Mutaz Barshim named Athlete of the Year

BUSINESS | 21 SPORT | 32

Doha to emerge as regional food

grain hub

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

Volume 21 | Number 6997 | 2 RiyalsThursday 1 December 2016 | 2 Rabia I 1438

H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser seated with other dignitaries at the closing ceremony of the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) 2016. Pic: AR Al-Baker

→ See also page 4

Sheikha Moza attends WISH closing ceremony

The Peninsula

Under Law No 21 of 2015 regulating the entry, exit and res-i d e n c y o f expatriates, which

will come into force on Decem-ber 13, the service periods of an expatriate employee will be cal-culated from the day he/she started working for their employer.

This includes all days of employment accumulated prior to the implementation of the new law, the Ministry of Admin-istrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs clarified yesterday.

Under the law, expats will no longer need approval from their existing employer to change jobs if they complete the length of a fixed-contract, the ministry said in a statement.

However, it is required that expats in fixed-contracts pro-vide written notice to their employer before the contract expires, advising their employer of their intention to change jobs at the end of their contract. The

duration to notify the employer will depend on the terms and conditions in the contract signed by each employee.

Expats in open-ended con-tracts will also be able to change jobs without their exist-ing employer’s permission, provided that they complete a five-year service period.

However, it is required that expats in open-ended contracts provide a written notice to their employer prior to changing job.

→ Continued on page 7

Havana QNA

Father Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani offered condolences

to President of Cuba, Raul Cas-tro, and to the members of the family on the death of former President Fidel Castro, during a funeral held in the Cuban capi-tal Havana yesterday.

Father Emir gave a speech in which he highlighted the achievements of the late pres-ident and his historical stances, especially in supporting the just Arab causes, on top of the cen-tral Arab issue, the Palestine issue, and the revolution of a million martyrs in Algeria.

Father Emir pointed to the prestigious position of the late President among top leaders, describing him as one of the giants of the national liberation who firmly believed in the right

Father Emir offers condolences on Castro's death

Father Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani speaking at the funeral of Fidel Castro in Havana yesterday. Also present are Cuban President Raul Castro and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

of people to self-determination at a time when most of the peo-ple of the earth were subjected to colonialism in different parts.

Father Emir also pointed to

the friendly relations between him and the late President of Cuba, as well as the mutual vis-its that have contributed to strengthening the relations

between Qatar and Cuba in var-ious fields. The funeral was attended by a number of Their Excellencies Heads of States and senior officials.

Qatar biggest Arab investor in TunisiaMohammed Osman in Tunis The Peninsula

Qatar tops the Arab coun-tries in terms of investment in Tunisia,

Qatari ambassador to Tunisia, Abdullah bin Nasser Al Hamidi said yesterday.

He was speaking on the sidelines of the International

Investment Conference on Tuni-sia (Tunisia 2020) after he signed an agreement with the Tunisian Minister of Development, Invest-ment and international Cooperation, Fadel Abdel Kefi.

According to the agreement, Qatar will cover the expenses of the two-day conference which concluded yesterday.

The Qatari Friendship Fund

(QFF) has announced that the Fund has created since 2013 more than 11,000 new job opportunities and supported and implemented 3,400 projects spread over seven Tunisian regions. Qatar is one of the major supporters of Tunisia and is cur-rently implementing several projects along with donations granted to Tunisia, a senior

Tunisian official said. What the Emir H H Sheikh

Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani announced at the opening ses-sion of the conference allocating $1.25bn for Tunisia is a great support, said Khalil Laabidi, General Director of the Foreign Investment Promotion Agency “FIPA-Tunisia”.

→ Continued on page 4

Tahseen plan launched

Amnesty ends today

Opec and Russia to cut output

KATARA Hospitality in col-laboration with Marriott International on Tuesday launched a unique pro-gramme — Tahseen — to train Qatari graduates for jobs in the hospitality industry.

Marriott International will initially appoint 50 Qataris.

→ Full report on page 3

THE Search and Follow-Up Department at the Ministry of Interior is set to tighten the noose on those violating the residency law by launch-ing an intensive inspection campaign as the three-month amnesty for illegal residents is expiring today.

→ Continued on page 5

OPEC agreed yesterday its first oil output cuts since 2008 after Saudi Arabia accepted “a big hit” on its pro-duction and dropped its demand on arch-rival Iran to slash output.

Non-Opec Russia will also join output reductions for the first time in 15 years.→ Full report on page 21

New residency law makes job change easier

of

The service periods of an expatriate employee will be calculated from the day he/she started working for their employer.

Under the law, expats will no longer need approval from their existing employer to change jobs

New law explained on page 7

02 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 HOME

03THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 HOME

Officials announce the 'Tahseen' Initiative programme during a press conference at Ritz-Carlton Hotel yesterday. Pic: Baher Amin / The Peninsula

Sidi Mohamed The Peninsula

Katara Hospitality in collab-oration with Marriott International on Tuesday

launched a unique programme to train Qatari graduates for jobs in the hospitality industry.

The programme named 'Tah-seen' was launched at an event at Ritz-Carlton Doha. Marriott International will initially appoint 50 Qataris with experience and passion to work in the hospital-ity industry. “Starting from February 2017, we will be target-ing 50 students who will spend between 12 and 18 months gain-ing full exposure to the business of running a hotel, working in a variety of different departments so that they get to know all the components of hotel manage-ment and what makes the difference between an average hotel and an outstanding one”, Sheikh Nawaf Bin Jassim Bin Jabor Al Thani, Chairman of Katara Hospitality said. The offi-cial launch of the initiative was

also attended by Arne Sorenson, Chief Executive Officer of Mar-riott International, Hamad Abdulla Al Mulla, Chief Executive Officer of Katara Hospitality and Alex Kyriakidis, President and Managing Director, Middle East and Africa of Marriott Interna-tional. “Today, we are proud to see a total of 44 Qatari nationals working within Katara Hospital-ity and its local hotels with an increase of over 400 percent since 2011” added Sheikh Nawaf.

“Tahseen is a leadership pro-gramme designed to empower the next generation of Qatari executives in the hospitality industry, helping us to consoli-date and strengthen our position as Qatar’s flagship hospitality company,” he said.

“Qatarisation is a vital part of Qatar National Vision 2030 and we at Katara Hospitality have long understood its importance and have taken every opportu-nity to foster and promote Qatari talent to leave an outstanding legacy for future generations,” he added. The programe is

developed in conjunction with regional and international insti-tututes, Cornell University, INJAZ AL Arab and Education for Employment, and focused on providing full exposure to the business of running a hotel resulting in a managerial oppor-tunity. The programme offers graduates six months of cross-exposure to all departments and six to 12 months of departmen-tal specialisation. It also provides graduates with access to Marri-ott International’s world renowned core management development programmes.

During the course, graduates will be fully immersed into all aspects of the industry and enroll in eCornell certificate pro-grammes combined with Cornell University’s executive leadership workshop, which will be tailored to the local culture and unique business environment of Qatar and the wider Middle East. Edu-cation for Employment will also train the selected class of profes-sionals on what it takes to be successful in the workplace.

Katara Hospitality launches planto train Qatari graduates for jobs

04 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 HOME

LEFT: H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser on her way to the closing ceremony of the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) 2016 with Princess Lalla Salma of Morocco. RIGHT: Sheikha Moza converses with dignitaries at the closing ceremony of the WISH 2016. Pic: A R Al-Baker

Sheikha Moza attends WISH session on investing in healthFazeena Saleem The Peninsula

Qatar's diversified local and global efforts in investing in the health sector were highlighted during separate ses-

sions of the World Innovation Summit (WISH) yesterday, in the presence of H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation.

The closing plenary session of the two-day summit discussed different aspects of Qatar’s investment in health education, expansion of healthcare facilities and research initiatives.

H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, Minister of Public Health, said that Qatar’s wide range of investment in health is not lim-ited to building hospitals, speaking to an audience of 1,400 experts, policy makers and aca-demics from around the world.

Princess Lalla Salma, chair-person of Lalla Salma Foundation for Cancer Prevention and

Treatment, and Princess Ghida bint Talal, chairperson of the board of trustees of the King Hus-sein Cancer Foundation (KHCF), Professor the Lord Darzi of Den-ham, Executive Chair of WISH,

Egbert Schillings, CEO of WISH and several other dignitaries were also present.

“We have a huge expansion programme but our work is not limited to buildings. We invest

very heavily in development in our human capacity and human talent. We invest in education, medical schools, continues devel-opment and tra ining programmes. We also focus on

quality and safety improvement of patient care. We also have number of programmes that focus on patient experience, which help in making our serv-ices more efficient,” she said.

“Qatar gives great importance to scientific research in various fields, especially in the health sec-tor to find innovative solutions to health challenges and ensure continuous development and improvement of health services in the country,” she added.

Amani Hadad, Pharmacy Stu-dent, Qatar University and Dr Turki Al Ahbabi, Resident, Hamad Medical Corporation share their training experience and benefits of attending global Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety, an initiative of WISH.

The closing session also heard Mustafa Suleyman, head of Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) at DeepMind, where he is respon-sible for integrating the company's technology across a wide range of Google products.

The second day of the

Summit featured policy briefings and panel discussions on cardi-ovascular disease, healthy populations and investing in health. The session on investing in the field of health highlighted that middle-income countries can achieve good results and improve public health as well as make progress in just one generation if they direct their investments to this sector. Dr Lawrence H Sum-mers, the former US Secretary of the Treasury, emphasised the importance of investment in health and its enormous eco-nomic returns, in addition to its humanitarian nature and role in the social and economic well-being.

Dr Summers praised Qatar's role and valuable efforts in health investment at home and abroad despite the circumstances in the region, pointing to the role of the Qatar Foundation and the Edu-cation City as well as the country’s fruitful cooperation with regional and international organisations in this field.

Minister of Public Health, H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari (second left), with (from left), Moderator Mishal Husain of BBC; Amani Hadad, Pharmacy Student at QU; Dr Turki Al Ahbabi, Resident, HMC; and Dr Don Berwick, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement; at the WISH conference yesterday. Pic: Salim Matramkot/ The Peninsula

Qatar is committed to helping Tunisia Continued from page 1“The important thing is

Qatar is committed to helping Tunisia and investing in differ-ent development projects. We have an office in Doha coordi-nating all investment activities there like other GCC states,” Laabidi told the Peninsula on the sideline of ceremony held to sign an investment agree-ment with Mexico.

“ We are planning to open more offices in the GCC states to encourage investments and today (Wednesday) Qatari

businessmen from the Qatar Chamber will hold a meeting with their Tunisian counter-p a r t s t o d i s c u s s implementation of some industrial projects including Petrochemical, plastic, logis-tics and free zones,” he added.

FIPA-Tunisia is a public institution set up in 1995 under the supervision of the Ministry of Development Investment and International Cooperation with the aim of promoting investments. The “Al Majed Group” in Qatar yesterday

announced that it is going to develop a tourism project in La Cigale Gamrat area in Tunisia at a cost of $200 m. Some 30 agreements were signed on the first day of Tunisia 2020.

At the ceremony held at the Convention Centre, agree-ments were also signed with the European Union for sev-eral donation programmes totalling € 200 m.

The General Commissioner of Tunisia 2020 Mourad Fradi said Tunisia has great poten-tial to be an investment hub,

and the situation is encouraging.

The organising committee received more than 12,000 applications for participation and the committee approved around 4,000 applications, Fradi told this daily.

The number of participants reached more than 2,700 peo-ple and this clearly reflects the fact that the investment envi-ronment in the country is encouraging and gaining con-fidence of the business sectors, said Fradi.

Kahramaa bags international awardsQATAR General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) has bagged two international awards “Asia’s Best Material-ity Reporting” and “Asia’s Best Stakeholder Reporting” at 2016 Asia Sustainability Reporting Awards’ Ceremony held in Singapore. The award was pre-sented by CSR-Works run under UN and CSR-Matters in a cere-mony held at British embassy in Singapore on Monday.

Nine international organ-isations competed with Kahramaa for Best Materiality Reporting and 10 organisations for Best Stakeholder Report-ing. The corporation also obtained certificates of appre-ciation for best nominee finalists for three awards “Best Environmental Reporting”, “Supply Chain Reporting” and “ B e s t S u s t a i n a b i l i t y Reporting”.

QATAR Museums (QM) has launched ten new publi-cations at the 27th Doha International Book Fair.

The ten new titles are showcased at the fair alongside 100 QM pub-lications ranging from comic book style illustra-tions, to books showcasing works by acclaimed local, regional and international artists that have exhibited in Qatar in the past and present.

Qatar Museums launches 10 books

05THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 HOME

Doha International Book Fair opensRaynald C Rivera The Peninsula

The 27th Doha Inter-national Book Fair opened on a high note yesterday at Doha Exhibition and

Convention Center (DECC).The event was opened by

H E Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser Al Ali, Minister of Cul-ture and Sports; H E Dr Saleh bin Mohammed Al Nabit, Min-ister of Development Planning and Statistics; H E Jassim Saif Ahmed Al Sulaiti, Minister of Transport and Communica-tions; and H E Dr Ghaith bin Mubarak Al Kuwari, Minister of Endowments and Islamic Affairs.

The ribbon cutting cere-mony was also attended by ambassadors and representa-tives of missions as well as other high ranking officials.

With a total of 895 stands spread on a 23,500sqm exhi-bition space, the fair is the biggest edition yet which saw the participation of 490 pub-lishing houses, 90 of which specialize on children’s books.

“This year’s book fair con-tinues to carry on its educational message. It also continues to witness increase in the number of participating countries and publishing houses,” Al Ali said.

He invited the people to visit the exhibition and benefit from the wide array of books in all fields. “This cultural event coincides with the celebrations for Qatar National day which falls on December 18,” he said, underscoring the fair as an important part of the big events organised in the country annu-ally. This year’s edition of the book fair has theme “Read” which clearly aligns with the

vision of the Ministry of Cul-ture and Sports. Elaborating on the choice of this year’s themes, the Minister said Iqra (read) is the first word revealed in the Holy Quran which underscores the importance of reading and knowledge. Among the 33 countries, the ones with the biggest participation are Egypt, Qatar, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Syria, some of which have set up their own pavilions.

A number of educational and academic institutions in Qatar are also participating at the fair with their own booths including Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar National Library, Qatar Museums and

Katara among others. Embas-sies of Korea, Japan and the United States of America also have their own stands at the fair. The 11-day fair showcases 104,389 titles in Arabic and other foreign languages; out of which 15,219 were published this year. There are more than 100 volunteers to assist visitors as well as thousands of trolleys available for visitors to carry books. In addition there are free Internet service, restau-rants and cafes along with ATMs provided by QNB at the venue.

The book fair is open until December 10 from 9am to 1pm and from 4pm to 10pm except on Fridays when it will be open from 4pm until 11pm.

H E Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser Al Ali, Minister of Culture and Sports; H E Dr Saleh bin Mohammed Al Nabit, Minister of Development Planning and Statistics; H E Jassim Saif Ahmed Al Sulaiti, Minister of Transport and Communications; and H E Dr Ghaith bin Mubarak Al Kuwari, Minister of Endowments and Islamic Affairs during the opening of the 27th Doha International Book Fair yesterday. Pic: Baher Amin/ The Peninsula

Amnesty scheme ends todayContinued from page 1

The Ministry of Interior had announced three-month amnesty scheme starting from September 1 and ending today (December 1). As the min-istry has so far not extended the deadline for amnesty scheme, stricter action against illegal residents likely to start soon.

Recently, a top official of the Search and Follow-Up Department in an interview had asserted that intensive inspection campaign would be launched after the end of the three-month amnesty to book illegal res-idents. The Ministry of Interior through its Public Relations department had run an awareness campaign in 11 languages including Arabic, Eng-lish, Hindi, Bengali, Nepalese, Indonesian, Tagalog, Urdu, Sinhalese, Tamil and Malayalam to introduce the scheme and its advantages to the expatriate communities. It also was announced in Arabic, English and Asian newspapers, and the embassies also advised their community members to avail of the scheme, which caused a great turn out of the beneficiaries at the Search and Follow Up Department. As per residency law, employers of illegal residents too will face severe punishment.

06 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 HOME

Ministry & CNA-Q renew comprehensive dealThe Peninsula

A new three-year Com-p r e h e n s i v e Agreement was signed between the Ministry of Education

and Higher Education and Col-lege of the North Atlantic in Canada, ensuring that College of the North Atlantic - Qatar (CNA-Q) will continue its role as Qatar’s premier technical college.

The contract was finalised at a formal signing ceremony at the Qatari Embassy in Ottawa, Can-a d a ’ s C a p i t a l , w i t h representatives from the Minis-try of Education and Higher Education, Government of Can-ada, Provincial Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, College of the North Atlantic (CNA) and CNA-Q in attendance.

"The Ministry of Education and Higher Education welcomes the new agreement and we are very pleased that the partnership continues. The signing opens new doors for collaboration in many

potential areas," said H E Dr Mohammed bin Abdul Wahid Al Hamadi, Minister of Education and Higher Education.

H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada, Chair of CNA-Q’s Joint Oversight Board, and Minister of Energy and Industry, said, “I have witnessed the growth of CNA-Q since its inception. It is gratifying to reflect on the college’s role in shaping Qatar’s post-secondary landscape in providing vital tech-nical and vocational training for

our youth. With the signing of the three-year Comprehensive Agreement we look toward the future and maintaining CNA-Q’s positive contribution to Qatar. This agreement reinforces the strong and friendly partnership between the Ministry of Educa-tion and Higher Education and CNA-Q. This partnership has suc-cessfully produced over 5,000 highly skilled, technically-com-petent graduates for Qatar’s workforce who make daily con-tributions to the successful realisation of Qatar’s 2030 National Vision.”

“We are very pleased that the successful partnership between CNA and the Ministry of Educa-tion and Higher Education continues,” said Dr Ken MacLeod, President, CNA-Q. “With the signing of this agreement we start the next chapter, launching into new programmes, building more educational capacity, and evolv-ing with the changing needs of our students and our business and industry stakeholders. In our 15th academic year, we take great

pride in the achievements of the College thus far. Our faculty and staff have shaped CNA-Q into a student-centred, applied learn-ing environment which is a focal point of educational pride in Qatar. Over the next three years, we look forward to new mile-stones, while continuing our most valued role — training more young Qataris to contribute to the knowledge-based economy envi-sioned in Qatar National Vision 2030.”

“Through strong partner-ships, CNA-Q will continue to deliver a quality education to the

future leaders of Qatar. I am pleased to see CNA-Q further its reputation as the premier tech-nical college in Qatar,” said the Gerry Byrne, Minister of Advanced Education, Skills and Labour, Government of New-foundland and Labrador. “The signing represents the continu-ation of the largest international post-secondary agreement ever awarded to a Canadian post-sec-ondary institution.”

The first Comprehensive Agreement between Qatar and CNA was signed on September 30, 2001. The College opened in

2002, with 300 students and 11 programmes. Now in the 15th academic year CNA-Q has more than 2,100 full-time students enrolled in over 30 programmes, and boasts nearly 5,000 alumni. In addition, there are 2,500 stu-dents enrolled part-time in an array of corporate training and development offerings. The cam-pus offers Canadian curriculum taught by Canadian industry experts in four areas of applied learning: Business Studies, Engi-neering Technology, Health Sciences and Information Technology.

Ministers as well as members of CNA-Q’s Joint Oversight Board in May 2016.

The contract

The agreement ensures that College of the North Atlantic - Qatar (CNA-Q) will continue its role as Qatar’s premier technical college.

The deal was finalised at a formal ceremony at the Qatari Embassy in Ottawa.

RAF to hold global summit on SALISanaullah Ataullah The Peninsula

As part of its ongoing ini-tiative 'SALI,' aimed at improving the health-

care facilities in deprived areas worldwide, Sheikh Thani bin Abdullah Foundation for Humanitarian Services (RAF) is organising an international conference.

The ‘Save a Life Initiative’ (SALI) was announced last year. It is focusing on provid-ing urgent primary health care and medical services to vul-nerable communities in countries, where access to basic healthcare is not possi-ble due to unrest or lack of facilities.

More than 150 experts from research institutions,

universities and NGOs from health sector will participate to the conference.

The representatives from United Nations and its allied organisations including World Health Organisation; Islamic

Development Bank and relief workers also attend the conference.

The conference hopes to discuss the SALI initiative, with a model of the initiative pre-sented. The result of Sudan

SALI initiative will be also be discussed in the conference. Plans to implement the initia-tive in Yemen and Palestine will be also be put on table.

“RAF gives priorities to health sector in its projects therefore it has launched SALI to develop this sector," said Dr Mohamad Salah Ibrahim, Dep-uty Director General of RAF.

"The initiative is an organ-ised scientific model to provide health care services in fragile areas," said Professor Ibrahim Al Jinahi, Head of the Scientific Committee of SALI.

The first phase of the initi-ative focus on improving the capability of health system by connecting the local health care facilities with interna-tional aid providers in the sector.

EAA and Gavi in new partnershipThe Peninsula

Education Above All Foun-dation (EAA) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, have

announced a new partnership to improve children’s health through community outreach and advocacy for immunisation in countries in Africa and Asia.

The partnership aims to identify communities with out-of-school children and where low levels of vaccination have been recorded. They will then develop a joint community out-reach strategy to improve rates of immunisation.

The partnership is an important means by which the organisations can show their significant contribution towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“Together, Education Above All and Gavi will work to improve health and wellbeing in some of the world’s most deprived communities,” said H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Founder and Chairperson of EAA Foundation and member of the United Nations SDG Advocates. She believes a col-laborative approach to development is crucial.

“This is just one example of the role education can play as

a driver for human develop-ment, showing that increased access to quality education can support the achievement of wider development aims”.

This partnership is the first of its kind for Gavi and EAA to target both SDG 3, which aims to ensure healthy lives and pro-mote well-being for all, and SDG 4, which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education. It is also a showcase for SDG 17, to revitalise the glo-bal partnership for sustainable development.

“Education plays a crucial role in raising awareness of health challenges and shaping the attitudes and behaviours that can make a difference,“ said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

During a meeting with Sheikha Moza in Doha, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, chair of the Gavi Board underlined that “overwhelming evidence dem-onstrates the benefits of immunisation as one of the most successful and cost-effec-t i v e p u b l i c h e a l t h interventions. Minimising the burden of illness through immunisation will positively affect a child’s ability to attend school and attain high educa-tion levels.”

Officials during a press conference held at Friends of the Environment Center Green Tent yesterday. Pic: Kammutty VP / The Peninsula

Qatar e-Nature Schools Contest launchedSidi Mohamed The Peninsula

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Sasol and Friends of the

Environment Centre (FEC) yes-terday announced launching 2017 edition of the Qatar e-Nature Schools Contest.

In order to participate, each school can send a representative-team comprising three students having at least one Qatari student except in cases when the school does not have any Qatari student.

The competition aims at encouraging students to discover the beauty and fauna and flora of Qatar. The competition will be based on a real-time quiz

contest and on the information provided in the Qatar e-Nature smartphone application and website for all primary schools across the country.

The competition consists of an interactive contest in the form of a live contest in front of an audience in which teams have to answer questions immediately in order to gain points.

Contest includes questions on birds, insects, mammals, reptiles, flora and nature reserves of Qatar, in addition to few ques-tions from the curriculum related to the environment.

First place winners will be awarded Gold medals and voucher worth QR4,000 for each student part of team, while the second place winners will be

awarded Silver medals and a voucher worth QR3,000 each student. The third and fourth position holders will get QR2,000 and QR1,000 respectively.

Rima Abu Khadija, Director, Office of Curricula Standards at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, said: “We are very proud to partner with Sasol and Friends of the Environment Centre who are giving incentives to our young students to actively learn about the nature in Qatar.”

Frahood Al Hajiri, Director, Friends of the Environment Cen-tre said: “Qatar e-Nature has been instrumental to further ele-vate the awareness about the different aspects of Qatar’s rich nature to the young minds in the country."

High-quality Qatari vegetables to be marketed through Al MeeraFROM today, the residents of Qatar will be able to enjoy real flavour and freshness of locally produced high-quality vegetables as two ministries have decided to market them starting from Al Meera.

The Ministry of Munici-pality and Environment in collaboration with the Minis-try of Economy and Commerce and Al Meera yes-terday announced adopting a new initiative for market-ing high-quality Qatari vegetables.

The programme depends on marketing only the best Qatari farms which produce the best quality vegetables very similar to European standards. The first phase will start in Al Meera, and 16 farms will participate in the initiative.

According to few months' old statistics, there are more than 1,200 farms in the coun-try, but only a small number of them commercially pro-duce fruits and vegetables.

Meanwhile, Al Rayyan Municipality in October reg-istered 168 violations during 701 inspection-visits and destroyed 37 whole-sheep and 340kg of meat unfit for human consumption. It also collected QR433000 as fines.

Officials at the press conference. Pic: Abdul Basit/ The Peninsula

07THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 HOME

The Peninsula

In October last year, Emir H H Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani issued Law No 21 of 2015 regulating the entry, exit and residency of expatriates. The law will come into effect on Decem-

ber 13.Below are answers to some of the most

commonly asked questions in relation to Law as provided by the Ministry of Admin-istrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs yesterday.

How can expatriates apply for an exit permit under the new rules?

Firstly, the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs will make employers agree on annual leave dates with the workers. When applying for an exit permit, for annual leave or an emer-gency, migrant workers will first submit their application in writing to their employer, as per the terms of their contract.

It is anticipated that in the overwhelm-ing majority of cases, exit permit requests will be approved and processed by employ-ers immediately. In some cases, if the employer rejects this request, expats will be able to apply directly to the Exit Permit Grievances Committee.

Expats are able to submit requests via an e-government services programme, or in-person at government service complexes and police stations throughout Qatar. Once submitted, all exit permit requests received will be decided upon within 72 hours.

Upon receipt, the Exit Permit Griev-ances Committee will conduct an immediate background check of the appli-cant to ensure that no active or pending criminal proceedings, or financial claims, are currently against them.

During the Committee’s 72-hour win-dow for deciding upon the request, it will look to contact the applicant’s employer. When contacted, the employer will be asked if they have any objections to the request. Valid objections may include: a) reason to believe that the employee has committed fraud b) reason to believe that the worker is attempting to evade prosecution for a crime.

If any of these objections are raised by

the employer, the burden will be on the employer to convince the relevant author-ities before the 72-hour period closes that a criminal case should be opened up against the worker. If they cannot succeed in per-suading the relevant authorities, the worker will be automatically granted an Exit Permit.

What will happen if the Exit Permit Grievances Committee is unable to con-tact the expatriate’s employer?

If the Committee cannot contact an expatriate’s employer within 72 hours of their exit permit application being submit-ted, it will approve the request – provided that the worker passes all relevant back-ground checks.

What will happen where there is an emergency and an expatriate needs to return sooner?

Seventy two hours is the current max-imum we expect for the appeals process, in reality the system can operate much faster. In the event of an emergency, e.g. a natural disaster in their country of origin, the committee can expedite this timing.

Who are the Members of the Exit Per-mit Grievances Committee, and how does it operate?

The Exit Permit Grievances Committee will consist of officials from the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs, and representatives of the National Human Rights Committee. In their hearings, the worker will have the opportunity to con-test any evidence that may have been used against them. Further, the worker will also have the opportunity to appeal for clem-ency, in cases where they owe debt but need to return home for a medical or family emergency.

The government anticipates that the majority of cases heard by the Exit Permit Grievances Committee will be decided in favour of workers.

In cases where an expatriate is pre-vented from receiving an exit permit, will their family members be able to leave the country?

Family members and dependents will be allowed to leave freely – unless they are implicated in any crime committed by the expatriate under investigation.

If expats leaves Qatar, how long will they need to wait before returning to the country to take up employment?

Expats who leave Qatar and have had their employment and Residency Permit terminated, will be able to return to Qatar to take up employment immediately after being granted a new visa. However, this will not be the case for workers who have been found guilty of misconduct whilst working for their previous employer in Qatar.

How long do employees have to find another contract in the case of termina-tion of a contract?

If necessary, employees can have up to three months to find work by notifying the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs. When the worker has found a new job, they will be required to return to the Ministry and present their new employment contract. Expatriates who do not find work within this period must leave Qatar.

New residency law explained

Continued fom page 1All expats who wish to

change jobs will also need to get the approval of the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs prior to taking up their new employment.

In cases where a worker wishes to change job prior to completing the length of their contract, they will need to seek permission from their existing employer. However, in cases where the worker can demon-strate they have been exploited or mistreated by their employer, the law gives them the right to demand to transfer employment.

A job contract is mandatory for obtaining a work visa to Qatar under the new law and all prospective migrant work-ers will be able to see a copy of their job contract, prior to leav-ing their country of origin, said the statement.

The Ministry also explained the procedures for applying for an exit permit under the new law and other important aspects of the entry and residency rules.

The explanations came as part of an ongoing campaign to raise public awareness on the new law. Over the past few weeks, the Ministry in collabo-ration with the Ministry of Interior held a series of work-shops and seminars for this purpose with participation of Qatari businessmen, officials from foreign embassies and representatives of different expatriate communities.

Addressing a meeting of major private sector employ-ers last week, an official of the ministry said, “The Government

of Qatar takes a holistic approach to migrant worker welfare. Included in the new law are several new protections for workers during all stages of the migration cycle – from recruitment to repatriation. All expatriates will benefit from the changes, including domestic, blue-collar and white-collar workers. We believe that every individual helping to build our country deserves quality living and working conditions.”

Once enforced, “the new law will offer substantial new freedoms and protections to over 2.1m salaried workforce” in the country, the ministry said in a statement.

The key changes being introduced include new options for workers to change jobs and apply for exit permits, as well as new regulations to prevent the exploitation of low-income workers. The new law also abolishes Qatar’s existing Kafala system, replacing it with a mod-ernised, contract-based system.

Expats also have the right to permanently leave the coun-try before or after completing the duration of their contract, after notifying the employer according to the terms of the contract. If the employer rejects a leave request, the migrant worker can appeal to the Exit Permit Grievances Committee, which has to respond to all requests within 3 days.

Employers found to have confiscated passports can be fined up to QR25,000 per worker. When enacted, this will be the toughest financial pen-alty against passport confiscation within the region.

New law will come into force on Dec 13

Employees can have up to three months to find work by notifying the ministry. When the worker has found a new job, they will be required to return to the Ministry and present their new contract.

If the Committee cannot contact an expatriate’s employer within 72 hours, it will approve the exit permit request – provided that the worker passes all relevant background checks.

08 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 HOME / MIDDLE EAST

12 dead in Turkey student dormitory fireIstanbul AFP

Turkey yesterday detained eight people over a deadly fire at a dormitory for school-girls that left 12 people

dead, as anger grew over pos-sible negligence that caused the tragedy.

The blaze, which officials said was likely caused by an electrical fault, tore through the building's wooden interior on Tuesday night as panicked youngsters tried to jump from windows to safety.

Some officials suggested many of the victims were killed on the top floors of the dormi-tory in the southern region of Adana after they were unable to open a fire door to flee the flames.

"We will learn lessons from this and we will do what needs to be done to ensure this never happens again," said Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz, adding that an inspection in June had

not uncovered any issues.In Ankara, Turkish police

used tear gas to disperse a pro-test outside the education ministry by activists angered that the devastated dormitory was managed by an influential religious sect.

Those detained as part of the investigation into accusations of "causing death by negligence" include the manager of the dor-mitory in the Aladag district of Adana, the Dogan news agency said.

Five people were detained initially while three other sus-pects were being treated for wounds in hospital. A total of 14 arrest warrants have been issued. Dogan said most of the dead would be identified using

DNA tests, in a sign that the vic-tims were too badly burned to be identified visually. Ten of those killed were schoolchildren aged up to 14, while the fire also claimed the life of a member of the teaching staff.

The four-year-old daughter of the dormitory manager being held by the police also died, Dogan said. Twenty-four peo-ple including 16 children were injured, Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak said.

Officials said the fire was likely caused by an electrical fault which then spread rapidly due to the dormitory's wooden structures and carpeted floors.

Adana governor Mahmut Demirtas said Tuesday some of the schoolgirls were injured after jumping out of windows to escape the flames. He added that none of those injured was in a serious condition.

Adana city mayor Huseyin Sozlu said the dormitory's fire door was locked and that most of the dead were recovered from near that exit.

50,000 join exodus from east Aleppo Aleppo AFP

More than 50,000 Syrians have joined a growing exodus of terrified civil-ians from east Aleppo, a monitor said

yesterday, as the UN Security Council was set for emergency talks on fighting in the city.

As government forces pressed an assault in the divided city, regime artillery fire killed at least 26 civilians in east Aleppo yesterday morning, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

Civilians have poured out of the besieged rebel-held east, battered by air strikes and heavy artillery fire by advancing regime forces.

AFP's correspondent in a southeastern district described artillery shells "coming down like rain" yesterday.

After one mortar attack, the motionless body of a girl was left crumpled in the street, her arm severed and her head pierced by a sliver of shrapnel. Rescue volunteers car-ried her body away on a motorcycle.

Regime forces and allied fighters have seized a third of the rebel-held east of Aleppo since they began an operation to recapture all of the battered second city just over a fort-night ago. They now fully control the city's northeast and pressed their offensive yes-terday on Aleppo's southeastern edges, advancing in the Sheikh Saeed district, according to state news agency SANA.

The loss of Aleppo would be the biggest blow for Syria's opposition since the conflict

began in March 2011 with anti-government protests, before spiralling into a civil war.

More than 50,000 people have fled Alep-po's rebel-held districts, the Observatory said yesterday, including at least 20,000 to gov-ernment-held territory and another 30,000 to Kurdish-controlled districts.

Many others have travelled south into the remaining territory held by rebels.

Another AFP correspondent near a tem-porary government-run shelter on the edge of Aleppo yesterday saw dozens of displaced residents huddled on the back of pick-up trucks under the pounding rain.

Hundreds also massed in the newly recaptured neighbourhood of Jabal Badro to board government buses heading to west Aleppo. "The situation of those fleeing is des-perate," said Pawel Krzysiek, head of communications for the International Com-mittee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Syria.

Syria's Red Crescent is offering assist-ance in government-held areas, but does not yet have access to east Aleppo.

The UN has for months sought access to the east, but a plan it presented earlier this month to deliver aid has yet to be approved by the government.

Russia miffed by Erdogan comment Moscow AFP

The Kremlin yesterday demanded an explanation after Turkish President

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara intervened in the Syria conflict solely to topple Presi-dent Bashar Al Assad.

Turkish forces are pressing on with a three-month opera-tion inside Syria in support of anti-Assad forces, while Russia is the chief ally of the Syrian president in the conflict that has claimed more than 300,000 lives since 2011.

At the same time, Turkey and Russia have also been working hard to improve rela-tions after clinching a reconciliation deal in June to repair ties brought to a historic low by Turkey's shooting down of a Russian jet in November 2015.

Erdogan had said at a meet-ing in Istanbul on Tuesday: "We went in there to put an end to the rule of the tyrant Assad who carries out state terror, not for anything else." His comments came as Russian Foreign Min-ister Sergei Lavrov is due to

meet Turkish counterpart Mev-lut Cavusoglu in the Turkish resort of Alanya today.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists he hoped that "clarification will come shortly from our Turkish partners".

Peskov said Erdogan's com-ment "is not in harmony with previous statements" and "not in harmony with our under-standing of the situation".

The Syrian Foreign Minis-try said Erdogan's statement "shows clearly that the flagrant Turkish aggression against the Syrian territory is only the result of the ambitions and the illusions of an extremist despot".

Turkey is waging the oper-ation against Islamic State (IS) jihadists and also Kurdish mili-tia to back pro-Ankara rebels, in an unprecedented military incursion.

There has so far been no indication of clashes with Assad's forces or that Turkey plans any offensive against regime-held territory.

Russia has generally steered clear of any sharp criticism of the Turkish offensive.

Kuwait City AFP

KUWAIT'S Emir H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah yesterday renamed the out-going prime minister to form a new cabinet following polls in which the opposition made a strong showing.

Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al Sabah, a senior member of the ruling Al Sabah family, resigned on Monday as required by the constitution after Saturday's snap polls.

He should form the cab-inet before December 11, when the new parliament is due to hold its inaugural ses-sion. The Islamist-dominated opposition won nearly half the seats in the 50-member parliament after snap elections.

Blaze Damage

Eight people detained over incident that caused widespread outrage across country.

Bodies lie on the ground at the site of a blast after regime strike over civilians in residential areas of Jub Al Quba neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, yesterday.

Kuwait reappoints premier

Sudanese protest over high prices Khartoum AFP

Anti-riot police yes-terday fired tear gas at about 300 Suda-nese protesters d e m o n s t r a t i n g

against a government decision to cut fuel subsidies.

Groups have staged per-sistent protests for weeks over the subsidy cuts, which have led to a sharp rise in the cost of other goods, including medicines.

The protest came after the end of a three-day nationwide strike called by several oppo-sition groups, which received a mixed response. "No, no to high prices," shouted about 300 men and women as they marched along a main street of Omdurman near Khartoum yesterday morning, an AFP

correspondent reported. Anti-riot police swiftly arrived at the scene and fired tear gas to disperse them, the reporter said.

In a separate demonstra-tion in downtown Khartoum, about 150 lawyers protested in front of the high court — the first rally of its kind since the fuel price hike was announced earlier this month.

Dressed in black gowns and coats the group stood fac-ing the high court and carried banners that said: "Say no to corruption, Say no to high prices, Say no to detentions." Several people in cars flashed victory signs in support of the lawyers as they drove by, the AFP correspondent reported.

The lawyers later dis-persed as anti-riot police arrived and began confiscat-ing their banners.

Jerusalem AFP

Israel yesterday delayed par-liamentary votes on controversial bills that

would limit the volume of calls to prayer at mosques and legal-ise several thousand Jewish settler homes in the West Bank.

The votes were put off until next week following a decision by government ministers, a parliament spokesman told AFP.

Deputies were to take a preliminary vote on a bill to prevent the use of loudspeak-ers for late night and early morning calls to prayer at mosques, a proposal that has angered Muslims.

A first reading of a bill to legalise around 4,000 settler homes in the occupied West Bank was also planned, but both were delayed.

The noise bill was put off

until December 7, while the settlement bill was to come up on Monday.

Israeli media reported that the votes were put off because a majority could not be assured. Discussions were continuing on both measures.

The noise bill would pro-hibit the use of loudspeakers between 11pm and 7am. It would officially apply to all religions, but it is widely seen as targeting calls to prayer at mosques.

The bill's backers say it is needed because the loudspeak-ers are a nuisance and can also be used to broadcast inciting messages.

Government watchdog groups say the measure is an unnecessary provocation that threatens freedom of religion. Israeli President Reuven Riv-lin is among those against the bill. The settlement bill has tested Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu's coalition, widely seen as the most right-wing in the country's history.

Netanyahu does not want the bill to pass, warning that it could violate international law and result in repercussions at the International Criminal Court.

Countries including the United States have also strongly criticised the bill and Netan-yahu is concerned over an international backlash.

But he is also faced with holding together his coalition and not being seen as acting against the powerful settler movement. The international community considers all Israeli settlements in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and the West Bank to be illegal, whether they are authorised by the govern-ment or not.

The Israeli government dif-ferentiates between those it has approved and those it has not.

Israel delays voting on mosques

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs H E Ahmed bin Abdullah Al Mahmoud received the Humanitarian Work Award of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). He was presented the award at a ceremony hosted by Regional Network for Social Responsibility yesterday in the Bahraini capital of Manama, during which the winners of humanitarian work in the GCC were honoured, at its fifth session for 2016, which carries the name of the Emir of Kuwait H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, the leader of Humanitarian Work.

Deputy PM receives GCC award

09THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 ASIA / AFRICA

Jakarta AFP

Thousands of Indonesians rallied across the coun-try yesterday, praying,

singing and calling for peace ahead of a major protest this week by Muslims against Jakarta's Christian governor.

Tomorrow's rally in Jakarta is expected to attract

about 150,000 people who have been angered by allega-tions that Basuki Tjahaja Purnama insulted Islam.

That would make it even bigger than a protest earlier this month that was marred by deadly violence.

Yesterday, the military and police organised "Archi-pelago Unity" gatherings across the country to call for

peace and reduce tensions before tomorrow's protest, with thousands packing out a park around a major monu-ment in Jakarta.

"The aim of this event is to unite us. There have recently been tensions among us, let's minimise that and come together again," event organiser Zamroni said yesterday.

Indonesians call for peace at rally

Beijing Reuters

China said yesterday it wanted to develop smooth military-to-

military ties with the new US administration of Donald Trump.

While the world's two largest economies are fre-quently at odds over issues like the disputed South China Sea, both have been trying to improve trust between their armed forces to reduce the risk of misunderstanding in any encounters.

This month, China and the United States staged a three-day humanitarian relief military drill as part of that trust-building exercise.

New concern looms with

Trump's election as US pres-ident. He lambasted China on the campaign trail and has suggested Japan and South Korea be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

Asked about Trump's election, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said it went without saying there were tensions in the military relationship and China hoped the United States would respect its core inter-ests and concerns.

"China is willing to work hard together with the defence department of the next US government to pro-mote the healthy and stable development of military-to-military relations," Yang said.

Trump will take over as president in January.

Indonesians assemble during an "Archipelago Unity" gatherings to call for peace and reduce tensions ahead of a December 2 protest, in Banda Aceh, yesterday.

China wants smooth military ties with Trump

Suu Kyi vows 'reconciliation' amid crisisSingapore AFP

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi vowed yesterday to work for "peace and

national reconciliation" amid mounting international condem-nation of a bloody army crackdown on her country's Muslim Rohingya minority.

The Nobel Peace Prize win-ner did not mention the violence in Rakhine state, but told a busi-ness forum in Singapore that multi-ethnic Myanmar needed to achieve stability to attract more investment.

Suu Kyi started a three-day visit to wealthy Singapore, the largest foreign investor in Myan-mar after China, as international pressure mounted on her gov-ernment to address the Rohingya crisis.

"As you know, we have many challenges. We're a country made of many ethnic commu-nities, and we have to work at achieving stability and rule of law which you in Singapore take pride in," the 71-year-old leader said.

"Businesses do not wish to invest in countries which are not stable. We do not wish to be unstable but we've had a long

history of disunity in our nation. So national reconciliation and peace is unavoidably important for us," she said.

Criticism of Buddhist-dom-inated Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya has been intense in Muslim-majority neighbours Indonesia and Malaysia.

Suu Kyi was scheduled to visit Indonesia, the world's larg-est Muslim-majority country, after Singapore but postponed the trip in the face of public pro-tests and a thwarted bomb plot against the Myanmar embassy.

A senior cabinet minister in Malaysia, Khairy Jamaluddin, yesterday called for a review of Myanmar's membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) because of what

he called its "large-scale ethnic cleansing" in Rakhine.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak will take part in a rare rally at the weekend to pro-test the crackdown on

Rohingyas, an official from his office said Tuesday, as the United Nations rights agency reiterated its claim the stateless minority may be victims of crimes against humanity.

China to help end Rakhine violenceCHINA has told Myanmar that they should work together to stabilise their shared bor-der, in the wake of a series of attacks by ethnic armed groups on Myanmar security forces and thousands of people cross-ing into China to escape the violence.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday told Myanmar delegation, led by peace commission chair Tin Myo Win, that Beijing was wor-ried by the deteriorating situation and repeated a call for an end to military action and for talks to resolve disputes.

"Both sides should prop-erly use the China-Myanmar high-level diplomatic and military mechanism to jointly maintain the peace and sta-bility of the China-Myanmar border region," a Foreign Ministry statement para-phrased Wang as saying.

The ministry Myanmar hoped to get Chinese support for ameliorating the situation.

Militants launch attacks on Mali airports

Vietnam seizes smuggled ivory hidden in timberVIETNAMESE authorities have seized nearly a tonne of ivory smuggled from Africa after locating nearly five tonnes in five previous shipments to the same port in the past two months.

Ho Chi Minh City's dep-uty customs chief, Le Dinh Loi, said the ivory seized Monday and Tuesday was hidden inside timber in two containers that arrived at Cat Lai port and was en route to neighboring Cambodia.

"The smugglers packed the ivory with wax and sealed it inside emptied-out timber". The seizures came less than two weeks after officials from more than 40 countries met at an international confer-ence on illegal wildlife trade in Hanoi.

Some wildlife traffickers are using Facebook to sell ivory tusks, rhino horns, and other illegal animal products, according to an undercover investigation from the Wild-life Justice Commission (WJC).

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong presents Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi with a picture taken at Rangoon Airport in May 1965 of her mother, Burma's ambassador to India Khin Kyi, with former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew during a dinner function at the Istana Presidential Palace, in Singapore, yesterday.

Gao Reuters

Militants have struck two airports in northern Mali with an explosives-

laden truck and rockets, residents and a security source said yesterday, in attacks that caused no victims but pointed to desert jihadists intensifying their insurgency.

In Gao, the offices of the UN peacekeeping mission located next to the airport terminal were razed by Tuesday evening's truck-bomb explosion which forced the airport to close.

French soldiers stationed in Gao took forensic evidence from among a tangle of papers, cor-rugated iron sheets and fragments of the attacker's flesh and bones strewn out next to the runway.

Gao -- seized by Islamist militants in 2012 before French forces drove them out a year

later -- is considered the best secured town in northern Mali with multiple UN, French and Malian army checkpoints along main roads.

A UN security source said that the attackers had passed through the regular checkpoints by using vehicles with a UN label.

A spokesman for the 13,000-strong UN mission could not immediately confirm the information.

"Yesterday, at about 18:00 a vehicle with explosives destroyed our pre-fabricated installations of MINUSMA at the Gao airport," said Olivier Sal-gado, spokesman for the peacekeeping mission, adding that another vehicle was being examined.

There were no fatalities beyond the attackers whose number has not yet been confirmed.

The UN security source

confirmed yesterday that two people on site were injured.

In the second incident, res-idents in Timbuktu said that rockets were fired overnight at the airport there but landed out-side the perimeter, without causing damage.

Mali's government signed a peace deal last year with secu-lar armed groups but Islamist militants pledging allegiance to both Al Qaeda and Islamist State have fought on and launched dozens of attacks on Western targets in recent months.

Soldiers of the Barhkane operation stand next to debris following a suicide car bomb attack at Gao Airport, yesterday.

Ethnic unrest

We're a country made of many ethnic communities, and we have to work at achieving stability and rule of law which you in Singapore take pride in: Suu Kyi.

Malaysia's Khairy Jamaluddin called for a review of Myanmar's membership in Asean because of what he called its 'large-scale ethnic cleansing' in Rakhine.

A mid US President-elect Donald Trump’s pledged misadventures during his controversial election campaign was the scrapping of the Iran nuclear deal. The historic agreement

signed between Iran and six world powers — US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany in August last year committed the Islamic Republic to rolling back its vaunted nuclear programme in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. An aggressive Trump leading a marauding election campaign for more than one year ahead of the US elections had promised that he would rip apart the Iran nuclear deal, which according to him, has given Tehran an upper hand by yielding a lot.

CIA Director John Brennan yesterday warned the incoming Trump administration over several issues that reflected the powerful American intelligence establishment’s anxiety. Brennan’s remarks betray a sense of worry within the current White House over what officials chosen by the Trump administration are going to do when they have all the power at their disposal.

Responding to Trump’s attempts to cosy up to Russia, the spy chief warned the incoming government against trusting Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said the Kremlin, a decades old rival of Washington, can’t be taken for its words.

Russia is supporting Syrian President Bashar Al Assad along with Iran in the five-year-old war that has claimed more than 300,000

lives. The US with its Arab and western allies wants Assad to leave the presidency and make way for another government. Brennan’s assessment of the situation in the war-ravaged nation is that the slaughter of civilians is of Assad and Russia’s making. Moscow, he said, had considerable sway over the situation in Syria but it was hard to come to any reliable deal with the Kremlin.

Trump has spoken favourably of Putin and termed him a strong leader. Brennan is not much off the mark in his assessment of the Russian strongman. The Russian president’s geopolitical ambitions have often led him to attempt to spread Russia’s territorial footprint.

It would be unprecedented in American political history if Trump scraps the Iran nuclear deal. As is his wont, besides being unpredictable the US president-elect is known to do outrageous things.

Brennan has warned against the use of intemperate language in the realm of relations with other countries as remarks might be taken out of context or misinterpreted to escalate the situation by vested interests.

The CIA chief’s assessment of the situation is quite accurate and his advice sagacious. The Trump administration should tread softly and desist from rolling back the Iran deal that came after years of efforts and hard diplomacy by world powers.

10 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 VIEWS

E S T A B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 6

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFI

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORHUSSAIN AHMAD

hussain@pen.com.qa

Tread softly

QUOTE OF THE DAY

I will be leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to make America Great Again!

Donald TrumpUS President-elect

Trump would be damaging his reputation by axing the Iran nuclear deal.

Hospitals and health insurers are gaining confidence that their nightmare scenario - millions of Americans instantly losing health insurance once

President-elect Donald Trump delivers on a promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare — is looking more like a bad dream than becoming reality.

The early view from the healthcare sector still includes an end eventually to President Obama’s signature health programme.

But Trump’s picks to head the US health department and its top regulator on Tuesday, along with his recent softening on some aspects of the existing law, is a sign to some sector insiders that instead of chaos, an orderly transition of up to three years to replace it with a plan that healthcare companies actually want could be in store.

Trump tapped Republican Representative Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon who drafted legislation years ago to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as head of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Consultant Seema Verma, who helped Vice President-elect Mike Pence create a Medicaid expansion plan in Indiana, is his choice to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Both must be confirmed by the US Senate.

Democrats bemoan the choices, saying they will gut the 2010 law that gave insurance to about 20 million people through the creation of new individual health insurance and the expansion of Medicaid for the poor.

But some healthcare companies, including insurers, doctors groups and hospitals, said they were encouraged by the appointments of experienced healthcare insiders.

“From our standpoint, we want to make sure that as many people as possible maintain (insurance) coverage,” said Dr Mario Molina, CEO of Molina Healthcare, which provides Medicaid and Obamacare individual insurance plans. “I think the pieces of the healthcare puzzle are kind of coming together for us now.”

That picture looks increasingly like lawmakers will bring Trump a “repeal” bill in January that lays out at least a two-year timeline for changing the law. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday that the House would start working on repealing and replacing Obamacare “right away,” but with a transition period to allow changes to be phased in over time.

That period could be up to three years, warned Senate Finance committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, in order “to work through the problems.”

Kathleen Harrington, chair of Policy of Government Relations for the Mayo Clinic, said so far she likes what she hears from

Health industry breathes easier as post-Obamacare path stabilisesCaroline HumerReuters

Republicans on changes to health insurance.

“We are very encouraged with the approach we’re hearing so far from President-elect Trump in terms of having a focused review and removing certain parts of it,” she said.

The key for Republicans is shifting the bulk of the oversight of individual insurance and the Medicaid programme to the states, and changing the way both are funded.

Insurers, who currently submit individual plans to both the state and the federal government, say this will allow them to sell more flexible health plans. For hospitals, the Verma appointment and Pence’s Medicaid expansion in Indiana are signs that one of their major sources of government reimbursement for medical services could continue to grow.

To be sure, it remains unclear what the overall impact will be on Medicaid and Medicare going forward. Both insurers and hospitals are watching for any negative impact from any changes, and anticipated cuts in funding.

Investors have already been playing the winners and losers of reforming health insurance. The Nasdaq Biotechnology index has gained 7 percent since Trump was elected as the possibility of Hillary Clinton enacting new legislation on drug pricing disappeared. On the other hand, shares of hospital chains have sold off sharply, including a 26 percent decline for Tenet Healthcare, on the fears that millions of newly uninsured patients will need care but not be able to pay their bills if and when the ACA is repealed.

Pence, who is expected to take a large role in shaping the administration’s healthcare policy, backed a plan in Indiana developed by Verma in which beneficiaries

contribute to the cost of their healthcare.

“It’s pretty clear that she is on the side of expanding Medicaid, but putting

some conditions on it,” said Joseph Antos, a health policy expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Antos expects the replacement plan to also include individual insurance that has a form of Federal subsidies, as envisioned in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s proposed plan to replace Obamacare.

AgileHealthInsurance.com, which sells short-term health insurance plans that are allowed to exclude benefits guaranteed under the ACA, expects the law to allow more choice so that insurers can design cheaper plans to hit a certain price point of $100 per month or $200 per month, as they did before the ACA, according to executive director Sam Gibbs.

Prices of Obamacare insurance rose about 25 percent for 2017 and large insurers including United Health Group have abandoned plans for next year, saying that they are losing too much money on sick customers.

Under Price and Verma, it could be the states once again making most of the decisions about mandatory benefits with the Federal government providing only a broad framework, Gibbs suggested.

At benefits company Stride Health, which sells and manages healthcare benefits to “gig” workers like Uber drivers, CEO Noah Lang said that he would want to be sure that the replacement plan has tax credits available to people as they need them, rather than at the end of the year only.

Blair Childs, senior vice president at hospital purchasing group Premier, said members of Congress are already asking healthcare companies for input on a roadmap for the ACA replacement.

“The offices we’ve talked to are saying ‘Don’t talk to me about what you don’t want, talk to me about what you do want. How do we solve this?” Childs said.

The Ryan plan, known as A Better Way, envisions block grant funding for Medicaid, the creation of vouchers for Medicare coverage, and the elimination of the advance paid premium subsidies for individual insurance. It is seen as the foundation of the eventual plan. Some Republican lawmakers hope that this new health reform law will get Democratic support and pass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

Price, who has presented his own replacement plan, is now turning to a job of managing a massive agency that oversees the US Food and Drug Administration, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Programme and other programmes, and will be tasked with implementing what Congress ultimately sends him, Childs said. “The relevant thing is the Ryan plan and what elements of that can be put into law,” Childs said.

Trump’s picks to head the US health department and its top regulator on Tuesday, along with his recent softening on some aspects of the existing law, is a sign to some sector insiders that instead of chaos, an orderly transition of up to three years to replace it with a plan that healthcare companies actually want could be in store.

ED ITOR IAL

semblance of democracy left in this country.While it is neither surprising nor strange why

Zizek is entirely oblivious to such facts, it is both curious and disappointing that Chomsky does not see this, even after the calamitous results of this election are clear for all to see.

In the encounter between Zizek and Chomsky, as a result, we have two opposing but equally stale and arcane views: one is to vote for Trump while the other is to vote for Clinton.

One is meant irresponsibly to stir things up, hoping they might get better, and the other equally irresponsi-bly meant to sustain the status quo for fear of fascism — both out to lunch as to the factual evidence that peo-ple have either made a judicious decision to vote for Clinton in “swing states” and refrain from voting for that corrupt warmonger in solidly “blue states”, or else voted for Trump not because they are necessarily illit-erate racists but to throw a monkey wrench at a deeply corrupt and heartless system that the flawed logic of “lesser evil” has historically sustained.

The choice of not voting for Clinton, which I among millions of other Sanders’ supporters made, was not out of any political piety to refrain from getting my hands dirty but to help put the factual evidence of a changing political culture electorally on the map. My not voting for Clinton in New York did not cost her anything - she won New York and all its electoral college counts.

But it did deny her diehard supporters from counting me among her “popular vote” and thus sustain their dangerous delusion that she is really a very popular politician or that the majority of Amer-ican people are really on her side, as diehard liberal supporters of the nefarious Islamophobe Bill Maher such as Michael Moore is doing as I write.

In opting for Clinton or Trump, Chomsky and Zizek both avoid the crucial question of actual vot-ers and how and why they voted the way they did, and are fixated on the abstract illusion of being on the left or right side of a vacuous argument.

Contrary to Chomsky’s high moral horse, it is immoral to vote for a corrupt warmonger who is partially responsible for a pernicious war that has destroyed the entire nation-state of Iraq and mur-dered hundreds of thousands of innocent human

EU’s broken promises threaten deals with Turkey

The EU-Turkey refugee deal and Customs Union update talks may collapse amid promises broken by the 28-member bloc. Turkey and the EU signed a refugee deal in

March, which aimed to discourage irregular migration through the Aegean Sea by taking stricter measures against human traffickers and improving the conditions of nearly three million Syrian refugees in Turkey.

The March 18 deal also allowed for the acceleration of Turkey’s EU membership bid and visa-free travel for Turkish nationals within the Schengen area.

In a joint statement dated November 29, 2015, the EU and Turkey had confirmed their commitment to re-energise the accession proc-ess. Turkey formally applied to become an EU member in 1987, while accession talks began in 2005. However, almost a year later, on November 24, the European Parliament approved a non-binding motion to freeze EU-membership talks with Turkey, in response to post-coup investigations and

recent developments in the country including measures taken within the framework of the fight against the PKK and FETO terrorist groups.

The EU countries’ leaders also decided to evaluate relations with Turkey at the EU summit in December.

The PKK — listed as a terrorist organisa-tion by Turkey, the US, and EU — resumed its decades-old armed campaign in July last year. Since then, more than 300 civilians and nearly 800 security personnel have been martyred. Around 8,000 PKK terrorists have been killed or apprehended.

Led by US-based Fetullah Gulen, FETO is accused of orchestrating Turkey’s July 15 coup plot as well as being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through infiltrating Turkish institutions, par-ticularly the military, police, and the judiciary. The July 15 defeated coup left 248 martyred and nearly 2,200 wounded.

Turkey and the EU had reaffirmed in the joint statement that the fight against terror-ism remained a priority. Yet, Brussels has often slammed Turkey over the precautions taken as part of the fight against the PKK and FETO, let alone support its fight against terror.

No operation has been launched against the PKK across Europe although it is listed as a terrorist organisation by the EU.

Moreover, on November 16, European Parliament head Martin Schulz and EU Com-missioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn held a meeting with a fugitive Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy — a move Ankara considers “support for terrorism.”

Faysal Sariyildiz is one of 15 HDP depu-ties for whom arrest warrants on terror-related charges were issued earlier this month. Sariyildiz failed to appear to tes-tify in a terrorism investigation in Turkey and there is also video footage allegedly showing him transporting weapons for PKK terrorists.

Customs UnionIn the statement, Turkey and the EU also

“took note of the launching of preparatory steps for upgrading the Customs Union.” “After com-pletion of this preparatory work by both sides, formal negotiations could be launched towards the end of 2016,” the statement said. However, no concrete steps have been taken so far. The Cus-toms Union agreement was established in 1995.

Refugee resettlementSo far, 1,614 Syrian refugees have been

resettled from Turkey to Europe while 578 irregular migrants have been returned from the Greek islands to Turkey, according to the European Commission. Europe had agreed to take 72,000. EU also failed to deliver a prom-ised €3bn ($3.2bn) in aid that has been pledged for over 3 million refugees living in Turkey.

Turkey will also receive an additional €3bn, agreed upon in a refugee deal with the

EU, throughout the next two years until 2018, the then PM Ahmet Davutoglu said in March. However, Turkey has so far received only €677m ($716m). Turkey is hosting the largest number of Syrian refugees in the world, and has so far spent more than $12bn on the refugees.

Visa-free travel In the joint statement, Turkey and EU had

also agreed to lift visa requirements for Turkish citizens in the Schengen zone by October 2016 on the condition that Ankara meets 72 require-ments set by the EU. Ankara has met most of the requirements, but the EU’s demands for change in Turkey’s anti-terrorism law have led to a deadlock in negotiations.

Turkey and the EU had reaffirmed in the joint statement that the fight against terrorism remained a priority. Yet, Brussels has often slammed Turkey over the precautions taken as part of the fight against the PKK and FETO, let alone support its fight against terror.

11THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 OPINION

Hasan Esen Anatolia

The torturous course and calami-tous consequence of the 2016 United States presidential elec-tion is bound to sustain a critical course of reflections for quite

some time to come — and quite rightly so.The disproportionately dangerous

power of the occupant of the White House and the fact that the peace and sanity of the world at large is very much contingent on a reasonable and sane person to occupy that office requires continued reflections on what is happening in this country and its perilously volatile political culture.

In two consecutive conversations with Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hassan, two prominent critical thinkers with a global audience have reflected closely on their respective views on the course and consequence of this pres-idential election. In a conversation with British Channel 4 aired just before the US election Slavoj Zizek had said he would vote for Trump, for “it will be a kind of big awak-ening. New political processes will be set in motion,” a point hereiterated later after the election in his interview with Mehdi Hassan.

On the opposite side, the distinguished American linguist and critical thinker Noam Chomsky restated his pre-election positionin a conversation with Hassan and famously said leftists who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton to block Trump “made a bad mistake”.

Chomsky then targeted Zizek and compared him with those intellectuals who had welcomed Hitler. Whereas in his pre-election position Chomsky had wisely encouraged voting for Clinton in “swing states”, in his post-election Al Jazeera interview he evidently dispensed with any such stipulation and categorically denounced those who had not voted for Clinton as immoral.

To be sure, both Zizek and Chomsky were and remain highly critical of Clinton. However, the former thinks voting for Trump would expedite the necessary changes he as a leftist yearns for, while Chomsky believes such acts, or even not voting for Clinton, let alone voting for Trump, would be morally reprehensible and politically flawed, for one should always opt for “lesser of two evils”.

Both these positions are politically flawed and misguided, morally obtuse and insular, both entirely oblivious of what actu-ally has happened in this presidential election. The fact is that the American politi-cal culture today has reached an historic crossroads where the crude cosmetic liber-alism of the deeply corrupt Democratic Party must either be swept away to clear the way for far more radical changes offered by Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein or else the proto-fascism of Trump will destroy any

Why Chomsky and Zizek are wrong on the US elections

Thousands of anti-Donald Trump protesters shut down 5th Avenue in front of Trump Tower as New Yorkers react to the election of Trump as president of the United States, in New York City.

beings, a close partner of Barack Obama in the nearly total destruction of Libya, and deeply in the pocket of the notori-ous Zionist billionaire supporter of racially profiling Muslims, Haim Saban, and therefore the closest bosom buddy of the nefarious Benjamin Netanyahu, and who as a result even more adamantly than Chomsky himself is dead against BDS, a peaceful act of civil disobedience against the murderous occupiers of Palestine. From the comfort of an armchair in front of Mehdi Hassan it is of course easy to moralise about the lesser or greater evil. But not if you are at the receiving end of the US or Israeli military rage. “In Gaza, we aren’t mourning Clinton’s loss,” rightly declares Yasmeen El Khou-dary, a Palestinian from Gaza, and yet the august thinkers on either side of the Atlantic, too preoccupied with navel-gazing on who is more “left” in their own estimations, wonder why.

“Hereby, I dedicate Trump’s victory to every democracy-loving American senator ... who gambled with our lives and futures in order to win more AIPAC votes.” Shall we not add to the list of dedications that El Khoudary names critical thinkers on whose moral maps Palestine and the rest of the world do not appear when commanding us to choose between the lesser of two evils? But we need not go all the way to Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya to see the absurdity of “the lesser of two evils” argument. Right here in the US far superior, far more critically intelligent, were posi-tions beautifully articulated by towering critical thinkers such as Eddie S Glaude Jr, the chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University.

Glaude’s argument was simple and principled: “Perhaps the most persuasive reason to vote for Hillary Clinton is Don-ald Trump. Trump is worse. I know that. The prospects of a Trump presidency - what would be a deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance - ought to frighten anyone. It fright-ens me. But my daddy, a gruff man who has lived all of his life on the coast of Mississippi, taught me that fear should never be the primary motivation of my actions. It clouds your thinking, and all too often sends you running to either safe ground when something more daring is required, or smack into the danger itself.”

If we do not heed the warnings of people such as El Khoudary and Glaude, those who write from experience and pain, not from useless speculations, and through them come to terms with the seismic changes now running amok in the US and around the globe, then the calamitous neoliberalism Chomsky scolds us to choose will surely end up with the neo-conservative fascism that Zizek is wishing upon us all.

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Turkey and the EU signed a refugee deal in March, which aimed to discourage irregular migration through the Aegean Sea by taking stricter measures against human traffickers and improving the conditions of nearly three million Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Hamid DabashiAl Jazeera

12 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 ASIA / PHILIPPINES

THAI police yesterday arrested three men suspected of planning bomb attacks at tourist suites in Bangkok, and nearby prov-inces, a top officer said.

The three hailed from Thailand's Muslim-majority south, where a decades-old insurgency has pitted separatist militants against government forces, said dep-uty national police chief Srivara Ransibrahmanakul.

But he ruled out any link between the suspected plot-ters and the insurgency.

"All three came from the southern provinces and were prepared to carry out an attack in Bangkok and surrounding areas but we believe they are not separatists," Srivara said.

"They planned to target tourist sites".

NEWS BYTES

Three arrested over Thailand bomb plot

Troops end

siege against

leftist rebelsManila Reuters

Troops in the southern Philippines retook a disused building from Islamist militants yes-terday, ending an

intense five-day siege that killed dozens of fighters the authori-ties say had pledged allegiance to Islamist State.

The incident highlights the challenges facing President Rod-rigo Duterte in keeping order in the Philippines, particularly in his native south, riven by nation-alist rebellions for decades.

The military stepped up its offensive after the weekend, pounding rebels holed up in a disused municipal hall with artil-lery and bombs dropped from aircraft.

The army said 30 security forces were wounded and 61 rebels killed in the operation.

The militants belonged to the Maute group, one of several Islamist groups in the country's restive south.

The siege ended as Duterte visited injured soldiers in Lanao del Sur province, where seven of his advance security party were wounded on Tuesday, when suspected Maute militias set off a bomb under their truck.

"The town is deserted and the Maute is withdrawing towards the mountain," said military spokesman Brigadier-General Restituto Padilla.

"They have been decimated. The capability to sustain and get back to the fight is no longer there."

The government suspects the Maute group in a September 2 bombing in Duterte's home city, Davao, which killed 14 people and wounded more than 70.

Last week, Duterte appealed to the Islamist State-linked Abu Sayyaf to disarm and start talks.

He urged them to halt piracy and kidnapping and not retali-ate on civilians for military operations to drive the rebels from their island strongholds.

Duterte has recently warned Islamist State could take root in

the Philippines and stressed the need to avoid "contamination", a risk also faced by neighbour-ing Malaysia and Indonesia.

The former mayor, who is overseeing a drugs crackdown that has killed more than 2,500 people, offered an olive branch to Maute, questioning why it wanted to take orders from IS.

"Maute, they are inspired by ISIS," Duterte said, using an abbreviation that refers to Islam-ist State.

"I did not want to wage a war against my own country-men. Please do not force my hand."

But he vowed not to relent."When the time comes, it's

going to be a war against terror-ism and drugs and I will tell you now, I will be harsh, As harsh as I can ever be."

AUSTRALIA'S biggest theme park announced its re-opening yesterday, six weeks after four people were killed on a mal-functioning water ride, with the all-clear given following a rig-orous safety review.

Ardent Leisure, which owns the park, said it would resume operations on December 10 with all funds from the open-ing weekend going to charity.

"Every ride and slide open on 10th December will have passed a rigorously conducted, multi-level safety review," Chief Executive Craig Davidson said yesterday.

Ardent Leisure previously announced the Thunder River Rapids ride will be demolished and a permanent memorial to the victims erected.

Theme park to reopen after deaths

ManilaAFP

Human rights campaign-ers expressed shock and defiance yesterday after

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to kill them for hindering his bloody war on drugs.

Duterte issued his warning on Monday as the death toll from his controversial crackdown climbed above 4,800, or roughly an average of 30 deaths a day since it began five months ago.

"The human rights (defend-ers) say I kill. If I say: 'Okay, I'll stop'. They (drug users) will multiply," Duterte said.

"When harvest time comes, there will be more of them who will die. Then I will include you among them because you let them multiply," he added.

Amnesty International Phil-ippines was among a range of groups to speak out against the comments, saying it was "appalled".

"This pronouncement is... inciting hate towards anyone

who expresses dissent on his war against drugs," it said in a statement.

The National Alliance against Killings Philippines, a newly formed coalition of rights groups, said it took the threat very seriously and called on Duterte to revoke it.

"His comment -- that human rights is part of the drug problem and, as such, human rights advocates should be tar-geted too -- can be interpreted as a declaration of an open sea-son on human rights

defenders," it said.Father Atilano Fajardo of

the archdiocese of Manila, who works with urban poor groups, said those seeking to protect the vulnerable would not be intimidated.

"This (threat) is a continu-ation of his effort to create a culture of fear, a culture of vio-lence. We will not let this come to pass," he said.

Fajardo said the Catholic Church, which counts more than 70 percent of Filipinos as followers and has so far been

subdued in its criticism of the drug war, was starting to find its voice on the issue.

"That is why he is more threatening. He cannot just frighten us. The priests and nuns will speak out," he said.

Duterte also said he would be "happy to eliminate" three million drug addicts.

Nevertheless, Duterte has also repeatedly insisted that nearly all of the people killed were either resisting arrest or murdered by fel low gangsters.

Manila detains two for bomb attempt near US embassyPHILIPPINE police have detained two men for an attempted bombing this week near the US embassy that has been blamed on Islamist State sympathisers, an official said yesterday.

Other alleged plotters are still being hunted over the powerful bomb found planted in a trash can near the US embassy in Manila on Mon-day, said the capital's head of police, Chief Superintendent Oscar Albayalde.

"They were detained as persons of interest in the planting of the IED (impro-vised explosive device)," he said yesterday.

"There is a real possibil-ity that this is the handiwork of the Maute group," he said, referring to an armed Muslim extremist group that has pre-viously pledged allegiance to the Islamist State movement in Syria and Iraq.

He described one man, who was arrested in Bulacan province just outside the cap-ital, as a Muslim convert and the other, detained in a Manila residential area, as a Muslim.

Albayalde added they were hunting for "three to five other suspects," but declined to give details.

On Monday, Duterte said IS, which controlled vast swathes of Iraq and Syria, had linked up with the Maute gang, a departure from pre-vious military denials of formal links between IS and local extremist groups.

South China Sea Reuters

Taiwan held rescue drills on Tuesday off the coast of its sole

outpost in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea, but the biggest claim-ant in the disputed waters kept uncharacteristically quiet.

China and self-governed Taiwan seldom see eye to eye, but in responding to Taipei's latest assertion of sovereignty over Itu Aba, Beijing has avoided the harsh language it often directs at other claimants to the busy waterway.

"Our supply transports have never encountered Chinese interference," Lee Chung-wei, minister of Tai-wan's Coast Guard Administration, said.

In the exercises, coast guard vessels and navy hel-icopters practised how to retrieve injured crewmen from a burning ship and transport them to Itu Aba's

small port and hospital.Vietnam, which also

claims Itu Aba, objected to the exercises, saying they violated its sovereignty and threatened peace and sta-bility in the region, the Vietnamese foreign minis-try said in a statement late on Tuesday.

Asked about the drills on Itu Aba, and whether Tai-wan had an obligation to respect Chinese sovereignty there, China's foreign min-istry underscored its desire for a unified approach.

"The Nansha Islands, including Taiping Island, are inseparable parts of China," spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily briefing in Beijing.

"Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have an obligation to jointly protect this ancestral property."

China's Taiwan Affairs Office added that it would be paying "close attention" to what Taiwan did related to Itu Aba. It did not elaborate.

Seoul AFP

South Korea yesterday revealed new cases of a deadly strain of bird flu as

authorities said they had slaugh-tered two million chickens and ducks in a bid to control the out-break. "We've culled some two

million birds and we will slaugh-ter another one million", an agricultural ministry spokesman said. Health authorities stressed there had been no cases of human infections from H5N6 in South Korea.

However, between 2014 and April 2016, H5N6 killed six peo-ple in China, according to the

South's Center for Disease Con-trol and Prevention. The World Health Organization warned earlier this year that the strain "has caused severe infection in humans" but added "until now human infections with the virus seem to be sporadic with no ongoing human to human transmission".

Philippine leader's threats alarm rights groups

Seoul confirms new bird flu cases

Beijing mum on Taiwan drills in South China Sea

Tough talk

I did not want to wage a war against my own countrymen. Please do not force my hand: Duterte.

The army confirmed that 30 security forces were wounded and 61 rebels died in the operation.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte addresses soldiers during a visit in Butig, Lanao del Sur, yesterday. BELOW: A military helicopter hovers over soldiers.

Health officials carry sacks containing chickens after they were culled at a chicken farm where a suspected bird flu case was reported in Hwaseong, south of Seoul, yesterday.

Sharif’s party in disarray in KP provinceT H E K H Y B E R - Pakhtunkhwa chapter of the ruling PML-N is plagued by serious organ-isational problems, so much so that its provincial leadership is struggling to realign the party in a province regarded as a stronghold of its most for-midable foe - the PTI. In addition to internal rifts and groupings, the party also faces a tug-of-war among its top leaders who have been vying for key posts.Powerful groups led by Pir Sabir Shah, Amir Muqam, SardarMehtab and Iqbal Zafar Jhagra are eyeing a lion’s share in the any future political arrangement in the prov-ince where the PML-N has long been planning to dent the PTI’s politics. The PML-N has a consid-erable presence in K-P, but the PTI’s rise during the 2018 general elections to form a provincial gov-ernment has rung alarm bells in the ruling party.Credible PML-N sources are of the view that the party’s central leader-ship led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has consid-ered the option of holding intra-party elections in a bid to realign the party.

Lioness gives birth to two stillborn cubs THE LONE LIONESS at the Marghazar Zoo, Rani gave birth to two still born cubs on Friday and Sat-urday. “We are worried about Rani’s physical and psychological health because she lost two cubs due to stillbirth,” said an official of the zoo, adding that the deaths were nat-ural. “We provided Rani with the best facilities and separated her from the lion a month before delivery,” he said.

NEWS BYTES

13THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 PAKISTAN / AFGHANISTAN

Neelum Valley AFP

Residents in Kashmir are racing to build underground bunkers for the first time since the 1990s, frightened

by what they say is the worst cross-border violence since a ceasefire was agreed in 2003.

Months of tension between India and Pakistan have erupted into shellings and gunfire across the disputed Kashmir frontier, claiming the lives of dozens of people, including civilians.

People in Azad Kashmir's Neelum Valley say the attacks come once or twice a week, and they never know when they might have to dive for cover.

Chand Bibi has concrete and steel rods waiting to be trans-formed into an underground bunker where her terrified fam-ily can take shelter as the monstrous boom of shelling reawakens old nightmares.

"You are talking about fear," the 62-year-old says. "We are near to dying at the moment we hear the boom. "The voice of the guns is horrible."

When it comes, Bibi and her relatives pile blankets, quilts and

clothes on top of their children to muffle the noise and their panic. Soon the extended fam-ily of about 20 people will be able to flee underground to the bunker they have paid Rs300,000 ($3,000) to build -- just under the cost of constructing a mud house in the valley, where the average worker makes around Rs800 per day. Sultan Ahmed is spending even more: up to Rs500,000 for a three metre by four metre (10 foot by 14 foot) space reinforced by more than 20 centimetres (eight inches) of concrete, forti-fied with steel rods, and buried

under nearly a metre of soil. Some 25 people will be able to take shelter inside the bunker once it is completed, the 47-year-old teacher says. Local mason Ghulam Hussain said his busi-ness has increased because of the renewed violence, as he packs his tools after finishing a bunker at one house to rush to another and start again.

Around half a million people live within range of Indian fire along the Pakistani side of the Line of Control, the de facto bor-der that has divided the Himalayan region since 2003, according to Farooq Haider Khan, leader of Azad Kashmir.

He says the government plans to build "community bun-kers". They have already fought two wars over the mountainous region, but years of relative peace after the 2003 ceasefire were shattered in September, after India blamed Pakistani mil-itants for a raid on an army base that killed 19 soldiers.

India said it had responded by carrying out "surgical strikes" across the heavily militarised border, sparking a furious reac-tion from Islamabad, which denied the strikes took place.

On Tuesday armed militants

stormed a major Indian army base near the frontier with Paki-stan, killing seven soldiers in the most audacious such attack since the September raid. The fear

spiralling on the Pakistani side is not only consuming residents -- tourism to the scenic Neelum Valley has plummeted this year, local official Sardar Abdul

Waheed said. "I am nervous that if this situation continues my whole investment will be sunk," says Zulfiqar Ali, who built a guesthouse in the valley last year.

Residents in Azad Kashmir to building bunkersSafety measures

People in Azad Kashmir's Neelum Valley say the attacks come once or twice a week, and they never know when they might have to dive for cover.

A family of about 20 people will be able to flee underground to a bunker.

Men prepare an underground bunker at Athmuqam village in Neelum Valley of Kashmir.

Kabul AFP

With daily battles between the govern-ment forces and

Taliban insurgents, the number of people who have fled their homes for safer parts of Afghan-istan has hit a record high, the UN said yesterday.

As of November 30, 2016, more than half a million Afghans -- 515,800 people -- had been internally displaced by fighting, surpassing a previous record of 471,000 set last year, according to the UN Office for the Coordi-nation of Humanitarian Affairs.

The figure has more than doubled since 2014, pointing to a sharp increase in the number of people leaving their homes

due to escalating violence in the war-torn country.

"I am concerned these record figures show not just an alarming number of new IDPs, but a longer term crisis where increasing numbers of families in Afghanistan are facing pro-longed displacement," Mark Bowden UN humanitarian coor-dinator said in a statement, referring to internally displaced people. Combined with the more than 600,000 Afghan refugees who have been forced to return to the country from neighbour-ing Pakistan this year, the mass migration to safer urban areas is draining local resources, UNOCHA said.

Massive internal displace-ment has plagued Afghanistan for years, beginning with the

Soviet invasion in 1979. But with the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban launched a bloody insurgency that has since spread to previously safer parts of the country. The violence has been driven in particular in the past two years, by Taliban's repeated assaults on Afghan cit-ies, which puts more civilians in the crosshairs.

A record 198 out of 399 dis-tricts of Afghanistan are now reporting conflict-induced dis-placement, and for the first time, all 34 provinces are hosting IDPs.

The UNOCHA said it had received 54 percent of the $152 million in emergency funding it needs to address the immediate needs of internally displaced people in Afghanistan.

An Afghan family, who were living as refugees in Pakistan, carries bundles of supplies at a humanitarian aid station in Torkham, Afghanistan.

Record half a million Afghans displaced by conflict: UN body

Islamabad Internews

Imperial College London Pakistan Society hosted their annual flagship Charity Ball

Shaam at the Hilton Kensing-ton Hotel here to raise funds for a charity working to establish eye hospitals in Pakistan.

Imperial College London’s Pakistan Students Society Pres-ident Anam Malik said that the evening titled “Shaam” raise awareness and celebrates Paki-stani culture as well as British Pakistani culture in order to bring the two cultures closer and highlight their distinctive nature. A glamorous evening of festivities and entertainment all in aid of the Graham Layton Trust (sister charity to LRBT Eye Hospitals in Pakistan) began with a reception, allowing guests the opportunity to min-gle with students and alumni from all over the UK.

The 300 guests included students from Imperial College as well as students from a vari-ety of London universities and many who had commuted from cities such as Leeds and Bir-mingham for the sellout event.

The three course meal catered by TKC Chaudhrys was a true reflection of traditional Pakistani cuisine and was savored by all. The event com-menced by a welcome speech by President Anam Malik, fol-lowed by DrRehan Rajput, Ophthalmic surgeon and LRBT volunteer who spoke to the audience about his experiences with LRBT and how their 17

fully equipped hospitals and 39 Community Eye Care Centres mean that virtually all Pakista-nis are within 3 hours travel of free eye care and the services provided are second to none.

LRBT has touched the lives of more than 3 million to date and the profound work done by this organisation was cele-brated by all.

Entertainment included a student acapella group Sorcery singing a mixture of Bollywood and English music as well as another student duo signing classics such as Valerie, capti-vating the audience.

Anam Malik led a commit-tee of 18 students in preparation of Shaam. She told: “I’m delighted how the event has turned out to be.

My team has been working incredibly hard for months now, from the Vice-President Anas Tahir to treasurers Aree-bMian and Faraz Sharif to Secretary Nida Hafiz, along with events officers, publicity managers and fresher repre-sentatives, who put their heart into promoting the event and making it the best Shaam Impe-rial College has seen so far.

I’m especially pleased to see that almost half of our audience is made of British, Indian, Afri-can, Bangladeshi or Arab students; our aim here at PakSoc is to reach the wider student community to spread the word about Pakistani her-itage, culture and charities, and to ensure Pakistan is known worldwide as an open, inclu-sive and peaceful nation.”

Islamabad Internews

Pakistani Minister of Climate Change Zahid Hamid has boasted that Pakistan is

setting up world’s largest solar park of 1,000 megawatts as part of its plan to promote produc-tion of renewable energy in the country.

“Pakistan has also enacted the National Energy Efficiency

and Conservation Act 2016 to promote effective conservation and efficient use of energy,” he said while addressing a press conference yesterday.

The minister led a Pakistani delegation for participation in the COP22 Conference in Morocco recently, which pro-vided an opportunity to highlight the significant achievements made to address the impact of climate change.

Hamid said the world com-munity was informed that Pakistan’s contribution to global warming was minimal as “we emit less than 1 per cent of the annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet we are ranked amongst the top 10 countries that are most vulnerable to climate change.”

The world community was also informed that Pakistan faced several major risks

pertaining to climate change including glacier melting, vari-able monsoons, recurrent floods, rise in sea levels, higher average temperatures and higher fre-quency of droughts.

Millions of people had been affected and a colossal damage was caused on a recurring basis, he said. “These threats pose major survival concerns for Pakistan, particularly in relation to water security, food security

and energy security,” Hamid said, adding these threats also had enormous adverse conse-quences for all socio-economic sectors, limiting the country’s ability to promote sustainable growth and development.

The minister emphasised that Pakistan as a responsible member of the global commu-nity had taken substantial steps, especially during 2016, to tackle the threat of climate change.

Pakistani students in London raise funds for eye hospitals

Pakistan setting up world’s largest solar park

14 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 INDIA

Fishermen anchor in a harbour in Chennai yesterday.

CRIMINALS yesterday gunned down a gang-ster in broad daylight within the premises of a court in Jamshedpur -- the home town of Chief Minister Raghubar Das, police said.

The incident has once again raised questions over the law and order situation in the state.

According to police, three criminals attacked Upendra Singh with sophisticated weapons and he sustained three bullet injuries. He was declared dead on being rushed to a hospital.

Another person also sustained gunshot inju-ries in the incident.

A DAY after the Sree Padma nabhaswa my temple here relaxed its dress code to allow entry to women wear-ing 'churidar', a few women entered through a side gate clad in chu-ridar, but some devotees and officials refused to allow entry to such attire through the other gates.

Temple Executive Officer K N Satish said the Kerala High Court had asked him to take the decision to allow churidar based on a petition, and he stands by the decision he took before the court on Tuesday.

NEWS BYTES

Gangster shot dead near court premises

Protests over allowing women to wear churidar

Three Army officers dead in copter crash

Deal on Kudankulam N-plant units 5 & 6 likely by year end

KolkataAFP

Three army officers were killed yesterday after their five-seater Cheetah

helicopter crashed while land-ing in eastern India, a defence official said.

Another officer was seri-ously injured in the crash that occurred in a military camp in West Bengal's Sukna district, a spokeswoman of the Indian Army's Eastern Command said.

"The helicopter was on a routine mission. It crashed near the helipad inside the army base as it was trying to land," Dipannita Dhar said by telephone.

The Cheetah helicopters, commissioned by the Indian Air Force (IAF) in the Seventies, are multi-role aircrafts which are used mostly during high-alti-tude missions. The IAF, which relies heavily on Russian-made equipment, has been blighted by a poor safety record.

In July, a Russian-built AN-32 military transport plane went missing over the Bay of Bengal with 29 people on board. And in 2013, all 20 people on board a military helicopter were killed when it crashed in northern India.

India, the world's largest arms importer, has been trying to revamp its ageing and out-dated military aircraft, with some of the fleet virtually on its

last legs. The Cheetahs have been built by Hindustan Aeronautics under a license agreement with French aerospace manufacturer Aerospatiale.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee yesterday condoled the death of three army officers in a Cheetah hel-icopter crash.

"Saddened by the death of three army officers in Sukna due to tragic chopper crash. Words are never enough. My condolences to bereaved fam-ilies," the Trinamool Congress supremo said on Twitter.

Major Sanjeev Lathar, Major Arvind Bazala and Lt Colonel Rajneesh Kumar were killed and a junior commissioned officer was critically injured when the helicopter crashed inside Sukna military base in the state's Darjeeling district.

ChennaiIANS

The general framework agreement for the third stage (units 5 and 6) of the

Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) in Tamil Nadu is expected to be signed by the end of December, its Russian makers said here.

The plant's blocks 3 and 4 (the second stage) would be commissioned in 2022 and 2023, they said.

"So we are all working with Indian partners, NPCIL (Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd), and are approaching to sign the documents for the two new units (units 5 and 6) of the KNPP.

We plan to sign documents in the nearest future. And by nearest I mean nearest," Nikolay Spassky, Deputy CEO for International Relations at Russian atomic energy corpo-ration Rosatom, told IANS here.

As for efficiency, Spassky asserted KNPP is India's best. "I have seen the official estimates (which show that) currently it is the most efficient power unit in India," he said.

Vladimir Angelov, Director for projects in India, ASE Group, the engineering division of Rosatom, expressed the hope that the agreements would be inked by the end of this year.

"First part of the job is negotiating the contract. I have just come back from Mumbai from these talks. We are rather optimistic that by the end of this year, the contracts for units 5 and 6 will be signed," Angelov said.

Construction of KNPP with the assistance of Russia is the largest joint project between the two countries in the energy field.

The first two 1,000 MW units are currently operational at Kudankulam. Unit 1 was con-nected to the grid on October 22, 2013.

SC orders cinemas to play National Anthem

Cyclone Nada to cross TN coast by Friday

Callers for dollars: Inside country's scam call centresMumbai Reuters

IIn late September, a woman in National City, California, received a voice message on

her phone saying she was in trouble with the Internal Reve-nue Service (IRS) over "tax evasion or tax fraud".

Panicking, she rang the number and told a man who said he was from the IRS: "I can pay $500," half the sum demanded. "I could do a payment plan. I just can't pay all of it at once."

"Ma'am, you can pay $500 today itself. You can do that?" the

man asked, adding that lawyers would look at her accounts and work out a monthly payment plan, but she had to pay half now.

In transcripts of the conver-sation that investigators shared with Reuters, the man told her to keep the phone line open and drive to a nearby grocery store, where she bought $500 worth of iTunes gift cards and gave the 'agent' the redemption codes.

She had just been scammed - one of at least 15,000 people the US Justice Department says lost more than $300 million in an "enormous and complex fraud" running since 2013. The

department last month brought grand jury charges against 56 people in India and the United States for "telefraud" scams run from fake call centres in India.

Investigators have arrested 20 people in the United States, and Indian authorities have made 75 arrests following Octo-ber raids on three premises in the Thane suburb of Mumbai. Charges include conspiracy to commit identity theft, imperson-ation of an officer of the US, wire fraud and money laundering.

Indian police say they are looking for Sagar Thakkar, a man in his early 30s also known as

Shaggy, who they believe mas-terminded the scam. Thakkar was also among those named by the US Department of Justice. Reu-ters was unable to contact Thakkar for comment; he is not known to have a lawyer, and police believe he fled to Dubai last month.

"We are trying to complete the procedure to issue a red cor-ner notice for Thakkar," Parag Manere, a deputy commissioner at Thane police, said, referring to an Interpol arrest warrant.

Police said Thakkar led a lavish lifestyle, frequenting 5-star hotels and driving

expensive cars with proceeds from the scam. He gave one, a 25m rupee Audi R8, to his girl-friend. "We have seized an Audi car, and are trying to find other assets of Thakkar," Manere said.

The FBI, which is involved in the investigations, declined to comment. The Department of Jus-tice did not respond to requests for comment for this article. At a news conference last month, Assistant Attorney General Les-lie Caldwell said the US would seek the extradition of suspects in India, and warned others engaged in similar schemes they could face jail terms.

New DelhiAFP

The Supreme Court yester-day directed cinema halls to play the National

Anthem before the start of mov-ies, saying it will instil "constitutional patriotism as well as committed patriotism and nationalism".

The playing of the anthem will be accompanied by an image of the Tricolour on the screen, the court said while bar-ring its commercial exploitation, dramatisation or playing of an abridged version.

The order shall be given effect to within a period of 10 days. The court said when the National Anthem is sung or played, it is imperative on the

part of everyone present to show due respect and honour by standing up.

"It is because when the National Anthem is sung, the concept of protocol associated with it has its inherent roots in national identity, national integ-rity and constitutional patriotism," the court said.

"All cinema halls in India shall play the National Anthem before the feature films start and all present in the hall are obliged to stand up to show respect," said a bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Amitava Roy.

It said before "the National Anthem is played or sung in the cinema hall on the screen, the entry and exit doors shall remain closed so that no one can create any kind of disturbance which

will amount to disrespect to the National Anthem".

The doors to cinema halls can be opened after the National Anthem is played or sung.

The order was passed on a public interest litigation filed by Shayam Narayan Chouksey who sought guidelines on playing the National Anthem.

Justice Misra said: "The directions are issued, for love and respect for the motherland

is reflected when one shows respect to the anthem as well as to the National Flag."

Referring to Article 51 of the Constitution regarding the Fun-damental Duties of the citizens, the court said: "... it is the sacred obligation of every citizen to abide by the ideals engrafted in the Constitution. And one such ideal is to show respect for the National Anthem and the National Flag."

"... The citizens must realise that they live in a nation and are duty bound to show respect to National Anthem which is the symbol of the constitutional patriotism and inherent national quality."

The court prohibited com-mercial exploitation of the National Anthem.

ChennaiIANS

Cyclonic storm Nada is expected to cross the Tamil Nadu coast near

Cuddalore by the early hours of December 2, said the weather office.

In its bulletin yesterday the Chennai Meteorological Office said cyclone Nada will cross the north Tamil Nadu coast between

Vedaranniyam and Puducherry, close to Cuddalore, by Decem-ber 2. Cuddalore is around 185km from here.

According to the weather office, Nada is about 710km southeast of Chennai, 670km east-southeast of Puducherry.

The system is very likely to move west-northwestward, intensify further and cross the north Tamil Nadu coast.

According to the weather

office, light to moderate rainfall is likely to commence over coastal Tamil Nadu from yes-terday evening.

Meanwhile, Lt General N C Marwah, Member, NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority), reviewed the pre-paredness of the state government to withstand the impact of the northeast mon-soon, a state government release said.

School children salute as they stand to attention and sing the National Anthem in Hyderabad.

Defence woes

The helicopter was on a routine mission. It crashed near the helipad inside the army base as it was trying to land.

The Cheetah helicopters are multi-role aircrafts which are used mostly during high-altitude missions.

Patriotism

The playing of the anthem will be accompanied by an image of the Tricolour on the screen.

15THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 INDIA

New Delhi IANS

The Supreme Court yester-day ordered status quo on land acquired for the con-

struction of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal's stretch in Punjab and appointed the Union Home Secretary, Punjab's Chief Secre-tary and the Director General of Police as receivers.

Issuing notice to Punjab and the Centre on Haryana's appli-cation, a bench of Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Ami-tava Roy ordered that the "status quo, as of today, shall be main-tained by the parties, subject to further orders of this court".

Appointing the receivers for the "lands, works, property and portions of the SYL canal"

stretch falling in Punjab, the court asked them to file a report on the ground situation of the property within a period of one week from yesterday.

However, the court clarified that "for the present, nobody in possession of the land etc. in question as of today would be dispossessed before the next date of hearing".

The court order came on a plea by the Haryana govern-ment that sought status quo ante in the wake of the Punjab gov-ernment's decision to denotify the acquired land and restore it to its original owners.

Appearing for Haryana, sen-ior counsel Shyam Divan told the court that Punjab could not nullify the 2002 and 2004 orders.

School girls lighting candles in the shape of a ribbon during a HIV/AIDS awareness campaign ahead of World Aids Day, in Ahmedabad, yesterday.

Candle-light campaign

New Delhi IANS

Chaotic queues got longer yesterday as people in large num-bers scrambled for money after monthly

salaries got credited in bank accounts -- the first since the high value currency was scrapped, causing an unprecedented cash deficiency across India.

Most private companies in India credit salaries to their employees on the last day of a month even as labour laws allow wages to be disbursed on any day before the 10th of the next month.

As soon as the salaries were credited, millions of employees began queuing up outside banks and ATMs across the country to withdraw cash to meet their monthly needs and pay their domestic helps, drivers and clear their monthly grocery and other bills.

Since the supply of notes from

currency chests has failed to keep pace with the demand for cash after 86 per cent of currency in circulation was declared illegal on November 8, the chaos wors-ened on the payday as more households needed cash than earlier. Several banks ran out of

cash within hours of opening. Some bank officials complained that they were getting cash much below what they need.

Bankers said they were rationing withdrawals so that more customers were catered to.

People were seen in bigger numbers waiting to withdraw money.

Many were annoyed by the rush and the arbitrary withdrawal limits set by banks. And the situ-ation could get worse in the coming days as more number of people will receive salaries.

"I have to pay my maid and grocery bills in cash. I somehow managed to convince my land-lord to accept the rent in cheque but I am bound to visit the bank for other payments," said Visha-kha Sharma from west Delhi.

The 27-year-old waited out-side a bank for two hours. "It is so humiliating that we have to stand in long queues and beg for our own money."

An MNC employee, Yogesh

New DelhiIANS

The Aam Aadmi Party yes-terday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party

had bought land ahead of the central government's demon-etisation announcement on November 8. Addressing the media here, senior AAP leader Ashish Khetan said: "BJP Pres-ident Amit Shah had asked all its state units to buy land before November 8."

He said the BJP had bought land in three states -- Bihar, Rajasthan and Odisha, and Shah

had authorised the deals."If Prime Minister Naren-

dra Modi wanted to be impartial then why did he not ask his MPs to submit the details of trans-actions made before November 8," Khetan said.

AAP's national spokesper-son Raghav Chadha said: "As per media reports, it is clear that BJP had changed its black money into white, as in the months of July, August and September heavy amounts were deposited in the accounts." He said the AAP has documents of the transac-tions made during the buying of these properties.

BengaluruAFP

Jatin Pal's wedding was just days away and his family were finalising plans for an extrav-

agant multi-day celebration — then Prime Minister Narendra Modi banned high denomination notes overnight, casting a dark shadow over the festivities. Within hours of Modi's surprise November 8 announcement, 500 and 1,000 rupee notes — some 85 percent of all cash in circula-tion — were withdrawn, leaving millions across the vast country out of pocket.

The move — described by the prime minister as a "surgical strike" against corruption and tax evasion — coincided with the start of India's annual wedding season, when thousands marry during a three-month period deemed aus-picious in the Hindu faith.

"We marry once and you try to make it memorable in every possible way. But the cash crunch is proving otherwise," said Pal. "This has soured the happiness and left a bad feeling."

Life savings are ploughed into weddings in India, with a typical urban family spending up

to $75,000 on celebrations, according to an estimate by Goldman Sachs.

Traders say almost all wed-ding-related purchases are traditionally made in cash from savings put aside over years — even decades — but that the currency ban means many fam-ilies are being forced to cut back.

"Indian parents start plan-ning and saving for the wedding as soon as a child is born," Priy-anka Gupta, owner of a bridal store said, adding that she had seen a significant drop in busi-ness since the demonetisation. Delhi-based wedding planner

Shrawan Kumar said most of his clients spend between 1.5 mil-lion and 2 million rupees, but that some had scaled back plans by as much as 40 percent. Oth-ers have simply decided to postpone or even cancel.

"I can't pay the waiter, pho-tographer, transport, florist, vegetable seller through cheques. We are at a loss," Kumar said.

Another casualty has been one of Delhi's oldest gold mar-kets, which has temporarily closed after tax officers raided jewellers across the country on reports of a gold buying spree following the currency ban as

people tried to turned their cash into gold. Almost 50 percent of gold sales in India are linked to weddings, according to the World Gold Council, with most purchases made in cash.

Stubbornly long queues out-side banks have become a ubiquitous sight across the coun-try as the new rupee bills have been slow to get into circulation. The government has put tempo-rary restrictions on the amount of cash people can exchange or withdraw in an attempt to wean the country off cash and bring more into the formal banking sector.

Long queues and chaos outside banks on salary dayCurrency woes

As soon as the salaries were credited, millions of employees began queuing up outside banks and ATMs across the country to withdraw cash to meet their monthly needs.

Several banks ran out of cash within hours of opening. Some bank officials complained that they were getting cash much below what they need.

People queue as they wait for their turn outside a bank in Mumbai yesterday.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Aam Aadmi Party leaders Inderbir Singh Nijjar and Sanjay Singh with party members during a public rally in Amritsar, yesterday.

BJP bought land before November 8: AAP

Cash-crunch slims down big fat weddings

Supreme Court orders status quo on SYL land

THE nationwide cash-crunch following the demonetisation move of the central government has claimed three lives in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, officials said yesterday.

The deaths took place in Banda and Hamirpur districts. The deceased have been identified as Anisa Khatun, 50, Phooljhar, 45 and Ghasita Kushwaha, 55. Khatun was suffering from tubercu-losis and was undergoing treatment.

Her son Shahrukh said: "My mother was in the queue outside a bank on Monday for around two hours but was unable to get cash. On returning home, she fell ill and died early on Tuesday." Phooljhar, a farmer, was also unable to procure cash to pay for his treatment.

LOK Sabha Speaker Sum-itra Mahajan yesterday inaugurated cashless facility in Parliament canteens.

"Bill for food in all canteens within Parlia-ment House precincts can now be paid by using credit or debit cards," Jithendra Reddy, Chair-man of Food Committee, said. He said staffers were being trained to handle card-swipe machines and they will be fully able to handle them within two-three days.

"This has been done to make things easy for people working in Par-liament," he said, adding that e-wallet services will also be started in the can-teens soon.

The canteens in Par-liament House premises are run by the Northern Railway catering serv-ice. Apart from serving MPs, visitors and jour-nalists. When Parliament is in session, they serve 4,500 people on average every day.

NEWS BYTES

Cash ban claims three lives in Bundelkhand

Parliament canteens go cashless

Yadav, said he had come to with-draw Rs24,000 from his bank account but was given only Rs10,000. "It's the end of the month and I am supposed to pay

bills. How will I manage?" Yadav asked.

A resident of Krishna Nagar in Delhi, Rahul Chauhan got his salary credited on Tuesday but

could not withdraw even after standing in a queue at 3am yes-terday. "By the time my chance to enter the bank came, it ran out of cash."

Fashion buzz

The 45-year-old wife of former Conservative prime minister David Cameron won many fans for her smart but modern style during his six years in office, drawing comparisons with US first lady Michelle Obama.

16 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 EUROPE

Rescue efforts on

Four miners were still mising. Company officials said some of the missing miners could be inside a collapsed machinery chamber. Sections of tunnels hundreds of metres below the surface were blocked by rocks, preventing access to the missing miners, company officials said.

Seagulls fight over a jaffa cake biscuit in St. Stephen's Green in Dublin, Ireland.

Eyeing the pie

A woman uses a shovel to remove snow off her car in Chortiatis, a suburb northeast of Thessaloniki, yesterday. The first snowfall covered many mountainous and semi-mountainous areas in northern, central and southern Greece.

First snowfall

Warsaw Reuters

Rescuers were search-ing for four missing miners in southwest-ern Poland yesterday after a tremor caused

rockfalls deep underground in a copper mine, killing four, the mine’s operator KGHM said.

The tremor hit the Rudna copper mine, KGHM said, caus-ing extensive damage.

Sections of tunnels hundreds of metres below the surface were blocked by rocks, prevent-ing access to the missing miners, company officials said.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have good news. Rescuers have reached the fourth miner, he is dead,” director of the mine, Pawel Markowski, told a news conference.

“We are continuing the operation, trying to locate the next miners,” he said. “They are a dozen or so metres away.”

Markowski said the fourth victim was a young mechanic who had worked for KGHM for 15 months. The third victim had just worked for a month at the mine.

Markowski said earlier that some of the missing miners could be inside a collapsed machinery chamber.

State-run KGHM said the Rudna mine, the largest copper mine in Europe and in opera-tion since 1974, had 11 shafts reaching as deep as 1,244 metres below the surface.

KGHM Chief Executive Officer Radoslaw Domagalski-Labedzki said earlier two of the miners killed were aged 33 and 47 and their families had already been informed. One of these miners died after he was taken to the surface, the com-pany said.

“We are all shocked by the scale of this tragedy which took place in a place we assessed was exposed to a moderate level of risk,” Domagalski-Labedzki told reporters.

Domagalski-Labedzki also said nine people working in the mine suffered spinal and head injuries and five were still in hospital.

“The rescue operation is taking place non-stop,” Domagalski-Labedzki told reporters.

“We all have high hopes that the news will be positive. This does not change the fact that the

rescue operation is taking place in difficult conditions,” he said before rescuers confirmed the third casualty.

The epicentre of the tremor was situated 1,500 metres below the surface and had a magnitude of 3.4, state news agency PAP reported.

Officials at KGHM said some of the underground tunnels still blocked by debris were eight metres wide and four metres high.

Tremors often occur in underground mines as remov-ing ore and digging tunnels from beneath the surface weakens the structure of the surrounding rocks, but most are harmless.

Prime Minister Beata Szy-dko has cancelled the government’s weekly sitting and is heading to the mine, her spokesman Rafal Bochenek was quoted by PAP as saying.

At 1213 GMT shares in KGHM were up 0.33 percent. The com-pany said it was too early to assess the damage and costs caused by the accident.

“After the rescuing opera-tion is finished, a special commission with the represent-atives of the State Mining Authority and KGHM experts will be convened. Only the part of the mine where the accident took place will be halted,” a KGHM spokeswoman said.

KGHM is one of the biggest copper and silver producer in the world. Its copper output stood at almost 700,000 tonnes in 2015.

Helsinki AFP

Finnish media claimed yes-terday that the prime minister pressured public

television to stop investigating an alleged conflict of interest after a company owned by his family won a major order from a nationalised mine.

The case centres on an order received by Katera Steel, an engineering company owned by Prime Minister Juha Sipila’s family, from a nickel mine that received cash bailout from state.

On November 11, the gov-ernment announced it would invest €100m ($107m) in Ter-rafame, the company operating the unprofitable mine that would likely have shut down without the intervention.

Sipila allegedly contacted the editor of public television Yle, Atte Jaaskelainen, and a journalist, following the publi-cation of its first article on the issue to discourage further cov-erage, according to the weekly Suomen Kuvalehti.

The newspaper reported that the pressure allegedly led

Yle to scale down coverage of the story.

Jaaskelainen denied bow-ing to pressure from the prime minister.

“My reasoning is that there was no reason to proceed with the matter... We took this deci-sion ourselves on journalistic grounds,” he wrote on the Yle website.

Sipila has denied any wrongdoing in the transaction.

“I know I have not been improper or biased in this case,” Sipila told Finnish news agency STT.

Berlin Reuters

Russia and Islamist mili-tants could try to boost their influence in Balkan

nations if the European Union doesn’t take them in as mem-bers, Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama said in an interview published yesterday.

Rama told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung it was in the EU’s interests to try and bring Balkan states into its fold.

“If we want to have a secure and stable EU and with it a secure Europe, it’s not good if there are holes,” Rama said.

“In addition, we shouldn’t forget that there are also other, third, actors, who are playing

their game and who could profit if the EU leaves a vacuum there,” he said. “I’m talking about Russia, but I’m also talk-ing about radical Islam,” he added.

The Balkan countries are sandwiched between EU mem-bers Greece and Hungary. Croatia and Slovenia have already joined Nato and the EU, while Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania are all pursuing EU membership.

The six Balkan countries are all at different stages in joining the EU. Serbia aims to complete accession talks by 2019. How-ever, taking on new members has sunk down the list of the EU’s priorities.

Moscow Reuters

PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin named deputy finance min-ister Maxim Oreshkin as Russia’s new economy min-ister yesterday , two weeks after the post’s previous holder was detained and accused of bribery.

Alexei Ulyukayev, the ex-economy minister, was accused of trying to extort a bribe from Russian oil major Rosneft, an allegation he denies. He is currently under house arrest.

Oreshkin, his 34-year-old replacement, joined the finance ministry in 2013 as head of strategic planning department and became a deputy finance minister in March 2015.

Upon appointment, Oreshkin told Putin that his main task for 2017 was finding measures that would boost economic growth in Russia.

“Oreshkin is a great expert in macroeconomics. I don’t know anyone on the market who would be better than him in macroeconom-ics,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said, commenting on his deputy’s appointment.

Oreshkin belongs to a group of young economists who joined the government. He started his carrier as economist at central bank in 2002. In 2006 he joined Rosbank, a Russian branch of Societe Generale, before moving on to Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank.

In 2012 Oreshkin joined VTB Capital, an investment arm of Russia’s second larg-est lender VTB.

Bring Balkan states in EU fold: Albania PM

Four dead in Poland copper mine tremor

Finland PM accused of silencing media coverage over mine deal

Putin names Oreshkin as new economy minister

London AFP

Nearly five months after leaving the Downing Street, Britain’s former

first lady Samantha Cameron (pictured) has launched a fash-ion label—revealed, naturally, in British Vogue magazine.

The 45-year-old wife of former Conservative prime min-ister David Cameron won many fans for her smart but modern style during his six years in office, drawing comparisons with US first lady Michelle Obama.

Am art school educated, Cameron was formerly the creative director of luxury leather goods and stationery firm Smythson, where she remains a creative consult-ant, and has also been studying pattern-cutting.

Free from the constraints of

public life, she has now come up with her own collection of 40 pieces which will go on sale early next year.

“I felt that there was a lot of American and French brands out there that fit that bracket of designer contemporary with the right price point and the right styling, but there aren’t that many British brands which fill that space,” she told the magazine. .

She added: “I’ve spent a lot of time trying stuff on my friends.”

The brand name, Cefinn, is reportedly derived from her children’s names—Elwen, Flor-ence, Ivan and Nancy.

Alexandra Shulman, editor-in-chief of British Vogue, was quoted in The Times as saying that the collection had a broad appeal, predicting that it would be popular as workwear.

“Like all designers Saman-tha has reflected her own taste in the clothes—they are quite simple well-cut shapes, hard-wearing with a lot of concentration on the fabrics so that they won’t look rubbish by the end of a busy day and there are a lot of separates,” she added.

She said: “The collection is above your average high street price but not anywhere near international designer prices.

“This slot in the shopping market is actually doing very well at the moment so it’s a good time for her to be launching.”

David Cameron resigned after the vote to leave the Euro-pean Union, which he had opposed, and was succeeded by Theresa May on July 13.

UK's Samantha Cameron launches fashion line

Moscow AP

A FRENCH musician and his Russian lawyer were detained yesterday in Moscow after a Russian pop star accused them of extorting €1m from him in a plagiarism row.

Didier Marouani a disco star, and his lawyer Igor Tru-nov were detained where they said they were to sign an out-of-court settlement with Filipp Kirkorov, Russia’s big-gest pop star. Marouani claims one of Kirkorov’s songs, “Cruel Love,” contains music he wrote years before.

Another of Marouani's lawyers, Lyudmila Ayvar, said the singer and his lawyer were released early Wednesday and they are not facing any charges.

French musician briefly detained in Moscow

17THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 EUROPE

New initiative

What is known as the European Defence Action Plan targets more efficient defence spending and increased joint research and procurement.

It proposes increasing the current €25m ($27m) allocated to defence research in the overall EU budget to €90m by 2020, when it should be replaced by a dedicated programme worth €500m annually.

Coloured lights are seen on a fountain at the Concorde Place yesterday near the giant Ferris wheel as part of illuminations for the Christmas holiday season in Paris, France.

Gripped in festive fever

Stunning discovery

The grim discovery by the University of Sheffield at Thornton Abbey in Lincolnshire included the skeletons of 27 children, as well as men and women.

Brussels AFP

The EU unveiled ambi-tious plans yesterday to boost joint defence spending including on shared assets like

drones and helicopters, as con-cerns grow that President-elect Donald Trump may downgrade the US security commitment.

Trump shocked long-time Nato allies in Europe when he suggested on campaign trail be would think twice about coming to their aid if they had not paid their defence dues.

“If Europe does not take care of its own security, nobody else will do it for us,” European Com-mission head Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement as the plans were announced.

“A strong, competitive and innovative defence industrial base is what will give us strategic autonomy,” said Juncker, who has long pushed for a more active EU military role and ultimately what he calls a “European Army”.

To stand on its own two feet, the EU “must invest in the com-mon development of

technologies and equipment of strategic importance—from land, air, sea and space capabilities to cyber security,” he said.

EU foreign affairs head Fed-erica Mogherini said this was not about the bloc striking out on its own given the doubts raised by a Trump presidency, or about it stepping on Nato’s toes.

“It is about streamlining what we have to make EU defence work better ... it is not about competi-tion or duplication,” she said, adding all member states were “on board” in support of the plans.

Some 22 of the EU’s 28 mem-ber states also belong to Nato and several of them, led by Britain, oppose any measure which they fear could undermine the US-led alliance. What is known as the European Defence Action Plan targets more efficient defence spending and increased joint research and procurement.

It proposes increasing the current €25m ($27m) allocated to defence research in the over-all EU budget to €90m by 2020, when it should be replaced by a

dedicated programme worth €500m annually.

Another fund, potentially worth €5bn per year, would help member states acquire military

assets jointly to reduce the cost, the statement said, citing as exam-ples drones or helicopters.

The overall programme is meant to strengthen the “Single

Market for Defence”—putting it on a par with the EU’s other single markets which aim to break down national barriers, be it in telecoms or energy, the statement said.

Berlin AFP

A German working in intel-ligence has been exposed as “a suspect Islamist”,

Germany’s domestic security agency said, following reports he was planning an attack on the agency’s headquarters.

“The Office for the Protec-tion of the Constitution (BfV) has managed to expose a suspected Islamist among its associates,” the agency said, confirming information published earlier by the Der Spiegel weekly and the daily Die Welt.

The 51-year-old German, who was arrested for sharing “sensi-tive information” online, is believed to have been planning a bombing at BfV headquarters in western city of Cologne, accord-ing to the German press.

There was no immediate suggestion he had any ties to the radical Islamic State group.

Contacted by journalists, a BfV spokeswoman said the unnamed 51-year-old had “made Islamist remarks online under a false name, and had offered internal information during online chats”.

She confirmed that an arrest

warrant was issued and the sus-pect had been detained.

She did not though confirm the reports that he was plotting an attack, saying there was no “evidence of a real danger to the office or its workers”.

Prosecutors are readying a case of “preparing a serious act threatening state security”.

Both Der Spiegel and Die Welt said he had converted to Islam in 2014. Married with chil-dren, he was employed at a bank and had, since April, also been doing some work for the agency gathering intelligence on the Islamist scene in Germany.

The publications said the suspect had partially admitted to the allegations by making references to bomb attacks car-ried out.

He used several different names online and allegedly divulged information about the agency in chat rooms, the reports said. His activities were uncovered about a month ago.

Germany has so far been spared the kind of large-scale deadly jihadist atrocities which have been carried out in Paris and Brussels, though individu-als have carried out attacks and others have been prevented.

Paris AFP

Three former Air France employees on trial for r i p p i n g c o m p a n y

executives’ shirts during a dispute over layoffs were found guilty yesterday in a case that highlighted the country’s fraught labour relations.

They were given suspended prison sentences of three to four months over the attack in October 2015 that left one executive with his shirt and jacket in tatters.

Appearing in court in northeast Paris, two others who faced the same charges of “organised violence” were acquitted.

The company said the sentences “enable us to close this sad episode”, but lawyer Lilia Mhissen, acting on behalf of most of the defendants, said she would encourage them to appeal.

Images of furious activists chasing down the executives at the airline’s headquarters on the edge of Paris made the front pages around the world when the confrontation took place.

The protests were led by the hard-left CGT, France’s largest union, over the airline’s plans to cut 2,900 jobs.

Ten other former and current employees from the company were fined €500 ($530) yesterday for damaging the company’s property after they broke down a gate at the headquarters during the demonstration.

Pierre Plissonnier, director

of long-haul operations at the airline, had told the court of his “humiliation” at seeing pictures of himself with a ripped shirt and jacket scrambling over a fence to escape the mob.

The court also viewed footage in which a worker can be heard threatening human resources boss Xavier Broseta before he was stripped in front of television cameras.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls had called for the defendants, whom he branded “rogues”, to be given stiff sentences.

The attack came to symbolise the often fraught relations between company executives and trade union representatives in France and led to questions about the limits of legitimate protest.

Incidents of so-called “boss-napping”, in which executives are held against their will during negotiations over job cuts, have spread in recent years.

In 2014, workers at a Goodyear tyre factory in northern France held two directors captive for close to 300 hours to protest the closure of the plant.

The CGT has organised protests against the Air France trial, with one member accusing the company and courts of “criminalising union action.”

Air France-KLM returned to profit last year after seven years of losses, but faces stiff competition from Asian and Gulf airlines as well as new, l o w - c o s t l o n g - h a u l alternatives.

Berlin Reuters

LUFTHANSA said it made its German pilots a new wage offer to try to end strikes that are causing hundreds of flight cancellations and costing mil-lions of euros a day.

The airline said yester-day it had dropped demands that would see pilots work-ing more hours in exchange for a wage increase. It is still offering to raise pilots’ pay by 4.4 percent in two instal-ments in 2016 and 2017 and make a one-off payment worth 1.8 months’ pay.

Union Vereinigung Cock-pit has called for an average annual pay rise of 3.7 percent for 5,400 pilots over a five-year period backdated to 2012 and had criticised man-agement for seeking additional concessions in exchange for more money.

“We want to get back to the negotiating table as quickly as possible,” Lufthansa board member Bettina Volkens said in a statement, adding she hoped the two sides could then dis-cuss other issues such as pensions.

German businesses and some other Lufthansa staff have called for an end to the protests, which are costing the airline €10 to €15m a day.

The strike by the pilots yesterday grounded almost 900 Lufthansa flights and is the sixth day of strikes since last week.

London AFP

An “extremely rare” mass grave containing 48 victims of the Black Death

has been found at the site of a 14th-century monastery hospital in northeast England, archaeologists said yesterday.

The grim discovery by the University of Sheffield at Thornton Abbey in Lincolnshire included the skeletons of 27 children, as well as men and women.

The bones were carbon-dated to the mid-1300s when the Black Death—one of the most deadly pandemics in human history—is estimated to have

wiped out up to 60 percent of Europe’s population.

DNA tests revealed the presence of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the disease, previously only identified at two 14th-century cemeteries in London set up to bury large numbers of urban dead, the university said.

“Despite the fact it is now estimated that up to half the population of England perished during the Black Death, multiple graves associated with the event are extremely rare in this country,” said Hugh Willmott from the University of Sheffield’s archaeology department.

Archaeologists say the scale of the find suggests the

community was overwhelmed by the disease and unable to cope with the number of people who died.

“Local communit ies continued to dispose of their loved ones in as ordinary a way as possible,” explained Willmott.

“The finding of a previously

unknown and completely unexpected mass burial dating to this period in a quiet corner of rural Lincolnshire is thus far unique and sheds light into the real difficulties faced by a small community ill-prepared to face such a devastating threat.”

Few mass graves associated with the Black Death have been found in England or northern Europe, he added.

Archaeologists were expecting to find a large mediaeval building when they started digging last year at the site, a green field grazed by sheep for hundreds of years.

“Instead, to our complete surprise, we found a huge

mediaeval mass grave—a big rectangular pit containing rows of women and men and a large proportion of children,” Willmott told reporters.

Teeth samples from the skeletons were sent to McMaster University in Canada where ancient DNA was extracted and tested positive for Yersinia pestis.

Diana Mahoney Swales, leading a study at the Sheffield University of the bodies, hopes it will shed light on the victims’ lives.

“We hope... that we will get a proper idea of who these people were, how they lived and why they ended up being buried as they were at Thornton Abbey,” she said.

EU unveils joint defence spending plan

FROM LEFT: European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen, and EU Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska at a news conference on European Defence Action Plan in Brussels, yesterday.

Black Death burial pit found at English medieval abbey

German spy agent exposed as ‘suspect Islamist’ Three found guilty in ‘shirt-ripping’ trial

Lufthansa makes new wage offer to striking pilots

18 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 AMERICAS

Loyalty reward

Steven Mnuchin, 53, is a former Goldman Sachs partner who was Trump’s campaign chairman. His appointment is seen as reward for taking Trump’s side at a time when the Republican Party’s major political donors had avoided Trump.

Washington AFP

President-elect Don-ald Trump named Wall Street veteran Steven Mnuchin for Treasury secretary

yesterday, filling key slots on his economic team even as he announced plans to leave his businesses to avoid any conflict of interest.

Mnuchin and billionaire Wilbur Ross were asked in a television interview with CNBC if they could confirm reports they had been named to lead the US Treasury and Commerce departments, respectively.

“We can, indeed,” said Mnuchin. “We’re thrilled to be here and we’re thrilled to work for the president-elect and hon-ored to have these positions.”

Mnuchin, 53, is a former Goldman Sachs partner who was Trump’s campaign chair-man and Ross is an investor who has made billions turning

around distressed companies.With his appointment,

Mnuchin is now being rewarded for taking Trump’s side at a time when the Republican Party’s major political donors, such as the billionaire Koch brothers, had avoided him.

Trump’s picks, although not yet confirmed by his White House transition team, would

Washington AP

HILLARY Clinton’s aides are urg-ing Democrats to channel their frustrations about election results into political causes — just not into efforts to recount ballots in three battleground states.

The former Democratic pres-idential candidate and her close aides see recount drive largely as a waste of resources, according to people close to Clinton. The effort is being fueled by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who’s formed an organisation to try to force recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

“Believe me if there was any-thing I could do to make Hillary Clinton the next president I would,” said former Pennsylva-nia Governor Ed Rendell, a longtime Clinton supporter. “But this is a big waste of time.”

Aides say Clinton is focused on moving past her unexpected defeat and has devoted little attention to recount or thinking about her political future. She’s spending time with her grandchildren and going for walks near her Westch-ester home. Sightings of Clinton hiking with her dogs and shopping at a Rhode Island bookstore went viral on social media.

be the first major nominations to his economic policy team.

They came as the president-elect announced he will be leaving his private businesses to avoid any appearance of a con-flict of interest while in the White House, while insisting he was not legally bound to do so.

In a series of Tweets, Trump said he would unveil his plans at a December 15 news conference in New York with his children.

He said he would “discuss the

fact that I will be leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

“While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.”

The billionaire real-estate mogul has yet to explain in detail how he intends to separate

himself from his complex busi-ness empire while president.

US presidents typically put their assets in blind trusts man-aged without their input.

But Trump has said he wants to leave the management of his extensive business interests to his children.

At the same time, he has reportedly looked into getting a security clearance for his son-in-law Jared Kushner so he could continue as a special adviser.

Washington AP

House Democrats re-elected Nancy Pelosi as their leader yesterday

despite disenchantment among some in the caucus over the par-ty’s disappointing performance in elections earlier this month.

The California lawmaker, who has led the party since 2002,

turned back a challenge from Ohio Representative Tim Ryan. The secret ballot vote was 134-63.

“We need the very best to lead us,” Representative Adam Schiff told Democrats in nomi-nating Pelosi. “No one is a better tactician than Nancy Pelosi.”

The 76-year-old California Democrat was forced to prom-ise changes to the caucus to answer complaints from

lawmakers fed up with being shut out of the upper ranks of leadership, especially in the wake of a devastating election that installed a GOP monopoly over Congress and the White House.

A half-dozen Democrats delivered testimonials to Pelosi in nominating speeches, but the disenchantment was evident.

“I think Tim Ryan would be

a great leader. He’s a new gen-eration and I think he would appeal to a lot of millennials and young people in this country,” Representative Steve Lynch said as he headed into the session. “He brings a certain excitement and also a bit of common sense from Youngstown, Ohio.”

“Our base is working people and we’ve got to talk about that. We’ve got to tell working people

in this country that we care about them,” Lynch said.

Leadership elections were originally scheduled to be held before Thanksgiving but were delayed to give Democrats more time to discuss and proc-ess the election results and consider a path forward. Many are discouraged after losing the White House and making smaller than expected gains in

both chambers of Congress.“I believe we must do more

than simply paper over the cracks,” said Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona, one of a handful of House Democrats to endorse Ryan. “We can’t just say the right things — we must take concrete steps to move our party in the right direction.”

Nonetheless Pelosi projected confidence heading into the vote.

Washington Reuters

A NEVADA man who prose-cutors say conspired to provide materials and sup-port to co-conspirators to carry out terrorist attacks in India aimed at creating an independent Sikh state pleaded guilty yesterday to federal charges.

Balwinder Singh, 42, made the plea in US District Court in Reno as part of an agreement with prosecutors, the Department of Justice said in a written statement.

Singh, who was arrested in December 2013, faces a maximum of 15 years in prison during his sentencing in February, although federal guidelines typically call for less time.

According to prosecutors Singh, also known as Jhaji, Happy Possi and Baljit, plotted terrorist attacks in India with several other people as part of a movement to create a Sikh state in Punjab.

Prosecutors said Singh bought two sets of night vision goggles and gave them to a co-conspirator who was planning to carry out attack, which was thwarted when the man was prevented from boarding a flight to Bangkok at San Fran-cisco International Airport.

Singh is a citizen of India and a permanent US resident, according to prosecutors.

Munuchin to be Treasury secretary

President-elect Donald Trump (centre) dines with Mitt Romney (right) and Reince Preibus at Jean-Georges restaurant at Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York.

Hillary team sees recount effort as waste of resources

Nevada man pleads guilty to conspiracy for attacks in India

House Democrats re-elect Nancy Pelosi as leader

Washington AFP

Three people have report-edly died in the US southeast as wildfires bore

down on a mountainous tourist region home to a theme park founded by country music leg-end Dolly Parton.

The fires, located in the east-ern part of Tennessee, have damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures and caused

thousands of evacuations, the Tennessee Emergency Manage-ment Agency (TEMA) reported.

Not only are the fires threat-ening Parton’s Dollywood, but they have also blazed through parts of tourist hamlet of Gatlin-burg, one of the gateways to the area’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Officials in Sevier County, in which Gatlinburg and Dollywood are located, told reporters that three people had died.

The fires have been fanned by high winds and fueled by parched vegetation after the worst drought in nearly a dec-ade. Wind speeds topping 110km per hour were reported in some parts of the state. Hundreds of firefighters have descended on Gatlinburg and Tema estimated that more than 14,000 residents and visitors had been evacuated from the city alone.

Three people with severe burns and a fourth with burns to

the face had been transferred to hospitals, it said, although it was unclear if any of these were among the fatalities.

More than 100 structures were damaged in the city, while more than 150 were damaged or destroyed in Sevier County, according to officials cited by CNN.

The Great Smoky Mountains, the most visited national park in the US, said it had “closed all facilities in the park due to extensive fire activity and

downed trees,” and that park headquarters were without power and phone services.

Dollywood, located in the town of Pigeon Forge near the national park, suspended oper-ations for Wednesday.

A morning assessment revealed no damage to the park itself, although more than a dozen cabins managed by Dol-lywood were found to be damaged or destroyed, the resort said in a statement.

Three dead as wildfires rage in southeastern US

Havana AP

Thousands of Cubans lined the streets of Havana yes-terday, some sleeping on

sidewalks overnight, to bid goodbye to Fidel Castro as his ashes began a four-day journey across the country.

A caravan carrying the ashes was scheduled left the capital’s Plaza of the Revolution after 7 am for a journey from Havana to San-tiago. On Tuesday night, tens of thousands of Cubans jammed the plaza as the presidents of Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Vene-zuela and South Africa, along with leaders of a host of smaller nations, offered speeches paying tribute to Castro.

The crowds at the rally and along yesterday's procession

route were a mix of people attending on their own and groups of Cubans organised by their government workplaces in group trips that are not strictly obligatory but create strong pressure to attend. Some groups of government workers slept on the streets because all public transport had been comman-deered to move people to Castro-related activities.

“We love the commandante and I think it’s our obligation to be here and see him out,” said Mer-cedes Antunez who was bused in by state athletics organisation from her home in east Havana along with fellow employees.

Cuban state media reported that urn containing Fidel Castro’s ashes was being kept in a room at Defence Ministry where Pres-ident Raul Castro, Castro’s

younger brother and successor, and top Communist Party offi-cials paid tribute.

The rally began with black-and-white revolution-era footage of Castro and other guer-rillas on a big screen and playing of Cuban national anthem. Raul Castro closed the rally with a speech thanking world leaders for their words of praise for his brother, whom he called the leader of a revolution “for the humble, and by the humble.”

South African President Jacob Zuma praised Cuba under Castro for its record on educa-tion and health care and its support for African independ-ence struggles.

The lines stretched for hours outside Plaza of the Revolution. In Havana and across the island, people signed condolence books

The urn with ashes of Cuban leader Fidel Castro is driven through the streets of Havana, yesterday.

and an oath of loyalty to Castro’s sweeping May 2000 proclama-tion of the revolution as an unending battle for socialism, nationalism and an outsize role for the island on world stage.

Inside the memorial, thou-sands walked through three rooms with near-identical displays fea-turing the 1962 Alberto Korda photograph of the young Castro in the Sierra Maestra mountains.

Cubans line streets as Fidel Castro’s ashes begin journey

19THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 HOME

Irfan Bukhari The Peninsula

On the academic landscape of Qatar, an international ethics summit is set to appear which

will cover dozens of topics hav-ing contemporary importance from corporate citizenship in global context to ethics revolv-ing around gender, religion, business and conflict.

A three-day International Ethics Summit themed “Morality in the Global Era: Theory, Policy and Praxis” will start from December 4 at HBKU Students

Centre at Education City.The summit will be an inter-

national opportunity for scholars, academia and audiences repre-senting various segments of society to explore and understand a number of issues such as: Eth-ical Leadership and Social Responsibility; Ethics in the Pro-fessions; Integrity in Business; Corporate Citizenship in a Global Context; Ethics and the Environ-ment; Immigration and Moral Tragedy; Ethics and Technology in the Global Age; Ethics and Sports; Ethics and Gender among others according to university’s call-for-papers and leaflet per-taining to programme-details.

Talking to The Peninsula, Hassan Bashir, Conference Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M said: “The summit will attempt to develop a multi-dis-ciplinary and global framework for engaging with questions of morality/immorality/amorality and rethink their meaning by delineating the moral conun-drums which individuals face in the global era.”

Bashir said as many as 80 delegates from 19 countries will participate in the summit including 27 from various insti-tutions of Qatar. He said 35 universities were participating

in the event while nine indus-t r y - p r o f e s s i o n a l s a n d international development agencies would also attend the summit.

Dr Melissa S Williams, Pro-fessor of Political Science, Founding Director Centre of Ethics at University of Toronto Canada will speak on “An Agent–Centered View of Global Ethics”.

Dr. Joshua Mitchell, Profes-sor of Government, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. & Doha will address on “The 21st Century Ethical Challenge to the Humanities.” Mitchell observes: “Geopolitically, both liberal and

anti-modern tropes seem to have been exhausted, and we are in need to renewal of the sort that the hermeneutics of suspicion, alone, cannot provide.”

The topic of keynote address of Dr. Liviu Papadima, Profes-sor of Literature, Vice-Rector, University of Bucharest, Roma-nia is “Humility in Politics and Literature: Western and East-ern Traditions”.

“Humility has been for cen-turies a lesson to be taught to future leaders, but is rarely approached in the numberless texts and trainings which would open the gate towards

leadership nowadays,” Papadima observes.

A discussion with industry leaders on ethical leadership themed “Ethical Leadership in Industry and Business: Respon-sibility and Risk in The Global Era” is another feature of the upcoming summit.

Dr. Eyad Masad, Vice Dean of Texas A&M University at Qatar; Dr. Mohammad Yousef Al-Mulla, MD and CEO of Qatar Petrochemical Company (QAPCO); Dr. R. Seetharaman, CEO Doha Bank and Dr. Tod A Laursen, President Khalifa Uni-versity UAE will take part in the discussion.

The Peninsula

THE Public Works Authority, ‘Ash-ghal’, will implement a minor traffic diversion on Mesaieed Road, approx-imately 14km south of Al Wakrah.

The temporary detour, which comes in coordination with the Gen-eral Directorate of Traffic, will be in place on today, and last for three months, Ashghal said in a press release.

The road change is required to enable the construction of a critical interchange that will connect the New Hamad Port to the New Orbital Highway and Truck Route project.

During the diversion, road users travelling northbound from Mesaieed to Al Wakrah will be detoured to a 1.4 km long purpose-built loop road before rejoining Mesaieed Road.

QNA

PRIME Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani yesterday chaired the Cabinet’s regular weekly meet-ing Emiri Diwan premises.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud said: “The Cabinet took necessary measures to issue a draft law adopting state budget for fiscal year 2017."

The Cabinet also approved a decision of Minister of Interior to exclude holders of Japanese dip-lomatic and official passports of some of visa requirements.

Under the decision, holders of Japanese diplomatic and official passports, as well as their family members living with them, will be allowed to enter and stay in Qatar for a maximum period of 90 days from the date of entry.

The Peninsula

As many as 1.5 million peo-ple in Yemen have been benefited from Qatar

Charity (QC) projects including food-aids and health and edu-cational projects.

QC also carried out various development programmes including rehabilitation and restoration of schools and water wells, said a press release.

QC provided food items to more than one million people, while over 168000 people ben-efited from the sheltering projects, which cost QR 4m. More than 27000 people ben-efited from the substantial assistance provided in the health and education fields at a cost of up to QR4 m.

Moreover, QC spent more than QR 2m for rehabilitation and providing wells with pumps and building 600 tanks in the

region. More than one million people benefited in Taiz, Aden, Lahij, Dhale and Sanaa.

QC distributed 3000 food baskets to achieve food secu-rity for the affected families in Tihama, at a cost of QR 900,000 as part of its urgent relief campaign launched last month to prevent famine in Tihama, Yemen.

Mohammed Rashid Al-Kaabi, Director of Relief Department at QC said, “QC has provided health assistance to the Yemeni people including rehabilitation of Dar Alestish-faa Hospital in Aden, which treated the wounded people during the war. QC imple-mented the Artificial Limbs Fitting Project for the benefit of the affected people in the war and established a medical camp that treated more than 300 people who suffer from ortho-pedic problems.”

Al-Kaabi demonstrated that

QC rehabilitated and restored the damaged schools, provided many school supplies and helped the refugee high school students in Djibouti by trans-ferring them from the camp where they reside to the Dji-boutian villages to complete their study.

QC’s office in Yemen

periodically coordinates the efforts of humanitarian work in Al Hudaydah Governorate, Yemen. It participates in the meetings held by the interna-tional organisations and the Yemeni official authorities to demonstrate the current inter-ventions to relieve the governorate’s population.

Social scientists set to decipher various shades of ethics

Diversion on Mesaieed Road from today

Cabinet holds weekly meeting

QC projects benefit 1.5 million in Yemen

A man receives aid from QC official.

20 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2016 HOME

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Syrian army announces major advance in AleppoSheikh Joaan Attends Final Race of Formula 1 in Abu Dhabi

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The Peninsula

The fourth Ajyal Youth Film Festi-val, presented by Doha film Insti-tute (DFI), opened

yesterday with the screen-ing of the Kazakh film The Eagle Huntress.

Fatma Al Remaihi, Fes-tival Director and Chief Executive Officer of DFI, welcomed over 550 young people from over 10 coun-tries at the festival’s launch.

The Ajyal Jurors, aged 8 to 21, are the heart of the festival that features 70 thought-provoking films that will inspire the youth and stimulate discussions about real and relevant issues that affect them glo-bally. This year, there are 24 international jurors.

Underlining Doha Film Institute’s commitment to nurturing youth talent and strengthening awareness on meaningful cinema in young people, the Ajyal Jurors will watch and eval-uate films in three categories for the Compe-tition. The Mohaq jury comprises jurors aged 8 to 12 years. There are 200 jurors in this segment, who will watch one programme of short films and four fea-ture length films. Hilal jurors are aged 13 to 17 and form the largest segment this year with 250 members. They will watch five feature films and a programme of

shorts. The most mature of Ajyal’s juries is Bader, with jurors aged 18 to 21. There are 100 young people who will select their favourite film from five features and two programmes of short films. Each of the Ajyal juries will award a Best Film prize to their favourite short and feature-length films for a total of six awards.

Today, Ajyal presents its first showcase of ‘Made in Qatar’ films by Qatari directors and people who call Qatar home. There is a section of internationally acclaimed films as Ajyal marks the commencement of its first Midnight Screen-ings and SONY Cinema Under the Stars. Ajyal Family Weekend also kicks off today, which is open for

all, as well as the first Ajyal Talks, insightful discus-sions with social media influencers that provide an inspiring interaction with people who have a posi-tive influence on youth. The Made in Qatar 1 will screen at 7pm at Katara Drama Theatre, and includes eight short films including those made with the support of DFI Qatari Film Fund. They include 9956 by Zaki Hussain, Amer: An Arabian Legend by Jassim Al-Rumaihi, Between Science and Reli-gion by Hamida Issa Dana’s Kite by Noor Al-Nasr, Fragile by Khalifa AlMarri, Al-Johara by Nora Al-Subai, Kashta by AJ Al Thani and Shishbarak by Bayan Dahdah.

Ajyal film festival opensThe Peninsula

Ooredoo has yesterday announced that it has surpassed the “one

million followers” milestone on its social media pages, as the company continues to offer a diverse range of con-tent to fit its customers’ digital lifestyles. The milestone, which will be celebrated with its users on the company’s Facebook, Twitter and Insta-gram pages, is another important step for Ooredoo, as more and more customers look to get in contact and find out the latest news and offers via their mobiles.

According to a region-wide study by Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) and Doha Film Institute (DFI) (Media Industries in the Mid-dle East, 2016), Qatar has the highest percentage of people reading news online daily at 42%. Ooredoo has responded positively to this change in customer behaviour, provid-ing more online and self-service features every month. Ooredoo Qatar’s Facebook profile continues to grow, with more than 712,000 likes, followed by Ooredoo Qatar’s Twitter pro-file with 386,000 followers, and Instagram with more than 68,000.

Fatima Sultan Al Kuwari, Director, Community and

Public relations, Ooredoo commented: “The demand for self-service, 24/7 information is growing daily. Our custom-ers are increasingly online and want access to our port-folio and latest news instantly, whether via our Ooredoo App, our website, or social media pages. We endeavour to continue to develop these platforms as a one-stop-shop for our cus-tomers, and passing this social media milestone dem-onstrates that we are heading in the right direction.”

“As well as the latest offers and services, we use our social media pages to cover our diverse sponsor-ship and CSR work, as well as use the platforms to listen to our customers and get to know what they truly want. Thank you to everyone who has supported us and fol-lowed Ooredoo online, without you all we could have not reached this amazing milestone,” she added.

As part of Ooredoo’s push to create a seamless online experience, in 2015, the com-pany introduced a dedicated customer service profile on Twitter (@OoredooCare), to provide quick and effective feedback to customer’s online, as well as revamped its dedicated customer forum, The Ooredoo Community (community.ooredoo.qa).

Ooredoo: Over 1 millionfollowers on social media

CEO of Doha Film Institute Fatma Al Remaihi takes a selfie with members of the jury the Ajyal Youth Film Festival in Doha, yesterday.

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