Russia beat Saudi Arabia 5-0 in World Cup opener

Eid shopping

Volume 23 | Number 7558 | 2 RiyalsFriday 15 June 2018 | 1 Shawwal I 1439 www.thepeninsula.qa

Eid Mubarak

EGYPT VS URUGUAY

3.00 PMMOROCCO VS IRAN

6.00 PMPORTUGAL VS SPAIN

9.00 PM

TODAY’S MATCH

Special World Cup coverage

on Sport pages

Amir receives Eid greetingsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has exchanged cables of greetings on the occasion of Eid Al Fitr with the leaders of the Arab and Muslim countries. The Amir also received cables of congratulations on this occasion from a number of leaders of friendly coun-tries, reported QNA.

Amir exchanged greetings with the Amir of Kuwait H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, H M King Abdullah II of Jordan, H M King Mohammed VI of Morocco, and Pres-ident Omar Hassan Ahmed Al Bashir of Sudan. Amir also exchanged greetings with President the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas, President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo of the Federal Republic of Somalia, and the Crown Prince of Kuwait. Sheikh Nawaf Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah.

The Amir has received a cable of greetings on the occasion of Eid Al Fitr from Speaker of the Advisory (Shura) Council H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud. Al Mahmoud expressed in his name and on behalf of the Advisory

(Shura) Council Members heartfelt greetings and blessings on the advent of Eid, affirming full support His Highness’s conscious march and renewing the pledge of allegiance and loyalty to His Highness’s wise leadership. He asked the Almighty Allah for the best of health and happiness to H H the Amir and further progress, welfare and prosperity to the loyal people of Qatar under the wise leadership of the Amir. The Amir sent a reply cable to the

Advisory Council Speaker in which he thanked the Speaker and the council members for the greetings and good wishes on the occasion of Eid Al Fitr , asking the Almighty Allah for the happy return of such an occasion to all of them.

TheAmir wished the Advisory Council Speaker and the Council members the best of health, happiness and more welfare, and dear homeland further progress, and prosperity.

Russia’s midfielder Yuri Gazinskii (left), celebrates with team-mates after scoring the first goal of the FIFA 2018 World Cup during the opening match against Saudi Arabia at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, yesterday. Russia kicked off their World Cup in style yesterday, thumping Saudi Arabia 5-0 in front of an ecstatic crowd after President Vladimir Putin officially opened the tournament.

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Peolpe busy with last minute Eid shopping at a hypermarket in Doha, yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT / THE PENINSULA

Amir, US President review strategic tiesQNA

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held a telephone conversation with Pres-ident Donald Trump of the friendly United States of America.

During the phone call, they reviewed the strategic cooperation relations between the two friendly countries and prospects for devel-oping them for common interests.

They also discussed the latest developments on the regional and interna-tional arenas, and exchanged views on a number of developments of mutual interest in the region.

DOHA: The Moon Sighting Committee of the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs announced yesterday that today is the first day of Eid Al Fitr.

This came in a statement issued by the Committee after its meeting this evening at the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, chaired by Head of the Moon Sighting Committee Dr Sheikh Thaqeel Al Shammari, QNA reported.

The Moon Sighting Committee held its meeting on yesterday evening to sight the crescent of Shawwal month,

and prove the testimony of who sees it.The Committee said the moon sighting was confirmed tonight in Al Ghazlania area in Qatar.

The Committee extends greetings on the occasion of advent of the blessed Eid Al Fitr to the Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the FatherAmir, H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani, as well as the honourable government, the people of Qatar and all Muslims.

Today is first day of Eid Al Fitr

Qatar integrates responsibility for protecting civilians in foreign policyTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Dr. Mutlaq bin Majid Al Qahtani, Special Envoy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Combating Terrorism and Medi-ation in Dispute Resolution and the National Focal Point for the Responsibility to Protect Civilians from Cruel Crimes, has underlined that Qatar had inte-grated responsibility for protecting civilians from atroc-ities, particularly war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing in its foreign policy.

He said siege countries have imposed a barbaric blockade on Qatar in flagrant violation of international laws and norms, stressing that the leadership, government and people of Qatar are now stronger than ever, and now we have more partners, allies

and friends than ever and all of them deserve to be thanked for their support to the State of Qatar, including the member states of this alliance.

Speaking at the 8th Annual Meeting of the Global Network of R2P Focal Points in Helsinki, Finland , Ambassador Mutlaq bin Majid Al Qahtani said that the integration was done by addressing the root causes of violence in some countries and societies and trying to address the domestic motives for vio-lence, including violent extremism, which could lead to terrorism and atrocities in some States, as well as through good offices, mediation and pre-ventive diplomacy to prevent and resolve conflicts.

The Special Envoy touched on how Qatar had integrated the responsibility for protection in its foreign policy, referring to its

first step in 2015 to appoint a senior official as its national focal point, noting that Qatar is the first country in the Middle East to do so and remained the only one in the region until Jordan joined it last year.

He noted that Qatar believes in constructive partnership and coop-eration in this regard, so it has been working closely with national NGOs and civil society organisations such as Education Above All, Educate A Child and Silatech. He pointed to its deep policy of economic empowerment and equal oppor-tunities throughout the Middle East with a view to addressing the root causes of violence and preventing the outbreak and spread of conflicts in the region, which suffers from unequal opportunities, inequality, poverty and lack of adequate education.

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QCB raises deposit interest rate by 25 basis pointsDOHA: Qatar Central Bank (QCB) yesterday announced a 25 base points increase on the QCB Deposit Rate (QCBDR), as of today to be 2 percent, on basis of local and international economic data.

QCB’s decision to raise QCBDR comes in line with the US Federal Reserve’s decision, announced yes-terday, raising the key interest rate by 25 basis points, amid expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates two more times this year.

The Qatari riyal is pegged to the US dollar at a fixed exchange rate since 1980, QNA reported.

Qatar Fan Zone opens doors for soccer loversAMNA PERVAIZ RAO THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar’s residents and visitors can enjoy live matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia at Qatar Fan Zone which is being hosted at Ali Bin Hamad Al Attiyah Arena in Al Sadd.

Entry is free to the fan zone, beside they are hosting enter-tainment and fun activities for the whole family.The fun kicked off yesterday and will continue for a month till 15 July to the FIFA World Cup. In addition to live football, the fan zone will feature live entertainment, concerts from Arab stars, a gaming and acti-vation area, and more than 40 food and beverage stalls.

Talking to The Peninsula, Jawaher Al Khuzaei, Acting Director of Communications and Marketing at Qatar Tourism

Authority (QTA) said: “This place for everyone, no matter what the gender and age is its open for families for a month. People can enjoy live football and show their support besides they can enjoy the various 40 food stalls as well”.

She added: “We have a big entertainment program lined up for our visitors which includes concerts and many more. We are only operating during the match days, we have a huge set-up of around 1,200 people”.

The official opening cer-emony will be held on Sunday 17 June. Starting at 5pm, the dazzling launch will feature aerial artists, live bands and a special per-formance from Fahad Al Kubaisi, one of Qatar’s favorite artists.

Fans will be able to enjoy three matches on Sunday, starting with Costa Rica vs Serbia at 3pm. After the opening ceremony, defending

champions Germany will take on Mexico at 6pm, followed by Brazil vs Switzerland at 9pm.

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to all our readers

Amir, Deputy Amir offer condolences on late Shawana Al Busaidi of Oman

02 FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018HOME

Vodafone Qatar offers over 100 destinations on passport packTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Vodafone Qatar now offers more than 100 top destinations on its Passport Pack. The Passport Pack allows customers to roam worry free and expe-rience Vodafone’s world class network; with the widest 4G coverage and with the only roaming pack in Qatar enabled on all operators across these countries.

Vodafone Qatar was the first to market with several game changing innovations such as its Bill Manager product, that is auto-matically activated for all Postpaid customers, as soon as they’re roaming in one of the enabled countries, so they don’t get bill shock.

The Vodafone Passport Pack allows customers to enjoy 1GB of data and 100 minutes of roaming

calls for only QR 100 per week. Just in time for the summer holiday season, 22 new coun-tries have been added to the Vodafone P a s s p o r t P a c k including Morocco, Austria, Armenia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Croatia and Kenya.

Diego Camberos, Chief Operating Officer at Vodafone Qatar, said: “The Vodafone Passport Pack just got better and our customers can now discover more of the world and roam in over 100 countries with an unmatched worry-free experience. Vodafone Passport Pack and Bill Manager strongly underline our com-mitment to lead in inno-vation drawing on the very best of the Vodafone brand globally.”

Prepaid customers can activate Vodafone Passport Pack through the My Vodafone App or by dialling *110*110#.

Qatar Airways celebrates 2018 World Cup kickoff THE PENINSULA

DOHA: As the Official Partner and Official Airline of FIFA, Qatar Airways is celebrating the kickoff of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia by bringing football fans from around the world to Russia to watch one of the most highly-anticipated events on the global sports calendar.

To celebrate the start of the tournament, the award-winning airline has provided its social media followers and football fans a unique opportunity with its #OnYourFeet challenge, an inter-active social media contest where participants create a short video of themselves freestyling with a football and share their favourite tricks with the world. The winning contestants will receive two Business Class tickets to any des-tination on the award-winning airline’s global route network.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: “The 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia has begun, marking an entire month of excitement as fans from around the world

gather in Russia to celebrate their love for football. Whether you are a football enthusiast, dedicated to supporting your national team or even your favourite local team, the World Cup is a global event that unites us all, and we are thrilled to be supporting such a world-class sporting occasion.”

The award-winning airline recently captured the excitement

of the upcoming tournament by launching its new 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia campaign, fea-turing a re-recording of the classic song ‘Dancing in the Street’ sung by renowned singer and TV star Nicole Scherzinger. The upbeat TV commercial has seen tremendous global success, with more than 20 million views across the airline’s social media plat-forms, including Facebook,

Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.Last month, the carrier

launched its ‘FIFA Fan Match’ social media contest. Participants were asked to describe themselves using five emojis for a chance to win tickets to watch the semi-finals in Saint Petersburg. The highly-engaging campaign was tremendously successful, with five lucky winners from around the world looking forward to

attending the World Cup semi-finals match in Russia.

In celebration of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Qatar Airways, in collaboration with SC and Hamad International Airport (HIA), have transformed HIA into a fan zone, ensuring that the thou-sands of passengers travelling through it never miss a moment of the World Cup’s excitement. Dedicated football fans transiting

through the airport will be able to watch the matches, which will be broadcast live in three beautifully themed viewing areas in con-courses A, B and C, as well as in Qatar Duty Free’s (QDF) Marché restaurant. The three viewing areas have been designed to resemble a living room, a stadium and a majlis – a traditional Arabic seating area where guests are received.

The condolences of the Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad AlThani to Haitham bin Tariq Al Said, Minister of Heritage and Culture in the Sultanate of Oman, H H Shihab bin Tariq Al Said, Adviser to H M the Sultan and Chairman of the Research Council in Oman and H H Adham bin Tariq Al Said on the death of their mother Shawana bint Hamoud Al Busaidi, were conveyed by H E Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani at the family Majlis yesterday morning. Sheikh Khalifa also conveyed the condolences of the Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani. He also offered condolences to their Highnesses and Excellencies members of the family, praying to Allah Almighty to give them patience and solace.

As the Official Partner and Official Airline of FIFA, Qatar Airways is celebrating the kickoff of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia by bringing football fans from around the world to Russia to watch one of the most highly-anticipated events on the global sports calendar.

Qatar integrates responsibility for protecting civiliansCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1Dr Mutlaq bin Majid Al Qahtani

pointed out that Qatar focuses on good offices, mediation and pre-ventive diplomacy to prevent mass atrocities and stop them as an effective tool to protect civilians. He referred to the efforts of the State of Qatar in Darfur to establish lasting and sustainable peace in the region and to continue implementing the Doha Agreement and encouraging other rebel groups to join the agreement besides focusing on sus-tainable development to maintain peace achieved.

He also revealed that Qatar is currently making intensive efforts and consultations between the conflicting parties in Afghanistan in order to achieve peace there, adding that Doha had supported the decla-ration of the latest ceasefire and urged the Taliban to agree to a cease-fire for the first time in the past 17 years, hoping that this would contribute to the preser-vation of civilian lives. He said that Qatar had worked to prevent further atrocities against the Muslim minority in the province of Arakan (Rohingya), and sought to build confidence between Myanmar and Bangladesh in preparation to put an end to this

crisis . He added that talks with these parties and other actors are continuing. He said that Qatar participated in a very early stage and quiet diplomacy behind the scenes to resolve the constitutional crisis in Gambia, noting that Qatar assessed the risks early and con-tinued with the leaders of the Gambia and Senegal. He pointed out that this early collective approach led to the peaceful transfer of power with the help of the coun-tries of the region .

Ambassador Al Qahtani said that the responsibility for pro-tection is a legal obligation for all countries. “All UN member states have been bound by this com-mitment at least since 2005, when world leaders agreed unanimously in the 2005 World Summit doc-ument, the obligation of States not to kill their own people and to protect them from heinous crimes or mass atrocities”.

“All of our countries are members of the United Nations and part of this document and therefore committed to the responsibility of protecting civilians,” he said. “We must always keep this in mind and should be seen as a starting point for our discussions on the appro-priateness and importance of the

responsibility to protect our coun-tries and our foreign policies, from a legal perspective.”

“It is very important to bear in mind that failure to prevent and stop atrocities would have serious consequences for all of us,” said Dr. Al Qahtani. “Look at the crisis in Syria as an example and its consequences for all .” He stressed the importance of inte-grating responsibility for pro-tection from the strategic per-spective as well. He explained that first we thought of the need to raise awareness about the responsibility for protection in our region and in the Gulf region in particular, so we organized the first high-level workshop on the responsibility for protection for the GCC in Doha in January 2017 in cooperation with the Global Center For the Responsibility To Protect and the United Nations.

He said Qatar has realised that there is an urgent need for this awareness because of the atrocities committed in Yemen and all the Gulf countries, including the blockade countries, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, participated in this workshop and were grateful to Qatar for these efforts, and for building their capacity in this regard.

Slaughter only at abattoirs: MinistrySIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Municipality and Environment has advised people to get their animals slaughtered only at abattoirs not at home to ensure the safety of meat as abattoirs have veterinary doctors to check animals.

Instead of buying meat from the market, many people prefer to buy sheep or goat and get it slaughtered to in order serve food made from fresh meat to their guests.

“A number of people during Eid days, in order to avoid waiting at abattoirs prefer to slaughter their sheep at homes ignoring the safety of meat,” said a source from the Ministry of Municipality and Environment.

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment provides veterinarians at abattoirs who examine all sheep before and after slaughter and sheep or meat unfit for consumption is removed.

“Slaughtering at homes in addition to causing health problems, also create many other problems like spreading of unpleasant odors when they throw the remains outside.” He added.

All the abattoirs are ready whether in Doha or at Al Rayan and the working hours will be suit all people. In the first day of Eid it will start early morning from 7am to 4 pm while other days will start from 7am to 2pm.

The abattoirs are equipped with all requirements and the vet-erinarians are increased at all these abattoirs to meet people needs.

On the first day of Eid, abattoirs are expected to receive thousands of slaughters and the price of slaughter of the sheep is QR16.

“I got a sheep slaughtered at the abattoir of Central Market at Abu Hmour on last Eid,” Samiullah Abdul Quddus, a Pakistani national told The Peninsula. He said that abattoir had implemented coupon system which helped reduce the waiting time.

“There was some crowd at the slaughterhouse but because of the proper system I receive my slaughtered animals within few hours,” said Abdul Quddus. He said that this year he also planned to get slaughtered an Australian sheep for him and his friends.

FIFA World Cup 2018 Qatar Fan Zone at Ali bin Hamad Al Attiyah Stadium in Al Saad is ready for World Cup fans. PIC: ABDUL BASIT / THE PENINSULA

Qatar Fan Zone opens door for football loversCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

“We have come up with this fan-zone idea earlier as well in 2014. Which was one-month long successful event. Our aim is to give people the taste of 2022, that how will we host world cup which will be family friendly. We are encouraging people to come and expe-rience how the games will be in 2022. All the performances happening in

Russia currently will be happening here as well in 2022,” Mead Al Emadi, spokesperson at Supreme Committee for Delivery &Legacy (SC) told The Peninsula.

Qatar Fan Zone is organised and delivered by the Supreme Committee for Delivery &Legacy (SC), the Ministry of Culture and Sports, and Qatar Tourism Authority.

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Deaths by Israeli fire darken Eid holiday in GazaREUTERS

GAZA: Israel’s killing of at least 125 Palestinians during protests at the Gaza border is casting a shadow in the enclave on its celebration of Eid Al Fitr, the Muslim holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Economic hardship arising from years of blockades, con-flict and internal political rivalries has also darkened the mood in the Islamist Hamas-run territory of two million people,

where Gaza economists put the unemployment rate at 49.9 percent.

“This is the toughest Eid of my life,” Worod Al Jamal, whose 15-year-old son Haitham was killed by Israeli fire at a protest on June 7, said yesterday on the eve of the holiday.

She showed reporters the new pair of jeans, shoes and a T-shirt her son bought just two days before his death. Pur-chasing new children’s clothing is part of the holiday tradition.

Dozens of other families in

Gaza are also in mourning this year. Deepening poverty has only compounded a sense of despair.

“The situation is bad... Pur-chasing power is very weak and sales this year are at their lowest in years,” said Omar al-Bayouk, whose clothing shop, like many others stores in Gaza, was vir-tually devoid of customers in the run-up to the holiday.

In Gaza’s Nusseirat refugee camp, Abdel-Rahman Nofal, 15, shopped with his father for new clothes.

“I bought a pair of shoes but I will only be able to wear one shoe. The other, I will keep at home,” said the teen, whose left leg was amputated after he was wounded by Israeli army gunfire at one of the protests.

Palestinians have been holding mass demonstrations at the border to demand a right of return to what is now Israel not only for those who fled or were forced to flee their homes in the war around Israel’s cre-ation in 1948 but also for mil-

lions of descendants. The UN General Assembly

condemned Israel on Wednesday for excessive use of force against Palestinian civilians. The United States called the resolution one-sided, saying it did not mention Hamas and accusing the group of initi-ating the violence.

Israel has said that many of the 125 dead were militants using civilians as human shields and that its army was repelling attacks on the border fence with Gaza.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II (left), shakes hands with Prime Minister Omar Al Razzaz during a swearing-in ceremony of the new cabinet in Amman, yesterday.

Jordan’s new government sworn in after mass protestsAFP

AMMAN: Jordan’s new government was sworn in on Thursday, after mass protests against price rises and austerity measures forced the prime minister’s resignation.

The new administration led by Harvard-trained economist Omar Al Razzaz has already withdrawn the contested tax law which brought thousands of Jor-danians to the streets, officials said.

The government shake-up has seen half the cabinet’s 28 ministers replaced, with Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi and Interior Minister Samir

al-Mabidin among those keeping their jobs.

The defence portfolio goes to Razzaz, while new ministers were appointed in the areas including finance, planning, international cooperation and regional development.

Since being asked to form a government by King Abdullah II on June 4, Razzaz said he had been engaged in talks with dif-ferent parties to “reach a fair taxation system for everyone”.

Cash-strapped Jordan relies heavily on foreign donors and in 2016 secured a $723-million loan from the International Monetary Fund.

But austerity measures tied

to the loan have seen prices of basic necessities rise across the kingdom. Jordanians protested in Amman and other cities over a proposed tax hike, with the scale of demonstrations prompting the resignation of prime minister Hani Mulki.

The public rallies were fol-lowed by a crisis meeting with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, con-cluding on Sunday with Jordan’s neighbours pledging $2.5 billion in aid.

The donors’ rival Qatar fol-lowed up with an offer of $500,000 in investment and promised to create 10,000 jobs for Jordanians.

Dozens dead in battle for key Yemen portAFP

AL DURAIHIMI: Yemeni pro-government forces were locked in heavy fighting with rebels that left 39 people dead yesterday, as they pressed a Saudi and UAE-backed offensive to retake the key aid hub of Hodeida.

The clashes came as the UN Security Council met for urgent talks on the military operation, which Russia warned could have “catastrophic conse-quences” for the entire country.

Yemeni forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition launched an assault on Wednesday to recapture the port city of Hodeida, which has been con-trolled by the Iran-allied Huthi rebels along with the capital Sanaa since 2014. Military sources said coalition gunships pounded rebel positions as fighting raged several kilo-metres from Hodeida airport, south of the city. The Houthis suffered 30 fatalities in the clashes, medical sources said.

Nine pro-government troops were killed in the same area, the medics said. Military sources said the deaths were caused by mines and snipers.

A correspondent south of Hodeida airport saw ambu-lances evacuating dead and wounded government loyalist fighters as reinforcements headed towards the front line.

The United Arab Emirates, a driving force in the coalition, said four of its troops were killed on the first day of the offensive Wednesday including at least one navy officer. The Houthis’

television channel earlier said they had struck a coalition ship off the coast of Hodeida with two missiles. There was no independent confir-mation of the report.

The United Nations has warned against an offensive on Hodeida because the port serves as the entry point for 70 percent of Yemen’s imports, with the country already teetering on the brink of famine after three years of war. Yesterday, authorities said the Red Sea lifeline remained open to shipping.

“We still have seven ships in the port. The work in the port is normal. And we have five other ships standing by waiting outside to enter,” port director Dawood Fadel said. Two Saudi and UAE aid ships were in the waters off Hodeida, coalition spokesman Turki Al Maliki told Saudi state media.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which intervened against the Huthis in 2015 with the goal of restoring Yemen’s government to power, have pledged to ensure a continuous flow of aid to the Arab world’s poorest nation. Abdullah Al Rabeeah, the head of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Aid and Relief Centre, pledged an air, sea and land bridge would be opened “to transport aid and medical sup-plies, food, shelter and fuel other

basic necessities”. Capturing Hodeida would

be the biggest victory for the Saudi-led coalition since the start of its costly intervention.

International aid groups cautioned the threat of a major humanitarian catastrophe was growing as fighting drew closer to Hodeida, with the UN esti-mating some 600,000 people live in and around the city.

“As air strikes intensify and front lines move closer to Hodeida city, so does the very real threat of harm to civilians in Hodeida,” said the Norwegian Refugee Council’s acting country director Christopher Mzembe.The group warned of a “high risk” of a fresh cholera outbreak around Hodeida should water supplies be disrupted.

The UN says military action could cripple desperately needed deliveries of commercial goods and humanitarian aid to millions in the aid-dependent country. Before the Security Council met behind closed doors, Sweden called for the UN body to demand an immediate halt to the assault to allow time for talks on a rebel withdrawal and to avert a humanitarian dis-aster. Russia said “the offensive against Hodeida risks triggering catastrophic consequences for all of Yemen”.

Vehicles display the logos for Zimbabwean opposition Movement For Democratic Change (MDC) party, and the ruling ZANU PF party outside an election nomination court in Harare, Zimbabwe, yesterday.

Wage protests lead to South African power outagesREUTERS

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa’s struggling state utility Eskom started controlled elec-tricity outages yesterday, after trade union pay protests at its power plants prevented it meeting demand.

The last time there were controlled power outages in Africa’s most industrialised economy, in 2015, economic output suffered. Power cuts during winter are likely to cause hardship for millions.

Labour unions have threatened a total shutdown of Eskom’s operations unless it meets their demands for a 15 percent pay rise. Eskom plans to offer no increase.

About 1,000 union members picketed outside its Megawatt Park headquarters in Johannesburg. Protesters at power plants blocked trucks carrying coal and buses ferrying staff, forcing some generating units to be switched off.

Eskom, which produces more than 90 percent of South Africa’s power, narrowly avoided a liquidity crunch early this year and was embroiled in

corruption scandals sur-rounding friends of former president Jacob Zuma.

It said in a statement that it expected the controlled outages - called load-shedding - to last from 5:40pm) until around 8pm. Shortly after-wards, traffic lights in central Johannesburg stopped working, while some bars showing the opening game of the soccer World Cup lost power. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), who together rep-resent more than 20,000 of Eskom’s 47,000 employees, say they want to send a “strong signal” to management.

Thabiso Masha, who works in Eskom’s research department in Germiston, said outside Meg-awatt Park: “Zero percent is non-sense, we won’t stand for it. Petrol is going up, VAT is going up, so our pay is decreasing.” An employee in Eskom’s distribution operation in Johannesburg, who asked not to be named, said: “It’s not the workers’ fault that the company is suffering because of corruption... They are preparing for job cuts.”

South Syria negotiator assassinatedAFP

BEIRUT: Gunmen yesterday assassinated a member of a committee charged with negotiating with Syria’s regime the fate of rebel-held southern territory, a monitor said, taking to a dozen the number of them killed in three weeks.

“At dawn, armed assailants killed a doctor who is part of the Daraa reconcil-iation committee,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding the attack took place in a rebel village in the northwest of the province.

Another 11 committee members have been killed by unidentified assailants since the end of May, said Observ-atory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

The killings come as regime ally Russia holds talks with regional powers to sort out the future of the region bordering Jordan and the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, and attempt to avoid a government military operation.

But rebel groups, which control 70 percent of the region, mainly in the provinces of Daraa and Quneitra, have been refusing to negotiate or reconcile with the regime.

Clashes halt oil loadings at major Libyan ports REUTERS

BENGHAZI: The major Libyan oil ports of Ras Lanuf and Es Sider were closed and evacuated on Thursday due to attacks by armed brigades opposed to the powerful eastern commander Khalifa Haftar, causing a production loss of 240,000

barrels per day (bpd). At least one storage tank at

Ras Lanuf terminal was set alight, an engineer told Reuters. Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) declared force majeure on loadings from both terminals, according to a document seen by Reuters.

The clashes between forces

loyal to Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) and rival armed groups were taking place south of Ras Lanuf, where the LNA was targeting its opponents with air strikes, local sources said.

The LNA took control of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf along with other oil ports in Libya’s oil crescent in 2016, allowing them

to reopen after a long blockade and significantly lifting Libya’s oil production.

More than half the storage tanks at both terminals were badly damaged in previous fighting and have yet to be repaired, though there have been regular loadings from Es Sider.

The clashes that killed 39 people, came as the UN Security Council met for urgent talks on the military operation, which Russia warned could have “catastrophic consequences” for the entire country.

05FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018 HOME

Bidding farewell to RamadanN

ormally, a guest does not stay long with his host. After dropping by for a while and completing his purpose or courtesy call, he shall finally

say goodbye and depart. When he will return is something that cannot be determined exactly by the host since he does not possess the will of his visitor, nor does he have any control and authority over him. Such visitor could return at his appointed time but may not find the same host for he could have left for the destination from which he will never return at all.

This is how Ramadan manifests itself to the Muslim Ummah so that when it leaves and departs, none of us has the assurance of receiving it again next year simply because none of us knows his fate — whether he will be still around, or will already have joined his Creator — by the time Ramadan returns again next year.

This blessing and virtue-filled guest of the believers has only come and stayed with us for a while to bring us a chance to purify and cleanse ourselves of wrongdoing and misdeeds and lay before us the opportunity to invest for the next world for which all living crea-tures are inevitably bound.

So much is the time spent in roaming around or staying awake at night for senseless things.

“The worth of time is the worth of man ‘s life”, the popular Arab writer Abbas Aqqad said.

Once Hasan Al Basari passed by a group of people who made mockery of Ramadan. He then said: “ Indeed, Allah has created the month of Ramadan as a racetrack for his servants where they compete with one another in worshiping Him. A group has advanced ahead and won while other groups have lagged behind and failed to win. What is more astonishing is one who laughs and makes fun in the day. Those who have come ahead are the winners and those who have mocked are the losers. “ Lucky is the one who is able to grab the Laylatul Qadar (Night of Power), a single

night which could only be found in the last ten days of Ramadan from 20th until 30th — which is better and superior to one thousand months of worship.

Allah said: “We have indeed revealed this message in the Night of Power. And what will explain to thee what the night of power is? The Night of Power is better than a thousand months. There come down the Angels and the spirit by Allah’s permission on every errand: Peace! This until the rise of morning (Quran 97:1-5).

The reason why Allah, the almighty, did not make known on which night this virtuous night falls, is so that His servants will strive hard to seek and seize that particular night by performing various acts of worships starting on the night of 21st especially like in acts of ibadah such as taHajud, recitation of the Quran and many more in the middle of the night.

We often focus on the fasting and Tarawih prayers during Ramadan.

However, the blessed month is also a time when generosity is greatly emphasised.

The Messenger of Allah was the most generous of people. He was especially generous in Ramadan when the Angel Gabriel would come and review the Quran with him. Gabriel would to review the Quran with him every night during the month of Ramadan. Verily, when Gabriel would come and review the Quran with him in Ramadan, the Mes-senger of Allah was more generous than the free-blowing wind. Imam Ahmad records this hadith with the additional words at its end, “He was not asked for anything except that he gave it.” Gen-erosity is expansive and abundant giving. Allah is described as generous.

We read in the compilation of Imam

Al Tirmidhi, from the transmissions of Sa’d bin Abi Waqqas, that the Prophet (PBUH) said: “Allah is generous, He loves generosity; He is noble, He loves nobility.” His compilation also mentions, on the authority of Abu Dharr, on the authority of the Prophet narrating directly from his Lord: O my servants! If the first of you, the last of you; the living of you, the dead of you; the intact of you, the decomposed of you; were to gather in a vast plain, and every indi-vidual were to ask of me his wildest dream, and I were to grant everyone what he asked, that would not decrease my dominion as much as [the water taken from] an ocean one of you were to pass by and dip a needle into it and then extract it. That is because I am gen-erous, extant, and glorious. I do what I please. My giving is a word and my pun-ishment is a word. My command to

something when I desire it is but to say, “Be, and it is!” In a well-known nar-ration, Fudail bin Iyyad mentioned, “Every night Allah proclaims, ‘I am gen-erous, I love generosity; I am noble, I love nobility.’” Allah is the most gen-erous of all.

His generosity is amplified during certain special times such as the month of Ramadan. It is in the context of dis-cussing Ramadan that he has revealed: When my servants ask about Me, verily I am close by. I respond to the call of the supplicant when he invokes me. (Quran 2:186) In a hadith mentioned by Imam Al Tirmidhi and others, the Prophet (peace be upon him) mentioned, “During it (Ramadan) a caller cries out, ‘Those desiring good come forward, and those desiring evil stay away.’ Allah has those He liberates from Hell, and that occurs every night (during Ramadan).” In that Allah has predisposed His Prophet upon the most perfect and noblest character traits, as is related in a hadith from Abu Hurayra, from the Prophet that he said, “I have only been sent to perfect the noblest of character.”

The significance of EidBY IMAM ALI SIDDIQUI

When the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) m i g r a t e d f r o m

Makkah to Madinah, the people of Madinah used to have two fes-tivals. On those two days they had carnivals and festivity. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) asked the Ansar (the Muslims of Madinah) about it. They replied that before Islam they used to have carnivals on those two joyous days.

The Prophet told them: ‘Instead of those two days, Allah has appointed two other days which are better, the days of Eid Al Fitr and Eid Al Adha.’ (Hadith) The root word for Eid is ‘aada meaning he or it returned. Lit-erally it means “the time of return of joy and of grief”. Therefore it signifies a festival.

The word Eid appeared in Al Maida (chapter 5 in the Holy Quran).

The Disciples of Isa (PBUH) requested him to pray to his Lord to send down a Table Spread with festive food to eat of it, satisfy their hear, and may be Witnesses to the miracles (Quran 5:115-6).

The Prophet Isa prayed to Allah: “O Our Lord! Send us a Table Spread with festive food, that there may be for us, for the first and last of us - Eid, a solemn festival and a Sign from You; and provide for our sustenance, for You are the Best Sustainer.” (Quran 5:117)

Eid Al Fitr is celebrated on the first day of Shawwal, at the completion of Ramadan. Shawwal is the 10th month of the Islamic calendar. The Eid Al Fitr is a very joyous day; it is a true Thanksgiving Day for the believing men and women. On this day Muslims show their real joy for the health, strength and the opportunities of life, which

Allah has given to them to fulfill their obligation of fasting and other good deeds during the blessed month of Ramadan.

Eid Al Adha is celebrated on the tenth day of Zulhijjah, the 12th and the last month of the Islamic calendar. It is also very joyous day; it is a feast of self-sacrifice, commitment and obe-dience to Allah. It commemo-rates the great act of obedience to Allah by the Prophet Ibrahim (as) in showing his willingness to sacrifice his son Ismael (as). Allah accepted his sacrifice and replaced Prophet Ismael (as) with a lamb. Although Haj has no relation with the Eid Al Adha, but the five days long rituals of Hajj are also done during this month culminating on 9th of Zdilhijjah. Many rituals of Hajj are enactment of the struggle of the family Ibrahim (as) specially his second wife Hajirah (as) and her son Prophet Ismael (as).

THE SUNNAH OF EID Keeping with the tradition

of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), Muslims are encourage to prepare themselves for the occasion of Eid. Below is a list of things Muslims should do in preparation for Eid:

1.Wake up early.2.Offer Salat Al Fajr.3.Prepare for personal

cleanliness take care of details of clothing, etc.

4.Take a Ghusl (bath) after Fajr.

5.Brush your teeth.6.Dress up, putting on best

clothes available, whether new or cleaned old ones.

7.Use perfume.

8.Have breakfast on Eid Al Fitr before leaving for prayer ground. On Eid-al-Adha, eat breakfast after Salaat or after sacrifice if you are doing a sacrifice.

9.Pay Zakat Al Fitr before Salat Al Eid (on Eid al-Fitr).

10.Go to prayer ground early.11.Offer Salat Al Eid in con-

gregation in an open place except when whether is not per-mitting like rain, snow, etc.

12.Use two separate routes to and from the prayer ground.

13.Recite the following Takbir on the way to Salaat and until the beginning of Salat Al Eid. On Eid Al Adha, Takbir starts from Mughrib on the 9th Dhu alhijah and last until the Asr on the 12th Dhu al-ilhijah:Allahu- Akbar, Allahu-Akbar. La ilaha illa-lah. Allahu-Akbar, Allahu-Akbar. Wa-lilahi alhamd.( Allah is greater. Allah is greater. There is no god but Allah. Allah is greater. Allah is greater. And all praises are for Allah).

SALAH BEFORE KHUTBAH Ibn Abbass reported: “I par-

ticipated in the Salat Eid Al Fitr with the Messenger of Allah (PBUH), Abu Bakr (ra), Umar (ra) and Uthman (ra), and all of them held Salat al-Eid before Khutbah, and then the Prophet Muhammad (saw) delivered the Khutbah (sermon)”. Hadith reported by Muslim WHO SHOULD OBSERVE EID PRAYER Umm Atiyah reported: ‘The Mes-senger of Allah commanded us to bring out on Eid Al Fitr and Eid Al Adha, young women, hijab-observing adult women and the menstruating women.

The menstruating women stayed out of actual Salaat but participated in good deeds and Du’a (supplication)’.

I (Umm Atiyah) said to the Holy Prophet (PBUH): ‘O! Mes-senger of Allah, one does not have an outer garment.’ He replied: “Let her sister cover her with her garment.” Hadith reported by Muslim.

On the Eid day, every believing man, woman and child must go to the prayer ground and participate in this joyous occasion.

Salat Al Eid is wajib (strongly recommended, just short of obligatory). It consists of two Rukat (units) with six or thirteen additional Takbirs. It must be offered in congregation. The Salat is followed by the Khutbah.

The Khutbah is part of the worship and listening to it is Sunnah.

During the Khutbah, the Imam must remind the com-munity about its responsibilities and obligations towards Allah, fellow Muslims and the fellow human beings.

The Imam must encourage the Muslims to do good and ward off evil. The Muslim community must also be directed to the state of the community and the Ummah at large and the feelings of sacrifice and struggle for Allah should be aroused in the community.

At the conclusion of the Salaat the Muslims should convey greetings to each other, give reasonable gifts to the youngsters and visit each other at their homes.

Muslims should also take this opportunity to invite their non- Muslims neighbours, co-workers, classmates and business acquaintances to Eid festivities to expose them to Islam and Muslim culture.

www.isna.net

This is how Ramadan manifests itself to the Muslim Ummah so that when it leaves and departs, none of us has the assurance of receiving it again next year simply because none of us knows his fate — whether he will be still around, or will already have joined his Creator — by the time Ramadan returns again next year.

Every Muslim is required to pay Zakatul Fitr at the con-clusion of the month of Ramadan as a token of thank-fulness to God for having enabled him to observe fasts.

Its purpose is to purify those who fast from any indecent act or speech and to help the poor and needy. This view is based upon the hadith which reads, “The Messenger of Allah, upon whom be peace, enjoined Zakatul Fitron those who fast to shield them from any indecent act or speech, and for the purpose of pro-viding food for the needy.

It is accepted as Zakah for the one who pays it before the `Eid prayer, and it is sadaqah for the one who pays it after the prayer.” Al Qaradawi comments on this hadith by saying that there are two purposes: one is related to the individual; for completion of his fast and compensation for any shortcomings in his acts or speech. The other is related to society; for the spreading of love and happiness among its members, particu-larly the poor and needy, during the day of `Eid.

It also purifies one’s soul from such shortcomings as the adoration of property, and from miserliness. Furthermore, it purifies one’s property from the stain of unlawful earnings. It is also a cure for ailments.[4] The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “It would be better that you treat your patients with charity.” In addition, it provides for the needs of the poor and the indigent and relieves them from having to ask others for charity on the day of `Eid. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Fulfil their need on this day (i.e., the day of `Eid)”

Zakatul Fitr is incumbent on every free Muslim who pos-sesses one Sa’a of dates or barley which is not needed as basic food for himself or his family for the duration of one day and night. Every free Muslim must pay Zakatul Fitrfor himself, his wife, children, and servants. This is the opinion of Imam Malik, Al Shafi`i, and Ahmad. Imam Abu Hanifah, however, said that it is only obligatory for one who possesses a nisab (a minimum amount of property) after fulfilling the costs of his house, servant, horse, and weapon.

Al Khattabi explained that Zakatul Fitr was obligatory for all Muslims, not only those who possess the nisab stating that this is the view of the majority of scholars.

He said, “In essence, the rationale behind it was stated to be the purification of one who fasts from any indecent act or speech. And since every Muslim needs this, it is therefore oblig-atory upon every fasting Muslim, whether rich or poor, who possesses one Sa` in excess of his main staple food for the duration of one day and night. This is because so long as the essential rationale is shared by all Muslims, then they also share the same obligation.” Al Qaradawi also asserts the majority view when he says, “It is a virtuous wisdom of Islam that it makes this Zakah obligatory not only on the rich, but also upon nearly every Muslim, for you can hardly find a person who does not possess one Sa’a of food above his main staple food for the duration of one day and night. The wisdom behind this obli-gation, therefore, is to prepare the poor to practice benevo-lence and feel the dignity and honour of giving in charity.

The purpose of Zakatul FitrEid Al Fitr is celebrated on the first day of Shawwal, at the completion of Ramadan. Shawwal is the 10th month of the Islamic calendar.

06 FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018ISLAM

07FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018 ASIA

Senior journalist Shujaat Bukhari shot deadIANS

SRINAGAR: Unknown gunmen shot a veteran journalist and his police bodyguard dead yesterday in the main city of violence-plagued Kashmir, police and witnesses said.

Shujaat Bukhari, editor of an English language daily Rising Kashmir, had just entered his vehicle outside his office in the city’s press enclave when assailants fired several shots from close range.

“He (Bukhari) is no more. One of his two police bodyguards also died in the attack,” a top police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Another police guard and the vehicle driver were critically wounded in the attack.

Fellow journalists were on the scene soon afterward. Bukhari was slumped over in the back seat, and one of the police body-guards had a gruesome head

wound. Bukhari was a protected

journalist, guarded by two armed police around the clock, in an area of India where political vio-lence and threats to reporters is common.

His final tweet, sent just a few hours before his murder, was a link to his website’s reporting of the UN human rights chief calling for a major investigation into abuses committed by both India and Pakistan in Kashmir.

Amnesty India described Bukhari as “a brave and out-spoken voice for justice and equality in Jammu and Kashmir”.

“This is a grave attack on press freedom and democratic voices,” the Editors Guild of India added on Twitter.

Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh described Bukhari’s murder as an “act of cowardice”.

“It is an attempt to silence the saner voices of Kashmir. He was a courageous and fearless jour-nalist,” he added. Witnesses said Bukhari died on the spot while the assailants fled immediately.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Rebel groups fighting Indian rule of Kashmir as well as gov-ernment forces have been accused in the past of abducting,

attacking and threatening journalists.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end British colonial rule in 1947. Both countries claim the former Himalayan kingdom in its entirety. The attack comes one day before the end of a unilateral halt in military operations against the rebels for the Holy Month of Ramadan.

UN human rights chief calls for probe in KashmirGENEVA: The UN human rights chief called yesterday for an independent international investigation into reports of rights violations in the disputed region of Kashmir, laying blame for civilian deaths and injuries on the actions of both India and Pakistan.

In its first report on the region, the office of Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, details “chronic impunity for violations committed by security forces.” The report was written without visiting the region as both sides refused to grant unconditional access to the investigators. The decades-old dispute “has robbed millions of their basic human rights,” Zeid said. He called for the UN-backed Human Rights Council that begins a new session on Monday to create a “Com-mission of Inquiry” to investigate alleged abuses in the region.

Bullet marks on the car of Syed Shujaat Bukhari, the editor of Rising Kashmir daily newspaper, after unidentified gunmen attacked him outside his office in Srinagar, yesterday.

Farmers shouting slogans during a protest against Punjab state government for the recent rise in electricity tariffs, in Amritsar, yesterday.

Split verdict in AIADMK MLAs’ disqualification caseIANS

CHENNAI: In a huge relief to the AIADMK government headed by Edappadi Palaniswamy, the Madras High Court yesterday delivered a split verdict in the case relating to disqualification of 18 MLAs, an order that will allow the present status quo to continue, at least for some more time.

While Chief Justice Indrani Banerjee declined to interfere with the order of the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker P. Dhanapal disqualifying 18 MLAs owing allegiance to sidelined AIADMK leader T T V Dhinakaran in

September last year, the other judge Justice M Sundar forming the two-judge bench set aside the Speaker’s order on the ground it is hit by “perversity, non compliance with the prin-ciples of natural justice, mala fides and violation of constitu-tional mandate”.

The judges said since there has been disgreement between them, the case should be trans-ferred to a third judge. Since the Chief Justice is involved in the matter, she is of he view that it would not be appropriate for her to nominate the third judge. Hence, the next senior-most

judge would name the third judge, they said. It is likely that the decision to name the third judge will most likely be taken by the senior-most judge Justice Kuluvadi Ramesh.

Maintaining status quo, the court also said till the case is finally decided the interim order issued earlier that barred holding of by-elections and floor test in the Assembly continue to be valid. In the 296-page judgement, Justice Banerjee said that in her opinion the view taken by the Speaker is a possible, if not plau-sible view, and “I am unable to hold that the said decision is any

way unreasonable, irrational or perverse”.

“It is well-settled that when two views are possible, the High Court does not in exercise of its power of judicial review con-ferred under Article 226 of the Constitution of India interfere with the decision just because it prefers the other view. No inter-ference is, therefore, warranted with the impugned order passed by the Speaker,” she said, dis-missing the petitions by the dis-qualified MLAs. In his order dif-fering with the Chief Justice, Justice Sundar said “sum totality of discussion leads this court to

inevitably conclude that the impugned order of the Speker disqualifying 18 writ petitioners herein deserves to be set aside.”

Citing various Supreme Court judgements, he said the Speaker’s order was hit by per-versity, non-compliance with the princioples of natural justice, mala fides and violation of con-stitutional mandate.” “It is made clear that his order is being passed without relying on the Yeddyurappa case owing to the controversy regarding implied overruling/per incuriam qua Nabam Rebia which has been left open,” he said.

Philippines delays talks with Communist rebels

Heavy rains cripple normal life in Karnataka

AP

MANILA: The Philippine government is delaying a resumption of peace talks with communist guerrillas to allow public consultations, an official said yesterday, adding that efforts to end one of Asia’s longest rebel-lions were “now at the cusp of some major breakthroughs.”

Presidential adviser Jesus Dureza said President Rodrigo Duterte ordered government negotiators to consult public and government groups about issues in the Norwegian-brokered nego-tiation, delaying its planned resumption. Duterte separately said the talks may resume next month.

“We are now at the cusp of some major breakthroughs in the peace talks, hence, the urgent need now to take deliberate steps

to ensure that we do not falter,” Dureza said, without elaborating. “Just and sustainable and lasting peace will happen only when our people understand and support these efforts.”

Rebel leader Jose Maria Sison has said “back channel” talks have led both sides to agree to a pre-liminary “stand-down” accord on June 21, with the peace talks to resume on June 28 to June 30 in the Norwegian capital of Oslo.

Philippine security officials, however, have opposed some rebel demands, including the release of jailed guerrillas, and want guarantees that the insur-gents would comply with any cease-fire agreement.

“We’ve been had before by that stand-down, when they con-tinued reclaiming villages that we have liberated,” Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told reporters

last week. “We may be the only ones standing down and not them.”

The communist rebellion, which has raged since 1969, has left about 40,000 combatants and civilians dead. It has also stunted economic development, espe-cially in the impoverished coun-tryside where the military says a few thousand Maoist insurgents are still waging a guerrilla war.

When he took power in 2016, Duterte resumed peace talks with the guerrillas and granted conces-sions by appointing three left-wing activists to his Cabinet. But the cordial relations rapidly dete-riorated when he protested con-tinuing rebel assaults on troops and policemen, along with guer-rilla extortion of mining firms and agricultural plantations.

Last year, Duterte canceled the talks with the guerrillas and

signed an order declaring the rebel group a terrorist organi-zation in a prelude to his govern-ment’s petition to a Manila court in February to formally designate the Communist Party of the Phil-ippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, as terrorist groups.

Duterte said he has invited Sison, the founder of the com-munist party who has been in exile in the Dutch city of Utrecht for more than three decades, to return to the Philippines for 60 days in an effort to hasten the con-clusion of the talks.

Dureza said the two sides would finalize an agreement on social and economic reforms when the talks resume and then tackle political and constitutional reforms before discussing the sen-sitive topic of ending the fighting and “disposition of forces.”

IANS

KOLKATA: The Indian Coast Guard yesterday rescued all 22 crew members of a merchant container vessel after a devastating fire broke out in the ship in the Bay of Bengal, a senior coast guard official said here.

The container ship, MV SSL Kolkata, that was on its way to the city with 464 containers on board, caught fire, the officer said.

“Our Coast Guard ship arrived in the area in the morning. The captain decided to save the crew and abandon the ship. On his request, we have successfully picked up all the 22 survivors. As of now, all 22 people are being brought to

Haldia in the coast guard ship,” Coast Guard Commander (NE) Inspector General KS Sheoran said here.

“The sea was very bad at the accident site. There were high waves and the wind was very strong. Almost 60-70 percent of the ship was on fire by that time,” he said.

The reason of the fire is still not confirmed. According to the Coast Guard, the owners of the ship, Shreyas Shipping & Logistics have hired tugboats from the nearby ports that would work on salvage oper-ation of the remaining goods, unaffected in the blaze.

The owner of the ship has hired big tugboats from Haldia port and Dhamra port in Odisha.

Duterte warns of possible violence if poor seize housesAP

MANILA: The Philippine pres-ident warned a pro-poor group yesterday not to take over a government housing project and said violence and deaths could occur if it defies orders and resists the police.

President Rodrigo Duterte ordered Kadamay and other groups to leave the low-cost housing area in Rodriguez town east of Manila by tomorrow noon, or he would deploy special police forces to drive them away. Police are under orders to wrest back control of the houses if they are seized, he said.

Kadamay members attempted to occupy some of the vacant houses in Rodriguez

on Wednesday but police drove them out. Some gathered nearby and staged a protest.

“If you want a fight, I’ll tell the police to give a fight,” Duterte, known for making death threats against drug and crime suspects, said in a speech before village leaders.

Duterte said he told police not to start any violence, “but if you need to kill in order to implement the legal regula-tions, do it. If it leads to five, six, seven deaths, I don’t care.”

Duterte warned the group not to repeat such a takeover, and expressed disgust that Kadamay members and other left-wing activists had burned his effigy in street protests.

IANS

MANGALURU: Torrential rains in the coastal and south-western districts of Karnataka crippled normal life, as the southwest monsoon inten-sified, causing flood-like situ-ation in towns and villages across the region, said an official yesterday.

“Schools and colleges have been shut yesterday and today in Dakshina Kannada, Kodagu, Chikkamagaluru and Udupi districts, as heavy rains continued unabated, throwing normal life out of gear,” a Revenue official told reporters here.

Very heavy rainfall meas-uring upto 19 cm was received in certain parts of Dakshina Kannada district, according to the data from Bengaluru centre of India Meteorological Department (IMD).

Meanwhile, Revenue Minister R V Deshpande told reporters here that Chief Min-ister H D Kumaraswamy had released additional funds to compensate the rain-affected people in Dakshina Kannada district. Incessant rains also disrupted vehicular traffic across the region, as land-slides in the ghat section and state highways between Hassan and Mangaluru blocked roads with debris and fallen trees.

Container ship on fire; 22 crew members rescued

Protest against rise in electricity tariffs

As the staggering task of reconstruction lurches into motions, analysts fear that the regime will make it much harder for many returning refugees to reclaim their property and assets, which may be confiscated by the state.

08 FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018VIEWS

The world learns to live with current Syrian regime

The writing is now indisputably on the wall: The Syrian regime is going nowhere. Despite seven years of civil war, the

deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, the flight of millions of ref-ugees, the hollowing out of the nation’s ancient cities and the horrific use of chemical weapons on civilians, President Bashar Assad remains in his post. The atrocities carried out under his watch led myriad foreign leaders and governments to call for his ouster, but Assad has withstood a multi-front rebellion against his rule.

Last week, his forces declared that the capital, Damascus, and its pop-ulous suburbs had been liberated from “terrorists” and are now fully under regime control. That marked the cul-mination of a systematic, brutal offensive against rebel positions sur-rounding the capital, including the enclave of Eastern Ghouta, which had held out for half a decade until it suc-cumbed earlier this year.

The armed opposition’s strong-holds, as my Washington Post col-leagues reported, are now limited to Idlib province in the north, bordering Turkey, and Daraa on the Jordanian border. The Syrian regime is moving to squeeze these areas as well, with ana-

lysts warning of the potential of further hideous civilian suf-fering. Last week, gov-ernment air-craft dropped leaflets on Daraa reportedly warning mili-tants to sur-render. “The men of the Syrian army are coming,” the leaflets read. “Take your decision

before it is too late.”Assad is in complete command of

the country’s three major metropolitan centers — Damascus and its environs, Homs and Aleppo. “The highway linking them is being rebuilt and will provide a secure route for government

soldiers heading to the remaining front lines,” wrote my colleague Louisa Loveluck. The stage is set for a final quashing of the rebellion.

“The regime is not strong, but there can be no question that it is now going to take over remaining areas of Syria until it reaches the front line of zones controlled by others,” said Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, to my colleagues.

That reality flies in the face of Western insistence that a true peace treaty is necessary to end the war. “It does rather make a mockery of the idea, pushed by people working towards peace talks, that there is no military solution to the Syrian con-flict,” said Emma Beals, an inde-pendent analyst covering Syria, to Loveluck. “While it may be true that there is no lasting peace to be found in a military strategy, there is certainly, as we are seeing, a way for them to achieve their objective: control.”

No one should be surprised by Assad’s bloody-minded determination to stay in power. “The regime has kept its nerve throughout the civil war, even when the opposition wiped out almost the entire Syrian war cabinet in 2012 with a cleverly placed bomb, and when in the spring of 2015 Palmyra and Jisr Al Shughour fell to rebels who were simultaneously laying siege to western Aleppo,” wrote Steven Simon, a former Obama administration official.

The Syrian ruler has also stared down the threats and posturing of both the Obama and Trump adminis-trations, outlasted a covert CIA program to arm “moderate” rebels and weathered a number of US missile barrages on Syrian airfields.

Regional politics have largely

played into Assad’s hands. The com-plexity of the war has thinned Western appetite for regime change in Damascus. President Donald Trump himself has made no secret of his dis-interest in removing Assad, preferring to focus on wiping out the Islamic State.

The deliberations surrounding Russia are worth watching. The Krem-lin’s entry into the war decisively tilted it in Assad’s favour, with Russian air power turning the tide of battle across the country. Now, Russia may be moving to consolidate its own stake in the Syrian endgame.

Assad doesn’t seem too concerned for now. As he tightens his grip over the core of the country, he’s also thwarting new international attempts to broker a political settlement.

As the staggering task of recon-struction lurches into motions, ana-lysts fear that the regime will make it much harder for many returning refugees to reclaim their property and assets, which may be confis-cated by the state and transferred over to loyalists. Even in a phantom peace, new divisions and injustices may fester.

Last week, the regime rejected a Russian proposal that would dilute Assad’s presidential powers, partially decentralize governance and set a maximum of two consecutive seven-year terms for the presidency. An opposition spokesman suggested that his unwillingness to accept even these terms shows that Assad “does not want a political solution.”

The writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.

ISHAAN THAROOR THE WASHINGTON POST

QUOTE OF THE DAY

I see the decision taken yesterday

by the UN General Assembly as a

historic milestone on the Palestinian

issue.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey’s President

Dialogue must be continued to mend G-7 divisions

The framework for the Group of Seven advanced nations, a structure for sup-

porting world prosperity and stability, faces a crisis. Close dialogue must be con-tinued to mend the state of division among the G-7 countries.

At economic discussions at the latest G-7 summit meeting in Canada, the United States came under a barrage of criticism from other member nations. This was because the United States had unilaterally imposed additional tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from Japan, the European Union and Canada.

The EU and Canada started preparations to slap retaliatory tariffs on imports of US products.

“Just exchanging trade-restrictive measures will not benefit any nation,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emphasized. However, the G-7 discussions remained as far apart as ever.

The schism was already evident at a meeting of G-7 finance ministers and central bank governors that had taken place ahead of the summit meeting.

The G-7 leaders’ failure to make mutual conces-sions at the face-to-face summit talks represents a serious situation.

The G-7 countries share such values as democracy and market economies. They have fulfilled a certain role in facilitating growth and stabilizing the global order through efforts to tackle such global problems as oil crises and financial unrest.

Divisions among the G-7 nations will incur large losses not only for the group but for the whole world. There is a pressing need to restore unity among the G-7 nations so they can perform their primary role.

Utilize new trade talksIt should be noted that

there is an increasing number of areas in which the G-7 members cannot act in concert. This change seems to have been caused

by the advent of U.S. Pres-ident Donald Trump, who pursues an “America first” policy and makes light of multilateral frameworks.

To make up for the G-7 group’s functional disorder, it will be important for its member states to recognize each other’s differences and utilize new trade talks agreed upon between the United States and European countries as well as working-level talks at the World Trade Organization.

It is regrettable that the G-7 meeting produced few achievements in other fields, either, as a result of antagonism between the United States and the other participating nations.

China has continued its unfair practices, including violating intellectual property rights. Although the latest summit provided an excellent opportunity for the G-7 nations to join hands in urging China to improve the situation, they failed to carry out exhaustive discussions.

Contrasted with the

economic discussions in which there was only discord among the G-7 nations, they were unan-imous regarding the North Korean problem.

To achieve North Korea’s complete, verifiable and irreversible denucleari-zation, the prime minister said, “It is indispensable to get North Korea to take concrete actions.” The other top leaders agreed.

Immediately prior to the first U.S.-North Korea summit meeting in history, it is greatly significant for the G-7 countries to confirm their cooperation and support the talks.

Russia’s possible return to the G-7 group was also discussed in the latest meeting. The Crimean problem has caused a serious schism in Russia’s ties with the United States and European nations.

If Russia rejoins the G-7 group just at a time when the relationship among G-7 countries remains fragile, it could only deepen the antag-onism between them.

While welcoming the summit, Qatar reaffirmed its stated policy on establishing world peace and resolving political conflicts through dialogue.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFIeditorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMEDm.salim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI osman@pen.com.qa

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

A peace initiative

Though the critics say that the summit held in Singapore between the US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is lacking in details and

unclear on how to achieve the said agenda, the meeting itself is a major step in the direction of peace.

While welcoming the summit, Qatar reaffirmed its stated policy on establishing world peace and resolving political conflicts through dialogue.

At the conclusion of the historic summit which was held on Tuesday, Trump pledged to provide security guarantees to North Korea, while Kim reaffirmed firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

The document said Trump and Kim conducted a com-prehensive, in-depth, and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new US-North Korea relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. The two sides also agreed to hold follow-on negotiations, led by the US Sec-retary of State Mike Pompeo, and a relevant high-level North Korea official, at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes of the summit.

A n o t h e r m a j o r announcement by Trump made later at a press meet that he would end war games with South Korea, was a necessary move to stop provocative actions to ease tensions and build confidence.

The Summit discussed three issues: nuclear disarmament, ensuring North Korea’s security and the actions that the parties will take to implement their obli-gations under their agreement.

The whole world welcomed the great initiative by the two nations. The State of Qatar in its welcoming statement, said that

achieving a comprehensive and sat-isfactory solution for all parties and through dialogue and peaceful means will end decades of the conflict that the cit-izens of the two Koreas paid its price, and which led to the dispersion of families since the 1950s. It will spread security and tranquility among North Korea’s neighbours.

As Qatar said the comprehensive solution will be a quantum leap and a new achievement in efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons around the world, and perhaps that step is significant for the Middle East, which Qatar fears to become a nuclear racing arena, unless the situation of escalation is contained by activating peaceful means to resolve disputes and differences and to reduce the nuclear ambitions of all parties.

It’s undoubtedly a major beginning towards a peaceful world as Kim said that North Korea had “decided to leave the past behind”, adding that “the world would see a major change.”

It’s true as Kim said: “It was not easy to get here. In the past, old practices and prejudices worked against us and placed many obstacles in our way, but we overcame all of them and we are here today.”

So an open and unprejudiced approach is necessary for all nations to over their differences and embrace peace to achieve a sustainable world.

THE JAPAN NEWS

The lack of safety is affecting severely the civilian population. UNICEF has reported that for the first time since 2002, it has registered an increase in out-of-school children. According to its report, some 3.7 million children between the ages of seven and 17 years (44 percent) are out of school due to the war.

09FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018 OPINION

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Tales of torture andhorror in Yemen

What is behind the ceasefire with the Taliban?

ARWA IBRAHIM

AHMED RASHID AL JAZEERA

Farouk Baakar, a 26-year-old Yemeni doctor from Hudaida, has been detained and tortured by Houthi militia for 15 months,

before he was released after his family paid a ransom.

Baakar describes his detention and enforced disappearance a “death-like

experience”. He was detained in Sanaa in November 2016 for treating a fighter who fought the Shia militia.

“They (the Houthis) kept asking me why I had saved his (the fighter’s) life. I told them it was my duty as a doctor,” Bakaar recalled.

He said he was forced out of the hospital he worked at in Sanaa, put in a car and driven away. Like many pris-oners in Yemen, Bakaar’s detention and enforced disappea-ance left his family unaware of his whereabouts for months.

During that time, Bakaar said, he was detained and tortured in different unidentified prisons.“I spent 50 days in an underground prison with barely any oxygen. I was hung by my wrists from the ceiling and left in my own faeces and urine to rot. I wasn’t allowed to wash once. “They extracted my finger-nails and used a cable to press onto the flesh underneath. I lost consciousness from the sheer amount of pain.

“They burned me with fire and dipped me in water that they’d run an electric current through. They beat me with all sorts of electric cables and iron rods,” explained Bakaar, who said he saw nails, dead animals and body parts laying around in some of the detention centres he was in. “In that prison, I felt like I was already dead,” he said.

Baakar also recalled that some fellow detainees he met at Houthi detention facilities had lost their eye-sight. “I saw detainees chained to the walls. They were bleeding around their feet, and their wounds from the chains had become infected with puss and

worms.“As a doctor, I couldn’t see them

(other detainees) suffer without trying to help. Whenever I was caught, I was made to experience the same pain they had,” he told Al Jazeera. The Houthi armed group has controlled large parts of Yemen since late 2014, including the capital. In conjunction with forces loyal to the late and deposed President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the group has carried out arbitrary arrests and detentions of its opponents, as well as enforced dis-appearances, torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, reported Amnesty International in February.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) also documented many cases of human rights abuses committed by Houthi authorities in Yemen. “We have docu-mented dozens of cases of arbitrary detention, forced disappearance and mistreatment. It is certainly more than 70 cases since 2014. Yemeni groups have documented far more,” Kristine Beckerle, Yemen researcher at HRW told. While many documented cases are in Houthi-controlled areas, the issue of arbitrary arrests, enforced disappear-ances and torture is not happening exclusively in Houthi prisons, according to HRW. “It (the human rights abuse) is absolutely a problem in Houthi areas, but it is a wider problem [than that].

Um Muhammed from the Sanaa-based Association of Abductees’ Mothers told Al Jazeera that her organi-sation has documented cases of torture in Houthi prisons.

They included “beating, use of sharp objects to penetrate body cavities, hanging, electrocution, burning with fire, and denailing. Some families even informed us of receiving dead bodies with obvious signs of torture,” she said.

Deaths in custody have also been documented. “The ways in which the Houthis are treating those they are detaining involve a myriad of human rights abuses. We have documented extreme forms of abuse including people dying in detention,” Beckerle told Al Jazeera.

While HRW docu-mented two deaths in custody in 2016, but Um Muhammed says the number of deaths in

detention is much higher.“We’ve documented at least 117

cases of death in custody that seem to have either been caused by torture or neglect,” said Um Muhammad.

One case the association is looking into is the death in custody of Muhammed Ghurab, a 28-year-old pharmacist from Sanaa, who was detained four years ago, and reportedly died in Houthi prisons last week.

According to a source close to Ghurab’s family, the family members received his body on Friday after they were informed by the Houthis that he died as a result of contracting tubercu-losis while in detention.

“His family visited him a few weeks ago. His mother nearly passed out from what she saw. He was extremely thin and he complained of severe chest pains,” said the source who did not wish to be named for fear of retribution.

“The symptoms Muhammed had complained of when the family visited didn’t align with tuberculosis,” added the source who believes Ghurab had either died out of neglect or was poisoned.

According to the source, there have been five other cases of reported deaths at the same detention centre — the political security prison in Sanaa — since Ghurab’s death.

“Many mothers of detainees came to Ghurab’s mother and told her that their sons are suffering similar symptoms as Ghurab had; extreme weight loss and severe chest burning and pain,” added the source.

“They worry their sons will reach the same fate as Muhammed.”

The writer is a journalist specialising in the Middle East and North Africa.

For the first time ever, the Taliban has announced a three-day ceasefire with the Afghan government over the

Eid holiday period. They have ordered their forces to cease opera-tions although they said they would continue attacking US forces in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s move follows Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s earlier demand from the Taliban to respect a brief unilateral ceasefire which the government would enforce over the Eid holiday period.

There have been many offers of temporary ceasefires by the gov-ernment over the past two decades but none have yielded a positive response from the Taliban. It was thought that the Taliban had become too fragmented and, at the same time, too confident that they are winning the war to accept a ceasefire.

It appears that pressure from Pakistan on the Taliban Shura which largely resides in the Pakistani border town of Quetta has been instrumental in pushing the Taliban to agree to a ceasefire.

According to Lisa Curtis, deputy assistant to US President Donald Trump, Washington has been pursuing “multiple lines of effort” for bringing peace to Afghanistan and an important component of that effort was to ensure that Pakistan played “a constructive role” in it. US and Nato troops in Afghanistan will also observe this truce.

The strategy behind the ceasefire offer is to create a pause in hostil-ities for a few days which could be extended further. The end game of the Ghani administration is to jump-start military and political dialogue aimed at ending the war.

Is the ceasefire a sign that the Taliban will enter into talks?

On February 28, Ghani issued a renewed call for the Taliban to join peace talks, promising that the government would recognise the group and give their leaders an office in Kabul. The Taliban never bothered to even reply to the offer.

At end of March, the Taliban were asked to attend a regional con-ference in Tashkent to discuss peace talks. They failed to turn up or even

reply to Uzbekistan’s offer.

The Taliban’s main demand is to hold direct talks with the US — something they have been asking for over several years. They will not talk to the Ghani government which they consider to be a “puppet” of the US. And as far as the Taliban are con-cerned, it is the Americans who have to make the first concessions.

However, the possibility for direct talks happening is

slim because there is disarray within all parties to the war. The Taliban are divided with individual com-manders now asserting more authority in the field than the Quetta-based leadership.

In fact, even ensuring the ceasefire will be a big challenge for the Taliban leadership; it is doubtful that they have had the opportunity to consult all their field commanders. Instead, it seems that the Quetta Shura has taken a uni-lateral decision to accept the ceasefire.

Furthermore, the Taliban are on the offensive and most attacks across the country are initiated by them rather than the Afghan army. There is no reason for them to give up that advantage now.

Equally fraught is the regional balance of power. Pakistan, Iran, Russia and possibly other states are giving public support to the Kabul government but covertly engaging elements of the Taliban who operate close to their borders.

The Trump administration is also divided between remaining in Afghanistan until the Taliban are defeated (which could take years) or pulling out quickly. Before the US elections, Trump made it clear that he was in the leave camp, but it seems that he was subsequently persuaded by the US military to stay put in Afghanistan.

Why is Ghani insisting on a ceasefire now?

The crisis in Afghanistan is getting worse by the hour as the fighting intensifies and the gov-ernment loses control of more districts.

It has been estimated that close to 200 soldiers and police officers were killed every week last year. The Afghan government cannot afford politically to continue having such a high death toll. The strength of the Afghan security forces has declined over the past 12 months, a

Human Rights Watch (HRW) have documented many cases of human rights abuses committed by Houthi authorities in Yemen. We have documented dozens of cases of arbitrary detention, forced disappearance and mistreatment. It is certainly more than 70 cases since 2014.

US government watchdog has said. The number of security forces personnel has fallen by about six percent to just over 300,000, according to a new report.

The lack of safety is affecting severely the civilian population. UNICEF has reported that for the first time since 2002, it has registered an increase in out-of-school children. According to its report, some 3.7 million children between the ages of seven and 17 years (44 percent) are out of school due to the war.

Afghan’s are also increasingly facing food insecurity as this year’s draught has affected some 20 provinces. In its report, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA) said that “this drought will have a particu-larly detrimental effect on already chronically food insecure farming households.”

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s refugee problem is growing. Afghans continue to leave their homes to seek safety in other parts of Afghanistan or escape into neighbouring Iran or Pakistan or even further into Europe

As these multiple crises are worsening, Ghani is desperate to stop the fighting even for a day if it can give some respite to his people. A major diplomatic push is now needed in the region to make the ceasefire last longer than three days.

The writer is a journalist and the author of five books on Afghan-istan, Pakistan and Central Asia.

10 FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018ASIA

UNHCR hopes to win reprieve for refugeesINTERNEWS

PESHAWAR: With the deadline [June 30, 2018] for repatriation of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan approaching, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is hopeful that the interim government would extend the stay of refugees.

Afghan refugees living in Pakistan have been issued Proof of Registration (PoR) card following an agreement signed between United Nations, Pakistan and Afghanistan allowing refugees registered with UNHCR to live in Pakistan.

The extension had expired on December 31. However, fol-lowing talks with Afghan gov-ernment in Islamabad; the stay was extended during a meeting of the federal cabinet. The meeting was chaired by former premier Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

“We hope the interim gov-ernment extends the deadline [for stay of the Afghan refugees with PoR cards in Pakistan],” Ruvendrini Menikdiwela, UNHCR’s head for Pakistan said.

Menikdiwela appreciated Pakistan’s role in hosting the largest displaced population after the World War, adding that it was not possible for a single country or a single organisation to continuously support such a large section of migrated population and col-lective efforts were required.

“Pakistan has been gener-ously extending support to Afghan refugees for last 40 years,” she informed during her address in connection with Ref-ugees Day adding the entire global community got together on this day ‘but currently,

unfortunately there is a dire need of celebrating this day.’

Head for Afghan Refugees at commissionerate stated that the former minister for States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) Abdul Qadir Baloch was in contact with Afghan officials where Jalili also hoped the interim setup would extend the stay of Afghan refugees.

“Well, if you see the political situation, relations between both the government, I think the smooth relations will play their role and we hope the stay is granted,” he said, adding ‘the interim setup would hopefully extend the stay but we would also talk to the next government.’

According to the commis-sionerate, some five million refugees had migrated to Pakistan around 40 years ago.

However, some have repatriated and around 1.4 million registered Afghan ref-ugees still live in the country across 43 camps. Of that figure, over one million refugees live in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) alone.

“We do not want these people to be repatriated force-fully. But whenever they go, they should have all the facil-ities available for them,” com-missioner of Afghan refugees said, adding ‘voluntary repatri-ation was the perfect solution.’

UNHCR also donated an ambulance worth Rs4,980,000 to Rescue 1122 Peshawar.

N Korea sanctions to remain until complete denuclearisationREUTERS

SEOUL/BEIJING: Tough sanc-tions will remain on North Korea until its complete denucleari-sation, the US Secretary of State said yesterday, apparently contradicting the North’s view that the process agreed at this week’s summit would be phased and reciprocal.

US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un issued a joint statement after their Singapore meeting that reaffirmed the North’s com-mitment to “work toward com-plete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”, while Trump “committed to provide security guarantees”.

“President Trump has been incredibly clear about the sequencing of denuclearisation and relief from the sanctions,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters after meeting South Korea’s president and Japan’s foreign minister in Seoul.

“We are going to get com-plete denuclearisation; only then will there be relief from the sanctions,” he said.

North Korean state media reported on Wednesday that Kim and Trump had recognised the principle of “step-by-step and simultaneous action” to

achieve peace and denucleari-sation on the Korean peninsula.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the world, through the summit, had escaped the threat of war, echoing Trump’s upbeat assessment of his meeting with Kim.

“What’s most important was that the people of the world, including those in the United States, Japan and Koreans, have all been able to escape the threat of war, nuclear weapons and missiles,” Moon told Pompeo.

Pompeo insisted North Korea was committed to giving up its nuclear arsenal but said it would “be a process, not an easy one”. “Kim understood getting rid of his nuclear arsenal needed to be done quickly and there would only be relief from stringent UN sanctions on North Korea after its “complete denu-clearisation”, Pompeo said.

Moon later said South Korea would be flexible when it comes to military pressure on North Korea if it is sincere about denuclearisation.

Also on yesterday, North and South Korea held their first mil-itary talks in more than a decade. The talks followed on from an inter-Korean summit in April at which Moon and Kim agreed to

defuse tension and cease “hostile acts”.

Speaking later in the day in Beijing, Pompeo said China, Japan and South Korea all acknowledged a corner had been turned on the Korean peninsula issue.

“China has reaffirmed its commitment to honouring the UN Security Council resolutions. Those have mechanisms for relief contained in them, and we agreed that at the appropriate time that those would be con-sidered,” Pompeo said, standing

next to the Chinese govern-ment’s top diplomat, State Coun-cillor Wang Yi.

“But we have made very clear that the sanctions and the economic relief that North Korea will receive will only happen after the full denuclearisation, the complete denuclearisation of North Korea.”

Wang said China had con-sistently supported the denu-clearisation of the Korean peninsula but that it was impos-sible to solve the issue overnight.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (left) shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, yesterday.

Pakistan elected to UN Economic and Social Council for three yearsINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has been elected to the UN Economic and Social Council for a three-year term starting from first day of next year.

The election was held at the UN General Assembly in New York. According to Foreign Office Spokesperson, Pakistan secured 175 votes out of a total 186 votes cast.

Pakistan is one of the four

countries elected to this important body from the Asia Pacific region.

ECOSOC is one of the prin-cipal organs of the United Nations mandated with the important tasks of coordination, policy review and formulating recommendations on economic, social and environmental issues. It is also responsible for imple-mentation of all important Sus-tainable Development Goals.

Pakistan’s permanent

representative to the United Nations Dr Maleeha Lodhi said Pakistan’s election to the council is the international community’s endorsement of the positive role it is playing at the world body.

She said as a member of ECOSOC, Pakistan will continue to work towards strengthening the Council, to make it more efficient, effective and responsive to the current social, economic and environmental challenges.

Rights body asks Pakistan to end crackdown on activistsAP

ISLAMABAD: An interna-tional rights body has urged Pakistan to end the “current crackdown” on human rights defenders, activists, jour-nalists and members of civil society ahead of the July 25 elections.

Yesterday’s statement by Amnesty International comes a week after authorities abducted Pakistani rights activist Gul Bukhari and held her for several hours in the eastern city of Lahore.

Bukhari is known for her criticism of Pakistan’s military.

Bukhari was seized on her way to a TV studio where she was to appear as an on-air analyst.

Also last week, Lahore journalist Asad Kharal, was wounded in a mysterious attack and earlier this month, 37 activists from Pakistani tribes were detained for ral-lying against the military.

In recent years, scores of journalists and bloggers who criticized security forces have gone missing in Pakistan.

Pakistan student stabbed 23 times fights to see her attacker jailedAFP

LAHORE: A Pakistani law student has emerged as a women’s rights crusader after she was stabbed 23 times in a busy street only to see her alleged attacker walk free, igniting outrage across the country.

Khadija Siddiqui (pictured) survived the frenzied attack in broad daylight outside her sis-ter’s school on a busy thor-oughfare in the teeming eastern city of Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital, in May 2016.

Her sister was also injured as she tried to defend her, and the brazen attack only ended when her driver managed to pull the assailant off and rush Sid-diqui to hospital, where she was admitted to intensive care with her neck slashed, her arms wounded, and a deep injury to her back.

Siddiqui named her attacker

as Shah Hussain, a classmate whom she had rejected roman-tically. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in July 2017.

But Hussain, the son of a prominent Lahori lawyer, appealed the decision, and in a shock judgement released on June 4, the Lahore High Court acquitted him on all charges.

The decision was greeted

with an uproar in Pakistan, where hundreds of women are murdered and attacked by men each year, with many struggling to get justice in a sluggish court system that advocates say is often slanted against them.

“I was shocked,” Sid-

diqui, who spent three weeks in hospital after the attack and whose back still pains her, told AFP. “But unfortunately it was true.”

Siddiqui’s long struggle to put her attacker behind bars had already drawn attention from women’s rights campaigners, but when Hussain walked free it unleashed a wave of anger.

“I am heart broken,

speechless, shattered after hearing what our judiciary system did to you @khadeeeej751 - But do not give up , keep fighting, and we shall overcome this together,” tweeted actress Urwa Hocane.

Hamza Ali Abbasi, another TV personality and activist, com-mented: “We must all unite & be Khadija’s voice & leave no stone unturned to get her justice against this barbarian! #WeAreWithKhadija”.

The hashtag was trending in Pakistan within hours of the acquittal.

The reaction intensified when the court’s judgement was released, with critics accusing it of “victim-blaming” after it poked holes in Siddiqui’s credibility.

The outcry was so great that Pakistan’s Supreme Court has now taken up the case and will hold hearings later in the summer.

Hashmi, Hussain’s father, has told AFP that his child is innocent. “My son is a brilliant student,” he said. “How can he be a criminal?”

Siddiqui’s case highlights how Pakistan’s judicial system fails women, says Hina Jilani, a leading lawyer and human rights activist. The young law student is lucky in that she received high-profile support and it came to the Supreme Court’s attention, Jilani says -- but that is rare.

“There is a prejudice against women,” she argues.

Pakistan is deeply conserv-ative, and violence against women remained “pervasive and intractable” in 2017, according a yearly report by the country’s Human Rights Commission.

It documented thousands of reported violent incidents including rapes, assaults, sexual harassment, acid attacks, murders, and even four examples of “stove burning” -- understood

to be when a woman is taken into a kitchen, covered in ker-osene and set alight; then the perpetrators claim she was burned by the stove.

The real figures, the com-mission said, are likely to be much higher.

Siddiqui says women, including herself, are often pres-sured to drop their cases, and can f a c e b l a c k m a i l a n d harassment.

But she is determined to see hers through, and says the attention it has received has prompted many women to contact her to say they, too, are encouraged to stand up for themselves.

“I have been told by the prosecutors... that I’m probably the first woman who is fighting so hard to get justice,” she said, sounding calm and confident. \

“It has proved that if women fight, they can turn things around.”

Hong Kong passes controversial bill for joint mainland rail checkpointsAFP

HONG KONG: Hong Kong lawmakers passed a contro-versial bill giving mainland authorities joint control over a new rail terminus yesterday despite angry protests the move would erode the city’s autonomy from Beijing.

It is illegal for mainland law enforcement to operate in semi-autonomous Hong Kong under the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

But with a high-speed rail

link to Hong Kong’s neighbouring mainland cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou due to open this year, plans have now been approved for a joint immigration check-point which will see mainland officials stationed in a new ter-minus in the heart of Hong Kong.

Long-running opposition against the proposals reached a head yesterday, with about 200 people demonstrating outside the Legislative Council against the bill.

Hong Kong enjoys liberties unseen on the mainland including

freedom of speech and an inde-pendent judiciary, with the rule of law a bedrock of its culture and business success.

The joint immigration arrangement bill was pushed through by Hong Kong’s partially elected legislature, after the council president kicked out several pro-democracy law-makers who protested. They were later barred from chamber.

Holding up slogans during a debate ahead of the vote, angry opposition lawmakers accused the president of “crippling the

legislature” and ceding Hong Kong to the mainland.

The troubled $10.7bn high-speed rail link is one of a number

of huge cross-border infrastructure projects approaching completion as concern grows Beijing is tight-ening its grip on the city.

Pro-democracy lawmakers chant slogans after Legislative Council passed the controversial bill, in Hong Kong, China, yesterday.

Pakistan has been generously extending support to Afghan refugees for last 40 years.

11FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018 EUROPE

UK: May’s Brexit compromise hits snagREUTERS

LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May failed yesterday to win around pro-EU lawmakers in her party over parliament’s role in the Brexit process, raising the risk of defeat in lower house votes next week.

May is struggling to unite the Conservative Party around her plan for leaving the European Union, trying to balance the demands of those who want the closest possible ties with the bloc and others who want a clean break.

The divisions only seem to be growing wider.

The row centres on what say parliament will have over any final Brexit deal agreed with Brussels. Some lawmakers want greater powers to direct the government’s negotiating strategy than have been so far offered.

Earlier this week, she agreed to seek a compromise with the rebellious Conservative law-makers, avoiding a House of Commons defeat on the final wording of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which will sever Britain’s ties with the EU.

Her minority government still needs support from the rebels to pass that bill and win

future votes on more than 10 separate pieces of legislation needed to prepare for Brexit.

That support was not forth-coming yesterday.

Dominic Grieve, a Conserv-ative lawmaker who has led the rebel group, told the BBC that the wording of the deal with May had been changed and the f i n a l f o r m a t w a s unacceptable.

“The plan now has got to be to try to put it right,” Grieve told Reuters later. The legislation will be debated on Monday by the upper House of Lords and if no compromise is agreed, May could face a damaging defeat when it returns to the lower house on Wednesday.

“Those who backed the prime minister on Tuesday night may well now feel very badly let down and they may choose not to go along with this really rather ridiculous amendment that’s been tabled by the government,” pro-EU lawmaker Anna Soubry told the BBC.

The Brexit department said

it was confident of securing a deal that parliament would accept, but set out in a statement the three scenarios which would trigger a vote in both houses of parliament.

They were: “a) should par-liament reject the government’s deal with the EU, b) that no agreement can be reached, or, c) there is no deal agreed by the 21 January 2019.”

“This ensures that in all cir-cumstances parliament can hold government to account, while also allowing government to deliver on the will of the British people as expressed in the ref-erendum,” a Brexit department

spokesman said. However, the nub of the disagreement with rebels appeared to be what form those votes would take. Grieve had originally proposed a vote to seek parliament’s approval, but the government was offering a largely symbolic vote.

“I’ve not lied, certainly not,” Solicitor General Robert Buckland, the minister who has been guiding the legislation through parliament for the gov-ernment, told Sky News. He said the final decision on the wording was taken by May.

“I’m sorry if they’re disap-pointed by the final terms of it, I really am.”

Merkel under pressure in escalating row over immigrationAFP

BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured) faced a tense showdown yestersday within her divided conservative camp over the flashpoint issue of immigration that could threaten her political future.

Merkel was confronted with an open rebellion by her hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, long a fierce critic of her liberal stance on refugees who wants to toughen border controls.

After late-night talks between them failed to resolve the dispute, a parliamentary session yesterday was suspended to allow the rival camps -- Mer-kel’s CDU and its traditional sister party from Bavaria, See-hofer’s CSU -- to each huddle for strategy talks.

Seehofer has demanded as part of his new “migration master plan” that German border police be given the right to turn back all asylum-seekers without valid identity papers and those who are already registered else-where in the European Union.

Merkel rejects the idea, fearing it would be seen in the EU as Germany going it alone and hurt already over-burdened frontline Mediterranean coun-tries such as Italy and Greece.

Currently migrants from these categories are initially admitted into Germany, where their situation is assessed in a bureaucratic process, with some later sent back to their first EU port of call or their country of origin.

Merkel pledged to seek a negotiated response on the issue from the EU, which holds its next summit on June 28-29, and to pursue bilateral deals with transit countries such as Italy and Austria.

“I see illegal migration as one of the major challenges of the European Union and therefore believe that we should not act unilaterally, or without consultation, and not at the expense of third parties,” she said. The CSU’s Alexander Dobrindt insisted Seehofer has

the authority to order police to turn back the migrants -- a potential act of open defiance that would force Merkel to fire him, sparking coalition chaos.

Merkel, the longest-serving EU leader, had Wednesday called immigration “a litmus test for the future of Europe” -- but the issue has once again turned into a test of Merkel’s own grip on power at home.

The top-selling Bild daily argued that “if no agreement is reached, Angela Merkel must face a vote of confidence and every lawmaker must decide ... Keep going with Merkel’s way or face an adventure called fresh elections.”

The opposition Greens party voiced “deep concern about a real government crisis” which put Germany “at a crossroads, to choose humanity, solidarity and the rule of law, or say goodbye to all these values”.

Seehofer has long fumed at Merkel’s decision to open German borders in mid-2015 to a mass influx of over one million asylum seekers. The mass arrivals, together with some high-profile crimes committed by migrants since, sparked the rise of the far-right AfD party, which entered parliament last year, upending German politics.

EU Parliament urges Commission to act against PolandREUTERS

STRASBOURG: Five of the main political groups in the European Parliament urged the European Commission yesterday to open infringement proceedings against Poland and to take it to the European Court of Justice to stop planned judicial reforms.

The call by the leaders of the centre-right European People’s Party, the centrist Liberals, the Socialists and Democrats, the Greens and the Unified European Left follows criticism from Com-mission vice-president Frans Timmermans, who has accused Warsaw of breaking EU obligations.

Frustration with Poland is focused on plans by the governing right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) to change the law on judicial appointments, a move that may force up to 40 percent of judges, including on the Supreme Court, to retire from July 3.

“In reforming the judiciary you still need to respect the inde-

pendence of the judiciary,” Tim-mermans said.

“If you believe that through putting the judiciary under political control you can make it a better judiciary you are wrong and you are violating your own obligations under European treaties,” he said.

In a joint letter, the five main

European Parliament groups called on European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to begin what is known as infringement proceedings against Warsaw, effectively a form of sanction against an EU member state. They also urged Juncker to refer the Polish law to the European Court of Justice.

Google buys more land in EuropeBLOOMBERG

BRUSSELS: Alphabet Inc.’s Google bought 70 hectares (173 acres) of land in the Nether-lands, as it explores options for building more data centers across Europe.

The company said it’s still considering whether to build on

the site in Noord-Holland, but that a decision will be made soon. “We want to ensure that we have options to continue to expand our data center presence in Europe if our business demands it,” Google spokesman Mark Jansen said yesterday.

Google already owns a data center in the town of Eemshaven

in the Netherlands, and announced earlier this year it would invest ¤500m to expand it.

The search giant also recently bought plots of land in Denmark, Luxembourg and Sweden, and in February said it would invest further in its Belgian site.

Moscow slams Norway plans to double US troop presenceAFP

OSLO: Moscow yesterday criticised Norway’s plans to ask Washington to double the number of US troops stationed in the Scandinavian country and deploy them nearer the border with Russia.

The plans “cause us serious concern,” Russia’s embassy in Norway wrote on its Facebook page.

Before joining NATO in 1949, Norway allayed Russian fears by pledging not to open its territory to foreign combat troops so long as it was not attacked or threatened with attack.

The stationing of US troops in Norway “contra-venes the Norwegian decision from 1949... ,” the embassy wrote.

Oslo’s announcement came after nine nations along NATO’s eastern flank last week called for the alliance to bolster its presence in their region.

Since last year, 330 US Marines have been deployed on rotation at Vaernes in the centre of Norway, Oslo now wants to boost the troop numbers to 700 and station them further north at Setermoen, 420 kilometres (260 miles) from Russia.

Paris puts final touches to Eiffel Tower anti-terror wallsAFP

PARIS: Paris is set to unveil thick bulletproof glass walls and metal fences around the Eiffel Tower, designed to protect France’s most famous monument from terrorist attacks.

The boosted security measures, under construction since last year, come with France still on high alert after a string of jihadist attacks that have killed more than 240 people since 2015.

The new walls, shown to journalists during a site tour yes-terday, are part of security measures that have cost nearly ¤35m ($40.7m) and are due to be finished by mid-July.

Glass walls measuring 6.5 centimetres (2.5 inches) thick will run along the riverside Quai Branly boulevard as well as the Avenue Gustave Eiffel which separates the tower from a park.

The walls, which are

bulletproof as well as resistant to vehicle-ramming attacks, are “rock-solid for absolute security”, said Bernard Gaud-illere, head of the SETE, the company which runs the Eiffel Tower.

The other two sides will be fenced off with metal barriers

formed from curved prongs in the form of the tower itself and at 3.24 metres high, stand exactly a hundredth of the height of the “Iron Lady”.

Gaudillere said his team worked with police to decide how best to secure a monument which has itself repeatedly

switched off its twinkling night-time lights in memory of the victims of attacks around the world.

Tourists visiting the site Thursday said they felt reassured by the new measures, still mindful of the horrific Islamic State attacks of November 2015 in which 130 people were killed at Paris nightspots.

“We live in a dangerous time. I think it’s a great idea -- when I see this I feel more safe,” said Edyta Poncyljusz, visiting from Warsaw.

David Luke, from the US state of Utah, noted with dismay that tourists are no longer free to walk under the tower as was the case last time he visited four years ago.

“But I think it’s a good idea,” he said of the security walls.

“It’s inconvenient and a little annoying, but we’re used to security measures in the US -- going through metal detectors just for a basketball game.”

Like other French tourist sites, the tower is regularly patrolled by anti-terror troops, and the forecourt underneath the iron structure has been fenced off over terrorism fears since June 2016.

Gaudillere acknowledged that the temporary fences were “not very aesthetically pleasing”, giving the monument the look of a building site, but promised the end result would be “infi-nitely nicer and more romantic”.

He said the building work does not appear to have dented visitor numbers, which are still expected to reach up to seven million in 2018.

Tourists will still be able to access the gardens and the fore-court underneath the tower for free once passing through the security fences, he said.

The walls are part of a ¤300m revamp of the Eiffel Tower, with most of the work due to be completed ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

Part of a bulletproof glass wall to be set around the Eiffel Tower as an anti-terrorism measure.

The row centres on what say parliament will have over any final Brexit deal agreed with Brussels.

First joint Royal tourBritain’s Queen Elizabeth and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, visit the Storyhouse in Chester, yesterday. Meghan travelled with the Queen by the Royal Train to northwest England for a day of events.

The suit accuses the Donald J Trump foundation of “extensive unlawful political coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing transactions to benefit Trump’s personal and business interests, and violations of basic legal obligations for non-profit foundations”.

12 FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018AMERICAS / CLASSIFIEDS

New York state files suit against TrumpAFP

NEW YORK: New York State filed suit yesterday against Pres-ident Donald Trump, his sons and daughter, alleging a pattern of “persistently illegal conduct” at their family foundation and seeking the charity’s dissolution.

The lawsuit, filed on Trump’s 72nd birthday, marked a new addition to the legal woes facing the White House, ranging from lawsuits from two women claiming affairs with Trump, to the sprawling probe into his campaign’s ties with Russia.

But while it carries the threat of multi-million dollar financial penalties, and the closure of the charity, the civil lawsuit is unlikely to lead to criminal charges against the president or his children, or to strengthen the case of those seeking his impeachment.

The suit accuses the Donald J Trump foundation of “extensive unlawful political coordination with the Trump presidential cam-paign, repeated and willful self-dealing transactions to benefit Trump’s personal and business interests, and violations of basic legal obligations for non-profit foundations”.

It says the real estate tycoon elected president in 2016 used charity funds from the foun-dation to pay his legal bills, promote his Trump-branded hotels, and for personal spending — including the

ostensible charity purchase of a portrait of Trump that was then mounted on the wall at one of his golf clubs.

The lawsuit also claims Trump used the foundation ille-gally to raise $2.8m to support his presidential campaign in a televised fundraiser on January 28, 2016 — held as he skipped a Republican presidential primary debate. Trump quickly responded with tweets in which he called the suit a “ridiculous case” and indi-cated he will fight it.

He accused “sleazy New York Democrats” of “doing eve-rything they can to sue me on a foundation that took in $18,800,000 and gave out to charity more money than it took in, $19,200,000”. “I won’t settle

this case!” he said. The suit added to multiple legal chal-lenges confronting Trump, newly returned from a ground-breaking summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which the White House hopes will lead to Kim giving up his nuclear weapons.

Trump is facing possible allegations of obstruction of justice from Russia collusion investigator Robert Mueller, and his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen is also under investigation in New York for issues that could relate both to Trump’s businesses and to the Russia probe. The suit names the president, sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and daughter Ivanka Trump, who were on the board of the foundation.

It seeks restitution of $2.8m and the shutdown of the foun-dation, as well as a 10-year ban on Trump serving on the board of any other New York charity. A one-year ban is sought for his three children. It also recom-mends the Internal Revenue Service investigate the foun-dation — which provides Trump with an avenue for tax writeoffs — over tax violations.

“As our investigation reveals, the Trump Foundation was little more than a checkbook for pay-ments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality,” said New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood.

Top US Republican against separating migrant families at the borderAFP

WASHINGTON: US House Speaker Paul Ryan said yesterday that he opposes separating undocumented immigrant families at the border and wants Congress to end the controversial practice through immigration legislation.

President Donald Trump has defended his administra-tion’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents, but some Republican lawmakers are growing uneasy about such border security rules implemented to deter other migrants. When speaking to reporters Ryan was asked if he was comfortable with the tactics. “No I am not,” he responded. “We believe it should be addressed in immi-gration legislation,” he said.

“We don’t want kids to be separated from their parents.” Congress this year has failed to pass legislation aimed at resolving multiple immi-gration flashpoints, including how to protect so-called “Dreamers” who were brought to the United States illegally as children.

But the issue of family sep-arations has swelled into a public relations headache for the Trump administration, with critics including the United Nations branding the tactic a human rights violation. House Republicans are drafting text barring family separations and are expected to slot it into an immigration bill that the House will consider next week, NBC News reported. It is unclear whether the broader measure can pass Congress.

Several hundred immi-grant families have been sep-arated since October, including many seeking asylum in the United States. “I don’t think anyone’s happy about what’s happening,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said when asked about the separations.

National strike in Nicaragua to shake Ortega’s grip on powerAFP

MANAGUA: Nicaragua’s capital Managua took on the airs of a ghost town yesterday, as a day-long national strike was held to protest two months of violent chaos under President Daniel Ortega that rights groups say has left at least 157 people dead.

Commerce stood still as shops, banks and eateries across the country closed for the “peaceful” 24-hour work stoppage ending at midnight. Images from the capital’s nor-mally bustling Mercado Ori-ental market showed shuttered storefronts. Busses and taxis were nowhere in sight.

Brutal violence broke out overnight in a number of hotspots including Masatepe — a municipality just southwest of flashpoint city Masaya — where a top rights group reported that four people were killed and several others wounded.

Alvaro Leiva, the head of Nicaragua’s Association for Human Rights (ANPDH), said that in Masaya, a city on the front lines of the anti-Ortega uprising, armed pro-government paramil-itaries opened fire at activist-guarded barricades.

Prior to the strike Nicara-guans rushed en masse to gas stations and supermarkets to stockpile food and supplies.

Jorge Esquivel, 60, said he supported the action called by a coalition of student, business and civic representatives, one of the main groups involved in the now-stalled talks with the government. “We have to make this sacrifice,” he said as he left a supermarket. “In one day we will not die of hunger.”

The work stoppage comes as Nicaragua’s influential bishops work to rekindle crisis talks. The Catholic clergy today will pub-licly unveil both their mediation offer and Ortega’s response — something the country has been anticipating for a week.

Managua’s vocal auxiliary bishop Silvio Jose Baez tweeted that the Church supports “the national strike as an act of pressure and social protest.” The strike “will demand an end to the repression, and support democratic and peaceful change, and a return to dia-logue,” he said. Bishops pre-viously called off talks with Ortega after a march led by victims’ mothers was violently repressed last month.

Argentine lawmakers approve bill to legalize abortionAFP

BUENOS AIRES: Lawmakers in Pope Francis’s native Argentina cast a historic vote yesterday to legalize abortion during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, a measure that now awaits Senate approval.

Thousands of abortion rights activists cheered and hugged outside the Congress as the lower house Chamber of Deputies passed the bill by 129 votes to 125. The bill will now go before the Senate, where it faces an uphill battle to become law.

“It’s the time of women’s rights,” said Silvia Lospennato,

a member of President Mauricio Macri’s center-right Cam-biemos (Let’s Change) coalition. Lawmakers wrangled through more than 22 hours of emo-tionally charged debate.

Nearly all 257 members spoke before the vote was taken, as activists on both sides of the divide kept vigil in the streets outside.

It was unclear up to the last minute if the measure would be approved or defeated.

As many as 30 lawmakers were undecided before the debate began on Wednesday, and one lawmaker abstained from voting.

13FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018 CLASSIFIEDS

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Friday 15 June 2018

PAGE | 15PAGE | 15VW agrees to $1.2bn

fine as diesel crisis grinds on

SoftBank executive says WeWork is raising funds at $35bn valuation

Buildings are seen in the central business district in Beijing, yesterday. Chinese economic growth showed signs of flagging as Beijing faces trade tensions with the United States as well as debt and pollution battles at home.

Oil steadies ahead of key Opec meetingREUTERS

LONDON: Oil prices steadied yesterday, but still faced pressure from evidence of rising US output and uncertainty over the outlook for supply before a meeting next week of the world’s largest exporters.

Benchmark Brent crude oil was up 10 cents at $76.84 a barrel by 1320 GMT, while U.S. light crude was 45 cents higher at $67.09.

Brent hit a high of $80 a barrel in May but has since drifted lower, indicating investors expect the market to become better sup-plied in the next few months as U.S. crude production rises and as key Middle East exporters and Russia pump more.

U.S. crude output has risen almost 30 percent in the last two years to a record high of 10.9 million bpd. Russia pumped 11.1 million bpd in the first two weeks of June, above Saudi Arabia, which produced slightly more than 10 million bpd.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other big producers meet

on June 22-23 in Vienna to discuss production and are widely expected to agree to higher output.

“A wait-and-see approach is taking hold across the energy complex as market participants buckle down ahead of next week’s crunch OPEC/non-OPEC meeting,” said Stephen Brennock, analyst at London brokerage PVM Oil Associates.

The surge in U.S. output has put pressure on other producers, which are losing market share.

Russian and Saudi pro-duction has been held back vol-untarily since 2017, when OPEC,

together with a number of other producers, began supply cuts of 1.8 million bpd to prop up prices.

But, with Brent prices up by around 180 percent from their 2016 lows and demand strong, OPEC and Russia may soon end their supply cuts. Saudi Arabia and Russia are understood to favour higher production to steady prices and some analysts say they could decide to pump more on their own if OPEC does not agree to increase production as a bloc.

Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Thursday he expected a reasonable and moderate agreement next week when OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers meet.

Falih, on a visit to Moscow to attend the World Cup, where the Russia and Saudi Arabia national soccer teams will play on Thursday, is due to meet Russian Energy Minister Alex-ander Novak and President Vladimir Putin before the game.

US crude inventories fell by 4.1 million barrels, more than anticipated, to 432.4 million barrels, last week, the US Energy Information Administration said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and other big producers meet on June 22-23 in Vienna to discuss production and are widely expected to agree to higher output.

Rolls-Royce to cut 4,600 jobs REUTERS

LONDON: Rolls-Royce is to cut 4,600 jobs over two years in the latest attempt by boss Warren East to reduce costs and complexity and make Britain’s best known engineering company more profitable and dynamic.

East, a softly-spoken former tech boss, has overhauled the 134-year-old Rolls since he took charge in 2015 but the new cuts come as the group grapples with an aero-engine problem that has grounded planes and angered clients.

The announcement, which East said is not linked to the Trent 1000 engine issue, marks the biggest round of job cuts since the company had to retrench during the aviation crisis that fol-lowed the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001.

The plan will remove 10 percent of the workforce, tar-geting duplication in corporate, administration and management roles to try to save 400m pounds ($536m) a year by 2020.

Two thirds of the job cuts will fall in Britain. Rolls is the biggest employer in the city of Derby, central England, with 15,700 at its headquarters.

“Rolls-Royce is at a pivotal moment in its history,” East told reporters. “We are poised to become the world leader in large aircraft engines. But we want to make the business as world class as our engineering and technology.

“We are proposing the cre-ation of a much more stream-lined organisation. We have to significantly reduce the size of our corporate centre, removing complexity and duplication that makes us too slow, uncom-petitive and too expensive.”

The cuts will not affect its engineers, Rolls said. The news has echoes of an announcement from BT last month, another venerable company that is cutting 13,000 managerial and back-office jobs to reduce bureaucracy and respond faster to its customers’ needs.

East, who built the chip designer ARM Holdings from a start-up into Britain’s biggest tech company, has complained that Rolls, a rival to General Electric, is too complex and cumbersome due to layers of bureaucracy above the shopfloor.

Driving home his new focus, he has set a 2020 free cash flow target of 1 billion pounds, a

sizeable jump from the 273 million pounds recorded in 2017, off revenue of 15 billion pounds.

In January he divided the company into three business units - Civil Aerospace, Defence and Power Systems - and the new restructuring is designed to remove management dupli-cation between those layers and the corporate centre.

The cuts follow a lengthy period of investment in previous years that has meant it is now delivering its biggest ever increase in large engine production.

The union Unite warned: “There is a real danger that Rolls-Royce will cut too deep and too fast with these jobs cuts, which could ultimately damage the smooth running of the company and see vital skills and experience lost.”

The major restructuring, costing a total of 500 million pounds between 2018 and 2020, will be reported as separate one-off costs, allowing it to stick to its targets for free cash flow.

“These changes will help us deliver over the mid and longer-term a level of free cash flow well beyond our near-term ambition,” East said.

The company holds an

investor day on Friday where it is expected to provide more details on its targets and outlook. Asked about the potential sale of the company’s commercial marine business, which supplies oil and gas customers and is under review, East said he would provide shareholders with a “short update” on Friday.

Investors will also be looking for hints that the div-idend could start to grow. It was halved in 2016 to enable the company to shore up its finances and cope with the declines in its aero engine and oil and gas busi-nesses over the previous two years. Rolls shares traded 3 percent higher to 854 pence by 1055 GMT after it published details of the restructuring plan.

The rise came despite analyst concerns about Rolls excluding the costs of restruc-turing from its the free cash flow targets. “In our view on first pass the headlines imply a notable underlying downgrade to current market expectations in outer-year estimates with higher than anticipated costs in the near term,” Barclays analyst Phil Buller said in a note.

“How much of this is driven by the growing Trent 1000 issues is unclear.”

Qatar stock index gains 17.67 pointsQNA

DOHA: Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) index gained 17.67 points (+0.19%) when the bourse closed trading at 9,097.91 points yesterday.

The volume of shares traded increased to 32,169,011 from

6,788,639 on Wednesday and the value of shares increased to QR2,482,660,000.67 from QR402,555,620.97 on Wednesday. From the 47 companies listed on QSE, shares of 41 saw trading today. From these, 20 com-panies gained, 18 closed lower and three remained unchanged.

Indices of two sectors ended green zone and five in red zone today. QSE Total Return Index increased 0.19% to 16,029.50 points and QSE Al Rayan Islamic Index declined 0.07% to 3,588.48 points. QSE All Share Index dropped 0.51% to 2,651.33 points.

Chinese growth flagging

Microsoft takes aim at Amazon with push for checkout-free retailREUTERS

SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft Corp is working on technology that would eliminate cashiers and checkout lines from stores, in a nascent challenge to Amazon.com Inc’s automated grocery shop, six people familiar with the matter, said.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is devel-oping systems that track what shoppers add to their carts, the people say. Microsoft has shown sample technology to retailers from around the world and has had talks with Walmart Inc about a potential collabo-ration, three of the people said.

Microsoft’s technology aims to help retailers keep pace with Amazon Go, a highly automated store that opened to the public in Seattle in January. Amazon customers scan their smart-phones at a turnstile to enter. Cameras and sensors identify what they remove from the shelves. When customers are finished shopping, they simply leave the store and Amazon bills their credit cards on file.

Amazon Go, which will soon open in Chicago and San Francisco, has sent rivals

scrambling to prepare for yet another disruption by the world’s biggest online retailer. Some have tested programs where customers scan and bag each item as they shop, with mixed results.

For Microsoft, becoming a strategic ally to retailers has meant big business. In addition to developing retail technol-ogies, it ranks No. 2 behind Amazon in selling cloud services that are key to running e-commerce sites, for instance.

It is not clear how soon Microsoft would bring an auto-mated checkout service to market, if at all, or whether its technology would be the answer retailers are looking for. But some see the technology as the next big innovation in shopping, one that Amazon’s competitors cannot afford to ignore.

“This is the future of checking out for convenience and grocery stores,” said Gene Munster, head of research at Loup Ventures in Minneapolis. The venture capital firm esti-mates the U.S. market for auto-mated checkout is worth $50bn. Cashier is one of the most commonly held jobs in the United States.

15FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018 BUSINESS

9,097.91 +17.67 PTS0.19%

QSE FTSE100 DOW BRENT7,765.79 +62.08 PTS0.81%

25,175.31 -25.89 PTS0.10% Dow & Brent before going to press

$67.04 +0.40

MarketWatchVW agrees to $1.2bn fine as diesel crisis grinds onBLOOMBERG

BERLIN: Volkswagen AG will pay a ¤1bn ($1.2bn) fine imposed by German prosecutors for cheating to get around diesel-emissions regulations, closing one chapter in a three-year-old crisis even as new developments arise.

The world’s biggest auto-maker accepts the fine and takes responsibility for its actions, Wolfsburg, Germany-based Volkswagen said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday after markets closed. The settlement of the criminal case will have a positive impact on other pro-ceedings in Europe, it said.

“We work with vigor on

dealing with our past,” Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess (pictured), said in a separate statement. “Further steps are necessary to gradually restore trust again in the company and the auto industry.”

VW still faces a multitude of probes both in Germany and abroad, with legal proceedings in 55 countries pending and investigations into stock-market manipulation in its home market. Investors have accused the company of informing investors too late about the probe, a view the carmaker has contested, saying it couldn’t have known the issue would balloon as it did.

Volkswagen shares fell 0.7 percent to ¤158.70 as of 9:06 am in Frankfurt. The stock is down 4.7 percent this year, valuing the auto manufacturer at 79.5 billion euros.

The new fine comes on top of the ¤25.8bns in provisions related to rigged engine-control software that the company has already set aside. It will add 1 billion euros to the diesel-related cash outflow of about 4 billion euros that VW had anticipated for this year. VW had net cash of about 24 billion euros at the end of the first quarter, providing a substantial liquidity buffer to digest the impact.

The rigging of as many as 11 million diesel cars worldwide was disclosed by U.S. authorities in September 2015 and triggered the deepest crisis in the manu-facturer’s history.

“The fact that the criminal risk has now been dealt with is good news,” said Arndt Elling-horst, an analyst with Evercore ISI. “Paying out 1 billion euros is extremely painful but in the broader context it isn’t a material number.”

While the company has shaken up management and introduced internal reforms, the crisis has continued to grind on. The settlement announced on Wednesday covers the com-pany’s role in a diesel-rigging investigation in Braunschweig, whose court district includes Wolfsburg, but it doesn’t affect criminal probes against indi-viduals, or civil claims and the shareholder lawsuits against Volkswagen. There are also probes in Munich focused on the Audi brand, and in Stuttgart cov-ering Porsche.

Just this week, Rupert Stadler, the head of Audi, was named a suspect in the Munich case, and his home was raided along with another member of the unit’s man-agement board.

The scandal has under-mined consumer demand for diesel cars, a key element in automakers’ plans to meet stringent new emissions targets in Europe, and other manufac-turers have also fallen under suspicion.

Daimler AG, maker of Mer-cedes-Benz luxury cars, was hit with a mass recall this week after German regulators con-cluded that it too used illegal systems enabling the shutoff of emissions controls. The Stuttgart-based automaker, which has repeatedly denied being complicit in the kind of cheating Volkswagen undertook, will upgrade software in 774,000 vehicles in a deal ena-bling it to escape fines.

A mechanic work on the production line of Volkswagen e-Golf in the Glaeserne Manufaktur plant in Dresden, Germany.

SoftBank executive says WeWork is raising funds at $35bn valuationBLOOMBERG

LONDON: WeWork Cos. is seeking to raise funds at a $35bn valuation, a price tag that would place the co-working startup above companies like Airbnb and SpaceX, according to an executive at SoftBank Group Corp., which is a major WeWork investor.

Rajeev Misra (pictured), who runs SoftBank’s $100bn Vision Fund and is the chief executive officer of SoftBank Investment Advisors, said Tuesday at the CogX conference in London that even though WeWork has been criticized as overvalued at $17 billion, it’s now raising money at $35bn, according to a person who saw a video of the talk, which is no longer available online. Misra also said that WeWork could at some point be a $100 billion company, but didn’t comment further on whether SoftBank would participate in this funding. WeWork declined to comment.

WeWork, which runs shared office space for startups as well as large enterprises, has raised billions of dollars in equity, including $4.4bn last summer from SoftBank, which split the money between WeWork’s central business and its three Asian subsidiaries. Misra’s comments were reported earlier by Business Insider.

For more cash, WeWork tapped the bond markets in April when it sold $702m in seven-year unsecured bonds. The com-pany’s bond offering documents showed fast-growing sales but even faster-increasing losses. WeWork had total revenue of $886 million but a net loss of $933 million in 2017, according to the doc-uments. It has also committed to pay $18bn in rent in the coming years for the buildings it currently leases, $5bn of which will be due in the next four years.

BREAK TIMEVILLAGGIO & CITY CENTERCROSSWORD NOVO Pearl Qatar

MALL

Note: Programme is subject to change without prior notice.

LANDMARK

ROXY

AL KHOR

ASIAN TOWN

The Incredibles (2D) 10:30am, 1:00, 3:30, 6:00, 8:30 & 11:00pm Deadpool 2 (2D/Action) 10:00am, 12:45, 3:30, 6:15, 9:00 & 11:45pm Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 12:45, 3:30, 6:15, 9:00 w& 11:45pm The Little Witch (2D) 10:00am, 12:10, 2:20 & 4:30pm Race 3 (2D/Hindi) 10:00am, 1:10, 4:30, 7:45 & 11:00pm Hotel Artemis (2D) 6:40, 8:50 & 11:00pm Maya: The Bee 2 (2D) 10:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00 & 6:00pm Leilet Hana Wa Srour (Arabic) 10:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00, 6:00 & 10:00pm Hereditary (2D) 8:00, 10:10pm & 12:20am A Woman In The Time Of Blockade (2D/Arabic) 4:00, 8:00pm & 12:00midnight Abla Tamtam 10:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00, 10:00pm & 12:00midnight The Incredibles (2D/IMAX) 10:00am, 1:00, 6:00, 8:45pm Deadpool 2 (2D/IMAX) 12:30, 3:45, 8:30 & 11:30pm Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (3D/IMAX /Action) 10:15am, 3:10, 6:00, 10:15 & 11:20pm

Race 3 (2D/Hindi) 2:00, 6:30, 8:15 & 11:30pm Maya: The Bee 2 (2D/Animation) 2:30 & 5:00pm7 Din Mohabbat In (2D) 4:30pm Leilet Hana Wa Srour 7:00pm Abla Tamtam (2D/Arabic) 9:30pm The Incredibles 2 (2D/Animation) 3:30 & 6:00pm Deadpool 2 (2D/Action) 9:00 & 11:15pm Naa Nuvve (2D/Telugu) 11:15pm

ROYAL PLAZA

The Incredibles 2 (2D/Animation) 2:00 & 4:15pm Maya: The Bee 2 (2D/Animation) 3:00 & 4:45pmRace 3 (2D/Hindi) 4:30, 6:30 & 11:15pm Golisoda 2 (2D/Tamil) 2:15pm Deadpool 2 (2D/Action) 6:45, 9:00 & 11:15pm Hotel Artemis (2D/Action) 7:30pmHeriditary (2D/Horror) 9:15pm Abla Tamtam (2D/Arabic) 9:30pm B-Tech (2D) 11:30pm

The Incredibles 2 (2D/Animation) 2:30, 4:45 & 7:00pm Maya: The Bee 2 (2D/Animation) 2:45 & 4:30pmDeadpool 2 (2D/Action) 3:00, 9:15 & 11:30pm A Woman In The Time Of Blockade (2D/Arabic) 6:30pm Al Risalah (2D/Arabic) 5:30pm Race 3 (2D/Hindi) 8:00, 11:00 & 11:30pm Heriditary (2D/Horror) 9:00pm

Kaala (Tamil) 12:00noon & 9:00pm Naa Nuvve (Telugu) 6:30pmRace 3 (Hindi) 12:00noon, 3:00, 6:00, 9:00, 11:00pm, 12:00midnight & 03:00am Uncle (Malayalam) 3:45pm & 02:00amB-Tech (Malayalam) 12:30, 8:30pm & 02:00amAravindante (2D/Malayalam) 9:00pm E. Ma. Yau (2D/Malayalam) 11:30pm

Race 2 (Hindi) 11:30am, 2:30, 5:30, 8:30 & 11:30pmThe Incredibles 2 (2D/Animation) 11:45am & 8:00pmNaa Nuvve (Telugu) 12:45 & 8:30pmGolisoda 2 3:15 & 11:00pm Kaala (Tamil) 5:00pm & 01:15amB-Tech (Malayalam) 5:45pm & 01:30amJurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 2:15 & 10:30pm

B-Tech (2D/Malayalam) 10:30am, 1:30, 7:10pm Deadpool 2 10:30am, 1:10, 3:00, 5:30, 8:00 & 11:30pmJurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 10:30am, 4:30 & 10:10pm Leilet Hana Wa Srour (Arabic) 1:00 & 9:10pmRace 3 (Hindi) 10:30am, 1:40, 3:40, 4:50, 8:15, 8:30, 10:30 & 11:20pm

The story follows a young man on a quest to find his true love in a crowded Karachi neighbourhood. He must overcome the obstacles, both spiritual and physical, to achieve his goals.

FLIK Mirqab

7 DIN MOHABBAT IN

B Tech 4:35, 8:10, 6:00 & 11:05pmDead Pool 2 2:20, 3:10, 4:45, 5:35, 6:15, 7:10, 8:00, 9:35, 10:00, 10:25 & 12:35pm Incredibles 2 5:00 & 7:30pm 3D 3:30Jurassic World 3:35 & 10:00pm 3D 5:45 & 8:20pmLeilet Hana Wa Srour 8:35, 10:35pm & 12:35am Maya The Bee 2:40, 3:10, 4:30 & 6:20pm Race 3 7:50, 11:20pm & 12:00midnight 3D 9:15 & 10:55pm

16 FRIDAY 15 JUNE 2018MORNING BREAK

FAJRSHOROOK

03. 14 AM

04. 43 AM

11. 34 AM

02. 57 PM

06. 26 PM

07. 56 PM

ZUHRASR

MAGHRIBISHA

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 04:45 – 18:45 LOW TIDE 01:00 – 11:00

Hot daytime with slight dust at times.

WEATHER TODAY

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum 34oC 44oC

Facebook news use declining, WhatsApp growing: StudyAFP

LONDON: News consumption is increasingly shifting from social media like Facebook to messaging applica-tions like WhatsApp, according to a study published yesterday which also found high levels of international public concern about fake news online.

The Reuters Institute report, which covers 37 countries in five continents, found that the use of social media for news fell by six percentage points in the United States compared to last year.

“Almost all the decline is due to a decrease in the discovery, posting and sharing of news in Facebook,” said lead author Nic Newman, a founding

member of the BBC News website.Facebook suffered its worst public

relations disaster in its history when a huge data privacy breach was revealed earlier this year. The scandal saw many users around the world opt to move away from Facebook, and to spend more time on other apps like WhatsApp and Instagram — which are also owned by Facebook.

The 2018 Digital News Report found that WhatsApp is now used for news by around half of the sample in Malaysia (54 percent) and Brazil (48 percent) and by around a third in Spain (36 percent) and Turkey (30 percent).

The report, based on a YouGov survey of over 74,000 online news consumers, found Instagram had also

taken off in Asia and South America, while Snapchat progressed in Europe and the United States.

The report also revealed that the average level of trust in the news has remained relatively stable at 44 percent — a slight increase from 43 percent last year. However, only 23 percent said they trusted the news they find in social media.

More than half (54 percent) agreed or strongly agreed that they were con-cerned about what is real and fake on the Internet. The rate was highest in Brazil at 85 percent and lowest in the Netherlands at 30 percent.

The survey found that a majority of respondents believed publishers and platforms have the biggest

responsibility to fix the problem of fake and unreliable news. Some 60 percent of respondents in Europe, 63 percent in Asia and 41 percent in the United States believed that their gov-ernments should do more to stop “fake news”.

The report also found that podcasts are becoming an increasingly popular way of accessing news, with 33 percent of respondents in the United States and 18 percent in Britain making use of them.

It found that in Britain, Germany and the United States, around half of those polled who have voice-activated digital assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home use them to receive news.

The iPal robots by Avatarmind are exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Asia in Shanghai.

‘iPal’ robot companion for China’s lonely childrenAFP

SHANGHAI: It speaks two languages, gives math lessons, tells jokes and interacts with children through the tablet screen in its chest — China’s latest robot is the babysitter every parent needs.

The “iPal” was among a slew of new tech unveiled at the Con-sumer Electronics Show Asia in Shanghai this week, offering education and company for lonely children and peace of mind for adults.

The humanoid device stands as tall as a five-year-old, moves and dances on wheels and its eyes keep track of its charges

through facial recognition tech-nology. Parents can also remotely talk to and monitor the children through the iPal, which is linked to a smartphone app that allows them to see and hear everything.

“The idea for this robot is to be a companion for children,” said Tingyu Huang, co-founder of AvatarMind Robot Technology. “When a child sees it, he or she will think of the robot as a friend, as another child in the family.” Their 9,000 yuan ($1,400) did not dampen interest from buyers watching a performance of several iPals dancing in unison.

“They’re pretty cute. I was just thinking my own

two-year-old daughter would love one,” Mike Stone, a buyer from Australia said.

China’s young working parents often face the burden of taking care of children or elders without help from a large extended family, as the impact of the country’s decades-long one-child policy lingers. The limit was raised to two children in 2016.

“I don’t think the robots can replace parents or teachers,” Huang said. The iPal is the latest humanoid robot to be marketed for family use, following in the footsteps of the diminutive, wisecracking “Pepper” com-panion released by Japan’s SoftBank in 2015.

Elvis’ drummer, last survivor of his band, dead at 87AFP

NEW YORK: Drummer D J Fontana, the last surviving member of Elvis Presley’s original band whose hard-driving but self-effacing style helped shape rock percussion, has died, his family said yesterday. He was 87. His son David Fontana wrote on Facebook that his father died peacefully in his sleep on Wednesday evening.

An inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Dominic Joseph Fontana introduced drums to the con-coction that became rock ‘n’ roll at a time that popular singers often eschewed percussion entirely.

Fontana was a drummer for a radio program in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana when Presley, then performing primarily for country audiences, came in 1954 after performing on the rival, more established show of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

Fontana later recalled that the manager of the “Lou-isiana Hayride” program in Shreveport quipped about Elvis Presley, “’What a funny name.... He’ll probably never make it with a name like that.’” Presley’s guitarist Scotty Moore approached Fontana to join and, in an instant, he became the original rockabilly drummer. “It worked but I’d gotten to thinking it was such a unique sound they had, why clutter it up with drums and noise?” Fontana told The Washington Post in 1986.

“So I just kind of laid back and stayed out of their way. I think that’s why I got the job,” he said. “I just stay out of their way.” Fontana was signed to Pres-ley’s band, dubbed The Blue Moon Boys, supplying the heavy, high-energy beats that came to charac-terize rock ‘n’ roll on The King’s early hits such as “Jailhouse Rock” and “Hound Dog.” But he also knew his place in his band, allowing Elvis to dominate the show as he pounded away in the back during almost nightly shows.

Fontana played drums on Presley’s historic appearances in 1956 on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the singer’s gyrating appeal captivating a teen audience and shocking older viewers.

The Blue Moon Boys broke up in 1958 but Fontana regularly backed up Presley through the 1960s. Late in his life he also played shows for Elvis enthusiasts with Moore, who died in 2016.

Martian dust storm silences Nasa’s OpportunityAFP

TAMPA: A massive dust storm raging across Mars has overcome Nasa’s ageing Opportunity rover, putting the unmanned, solar-powered vehicle into sleep mode and raising concerns about its survival, the US space agency said.

The unusually severe dust storm has blocked out the Sun over one quarter of the Red Planet, blanketing an area spanning 14 million square miles (35 million square kilometers), Nasa said. Opportunity, located in a spot called Perseverance Valley, “has fallen asleep and is waiting out the storm,” said John Callas, Opportunity project manager at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“We are concerned but we are hopeful that the storm will clear and the rover will be able to com-municate with us.” The storm was first detected on May 30, and grew worse in recent days. The robotic vehicle — one of two currently operating on Mars — has shut everything down except its master clock, and last commu-nicated with Earth on June 10. Callas declared a “spacecraft emergency” due to low power.

“In this point we are in a

waiting mode. We are listening every day for possible signals from the rover,” he said, likening the atmosphere among col-leagues to having a loved one lying in a coma.

“If it was your 97-year-old grandmother, you would be very concerned. And we are,” he said.

Opportunity, along with its twin named Spirit, launched in 2003 and landed on Mars a year later to hunt for signs of past life. Its mission was initially meant to last just 90 days.

The rover “has made a number of discoveries about the Red Planet including dramatic evidence that long ago at least one area of Mars stayed wet for an extended period and that conditions could have been suitable for sustaining microbial life,” Nasa said in a statement.

When the storm struck, Opportunity was tooling around near a channel, carved in rim of crater, to see if it might have been created by flowing water, wind erosion, or something else.

Its partner rover, Spirit, became stuck in soft soil in 2009, and its mission was for-mally declared over in 2011.

Callas said he is hopeful Opportunity will not fully shut down because the approaching

Martian summer means temper-atures should not dip below the rover’s minimal operating tem-perature, -55 degrees Celsius (-167 Fahrenheit).

The coldest Nasa expects it to get is -36 C (-60 F). “So we should be able to ride out the storm,” he said. The dust is accu-mulating in a thin layer, and is

not expected to bury the rover.Opportunity is expected to

remain asleep until there is enough power to charge the battery above a certain threshold, at which point it would autono-mously wake up, said Callas.

Opportunity has traveled some 45km on the Martian surface. It survived a less severe

A file picture of Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. The rover has set a new off-Earth, off-road distance record, logging just over 40km on the surface of the Red Planet to surpass the old benchmark set in 1973 by a Russian probe on the moon.

dust storm in 2007. Martian dust storms are more easily whipped up on the Red Planet than on Earth because of Mars’ thin atmosphere. They can last between a few weeks to a few months. Where Opportunity lies, “it is completely black on Mars. It is completely dark,” said Callas.

Nasa’s larger and newer Curiosity rover is on the other side of the planet, where the sky has already begun to darken from the storm. However, Nasa is not as worried about Curiosity, which landed in 2012, because it is nuclear-powered, not reliant on the Sun.

Experts said the dust storm is not likely to endanger Nasa’s InSight mission, which launched earlier this year and is scheduled to land in November, on a mission to study quakes on Mars.

But scientists are studying this and other dust storms on Mars in order to be better able to forecast them, in case human explorers ever set up camp there.

“We would not want to have a crew operating remotely from their base and be caught off guard with a storm like this and have difficulty getting back home,” said Jim Watzin, director of the Mars Exploration Program at Nasa.

Sheep graze streets of Paris suburbAFP

AUBERVILLIERS: It’s an idyllic scene: Sheep nibble placidly on the grass as a gaggle of children laugh in delight. But this is a high-rise housing estate in the suburbs of Paris, not the tranquil countryside.

Every month, enthusiastic shepherds from an urban farming project in Aubervil-liers, just north of Paris, release their dozens-strong herd from their enclosure in a park for a wander in the streets.

The goal is two-fold: To give the animals access to plants that are good for them, and to bring a little rural peace to a neighbourhood better known for dreary tower blocks and industrial sites.

“Each time it’s done in good humour, they’re very well behaved,” Julie-Lou Dubreuilh, co-founder of the Urban Shepherds cooper-ative, said of her flock.

The sheep make their way at a leisurely pace across zebra crossings, past cafes and petrol stations, stopping to graze at the base of graffitied public apartment blocks.