.

The magazine went on to ex-plain that the infl uence of the Gulf member states of OPEC on global energy policies is strengthening.

These countries are now com-mitted to the OPEC+ produc-tion agreement with Moscow to maintain relations that have de-veloped since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Despite the resentment that

the United States feels about the refusal of the Gulf states to stand by it, it avoids public dis-agreement with it, indicating that it is a balancing process that bears fruit for the Arabian Gulf states.

At the end of its analysis, the magazine states that it believes this is a horrifi c year for the Ukrainians, and a bad year for the world as a whole, but the Arabian Gulf states are working to ensure they emerge stronger than when they had started.

‘Unequivocal stance’

BRUSSELS, May 13, (KUNA): The European Union on Tuesday lauded Kuwait’s support to the UN charter and its “unequivocal stance” in favour of a rules-based international order to tackle global issues and prob-lems.

This position was ex-pressed by European Com-mission Vice President of the Margaritis Schinas, who is responsible for promoting “European Way of Life” and also for coordinating migra-tion and asylum issues, after a meeting with Kuwaiti Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Majdi Al-Dhafi ri.

Schinas told KUNA that he was very happy to re-cently propose formally the inclusion of the State of Ku-wait into the EU’s Schengen

visa-waiver scheme, saying it was not “an ad-hoc frag-mented decision” but tangi-ble proof of “our conviction that the State of Kuwait has the same view of the world as we do.

It is also a sign of apprecia-tion for the important reforms that Kuwait has undertaken and also for the very clear and unequivocal stance in favour of a rules-based international order and commitment to the UN charter,” he added.

The process now starts for formally adopting the Schen-gen visa-wavier proposal for Kuwait. “There is still some work to be done both at the Council of EU ministers and the European Parliament,” noted Schinas, citing his ex-pectation of a ‘swift agree-ment on the matter’.

EU praises Kuwait’s support forrules-based international order

Sadaaqa poster

Noura & Shaikha Al Arfaj on SadaaqaOn May 23, Sadaaqa, a show that celebrates India-Kuwait friendship presents Noura and Shaikha Al Ar-faj, daughters of Abdulaziz Al Arfaj, a Kuwaiti merchant who began his business from his office on Moham-med Ali Road in Bombay.

Noura Al Arfaj, CEO of Al Arfaj Engineering Company, a dynamic Kuwaiti woman who won the Arab Women’s Award for business ex-cellence was born and brought up in India. She can speak fluent Hindi, has strong memories of her growing up years, and innumerable stories to share.

Shaikha on the other hand was born in Kuwait but like her parents and older siblings developed a close and meaningful relationship with India. She nurtured this rela-tionship by spreading awareness about the benefits of ancient Indian practices in Kuwait.

Director of International Projects

at Pace, a leading engineering consulting company, Shaikha is at the top of her profession. Her inti-mate connection with India reflects in her entrepreneurship. She is the founder of Ginger, a vegan restau-rant based on the ancient Indian principle of ‘Satvik Ahaar’. She is also the co-founder of Harmony House, a Raja Yoga center based on a Raja Yoga center based on well being & mastery over the self learning.

On occasions, Shaikha can be found wearing a sari, a garment she wears with ease and confi-dence. In Sadaaqa, the two sisters not only talk about their family’s close association with India, holi-days in Panchgani and Alibaug, memories of life in Bombay, about Raja Yoga, and the concept of Sat-vik Ahaar but also about the close friendly connection between India and Kuwait.

Kuwait’s MoI cautions against dusty weather

Power index begins to rise at mid-day as summer sets inKUWAIT CITY, May 14, (Agen-cies): The electrical index began to rise with the increase in tempera-tures, as the volume of consumption reached 11,150 megawatts at two on Thursday afternoon, which is the peak consumption time, reports Al-Anba daily.

Informed sources at the Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy said these loads are considered the highest for this year with the approach of the peak season in light of the high temperatures that reached 36 degrees Celsius.

The sources pointed out that the re-serve – 2,520 megawatts -- is consid-ered reassuring, pointing out that the pace of maintenance of the power sta-tions and their introduction into ser-vice is going as planned to be ready in the peak season.

The sources pointed out the minis-try expects an increase in the volume of consumption starting from the end of this month, and it may reach 16,500 MW during the peak season, accord-ing to the mathematical forecasts of consumption compared to the highest

consumption last year which exceed-ed 18,000 MW.

Moreover, an emergency situation at one of the power transformers feed-ing the Abdali regopm partially cut off power supply to the area’s farms

area.The Ministry of Health has advised

the public to avoid exposure to dust and dirt, stressing the need to be care-ful; especially now that the country is witnessing harsh weather conditions,

reports Al-Jarida daily.Kuwait’s Interior Ministry on Fri-

day called on everyone to be cautious about countrywide unstable weather and dusty wave that led to low visibil-ity on some roads.

In a press statement, the ministry urged the public not to be hesitant to contact the emergency hotline 112 for necessary traffi c help.

The ministry, further, called on sea-goers to notify the coastguard on the number 1880888 before getting into the water, and to call the same number for any emergency and necessary help.

In a recent press statement, the ministry confi rmed the completion of all the necessary preparations like the availability of ambulance, primary health centers, emergency, and acci-dent departments in hospitals.

The ministry said all the treatments and medicines for diseases associated with changes in weather conditions are available. It also emphasized the need to refer patients to the nearest health cen-ter in case of failure to respond to treat-ment or call emergency number 112 to request for help.

KUNA photoDusty wave hit Kuwait on Friday that led to low visibility on some roads.

‘Absence of govt environmental coordination portends disasters’

Low performance threatens Kuwait’s economic resource

KUWAIT CITY, May 14: A recent report by the Au-dit Bureau painted a bleak picture of Kuwait’s envi-ronmental future, based on low performance indicators of the concerned govern-ment agencies, threatening in the end the country’s only economic resource, which is oil, impeding its export in the future, result-ing losses in millions, not to mention the great damages to public health and infra-structure in the country.

The report, issued under the title ‘Evaluating the efficiency and ef-fectiveness of the performance of the concerned authorities in dealing with the effects of climate change in Kuwait’ monitored the profound weather and environmental chang-es that Kuwait is subjected to, in contrast to the decline in the per-formance of government agencies and the failure to implement plans and projects that help In the face of these disruptive changes to health and the economy.

ReportThe report warned of the rising sea

level, which is losing coastal lands between 1.4% to 3% of its area, and exposing the desert ecosystem to the risks of extensive deterioration with an area of 14.2 thousand km2, equiv-alent to 80% of the country’s area, as a result of many natural factors, most notably the change in cover Vegeta-tion, loss of biodiversity and damage to natural materials.

The exacerbation of the creeping sand phenomenon and the absence of vegetation cover had a negative impact on the activity of many facil-ities, including oil wells, oil collec-tion centers, air bases, main roads, threatening the infrastructure, and representing a burden on the state budget, as the removal of sand cost the public budget in one year About $4 million, and the cost of remov-ing one cubic meter of sand rose to $1.32, which is the highest price in the world, and the total annual veg-etation cover change cost was $35.4 million.

The “Accountability” criticized the lack of coordination between the concerned authorities such as “Agriculture” and “Works” with the oil sector in taking the neces-sary measures to make windbreaks and increase afforestation around highways and oil installations, to address sandstorms, which hinders the export of oil and deprives the country of its source of income the only.

The report included mathemati-cal data on the increase in aver-age temperatures in the summer

KUNA photoPart of the annual symposium organized by the Arab Institute for Human Rights.

Methods and tools for teaching in Arab countries

Call to develop educational curriculaTUNIS, May 14, (KUNA): Kuwaiti researcher Dr. Siham Al-Fraih has stressed the need to develop education curricula, methods and tools in Arab countries, stressing that taking care of the fi eld of education is the fi rst and essential step for the development of societies.

This came in a statement that Al-Fraih made to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) on the sidelines of her partic-ipation in a symposium organized by the Arab Institute for Human Rights in Tunisia under the title ‘Future of Edu-cation in Arab Countries: Policies, Ap-proaches and Work Directions’.

Dr Al-Fraih, who holds the position of President of the National Society for Child Protection and Vice President of the National Bureau for Human Rights in Kuwait, expressed her pride in par-ticipating in “a meeting of this size and importance for all our Arab societies, especially as it revolves around the issue of education, which I consider one of the most important issues in the world, especially in the Arab region.”

She explained that “if any society wishes to enter into a development pro-cess, the fi rst step to achieve human de-velopment is to take care of education,” referring to the experiences of some Asian countries such as Singapore, which was suffering from several problems, but it made a great leap on the ladder of de-

velopment due to its concern for educa-tion.

She stressed the need to pay atten-tion to all aspects of the educational process, especially the development of curricula, methods and tools for teach-ing and education, calling for shedding light on this “vital” issue in the Arab world and seeking the assistance of in-stitutions, organizations, personalities and experiences to develop the educa-tion system by implementing the rec-ommendations and proposals of such scientifi c meetings.

She also called for the establishment of strong links between civil institu-tions and organizations interested in the fi elds of education, human rights and decision-making circles in the Arab world so that the recommenda-tions and suggestions of specialists fi nd their way to be implemented on the ground and benefi t our rising gen-erations.

Dr Al-Fraih stated that “the education-al process is a triangle whose sides are the student, the teacher, and the curricula, and it must be taken care of by providing the appropriate conditions and the neces-sary training and developing educational methods to respond to the requirements of the current era.”

She stressed the need to focus on developing teaching methods, tools and textbooks, and to get out as soon

as possible from the circle of indoc-trination, which is one of the biggest and most dangerous dilemmas of the educational process in our Arab curri-cula, and to replace it with interactive methods that transform the student into a key participant in the assimilation of values and knowledge.

In this regard, she said, “We must provide the learner with concepts and values of human rights, especially freedom, justice, tolerance with others, acceptance of differences in color, ori-gin, race and creed, and transforming these convictions into societal behav-ior.

She also called for “preparing spe-cial programs for children in confl ict and crisis areas in our Arab region, who have been deprived of their most basic rights to education, which will result in closed and violent genera-tions.”

It is noteworthy that Dr. Al-Fraih worked as a professor of Arabic litera-ture and previously held the positions of Dean of the College of Arts and Head of the Arabic Language and Me-dia Departments at Kuwait University.

Dr Al-Fraih contributed to the adop-tion of the Children’s Rights Law in the State of Kuwait in March 2015, where she participated in drafting the bill, which was subsequently approved by the National Assembly.

from June to September from 2005 to 2019, with a clear rise in temperature in 2021, which leads to heating the sandy soil and the emergence of a solid upper crust

that isolates rainwater intrusion, increases evaporation rates and depletes soil fertility and the dis-appearance of vegetation cover.

In addition, despite the negative climatic conditions, the report not-ed Kuwait’s success in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which makes it a country affected rather than affected by the phenomenon of climate change, which is a very important step in the field of en-vironmental preservation, accord-ing to the efforts revealed by the Environment Public Authority for the Diwan.

In this context, the “Accountabil-ity” report revealed a failure to com-plete the projects of the Meteoro-logical Department’s strategic work plan, and most of the objectives of its programs, most notably the develop-ment and expansion of the network of meteorological stations and im-proving the accuracy of forecasts.

He pointed to the Meteorol-ogy Department’s inaction in taking measures and issuing laws related to civil aviation, which takes years, and the inadequacy of cars for the tasks of following up on the 27 meteoro-logical stations distributed through-out the country.

He criticized the deterioration of most of the automated systems used by the department, while 6 projects worth 36 million dinars were includ-ed to enable them to manage their tasks. He also criticized the failure to include the rain seeding project in

the work plan.He stated that the administra-

tion requested the employment of 247 employees for its new proj-ects, with an actual need of 129 percent, stressing that there are obstacles in their employment due to the lack of encouraging finan-cial incentives, the lack of scholar-ship graduates to specialize in the field of meteorology, the dropout of forecasters to work in other jobs and the transfer of some of them to teach and the unavailability of expatriates working In this area.

The Audit Bureau drew attention to what it called “the failure of the Ministry of Health and the inad-equacy of the measures taken by it, in dealing with the risks of climate change, as there is a shortcoming in the process of counting respiratory patients in relation to the number of the population exposed to the influ-ence of weather conditions, such as high heat, humidity and dust.

The Audit Bureau report stated that the system of producing electric power using photovoltaic panels fac-es a great challenge, especially in the western region with the decline of vegetation cover and the frequency of dust storms, which lead to block-ing of light.

Effects of dust storms on the oil industry include the disruption of oil production for 645 days. port opera-tions stopped due to the delay in the arrival of tankers and delayed drill-ing operations.

Emirates Air lost $1 billion, but that’s an 80% improvement

One of the world’s biggest airlines and the Mideast’s top carrier, Emirates Air, said Friday it lost $1.1 billion over the past fi scal year, but that fi gure still marks an 80% improve-ment from the year before. The airline said revenue was up 91%, reaching $16.1 billion.

As Emirates Air claws it way out of the worst of the pan-demic, its main hub of Dubai International Airport remains the busiest in international travel.

Emirates expects to climb out of the red and see profi ts this year as it plans to start paying back its shareholder, the Dubai government, some of the $4 billion it threw the airline to stay afl oat amid COVID-19 lockdowns.

The carrier’s success and fi nancial health is seen as a

bellwether of Dubai’s own economy, which relies heavily on tourism, foreign investments and real estate purchases by the world’s elite. The emirate, which is part of the United Arab Emirates, was quick to swing open its doors to for-eign travelers with few requirements for entry after a brief, but extremely stringent lockdown period in 2020.

Chairman and chief executive of Emirates, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, said business recovery picked up pace in the second half of the fi scal year, with demand for travel coming back. It’s unclear how much of that was related to travel to visitors coming to Dubai to ex-perience its six-month-long World Fair, or Expo, that ended in March. (AP)

Market Movements 13-05-2022

Business Change Closing ptsJAPAN - Nikkei +678.93 26,427.65UK - FTSE 100 +184.81 7,418.15EUROPE - Euro Stoxx 50 +89.99 3,703.42UAE - DFM +92.00 3,418.57PAKISTAN - KSE 100 +588.02 43,486.46

Change Closing ptsSAUDI - Tadawul -543.78 12,835.30EGYPT - EGX 30 -176.95 10,678.98PHILIPPINES - PSEi -153.13 6,379.17

Kuwait oil price up – KPC

Spot oil dropped in April after three months of risesVIENNA, May 14, (KUNA): The OPEC Reference Basket dropped by USD 7.84, or 6.9 percent, to settle at USD 105.64/b, OPEC monthly report said Thursday.

The report also mentioned crude futures prices declined m-o-m in April, amid elevated market volatility, fueled by persistent uncertainty regarding market outlook.

The ICE Brent front month fell USD 6.54, or 5.8 percent, in April to aver-age USD 105.92/b and NYMEX WTI decreased by USD 6.62, or 6.1 percent, to average USD 101.64/b. Consequently, the Brent/WTI futures spread wid-ened 8 cent to average USD 4.28/b.

The market structure of all three major crude benchmarks - ICE Brent, NY-MEX WTI and DME Oman, softened significantly, but remained in back-wardation.

Hedge funds and other money managers kept net long positions in WTI and Brent little changed after the previous month’s sharp selloff.

World Economy World economic growth in 2022 is revised down to 3.5 percent from 3.9 percent in last month’s assessment, following growth of 5.8 percent in 2021.

US GDP growth for 2022 is revised down to 3.2 percent from 3.8 percent, after growth was reported at 5.7 percent for 2021.

Euro-zone economic growth for 2022 is revised down to 3.1 percent from 3.5 percent, following growth of 5.4 percent in 2021.

Japan’s economic growth for 2022 is revised down to 1.8 percent from 1.9 percent, after growth of 1.7 percent in 2021. China’s 2022 growth is revised down to 5.1 percent from 5.3 percent, after growth of 8.1 percent in 2021.

Challenges related to ongoing geopolitical tensions, the continued pandem-ic, rising inflation, aggravated supply chain issues, high sovereign debt levels in many regions and expected monetary tightening by central banks in the US, the UK, Japan and the euro area require close monitoring.

World Oil Demand World oil demand growth in 2021 remains broadly un-changed from the previous month’s assessment at 5.7 mb/d. World oil de-mand growth in 2022 is expected to increase by 3.4 mb/d y-o-y, representing a downward revision of 0.3 mb/d from last month’s report, with 1.8 mb/d in the OECD and 1.6 mb/d in the non-OECD.

Oil demand growth in 2Q22 is projected to be slower at 2.8 mb/d, compared with 5.2 mb/d in 1Q22.

Demand in 2022 is expected to be impacted by ongoing geopolitical de-velopments in Eastern Europe, as well as COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

World Oil Supply Non-OPEC liquids supply growth y-o-y in 2021 is broad-ly unchanged at around 0.6 mb/d.

Total US liquids production is estimated to have increased y-o-y by 0.15 mb/d. Non-OPEC supply growth for 2022 is revised down by 0.3 mb/d y-o-y to 2.4 mb/d.

Russia’s liquids production for 2022 is revised down by 0.36 mb/d.The US liquids supply growth forecast for 2022 is broadly unchanged at

1.29 mb/d.The main drivers of liquids supply growth for the year are expected to be

the US, Canada, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Guyana and Norway.OPEC NGLs are forecast to grow by 0.1 mb/d both in 2021 and 2022 to

average 5.1 mb/d and 5.3 mb/d, respectively.OPEC-13 crude oil production in April, increased by 153 tb/d m-o-m, to

average 28.65 mb/d, according to available secondary sources.Demand for OPEC crude in 2021 was revised up by 0.1 mb/d from the

previous month’s assessment to stand at 28.2 mb/d, which is around 5.0 mb/d higher than in 2020.

Demand for OPEC crude in 2022 was revised up by 0.1 mb/d from the previous month to stand at 29.0 mb/d, which is around 0.8 mb/d higher than in 2021.

Also:KUWAIT: Price of Kuwaiti oil went up by USD 3.01 to USD 115.20 per barrel on Friday compared with USD 112.19 pb on Thursday, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) said in a statement on Saturday.

Globally, price of the Brent crude rose by USD 4.10 to 111.55 pb, while West Texas Intermediate crude increased by USD 4.36 to USD 110.49 pb.

Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference at the Federal Reserve, on May 4, 2022 in Washington. The Federal Reserve intensifi ed its drive to curb the worst infl ation in 40 years by raising its benchmark short-term

interest rate by an sizable half-percentage point. (AP)

Soft US economic landingmay be out of Fed control

Senate confi rms Powell for second term

WASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): Federal Reserve Chair Je-rome Powell, fresh off winning Senate confi rmation for a sec-ond term earlier in the day, acknowledged for the fi rst time Thursday that high infl ation and economic weakness overseas could thwart his efforts to avoid causing a recession.

For weeks, Powell has portrayed the Fed’s drive to raise interest rates as consistent with a so-called “soft landing” for the economy. Under that scenario, the Fed would manage to tighten borrowing costs enough to cool the economy and curb infl ation without going so far as to tip the economy into recession.

But in an interview on NPR’s “Marketplace,” Powell conceded that that balancing act

- which many economists have said they doubt the Fed can achieve - could be undercut by economic slowdowns in Europe and China.

“The question whether we can execute a soft landing or not - it may actually depend on factors that we don’t control,” the Fed chair said. “There are huge events, geopoliti-cal events going on around the world, that are going to play a very important role in the economy in the next year or so.”

Such comments refl ect less confi dence in avoiding a recession than Powell has previ-ously conveyed. Just last week, he said at a news conference: “I think we have a good chance to have a soft or softish landing or outcome.”

On Thursday, he said that slowing infl ation to the Fed’s 2% annual target - from its current 6.6%, according to the central bank’s preferred measure - “will also include some pain, but ultimately the most painful thing would be if we were to fail to deal

with it and infl ation were to get entrenched in the economy at high levels.”

Europe’s economies are suf-fering from high infl ation, exac-erbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting spike in natural gas and oil prices. Eu-rope has been far more depend-ent on Russian energy supplies than the United States has been.

China’s strict COVID lock-down policies have shut down ports, hindering exports and slow-ing consumer spending in cities like Shanghai, where millions of Chinese have been largely restrict-ed to their homes for weeks.

In his interview with NPR, Powell also seemed to suggest that the Fed would at least con-sider raising its benchmark rate by an extremely large three-quarters of a point if infl ation failed to show signs of easing in the coming months. Last week, the stock market initially soared when Powell appeared to take a three-quarter-point rate hike off the table.

After repeating his comment from last week that half-point hikes were likely at each of the next two Fed meetings, in June and July, Powell added Thurs-day: “If things come in better than we expect, then we’re pre-pared to do less. If they come in worse than when we expect, then we’re prepared to do more.”

When asked if “do more” meant a three-quarter point hike, Powell said: “You’ve seen this committee adapt to the incoming data and the evolving outlook. And that’s what we’ll continue to do.”

The Senate on Thursday con-fi rmed Jerome Powell for a sec-ond four-year term as Federal Reserve chair, giving bipartisan backing to Powell’s high-stakes efforts to curb the highest infl a-tion in four decades.

The 80-19 vote refl ected broad support in Congress for the Fed’s drive to combat surging prices through a series of sharp interest rate hikes that could extend well into next year. The Fed’s goal is to slow borrowing and spending enough to ease the infl ation pres-sures.

Since February, when his fi rst term expired, Powell had been leading the central bank in a tem-porary capacity.

He faces a diffi cult and risky task in trying to quell infl ation without weakening the economy so much as to cause a recession.

An oil drilling rig is pictured at sunset, on March 7, 2022, in El Reno, Okla. A federal appeals court in New Orleans hears argu-ments Tuesday, May 10, 2022, about whether President Joe Biden legally suspended new oil and gas lease sales because of

climate change worries. (AP)

‘Lack of industry interest … confl icting court rulings’

Gulf, Alaska offshore oil lease sale cancelled WASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): The Biden administration is cancel-ing three oil and gas lease sales scheduled in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, removing millions of acres from possible drilling as U.S. gas prices reach record highs.

The Interior Department announced the decision Wednesday night, citing a lack of industry interest in drilling off the Alaska coast and “conflicting court rulings” that have complicated drilling efforts in the Gulf of Mexico, where the bulk of U.S. offshore drilling takes place,

The decision likely means the Biden administration will not hold a lease sale for offshore drilling this year and comes as Interior ap-pears set to let a mandatory five-year plan for offshore drilling expire next month.

“Unfortunately, this is becoming a pattern - the administration talks about the need for more supply and acts to restrict it,’’ said Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of the American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry.

“As geopolitical volatility and global energy prices continue to rise, we again urge the administration to end the uncertainty and im-mediately act on a new five-year program for federal offshore leas-ing,’’ he said.

The lease cancellations come as gas prices have surged to a record $4.40 a gallon amid the war in Ukraine and other disruptions that

have pushed prices $1.40 a gallon higher than a year ago. Consumer prices jumped 8.3% last month from a year ago, the government said Wednesday.

A federal appeals court in New Orleans, meanwhile, is consider-ing a challenge to a moratorium on new federal leasing that Biden imposed soon after taking office in January 2021. Biden said the ad-ministration needed to consider the effect of new drilling on climate change and conduct proper environmental reviews.

Louisiana and 12 other states challenged Biden’s order, saying laws passed in response to the 1970s oil crisis require lease sales on federal lands and waters.

The Biden administration failed to “grapple with prior analyses” of the planned sales to give a valid reason for postponing or cancel-ing them, Louisiana Deputy Solicitor General Joseph Scott St. John told a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel this week.

The three-judge panel did not indicate when they will rule.Environmental groups hailed the latest lease cancellation, saying

the administration needs to do more to curb greenhouse gas emis-sions from fossil fuels that are driving climate change.

“To save imperiled marine life and protect coastal communities and our climate from pollution, we need to end new leasing and phase out existing drilling,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal direc-tor at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

An Emirates plane taxis to a gate at Dubai International

Airport at Dubai International Airport in Dubai, United Arab

Emirates, on March 22, 2017. One of the world’s biggest

airlines and the Mideast’s top carrier, Emirates Air, said Fri-

day, May 13, 2022, it lost $1.1 billion over the past fi scal

year, but the fi gure still marks an 80% improvement from the year before. The airline said revenue was up 91%, reaching $16.1 billion. (AP)

Hyundai will set $7 blnUS plant on Biden visitATLANTA, May 14, (AP): South Korean automaker Hyun-dai Motor Group is expected to announce next week that it’s building a massive electric ve-hicle plant near Savannah, Geor-gia, according to a U.S. offi cial familiar with the anticipated an-nouncement.

Hyundai is fi nalizing those plans as President Joe Biden is set to travel to South Korea next week as part of his fi rst visit to Asia during his presidency.

The White House and Hyun-dai have been in discussions about the project, which is ex-pected to bring thousands of new jobs to Georgia, and the formal announcement is likely during Biden’s scheduled May 20-21 visit to Seoul, according to the offi cial who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The offi cial stressed though that details of the formal an-nouncement are still being worked out.

The plant could grow to include 8,500 employees and would be built on a 2,200-acre (890-hectare) site that state and local govern-ments own near the hamlet of El-labell, Georgia, said two people familiar with Georgia’s talks with Hyundai. The location’s about 25 miles (40 kilometers) inland from Savannah. The second person said Hyundai would invest more than $7 billion and could also build some cars powered by gasoline en-gines at the site, with an announce-ment in Georgia set for May 20. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the confi -dential talks.

It would be the second huge electric vehicle plant announced in Georgia in less than a year. Rivian Automotive in December announced it would build a $5 billion, 7,500-job electric truck plant about 45 miles (70 kilom-eters) east of Atlanta.

“Hyundai Motor Group is committed to accelerating elec-trifi cation in the U.S.,” said spokesperson Michelle Tinson. “We will announce the location of our new US EV plant soon.”

Biden is heading to South Ko-rea and Japan for talks with those two countries’ leaders. He also will meet during that trip with leaders from the Indo-Pacifi c strategic al-liance with the U.S. known as the Quad: Australia, India and Japan.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, who took offi ce ear-lier this week, pledged during

his campaign to strengthen U.S.-South Korea ties.

U.S. Sen Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, met with Kia offi cials Tuesday. “I tell busi-ness leaders regularly: Georgia is open for business,” Warnock said, not mentioning the possibil-ity of the plant.

Hyundai’s interest in Georgia was fi rst reported by Reuters, while The Atlanta Journal-Con-stitution initially reported the an-nouncement plan. The company sells cars under the Hyundai and Kia brands.

The announcement would come in the closing days before Georgia’s May 24 primary elec-tions and could be a last-minute boost to Gov. Brian Kemp. The Republican incumbent leads in polls in his effort to hold off a challenge from former U.S. Sen. David Perdue and others in the GOP primary. Perdue has repeat-edly attacked the Rivian deal, in which Georgia and local govern-ments have pledged $1.5 billion of incentives and tax breaks, saying the state is transferring money to liberal fi nanciers and should have consulted with local residents who oppose the plant because it threatens their rural quality of life.

The South Korean automaker would add a third American as-sembly plant to the Hyundai fac-tory in Montgomery, Alabama, and a Kia factory in West Point, Georgia. It’s unclear what mod-els would be assembled at the new Georgia plant. Hyundai an-nounced plans to invest $7.4 bil-lion in the United States by 2025 to produce electric vehicles, up-grade plants and develop technol-ogy. The company plans to start building hybrid and electric ve-hicles at its Montgomery plant by this fall, investing $300 million.

Kemp has cultivated ties to the Korean automaker, part of a push to deliver jobs to parts of Georgia outside Atlanta and to build Geor-gia’s position in the electric vehicle industry. South Korean conglom-erate SK Group is building a $2.6 billion complex to make batteries for electric vehicles in Commerce, northeast of Atlanta.

“There was a reason I made my fi rst economic development trip to South Korea and visited with great companies like Kia and Hyundai and a lot of others. We’ve got a great partnership with them and a lot of other South Korean compa-nies, and we have for a long time,” Kemp said Monday.

managers fi red from Twitter amid Musk buyout turmoil

Twitter fi red two of its top managers Thursday, the latest sign of internal tur-moil amid Tesla billionaire Elon Musk’s planned buyout of the company.

One Twitter general manager, Kayvon Beykpour, is leaving after 7 years. In a series of tweets Thursday, Beykpour said CEO Parag Agrawal “asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.”

Bruce Falck, Twitter’s revenue and product lead, was also fi red, accord-

ing to a tweet that has since been de-leted. His Twitter bio now says “unem-ployed.”

“I dedicate this Tweet to those en-gineers and thank you ALL for the op-portunity to serve alongside you. It’s been awesome. There is a lot more to do so get back to work, I can’t wait to see what you build,” Falck tweeted.

Twitter confi rmed both departures and said the company is pausing most hiring and except for business critical roles. In

addition, it said in a statement, “we are pulling back on non-labor costs to ensure we are being responsible and effi cient.”

Beykpour was the general man-ager of consumer Twitter, leading design, research, product, engineer-ing and customer service and opera-tions teams, according to his Twitter bio. A co-founder of the live streaming app Periscope, Beykpour joined Twit-ter when the social media company bought his startup in 2015. (AP)

BUSINESSARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

7

The Twitter application is seen on a digital device, on April 25, 2022, in San

Diego. Shares of Tesla and Twitter have tumbled

this week as investors deal with the fallout and

potential legal issues surrounding Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his $44

billion bid to buy the social media platform. Of the

two, Musk’s electric ve-hicle company has fared

worse, with its stock down almost 16% so far this

week to $728. (AP)

Number of fake accounts raise skepticism

Musk puts Twitter on hold … doubt on $44bn dealDETROIT, May 14, (AP): Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has put his plan to buy Twitter on what he called a tem-porary “hold,” raising fresh doubts about whether he’ll proceed with the $44 billion acquisition.

Musk tweeted early Friday that he wanted to pinpoint the number of spam and fake accounts on the social media platform. He has been vo-cal about his desire to clean up Twitter’s problem with “spam bots” that mimic real people, and he appeared to question whether Twitter was un-derreporting them.

But the company has disclosed in regulatory fi lings that its bot estimates might be low for at least two years, leading some analysts to believe that Musk could be raising the issue as a reason to back out of the purchase.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted Friday morning, indicating he’s skeptical that the number of inauthentic accounts is that low.

On Friday, Musk subsequently tweeted that he’s “still committed to acquisi-tion.” Neither Twitter nor Musk responded Friday to requests for comment. Musk has conducted a long fl irtation with Twitter that culminated in an April deal to acquire the social platform.

The problem of fake accounts on Twitter is not a secret.In its quarterly fi ling with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Twit-

ter itself expressed doubts that its count of bot accounts was correct, conceding that the estimate may be low. “In making this determination, we applied signifi -cant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated,” the fi ling says.

A review of Twitter fi lings with the SEC shows that the company’s estimate of spam bot accounts and similar language expressing uncertainty about it have been in Twitter’s quarterly and annual reports for at least two years, well before Musk made his offer.

Sara Silver, a professor of business journalism and fi nancial communication at Quinnipiac University, said it appears Musk is using the number of spam accounts as a pretext to pull out of the deal.

“To claim that this is the reason that he’s putting the deal on pause, it’s not credible,” Silver said. “This is not a new issue for him. It’s not just entering his consciousness now.”

Stock in both Twitter and Tesla swung sharply in opposite directions Friday, with Twitter stock falling 9.7% and shares of Tesla, which Musk has proposed using to help fund the Twitter deal, rising 5.7%.

But shares of Tesla, which Musk has been selling to fund some of the acquisi-tion of Twitter, have tumbled since it was revealed the social platform had become a Musk target.

Tesla shares have lost a quarter of their value in the last month, and have fallen from about $1,150 in early April when Musk confi rmed he had taken a huge stake in Twitter to $769.59 Friday.

“It’s become much more expensive for him to buy this company using his Tesla shares,” Silver said. An SEC spokesperson declined to comment.

Musk’s net worth, estimated by Forbes earlier this week at $240 billion, was $232 billion as of Friday.

Academic researchers in 2017 attempted a census of all of Twitter’s active English-language accounts and estimated that up to 15% were bots of some kind. Emilio Ferrara, a professor at the University of Southern California who helped lead the research, said Friday that Twitter has gotten better at detecting and con-stantly deleting spam accounts - but they are added to the platform all the time.

“It’s really hard to pinpoint the fi gure overall,” he said. “It’s not possible -- un-less you are Twitter -- to make a comprehensive estimate of the userbase.”

Tesla shares may have also benefi tted from Twitter bot accounts over the years. A University of Maryland researcher recently concluded that such bots have been used to generate hundreds of thousands of positive tweets about Tesla, potentially buoying its stock in years when it was under pressure.

Neither Tesla nor its supporters have taken responsibility for those bots.Investors assessing the deal have had to weigh Musk’s legal troubles and the

possibility that acquiring Twitter could be a distraction from running the world’s most valuable automaker.

Musk has already sold off more than $8 billion worth of his Tesla shares to help fi nance the Twitter purchase.

Originally Musk had committed to borrowing $12.5 billion with Tesla stock as collateral. He would borrow $13 billion more from banks and put up $21 billion in Tesla shares that would go to banks in exchange for cash when the deal closes.

Last week, Musk announced commitments of more than $7 billion from in-vestors that would reduce the number of Tesla shares he would have to post as collateral.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who follows both Tesla and Twitter, called Musk’s tweet “bizarre” and said Wall Street is skeptical. “The street view is that he’s trying to fi nd an excuse to basically talk down the deal price or walk,” Ives said.

If the deal doesn’t go through, Musk could have to pay a $1 billion breakup fee.He added that Musk’s use of Twitter rather than a fi nancial fi ling to make the

announcement was troubling and “sends this whole deal into a circus show with many questions and no concrete answers as to the path of this deal going forward.”

Elon Musk

CEO of FTX crypto exchange buys big stake in Robinhood

The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX has bought a 7.6% stake in Robinhood Markets, according to a fi ling with U.S. regulators on Thursday. Samuel Bankman-Fried said in the fi ling that he bought the shares thinking they were an attrac-tive investment and that he doesn’t currently have any plans to change or infl uence the control of Robinhood.

Robinhood shot to fame for its easy-to-use trading app, which brought a new generation of investors to the stock mar-ket, perhaps most famously with the meme-stock frenzy that sent GameStop soaring early last year. But crypto has become a major part of its business.

About a quarter of the revenue Robinhood made during the fi rst three months of the year from trading by customers

came from cryptocurrencies. Robinhood has been bolstering its crypto business, rolling out crypto wallets for its customers and adding new coins to trade on its platform.

Bankman-Fried built his stake in Robinhood through a com-pany called Emergent Fidelity Technologies, buying shares steadily from March 14 through Wednesday. The stock’s price fell over that time, as it has generally since briefl y touching $85 shortly after its debut on the Nasdaq in the summer of 2021.

Robinhood’s stock has plummeted as its growth has slowed sharply. It reported a larger loss for the fi rst quarter of this year than analysts expected. The company said volatility in stock and crypto markets kept casual investors away, or at least made them more cautious and less likely to do large trades. (AP)

BUSINESSARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

8

Terra experiences cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank run

Bitcoin drops, a stablecoin plunges in wild crypto weekNEW YORK, May 14, (AP): It’s been a wild week in cryp-to, even by crypto standards.

Bitcoin tumbled, stablecoins were anything but stable and one of the crypto industry’s highest-profi le companies lost a third of its market value.

Here’s a look at some major developments in cryptocurrencies this week:

BitcoinThe price of bitcoin dropped to around $25,420 this week, its lowest level

since December 2020, according to CoinDesk. It steadied around $30,000 Friday, but that’s still less than half the price bitcoin fetched last November.

Some bitcoin proponents have said the digital currency could protect its holders against inflation and act as a hedge against a decline in the stock mar-ket. Lately, it’s done neither. Inflation at the consumer level rose 8.3% in April compared to a year ago, a level last seen in the early ‘80’s. With the Fed-eral Reserve aggressively raising interest rates to try to tamp down inflation, investors are dumping risky assets, including stocks and crypto. The S&P 500 is down more than 15% this year. Bitcoin has dropped about 37% year to date.

Other cryptos have fared just as poorly. Ethereum has dropped 44% and dogecoin, a cryptocurrency favored by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has lost about half its value.

Stablecoin collapseStablecoins have been viewed as a safe harbor among cryptocurrencies.

That’s because the value of many stablecoins is pegged to a government-backed currency, such as the U.S. dollar, or precious metals such as gold.

But this week one of the more widely used stablecoins, Terra, experienced the cryptocurrency equivalent of a run on the bank.

Terra is a stablecoin in a cryptocurrency ecosystem known as Terra Luna. Terra is an algorithmic stablecoin, which means its supply is adjusted through complicated buying and selling to keep its peg to $1. Terra was also fueled by an incentive program that gave its holders high yields on their Terra. Luna was the coin meant to be used in the ecosystem to buy and sell assets, and at its peak it was worth more than $100.

Even though the developers of Terra said its algorithms would backstop the stablecoin, they decided to further backstop it with holdings of bitcoin.

Terra’s problems started from a combination of withdrawals of hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars from Anchor, a platform that supported the stablecoin. Combined with worries overall about cryptocurrencies, and the drop in bitcoin’s price, Terra started to lose its peg to the dollar. The bitcoin that Terra held was also worth less than they paid for it, and selling those bit-coin into the market caused bitcoin prices to fall even further.

Efforts by Terra’s developers to shore up liquidity failed. On Friday, Terra had fallen to 12 cents and Luna was trading at a value of less than one ten thousandth of one cent.

CoinbaseCoinbase lost about a third of its value this week, during which the crypto-

currency trading platform reported that active monthly users fell by 19% in the first quarter amid the decline in crypto values.

Investors had been running for the exits even before Coinbase reported a $430 million quarterly loss. Shares closed Friday at $67.87. On the day of its initial public offering just 13 months ago, shares reached $429 each.

In a letter to shareholders, Coinbase said it believed that current market conditions were not permanent and it remained focused on the long-term while prioritizing product development. While most Wall Street analysts ex-pect Coinbase to weather the storm, they’re also warning that increased regu-lation of cryptocurrencies could hamper the company’s growth.

RegulatorsThere has been a lot of talk about regulating cryptocurrencies, but little in

the way of action.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, responding to the volatility in the crypto markets this week, said Thursday that the U.S. needs a regulatory framework to guard against the risks surrounding cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.

In March, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said new forms of digital money such as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins present risks to the U.S. fi-nancial system and will require new rules to protect consumers. This Monday, right before the implosion of Terra, the Fed said in its semiannual report on financial stability that stablecoins are vulnerable to “runs” that could harm owners of the coins.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler has said that the crypto industry is “rife with fraud, scams and abuse” and that his agency needs more authority from Congress - and more funding - to regulate the market.

Britain has unveiled plans to regulate stablecoins as part of a broader plan to become a global hub for digital payments. European Union lawmakers have agreed on draft rules for cryptoassets, but still have to negotiate a final bill.

An advertisement for Bitcoin cryptocurrency is displayed on a street in Hong Kong, on Feb. 17, 2022. It’s been a wild week in crypto, even by crypto stand-ards. Bitcoin tumbled, stablecoins were anything but stable and one of the crypto industry’s highest-profi le companies lost a third of its market value. (AP)

Crypto meltdown promptsYellen to call for regulationWASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): Treasury Secretary Ja-net Yellen, responding to the recent sharp decline in the value of cryptocurrencies, said Thursday that additional federal regulation was needed to respond to the wave of speculative investment in the currency whose secrecy is an essential part of its appeal.

“We really need a regulatory framework to guard against the risks,” Yellen said of cryptocur-rencies called stable coins, during a House committee hearing Thurs-day. Citing the rapid rise in use of digital assets, she added, “Really, we need a comprehensive frame-work so that there are no gaps in the regulation.”

Stable coins are a type of cryptocurrency pegged to a specific value, usually the dollar, another currency or gold. Its parity with the dollar is what, in theory, makes it stable. However, volatility in the cryptocurrency market this week challenged that premise.

“We’ve had a real life demonstration of the risks,” she

said, referring to the meltdown of the TerraUSD begin-ning on Monday.

A run - or sale by a large number of owners - on the Terra stable coin, caused it to drop in value from roughly $8 to below 30 cents.

A Federal Reserve report released Monday outlines how stable coins are vulnerable to runs.

“Terra broke the buck and this morning and yesterday the largest stable coin Tether also broke the buck,” refer-ring to another token that dropped below its dollar peg this week.

Yellen was also questioned at the hearing on the root cause of inflation, which has driven up prices, and how the administration plans to combat rising energy, housing and food costs.

She said the administration is doing what it can to ad-dress supply chain issues and other contributors to infla-tion.

“We have a really good strong labor market, we have household balance sheets that are in good shape,” as well as a strong banking sector, Yellen said.

“All of those things suggest that the Fed has a path to bring down inflation without causing a recession,” she said.

Yellen

Philip Morris to buy Swedish Match for $16 billionNEW YORK, May 14, (AP): Philip Morris will attempt to step further into the smoke-free tobacco market, offering to buy the chewing tobacco company Swedish Match for about $16 billion in cash.

Philip Morris is offering $10.62 (106 Swedish krona) for each share of Swedish Match, a premium of about 39% to

its closing price Monday before the potential deal was fi rst reported in The Wall Street Journal.

Swedish Match, based in Stockholm, makes nicotine pouches, chewing tobacco and moist snuff, among other prod-ucts. It derives more than 65% of its sales from smoke-free products, with most taking place in the U.S. and Scandinavia.

This Dec. 17, 2020, photo shows the logo for the Robinhood app on a

smartphone in New York. The CEO of cryptocur-

rency exchange FTX has bought a signifi cant,

7.6% stake in Robinhood Markets, according to a

fi ling with U.S. regulators on Thursday, May 12,

2022. (AP)

Japan’s Honda sees profi t slide on chips, material cost woes

Honda’s fi scal fourth quarter profi t slipped to almost half of what the Japanese au-tomaker earned the previous year as it endured supply shortages and rising raw materials costs.

Tokyo-based Honda Motor Co. report-ed Friday that its profi t was 124.8 billion yen ($967 million) in the January-March quarter, down 41% from 213.3 billion yen a year earlier. Quarterly sales edged 7% higher to 3.88 trillion yen ($30 billion).

Honda said it is cutting costs but ac-knowledged continuing uncertainty over

supplies and production for various rea-sons, such as Chinese lockdowns to bat-tle coronavirus outbreaks.

The semiconductor shortage has hurt sales, despite strong demand for Honda models, the company said. Honda was securing alternative suppliers, it said.

“I deeply apologize for the problems we have caused for those customers gra-ciously waiting for our cars,” Honda Chief Financial Offi cer Kohei Takeuchi said from its headquarters.

In the fi scal year that ended in March,

Honda posted a 707 billion yen ($5.5 bil-lion) profi t, up 7.6% from 657 billion yen the year before. Sales totaled 14.6 trillion yen ($113 billion) sales, up 10.5% on year.

Honda, which makes the Accord sedan, Odyssey minivan and Civic compact, sold about 4 million vehicles for the fi scal year, down from 4.5 million vehicles. Vehicle sales dropped in Japan, the U.S. and the rest of Asia.

Motorcycle sales for the fi scal year in-creased 12.5% to 17 million motorcycles, as sales grew especially in Asia. (AP)

BUSINESSARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

9

Stocks rally … mark 6th straight losing weekWeekly losses in Friday fi nish

NEW YORK, May 14, (AP): Wall Street closed out an-other volatile week of trading with a broad rally Friday, though it wasn’t nearly enough to keep the market from its sixth straight weekly drop, the longest such streak since 2011.

The S&P 500 climbed 2.4%. More than 90% of the companies in the benchmark index closed higher. The Nasdaq rose 3.8% as more gains in technology companies helped lift the tech-heavy index. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.5%.

The upbeat finish still left the indexes with weekly losses of more than 2.4% each, extending the string of weekly declines to six weeks for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, while the Dow registered its seventh straight weekly drop.

Markets have been slumping since late March as traders worry that the Fed-eral Reserve may not succeed in its delicate mission of slowing the economy enough to rein in the highest inflation in four decades without causing a reces-sion.

While there have been sudden rallies along the way, including a 2.5% gain for the S&P 500 in late April and a 3% gain in early May, the market has continued to lose ground since setting an all-time high at the start of the year.

That’s not an unusual pattern on Wall Street when indexes are close to en-tering a bear market, or a decline of 20% or more from their most recent peak. The closest the S&P 500 has gotten to a bear market this year was Thursday,

when it ended 18.1% below the peak it reached in January.“If you look back at how bear markets unfold, they don’t go down every

day, all day, all at once until the finish, they have pretty good rallies,” said Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager with Globalt Investments. “This might be one of those big rallies that takes you back up somewhat before the market turns back down again.”

The S&P 500 rose 93.81 points to 4,023.89. The index is now down 15.6% for the year. The Dow gained 466.36 points to 32,196.66, while the Nasdaq rose 434.04 points to 11,805.

Smaller company stocks also staged a solid rally. The Russell 2000 gained 53.28 points, or 3.1%, to 1,792.67.

Twitter fell 9.7% after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he was putting his deal to acquire the social media company on hold. Tesla rose 5.7%.

Businesses have been struggling to keep up with increased demand for a wide range of products and goods amid supply chain and production prob-lems. They’ve been raising prices on everything from food to clothing, which has been putting pressure on consumers and raising concerns about a pullback in spending and slower economic growth.

The Fed is attempting to temper the impact from rising inflation by pulling its benchmark short-term interest rate off its record low near zero, where it spent most of the pandemic. It also said it may continue to raise rates by dou-ble the usual amount at upcoming meetings. Investors are concerned that the central bank could cause a recession if it raises rates too high or too quickly.

The Labor Department issued reports this week that confirmed persistently

high consumer prices and wholesale prices that affect businesses.“There’s a lot of issues and rising inflation with a tightening Fed is not the

greatest of market conditions, but at some point it’s priced in,” said Jay Hat-field, CEO of Infrastructure Capital Advisors.

Meanwhile, China’s decision to lock down major cities amid worries about a COVID-19 resurgence have further strained supply chains and Russia’s in-vasion of Ukraine raised already high energy and food costs globally.

Technology stocks led the gains Friday. Apple rose 3.2% and Microsoft rose 2.3%. The sector has been behind much of the broader market’s volatility throughout the week and has been slipping overall as investors prepare for higher interest rates, which tend to weigh most heavily on the priciest stocks.

Retailers and communications companies also made solid gains. Amazon jumped 5.7% and Google’s parent rose 2.8%.

Bond yields rose significantly. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 2.93% from 2.82% late Thursday.

The price of U.S. crude oil rose 4.1% to settle at $110.49 per barrel. It’s up about 50% for the year.

Investors have also been focusing on the latest round of corporate earn-ings to gain more insight into how inflation is impacting businesses and con-sumers. Several major retailers will report their results next week, including Walmart, Target and Home Depot.

Bitcoin steadied around $30,000 late Friday after dropping to around $25,420 earlier this week, its lowest level since December 2020, according to CoinDesk. Only six months ago it was over $66,000.

Spain, Portugal sign totemper energy pricesMADRID, May 14, (AP): Spain and Portugal on Friday signed off on a temporary cap on natural gas prices, in a co-ordinated move described by Portugal’s environment minis-ter as an “unprecedented” bid to temper soaring energy prices and inflation.

As energy prices surge across Europe, exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine, Spain and Portugal joined forces ear-lier this year to ask the Euro-pean Union’s executive arm to allow them to skirt the bloc’s common-market rules.

Citing the large amounts of renewable energy used in both countries and their scant connections with the Euro-pean power grid, the Euro-pean Commission agreed to allow a price cap on gas used for power generation, averag-ing around 50 euros ($52) per megawatt-hour for the next 12 months.

Spanish Minister for Ecolog-ical Transition Teresa Ribera said the measure would protect consumers and businesses as Europe grapples with volatile energy prices that are driving record inflation.

The cap is expected to imme-diately reduce costs for a third of domestic consumers and 70% of industry, she added.

“For the first time, it’s not the usual people paying for this,” Ribera said. “The measures ad-opted are fundamentally aimed at reducing the extraordinary profits of energy companies so that this adjustment benefits all of us.”

She did not provide further details on how the plan would be funded.

In Portugal, Duarte Cordeiro, the minister for the environ-ment and climate action, said the measure would capitalize on “unexpected” windfalls in the system to reduce prices.

“This is an unprecedented measure, a mechanism with a set of very clear goals. Firstly to stop the escalation of prices, secondly to protect those who are more exposed and thirdly, to socialize the costs and ben-efits.”

The joint plan will now go to European Commission to get the final go-ahead, Ribera add-ed, and was expected to take ef-fect fully in the coming weeks.

Energy companies in Spain have criticized the plan, citing concerns that the new rules will distort the market. José Bogas, the chief executive of Spain’s Endesa, said the cap on prices could result in an increase in gas consumption.

“That is the opposite of what is intended,” he said on a con-ference call with analysts ear-lier this week.

In late April, after news broke that the European Com-mission was considering the proposal from Spain and Por-tugal, the CEO of Spanish power utility Iberdrola, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, called for the EU to instead seek a common solution. Speaking during an analyst call, he described the idea of an exception for Iberia as “unjustified and contrary to the single market.”

Prices for energy have been steadily climbing in Spain since last year, said Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, an analyst who focuses on Europe for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “It’s one of the highest prices in Europe ... they have to protect consumers.”

It remains to be seen how exactly the cap will ultimately impact energy prices or wheth-er the governments or compa-nies will end up covering the costs of the cap, she added. “It depends on how they manage it now.”

Operators work at Enagas regasifi cation plant, the largest LNG plant in Europe, in Barcelona, Spain, on March 29, 2022. The Spanish government on Friday ap-proved a new plan aimed at reining in soaring energy prices, signing off on a temporary cap on natural gas prices that it said would immediately reduce costs for a

third of domestic consumers and 70% of industry. (AP)

Caracas breaks from socialist model

Venezuela plans stock sale of state-owned fi rmsCARACAS, Venezuela, May 14, (AP): In a break from its socialist model, Venezuela’s government plans to open for private investment a number of state-owned companies in vital sectors as it seeks to address a need for capital for severely underinvested businesses. Scant details on the move are fueling doubts.

The government intends to sell between 5% and 10% of shares in various companies, some of which were na-tionalized by the late President Hugo Chávez in his bid to transform the South American country into a socialist state. But basic information for a public offering, includ-ing number of shares, stock price and the exchange in which a company will be listed, remain unclear ahead of the planned Monday sale.

Chávez’s successor, President Nicolás Maduro, this week said the sales would be geared “fundamentally” to-ward local investors but foreign money could also flow into the companies, including telephone and internet ser-vice provider CANTV, which the government national-ized in 2007 after buying Verizon’s stake.

“We need capital for the development of all pub-lic companies,” Maduro said during a televised event Wednesday. “We need technology. We need new mar-kets, and we are going to move forward.”

Interest, however, may be limited to investors with ties to the government or those with an appetite for risk.

The country is still under economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other countries that prevent investors from being able to funnel money to Venezuela’s state-owned companies. And the percentages Maduro an-nounced would not give private investors decision-mak-ing powers to undertake much-needed changes within the corporations.

Among the companies Maduro mentioned are CANTV and its subsidiary Movilnet, petrochemical producer Petroquimica de Venezuela and a conglomerate focused in the mining sector. Some shares of CANTV already trade on the Stock Exchange of Caracas, the country’s

oldest exchange.At the turn of the century, Chávez carried out a series

of takeovers in the electricity, telecommunications, natu-ral gas and oil sectors. But the government made mini-mum investments in some of these companies, which have left them providing substandard services.

Days-long power outages are common across the country. Millions of households either do not have ac-cess to water or the service is intermittent. Internet and phone services are deficient.

Government supporters and opponents alike complain about poor basic services across the country even if an election is not approaching. But economists point out that Venezuelan’s government needs to improve some of those services even if it is slightly ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

“We are no doubt seeing a paradigm shift that is largely forced by the circumstances but also largely fueled by po-litical survival,” Luis Prato, senior economist with the firm Torino Capital. “Since June 2014, with this significant drop in oil prices, the Maduro administration began to see a drop in oil revenues. Then, we went through a period from 2014 to 2019 of price controls, of a more intervening state. But to the extent that the state began to lose incidence in the ability to generate wealth and growth, it began to make room for participation of the private sector.”

Venezuela is still under a protracted social, economic and humanitarian crisis credited to plummeting oil pric-es, economic sanctions and two decades of mismanage-ment by socialist governments. But the government has taken steps to relieve some of the economic pressures, including by giving up its long and complicated efforts to restrict transactions in U.S. dollars in favor of the local bolivar, whose value has been obliterated by inflation.

Maduro during this week’s announcement said the state-owned companies would be listed in the country’s “various stock exchanges” without specifying.

But by Friday, Gustavo Pulido, president of the Stock

Exchange of Caracas, had not received any information of the planned stock sales. He said the process to register the other companies and eventually list them is lengthy and requires the disclosure of financial documents.

“It takes as long as you want to take to make the place-ment successful. I couldn’t tell you a certain time,” Pu-lido said, adding that an offering on the Stock Exchange of Caracas could not be structured by Monday.

The government established its own exchange in 2010. A government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press regarding the exchanges it intends to use.

Prato said the government is likely to use its own ex-change or a separate digital system for now but that it would have limited results.

Henkel Garcia, director of the Caracas-based firm Econometrica, said the companies require significant in-vestments to improve the quality of their services, which were much better before they were nationalized. But he warned that the country lacks a mechanism to oversee the accounting and financial reporting procedures of the companies, making it impossible to guarantee the private investment in the state companies would be appropri-ately spent.

That missing component, he said, creates an scenario similar to post-Soviet reforms in which a large number of state-owned companies were privatized.

“If this really is the beginning of the total sale or the total handing over of these companies, which for me is a probable scenario, and one would have to ask to whom they would be handed over because we have episodes like the Russian one, in which these companies that once belonged to the state ended up in the hands of people who were close to the government,” Henkel said. “So, it is a complex phenomenon that one could say opens the door to something positive, but with the institutional weakness that we have and with the lack of credible referees, well, it might not end in the best way.”

Nissan considers thirdauto plant in AmericaYOKOHAMA, Japan, May 14, (AP): Nissan is considering add-ing a new auto plant in the U.S. to keep up with growing demand for electric vehicles, a top execu-tive at the Japanese automaker said Friday.

“It may not be a surprise that we go for a third plant,” Chief Operating Offi cer Ashwani Gup-ta told reporters at Yokohama headquarters.

Nissan Motor Co. now has two auto plants in the U.S. One in Can-ton, Mississippi makes the Titan pickup truck and Altima sedan, among other models. The other in Smyrna, Tennessee makes the Leaf electric car, Pathfi nder sport utility vehicle and other models.

Each of the plants employs thousands of workers and has pro-duced millions of Nissan vehicles.

The third plant would not just be an added assembly line to an exist-ing plant but a totally new facility, although it may be built as an ex-tension of an existing plant, Gupta said. That would add several thou-sand jobs in the area, although its realization would be some years

down the road.“The importance of localiza-

tion will increase year on year,” Gupta said.

Depending on the region, cus-tomers may receive incentives for buying electric vehicles, and the fl uctuating foreign exchange rate may also make localized production more desirable, ac-cording to Gupta.

His comments come a day af-ter Nissan reported profi tability for the fi rst time in three fi scal years, despite challenges in the overall auto industry stemming from a shortage of chips because of restrictions related to the coro-navirus pandemic.

Nissan, allied with Renault SA of France, recorded a profi t of 215.5 billion yen ($1.7 billion) for the fi scal year through March, a reversal from the 448.7 billion yen loss the previous fi scal year.

Gupta’s comments also refl ect a growing shift toward ecological vehicles to support sustainable forms of energy and transporta-tion amid worries about climate change.

Pilots at United will vote on contract after tentative dealCHICAGO, May 14, (AP): United Airlines and its pilots’ union said Friday they reached tentative agreement on the outline of a new contract, a notable deal while labor tension has increased in the airline industry.

The leader of the United chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, Michael Ham-ilton, and United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby called it an industry-leading agreement. However, fi nancial details were not disclosed.

The two sides said they were still working on contract language, and that pilots would hold a ratifi cation vote in coming weeks. The union represents about 13,700 pilots, who

have been working under terms of a contract that came up for renegotiation in January 2019 — by law, labor contracts at airlines do not expire.

The tentative deal at United contrasts with increasing tension between pilots and management at American, Southwest and Alaska. Pilots, whose numbers were cut through buyouts and early retirement after the pandemic hit, say they are overworked, and they are demanding sizable pay increases. Alaska Airline pilots began a strike-authorization vote this week. However, federal law includes barriers to legal strikes in the airline industry — they can be blocked by federal mediators or the president.

A woman walks in the rain near the logo of Honda Motor Compa-ny on May 13, 2022, in Tokyo. Honda’s fi scal fourth quar-ter profi t slipped to almost half of what the Japanese automaker earned the previous year amid headwinds of supply shortages and rising raw mate-rial costs. (AP)

EU envoy to Iran N-talks detained Top EU diplomat hopeful

The European Union’s main representative at the nuclear talks with Iran says he was briefl y detained with colleagues at Frank-furt Airport, in breach of diplomatic rules.

Enrique Mora of Spain, who has long led the EU delegation at the talks in Vienna, said the incident happened Friday morn-ing as he was trying to make a connecting fl ight from Tehran to Brussels.

Mora wrote on Twitter that he received “not a single explana-tion” from German authorities for why he was detained. “An EU offi cial on an offi cial mission holding a Spanish diplomatic pass-port. Took out my passport and my phones.”

Mora said the EU Ambassador to the U.N. in Vienna and the head of the EU’s Iran task force were also detained. (AP)

The European Union’s foreign policy chief said Friday he is hope-ful that stalled talks with Iran over the country’s nuclear program can reach an agreement.

The talks between Tehran and world powers are deadlocked in part over Iran’s demand for the United States to lift a terrorist designation on the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of the Group of Seven major economies in Germany, Josep Borrell, the EU’s high rep-resentative for foreign policy, said an EU envoy visited Tehran this week for talks that had “gone better than expected.”

“The negotiations have been stalled for two months due to this disagreement about what to do with the Revolutionary Guard,” Borrell said. (AP)

BUSINESSARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

10

‘Situation remains grim, complex’

Shanghai will try to ease lockdown in a few daysBEIJING, May 14, (AP): Shanghai will try again to reopen in a few days after it has eliminated COVID-19 transmission among the general population as the outbreak in China’s largest city subsides, an official said Friday.

The strict lockdown of the city - now in its seventh week, but lifted and reinforced at times to the frustration of residents - is part of the ruling Com-munist Party’s “zero-COVID” policy that has exacted a mounting economic toll and that even the World Health Organization says may be unsustainable.

The goal in Shanghai is to achieve “elimination in society,” meaning any new cases would only be in people already in isolation, Vice Mayor Wu Qing said at a news conference. That would allow an “orderly opening, limited (population) flow, and differentiated management,” Wu said.

No exact date beyond the middle of the month was given, nor did Wu say how the reopening would occur except that the city intends to gradually re-store industrial production, education and medical services.

Shanghai officials have made similar assurances in the past, only for restric-tions to return even as cases wane in the city of 25 million people.

Complaints about food shortages and other hardships and videos posted online showing people in Shanghai and other areas arguing with police have been deleted by censors.

In Beijing, which has a much smaller outbreak, more daily testing has been ordered, classes have been suspended, people have been ordered to work from

home, restaurants are restricted to takeout service, and many shops, tourist sites, banks and government offices are closed.

Some residential communities are under lockdown and residents have been warned to avoid traveling between city districts.

Shanghai reported 2,096 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, all but 227 of them in people not showing symptoms. Beijing reported 50 cases, in line with recent daily totals.

At a Friday briefing, National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng said that while case numbers are dropping, local transmission has not been entirely cut in some places and the situation remains “grim and complex.”

In a sign that testing may become routine in the future, authorities have ordered all cities to set up testing sites that are no more than 15 minutes’ walk from where people live. Shanghai alone now has more than 5,700 in opera-tion, with plans for another 4,200, state media reported.

China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed as “irresponsible” WHO’s doubts ex-pressed earlier this week about continuing the “zero-COVID” approach man-dating strict lockdowns, mass testing and the compulsory removal to crowded centralized quarantine centers of anyone who tests positive or is a close con-tact.

Experts have questioned the policy’s continued use given that vaccines are widely available, and it has affected growth in the world’s second largest

economy as well as global supply chains.Yet it has become ever-more closely identified with Chinese President and

Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, who is determined to maintain tight so-cial control and shore up his and the party’s authority ahead of a key party congress later this year.

Already highly limited rights to privacy, free speech and personal autono-my have been further restricted in the name of fighting the pandemic. China’s borders have been largely closed for more than two years, and this week the government said it would tighten restrictions on outbound travel by Chinese citizens and increase scrutiny over the issuance of passports.

At a meeting last week, the party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Com-mittee said it was committed to “resolutely fighting any attempts to distort, question or dismiss China’s anti-COVID policy.”

“In the face of mounting uncertainties due to COVID-19, one thing remains certain - China will stick to its dynamic zero-COVID policy that has proven pragmatic and effective,” the official Xinhua News Agency said in an edito-rial Thursday.

China’s outbreaks and the ensuing restrictions have led to a number of events being canceled or postponed, most recently the Asian Games originally scheduled for September in the city of Hangzhou, 177 kilometers (110 miles) west of Shanghai.

A customer looks at display cases in a bakery in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, May 11, 2022. Iran abruptly raised prices as much as 300% for a variety of staples such as cooking oil, chicken, eggs and milk on Thursday. (AP)

In this photo released by the Iranian Foreign Ministry,

Enrique Mora, a leading Euro-pean Union diplomat, left,

shakes hands with Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri

Kani in Tehran, Iran, March 27, 2022. Mora, the European

Union coordinator of talks to revive Iran’s nuclear ac-

cord with world powers said Tuesday, May 10, 2022, that

he was traveling to Tehran, as the bloc makes a last-ditch effort to salvage the deal after

a weeks-long standstill. (AP)

G7 warns over Ukraine graincrisis, eyes Solidarity LanesWEISSENHAUS, Germany, May 14, (Agencies): The Group of Seven leading economies warned Saturday that the war in Ukraine is stoking a global food and energy crisis that threatens poor coun-tries, and urgent measures are needed to unblock stores of grain that Russia is pre-venting from leaving Ukraine.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who hosted a meeting of top G-7 diplomats, said the war had become a “global crisis.”

Baerbock said up to 50 million peo-ple, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, would face hunger in the coming months unless ways are found to release Ukrainian grain, which accounts for a sizeable share of the worldwide supply.

In statements released at the end of the three-day meeting on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast, the G-7 pledged to provide further humanitarian aid to the most vul-nerable.

“Russia’s war of aggression has gener-ated one of the most severe food and en-ergy crises in recent history which now threatens those most vulnerable across the globe,” the group said.

“We are determined to accelerate a coordinated multilateral response to pre-serve global food security and stand by our most vulnerable partners in this re-spect,” it added.

Canada’s foreign minister, Melanie Joly, said her country, another major ag-ricultural exporter, stands ready to send ships to European ports so Ukrainian grain can be brought to those in need.

“We need to make sure that these ce-reals are sent to the world,” she told re-porters. “If not, millions of people will be facing famine.”

The G-7 nations also called on China not to help Russia, including by under-mining international sanctions or justify-ing Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

Beijing should support the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, and not “assist Russia in its war of aggression,” they said.

The G-7 urged China “to desist from engaging in information manipulation, disinformation and other means to legiti-mize Russia’s war of aggression against

Ukraine.”The grouping, which comprises Brit-

ain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, also reiter-ated its stance that the territories seized by Russian forces need to be returned to Ukraine.

“We will never recognize borders Rus-sia has attempted to change by military aggression,” they said.

The meeting in Weissenhaus, northeast of Hamburg, was billed as an opportunity for offi cials to discuss the broader impli-cations of the war for geopolitics, energy and food security, and ongoing interna-tional efforts to tackle climate change and the pandemic.

In a series of closing statements, the G-7 nations also addressed a wide range of global problems from the situation in Af-ghanistan to tensions in the Middle East.

Also:BRUSSELS: The European Commis-sion Thursday presented a set of actions to establish “Solidarity Lanes” to help Ukraine export its agricultural produce.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its blockade of Ukrainian ports, Ukrainian grain and other agricul-tural goods can no longer reach their des-tinations.

The situation is threatening global food security and there is an urgent need to es-tablish alternative logistics routes using all relevant transport modes, it said in a press release.

EU Commissioner for Transport Adina Valean said: “20 million tons of grains have to leave Ukraine in less than three months using the EU infrastructure.”

“This is a gigantesque challenge, so it is essential to coordinate and optimize the logistic chains, put in place new routes, and avoid, as much as possible, the bot-tlenecks,” she said.

The EU will work on a number of pri-ority actions in the short term.

They include providing additional freight rolling stock, vessels and lorries, prioritization of Ukrainian agricultural export shipments, and providing more ca-pacity for temporary storage of Ukrainian exports in EU territory.

Shelves emptied

Panic, anger after Tehranups prices of food staplesDUBAI, United Arab Emirates, May 14, (AP): Iran abruptly raised prices as much as 300% for a variety of staples such as cooking oil, chicken, eggs and milk on Thursday. Scores of alarmed Iranians waited in long lines to snatch up bundles of food and emptied super-market shelves across the country in the hours before the price hike took effect.

Panicked shoppers raided stores and stuffed basic goods into large plastic bags, according to footage shared widely on social media. Lines in Tehran snaked out of grocery stores late Wednesday. On Thursday, Iran’s currency dropped to a low of 300,000 rial to the dollar.

Internet disruptions were reported across Iran as the government braced for possible unrest, advocacy group NetBlocks.org said. Protests appeared to spring up in the remote and impoverished south, according to videos shared online. The Associated Press could not verify their authenticity but the footage corresponded to reported events.

The scenes revealed not only deep anxiety gripping the country and frus-tration with Iran’s leaders, but also underscored the staggering economic and political challenges facing them.

Food prices across the Middle East have surged due to global supply chain snarls and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which both export many essentials. Iran imports half of its cooking oil from Ukraine, where fi ghting has kept many farmers from the fi elds.

Although Iran produces roughly half of its own wheat, it imports much of the rest from Russia. The war has added to infl ationary pressures. Smuggling of Iran’s highly subsidized bread into neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan has spiked as hunger spreads across the region.

Drought is already ravaging Iran’s economy. Western sanctions over Iran’s nuclear deal have caused additional diffi culties. Infl ation has soared to nearly 40%, the highest level since 1994. Youth unemployment also remains high. Some 30% of Iranian households are below the poverty line, reports Iran’s Sta-tistics Center.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has promised to create jobs, lift sanctions and rescue the economy, but talks to revive Iran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers remain deadlocked. Iranian families have seen their purchasing power rapidly diminish.

The government is trying to act swiftly to blunt the pain. Authorities have promised to pay every Iranian citizen some $14 a month to compensate for the price hikes.

The cost of special and artisan breads, such as French baguette and sandwich bread, has multiplied by 10, bakery owners say. But authorities are careful not to touch subsidies on the country’s fl atbread, which contributes more to the

Iranians’ daily diet than anything else.Subsidies, and bread subsidies in particular, remain a highly sensitive issue

for Iran, which has been roiled by bread riots throughout its history. In the 1940s, bread shortages triggered mass street protests and a deadly crackdown that brought down then-Premier Ahmad Qavam.

Memories of Iran’s fuel price hike three years ago also remain fresh. Wide-spread protests - the most violent since the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979 - rocked the country. Hundreds of demonstrators were killed in the crack-down, according to Amnesty International.

But in recent weeks, the government has allowed prices to surge for almost every other staple, including pasta, until Thursday’s hike for remaining Iranian dinner table basics.

As Iranians vent about the rising prices of fl our, the top trending hashtag on Twit-ter in recent weeks has been #macaroni - the term Iranians use for all types of pasta.

“I am sure the government does not care about average people,” Mina Teh-rani, a mother of three told the AP as she browsed a supermarket in Tehran. She stared in shock at a price tag for pasta - now 165,000 rials for a pound, compared to 75,000 rials last month.

Iranians who had forgone meat or dairy to save money have nothing left to cut, complained Tehran resident Hassan Shahbazzadeh.

“Now even macaroni is taken off their dining table,” he said.“This jump in the price of fl our has made people crazy,” said Saleh, a gro-

cery store worker in Susangerd, a city in the oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan, home to an ethnic Arab population that has alleged discrimination and includes a separatist movement.

Saleh said that the price of a sack of 40 kilograms of fl our had soared to the equivalent of $18 from $2.5 in recent weeks, stoking intense anger in the res-tive province.

“Many rushed to groceries to buy macaroni and other things for their daily needs,” he said, giving only his fi rst name for fear of reprisals.

Tempers have also fl ared in Iran’s parliament.“The waves of increasing in prices have made people breathless,” Kamal

Hosseinpour, a lawmaker for the Kurdish area, thundered in a parliament ses-sion earlier this week. “Macaroni, bread and cooking oil are the main staples of Iran’s weaker people. ... Where are the offi cials and what are they doing?”

Other lawmakers have directly rebuked hard-line President Raisi.“The administration is incapable in managing the country’s affairs,” said

Jalil Rahimi Jahanabad, a lawmaker for the Taibad province near Iran’s border with Afghanistan.

Supporters of the government have described the price hikes as “necessary economic surgery” - part of a parliament-approved reform package. Some so-cial media users have ridiculed the term, saying offi cials have removed the patient’s heart instead of the tumor.

As outrage over rising infl ation surges online, Iranian authorities appear to be bracing for the worst.

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This image released by Paramount Pictures shows Tom Cruise as Capt. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell in ‘Top Gun: Maverick.’ ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ opens in US theaters on May 27. (AP)

Surprise! Justin Timberlake is in ‘Candy’ with Jessica Biel

Ashley Judd talks about mental health after mother’s deathNASHVILLE, Tennessee, May 14, (AP): Ashley Judd encouraged people to seek help for their mental health and talked about her griev-ing process after the loss of her mother, country star Naomi Judd.

In an interview aired on “Good Morning America” on Thursday, the movie star said she wanted to address her mother’s struggle with depression. Judd said she was with her mother at her home in Tennessee on the day Naomi died on April 30.

Judd also encouraged anyone who was having thoughts of harm-ing themselves to reach out to The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Naomi Judd died at the age of 76, a day before she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame with her duo partner and daugh-ter Wynonna Judd. In a statement provided to The Associated Press, the family said they had lost her to “the disease of mental illness.”

“When we’re talking about mental illness, it’s very important, and to be clear and to make the distinction between our loved one and the disease,” Judd said in the interview. “It lies. It’s savage. And, you know, my mother, our mother, couldn’t hang on until she was inducted into the Hall of Fame by her peers. I mean, that is the level of catastrophe of what was going on inside of her because the barrier between — the regard in which they held her couldn’t penetrate into her heart. And the lie that the disease told her was so convincing.”

Ashley Judd said that her mother shot herself with a gun, but asked for privacy on other details of the death. Naomi Judd wrote openly about her depression and anxiety in her memoir “River of Time” and daughter Ashley said it was because of this that she

cherished every moment she spent with her mother.“I really accepted the love my mother was capable of giving me

because I knew she was fragile,” Judd said. “So when I walked around the back of their house and came in the kitchen door and she said, ‘There’s my darling, there’s my baby.’ And she lit up. I savored those moments.”

Naomi and Wynonna Judd scored 14 No. 1 songs in a career that spanned nearly three decades. The red-headed duo combined the traditional Appalachian sounds of bluegrass with polished pop styl-ings, scoring hit after hit in the 1980s. Wynonna led the duo with her powerful vocals, while Naomi provided harmonies and stylish looks on stage.

The Judds released six studio albums and an EP between 1984 and 1991 and won nine Country Music Association Awards and seven from the Academy of Country Music. They earned a total of fi ve Grammy Awards together on hits like “Why Not Me” and “Give A Little Love,” and Naomi earned a sixth Grammy for writ-ing “Love Can Build a Bridge.”

Also:NEW YORK: Viewers tuning in to Thursday’s episode of “Candy,” starring Jessica Biel, may recognize a familiar face: Biel’s husband Justin Timberlake.

The musician and actor portrays a deputy who investigates the murder the show is centered around.

Biel, a co-executive producer on the project, says Timberlake fi rst approached her producing partner, Michelle Purple, about

wanting to be involved.“They sort of had this whole plan. I didn’t even know about at

fi rst. And then I thought he was kidding. And then he said, ‘No, for real, I want to do this.’ And then it was off to the races. He was getting a wig fi tting, it was so fun and was such a good surprise.”

Biel admits to being worried at fi rst about whether their dynamic would “translate at work” but that quickly went away.

“I actually felt total peace when he was around. Like, I knew he was going to hold that sort of safe space for me to work in the way I needed to and be non-judgmental and open and free. And he gave me the freedom to improvise, which he’s so good at and I’m less comfortable with.”

In “Candy,” Biel plays Candy Montgomery, a young, outgo-ing, church-going wife and mother in Texas who voraciously reads romance novels. She seems to have it all — but is bored — so she begins an affair with a man from her town (played by Pablo Schreiber) and ends up killing his wife, Betty, with an ax. Mont-gomery pleaded not guilty to the crime and a jury sided with her, some even saying they never liked Betty.

The story is based on a real case from 1980 and is of interest in Hollywood at the moment. Elizabeth Olsen recently wrapped fi lming her own limited series version called “Love and Death,” in which she plays Candy.

Melanie Lynskey, who plays Betty, hopes the story will lead to compassion for the victim, and that people will see how the trial was a popularity contest.

NEW YORK: The rapper Casa-nova pleaded guilty to charges in a gang-related federal racketeer-ing case that accused him of drug dealing and robbery, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The performer, whose legal name is Caswell Senior, was charged in a 2020 indictment against more than a dozen other members of the Untouchable Go-rilla Stone Nation gang.

Senior, 35, admitted to par-ticipating in offenses including a robbery in New York City and to conspiring to traffi c marijuana, prosecutors said. He had surren-dered in 2020.

The defendant “now stands convicted of playing a leadership role in Gorilla Stone, a particularly violent Bloods gang that operates throughout New York and across the country,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in statement.

Defense attorney James Kou-souros said the government dis-missed more serious charges as part of the plea. The robbery occurred at a diner where his client “asked a young lady to stop taping him and taunting him,” Kousouros added.

Senior, of Montville, New Jersey, “has accepted responsibil-ity fully and respectfully and we hope that the court will consider all the facts and circumstances,” the lawyer said. (AP)

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GENEVA: Christie’s says “The Rock,” an egg-sized white diamond billed as the largest of its kind to go up for auction, sold Wednesday for more than 21.6 million Swiss francs ($21.75 mil-lion), including fees — though at the low end of the expected range.

The 228-carat pear-shaped G-Color stone, with its platinum pendant mounting, has a gross weight of 61.3 grams (2.2 ounces) and dimensions of 5.4 centimeters by 3.1 centimeters (2.1 inches by 1.2 inches) — making it about the size of a medium hen’s egg.

G-Color is not the highest grade, but fourth on the letter rung below the top-grade D-Color diamonds.

An unspecifi ed private buyer acquired The Rock, for which the pre-auction estimate was between 19 million and 30 million francs.

Max Fawcett, head of jewelry at Christie’s Geneva, hailed a successful sale in “uncharted terri-

tory” for a stone of its kind.Also going under the hammer

Wednesday was the “Red Cross” diamond, a 205.1-carat fancy yellow stone, which fetched nearly 14.2 million francs, double the pre-sale estimate. The diamond was cut from a rough stone unearthed from South Africa’s Griqualand mines in the early 20th

century, and went up for auction for the fi rst time in 1918. (AP)

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ATLANTA: The rapper Gunna was booked into a jail in Atlanta on a racketeering charge Wednes-day after he was indicted with fel-low rapper Young Thug and more than two dozen other people.

An indictment fi led Monday in Fulton County Superior Court accuses Gunna, whose given name is Sergio Kitchens, of violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering law. It was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer who could com-ment on the charges.

The indictment alleges that Young Thug co-founded a violent

street gang that committed murders, shootings and carjack-ings over roughly a decade and promoted its activities in songs and on social media. It includes a wide-ranging list of 181 acts that prosecutors say were commit-ted starting in 2013 as part of the alleged racketeering conspiracy to further the gang’s interests. (AP)

Film

Variety

Tele

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‘Maverick’ a thoroughly enjoyable ride

‘Top Gun’ sequel back in the danger zoneBy Mark Kennedy

Early on in “Top Gun: Maverick,” Tom Cruise hops on his sleek motorcycle, wearing Aviator

sunglasses and a leather jacket with patches, and speeds into a time machine. No, that’s not right. It’s actually us who take a trip back.

More than 30 years after Cruise smirked his way to the cocky heights of the ‘80s as the maverick Navy pilot codenamed Maverick, he effortlessly picks up the character in a new chapter of “Top Gun” that is an absolutely, thoroughly enjoyable ride — a text-book example of how to make a sequel.

“Top Gun: Maverick” satisfi es with one foot in the past by hitting all the touchstones of the fi rst fi lm — fast motorcycles, the song “Danger Zone,” military fetishisms, humorless Navy bosses, shirt-less bonding sports, “the hard deck,” bar singalongs and buzzing the tower — and yet stands on its own. It’s not weighed down by its past like the last “Ghostbusters” sequel, but rather soars by using the second to answer and echo issues with the fi rst.

Cruise is, of course, back, reprising his rebel test pilot now based in a forgotten corner of the Mojave Desert, a mere captain when he should be an admi-ral because he keeps bucking authority. The years have not calmed Maverick from his impulsive, hot-headed style. Pilots do, he argues; they don’t rumi-nate. “You think up there, you’re dead,” he states. This is Cruise at his most Cruise-iest, coiled, sure and arrogant, teeth gleaming in the sunshine.

His once-rival Iceman — Val Kilmer — is back, too, a huge Navy muckety-muck now. And even Goose is back, by way of his son, the similarly mustachioed Miles Teller, who is strikingly similar looking to Anthony Edwards, the actor who played Maverick’s doomed fl ight partner and wingman in life in the fi rst fi lm. That death looms large for Maverick even 30 years on: “Talk to me, Goose,” he’ll whisper to himself.

Some things have changed, of course. The F-14A

Tomcats have been replaced by the F/A-18 and the all-male cocky pilots of the fi rst fi lm have been in-fi ltrated by a few cocky women. Unfortunately, it seems these are the last days of envelope-pushing men and women in naval aviation; pilotless aircraft are more reliable and they’re next. “The future is coming and you’re not in it,” Maverick is told by Ed Harris, playing a humorless admiral.

But Maverick, on the edge of extinction, has one last job for the Navy: Train a group of young hot-shots for a dangerous bombing mission in Iran. One potential snag: The young hotshots he must train include Goose’s son, call sign Rooster. Will Mav-erick be responsible for cooking another Goose? Can he outwit John Hamm, playing an imperious by-the-book offi cer with delicious calm fury?

VisceralDirector Joseph Kosinski brings a visceral feel to

the fi lm, somehow making us feel claustrophobic in the wide open sky as pilots swoop and swerve. He wonderfully alternates between loud scenes outside with airplane engines roaring and quiet ones indoors of people almost whispering. He also switches from brilliant sun to dark interiors.

One welcome touch in the screenplay by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher Mc-Quarrie is a new love interest for Maverick. Jen-nifer Connelly plays a divorced bar owner who has a townhouse, a beach house, a sailboat and a Por-sche, so business is good. But she’s also not a push-over for on-again-off-again Maverick and, in a key scene, she’s the comfortable pilot of a boat and he’s the clueless one.

This is a more thoughtful Maverick, more gloomy. “Top Gun: Maverick” is in some ways a meditation on what happens to gifted rebels later in life. He is riven by guilt and in one scene he is picked up and unceremoniously tossed out of a bar by the very same hotshots that he was 30 years ago. Worst, he’s called “pops.” What is remarkable is

that Cruise looks to have indeed found a way to thwart time. His chiseled body and still-boyish face are indistinguishable from the pilots three decades his junior during a football game on the beach.

The fi lm handles Maverick’s personal stuff — wooing the barmaid, repairing his relationship with Goose’s kid — while also fulfi lling its promise as an action movie. There are jets pulling 10Gs, the metal sound of cockpit sticks being pulled, epic dogfi ghts and the whine of machinery balking at the demands put on it. The action even takes a few unexpected and thrilling turns. So jump on Maverick’s bike, hug him tight and join him on the highway to the danger zone.

“Top Gun: Maverick,” a Paramount Pictures re-lease that hits theaters May 27, is rated PG-13 for “sequences of intense action and some strong lan-guage.” Running time: 131 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

Also:NEW YORK: Next year’s Academy Awards will take place March 12, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced Friday.

The date for the 95th Academy Awards moves the show up slightly from this year, when they where held unusually late on March 27, partly due to the February Olympics. But it will also leave in place a stretched-out awards season that some have argued saps the Oscars of drama.

The 94th Academy Awards didn’t lack for that, albeit not in the way the fi lm academy intended. On a night that saw Apple TV+’s “CODA” become the fi rst fi lm with a largely deaf cast and the fi rst fi lm from a streaming service to win best picture, the infamous slap by Will Smith of presenter Chris Rock overshadowed the awards.

Smith has since resigned from the academy, which banned the actor 10 years from attending the Oscars.

ABC will again broadcast next year’s ceremony. (AP)

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People & Places

NEWS/FEATURESARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

12

Promotes self love

Becky G unveils herevery side in songsNEW YORK, May 14, (AP): Becky G finds every bit of her represented in the songs of her new album, “Esquemas.”

“I can feel the parts of me that feel empowered. I can feel the parts of me that feel sexy. I can feel the parts of me that feel strong. I can feel the parts of me that feel vulnerable,” the Latin star says.

The 14-track “Esquemas”, which is out Friday and can be translated as outlines, includes the hit “Mamiii” with Karol G, as well as the previously released singles “No Mienten”, “Fulanito” with El Alfa, “Bailé Con Mi Ex” and “Ram Pam Pam”, with Natti Natasha.

It opens with the uplifting “Buen Día” and invites to dance and move with a mix of rhythms like pop, reggaeton, cumbia and hip-hop, in titles like “Tajín,” “Guapa,” the murky banger “Kill Bill” and the sensual “Una Más.”

It’s lyrics promote female empowerment, self-confi-dence and self-love.

“That definitely was the intention,” said the Mexican-American singer in an inter-

view.“I think throughout the pandemic we’ve all had

our own personal experiences,” she said. “For me, it gave me time to think about things that were more important in life. Not about ticket sales or how many streams I got on a song ... but (about) my family, my health, my mental health. And I was able to create music just to create music.

“’Esquemas’ is literally a genre-bending or genre-less album. Its songs are really just based on story-telling, real, true emotion and empowerment, for sure.”

Becky G, whose real name is Rebbeca Marie Go-mez, also spoke about “Dolores,” a touching song inspired by her “abuelita” (grandmother), and how important it’s been for her to honor her immigrant grandparents by staying true to her roots and singing in Spanish.

Remarks have been edited for brevity and clarity.AP: You open the album with the uplifting “Buen

Día” (“Good Day”), where you sing that you woke up wanting to eat the world and that you weren’t born to lose. Tell us a bit about that song.

Becky G: “Buen Día” is intentionally put as song No. 1 on my album because that is even a reminder to myself on my bad days that it’s never too late to have a good day, and that a day above ground it’s a success in itself, and that life is beautiful! You know, it’s an affirmation. There’s a lyric where I say: “Hice un pacto con la mujer del espejo / si yo estoy bien, ella está bien” (I made a pact with the woman in the mirror / if I am good, she’s good), basically saying like, that connec-tion that you have with yourself is so important, and taking care of yourself and accepting yourself for who you are. That’s what I love about “Buen Día”. When I go on tour and I’m tired and I may be having a (exple-tive) day, I’m gonna sing that song and be like, “Listen to yourself, Rebbeca!”

AP: The album closes with the hit “Mamiii”, which had massive success in the global charts with over 350 million streams globally. How did this col-lab with Karol G come to be?

Becky G: I’ve invited Karol to be a part of so many songs in the past and it never happened, not because we didn’t want to work together but because of the timing or of it wasn’t the right song. The ser-endipity of it all was that I wasn’t looking for it - like my grandma says, “Si Dios quiere (If God is willing) is when is gonna happen”. And that’s what happened.

(Producer) Ovy sent it to me during the holidays. I loved the chorus, I loved the style of production he was leaning into and I told him, “I wanna add more regional Mexican elements, more guitar and a little ‘grito’ (scream) in the beginning” because, you know, it’s a song that reminds me of the feeling that my mom would have when she would listen to artists like Ana Gabriel or Jenni Rivera, songs that you basically scream out because it feels so good and so cathartic. So “Mamiii” was done, and I guess Ovy played it for Karol and she FaceTimed me saying: “This is it, this is the one”. And I was like “This is it, ladies and gentle-men, this is the one!” I’m so thankful.

AP: You have a song called “Dolores” in which you tenderly try to console and uplift a woman that’s crying. Who is Dolores?

Becky G: “Dolores” is a song that I literally would dedicate to my younger self, to my “abueli-tas” (grandmothers), to my mom, to my baby sister, to any woman in my life that has ever felt unseen or misunderstood. “Dolores” is literally if you ripped out pages from my diary, and I think that’s what’s so special about “Esquemas”, that in every song I can hear myself. “Dolores” is one of those vulnerable songs. I was specifically inspired by my grandma, who’s not named Dolores, by the way, her real name is Guadalupe but my “tíos” (uncles) jokingly call her Dolores (pains) because “Ay Guadalupe, todo te du-ele” (Oh Guadalupe, everything hurts you). I think that song is really special.

AP: You are fully bilingual, and although you sing mostly in Spanish, you have also recorded mu-sic in English. Where do you feel more comfortable?

Becky G: You know, I feel comfortable in Span-glish. I can do interviews in Spanish and English, and I’ll always end up speaking Spanglish anyways. That’s just part of who I am and how I grew up. My “abuelitos” (grandparents) only speak Spanish, so I learned Spanish at the same time that I learned English. But I think I actually feel more confident expressing myself through music in Spanish. I found myself as a young woman in my sound and my mu-sic in Spanish, and I think you can really hear that, because I was so young when I got signed — I was 14, and I’m 25 today.

I only started in English in music because that’s just how it happened, but I’ve always been proud to be Latina, Chicana, Mexican-American. You know, my “abuelitos” came from Jalisco, Mexico, with their clothes on their back and not a penny in their pocket, and if it weren’t for their sacrifice I wouldn’t be where I am today. So it gives me a lot of pride to be able to sing music completely in Spanish because I AM Latina and because I can look to my “abueli-tos” and say: “Sí valió la pena”. It was worth it in the end.

Becky G

This image released by the Metropolitan Opera shows Brenda Rae as Ophelia, (left), and Allan Clayton as Hamlet in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Matthew Jocelyn and Brett Dean’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play ‘Hamlet’ on May 4, in New York. (AP)

‘To be or not to be true to the text’

New ‘Hamlet’ upends expectationsNEW YORK, May 14, (AP): Rosen-crantz and Guildenstern are dead, all right, but not as Shakespeare imag-ined. No Norwegian prince arrives to seize the Danish throne. And to be or not to be is not the question.

So it goes in the latest operatic ad-aptation of the most famous play in the English language. “Hamlet,” with music by Brett Dean and libretto by Matthew Jocelyn, opens at the Metro-politan Opera on Friday, the fi nal new production in the company’s come-back-from-COVID season.

This is “Hamlet” as you’ve never heard it, set to an orchestral score that includes an accordion, tinfoil, plastic bottles, sandpaper and stones knocked together.

And Jocelyn’s version of the play sounds at times as if he’d taken the various texts that survive and put them through a Mixmaster, even shifting lines away from one character and giving them to another. It’s enough to give Shakespeare purists fi ts.

Yet to paraphrase a line from the play, there’s method in his madness.

“I told Brett at the outset there’s no such thing as ‘Hamlet,’” Jocelyn said in an interview. “There were three versions published in his lifetime and every production has always been a confl ation. It felt to me that if we went back to the original sources we would have the raw material to make our own compilation, but in a more radi-cal way.”

Tenor Allan Clayton, who per-formed the title role at the work’s 2017 premiere at England’s Glyndebourne Festival and is repeating it at the Met, said that “what Matthew has done very cleverly is to upend some of the expec-tations.

“Because the benefi t of doing ‘Hamlet’ is that people can say, ‘Oh, I’ll come and see that,’” Clayton said. “They’ve got a way into it, as op-posed to any other contemporary op-era which might seem less approach-able. He takes that expectation and he doesn’t destroy it completely, but he

sort of throws curveballs in.”For example, Clayton, said in the

opera “My fi rst line is “ … Or not to be,” and the audience goes, ‘Oh, wait, that doesn’t come in until much later.’”

And when Hamlet does eventually deliver that soliloquy, it’s not the fa-miliar version but rather based on the fi rst published text of the play, the dis-puted First Quarto.

So instead of beginning: “To be or not to be: that is the question,” we get “...or not to be. To be....ay, there’s the point.” And later, instead of “To die; to sleep .. perchance to dream! Ay there’s the rub,” we hear “To die, to sleep - is that all? Ay, all. No! To dream - ay, there it goes.”

Besides rearranging and reassign-ing chunks of the text, Jocelyn had to make drastic cuts to get a play that would take nearly six hours to perform completely down to an opera of less than three.

Psychodrama“The decision was to make it a

family story,” Jocelyn said. So he and Dean jettisoned the character of Fortinbras, the Norwegian prince who claims the throne at the end of the play. They also dropped a subplot in which the sycophantic courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern accompany Hamlet to England and are murdered en route. Instead, they survive until the fi nal scene when Hamlet slashes them with a poisoned sword.

Focusing more narrowly on Ham-let’s agonizing over whether and how to seek revenge on his uncle for mur-dering his father helped Dean create what he called “an aural psychodrama, getting inside Hamlet’s head.”

To do this, he made the “sound world quite all-encompassing,” plac-ing two trios of clarinet, trumpet and percussion in side balconies, along with occasional choristers.

When a percussionist knocks two stones together, Jocelyn said, “We’re feeling what it is to be inside Hamlet’s head because those rocks are explod-

ing in his head.”There’s also a “semi-chorus” of

eight singers in the orchestra pit, which Dean said “work as a resonance cham-ber, an echo of some of the things you hear spoken or sung on stage.”

He even has Ophelia sing a few lines standing in an upper balcony.

“A lot of people who weren’t opera fans told me they loved sitting in the middle of the audience and feeling like they were in a cinema soundscape,” Clayton recalled from the Glynde-bourne performances. “Sort of like Dolby Surround sound.”

Despite the sometimes eccentric in-strumentation, Dean doesn’t consider his score particularly diffi cult for a newcomer to opera to appreciate.

“We composers like to think we’re the newest thing since sliced bread,” he said, “But it’s not the most chal-lenging thing that one will necessarily hear in avant garde terms. It has a lyri-cism.”

First performed in 1602, “Hamlet” and its infl uence are inescapable more than 400 years later. While the opera is playing at the Met, across town an acclaimed production from London is opening at the Park Avenue Armory. The Public Theatre is presenting the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Fat Ham,” a tale inspired by Shakespeare about a Southern gay Black college student. The current movie “The Northman” is based on the tale of Amleth, which was a source for Shakespeare. Even “The Lion King,” which has been on Broad-way for nearly a quarter-century, takes key plot elements from the play.

Yet though numerous composers have created operas based on “Ham-let,” only Ambroise Thomas’s 1868 fi ve-act French-language version has kept a toehold in the active repertory.

Even before the Met production, Dean’s “Hamlet” has shown signs of staying power, with performances in Adelaide, Australia and Cologne, Ger-many. It will also be produced at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Ger-many, next summer.

Stage

Becky G appears at the Oscars in Los Angeles on March 27, 2022. Beck G’s

latest album is ‘Esquemas.’ (AP)

NEW YORK: Fred Ward, a veteran actor who brought a gruff tenderness to tough-guy roles in such fi lms as “The Right Stuff,” “The Player” and “Trem-ors,” has died. He was 79.

Ward died Sunday, his publicist Ron Hofmann said Friday. No cause or place of death was disclosed per the family’s wishes.

Ward earned a Golden Globe and shared the Venice Film Festival ensemble prize for his performance in Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts,” and played the title character in “Remo Williams: The Adventure Be-gins.” He also reached new heights playing Mercury 7 astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom in 1983s Academy Award-nominated fi lm “The Right Stuff.”

“Devastated to learn about the pass-ing of my friend, Fred Ward,” tweeted actor Matthew Modine, who co-starred with Ward in “Short Cuts” and Alan Rudolph’s “Equinox.” “A tough façade covering emotions as deep as the Pacifi c Ocean. Godspeed amigo.”

A former boxer, lumberjack in Alaska and short-order cook who served in the US Air Force, Ward was a San Diego native who was part Cherokee. One early big role was alongside Clint Eastwood in 1979’s “Escape From Alcatraz.”

“I mourn the loss of Fred Ward, who was so kind to me when we worked together on ‘Remo Williams,’” actor Kate Mulgrew tweeted. “Decent and modest and utterly professional, he disarmed with a smile that was at once warm and mischievous.”

Ward’s other roles included a rumpled cop chasing a psychotic criminal played by Alec Baldwin in George Armitage’s “Miami Blues.” He was a formidable and intimidating father to both Fred-die Prinze Jr.’s character in “Summer Catch” and David Spade’s title character in “Joe Dirt.”

Ward played President Ronald Reagan in the 2009 Cold War espionage thriller “Farewell” and had a supporting role in the 2013 action fl ick “2 Guns,” starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg.

In the horror-comedy “Tremors,” Ward paired with Kevin Bacon to play a pair of repairmen who end up saving a hardscrabble Nevada desert community beset by giant underground snakes. (AP)

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NEW YORK: Jesse Williams vowed not to be discouraged after leaked video and images of his onstage scene in the

Ward Wahlberg

Variety

Kalush Orchestra from Ukraine singing ‘Stefania’ performs during the final dress rehearsal at the Eurovision Song Contest in Turin, Italy, May 13. Kalush Or-chestra and its members’ folk-hip hop anthem to their war-torn nation is the oddsmaker’s favorite to win the Eurovision Song Contest, an event intended to

celebrate diversity and promote friendship among nations. (AP)

Broadway play “Take Me Out” were posted online.

“I’m not down about it. Our job is to go out there every night, no matter

what,” Williams told The Associated Press on.

The leaked video and images prompt-ed an outcry from the show’s producers

and the union that represents actors and stage managers.

“I’m not really worrying about it. I can’t sweat that. We do need to keep advocating for ourselves. And it’s won-derful to see a community push back and make clear what we do stand for, what we don’t,” Williams said. “Consent is important, I thought. So, let’s keep that in mind universally.”

Williams earned a Tony Award nomi-nation Monday for playing the superstar and the revival is up for a Tony as well.

While Broadway shows have a strict policy against recording anything onstage, Second Stage Theater, which is producing the revival, has added Yondr pouches to protect the actors. Audience members arriving at the theater are asked to put their phones into a locked pouch that is only opened at the end of the show. Producers said they would beef up security in the wake of the violation.

“Theater is a sacred space, and every-body doesn’t understand that. Everybody doesn’t necessarily respect or regard that in a way that maybe they should, or we’d like,” Williams said.

The leaked video is the latest incident in which the privacy or well-being of a performer was put in jeopardy, following Will Smith’s Oscar slap of Chris Rock and when Dave Chapelle was attacked by a man at the Hollywood Bowl. (AP)

Music

SCIENCEARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

13

Moon goes blood red

1st image of Milky Way’shuge black hole revealedWASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): The world’s fi rst image of the chaotic supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy doesn’t portray a voracious cosmic destroyer but what astronomers Thursday called a “gentle giant” on a near-starvation diet.

Astronomers believe nearly all galaxies, including our own, have these giant black holes at their center, where light and matter cannot escape, making it extremely hard to get images of them. Light gets bent and twisted around by gravity as it gets sucked into the abyss along with su-perheated gas and dust.

The colorized image unveiled Thursday is from the international consortium behind the Event Horizon Tele-scope, a collection of eight synchronized radio telescopes around the world. Previous efforts to capture a good im-

age found the black hole too jumpy. “It burbled and gurgled as we

looked at it,” the University of Ari-zona’s Feryal Ozel said.

She described it as a “gentle gi-ant” while announcing the break-through along with other astrono-mers involved in the project. It also confi rmed Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity by being precise-ly the size that Einstein’s equations dictate. This one is about the size of the orbit of Mercury around our sun.

Black holes gobble up galactic material but Ozel said this one is “eating very little.” It’s the equivalent to a per-son eating a single grain of rice over millions of years, another astronomer said.

Scientists had expected the Milky Way’s black hole to be more violent, but “it turned out to be a gentler, more cooperative black hole than we had simulated,” Ozel said. “We love our black hole.”

“It is the cowardly lion of black holes,” said project sci-entist Geoffrey C. Bower of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Because the black hole “is on a starvation diet” so little material is falling into the center, and that allows astrono-mers to gaze deeper, Bower said.

The Milky Way black hole is called Sagittarius A(asterisk), near the border of Sagittarius and Scorpius constellations. It is 4 million times more massive than our sun.

This is not the fi rst black hole image. The same group released the fi rst one in 2019 and it was from a galaxy 53 million light-years away that is 1,500 times bigger than the one in our galaxy. The Milky Way black hole is much closer, about 27,000 light-years away. A light year is 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers).

To get the picture the eight telescopes had to coordinate so closely “in a process similar to everyone shaking hands with everyone else in the room,” said astronomer Vincent Fish of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The project cost nearly $60 million with $28 million coming from the US National Science Foundation.

“What’s more cool than seeing the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way,” said California Institute of Technology’s Katherine Bouman.

❑ ❑ ❑

Lunar Eclipse: A total lunar eclipse will grace the night skies this weekend, providing longer than usual thrills for stargazers across North and South America.

The celestial action unfolds Sunday night into early Monday morning, with the moon bathed in the refl ected red and orange hues of Earth’s sunsets and sunrises for about 1-1/2 hours, one of the longest totalities of the decade. It will be the fi rst so-called blood moon in a year.

Observers in the eastern half of North America and all of Central and South America will have prime seats for the whole show, weather permitting. Partial stages of the eclipse will be visible across Africa, Europe and the Mid-dle East. Left out: Alaska, Asia and Australia.

“This is really an eclipse for the Americas,” said NA-SA’s Noah Petro, a planetary geologist who specializes in the moon. “It’s going to be a treat.”

All you need, he noted, are “patience and eyeballs.” A total eclipse occurs when Earth passes directly be-

tween the moon and the sun, and casts a shadow on our constant, cosmic companion. The moon will be 225,000 miles (362,000 kilometers) away at the peak of the eclipse - around midnight on the US East Coast.

“This is this gradual, slow, wonderful event that as long as it’s clear where you are, you get to see it,” Petro said.

If not, NASA will provide a livestream of the eclipse from various locations; so will the Slooh network of ob-servatories.

There’ll be another lengthy total lunar eclipse in November, with Africa and Europe lucking out again, but not the Americas. Then the next one isn’t until 2025.

Launched last fall, NASA’s asteroid-seeking Lucy spacecraft will photograph this weekend’s event from 64 million miles (103 million kilometers) away, as ground controllers continue their effort to fi x a loose solar panel.

NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, a geologist, plans to set her alarm clock early aboard the International Space Station.

“Hopefully, we can be up in time and be at the right place at the right time to catch a good glimpse,” she told The Associated Press earlier this week.

Also:VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif.: A SpaceX rocket carried 53 satellites for the Starlink internet con-stellation into orbit Friday after blasting off from Cali-fornia.

The Falcon 9 booster lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 3:07 pm, and minutes later the fi rst stage landed on a droneship in the Pacifi c Ocean while the sec-ond stage continued toward low Earth orbit.

SpaceX later tweeted that the satellites were success-fully deployed.

Starlink is a space-based system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring internet access to underserved areas of the world.

Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX has hundreds of Starlink satellites orbiting Earth at an altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers).

Meanwhile, the roof of Seattle’s iconic Space Needle has been painted “Galaxy Gold” — the original color of of the landmark when it opened during the city’s 1962 World’s Fair.

The 605-foot tower’s paint job is part of the 60th anniversary of Seattle Center, the 74-acre campus that was built for the World’s Fair and now features a sports and performing arts stadium, cultural centers, the city’s popular independent radio station and other amenities.

The anniversary celebration, which began in April, continues for six months.

Space

Ashley Maddox feeds her 5-month-old son, Cole, with formula she bought through a Facebook group of mothers in need, May 12, in Imperial Beach, Calif. ‘I con-nected with a gal in my group and she had seven cans of the formula I need that were just sitting in her house that her baby didn’t need anymore,’ she said. ‘So I

drove out, it was about a 20-minute drive and picked it up and paid her. It was a miracle.’ (AP)

This image released by the Event Ho-rizon Telescope Collaboration, May 12, shows a black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way black hole is called Sagittarius A*, near the border of Sagittarius and Scorpius constellations. It is 4 million times more massive than our sun. The image was made by eight synchronized radio tele-

scopes around the world. (AP)

Discovery

Desalination project rejected: A Cal-ifornia coastal panel on rejected a long-standing proposal to build a $1.4 billion seawater desalination plant to turn Pacifi c Ocean water into drinking water as the state grapples with persistent drought that is expected to worsen in coming years with climate change.

The state’s Coastal Commission voted unanimously to deny a permit for Posei-don Water to build a plant to produce 50 million gallons of water a day in Hunting-ton Beach, southeast of Los Angeles.

Poseidon said it was disappointed in the decision.

“California continues to face a pun-ishing drought, with no end in sight,” a company statement said. “Every day, we see new calls for conservation as reser-voir levels drop to dangerous lows. We fi rmly believe that this desalination pro-ject would have created a sustainable, drought-tolerant source of water.”

The vote came after a heated meeting before the commission attended by doz-ens of supporters and critics of the plan. It was considered a crucial decision on the future of the plant after years of other hearings and delays.

Poseidon’s long-running proposal was supported by Gov Gavin Newsom but faced ardent opposition from envi-ronmentalists who said drawing in large amounts of ocean water and releasing salty discharge back into the ocean would kill billions of tiny marine organisms that make up the base of the food chain along a large swath of the coast.

“The ocean is under attack” from cli-mate change already, Commissioner Dayna Bochco said. “I cannot say in good conscience that this amount of dam-age is OK.”

Other critics said the water would be too expensive and wasn’t urgently needed in the area where it would be built, which is less dependent on state and federal wa-ter due to an ample aquifer and water re-cycling program.

Commissioners cited those issues in following a staff recommendation and re-jecting the proposal. They also cited the energy cost of running the plant and the fact that it would sit in an earthquake fault zone.

Before voting, the 12-member com-mission heard hours of comments from scores of people packed into a hotel meet-ing room in the Orange County city of Costa Mesa in addition to those tuning in online. (AP)

❑ ❑ ❑

Dolphin leaves quarantine: A rescued juvenile bottlenose dolphin, fl own from Texas to the Florida Keys-based Dolphin Research Center seven weeks ago, was moved to the facility’s primary dolphin lagoon.

The transfer marks the male marine mammal’s fi nal integration into a “for-ever family” of other permanent dolphin residents.

Ranger convalesced in a medical quar-antine pool specially designed to increase his eating and weight, while strengthen-ing both his immune system and his bond with human caregivers.

He was rescued a year ago after be-ing discovered stranded in waters around Goose Island State Park in Texas, suf-fering from an underlying respiratory infection and dehydration following his mother’s death.

After determining that Ranger hadn’t learned enough eating and survival skills from his mother to successfully live in the wild, National Marine Fisheries chose Dolphin Research Center in Marathon as his forever home.

To safely maneuver Ranger from quar-antine, DRC staff employed a special marine mammal stretcher and placed him into the natural Florida Bay water of the facility’s main lagoon. Several dolphins in neighboring pools observed as Ranger

speedily explored his new home, taking in their sonar signals for the fi rst time since arriving at the rehabilitation facility in late March.

It took less than an hour for Ranger to begin interacting and accepting food from Linda Erb, DRC’s vice president of ani-mal care and training.

“We were surprised he decided to eat within 45 minutes of getting in the pool,” Erb said. “He hasn’t heard dolphin sounds for over a year.” (AP)Newsom Bochco

Ozel

Biden focuses on shortage

US parents swap, sell baby formulaWASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): Presi-dent Joe Biden stepped up his admin-istration’s response to a nationwide baby formula shortage Thursday that has forced frenzied parents into online groups to swap and sell to each other to keep their babies fed.

The president discussed with ex-ecutives from Gerber and Reckitt how they could increase production and how his administration could help, and talked with leaders from Walmart and Target about how to restock shelves and address regional disparities in ac-cess to formula, the White House said.

“We recognize that this is certainly a challenge for people across the coun-try, something the president is very focused on and we’re going to do everything we can to cut red tape and take steps to increase supply,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

The administration plans to monitor possible price gouging and work with trading partners in Mexico, Chile, Ire-land and the Netherlands on imports, even though 98% of baby formula is domestically made.

The problem is the result of sup-ply chain disruptions and a safety re-call, and has had a cascade of effects: Retailers are limiting what customers can buy, and doctors and health work-ers are urging parents to contact food banks or physicians’ offi ces, in addi-tion to warning against watering down formula to stretch supplies or using online DIY recipes.

ConnectedThe shortage is weighing particular-

ly on lower-income families after the recall by formula maker Abbott, stem-ming from contamination concerns. The recall wiped out many brands covered by WIC, a federal program like food stamps that serves women, infants and children, though the pro-gram now permits brand substitutes. The Biden administration is working with states to make it easier for WIC recipients to buy different sizes of for-mula that their benefi ts might not cur-rently cover.

About half of infant formula na-tionwide is purchased by participants using WIC benefi ts, according to the White House.

Clara Hinton, 30, of Hartford, Con-necticut, has a 10-month old daughter, Patiennce, who has an allergy that re-quires a special formula.

Hinton, who has no car, has been taking the bus to the suburbs, going from town to town, and fi nally found some of the proper formula at a box store in West Hartford. But she said the store refused to take her WIC card.

Hinton said her baby recently ran out of formula from an already opened can she got from a friend.

“She has no formula,” she said. “I just put her on regular milk. What do I do? Her pediatrician made it clear I’m not supposed to be doing that, but what do I do?”

Parents are also using social media to bridge supply gaps.

Ashley Maddox, a 31-year-old mother of two from San Diego, started a Facebook group on Wednesday after failing to fi nd formula for her 5-month-old son, Cole, at the commissary on the Navy base.

What is behind the baby formula shortage in US?

“I connected with a gal in my group and she had seven cans of the formula I need that were just sitting in her house that her baby didn’t need anymore,” she said. “So I drove out, it was about a 20-minute drive and picked it up and paid her. It was a miracle.”

She said there was already a stigma attached to being a non-breastfeeding mom and that the group has become supportive. “To not be able to have that formula, it’s scary,” she said.

Jennifer Kersey, 36 of Cheshire, Connecticut, said she was down to her last can of formula for her 7-month-old son, Blake Kersey Jr., before someone saw her post on a Facebook group and came by with a few sample cans.

She said she and others in the group are helping each other, fi nding stores that might have the formula in stock and getting it to mothers who need it.

Kimberly Anderson, 34, of Hart-ford County, Maryland, said her 7 1/2-month-old son takes a prescription

formula that has been nearly impossi-ble to fi nd locally. She turned to social media and said people in Utah and Boston found the formula, which she paid to have shipped.

“They say it takes a village to raise a baby,” she said. “Little did I know my village spans the entire U.S. as I ping friends, family for their zip codes so I can check their local Walmarts to have them ship directly to me.”

Shortages of basic goods have been a problem since the start of the coro-navirus pandemic. Access to medical supplies, computer chips, household appliances, cars and other goods has been hurt by closed factories and out-breaks of the virus, as well as storms and other climate-related events.

Dr. Navneet Hundal, a pediatric gas-troenterologist at Massachusetts Gen-eral Hospital in Boston, said she and other pediatricians have been grap-pling with the formula shortage for months.

WASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): Many parents are hunting for infant formula because of a combination of short- and long-term problems that has hit most of the biggest US brands.

Millions of babies in the US rely on formula, which is the only source of nutrition recommended for infants who aren’t exclusively breastfed.

Here’s a look at what’s behind the problem and what parents can do:

Why is there a shortage?Ongoing supply disruptions have

combined with a recent safety re-call to leave many pharmacy and supermarket shelves bare.

The problems began last year as the COVID-19 pandemic led to dis-ruptions in labor, transportation and raw materials — economy-wide is-sues that didn’t spare the formula industry. Inventory was further squeezed by parents stockpiling during COVID-19 lockdowns.

Then in February, Abbott Nutri-tion recalled several major brands of powdered formula and shut down its Sturgis, Michigan, factory when federal officials began inves-tigating four babies who suffered bacterial infections after consuming formula from the facility.

Abbott is one of only a handful of companies that produce the vast majority of the US formula supply, so their recall wiped out a large segment of the market.

What is in baby formula?Most formulas contain protein

from cow’s milk that’s been al-tered to be easier to digest and en-hanced with extra nutrients needed for growth and development. The Food and Drug Administration sets specific nutritional requirements, including minimum amounts of pro-tein, fat, calcium and a number of vitamins. Formula makers achieve those levels by adding various sug-

ars, oils and minerals. The formulas are designed to

mimic breast milk, though stud-ies have repeatedly shown better health outcomes for babies who are breastfed.

Why can’t all mothers rely on breast milk?

Health professionals recommend exclusively breastfeeding babies until they are 6 months old. But federal figures show that only 1 in 4 are relying solely on breast milk at that age.

Mothers face a number of chal-lenges to long-term breastfeeding, including returning to work and finding the time and equipment needed to pump breast milk. About 60% of mothers stop breastfeeding sooner than they had planned, ac-cording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

State and federal laws have been enacted to encourage breastfeeding by requiring break time and accom-modations for mothers of infants.

Rates of breastfeeding have con-sistently been lower among Black babies than other groups. About three quarters of Black babies are breast fed in infancy, below the na-tional average of 84%, according to the CDC.

What should parents do if they are having trouble finding for-mula?

Talk with your pediatrician or call a local food bank to see if they can help locate some options. Experts also recommend checking with smaller stores and pharmacies, which may still have supplies when larger stores run out.

Most regular baby formulas contain the same basic ingredients and nutri-ents, so parents shouldn’t hesitate to buy a different brand if they’re having trouble finding their regular one.

Some infants require specialty for-mulas due to allergies, digestive prob-lems and other medical conditions.

Health

SPORTSARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

14

Astros rout Nationals,extend winning streak

Yankees improve to league-best 24-8

WASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): Jose Altuve homer-ed on the fi rst pitch of the game, Yordan Alvarez and Yuli Gurriel also went deep and the Houston Astros ex-tended their winning streak to 11 games with a 6-1 rout of the Washington Nation-als on Friday night.

Houston manager Dusty Baker, who led Washington to consecutive NL East titles in 2016 and ‘17, won in his fi rst game back at Nationals Park since he was fi red after two seasons.

Framber Valdez (2-2) allowed one run over 7 2/3 innings foir his fi rst vic-tory since April 7. Houston has allowed just 12 runs during its streak with an 0.91 ERA in that stretch.

Washington has lost seven of its last nine and is 4-14 at home. Its 11-23 re-cord after 34 games is its worst since opening 9-25 in 2007.

Valdez struck out six during his longest outing of the year, yielding his only run on Alcides Escobar’s fi elder’s choice grounder in the seventh.

Josiah Gray (4-3) allowed six runs and six hits in six innings.

Yankees 10, White Sox 4In Chicago, Giancarlo Stanton homer-

ed in his third consecutive game, Aaron Judge went deep for the second time in two nights and New York routed Chi-cago.

After connecting twice and driving in a career-high six runs Thursday in a 15-7 win, Stanton smacked a two-run drive Friday in the fi rst inning against Vince Velasquez (2-3). The Yankees have won 19 of 22 games.

Judge made it 6-0 when he hit a solo drive in the fourth for his major league-leading 12th home run. Josh Donald-son also homered in his second straight game and drove in three runs, and Joey Gallo went deep, too.

Gerrit Cole (3-0) lasted 6 1/3 innings, allowing three runs and six hits. The right-hander struck out nine and walked one, helping New York improve to a ma-jor league-best 24-8.

Angels 2, Athletics 0In Oakland, Chase Silseth allowed

one hit in six strong innings while be-coming the fi rst player from last year’s draft to make his major league debut, leading Los Angeles past Oakland.

An 11th-round draft pick by the An-gels last July, Silseth was still pitching in college for Arizona a year ago. He made eight appearances in the minors before getting called up from Double-A Rock City before the game to pitch for the big league club - fi ve days before his 22nd birthday.

Silseth (1-0) dazzled the A’s with a fastball clocked at 98 mph and a steady sinker and slider that helped produce eight groundouts. The right-hander fi n-ished with four strikeouts and two walks during his 81-pitch outing, and allowed only one runner to reach second base.

Mariners 2, Mets 1In New York, Ty France hit a tie-

breaking single in the eighth inning for yet another key hit and Seattle broke through against New York’s bullpen af-ter Max Scherzer tired in the Mariners’ fi rst game at Citi Field.

The Mets wore black jerseys on a misty Friday the 13th behind Scherzer, who pitched superbly and left after es-caping a seventh-inning jam.

Seattle, which won for just the fourth time in 16 games, went ahead in the eighth after Drew Smith (0-1) walked his fi rst two batters, Abraham Toro and Adam Frazier. With the infi eld shifted for France to pull, he poked a slider on the outside corner down the right-fi eld line.

Paul Sewald (2-1) struck out Starling Marte to strand runners at second and third in the seventh and threw a 1-2-3 eighth in his return to Citi Field, where he pitched for the Mets from 2017-20.

Red Sox 7, Rangers 1In Arlington,Nick Pivetta allowed a

run and three hits in a season-long seven innings to win for the fi rst time since

August and Boston had a four-run sixth inning to beat Texas.

J.D. Martinez began Boston’s big in-ning by lining a single to left fi eld that skipped at Brad Miller’s feet. The hit extended Martinez’s hitting streak to 14 games and his on-base streak to 30 games to last September, both the long-est active streaks in the major leagues.

Pivetta (1-4) ended a personal sev-en-game losing streak over 13 starts. His previous win was Aug. 13, 2021, over Baltimore. He struck out four and walked one. His shutout bid ended in the seventh inning when Kole Calhoun tri-pled to center and scored on a wild pitch.

The Red Sox have won two of their last three games following a season-long fi ve-game losing streak that put them in

last place in the AL East.Reds 8, Pirates 2

In Pittsburgh, Mike Moustakas homered twice and Brandon Drury drove in four runs to break out of a slump and lead re-surgent Cincinnati past Pittsburgh,

Moustakas hit a solo shot into the

right fi eld stands in the fourth inning to break a 2-2 tie. In the seventh, he had another solo homer to make it 8-2, two batters after Drury had a two-run drive.

It was the 15th multihomer game for Moustakas, who has 199 career home runs. He helped the Reds win for the sixth time in eight games following a 3-22 start.

Tyler Mahle (2-4) won for the fi rst time since opening day, snapping a six-start winless streak. Mitch Keller (0-5) remained winless.

Twins 12, Indians 8In Minneapolis, Royce Lewis hit a

grand slam for his fi rst big league hom-er, capping a nine-run fi fth inning that sent Minnesota past coronavirus-struck Cleveland.

Byron Buxton, Jorge Polanco and Gary Sánchez also homered for Min-nesota. The spree came after Minnesota was shut out in two of its three games against Houston.

The Guardians returned after hav-ing a game Wednesday at the Chicago White Sox called off - that was the fi rst COVID-19-related postponement in the majors this season.

Brewers 2, Marlins 1In Miami, Jace Peterson walked

against Anthony Bender with the bases loaded in the ninth inning to lift Milwau-kee past Miami.

After starters Corbin Burnes and Pa-blo López dueled for seven innings, former Marlins star Christian Yelich reached on a leadoff single against Tan-ner Scott (0-1) in the ninth. Scott hit Luis Urías and surrendered pinch-hitter Ty-rone Taylor’s single to right that loaded the bases.

Bender relieved and struck out Hunter Renfroe before walking Peterson on four pitches.

Tigers 4, Orioles 2In Detroit, Miguel Cabrera doubled

and homered to help slumping Detroit beat Baltimore.

Eduardo Rodriguez (1-2) pitched 6 2/3 scoreless innings, allowing fi ve hits and walking four as the Tigers won for

just the second time in 11 games. The Orioles left the bases loaded in each of the last three innings.

Cabrera gave the Tigers a 1-0 lead with an RBI double in the third. It was his 602nd career double, moving him ahead of Barry Bonds for sole posses-sion of 17th place in major league histo-ry and drawing a standing ovation from the Comerica Park crowd.

His 504th career homer in the sixth in-ning made it 2-0. The homer moved him into a tie with Eddie Murray for 27th on the career list and gave him 1,123 extra-base hits, breaking a tie with Manny Ramirez for 17th place.

Diamondbacks 4, Cubs 3In Phoenix, Ketel Marte had three hits

and drove in a run, Zach Davies pitched effectively into the sixth inning and Ari-zona beat Chicago.

Marte struggled to start the season after signing a long-term contract in spring training, but has started to round back into All-Star form the past couple of weeks. He had a pair of doubles off Drew Smyly (1-4) and fi nished 3 for 4, raising his average to .222.

Davies (2-1) allowed three runs and four hits with six strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings. Ian Kennedy worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the eighth after shortstop Geraldo Perdromo’s two-out error and Mark Melancon pitched a per-fect ninth for his seventh save in eight chances.

Giants 8, Cardinals 2In St. Louis, Logan Webb pitched six

strong innings and San Francisco Giants beat St. Louis for its sixth straight vic-tory.

Curt Casali hit his fi rst homer of the season during a fi ve-run burst in the eighth inning. St. Louis has lost fi ve of six.

Webb (5-1) gave up just one run de-spite allowing the leadoff batter to reach in fi ve innings. He didn’t permit a hit un-til Brendan Donovan’s shift-aided sin-gle to lead off the fi fth and his defense turned a pair of double plays behind him. Webb allowed three hits, walked three and struck out one.

Rays 5, Blue Jays 2In St. Petersburg, Brandon Lowe hit

a pair of triples and Manuel Margot had a tiebreaking single in the eighth inning, leading Tampa Bay past Toronto.

Lowe’s RBI triple capped a three-run eighth as the Rays sent Toronto to its fi fth straight loss. The Rays broke a 2-2 tie with three straight hits off starter Kevin Gausman (3-2).

Margot returned to the lineup after missing two games with a tight ham-string and extended his hitting streak to 10 games with his go-ahead single.

Padres 11, Braves 6In Atlanta, Ha-Seong Kim hit a three-

run homer in the seventh inning off re-liever Will Smith, Wil Myers went deep in the sixth against Max Fried and San Diego beat Atlanta.

Kim homered for the fourth time after Eric Hosmer and Myers singled against Smith (0-1) to make it 7-6. Myers added a sacrifi ce fl y in the ninth to make it 8-6. His solo shot to center in the sixth gave San Diego a 4-2 lead.

Kim, Hosmer and Myers each had three hits to help San Diego to a season-high 16.

Royals 14, Rockies 10In Denver, Andrew Benintendi hit a

two-run homer and an RBI triple, Hunter Dozier had his fi rst career fi ve-hit game and Kansas City outscored Colorado.

Ryan O’Hearn also homered, Michael A. Taylor had three hits and drove in two, and Bobby Witt Jr. delivered a two-run triple for the Royals. They entered the night with the second fewest runs in the majors.

Brendan Rodgers hit a two-run hom-er, doubled twice and drove in four, and Sam Hilliard homered for the Rockies in their fi fth straight loss. Kyle Freeland (1-4) allowed 12 of Kansas City’s 18 hits over 4 1/3 innings, and Colorado gave up six unearned runs.

Phillies 12, Dodgers 10, 10 InningsIn Los Angeles, Nick Castellanos had

a two-run double during Philadelphia’s three-run 10th, and the Phillies battered the slumping Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitching staff for the second straight game.

Justin Turner hit a tying two-run hom-er in the ninth and drove in four runs for the Dodgers, who have lost three straight for the fi rst time since July 21-23, 2021.

Philadelphia Phillies’ Bryce Harper (second from left), hits a solo home run as Los Angeles Dodgers relief pitcher Phil Bickford (left), watches long with catcher Austin Barnes (right), and home plate umpire Paul Emmel during the

eighth inning of a baseball game in Los Angeles. (AP)

San Diego Padres starting pitcher Yu Darvish works in the fi rst inning of a baseball game against the At-

lanta Braves in Atlanta. (AP)

BASEBALL

Altuve Drua dominate Moana Pasifi ka in battle of newcomers

Blues keep lead in Super Rugby PacAUCKLAND, New Zealand, May 14, (AP): Bryce Heem scored two tries as a fi rst-half replacement and winger Ca-leb Clarke added two more as the Auckland-based Blues beat the Queensland Reds 53-26 on Saturday to stay atop the table in Super Rugby Pacifi c.

Heem took the fi eld as an early substitute for All Blacks center Rieko Ioane, who strained a hamstring. He touched down fi rst in the 14th minute - less than a minute after tak-ing the fi eld - and again as the Blues built a 22-7 lead after 32 minutes.

The Blues were impressive, hunting turnovers through-out the fi rst half and quickly combin-ing in layered support play to create tries, including one before halftime to Clarke.

The Reds were almost constantly going backward which taxed their tight forwards. But they stayed in the game, overcoming lineout glitches and helped by penalties conceded by the Blues at breakdowns, to create two fi rst-half tries. Winger Suliasi Vuniva-lu scored the fi rst and had a role in the second scored by lock Ryan Smith.

Scrumhalf Tate McDermott and fl yhalf James O’Connor also helped the Reds with try-saving plays that kept the match in the balance at 22-14 at halftime.

The Blues put the match beyond doubt with two tries in the space of three minutes at the start of the second half.

The Reds rallied with two tries to fullback Jock Camp-bell on either side of a try to Blues replacement hooker Soane Vikena which made the score 46-26 or seven tries to four, briefl y endangering a Blues bonus point.

Vikena’s second try from a lineout drive sealed the match and made the bonus point safe ahead of the Blues’

clash with the second-place ACT Brumbies next weekend.Earlier, the Fijian Drua scored three fi rst-half tries and

held on in a tighter second half to beat Moana Pasifi ka 34-19 in the fi rst offi cial meeting of this season’s Super Rugby newcomers.

Unfortunately the clash of the fi rst Pacifi c teams in Super Rugby came when both likely are out of playoff contention.

After an exchange of traditional challenges, the Drua took the lead with a try after six minutes to backrower Te Ahiwaru Cirikidaveta. Only two minutes later winger Vi-naya Habosi made the score 14-0 with his fi fth try of the season. Flanker Solomone Funaki struck back for Moana Pasifi ka in the 13th minute but the Drua retained the upper hand with a try to center Apisalome Vota.

Prop Abraham Pole scored for Moana Pasifi ka who trailed 24-12 at halftime.

In the fi nal match Saturday, the Wellington-based Hur-ricanes came back from a 15-0 halftime defi cit to beat the New South Wales Waratahs 22-18 at Sydney.

Flanker Ardie Savea scored the winning try for the Hur-ricanes with six minutes left after substitute fl yhalf Ben Donaldson had given the Waratahs a three-point lead head-ing into the fi nal 10 minutes. It was the fourth win in four matches for New Zealand teams against their Australian counterparts so far in the 13th round.

On Friday, the Highlanders beat the Western Force 61-10 and the Crusaders defeated the ACT Brumbies 37-26 ahead of the Blues’ victory Saturday over the Reds.

On Sunday, the Hamilton-based Chiefs will try to make it a 5-0 clean sweep when they take on the Rebels at Mel-bourne.

Heem

RUGBY

MLB Results/Standings

WASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): Results and standings from MLB games on Friday.Houston 6 Washington 1Tampa Bay 5 Toronto 2Detroit 4 Baltimore 2Boston 7 Texas 1NY Yankees 10 Chicago W. Sox 4Minnesota 12 Cleveland 8LA Angels 2 Oakland 0Milwaukee 2 Miami 1

Cincinnati 8 Pittsburgh 2Seattle 2 NY Mets 1San Diego 11 Atlanta 6San Francisco 8 St. Louis 2Kansas City 14 Colorado 10Arizona 4 Chicago Cubs 3Philadelphia 12 LA Dodgers 10 innings 10

American LeagueEast Division

W L Pct GBNew York 24 8 .750 —Tampa Bay 20 13 .606 4-1/2Toronto 17 16 .515 7-1/2Baltimore 14 19 .424 10-1/2Boston 12 20 .375 12

Central Division W L Pct GBMinnesota 19 14 .576 —Chicago 15 16 .484 3Cleveland 15 16 .484 3Kansas City 11 19 .367 6-1/2Detroit 10 23 .303 9

West Division W L Pct GBHouston 22 11 .667 —Los Angeles 22 12 .647 -1/2Seattle 15 18 .455 7Texas 13 18 .419 8Oakland 14 20 .412 8-1/2

National LeagueEast Division

W L Pct GBNew York 22 12 .647 —Philadelphia 16 17 .485 5-1/2Atlanta 15 18 .455 6-1/2Miami 14 18 .438 7Washington 11 23 .324 11

Central Division W L Pct GBMilwaukee 21 12 .636 —St Louis 17 15 .531 3-1/2Pittsburgh 13 19 .406 7-1/2Chicago 11 20 .355 9Cincinnati 9 24 .273 12

West Division W L Pct GBLos Angeles 20 11 .645 —San Diego 21 12 .636 —San Francisco 20 12 .625 -1/2Arizona 18 15 .545 3Colorado 16 16 .500 4-1/2

Kohli fl ops again in ‘big’ Bangalore lossMUMBAI, India, May 14, (AP): Blis-tering half-centuries by Liam Living-stone and Jonny Bairstow earned Pun-jab Kings a crucial 54-run win over Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League.

Virat Kohli’s long run of poor batting form in the IPL continued when he fell for 20 and Bangalore limped to 155-9 after Punjab made a formidable 209-9. Kohli has only 236 runs with one half-century in 12 games this season.

The big win lifted Punjab to sixth and still in the race for a top-four place in the playoffs with two league games to go.

Bangalore barely hung to fourth place after its fourth loss in six games.

Kohli, who has three golden ducks in this IPL, fell to the pace of Kagiso Rabada after he was caught at short fi ne leg. The on-fi eld umpire gave not out, but Punjab reviewed and video showed the ball kissed the gloves.

“Sometimes when you’re a little bit under pressure, the game fi nds ways to keep you under pressure,” Bangalore skipper Faf du Plessis said of another Kohli failure.

SPORTSARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022

15

Washington Capitals defenseman Nick Jensen (3) reaches for the puck against Florida Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad (5) during the second period of Game 6 in the first round of the NHL Stanley Cup hockey playoffs in Washington. (AP)

Iga Swiatek of Poland returns the ball to Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus during their semifinal match at the Italian Open tennis tournament, in Rome. (AP)

Resilient Tsitsipas into Italian Open final

Swiatek equals Serena with 27-match winning streakROME, May 14, (AP): Not since Serena Williams seven years ago has another woman had such a hot streak.

Top-ranked Iga Swiatek routed Ar-yna Sabalenka 6-2, 6-1 for her 27th straight win and reached the Italian Open fi nal on Saturday.

Williams won 27 in a row over 2014 and 2015. The all-time longest streak belongs to Martina Navrati-lova, who put together 74 straight in 1984.

“I’m just constantly surprising my-self that I can do better and better,” Swiatek said. “I feel like I actually can believe now that the sky’s the limit. That’s the fun part.”

Aiming to defend her Rome title in Sunday’s fi nal, Swiatek will face

another player on a run, Ons Jabeur, who beat Daria Ka-satkina 6-4, 1-6, 7-5 for her 11th consecu-tive victory after lifting the Madrid Open trophy last week.

In the men’s t o u r n a m e n t ,

Stefanos Tsitsipas reached his fi rst Rome fi nal by rallying past Alexan-der Zverev 4-6, 6-3, 6-3.

Seeking to win her fi fth straight tournament, Swiatek dominated the eighth-ranked Sabalenka with power, consistency and fi nesse.

While she struggled with her serve at times, Swiatek was able to consist-ently crush both forehand and back-hand winners on the slow, red clay court at the Foro Italico. The 20-year-old Pole also hit a delicate backhand half-volley winner in the fi nal game of the fi rst set.

Swiatek had the same number of winners and unforced errors, 15, while Sabalenka produced just eight winners and had a whopping 31 un-forced errors.

“Today I felt like I really under-stood the clay,” Swiatek said.

The hard-hitting Sabalenka took a medical timeout late in the second set and had her back treated.

When it was over, she waved her arms to urge the crowd to cheer loud-

er for her.Swiatek, who was a surprise

champion at the French Open in 2020 when she was ranked No. 54, will be the favorite to add a sec-ond title at Roland Garros when the year’s second Grand Slam starts next weekend.

There’s more to Swiatek’s super season than her winning streak.

With more than half the season still to go, Swiatek has already won as many matches this year (36) as she did in all of 2021.

She also became the seventh player to reach two fi nals in Rome before turning 21 after Chris Evert, Navra-tilova, Gabriela Sabatini, Monica Se-les, Martina Hingis and Venus Wil-liams.

Jabeur saved a match point late in the third with an inside-out forehand winner that landed on the line. The Tunisian then sealed it on her fi rst match point with a backhand drop-shot winner - an appropriate ending for the player who leads the tour in successful drop shots this year with more than 100.

In all, Jabeur hit 47 winners to Ka-satkina’s 13.

Tsitsipas has been pushed to three sets in three of his four matches this week, having also overcome local fa-vorite Jannik Sinner in straight sets in the quarterfi nals.

Tsitsipas has also played all of his matches in the midday heat.

“The heat hasn’t been easy. But that’s what I prefer,” the Greek player said.

Tsitsipas defended his title at the Monte Carlo Masters last month and is aiming for another big clay-court title before the French Open.

The Italian Open has been played at the picturesque Foro Italico, which includes a court lined by neo-classi-cal statues, since 1935.

“It’s one of the tournaments that has the most history in our sport,” Tsitsipas said. “You can see walk-ing around the site, one of the most beautiful stadiums - the Pietrangeli. So there’s a lot of history playing in these courts and you feel very proud that you’ve made your way here and are able to participate in such a his-torically rich event.”

WASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): Jonathan Huberdeau couldn’t remember what it was like to be on the smil-ing side of a handshake line.

The feelings were so strong after he and the Florida Panthers beat the Washington Capitals 4-3 in overtime Friday night to win Game 6 and move on to the second round that Huberdeau wants to replicate it over and over.

“We didn’t know how it felt,” he said. “Now we might as well go all the way.”

That’s a long way off, but getting out of the first round was a strong first step for the Presidents’ Trophy winners who won the franchise’s first playoff series since 1996. Ending that drought at 26 years took bouncing back from the Capitals tying the score with 1:03 left in regulation and getting another big goal from leading scorer Carter Verhaeghe 2:46 into overtime to move on.

Florida will face either the cross-state rival - and back-to-back defend-ing Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning - or the Toronto Maple Leafs in the next round. They face off in Game 7 of that series Sat-urday.

“They’re going to be big-time chal-lenges,” interim coach Andrew Bru-nette said. “It will be a different kind of series.”

This series included the Panthers rallying from a deficit to win the final

three games. After Ryan Lomberg tied it in the second period in his return to the lineup, trade-deadline acquisition Claude Giroux evened things up in the third and captain Aleksander Bar-kov put them ahead before T.J. Os-hie’s power-play goal sent the game to OT.

After a league-high 29 comeback victories in the regular season and a dose of adversity in a tougher series than many anticipated, the Panthers were not shaken by the sudden turn of events.

“We were just confident,” Huber-deau said. “We know we can score some goals. Obviously they tied it up, but that’s hockey. That’s how it hap-pened the way we won here the last time, so that was the same thing. Ob-viously we stuck with it, and that’s the kind of team we are and we showed it.”

Verheaghe’s OT goal was his team-leading sixth of the series and came after he missed the morning skate and was considered a game-time decision. Brunette said Verhae-ghe “dug in deep and found a way to get it done.”

That’s true about the entire team. Dogged by the reputation of losing in the playoffs, Florida’s core of Hu-berdeau, Barkov and top defenseman Aaron Ekblad that had fallen short three previous times finally got to soak in what it’s like to win a

Rangers 5, Penguins 3 In Pittsburgh, Chris Kreider’s

long slap shot bounced over Louis Domingue and into the net with 1:28 left and the New York Rangers beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 5-3 on Friday night to push their thrilling first-round series to a deciding Game 7.

Kreider’s second of the game and fourth of the playoffs sent the series

back to New York. Andrew Copp added an empty netter for good mea-sure in the waning seconds. Game 7 is Sunday at Madison Square Garden.

Mike Zibanejad had two goals and two assists and Adam Fox had four assists. Igor Shesterkin stopped 31 shots to win at PPG Paints Arena for the first time this series after getting chased by Pittsburgh in Games 3 and 4.

Bryan Rust, Evgeni Malkin and Jeff Carter scored for Pittsburgh. Domingue, who has become a local folk hero while filling in for injured Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith, made 33 saves but couldn’t get a han-dle on Kreider’s shot, which seemed to hit him high then popped up into the air and behind him before rolling into the net.

Pittsburgh played without captain Sidney Crosby, who sat out while deal-ing with an upper-body injury. His sta-tus going forward is uncertain.

Stars 4, Flames 2In Dallas, Miro Heiskanen scored

the go-ahead goal late in the second period for and Dallas recovered af-ter blowing an early two-goal lead to force a deciding Game 7 in their first-round Western Conference series.

Roope Hintz and Michael Raffl also scored for the wild-card Stars, and Tyler Seguin added an empty-netter in the final minute. Jake Oettinger stopped 36 shots.

Mikael Backlund and Michael Stone scored for Calgary, which tied the score 2-2 with 8:01 left in the sec-ond. Jacob Markstrom also had 36 saves.

The series wraps up Sunday night in Calgary, where the Flames last hosted a Game 7 in 2006 and lost their first-round series to Anaheim.

Rangers, Stars force Game 7s

Wings rally to‘beat’ MysticsWASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): Arike Ogunbowale scored 27 points, Allisha Gray had 21 and the Dallas Wings overcame a 15-point second-quarter deficit to beat the Washington Mystics 94-86 on Friday night.

Ogunbowale took over after Dal-las (1-1) fell behind 38-23 with 3:34 remaining in the second quarter. She hit three straight 3-pointers in a min-ute second span, scoring 14 of her 18 points in the quarter from there to pull the Wings to 44-41 at halftime.

Gray tied it with a 3-pointer 20 sec-onds into the third period, accounting for 12 points to help the Wings take a 66-55 lead into the fourth. The Mystics (3-1) got no closer than six points in the final quarter.

Fever 92, Liberty 86, OTIn New York, Kelsey Mitchell scored

24 points, Victoria Vivians added 20 and Indiana beat New York in overtime.

Danielle Robinson scored eight of her 17 points in overtime, breaking a tie with two free throws with 24.9 sec-onds left. Robinson made her season debut for the Fever (2-2) after return-ing Sunday from playing overseas.

Aces 96, Dream 73College Park, A’ja Wilson scored

15 points, Kelsey Plum had 14 points and 11 assists and the Las Vegas Aces rolled to a 96-73 victory over the At-lanta Dream.

Wilson also had seven rebounds and five blocks to help Las Vegas improve to 3-1 overall and 2-1 on the road.

Panthers reach 2nd round

China withdraws as host of 2023 Asian CupKUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 14, (AP): China with-drew as host of soccer’s 2023 Asian Cup on Saturday in the latest cancellation of the country’s sports hosting duties dur-ing the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Asian Football Confederation praised Chinese soccer officials for making “this very difficult but necessary deci-sion in the collective interests of the AFC Asian Cup.”

The 24-nation tournament was due to be played in 10 cities in mostly newly built stadiums in June and July of next year.

China’s withdrawal could let Qatar or Saudi Arabia step up as hosts while both are bidding in a contest to host the 2027 edition. India and Iran are also candidates for the 2027 edition with a decision expected early next year.

Qatar has stadiums in place to host the 2022 World Cup

kicking off in November. However, a June 2023 start for the Asian Cup could be unlikely because of the extreme heat in the Qatari summer, making early 2024 a better option.

The quadrennial Asian Cup is traditionally played in Janu-ary and February. Qatar (2011) and Australia (2015) hosted the tournament when it was played in January, while the 2019 event in the United Arab Emirates was held from Jan. 5 to Feb. 1.

Qatar are the defending champions after they upset Japan 3-1 in the 2019 final to earn the country’s first major soccer title.

China was due to host the 2022 Asian Games in Hang-zhou in September but that was postponed along with nearly all international sports events in the country.

TENNIS

ICE HOCKEY

BASKETBALL

New York Rangers’ Mika Zibane-jad (93) and Tyler Motte (64) begin the celebrate the winning goal dur-ing the third period in Game 6 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup first-round playoff series against the Pittsburgh

Penguins in Pittsburgh. (AP)

Tsitsipas

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SportsBayern’s Robert Lewandows-ki lifts the trophy after he was awarded as top scorer of the German Bundesliga after the soccer match between VfL Wolfsburg and Bayern Mu-nich in Wolfsburg, Germany. (AP)

Leipzig secure Champions League qualification

Last-gasp Stuttgart survive in dramatic Bundesliga finaleBERLIN, May 14, (AP): Wataru Endo scored in injury time for Stuttgart to clinch Bundesliga survival at Hertha Berlin’s expense after a dramatic 2-1 win over Cologne in the final round on Saturday.

Endo’s 92nd-minute winner lifted Stuttgart ahead of Her-tha on goal difference to set off scenes of jubilation with fans storming the field.

Hertha lost at Borussia Dortmund 2-1. Youssoufa Mouko-ko’s late winner for Dortmund sent Hertha into the dreaded relegation playoff against the second division’s third-place finishers to see which will play in the Bundesliga next season.

Hertha will likely face former Bundesliga heavyweight Hamburger SV on May 19 and 23.

On a day of farewells in the Bundesliga, Erling Haaland also scored for Dortmund and Robert Lewandowski brought his league-leading tally to 35 goals for Bayern Munich, while Arminia Bielefeld was finally relegated to join last-placed Greuther Fürth in the second division.

Bayern sporting director Hasan Salihamidžić confirmed before the league champion’s 2-2 draw in Wolfsburg that Lewandowski wants to leave the Bavarian powerhouse.

Lewandowski, who has been linked with a move to Bar-celona, has a contract with Bayern to 2023 but Salihamidžić said he turned down the club’s offer to extend it and said “he would like to do something else.”

Bayern failed to win any of their three games after win-ning the title.

Haaland, who is joining Manchester City, was applauded by Dortmund fans before kickoff against Hertha. Michael Zorc was also given a fond farewell after 44 years as a Dort-mund player and sporting director.

Hertha struck first with a first-half penalty from Ishak Belfodil and Haaland equalized with another in the sec-ond half to take his league tally to 22 in 24 appearances this season.

Leipzig secured Champions League qualification in fourth place with a late 1-1 draw in Bielefeld, finishing one point ahead of fifth-placed Union Berlin, which clinched Europa League qualification thanks to Taiwo Awaiyi’s late winner against Bochum for 3-2.

Exequiel Palacios scored in injury time for third-placed Bayer Leverkusen to end Freiburg’s Champions League qualification hopes in a 2-1 win. Leverkusen fans paid trib-ute to departing managing director Rudi Völler before the match.

In other games with little at stake, Borussia Mönchengla-dbach routed Hoffenheim 5-1, Mainz drew with Eintracht Frankfurt 2-2, and Augsburg defeated Fürth 2-1.

Gladbach coach Adi Hütter announced after his team’s win that it was his last in charge after a mutual agreement with the club not to continue. Augsburg coach Markus Weinzierl also said it was his last.

IOC questions Olympic boxing leadershipGENEVA, May 14, (AP): With box-ing’s status at the Olympics in doubt, the IOC was not impressed on Satur-

day with the leadership election of the sport’s governing body which was stripped of recognition in 2019.

International Boxing Association members re-elected their Russian pres-ident Umar Kremlev by acclamation two days after the only other candidate, from the Netherlands, was removed by an independent vetting panel.

“The events surrounding IBA’s gen-eral assembly, in particular the elections, merit careful analysis and are just rein-forcing the questions and doubts around IBA’s governance,” the International Olympic Committee said in a statement.

Saturday’s vote marked the third presidential election in less than four years where boxing officials worldwide have elected a winner in defiance of IOC advice. The IOC has for several years expressed concerns about the integrity of IBA’s management and finances, and potentially improper judging of bouts at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics under previous leadership.

Augsburg’s Reece Oxford (from left), Augsburg’s Andre Hahn, Fuerth’s Se-bastian Griesbeck and Fuerth’s Nick Viergever challenge for the ball during the German Bundesliga soccer match between FC Augsburg and Greuther

Fuerth in Augsburg, Germany. (AP)

Haaland

SOCCEROLYMPICS

Salernitana draw, Venezia relegatedMILAN, May 14, (AP): Diego Perotti was in tears at the final whistle and had to be consoled by his teammates after his late penalty was saved in relega-tion-threatened Salernitana’s 1-1 draw with Empoli in Serie A on Saturday.

Salernitana inched two points clear of the drop zone - but missed a chance to gain more ground - before Cagliari and Genoa play on Sunday.

Empoli goalkeeper Guglielmo Vi-cario pulled off a number of fine saves, including the penalty stop, though he was also somewhat at fault for Fed-erico Bonazzoli’s second-half equal-izer after Patrick Cutrone had given Empoli the lead.

The result sent last-place Venezia straight back to Serie B regardless of their result at Roma.

Salernitana were desperate for points at Empoli after a stoppage-time equalizer from Cagliari last weekend saw the Sardinian team snatch a draw in their relegation battle.

It had the better of the early chances and Empoli defender Fabiano Parisi had to make a goalline clearance shortly be-fore Vicario pushed another attempt onto the underside of the crossbar and out.

But it was Empoli that took the lead against the run of play when Cutrone ran onto a Kristjan Asllani through ball and placed an effort between the goal-keeper and the near post.

Vicario continued to keep Salerni-tana at bay, including with two stun-ning stops in the second half to claw efforts off the line from first Bonazzoli and then Milan Djuric.

Those two chances came either side of Cutrone almost doubling his tally but he hit a low shot onto the right post.

Vicario made a rare mistake for the Salernitana equalizer in the 76th min-ute as he dropped a corner and the ball came to Bonazzoli for an overhead kick into the back of the net.

Salernitana had a golden chance to take the lead, six minutes from time, when they were awarded a penalty for a tackle by Simone Romagnoli on Ma-madou Coulibaly.

But Vicario pulled off another im-pressive feat by also saving Perotti’s spotkick.

Warriors advance to West finals

Celtics force Game 7 with Bucks

SAN FRANCISCO, May 14, (AP): Klay Thomp-son knocked down eight 3-pointers on the way to 30 points, Stephen Curry scored 29 with six 3s, and the Golden State Warriors advanced to the Western Conference finals by beat-ing the Memphis Grizzlies 110-96 in Game 6 on Fri-day night.

Curry found his shooting touch late and made two straight baskets late in the third for a 78-77 lead en-tering the final 12 minutes. Dray-mond Green contributed 14 points, 16 rebounds and eight assists. Kev-on Looney grabbed 22 rebounds and Andrew Wiggins scored 10 of his 18 points in the fourth with a pair of timely 3s.

Golden State - eliminated by Mem-phis in the play-in tournament last year - withstood a testy series to advance to the conference finals for the first time since 2019, when the franchise reached

its fifth straight NBA Finals before los-ing to Toronto in the deciding Game 6.

The third-seeded Warriors will face the Phoenix-Dallas winner in the con-

ference finals. Game 7 of that series is Sunday in Phoenix.

“Whoop that trick!” the delighted, raucous home crowd chanted in the waning moments, the fans’ steal away from Memphis.

Celtics 108, Bucks 95 In Milwaukee ,Jayson Tatum scored

46 points, outdueling Giannis Antetok-ounmpo to make sure there wouldn’t be another Milwaukee fourth-quarter comeback, and the Boston Celtics beat the defending champions Bucks 108-95 on Friday night to force a seventh game in the Eastern Conference semi-final.

The third straight victory for a road team set up a winner-take-all game Sunday in Boston. The winner will head to Miami to face the top-seeded Heat on Tuesday night.

Boston bounced back two nights af-ter blowing a 14-point, fourth-quarter lead at home in a 110-107 Game 5 loss. The Bucks tried to rally again after trailing by 14 points in the final period, but this time Tatum kept the Celtics on top and kept their season alive.

Golden State Warriors center Kevon Looney (5) reaches for the ball against Memphis Grizzlies’ Tyus Jones, (left), and Kyle Anderson during the first half of Game 6 of an NBA basketball Western Conference playoff semifinal in San Francisco. (AP)

Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetok-ounmpo shoots over Boston Celt-ics’ Marcus Smart during the first half of Game 6 of an NBA basket-ball Eastern Conference semifinals playoff series in Milwaukee. (AP)

BASKETBALL

SOCCER

De Gendt wins 8th stage, López keeps leadNAPLES, Italy, May 14, (AP): A decade after his fi rst Giro d’Italia stage victory, Belgian cyclist Thomas De Gendt claimed his second on the eighth stage on Saturday and Juan Pedro López remained wearing the pink jersey.

De Gendt was helped by Lotto-Soudal teammate Harm Vanhoucke and edged out Davide Gabburo and Jorge Ar-cas in the sprint at the end of an undulating 153-kilome-ter (95-mile) route that started and fi nished in the seaside city of Naples.

The 35-year-old De Gendt sat up and pumped his fi st in celebration as he crossed the line.

All four riders were part of a 21-man breakaway that

got away in a fast start, driven by Mathieu Van Der Poel, who was keen for the stage win.

The route took in four laps of a 19-kilometer (12-mile) circuit in the volcanic surrounding area.

It was on the penultimate lap that Van Der Poel tried to attack, but he was caught by other riders from the breakaway. Shortly after, the quartet that contest-ed the final sprint managed to get clear with 40 kilo-meters remaining.

Most of the overall contenders crossed the line togeth-er, about 3 1/2 minutes behind De Gendt.

López maintained his 38-second advantage over Len-nard Kämna after moving into the overall lead on Tues-day. Rein Taaramäe was third, 58 seconds behind López.

Kämna tried to attack from the peloton but was swiftly reeled in by López and his Trek-Segafredo teammates.

Sunday’s ninth stage is one of the toughest in this year’s race. The 191-kilometer (119-mile) route from Is-ernia fi nishes atop the fearsome Blockhaus, with double-digit gradients along a series of hairpin bends leading to the line.

There are also three other categorised climbs on a day that includes 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) of climbing and a start that some team directors have called the toughest ever start to a grand tour stage.

The Giro fi nishes on May 29 in Verona.

Belgium’s Thomas De Gendt celebrates after winning the eighth stage of the Giro d’Italia cycling race, from

Naples to Naples, Italy. (AP)

CYCLING