over 1.84 million accessed turkish president meets ......oct 16, 2018 · hamad medical corporation...

Volume 23 | Number 7681 | 2 RiyalsTuesday 16 October 2018 | 7 Safar I 1440 www.thepeninsula.qa

BUSINESS | 21 SPORT | 27Paine eyes Australia’s first series win in Asia since 2011

QIIB net profit grows by 5% to QR735m in Q3

Qatar's Fastest Mobile Network �� ®��®

Turkish President meets Minister of State for Defence Affairs

DOHA: Doha Center for Media Freedom (DCMF) expressed concern over the developments in the case of the disappearance of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who has not been seen since entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and after reports about his death.

DCMF said in a statement that it hope that the ongoing investigations will reveal the truth about Khashoggis disappearance

and its circumstances, and enlighten the international public opinion on this case which developments are followed worldwide with great interest.

The Centre urged the United Nations and all human rights organisa-tions, especially the one concerned with freedom of opinion and expression to exert more pressure on the concerned parties in order to reveal the truth about Khashoggis fate and ensure

that international justice mechanisms are used to prevent impunity.

The Centre stressed that this issue highlighted the restriction of freedom of opinion and expression, and revealed the extent of vio-lations against journalists and opinion writers, adding that these violations must be dealt with in accordance with the international laws, universal and human rights covenants which prohibit them.

AGENCIES

WASHINGTON: Saudi Arabia is preparing a report that would admit Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed as the result of an interrogation that went wrong, CNN reported, citing two unnamed sources.

One source cautioned that the report was still being prepared and could change, CNN said. The other source said the report would likely conclude that the operation was carried out without clearance and that those involved will be held responsible, the cable news outlet said.

Meanwhile, US Pres-ident Donald Trump sug-gested yesterday that “rogue killers” could be responsible for a Saudi journalist’s dis-appearance after a personal phone call in which Trump said Saudi Arabia’s King Salman strongly denied any knowledge of what hap-pened to Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump said he had spent about 20 minutes on the phone with King Salman, the crown prince’s 82-year-old father, who denied having any information about what had happened to Khashoggi.

Trump also announced he’d dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the Kingdom — and anywhere else necessary — to get to the bottom of the suspected murder of Khashoggi, who

hasn’t been seen since entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago.

The US president is under growing pressure to take action on the suspected murder of the Saudi writer, who has been living and working in the United States, including contributing to The Washington Post and writing columns critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Turkish officials say they

believe Saudi agents killed and dismembered Khashoggi and Turkey has audio and video recordings of it.

The crown prince, ambi-tious, aggressive and just 33 in a kingdom long ruled by aging monarchs, has consid-erable weight in Saudi gov-ernment actions. He and Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, have forged close ties.

�SEE ALSO PAGE 9

Influenza immunisation campaign launchedFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

DOHA: With winter season approaching, a comprehensive national influenza vaccination campaign has been launched jointly by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) and Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).

The influenza vaccine has been made easily accessible to

everyone to ensure vaccination of as many people as possible. The vaccine is available for free across all PHCC’s health centres and at 47 private and semi-gov-ernmental health care facilities including Qatar Petroleum and Sidra Medicine, said officials addressing a press conference, yesterday.

The public can call 107 and book an appointment for vac-cination at the health centres. Most private health care

providers also encourage people to pre-register by calling or through dedicated portals.

The influenza vaccine cam-paign, themed ‘Fight Flu’, aims to ensure that both the com-munity and healthcare workers are vaccinated. The campaign started for healthcare workers from October 10 and for the public from yesterday and will last until end of the flu season.

�CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

DCMF expresses concern

Trump sends Secretary

of State Mike Pompeo

to Riyadh

The President of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs, H E Dr Khalid bin Mohamed Al Attiyah, at the Presidential Palace in Ankara. Al Attiyah conveyed the greetings of H H the Amir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and his wishes of the best of health to the Turkish President. Talks covered the relations between the two brotherly countries and ways of promoting them in all fields, as well as the latest developments in the region.

Dust storm and rain mark beginning of Wasmi seasonSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

DOHA: A dust storm engulfed Doha, its suburbs and some other parts of the country yesterday evening causing low visibility which pushed motorists to drive extra carefully.

People on the streets were seen cov-ering their faces to protect themselves from dust. Rainfall was also reported in northern parts of Qatar yesterday.

Unstable weather is caused by change

of season as Qatar entered in Wasmi season yesterday while the country is likely to continue witnessing rainfall and low temperate, according to Qatar Mete-orology Department (QMD).

“During Wasmi season which will last 52 days, maximum temperature in Doha is expected to reach less than 35 degree Celsius and minimum temper-ature will fall to about 20 degree Celsius,” said QMD.

�CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

A lightning strike seen over Doha skyline yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT / THE PENINSULA

8.98 million Total page views

of the portal during

January-September

1.62 millionTotal page views

of the portal in

September

24%Rise in number of

visitors accessed

Hukoomi in September

302,721 Number of visitors

accessed the portal in

September

244,730 Number of visitors accessed the portal in August

Over 1.84 million accessed Hukoomi portal in 9 monthsSACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Over 300,000 visitors accessed Hukoomi, Qatar’s official e-government portal, in September making it the highest monthly figure of 2018. More than 1.84 million visitors accessed Hukoomi portal during January-September period of the current year.

The portal witnessed a monthly rise of about 24 percent as 302,721 visitors accessed Hukoomi portal in September this year, compared to 244,730 visitors in August 2018.

Higher number of visitors to the portal resulted in more page views and led to increased traffic. The portal received over 8.98 million page views during January- September period of the current year.

The consistent rise in the visitors and page views reflects that a growing number of people are now using Hukoomi services and that the awareness about the services are increasing among the residents.

The portal includes more than 1,400 services, with more than 650 online services that can be completed online by individuals, visitors, businesses, and government entities.

There were over 1.62 million page views in September, com-pared to 1.24 million page views in August, showing a healthy rise of around 31 percent. The number of visitors to the portal has grown consistently so far this year. In January this year about 1.2 million visitors accessed the portal while around 94,300 visitors accessed

the portal in February. Since then, the monthly visits are in the range of 100,000 to 293,000 visitors.

A total of 135,131 transac-tions took place through the portal in August, according to the data of Ministry of Devel-opment Planning and Statistics. Out of the total transaction in August, around 39,000 were relating to online registration for the Medical Commission while about 52,200 transactions were regarding CPGA income account. Over 32,700 health cards were renewed via Hukoomi during August. Another transactions, during the month, were related to Palm import license, e-payment for

tender documents, applying for the approval for dealing with telecommunications equipment and related activities.

In April this year, Hukoomi was ranked first in web acces-sibility for Assistive Technology Center (Mada) out of 124 entities.

The role of Hukoomi, is to make government information and services more efficient and effective in order to be acces-sible to all citizens, residents, visitors and businesses. It also aims at raising awareness on the public programmes, events, news and government initia-tives, in line with the objectives defined by Qatar e-Government 2020 Strategy.

Saudi preparing to admit Khashoggi was killed: CNN

02 TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018HOME

Fourth Katara Festival of Arabic Novels opens on a creative noteTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Prominent Arab novelists, writers and literary critics have gathered at the Fourth Katara Festival of Arabic Novels which began yesterday at Katara Cultural Village premises.

Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Sulaiti, General Manager of Katara Cultural Village, opened the three-day Festival which witnesses, among other activities, the awarding of prizes to winners of the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel 2018.

Al Sulaiti in his opening address said that the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel over the past four years has gained a prestigious position in the Arab literary and cultural circles thanks to the concerted efforts of the organisers to expand it to new areas.

“The Prize has become a real meeting point for Arab novelists, writers and critics and its growing popularity has been reflected in the steady growth in the number of participants, which has reached 1,283 in the fourth edition,” he added.

“I would like to emphasise that this award is for all Arabs from all regions. And we expect everyone attending this

Festival to enjoy the cultural and literary atmosphere it provides,” said Al Sulaiti.

Al Sulaiti honoured two Qatari per-sonalities for their outstanding contri-bution to art and literature — Mariam Al Nuaimi of Qatar University and artist Bakhitha Al Sada.

Al Sulaiti, accompanied by Khaled Al Sayed, Head of the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel, the participating writers, novelists and other dignitaries, then opened the Katara Library of Arabic Novels at Building 32 and an exhibition on the life and works of renowned Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani at Building 18.

The Library showcases more than 10,000 titles in fiction, in addition to studies and critical works on Arabic novels. It has special sections for reading and for screening of films and serials based on fiction, as well as audio pro-grammes. It also has dedicated facilities for lectures, seminars and workshops, and a studio for recording interviews and interactive sessions. The Library will also have a Readers’ Club.

The exhibition on Kanafani features 32 paintings, photographs

and illustrations introducing the life and literary journey of the Palestinian revo-lutionary novelist, from his birth in Acre on April 1936 until his assassination by Israeli intelligence agencies in Beirut on July 8, 1972.

A signing of books by authors who won the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel 2017 took place at Building 18, during which the attendees received copies of the novels and critical studies with sig-nature of the authors. Translations of several prize winning novels in English and French were also on offer.

An innovative electronic application named #Mishwar_Wariwaya was launched on the occasion for walkers to listen to audio version of select Arabic novels. It can be used in all mobile or elec-tronic devices having Android, iOS or Apple operating system.

The app enables the user to count the number of words they have listened while walking, along with the steps and distance they have covered. Users will also be able to know how much calories they have burnt after their walk.

Events on the first day of the Festival

concluded with a seminar on Kanafani followed by screening of a film based on Kanafani’s novel “Return to Haifa”.

Events today include the launch of a new Katara initiative named “Narrations from Novels” for school students to get them acquainted with Arabic novels.

Two seminars on literary criticism will

take place focusing on women fiction writers in Arabic and “novels and theatre,” with participation of prominent writers and critics. Today’s events will conclude with a grand award ceremony to honour winners of the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel 2018 at Katara’s Opera House at 8pm.

Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Sulaiti, the General Manager of Katara Cultural Village, opening the festival.

Qatar, Turkey discuss relations and ways of enhancing them in various fields

FROM LEFT: Dr Khalid Hamid Elawad, Subject Matter Expert, Public Health, Clinical Affairs, PHCC; Nayef Abboud Al Shammari, Assistant Executive Director of Media at HMC, Dr Abdullatif Al Khal, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, HMC and Dr Soha Albayat, Head of the Vaccination Section at MoPH during the press conference held, yesterday. PIC: ABDUL BASIT / THE PENINSULA

Influenza immunisation campaign launched

→CONTINUED

FROM PAGE 1

A dedicated website www.stoptheflu.qa has been created to raise awareness among the public a b o u t t h e vaccine. It pro-vides information including myths and facts as well as information about the spots where people can get the vaccine.

I m m u n i -sat ion and i m p r o v e d treatment have reduced mortality and morbidity rates in Qatar and across the world in recent years. However, communicable diseases remain a significant challenge for public health services.

“Influenza like illnesses are among the most commonly reported communicable diseases in Qatar therefore it is critical that we focus national attention on the importance of influenza vacci-nation to protect as many people as possible every season,” said Dr Soha Albayat, Head of the Vacci-nation Section at MOPH.

She also emphasised that the influenza vaccination during pregnancy is safe and it would keep the babies safe from flu during their first few months of their life.

Influenza is usually

characterised by sudden onset of constitutional and respiratory symptoms such as fever, myalgia, cough, sore throat, rhinitis and headache. Influenza typically resolves in three to seven days in the majority of individuals.

“Influenza is more common during the winter season. It was spreading fast around the world including Qatar during the last winter season. We recorded some of the highest rates of influenza in Qatar last year. The annual seasonal flu vaccine is the best and safest way to reduce the chances catching the flu and potentially spreading it. We are providing the best, most advanced and safe vaccines,” said Dr Abdullatif Al Khal, Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Head

of Infectious Diseases at HMC. “Vaccination to prevent

influenza is particularly important for people who are at high risk for the flu and its complications. This includes the elderly, young children, pregnant women and people with chronic medical con-ditions,” he added.

Dr Khalid Hamid Elawad, Subject Matter Expert - Public Health, Clinical Affairs, PHCC, said, “It is also essential to practice good hygiene by properly and fre-quently washing hands and pro-tecting coughs and sneezes (coughing or sneezing onto a tissue or an elbow) to help prevent the spread of seasonal influenza. People who have flu-like symptoms should stay at home to avoid infecting others.” Dusty wind at the Doha Corniche yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

Dust storm and rain mark beginning of Wasmi season

→CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

The Department posted yes-terday a video-footage of rainfall in Al Shamal area on its Facebook account. QMD has also forecasted chances of scat-tered rain; maybe thundery at times starting from tomorrow (Wednesday).

QMD updated weather con-ditions in a number of posts on its social networking sites yes-terday evening. “Dusty condi-tions and poor visibility are observed in some areas including Doha due to the tem-porary strong wind associated with local thunderstorms. Visi-bility expected to improve grad-ually in next few hours. Please be careful,” said a post.

In another post, QMD said: “Latest radar image shows thundery rain north of Al Sha-haniya accom-panied with strong wind causing rising dust and poor visibility. Latest radar image shows thundery rain towards Al Khor may be accompanied with strong wind causing rising dust and low

visibility.”According to a report of

QMD, unstable weather condi-tions expected to affect the country due to extension of a low pressure with good humidity and cooling in the upper atmospheric levels which helps clouds to form starting from tomorrow (October 17) until the beginning of next week.

“Skies are expected to become gradually partly cloudy to cloudy at times with a chance of scattered rain mostly light to moderate in intensity. In addition, thundery cells are likely to form in some areas accompanied with moderate to heavy rain and strong wind

causing rising dust at times,” said the report.

QMD has urged people to be cautious, check weather condi-tions before going to sea and to follow latest updates through its official social media accounts. “The onset of the locally famous Wasmi season begins on October 15 and lasts for 52 days,” said QMD.

“This season is named so because it coincides with rainfall that helps certain local plants to grow such as Helianthemum and Geranium. Rainfall in the beginning of Wasmi season is usually an indication of a good rainy season,” said the Department.

Amir holds phone call with Iraqi President

The President of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs H E Dr Khalid bin Mohamed Al Attiyah at the Presidential Palace in Ankara yesterday. RIGHT: Dr Al Attiyah with the Minister of Defence of the Republic of Turkey, General Hulusi Akar, at the headquarters of the Defence Ministry in Ankara. The meeting discussed the bilateral relations and ways of enhancing them in various military areas, in addition to the latest regional developments. The Turkish Defence Minister hosted a luncheon banquet in honour for the Deputy Prime Minister. The meeting and the luncheon banquet were attended by Qatar’s Ambassador to Turkey, Salem bin Mubarak Al Shafi, and the Military Attache at the Qatari Embassy in Ankara, Brigadier General Mohammed bin Rashid Al Shahwani.

QNA

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held a telephone conversation with the President of the Republic of Iraq, Dr Barham Salih, yesterday.

During the telephone conversation, H H the Amir congratulated the Iraqi Pres-ident on his election and his swearing in as President of the Republic, wishing him success and the best of luck and the brotherly Iraqi people further development and prosperity.

The telephone conver-sation also touched on the bilateral relations and ways of promoting them, as well as issues of mutual concern.

03TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018 HOME

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was awardedBest Bank - Qatarin the Global Finance

World’s Best Bank Awards 2018

Advisory Council Speaker reviews relations at IPU meetTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Speaker of the Advisory Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud, participated in the 203rd session of the Governing Council accom-panying the meetings of 139th General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) which began yesterday in Geneva.

The Speaker of the Advisory Council participated in the opening session, which discussed a number of issues, including pro-posals for the election of the pres-ident of the 139th Assembly, the financial situation of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and the draft programme and budget for 2019, in addition to the report of the IPU Secretary-General Martin Chungong on the activities of the IPU since the 202nd session of the Governing Council.

Issues related to the mem-bership of the IPU 2017 and 2021 as well as amendments to the statute and rules of the IPU and the elections of the executive com-

mittee were also discussed.The meeting was attended by

a number of members of the Advisory Council and Permanent Representative of the State of Qatar to the United Nations in Geneva, Ali Khalfan Al Mansouri.

The Speaker also met sepa-rately with Duarte Pacheco, Chair of the Twelve Plus Group, European countries, Australia and Canada and head of the Portu-guese delegation, Jacob Mudenda, President of the African Group, Speaker of the Parliament of Zim-babwe, Wesley Simina, President of the Asia-Pacific Group and

speaker of the Micronesia Par-liament, on the sidelines of the meetings of 139th General Assembly of the Inter-Parlia-mentary Union (IPU).

The meetings discussed rela-tions between the State of Qatar and the Twelve Plus Group, European countries, Australia and Canada, the African Group and

the Asia-Pacific Group and ways to support, develop and strengthen such relations, in addition to discussing the most important topics on the agenda

of the 139th IPU General Assembly.

The Speaker of the Advisory Council met separately with the President of the French IPU Group, Sophie Errant; the member of the Executive Committee of the IPU, Oliveira Valente; the President of the Council of the Nation of Algeria, Abdelkhader Bensaleh; the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Assembly of Vietnam and member of IPU Executive Committee, and Member of the Mexican Senate and head of the delegation, Salomon Jara Cruz.

The meetings discussed the parliamentary relations between the State of Qatar and each of the French IPU Group, the IPU Exec-utive Committee, the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the United Mexican States, and ways of enhancing them, in addition to the most important topics listed on the agenda of the 139th General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

The Speaker of the Advisory Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud, at the event in Geneva, yesterday.

Issues related to the

membership of the

IPU 2017 and 2021 as

well as amendments

to the statute and

rules of the IPU and

the elections of the

executive committee

were also discussed.

Qatar harnessed all energies to ensure food securityTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Minister of Envi-ronment and Municipality H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi said that Qatar has harnessed all its energies to ensure food security in the country. The Minister said that the wise leadership is keen to develop natural resources, especially the agricultural ones in order to achieve self-suffi-ciency in production of many goods and products.

This came in a speech of the Minister on the occasion of World Food Day, which falls on October 16 (today) which is being celebrated this year under the theme ‘Zero Hunger’.

The Minister said that Qatar’s celebration of World Food Day is a confirmation of the importance of food and the need to provide it to everyone living on its land, adding that the theme of this year’s cele-bration is to raise public awareness of the problem of hunger and to highlight the suf-fering of the hungry people in the world.

He stressed the need to take measures to combat hunger, adding that everyone is concerned about the problem of hunger and all governments, countries, institutions and indi-viduals have a role in elimi-nating hunger.

He pointed out that the FAO

is trying through this occasion to highlight the right of people to get food, and urged govern-ments to provide food for their people and investment in agri-culture and food sector.

Al Rumaihi noted that at the local level, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment has an important responsibility for food security and natural resource development to increase production and increase self-sufficiency.

“The Ministry has adopted plans and strategies based on increasing the production of agricultural commodities in the country such as vegetables, red meat, poultry, eggs and fish,” said the Minister. He added that

the agricultural sector was able to achieve a great leap in order to cover the requirements of the local market and raise the self-sufficiency in the sectors of agriculture, animals and fish.

He also expressed his hope that the ministry will take part in the celebration of World Food Day, organize a number of activities and awareness activities with the participation of a number of stakeholders in food security and the elimi-nation of hunger, convey the message of awareness of the problem of hunger and the importance of reducing it, and to the importance of the role that every responsible person can play in combating it.

The Ministry of Munici-pality and Environment, on this occasion will organise an event at Ezdan Mall in Al Gharafa from October 16 to 18, in coop-eration with a number of stake-holders such as the Ministry of Public Health and the Qatari Red Crescent among others and a number of local productive farms and animal production companies in Qatar.

World Food Day, which falls on October 16, marks the anniversary of the creation of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1945. According to UN agencies, the number of hungry people in the world reached 821 million this year.

Awareness about impact of divorce heldTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Family Consulting Center (Wifaq) organised on Monday a series of workshops aimed at raising awareness of the negative effects of divorce and improving psychological and social compatibility between separated spouses.

The two-week workshops held under the slogan “New Beginnings” include a series of awareness themes.

The first day of the workshop deals with the definition of divorce and its stages, its effects and ways of coping with it (the effects of divorces on spouses), the most important changes in one’s life after divorce, and the most important negative psycho-logical and physical effects of divorce and how to deal with these effects.


Temporary closure of two lanes on Al Istiqlal StreetTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced the implementation of a temporary closure of two lanes on Al Istiqlal Street in both directions between 5/6 Inter-change and Onaiza Inter-section, known as the Qatar Club Intersection. The other two lanes on Al Istiqlal Street will remain open to traffic.

The closure will start today

and will last until October 23, 2018, in coordination with the General Directorate of Traffic. The closure aims at paving the last layer of asphalt on Al Istiqlal Street and will be imple-mented in two phases to ensure free traffic flow. The Authority will install road signs advising motorists of the changes on the road. Ashghal has requested all road users to abide by the speed limit and follow the road signs to ensure their safety.

Farewell ceremony for Kenyan envoy

The Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H E Dr Ahmed bin Hassan Al Hammadi, held yesterday a farewell ceremony in honour of the Ambassador of the Republic of Kenya to the State of Qatar, Galma Mukhe Boru, at the diplomatic club, on the occasion of the end of his tenure in the country. A number of Their Excellencies heads of diplomatic missions and bureaus accredited to the country attended the ceremony along with the foreign ministry’s department directors.

Ooredoo is partner of Artistic Gymnastics championshipTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Ooredoo announced yesterday it is the National Tele-c o m m u n i c a t i o n Partner for the 48th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships which will be held in Doha. The event will take place between October 25 and November 3, at the Aspire Academy Dome, and will feature over 700 male and female gymnasts from 80 countries, including three Team Qatar gymnasts.

This is the first time that the Championships will be held in Qatar and the Middle East and contestants will compete across 10 days to take the title in their category.

Manar Khalifa Al Muraikhi, Director of PR and Corporate

Communications, Ooredoo Qatar, said: “Ooredoo is proud to be supporting the Gymnastics Championship in Qatar and wish Team Qatar the best of luck. We believe in supporting events like this to inspire more children to

live an active and healthy life-style and encourage families to go along and watch the world-class athletes in action.”

Tickets to the championship are available at Virgin Megastore.

The officials at the Artistic Gymnastics Championship at the press conference.

Seminar held on trademarksDOHA: The Ministry of Economy and Commerce organised a seminar titled “Trademarks and Registration Procedures”, yesterday. The seminar brought together a number of investors, business owners, entrepreneurs and intellectual property agents.

The seminar comes within the framework of the Ministry’s efforts to protect and promote intellectual property rights on a large scale, and to raise awareness among investors and entre-preneurs about the impor-tance of trademarks and their use when offering services and products. The Ministry stressed on the importance of protecting a trademark against infringements by reg-istering it at the concerned department at the Ministry and introduced participants to steps to electronically reg-ister a trademark.

Call to follow winter camping

security and safety rules THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The participants in a seminar, organised by the Ministry of Interior’s General Directorate of Traffic, urged all those wishing to go camping this year to follow the rules and conditions for camping at various levels of health, envi-ronment and traffic, and to respect security and safety procedures.

The seminar focused on the new conditions and procedures for registering tents and car-avans and the traffic rules that related to it, the necessary tech-nical specifications, environ-mental violations, the role of the Qatar Tourism Authority through Al Enna project, and other topics related to the camping season.

During the seminar, the par-ticipants stressed awareness campaigns during the camping season to avoid misconduct that could lead to loss of life, destruction of public and private property, or environmental damage in violation of rules.

On the traffic issue, the Director of the Awareness and Information Department at the General Directorate of Traffic, Colonel Mohamed Radhi Al Hajri, said that the camping season is witnessing a traffic jam in several parts of the country. He stressed that the directorate will show zero tolerance with

any irregularities or violations to the specifications set by the Ministry of Interior.

Colonel Al Hajri also stated that a full one year period has been given to register the car-avans as a local industry, during this period, it was registered and numbers were placed on the chassis at the camping areas.

HMC Injury and Accident’s Center Dr Aisha Obaid pointed to the increasing number of injuries caused by unsafe driving of four-wheel bikes, warning against use of children under 12 years old for this type of bicycle.

For his part, Traffic Investi-gation Department at the General Traffic Administration Capt. Fahd Al Shahwani affirmed the presence of traffic patrols around the clock, whether both the traffic department of the south and the

traffic department of the north, to respond to reports of acci-dents during the camping season or monitoring irregular-ities of caravans.

Lieutenant Rashid Al Hajri of the technical inspection department pointed to the modern registration system for caravans, including the numbers that placed on the chassis, after meeting the technical specifica-tions for length, width and stickers.

Eng Omar Al Awadhi of the Qatar General Authority for Standardization and Metrology spoke about the compatibility of existing tents and caravans with technical specifications and their role in meeting traffic safety and road safety. He pointed out that the authority is in the process of completing these standards and distributing them along with other safety and administrative aspects.

Omar Al Jaber, spokes-person of the Al Enna project of the Qatar Tourism Authority, pointed to the advantages of the “Al Enna” project and its tracks for motor sports and motorbikes.

He said that the project, which will be built over a 300,000sqm area in its first phase, is to organize the races and tournaments carried out by the Mawater Center, by pro-viding safe areas and conditions ensuring security and safety.

Aspire Zone is becoming familiar name in France, says AmbassadorTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Aspire Zone Foundation (AZF) welcomed the French Ambassador to Doha, Franck Gellet, yesterday providing him with a tour of its world-class facilities.

During his visit, the French Ambassador received a brief on the services offered by AZF and

its member organisations: Aspire Academy, Aspire Logistics, and Aspetar, the orthopaedic and sports med-icine hospital.

At the beginning of the tour, the French diplomat took in the Academy’s efforts to develop future athletes. He then visited Khalifa International Stadium, Qatar’s first completed 2022

FIFA World Cup host venue, where he admired the design of the stadium and its sustainable air-cooling technology.

At Aspetar, the French envoy met with Mohammed Khalifa Al Suwaidi, the CEO of AZF and the Director General of Aspetar. The AZF CEO led the tour and explained the various services Aspetar offers athletes who are

recovering full fitness. Following the tour, Al Suwaidi and Gellet had a meeting where they disused current and future cooperation opportunities with French organisations.

Ambassador Gellet, said; “What I saw today is encouraging and shows Qatar’s desire to create a world-class sports ecosystem. That feeds into the facilities I see here and the coun-try’s preparations for the World Cup in 2022.”

The Ambassador added that AZF is becoming a familiar name in France, but that he didn’t imagine it to be as impressive as it turned out to be. He continued: “It is and should be a matter of great pride for Qatar. I have been particularly impressed by the long-term investment the country is making into sports”.

French Ambassador to Doha, Franck Gellet, with Mohammed Khalifa Al Suwaidi, the CEO of AZF and the Director-General of Aspetar.

Qatar, Canada discuss boosting culture and sports ties

Minister of Culture and Sports H E Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali with the Ambassador of Canada to the State of Qatar, Stefanie McCollum. During the meeting, they discussed means of enhancing and developing cooperation between the two countries in the fields of culture and sports.

During the seminar,

the participants

stressed awareness

campaigns during

the camping season

to avoid misconduct

that could lead to loss

of life, destruction

of public and

private property,

or environmental

damage in violation of

rules.


CCQ hosts debate competitionTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Extending its holistic educational experience beyond the classroom, the Community College of Qatar (CCQ), Qatar’s fastest-growing educational institution, recently hosted QatarDebate’s 1st Qatar Univer-sities Debate League (QUDL) in Arabic for the 2018-2019 season, at its C-Ring Campus.

The competition witnessed the participation of students rep-resenting CCQ, Qatar University, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, and Qatar Foundation, said a release. The tournament kicked off at 9:30am and went for three debate rounds where all partic-ipating teams had a chance to compete, before crowning the league winners.

The rounds discussed three thought-provoking topics; “The Council will prevent first world countries from attracting com-petencies in third world coun-tries”; “The council will not take punitive action against soldiers for war crimes as long as they received orders”; and “The council will seize vacant lots in residential or commercial areas”.

Students representing CCQ in the tournament were Fatma Abdul Shaheed, Mariam Allangawi, Aljazi Al Korbi, Meera Alishaq, Abdullah Abdul Shaheed, Abdullah Al-Dari, Abdulaziz Al-Ansari, and Hasan Hmoud.

Commenting on the occasion, CCQ’s Dean Dr. Abdallah Haz-aimeh, said: “At CCQ, we are

honored to be hosting QUDL for the first time in collaboration with QatarDebate Center, and we firmly stand behind the message this event aims to spread as well as the Centre’s relentless pursuit of preparing and nurturing the future leaders of the nation.”

He said that there are some important life lessons we believe the participating teams will walk away with today, complemented by three key skills this debate tournament highlights – self-confidence, leadership, and team spirit.

“We can personally identify with these skills at CCQ, as without them we couldn’t have achieved the remarkable growth we enjoy today since the College first opened its doors in 2010. This is why we are always keen on having meaningful interaction with our future leaders, and we wish the best to all participating teams,” said

Echoing the Dean’s remarks, Amnah Al Azzah, CCQ Debate

Club Chair, said: “Our Club unites students from various back-grounds and academic disci-plines, who bring a broad range of perspectives to the table.”

He said that the club inspires members to think outside the box and helps take their intellectual and interpersonal skills to the next level and this not only ben-efits them in their studies but also in their personal and professional lives.

“We would like to thank QatarDebate for bringing this productive-yet-fun event to the country’s college students, and we are extremely proud of the effective participation of our Debate team in this prized com-petition,” he added.

Members of the CCQ debate team.

The competition

witnessed the

participation of

students representing

CCQ, Qatar University,

Hamad Bin Khalifa

University, and Qatar

Foundation, said a

release.

Al Jazeera Media Institutetrains 14,000 Qataris over the past 15 yearsSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Al Jazeera Media Institute has trained about 28,000 trainees over the past 15 years, among them 14,000 Qataris, said Iman Ahmed Al Ameri, Deputy Director of Al Jazeera Media Institute.

“The Institute offers its media courses almost free to Qataris and the number of Qataris joining the institute has increased after the siege. The institute offers not only training courses, but also con-sultancy to many media organizations and channels not only inside Qatar but also outside country,” Al Ameri said.

Al Ameri was talking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of “Qatari Lecturer” programme recently organized by The National Committee for Inter-national Humanitarian Law of the Ministry of Justice.

She added: “There is an important initiative under which the Institute’s curricula will be adopted by colleges in the Arab World which offer media studies programs. The meetings are being held with these colleges and it is expected to be matured by next year.”

She said that under another initiative, Al Jazeera Media Institute will provide media training to World Cup 2022 security officers from January 2019 that would be one-year training course.

“The Institute also invites all distinguished media profes-sionals from the Arab world to benefit from their experience and to transfer their expe-rience to trainees. The Institute benefit from the research they are doing.”

When asked whether the Institute provides free training courses, she said: “It offers free training courses to media stu-dents in Sudan, Somalia, Pal-estine, Syria, Morocco among other countries.”

“We are keen that the fee structure fits all trainees and there are online courses (e-Learning) available at the Institute at low fee costs inside and outside the country,” she said replying to another question about the costs of the courses at the Institute.

Among the courses being offered by the Institute are TV Talk Show Presentation, Intro-duction to TV Presentation, and Video Production for Digital Platforms.

She said that the Institute’s ambit was not only limited to offering courses rather it was a centre of research, knowledge and sciences. “It has developed a lot of media sections in some ministries in Qatar and provided con-sultants to a lot of private channels.”

Iman Ahmed Al Ameri, Deputy Director of Al Jazeera Media Institute PIC: BAHER AMIN /

THE PENINSULA

Unesco urged to issue statement on missing KhashoggiTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: A London based humanitarian organ-isation, ‘Salam International Organization for the Protection of Human Rights – SPH’, has called on the Unesco to issue a press release concerning the disappearance and alleged

murder of the Saudi journalist to condemn his killing, as what happened regarding many journalists all over the world.

On October 2, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist critical of the Saudi government, dis-appeared after having visited the Saudi con-sulate in Istanbul-Turkey, said SPH in a

statement On the same day, according to infor-mation provided by the Turkish Intelligence, two private Saudi aircraft landed at Istanbul airport with fifteen Saudi passengers, whose identities were subsequently revealed by the Turkish authorities as members of the Saudi intelligence, Air Force, and Forensics.


Aster conducts 5,871

free Lipid Profile testsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Marking the World Heart Day, Aster DM Healthcare, the largest private healthcare provider in the region has created a new history of 5,871 free Lipid Profile Tests for residents in Qatar.

The 5-hour long mega event was conducted by Aster on the occasion of World Heart Day as a part of their CSR initiative, Aster Volunteers.

The free tests were held at Aster Medical Centres in C Ring Road, Al Hilal, Al Rayyan, Industrial Area, Al Khor, Old Al Ghanim and Aster Hospital in Mathar Qadeem on Friday (September 28) from 6.00am to 11am. 206 Staff Volunteers and 52 External Volunteers including students and representatives of various social

organisations participated in coordi-nating the event. World Heart Day is observing every year on September 29 by World Heart Federation to draw worldwide attention to spread awareness about cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is the world’s biggest killer and claims more than 17.5 million lives all around the world.

Lipid Profile is group of blood test including Total Cholesterol, HDL, LDL

and Triglycerides which directly linked to risk of heart and blood vessel disease.

Stating on achievement, Dr. Sameer Moopan, Chief Executive Officer, Aster DM Healthcare- Qatar said, “We are very happy for given 5871 free lipid profile tests to the people who have registered with

us. We did it as a part of our Corporate Social Responsibility initiative titled, Aster Volunteers to spread the awareness on lifestyle disorders and importance of pre-ventive care among public”

Prof. Dr. Raveendran, Cardiologist at Aster Medical Centre, Al Hilal said, “17.5

million people die every year due to car-diovascular disease. 80% of the deaths from cardiovascular diseases can be pre-vented by avoiding four major risk behaviors, namely tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and harmful use of alcohol.”

A large number of people visited Aster Medical Centres to avail free tests.

QC to hold radio program today to raise fund for GazaTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Charity (QC), in cooperation with Al Quran Al Kareem Radio, has dedicated today’s episode of the weekly radio program entitled “Compet-itors” to QC’s projects for the Gaza Strip, which were announced as part of the ongoing humanitarian campaign entitled “Gaza, the Right to Live”.

Today’s episode will focus on supporting a package of projects to provide generators and fuel to schools, hospitals and home amidst long power outages, which last for 16-20

hours per day. Also, there will be a considerable concentration through the episode on gar-nering support for water projects to benefit the people in Gaza.

The episode will also focus on supporting health projects, as Gaza suffers from the shortage of medicines by 45 percent, and there is a severe shortage in laboratory supplies by 58 percent as well as some 4,800 patients in Gaza need daily access to life-saving health services for their survival.

Salman Abdullah Abdul Ghani, a prominent person, and

Sheikh Abdullah Al-Ashool will be special guests at today’s episode of the program, which is presented by Dr Abdulrahman Al Harami.

Qatar Charity has urged the benefactors and good doers in Qatar to listen to the “Compet-itors” program, which will be broadcast through Al Quran Al Kareem Radio today at 8pm. The aim is to garner support for the people of the Gaza Strip, who are in urgent need for food, health care, education and housing, as they are deprived of their most basic rights, and struggling desper-

ately to survive.The charity also urged them

to actively participate in sup-porting QC’s projects and its humanitarian and development efforts to ease the hardship of the people in Gaza and meet their various basic needs.

More information on QC’s projects within the framework of the “Gaza, the Right to Live” campaign, is available on QC’s website and App, as well as such information, can be requested by dialing QC’s hotline 44667711.

Qatar Charity has been implementing humanitarian and development projects for the

benefit of the Palestinian people since the 1990s. It has a field office in Gaza, which oversees its projects directly, ensures its quick intervention in times of crisis, and cooperates with international, regional and local humanitarian partners.

During the period 2008-2018, the charity managed to implement 1462 relief and development projects in several areas and sponsored more than 15,000 people within its social welfare efforts. These projects, directly and indirectly, benefit some 800,000 people and fam-ilies annually.

Malabar Gold offers 250,000 gold coins in festive promotionTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Malabar Gold & Diamonds, one among the largest jewellery retailers globally with a strong retail network of 250 retail outlets spread across ten countries, has unfolded the details of its much-awaited Diwali promotion.

Malabar Gold & Diamonds is also celebrating its 25th anniversary during this festive season. The company is taking this opportunity to thank their customers for their continued support over the years, said a statement.

This season’s festive promotions brings every customer a chance to be a winner through this festival. The customers get unmatched chances to win a total of 250,000 gold coins across their showrooms globally.

Customers can win a guaranteed gold coin or up to 100 gold coins instantly on purchase of gold jewellery worth QR2,500 via ‘Scratch & Win’ coupons. Adding to the above, customers also get two gram gold coin on diamond jewellery purchase of QR5,000 and a one gram gold coin on purchase of diamond jewellery worth QR3,000.

Also, customers will have a great opportunity to get protected from the increasing gold rate by just paying 10% of the entire amount on the selected gold jewellery. This offer is valid until November 10 only.

The customers also get a fabulous chance to

buy 8 gm gold coins with absolutely no making charges from any of Malabar Gold & Diamonds outlets in Qatar during this period. Furthermore, customers can avail the zero deduction offer on 22K (GCC) gold jewellery exchange as well. Above offers are valid at their outlets in Qatar until November 10, 2018.

Blueair JOY S: A powerful air purifier now available in QatarTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: In the wake of rising awareness of ambient air quality and its impact on health in the Middle East, Blueair, a world leader in air purification solutions, has launched JOY S – a powerful air purifier for compact living.

With cutting-edge, portable design, JOY S is offered in five different colours to suit any interior.

Backed by Swedish expertise, JOY S is uniquely equipped to deliver clean air thanks to its HEPASilent™ filtration tech-nology, which uses a combination of elec-trostatic and mechanical processes to remove 99.97% of airborne pollutants, bac-teria, viruses, allergens, microplastics, smoke, dust, pet dander and pollen as small as 0.1 micron in size.

JOY S has a 200-cubic-metre-per-hour

CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rate) and whisper-quiet performance. The new Blueair product assures clean air for an area of 16 square metres every 12 minutes, making it ideal for the small and medium rooms found in many Gulf homes. JOY S is available at across Jumbo Electronics and leading hypermarkets.

According to the World Health Organ-ization, air pollution is the world’s single biggest environmental health threat. Exposure to indoor air pollution can lead to a wide range of diseases including acute and chronic respiratory conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia, lung cancer, ischemic heart disease, stroke and cataract. Polluted indoor air can also trigger asthma and allergies.

Commenting about the JOY S, TR Ganesh, General Manager, Blueair Middle East, said, “The importance of clean air, with

its tremendous positive health benefits, cannot be overstated. Residents are increas-ingly adopting air purification technology to improve their living environments. Con-sumers expect their air purifiers to extract

all impurities from indoor air while deliv-ering the best CAD rate with minimal capital outlay and energy consumption. JOY S meets these requirements in a single package.”

Blueair JOY S in different colours.

Radio Olive organises Dandiya Night with RJsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar witnessed the most magnificent event of the year Dandiya Night with RJs, the first ever Dandiya event by Radio Olive 106.3 FM at Regency Halls.

The event was organized by Tezkar in association with Radio Olive 106.3 FM. The power

packed performance by Qatar’s favourite RJs, RJ Neeti, RJ Sumit, RJ Simran, RJ Harsha, RJ Neeraj and RJ Lallit along with DJ Sar-faraz enthralled the audience.

Around 800 people attended the event that included both Indian expa-triates and Qatari nationals. Dandiya night was graced with the presence of Hemant Kumar

Trivedi, First Secretary (Infor-mation & Education), Captain Kapil Kaushik (Defence Attache) and many important personalities of Qatar including Suhail Bukhari, Harish Kanjani, Ramesh Bhulchandani, Manoj Megchiani among others.

Dandiya Night with RJs was sponsored by Rayyan Water, ATpik, NIIT Qatar and Q tickets.

People enjoying Dandiya Night with RJs.

The 5-hour long mega event

was conducted by Aster on

the occasion of World Heart

Day as a part of their CSR

initiative, Aster Volunteers.

Ministry allocates hotline for Winter Camping SeasonDOHA: The Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment, represented by the department of reference information systems, has al located a hotl ine (44262000) to receive inquiries and complaints regarding the winter camping, during the official working hours from 7:00 am to 2:00 pm, through its oper-ations room.

These rooms are estab-lished annually for the season management to monitor the performance of the booking system and receive any complaints related to it and deal with it immediately.

The winter camping season 2018-2019 will begin on the first of November and continue until 15 April 2019, in several locations on the beaches and mainland. The registration process for camping began today and will continue until December 31.

The number of land and sea camps available in all areas of the country this year is about 2,630 camps, with an increase of 30 camps over last year’s season. The booking and payment methods with the amount of QR10,000 was marked by a good flow and great demand, and on the first day 770 camps were booked


QCDC hosts training programme for counsellorsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Career Devel-opment Center (QCDC), a member of Qatar Foundation, has organised an advanced training programme on the use of its Career Advising System (CAS).

The one-week programme, was held in partnership with the US Embassy in Qatar and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to provide training to over 90 academic counselors and career practitioners.

The program familiarized academic and career counselors with the use of CAS, a unique career advising system which provides tailor-made solutions that factor in Qatar’s social and economic conditions. QCDC developed CAS in co-operation with Kuder Inc., a world leader in career planning services, and various government entities, to integrate specialized IT solutions into the career guidance framework in Qatar.

QCDC rolled out CAS across public secondary schools in Qatar during the second semester of the 2017-2018 aca-demic year within the framework of a memorandum of understanding between QCDC and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

Abdulla Al Mansoori, Director, QCDC, said, “This advanced training programme

builds on our achievements last year, including the training of 70 academic counselors from dif-ferent schools across Qatar.

“QCDC, in collaboration with the US Embassy and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, is working to promote capacity building and instill a culture of career

guidance at the core of our schools’ objectives. As Qatar pursues its journey toward pro-moting a knowledge-based economy, a balance must be struck between the demands of the labor market and youth aspirations,” Al Mansoori added.

The training program brought together nearly

90 participants, including 70 academic counsellors from public schools across Qatar, as well as participants from the Academic Bridge Program – under Pre-University Education at QF – which recently inked a partnership with QCDC to use and activate CAS.

The new career advising system features diverse and innovative components as well as psychometric and personality assessment tools to help students identify the most appropriate academic and career paths in line with the future needs of Qatar.

Academic counsellors during an advanced training programme on the use of QCDC’s Career Advising System.

Sidra Medicine to host two-day pediatric and orthopedic symposiumTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Sidra Medicine will host a two-day Orthopedic Symposium this weekend as part of its ongoing efforts to share knowledge and expertise with colleagues in Qatar and beyond.

The Pediatric Fractures and Polytrauma Symposium will take place on October 19 and 20, in the Sidra Auditorium in the Main Hospital Building. This event will bring together medical professionals of all levels who participate in the treatment and management of children who sustain multiple injuries and fractures.

Dr Abdelsalam Hegazy, a Pediatric Orthopedic Con-sultant at Sidra Medicine and the Chair of the Organizing Committee, said, “The sym-posium is the first of its kind at Sidra Medicine. The program is aimed at Healthcare Providers from different disciplines, to help provide the best care for our Pediatric Trauma Patients. It will combine both interactive and didactic sessions with an aim of providing holistic care. This will be an annual event with a different theme each year.”

Attendees will include orthopedic surgeons, emer-gency department physicians, physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses and allied health prac-titioners, including physiother-apists, occupational therapists and orthopedic casting techni-cians, as well as anyone else working directly with Pediatric Patients presenting with mul-tiple trauma and fractures.

Sessions will include lec-tures presenting the most up to date evidence for the treatment of multiple pediatric fractures, and hands-on skills workshops

which will introduce novel sur-gical techniques for man-agement of Sypracondylar Humerus fractures (breaks to the bone just above the elbow). Workshops will also emphasize the importance of age-appro-priate treatment of pediatric femoral fractures (thigh bone fractures).

Dr Jason Howard, Sidra Medicine’s Division Chief of Orthopedic Surgery will join a number of hospital colleagues, and noted international experts including Dr Andrew Howard from Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada who is the Director of the Office of Inter-national Surgery and spe-cializes in injury prevention in children and Dr Kai Zieberth from Bern University Hospital for Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology in Switzerland.

The Pediatric Fractures and Polytrauma Symposium is the latest in the Sidra Symposia series, a popular program which has attracted a large fol-lowing in the country. The series is directed towards academia, researchers, physi-cians, healthcare providers and regulatory providing them with access to knowledge, ideas, techniques and best practice across a variety of clinical areas.

Dr Jason Howard

Qatar concludes participation in Frankfurt International Book FairTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Qatari pavilion concluded its participation in the 70th session of the Frankfurt International Book Fair Exhibition, highlighting the richness and distinctiveness of Qatari culture.

The Qatari pavilion’s visitors were intro-duced to the aspects of Qatari culture pre-sented by the distinguished publications of the Ministry of Culture and Sports and the

museums of Qatar, Katara Publishing house and Hamad bin Khalifa University Press, as well as the publications of the Qatari pub-lishing houses, including, Rosa Publishing House and Lusail Publishing and Qatari works translated into the German language. It also gave visitors a clear insight into the development of the Qatari cultural landscape.

During his visit to the Qatari pavilion at the exhibition, Ambassador of the State of

Qatar to Germany Sheikh Saoud bin Abdul-rahman Al Thani appreciated the efforts of the Ministry of Culture and Sports to high-lighting the Qatari culture and the cultural efforts of the State of Qatar, stressing the importance of the continuous Qatar’s partic-ipation in this exhibition for 15 years as well as the success of this participation in pro-moting the opportunities of knowledge and cultural exchange, especially in translating Qatari works into the German language.

The programme familiarized academic and

career counsellors with the use of CAS, a

unique career advising system which provides

tailor-made solutions that factor in Qatar’s

social and economic conditions.


WCM-Q helps set management

guidelines on arthritisTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) has collaborated with regional and international experts to adapt international guidelines for the management of rheumatoid arthritis to the Eastern Mediterranean region.

The project brought together experts from 24 institutions across the region, the USA and Canada to adapt the guidelines of the American College of Rheu-matology (ACR) to suit local cir-cumstances. The ultimate aim of the project is to ensure rheu-matoid arthritis patients across the Eastern Mediterranean region receive the very best care possible.

Rheumatoid arthritis is char-acterized by painful inflam-mation and progressive immo-bility of the joints, particularly in the hands, feet and cervical spine. While there is currently

no cure for rheumatoid arthritis, if treated correctly symptoms can be alleviated and progression of the disease slowed.

The guideline adaptation project was conducted under the guidance of Dr Thurayya Arayssi, WCM-Q Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education and a practicing rheumatologist, in partnership with Dr Elie Akl, Pro-fessor of Medicine and Director of the American University of

Beirut (AUB) GRADE Center, and Director of the Clinical Research Institute at AUB.

Dr Arayssi said, “Because rheumatoid arthritis cannot be cured, treatment focuses on long-term management of the disease. As such, it is very important that rheumatologists have access to the most up-to-date treatment guidelines so their patients receive the best possible care.”

Dr Arayssi has been working with fellow clinicians and epi-demiologists to systematically analyze each of the treatment guidelines of the ACR and tailor them to the Eastern Mediter-ranean region. This process of adaptation and development of guidelines (known in the medical world as ‘adolopment’) follows an established protocol that con-siders factors such as cost, impact on health equities, balance of benefits and harms, and acceptability. Adolopment

is considered to be far more effi-cient in terms of time and expense than creating new or ‘de novo’ guidelines from scratch.

The working group adapted the ACR guidelines in two separate waves, eventually producing 16 recommendations for the man-agement of early and established rheumatoid arthritis in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

The results of this process

have now been documented in a research paper entitled ‘Rec-ommendations for the man-agement of rheumatoid arthritis in the Eastern Mediterranean region: an adolopment of the 2015 American College of Rheu-matology guidelines.’ It has been published in Clinical Rheuma-tology, a leading medical journal. The group has also published its methodology in Health and

Quality of Life Outcomes, another leading journal.

The Qatar National Research Fund’s (QNRF) Conference & Workshop Sponsorship Program (CWSP) and Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar funded the first wave of adaptation. The International League of Associ-ations for Rheumatology (ILAR) funded the second wave of adaptation.

Distinguished rheumatologists from across the Eastern Mediterranean region posing for group picture in Doha.

The project brought

together experts from

24 institutions across

the region, the USA

and Canada to adapt

the guidelines of the

American College

of Rheumatology

(ACR) to suit local

circumstances.

HBKU researcher competes in 10th season of Stars of ScienceTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The 10th season of Qatar Foun-dation’s edutainment TV show Stars of Science has featured Qatar-based Nour Majbour from Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s (HBKU) Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI) among the top nine contestants.

Majbour, a full-time research asso-ciate at QBRI, skillfully fought her way through the casting stage with her pro-posed innovation in early Parkinson’s disease (PD) detection. Elaborating on her pioneering idea, she said, “My Par-kinson’s Early Detection Kit aims to surpass the current limitations in

disease diagnostics through the use of antibodies. A type of protein integral to the body’s immune system that may be leveraged to identify biological signs of the onset of PD.

“For a neurodegenerative disease without a known cure, early detection and treatment are instrumental in relieving symptoms and improving the patients’ quality of life, particularly those who suffer from a lack of options and resources to seek treatment. Wit-nessing the rapid degenerative process of PD in family members has impacted my research, which aims to honor their legacy and ease the suffering of many other patients worldwide.”

Majbour’s participation in a public platform that actively empowers Arab youth promoted her to an ambassador for women’s entrepreneurship in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) – a traditionally male-dominated profession.

Praising Majbour’s role in decon-structing barriers for Arab women, her mentor and Acting Executive Director at QBRI Dr Omar El Agnaf said, “Nour’s entrepreneurial spirit and dedication have crafted an inspirational story for young women whose involvement in STEM is essential to closing the per-sisting gender gap. Today, women still only make up thirty percent of the

world’s researchers.”HBKU’s dedication to fostering tal-

ented women in STEM is underlined by the University’s lasting collaboration with Stars of Science – a program that aims to promote access to knowledge and opportunity across broad view-ership demographics.

Stars of Science, which receives additional support from HBKU’s other research institutes including Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) and Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), follows the journey of nine Arab innovators through prototyping and customer val-idation episodes until the finale. Nour Majbour

NU-Q professor publishes novelTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: A new book by North-western University in Qatar Professor Sam Meekings uncovers the story behind a painting by Vincent van Gogh of his personal doctor, Paul Gachet. The book explores the history of Gachet’s life as well as the painting itself and brings nuance to this doctor’s melan-choly character.

Meekings, an accomplished novelist and poet, is launching his new novel ‘The Afterlives of Doctor Gachet,’ at the London Review of Books Bookshop in Bloomsbury, as well as delivering a live reading and talk at Oxford University in the UK.

“It follows Dr Gachet’s life, from his work in asylums and cholera wards to the contro-versial exhibitions of the first Impressionists, from the bat-tlefields of the Franco-Prussian war and its bloody aftermath in the Paris Commune, through to treating Van Gogh in Auvers,” said Meekings.

“This is the latest of Sam Meekings’s already distinguished roster of books that illuminate his talent as a story teller—and gift as a writer,” said Everette E.

Dennis, dean and CEO. Through historical fiction,

Meekings explained that his book portrays similarities and differences in how people responded to depression over the last hundred years. “On the one hand it shows us what life was really like in different eras, cultures, and places, and on the other, it reminds us of how similar each of us is deep down in our longings, doubts, desires and goals,” said Meekings.

In the book, Meekings traces the journey of Van Gogh’s painting, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, from fashionable Parisian salons to the bunkers full of confiscated ‘degenerate’ art in Nazi Germany, and from ref-ugees arriving in America to its mysterious disappearance with a reclusive billionaire in Tokyo.

NU-Q Professor Sam Meekings

NBK Automobiles to display latest cars at QMS THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Nasser Bin Khaled Automobiles, the authorized general distr ibutor of

Mercedes-Benz in Qatar, is showcasing wide range of Mercedes-Benz cars, in the eighth edition of Qatar Motor Show 2018 (QMS) which will

open tomorrow and will continue till October 21 at Doha Exhibition and Convention Center.

Welcoming visitors to the show’s largest pavilion, the NBK Automobiles’s luxurious pavilion will welcome visitors and car enthusiasts to have closer look at various models of SUVs, sporty cars, coupe’s and the famous luxury sedan cars.

Besides, NBK Automobiles will amaze the audience with the unveiling of three top new cars on the opening day: the sporty CLS 53 AMG, the SUV GLE 450 and the iconic Mercedes-Maybach S-Class 650.

Qatar Motor Show is the most important motoring event in the Middle East for car lovers and trade professionals. The exhibition has become a

regular date in the calendar and offers one of the best informative platforms about car manufacturing.

Nasser Bin Khaled Automo-biles has built its success by establishing solid, longstanding relationships with its cus-tomers, and its wide product offering which appeals to all. As a brand name, Nasser Bin Khaled Automobiles is deeply associated with a history of premium quality service and market leadership.

The company promises to not only meet customer expec-tations, but to exceed them. Established in 1957, Nasser Bin Khaled Automobiles is Qatar’s exclusive distributor of three of the world’s most respected, iconic brands: Mercedes-Benz, M e r c e d e s - A M G a n d Mercedes-Maybach.

QCS launches voluntary programmeTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Cancer Society (QCS) has launched its first voluntary programme with an initial registration of 70 volunteers. The voluntary porgramme includes two segments namely ‘Together for Them’ and ‘Preparation’.

The programme aims to spread the culture of volunteerism and training volun-teers to provide humanitarian work profes-sionally. Through the programme volunteers will support to spread awareness about dif-ferent types of cancer prevention and impor-tance of early detection, said Mariam Al Noaimi, General Manager, QCS.

The volunteers will also support and advocate for people living with cancer.

‘Together for Them’ segment of the pro-gramme aims at recruiting community members from the age of 20 years and above. They will be trained to promote com-munity awareness about the importance of adopting a healthy lifestyle, cancer related knowledge and how to support people living with the disease.

The segment ‘Preparation’ aims at involving high school students to increase awareness among the community.

Those interested in joining the voluntary programme could register through the link: https://www.qcs.qa/get-involved.

Meekings, an

accomplished

novelist and poet, is

launching his new

novel ‘The Afterlives

of Doctor Gachet,’ at

the London Review

of Books Bookshop in

Bloomsbury.

QCS volunteers speaking to community members during a recent awareness campaign.

09TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018 MIDDLE EAST

Khashoggi case: Turkey searches Saudi Consulate AFP

ISTANBUL: Turkish police yesterday searched the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul for the first time since journalist Jamal Khashoggi went missing.

Khashoggi, a Saudi national and US resident who became increasingly critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has not been seen since he walked into the Istanbul con-sulate to sort out marriage paperwork on October 2.

Turkish officials have said they believe he was killed — a claim Saudi Arabia has denied — with the controversy dealing a huge blow to the kingdom’s image and efforts by its youthful crown prince to showcase a reform drive.

Until now, Riyadh has not allowed Turkish investigators to search the consulate — officially Saudi territory — with reports both sides were at odds over the conditions.

But late yesterday evening — after Turkish authorities placed high iron barriers in front of the consulate — a motorcade of six cars drew up and Turkish police and prosecutors entered the premises.

Some police were in uniform

while other officials were in suits carrying printers and files.

Dozens of media organisa-tions — some of whom had set up tents — have kept a constant vigil outside the consulate in the expectation that the search would finally begin.

A Saudi delegation had entered the consulate one hour before the Turkish police arrived and appeared still to be inside as the search was conducted.

“Just spoke to the King of Saudi Arabia who denies any knowledge of whatever may have happened ‘to our Saudi Arabian citizen’,” Trump tweeted. Riyadh’s most recent comments have focused on having no knowledge of any killing or denying any such order had been given. “The denial was

very, very strong,” Trump later told reporters at the White House. “It sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers. Who knows?”

The search came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and King Salman also had their first telephone talks since the controversy erupted, in what appeared to be a concil-iatory conversation according to official readouts.

While lurid claims have appeared in Turkish media — including that Khashoggi was tortured and dismembered — Turkey’s leadership has so far refrained from pointing the finger directly at Riyadh in public comments.

An investment conference which was scheduled to take place in Riyadh next week, has been hit by a string of prominent cancellations.

Business barons including British billionaire Richard Branson and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, as well as media powerhouses Bloomberg and CNN, have pulled out of the Future Investment Initiative (FII).

And in a major new blow for the event, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Ford chairman Bill Ford also cancelled plans to

attend as well as Larry Fink, the head of investment giant BlackRock, and Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone.

A section on the glitzy event website with pictures of the speakers has now been taken down. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he still

plans to attend but would “take (it)... into account” if more infor-mation came out next week.

Saudi stocks have also been hit, suffering days of heavy losses. But Riyadh on Sunday vowed to hit back against any punitive measures while Trump has also made clear he is

reluctant to curb all-important arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Britain, France and Germany also released a rare joint statement saying they were treating Khashoggi’s disap-pearance “with the utmost seri-ousness” and calling for a “credible investigation”.

Turkish crime scene investigation team members arrive at the Consulate General of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul after the start of joint Turkish-Saudi probe of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi, yesterday.

Late yesterday

evening — after

Turkish authorities

placed high iron

barriers in front of

the consulate — a

motorcade of six cars

drew up and Turkish

police and prosecutors

entered the premises.

Syria reopens two border crossings, but many escape regime controlAFP

BEIRUT: Closed for years due to the civil war, Syria yesterday reopened a vital border post with Jordan as well as a crossing into the Israeli-controlled Golan, as President Bashar Al Assad’s regime bolsters its control after sweeping advances against rebels.

Two white jeeps crossed into Israeli-controlled territory during a low-key ceremony to mark the reopening of the Quneitra crossing in the Golan Heights, four years after it was closed when Syrian rebels seized nearby territory.

Dozens of kilometres (miles) to the south and three years after it too was closed, a black metal border gate opened at the

Nassib crossing into Jordan as police and customs officials stood nearby.

The Jordan crossing was previously a major trading route, while the remote Quneitra post is used primarily by a United Nations force which monitors a ceasefire line sepa-rating Israeli-occupied parts of the Golan Heights from Syria.

Their reopening were indi-cations of a clear trend in Syria’s civil war, with Assad’s gov-ernment — backed by Russian and Iranian military support — taking back huge swathes of land in the past year.

Also yesterday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said after talks in Damascus with his Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim Jaafari that the

country’s Albu Kamal border post with Iraq would also reopen “as soon as possible”.

Even though Syria’s gov-ernment still controls only around half of the border crossings with its neighbours, Assad’s forces have made major advances near Jordan and seized almost the entire province of Quneitra this summer.

Syrian businessman Hisham Falyoun, who lives in Jordan with his wife and children, was the first person to cross the border in his black Mercedes jeep. The border crossing, known as Jaber on the Jordanian side and Nassib on the Syrian side, was a key trade route before Amman closed it after the post was overrun by rebels in April 2015.

Israeli soldiers close the gate as UN forces drive through the Quneitra crossing in the Golan Heights on the border line between Israel and Syria, yesterday.

Israeli fire wounds 32 Palestinians in mass protest along Gaza beach AP

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s Health Ministry says 32 Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli fire during a mass protest along the beach near the Israeli frontier.

Protesters threw flaming tires over the fence yesterday, while fishing boats hoisted Pal-estinian flags. Israeli forces responded with tear gas and live fire.

The ruling Hamas group has been staging border protests for the past six months in hopes of easing a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade.

It has intensified the pro-tests in recent weeks as Egyptian-mediated cease-fire efforts have faltered. Over the weekend, Israel halted Qatari-donated fuel shipments to Gaza’s power plant in response to the escalated protests.

Since March, 155 Pales-tinians participating or attending the protests were killed.

Israel says it is defending its border. An Israeli soldier was fatally shot in July.

Israeli troops yesterday shot and killed a Palestinian man in

the northern West Bank, the military said.

The incident came as security forces continued to search for a Palestinian who shot and killed two Israelis in a West Bank industrial park last week. The military notified the man’s family yesterday that it intends to demolish his home in response to the attack.

The area has experienced an uptick in violence since last week’s shooting.

Also yesterday, the Israeli army ordered a nearby Pales-tinian school closed following alleged stone-throwing pro-tests, firing tear gas and stun grenades to clear out the building.

The military said yesterday it declared the 500-student school in Sawyeh a closed mil-itary zone in response to a “large number of popular terror acts.” But students defied the order and came to classes with their families, backed by the Palest inian educat ion minister.

Troops fired tear gas and stun grenades into the school early yesterday, sending stu-dents and their families scram-bling out of the building.

US sanctions violate Iranian human rights, say newspapersAP

TEHRAN: Several Iranian reformist newspapers yesterday published a rare joint editorial criticising US sanctions against the country and asking “world journalists” to defend Iranian human rights.

The editorial was published in both Farsi and English yes-terday in at least eight state-owned and pro-reform dailies.

It said the US has “lied” about the purpose of sanctions, which target the needs of ordinary people and curtail access to medical supplies and equipment.

The joint editorial said that “trade restrictions, blockades, embargoes, freezing of assets and other economic sanctions are incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations.” It called the US pullout from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran “an

undiplomatic and immoral” policy. The agreement with world powers had established a protocol to limit Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanc-tions relief.

Iran is negotiating with European trading partners to try and find a way to circumvent US sanctions and remain within the nuclear deal. The editorial is seen as part of efforts by Iranian reformists to address

international public opinion ahead of the implementation of a new round of US sanctions tar-geting oil in early November.

Hard-liners opposed to rap-prochement with the West were always skeptical of the nuclear deal, and have viewed the with-drawal as proof of their long-standing belief that the US cannot be trusted.

Yesterday, Iran’s President Hassan Rowhani, a relative

moderate, tried to downplay the upcoming US sanctions targeting the country’s vital oil and gas sector.

Also yesterday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said Tehran received a US note confirming its withdrawal from a decades-old treaty affirming friendly rela-tions between the two countries.

The Trump administration

announced it would terminating the 1955 amity treaty earlier this month in response to a UN court order that the US lift sanctions on Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said withdrawing from the treaty was long overdue and followed Iran “groundlessly” bringing a complaint with the International Court of Justice challenging US sanctions on the basis that they were a violation of the pact.

Turkey suspends over 250 senior officials AFP

ANKARA: Turkey has suspended more than 250 senior local officials over alleged terror links and activities unrelated to their posts, the interior ministry said yesterday.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu removed 259 local neigh-bourhood heads — known as

“muhtar” in Turkish — from their posts, his office said in a statement.

It did not provide further detail on what terror organisa-tions the officials were allegedly linked to.

The muhtar is the elected chief of a village or a city neigh-bourhood, and responsible for day-to-day services for

residents such as registration. Turkey has suspended or sacked over 140,000 public sector employees because of alleged links to the US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen blamed for the July 2016 failed coup and Kurdish militants.

Turkey claims Gulen ordered the coup but he denies the accusations.

‘Iran embassy in Ankara gets bomb threat’AFP

ANKARA: An individual who claimed to have links to the Islamic State extremist group threatened to attack the Iranian embassy in Ankara, Tehran’s envoy in Turkey said yesterday, denying Turkish media reports that he had been evacuated.

“The suicide attack against the embassy was only a threat,” Ambassador Mohammad Ebrahim Taherian Fard said. “Nothing significant has happened and things are under control.” “The threat was made by someone who introduced himself as linked to IS,” Fard said, quoted by state news agency IRNA.

Turkish media said Fard had been evacuated but the ambassador and Tehran flatly denied the report as a com-plete fabrication.

“Such a claim is a sheer lie, and the personnel at our embassy are present at their workplace in full health and security,” the foreign ministry said.

Although German

states have fewer

powers than

those in the US,

state elections

are extremely

important.

They’re where

the parties try

out electoral

platforms, tactics,

and alliances, and

where national

political stars are

born.

THE JAPAN NEWS

10 TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018VIEWS

German voters are tired of immigration politics

Sunday’s election in Bavaria, in which the long-dominant gov-erning party, the Christian Social Union, lost its majority,

showed that there’s no more business as usual in German politics - and that the change has little to do with the massively overblown immigration issue. The vote gives an important opening to Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has to fight to complete her term, but also poses new risks for her.

Although German states have fewer powers than those in the US, state elections are extremely important. They’re where the parties try out electoral platforms, tactics, and alliances, and where national political stars are born. Voters are active: The turnout in Bavaria on Sunday was 72.4 percent, only slightly lower than the 76.2 percent that voted at last year’s national election.

Bavaria, the state with the lowest unemployment (2.8 percent compared with 5.1 percent nationwide) and the home of top companies such as Siemens, BMW, Allianz SE, and Infineon Technologies SE, stands out even against that background. It is, for example, the only state in which Ger-many’s strongest party, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, doesn’t

run in elec-tions, relying instead on a local ally, the CSU. This has given the CSU an outsized role in national pol-itics. It’s a full-blown part of the current ruling coalition despite winning votes in just one of Germany’s 16 states. This year, it has been a nightmare coalition partner. As polls showed the CSU

wouldn’t hold on to its majority in Bavaria, the party’s leadership swung to the right to avoid losing votes to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany. The tactic resulted in CSU leader Horst Seehofer’s attempts to single-handedly limit immigration and step up deportations.

Both other parties in the nationwide coalition hated this tactic but could do little as Seehofer paralyzed the gov-ernment. Merkel couldn’t fire him because she needed to preserve the

CDU-CSU alliance, and she looked diminished by the strife, even helpless. This cost the CDU a drop in popularity from the nearly 33 percent it won in the national election last September to between 26 percent and 28 percent in current polls, the lowest the center-right political force has ever been.

The election proved that Seehofer’s tactics had been a big mistake. With just 10.2 percent of the vote, the AfD did worse than in last year’s national election, when it won 12.4 percent in Bavaria and 12.6 percent nationwide.

“The election in Bavaria should be a lesson to everyone who wants to lean to the right instead of relying on one’s success in the political center,” tweeted Serap Guler, a member of the CDU federal leadership. “You don’t fight populism with populism.”

The message from conservative Bavarian voters was clear: Many would rather vote Green than back an anti-immigrant party, even if it’s a familiar one, and others just want politicians to focus on local issues, such as small business and transportation. The Greens are now the second-strongest party in Bavaria with 17.5 percent support; they won the election in Munich, the state capital, and they’re the political force with which the CSU, winner of 37.2 percent of the vote, could build the most popular two-party ruling coalition, though it prefers the Free Voters as a partner. A mod-erate stance on immigration and more attention to local affairs and the envi-ronment probably would’ve given the CSU a stronger result without under-mining the nationwide coalition. As it is, Seehofer in particular comes out of the election weakened, and Merkel must be quietly pleased despite a loss for her allies. The Greens’ compas-sionate stance on immigration aligned much better with the CSU voters’ values - and with the stance of the Bavarian Catholic Church, for that matter - than Seehofer’s attempts to shove asylum seekers back from Ger-many’s borders.

Merkel’s strategy of holding onto the center rather than appeasing the nationalist fringe is suddenly looking

smarter. That will help her stay on as chancellor to the end of the legislative period in 2021 and as party leader past the December leadership election. There may be less pressure on her to shift to the right, especially if the Greens also make strong gains in the next state election, in Hesse, on Oct. 28. They appear poised to do so, perhaps even allowing the CDU to keep gov-erning the state with them rather than build some new coalition.

One complication for Merkel is that the Social Democratic Party, part of the federal ruling coalition, did terribly in Bavaria. With 9.7 percent of the vote, the once-formidable workers’ party is sinking into irrelevance. Its nationwide polling numbers are dismal: It consist-ently lags behind the Afd now and is beginning to fall behind the Greens. The latter, with a political program that appeals to millennials and liberal voters in general, have a chance to turn themselves from an environmentally focused party into the biggest center-left force - the slot in the political spectrum that the SPD thought it would own forever.

Now the Social Democrats’ string of defeats means they may rethink their participation in the governing coalition; if they do, a new election is likely. Merkel wouldn’t be the conservatives’ uncon-tested choice to lead the CSU into it.

Merkel also may be undermined by her party’s weak performance in Hesse later this month; she’ll be blamed for it even if Seehofer and his allies in the CDU are really more at fault. Both Merkel and the battered SPD could benefit, however, from moving on and finally trying to govern Germany more actively than the CSU leadership’s dis-ruptive electoral politics allowed them to do for most of 2018. There are plenty of issues apart from immigration on which they can score wins, including dealing with impending diesel-car bans in big cities and expanding the social safety net while the strong economy allows it. If the Bavarian results are any indication, voters are getting tired of the immigration debate and hoping they get more attention from the government and politicians in general.

LEONID BERSHIDSKY BLOOMBERG

QUOTE OF THE DAY

(The election) showed that even with the best

economic data, with near-full employment in almost

all parts of Bavaria, that isn’t enough for

people when something is missing that is so

important — confidence.

Angela Merkel

German Chancellor

Media should stand with victims in their coverage of disasters

Coveying useful information to those affected by disasters accurately and promptly amid a succession of major natural

disasters: The importance of press reporting should be recognized anew.

Newspaper Week has started. “Stories that close in on the truth and stand near the people” was chosen as this year’s slogan. It is a realization of the magnitude of the expectations placed on newspapers.

An earthquake hit northern parts of Osaka Prefecture in June; torrential rain wrought havoc in western Japan in July; damage was caused by a typhoon in September; and an earth-quake occurred in Hokkaido in the same month. Sending a number of journalists to these disaster-stricken areas, The Yomiuri Shimbun has reported the actual state of damage and the voices of people affected by the disasters. We have also established

“Kurashi-no Keijiban,” notice boards on which information for disaster victims is provided.

In disaster reporting, not only newspapers but also various other media, such as television and the internet, convey information, by making use of their respective strengths.

During the torrential rain that hit western Japan, evacuations did not necessarily occur even after such information as evacuation advisories and directives and an emergency heavy rain warning had been issued, and a number of elderly people died in their homes. Why didn’t they escape? The Yomiuri Shimbun, in articles examining the disaster, high-lighted “a gap that exists between the act of conveying information and [people] having the information truly conveyed [to them].” The articles also revealed the inadequacy of disaster-prevention plans of local governments and were published with a belief that

news reporting is something that must help to prevent similar reoccurrences.

Even with major disasters, the general public tends to lose interest over time. Whenever the occasion arises, we will convey the present state of affairs in disaster-hit areas and push for swift reconstruction.

It is a cause of concern that in recent years, responses taken by local governments have differed with regard to the disclosure of the names of those missing during disasters.

In emergencies, the serving of public interest in the search of missing people should be prioritized over the protection of private information. Local governments should not hesitate to release the names of missing persons. Whether the names of victims are reported should be the responsi-bility of news organizations to determine.

An emerging issue in the internet era has been the ease with which “fake” or inaccurate news spreads.

The controversy

has troubled

Saudi Arabia as

its investment

conference, due

to take place next

week in Riyadh

and dubbed

“Davos in the

Desert,” has been

hit by a string

of prominent

cancellations.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK [email protected]

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM [email protected]

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI [email protected]

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Saudi impasse

US President Donald Trump said yesterday he is sending his top diplomat Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Saudi Arabia after Saudi King Salman

told him in a phone call that he has no idea what happened to missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Following days of mounting tensions and reluctance to cooperate with Turkey to investigate the disappearance of Khashoggi, under pressures from different directions, the Saudi authorities agreed to allow Turkish investigators to enter the consulate and conduct joint search.

Turkey has so far refrained from pointing the finger directly at Riyadh in public comments or officially, but has been asking for Saudi cooperation to allow investigations take place as the crime took place on its soil and at diplo-matic mission whose basic job is to facilitate people’s needs and ensure their safety.

President Trump has threatened “severe punishment” if Khashoggi was killed inside Saudi mission. However, the US President has repeatedly made it clear that he will not risk billions of dollars in deals to sell weapons.

The controversy has troubled Saudi Arabia as its investment conference, due to take place next week in Riyadh and dubbed “Davos in the Desert,” has been hit by a string of prominent cancellations. Most prominent and major global business barons and media powerhouses, have pulled out of the Future Investment Initiative (FII).

Along the statements made by President Trump to impose “severe punishment” and the strict demand of traditional allies like Britain, France and Germany calling for credible investigations have all together led to Saudi’s frustration and emotional reactions to retaliate any punitive action.

In a jerky response to US President and the Western allies, Saudi said it “will respond with greater action,” if there are

measures and that its economy “has an influential and vital role in the global economy” what has been considered by economists that Saudi may be threatening to use oil as a weapon and to show its ability to drive oil prices up further.

The unprecedented diplomatic tensions are not only between Saudi and US or Turkey, but also with the entire world that is looking for a simple answer to a very simple question about the whereabouts of the missing journalist Khashoggi who disappeared after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Yes this tension has begun to desta-bilize the global market but definitely Saudi Arabia is inca-pable to confront the entire world.

The silence of the international community over many abuses, including siege of Qatar, Lebanese PM issue, abduc-tions of members of royal family, taking hundreds of busi-nessmen as hostages in Ritz Carlton, imprisoning of activists and the war in Yemen, have encouraged the Saudi author-ities to undermine any basic international norms and even use a diplomatic mission for torturing and killing its own citizen and dismembering his body.

German Interior Minister and leader of the conservative Christian Social Union party, Horst Seehofer (centre), and CSU Secretary-General Markus Blume (right) give a statement as they arrive for a CSU leadership meeting in Munich, yesterday.

The bullet-riddled

complex looms large

among the sea of

destroyed buildings in the

northern city, once the de

facto Syrian capital of IS’s

ill-fated “caliphate”.

11TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018 OPINION

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Fleeing hardship at home, Venezuelan migrantsstruggle abroad, too

Year after IS lost Raqa, holdout hospital awaits recovery

ALEXANDRA ULMER REUTERS

LAYAL ABOU RAHAL AFP

Every few minutes, the reeds along the Tachira River rustle.

Smugglers, in ever growing numbers, emerge

with a ragtag group of Venezuelan migrants - men struggling under tat-tered suitcases, women hugging bundles in blankets and school-children carrying backpacks. They

step across rocks, wade into the muddy stream and cross illegally into Colombia.

This is the new migration from Venezuela. For years, as conditions worsened in the Andean nation’s ongoing economic meltdown, hun-dreds of thousands of Venezuelans - those who could afford to - fled by airplane and bus to other countries far and near, remaking their lives as legal immigrants.

Now, hyperinflation, daily power cuts and worsening food shortages are prompting those with far fewer resources to flee, braving harsh geog-raphy, criminal handlers and increas-ingly restrictive immigration laws to try their luck just about anywhere.

In recent weeks, Reuters spoke with dozens of Venezuelan migrants traversing their country’s Western border to seek a better life in Colombia and beyond. Few had more than the equivalent of a handful of dollars with them.

“It was terrible, but I needed to cross,” said Dario Leal, 30, recounting his journey from the coastal state of Sucre, where he worked in a bakery that paid about $2 per month.

At the border, he paid smugglers nearly three times that to get across and then prepared, with about $3 left, to walk the 500km to Bogota, Colom-bia’s capital. The smugglers, in turn, paid a fee to Colombian crime gangs who allow them to operate, according to police, locals and smugglers themselves.

As many as 1.9 million Vene-zuelans have emigrated since 2015, according to the United Nations.

Combined with those who preceded them, a total of 2.6 million are believed to have left the oil-rich country. Ninety percent of recent departures, the UN says, remain in South America.

The exodus, one of the biggest mass migrations ever on the con-tinent, is weighing on neighbors. Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, which once welcomed Venezuelan migrants, recently tightened entry require-ments. Police now conduct raids to detain the undocumented.

In early October, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, Colombia’s foreign minister, said as many as four million Vene-zuelans could be in the country by 2021, costing national coffers as much as $9 billion. “The magnitude of this challenge,” he said, “our country has never seen.” In Brazil, which also borders Venezuela, the government deployed troops and financing to manage the crush and treat sick, hungry and pregnant migrants. In Ecuador and Peru, workers say that Venezuelan labor lowers wages and that criminals are hiding among honest migrants.

“There are too many of them,” said Antonio Mamani, a clothing vendor in Peru, who recently watched police fill a bus with undocumented Venezuelans near Lima.

By migrating illegally, migrants expose themselves to criminal net-works who control prostitution, drug trafficking and other rackets. In August, Colombian investigators dis-covered 23 undocumented Vene-zuelans forced into prostitution and living in basements in the colonial city of Cartagena. While most migrants are avoiding such straits, no shortage of other hardship awaits - from homelessness, to unemployment, to the cold reception many get as they sleep in public squares, peddle sweets and throng already overburdened hospitals.

Still, most press on, many on foot.Some join compatriots in Brazil

and Colombia. Others, having spent what money they had, are walking vast regions, like Colombia’s cold Andean passes and sweltering tropical lowlands, in treks toward distant cap-itals, like Quito or Lima.

Johana Narvaez, a 36-year-old mother of four, told Reuters her family left after business stalled at their small car repair shop in the rural state of Trujillo. Extra income she made selling food on the street

withered because cash is scarce in a country where annual inflation, according to the opposition-led Con-gress, recently reached nearly 500,000 percent.

“We can’t stay here,” she told her husband, Jairo Sulbaran, in August, after they ran out of food and sur-vived on corn patties provided by friends. “Even on foot, we must go.” Sulbaran begged and sold old tires until they could afford bus tickets to the border.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has chided migrants, warning of the hazards of migration and that emigres will end up “cleaning toilets.” He has even offered free flights back to some in a program called “Return to the Homeland,” which state tele-vision covers daily.

Most migration, however, remains in the other direction.

Until recently, Venezuelans could enter many South American countries with just their national identity cards. But some are toughening rules, requiring a passport or additional documentation.

Even a passport is elusive in Vene-zuela. Paper shortages and a dysfunc-tional bureaucracy make the doc-ument nearly impossible to obtain, many migrants argue. Several told Reuters they waited two years in vain after applying, while a half-dozen others said they were asked for as much as $2000 in bribes by corrupt clerks to secure one.

Maduro’s government in July said it would restructure Venezuela’s passport agency to root out “bureaucracy and corruption.” The Information Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Many of those crossing into Colombia pay “arrastradores,” or “draggers,” to smuggle them along hundreds of trails. Five of the smug-glers, all young men, told Reuters business is booming.

“Venezuela will end up empty,” said Maikel, a 17-year-old Venezuelan smuggler, scratches across his face from traversing the bushy trails. Maikel, who declined to give his surname, said he lost count of how many migrants he has helped cross.

Colombia, too, struggles to count illegal entries. Before the government tightened restrictions earlier this year, Colombia issued “border cards” that let holders crisscross at will. Now, Colombia says it detects about 3,000 false border cards at entry points daily.

Shattered ultrasound machines and prosthetic limbs litter the hallways of Raqa’s main hos-pital, still gutted a year after

the Islamic State group made its infamous last stand in its Syrian heartland.

The bullet-riddled complex looms large among the sea of destroyed buildings in the northern city, once the de facto Syrian capital of IS’s ill-fated “caliphate”.

On October 17 last year, US-backed forces overran the city’s final two jihadist holdouts -- the National Hospital and nearby stadium -- sealing the end of IS’s bloody three-year reign over Raqa.

But a year later, as other parts of the city are being slowly rebuilt, the massive hospital remains in ruins, almost haunted.

The road leading up to the entrance has been cleared of the burned corpses lying there last October, but twisted car wrecks still make for an uncomfortable welcome.

Torn-up gurneys, filthy sky-blue hospital sheets and rusted gas

canisters have been dumped in the courtyard.

Bullet-riddled doors are graffitied with the phrase “CLEAR, November 9, 2017”, apparently marking the day those rooms were checked for mines or lingering jihadists. Inside, hospital rooms are charred black from fires after air strikes.

Paint is peeling off the ceiling and the walls are lined with sand bags piled by IS fighters defending their final bastion.

Making his way slowly through the abandoned medical ward was Mohammad Hussein, 37, in navy trousers and a striped shirt.

Hussein is now a member of the health commission of Raqa Civil Council (RCC), the body governing the city since IS’s ouster, but he was once a nurse in the hospital.

“You don’t feel like you’re walking into a hospital. You feel like you’re walking into a mound of rubble,” he muttered.

The Raqa native began working in the hospital in 2003 at the age of 22, and stayed on when IS captured

the city 11 years later. Hussein recalls IS members

shoring up the hospital’s defences last year, digging tunnels and setting up blast walls as the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) closed in.

“They stockpiled medical supplies in huge amounts -- serums, blood, water, power generators,” he said.

After days of besieging the hos-pital and stadium, the SDF made a successful, lightning-fast push for both. Since then, tens of thousands of people have returned to Raqa, but life is still dangerous in the city.

IS planted a sea of mines across the city that have maimed and killed returning residents, and guerrilla-style attacks against SDF positions indicate jihadist sleeper cells remain a threat.

“No one lost as much as Raqa’s people when it comes to the destruction of this hospital, which used to serve hundreds of people on a daily basis,” said Hussein.

Khaled Abbud al-Hassan was one of them. One day last year, as artillery and air strikes pounded areas near his home, a piece of shrapnel tore into his building.

“It killed my four-year-old daughter and cut my hand, so I went to get treated at the hospital,” said Hassan, 60. Inside were doctors from Azerbaijan, he recalled. Most of the Syrian staff was from Aleppo, west of Raqa.

“They treated each other and us as well. I was there for about a week before the hospital was bombed and they told us to get out,” Hassan said.

After a recent visit to Raqa, Amnesty International said the level of destruction was “shocking”, with schools, homes, and medical infra-structure still ravaged.

It has slammed the US-led coali-tion’s bombing of the city and said it should help rebuild Raqa.

The coalition has removed rubble

For years, as

conditions

worsened in the

Andean nation’s

ongoing economic

meltdown, hundreds

of thousands of

Venezuelans - those

who could afford

to - fled by airplane

and bus to other

countries far and

near, remaking

their lives as legal

immigrants.

from main streets and demined some areas, but a rehabilitation of the hospital has still not been spon-sored, said RCC co-chair Laila Mustafa.

“It needs huge funds to be restored, more than three billion Syrian pounds (almost $6 million). This excludes medical equipment, which would be high-quality and exorbitantly expensive,” Mustafa said. She told AFP that the RCC was in talks with a foreign backer over funds to partially rehabilitate one hospital ward.

The stadium, whose under-ground locker rooms IS had trans-formed into a prison, has fared better. The field was partly restored after the SDF’s takeover, hosting its first football match in April.

Now, labourers are building a platform and stadium seats have been painted white, with a crimson-red trim.

“We’re coordinating with the RCC and the Syrian Democratic Council to rehabilitate the national stadium,” said Imad al-Himad, a contractor. It has so far cost around 100,000 Syrian pounds.

“This was the ‘black stadium,’ and since it was repainted white, it’ll be known as the White Stadium,” said Himad.

12 TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018AFRICA

Gambia opens probe intoabuse by former rulerAFP

BANJUL, GAMBIA: The West African state of The Gambia yesterday launched an 11-member truth commission tasked with shedding light on summary executions, disap-pearances, torture, abuse and other crimes under the regime of ousted dictator Yahya Jammeh.

“Today marks.. . the beginning of the much-antici-pated mechanism that is expected to ensure healing, justice and proper documen-tation of the rights violations and abuses that took place in the previous regime,” the office of his successor, President Adama Barrow, said in a tweet.

Inspired by South Africa’s investigation into the apartheid era, the commission will hold witness hearings into Jammeh’s 22-year era of oppression, opening the way to prosecuting those responsible and offering victims and their relatives the hope of closure.

“Gambians who were tor-tured or abused in prison, who were shot for peacefully dem-onstrating, who were forced into Jammeh’s phony HIV ‘treatment’ programmes, whose family members were killed or who

were targeted in literal witch hunts will all be able to come forward,” said Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“We know so much more today about the crimes of Jam-meh’s government than we did a year ago — and when the truth commission is finished hearing from all the victims we should have a complete picture.”

The process, he hoped, marked the first step to “holding Yahya Jammeh and his henchmen to account.” Jammeh came to power in a military coup in 1994, installing a structure of oppression and corruption that touched nearly every part of Gambian society.

Dissidents and journalists

were picked up and tortured by the dreaded National Intelli-gence Agency (NIA). An ultra-loyal death squad called the Junglers carried out summary killings, including the alleged murder of scores of West African migrants.

Jammeh’s reign began to crumble in December 2016, when he dramatically lost elec-tions to opposition leader Adama Barrow.

He refused to step down, but was eventually forced out after other West African coun-tries intervened militarily and diplomatically, and flew into self-imposed exile in Equatorial Guinea.

Created under an act of par-liament, the Truth, Reconcili-ation and Reparations Com-mission (TRRC) aims at using openness and a court-like approach to investigate over two years how abuse began and became systemic and the impacts it had. The Center for Victims of Human Rights Vio-lations, an NGO set up by victims and relatives of victims, says it has already documented hundreds of cases. But the full extent of abuse may never be known and whether Jammeh himself will be put in the dock is far from clear.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni (right) meeting with US rapper Kanye West at the State House in Entebbe, Uganda.

Kanye West gifts white sneakers to MuseveniAFP

KAMPALA: Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian yesterday paid a visit to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, gifting the 74-year-old leader a pair of white sneakers.

Rap megastar West is in the east African nation to finish recording his ninth studio album “Yandhi”, which was meant to drop two weeks ago, until his sur-prise decision to go and record in Africa to “feel the energy”. The

serial Grammy-winning artist — who recently announced he was changing his name to Ye — arrived in Uganda on Saturday.

The country seizing the opportunity to market itself as a tourist destination, with the couple pictured visiting its natural sites.

“I held fruitful discussions with the duo on how to promote Uganda’s tourism and the arts. I thank Kanye for the gift of white sneakers. Enjoy your time in Uganda. It is the true Pearl of

Africa,” he wrote. It is West’s second audience with a president in under a week after his eyebrow-raising meeting with Donald Trump last on Thursday, in which he performed a relentless monologue that left even the US President speechless.

His lecture included every-thing from Trump’s protectionist trade policies to replacing Air Force One with a hydrogen plane, black gun crime and “infinite amounts of universe,” was met with bemusement and concern.

26 drown in boat accident in northwest MaliAFP

BAMAKO, MALI: Twenty-six people drowned when two boats overturned in a swollen river in northwestern Mali, officials and local residents said.

“Two canoes carrying 48 people capsized on Saturday at

Arnassey in Bourem Inaly dis-trict, in the Timbuktu region,” Transport Minister Soumana Mory Coulibaly said in a statement released overnight on Sunday.

“This sad accident caused the death of 26 people. Twenty-two bodies have been recovered.” A

local resident, Martala Salley, said that the passengers were farmers who had decided to go to their fields by boat as the river had risen from seasonal rain, which made water transport possible.

“The two boats capsized before they reached their

destination,” said Yoro Maiga, a local councillor in the neigh-bouring district of Dire, explaining that winds had whipped up powerful currents.

“We were able to save some people — they weren’t weighed down by heavy objects or luggage,” Maiga said.

Transport accidents in Mali, a poor landlocked state in the Sahel, are common. Poor safety standards or equipment are typ-ically cited as the main cause.

Last month, 20 people died when the truck carrying them plunged into a river in the centre of the country.

Protesters, soldiers clash in Comoros over presidential term extensionREUTERS

MORONI: Protesters barricaded roads with tree trunks, stoned cars and clashed with soldiers in the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros yesterday in demonstrations against Pres-ident Azali Assoumani’s bid to extend term limits, officials said.

Assoumani’s move to compete in presidential polls in early 2019 has angered people on the archipelago’s Anjouan island as it would deny them taking over the presidency under a system that rotates the post among the country’s three main islands.

“These protests are a result of a general sentiment of being

fed up with the unfortunate decisions made by President Azali,” said Mohamed Sadate Nadjib, a government official in Anjouan, adding 13 people had been arrested.

“There is a presence of sol-diers on the streets and they are trying to remove the barricades but the people are blocking the streets again as soon as they leave,” he said.

President Assoumani a former military officer, joins a string of African leaders in coun-tries such as Rwanda, Uganda and Cameroon who have extended presidential term limits or amended the consti-tution in order to remain in power. In August, Assoumani

— from the island of Grande Comore — said a June refer-endum had resulted in the extension of presidential term limits and an end to the rotating presidency. The opposition called the referendum illegal.

Under the old system, the island of Anjouan would have been in line to hold the presi-dency in 2021.

The “yes” vote allows Assoumani to run for two more, five-year terms, starting from the early election next year, rather than being required to step down when his present term ends in 2021. Security offi-cials said Anjouan’s Mutsamudu and Ouani ports remained open despite the unrest.

Chaos as 200,000 Congolese expelled from AngolaAFP

KAMAKO, DR CONGO: Life fell apart last week for mother of four Dorcas who was among 200,000 Congolese attacked and then forcibly thrown out of neighbouring Angola despite having lived there for a decade.

Speaking in Kamako, a frontier town in southern Dem-ocratic Republic of Congo, the woman in her forties said she and her husband had made their lives in the Angolan border town of Lupaca until the nightmare began.

“There were rumours cir-culating that the Angolan authorities would be expelling foreigners,” from Lunda Norte province which borders on DRC, she said.

“Suddenly yesterday (last week) we saw youths from the Tchiokwe community with Angolan policemen starting to burn the homes of those per-ceived to be foreigners.

“When they came to our house, they attacked my husband with a machete and we were forced to flee taking whatever little we could carry,” she said. “All our children were born in Angola and only speak Portuguese,” she said.

Angola was a former Por-tuguese colony while DR Congo was ruled by the Belgians and is a francophone country.

Oil-rich Angola attracts hordes of Congolese as it is rel-atively more stable and offers better employment prospects.

DR Congo has an abun-dance of mineral wealth but

large swathes are rocked by unrest and violence unleashed by rebel groups and militias from within and neighbouring nations such as Uganda and Rwanda.

The operations last week against migrants triggered clashes between Congolese, security forces and local Angolans. Local media and an NGO reported that several migrants have been killed, though Angolan authorities deny any deaths or forcible repatriations.

Lunda Norte’s governor, Ernesto Muangala, said that “more than 200,000 Congolese living illegally in Angola have been repatriated on a voluntary basis.” Trucks were seen plying incessantly over the weekend taking Congolese nationals to the border from Dundo, the capital of Lunda Norte.

Several Congolese patiently waited outside the Angolan consulate in Kamako, bran-dishing their Angolan residence permits. The doors of the mission were closed.

“What are we going to do in DRC? We have all lived in Lucapa for 10 or 20 years,” said Daniel Mukenge, a man in his forties. “Our papers are all in order. We have invested and built homes,” he said. “Now the authorities are refusing to rec-ognise the documents that they themselves delivered. We are now asking our authorities to intervene so that the Angolan authorities buy our houses oth-erwise we are condemned to death here,” he said.

Keino given more time to report to police in graft caseAP

NAIROBI: Running great Kip Keino was given more time yesterday to report to police in Kenya after being one of seven former Olympic and government officials accused of corruption relating to the misappropriation of more than $545,000 around the time of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

The seven were ordered to report to police and appear in court yesterday but Keino, a two-time Olympic champion, was one of four who did not.

A judge extended their deadline until 6am on Thursday and ordered they then appear in court Friday to enter pleas. The judge said warrants for their arrest would be issued if they didn’t hand themselves in on Thursday.

Former Kenyan sports minister Hassan Wario is one of the suspects and also did not appear yesterday. The other two who did not appear were former sports ministry officials Harun Chebet and Patrick Nkabu.

The case relates to money set aside to fund Kenya’s team at the Rio Olympics. It was allegedly embezzled and misused by Keino and the others. Keino was the head of the Kenyan Olympic committee at the time. The three who did appear in court were former Olympic committee sec-retary general Francis Kanyili, Rio team manager Stephen Arap Soi and former sports ministry official Richard Ekai.

They all denied the charges and were granted $20,000 bail each.

Judge Douglas Ogoti also said the trial would start today, when the 78-year-old Keino would answer accu-sations that he is corrupt. Kenya’s director of public prosecutions announced that the seven should be charged with multiple counts of cor-ruption and abuse of office.

Workers collect harvested maize stems on the Thrive Agric’s farm in Jere, Kaduna, Nigeria. Means of livelihood

The commission

will hold witness

hearings into

Jammeh’s 22-year

era of oppression,

opening the way to

prosecuting those

responsible and

offering victims and

their relatives the

hope of closure.

13TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018 ASIA

India, China to jointly train 10Afghan diplomatsREUTERS

NEW DELHI: India and China launched a programme yesterday to train Afghan diplomats and China’s ambas-sador said it would likely be followed by joint programmes in other fields to help war-torn Afghanistan.

Such cooperation is the first by the two Asian giants which have long been locked in a tussle for influence in a region stretching from Nepal to Sri Lanka and the island chain of the Maldives. Within Afghanistan, India and the China have been on opposite sides with China relying on its old ally Pakistan as it seeks to stabilise Afghanistan by various means, including bro-kering talks to end the Taliban insurgency.

India, on the other hand, has invested billions of dollars in eco-nomic projects and training of military officers to strengthen the Afghan government in its fight against the Taliban.

For its part, Pakistan sees the expansive diplomacy in Afghan-istan by its old rival, India, as a way to encircle it. China’s ambas-sador to India said the joint training of 10 Afghan diplomats at the Indian Foreign Service Institute was the first step in China-India-Afghanistan coop-eration that was agreed at a summit between President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi this year.

“This is just the beginning. China and India have respective advantages. For example, India has remarkable edge in agri-culture and medical services, and China in hybrid rice and poverty reduction,” the Ambassador, Luo

Zhaohui, said in a speech.“I am sure that in the future

days China-India cooperation in Afghanistan will span from training programme to more concrete projects.” Modi and Xi agreed to handle long-standing political differences peacefully at their summit in China, just months after a dispute over a stretch of their Himalayan border near the tiny state of Bhutan rekindled fears of war.

Luo said India-China coop-eration in Afghanistan should be extended to countries such as Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, Myanmar and even Iran.

In many of these countries, China is helping to build infra-structure as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, which India sees as a bid by China to expand its influence. China’s call for part-nership comes just a week after its embassy in New Delhi said India and China must deepen their cooperation to fight trade protectionism, as it criticised the United States for what it termed provoking disputes.

China’s ambassador

to India said the

joint training of 10

Afghan diplomats at

the Indian Foreign

Service Institute was

the first step in China-

India-Afghanistan

cooperation that was

agreed at a summit

between President

Xi Jinping and Prime

Minister Narendra

Modi this year.

Parrikar back in Goa, not to quit as CMIANS

PANAJI: Ailing Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar will not resign as the head of the BJP-led coalition government, Goa BJP President Vinay Tendulkar said yesterday, ruling out “rumours” that the former Defence Minister was likely to step down from his post due to ill-health.

“There is a rumour which is being spread, that the Chief Min-ister will resign. This will not happen. He is a CM of the coa-lition for five years. He will com-plete that tenure and he will attend to work at office soon,” Tendulkar told reporters after a meeting of BJP leaders at the party’s Goa headquarters here.

“His health is fine. Doctors have advised him rest for two days. After that he will meet party officials, ministers and MLAs,” Tendulkar said yesterday.

Asked about the sudden decision taken to relocate Par-rikar from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi to Goa on Sunday, Tendulkar said: “The treatment being given at AIIMS will be continued in Goa.”

Parrikar, being treated for advanced pancreatic cancer, was admitted to AIIMS on Sep-tember 15.

The Chief Minister has been in and out of hospitals in Goa, Mumbai, New York and now Delhi for the last seven months.

Earlier, the Chief Minister’s Office in a statement said: “Par-rikar’s condition has improved further. He had a chat with his family members... Doctors have advised him to rest for a week.”

Parrikar’s absence from office due to health reasons has triggered political upheaval in Goa, with ruling allies stepping up pressure on the BJP to shed some of the top portfolios cur-rently held by the Chief Minister.

The Congress has also demanded that due to Parrikar’s ill-health, the state adminis-tration had come to a standstill and has demanded that Gov-ernor Mridula Sinha should dismiss the government.

Bishop granted bail in nun abuse caseAFP

NEW DELHI: An Indian bishop accused of raping a nun was granted bail in a case that has triggered rare dissent within the country’s Catholic Church.

Bishop Franco Mulakkal was arrested on September 21 in the southern state of Kerala on suspicion of physically assaulting the nun 13 times between 2014 and 2016.

Pope Francis suspended him the day before his arrest, appointing another bishop in his place.

Mulakkal, 53, who headed the diocese of Jalandhar in the northern state of Punjab, has denied the allegations and has called the scandal a conspiracy against the church.

The nun first made the

allegations in June but police only started formal questioning in September as fury over the case mounted.

The lack of action provoked outrage and five nuns — in a rare public show of dissent within the Indian Church — and dozens of supporters staged days of protests.

Senior members of the Kerala Church have however come out in support of Mulakkal.

The bishop had previously been denied bail and kept in police custody for further questioning.

Failure by Church officials to take action on abuse allega-tions has been one of the biggest scandals to hit Roman Catholicism globally in recent years.

AFP

NEW DELHI: Thousands of devotees joined street marches in southern India yesterday as tensions mounted over a recent Supreme Court verdict revoking a ban on women entering a famous Hindu temple.

The Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala — considered one of the holiest for Hindus — in Kerala has traditionally barred all women between 10 and 50 of age. But India’s top court revoked the ban on women entering the temple in September, ruling that patriarchy cannot be allowed to trump faith.

Those protesting against the court’s decision, including hundreds of women, warned they would step up their pro-tests before the temple reopens tomorrow, when it will have to allow all women entry as per the court order.

“These protests have taken place in several districts over the last few days. We don’t yet have an exact number but the people ended their march in the state capital Thiruvananthapuram today,” Pramod Kumar, Kerala police spokesman, said.

Local media showed thousands participating in the march supported by the local unit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP.

Smaller protests have also taken place elsewhere in India in recent days including in Ahmedabad in western India.

Air hostess falls out of plane, suffers injuries

Tensions rise over women’s entry to Sabarimala

AFP

MUMBAI: A flight attendant fell out of an Air India plane while trying to close its door yesterdfay, the airline said, reportedly breaking her leg when she landed on the tarmac.

The accident occurred at Mumbai’s international airport as the crew were getting ready to welcome passengers aboard the New Delhi-bound flight.

“The cabin crew member fell off while closing the back door of the Boeing 777 and sustained injuries,” Pravin Bhatnagar, a senior manager at Air India, said. “She is receiving treatment in hospital. An investigation will be

carried out to determine the exact cause of the incident.” media reports said the woman, a 52-year-old, was conscious but had leg fractures. A spokesperson for Nanavati Hospital, where the flight attendant was taken, was not available for comment.

Air India has been hit by a string of technical glitches and other embarrassing incidents, including staff turning up late for flights, over the years. The carrier last week grounded two pilots after one of its jets carrying 136 people hit an airport perimeter wall on take-off and then flew for almost four hours with a damaged body before landing safely.

Lies do not have legs: Journalist

Indian fishermen paddling as young women sailors from the Yatch club perform the traditional dance on the flower decorated coracles on Hussain Sagar Lake as they celebrate the ‘Bathukamma’ or ‘Life Giver’ Festival in Hyderabad, yesterday.

‘Life Giver’ Festival

Akbar files defamation case against #MeToo accuserIANS

NEW DELHI: Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar filed a criminal defamation complaint against a woman jour-nalist, Priya Ramani, who had accused him of harassment, alleging that “scandalous allega-tions” have been made to bring down his image in the society.

Seeking her prosecution under Section 500 of the Indian Penal Code that provides for imprisonment for two or more years in case of defamation, the Minister of State for External Affairs filed the complaint in the Patiala House court complex.

Akbar has been accused of harassment by several women journalists, including Ramani, who had worked with under him more than 15 years ago. He has denied the charges as “false, wild and baseless”.

Reacting to the defamation case, Ramani said she was “deeply disappointed” that the Minister sought to dismiss the detailed allegations of several women as a political conspiracy and by filing the case he was seeking to “silence” the women complainants through intimi-dation and harassment.

“Needless to say, I am ready to fight allegations of defamation laid against me as truth and the absolute truth is my only defence,” she said in a statement.

Several journalist bodies also expressed “deep disap-pointment” at Akbar’s threat of legal action and demanded he must step down for the sake of an impartial probe into the alle-gations against him.

“In the interests of a fair probe, moral and public pro-priety, it would only be appro-priate that the Minister steps

down from his post till such time as the inquiry is completed,” the Press Club of India, Indian Women Press Corps, South Asian Women in Media and Press Association said in a joint statement.

“That the scandalous alle-gations levelled by the accused against the complainant (Akbar) herein, by their very tone and tenor, are ex facie defamatory and have not only damaged the goodwill and reputation of the complainant, in his social circles and on the political stage, established after years of toil and hard work, but have also affected the personal rep-utation of the complainant in the community, friends, family and colleagues, thereby causing him irreparable loss and tre-mendous distress,” said the complaint filed by advocate Sandeep Kapur.

Supporters of India’s main opposition Congress party shout slogans as they stand on police barricades during a protest demanding the resignation of India’s Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar in New Delhi, yesterday.

IANS

New Delhi: A day after Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar said that charges of harassment against him were “wild and baseless”, Ghazala Wahab, one of the journalists who had levelled the allegations, said “lies do not have legs” and they cannot go far.

Writing for the news website ‘The Wire’, Wahab said Akbar’s statement describing the charges against him as based on “innuendo, speculation” was “full of tired clichés” and he was either lying or his memory was failing him when he spoke of a “very tiny cubicle” — the place inside the newspaper office where the harassment was said to have taken place two decades back. “In attempting to refute my story of molestation and har-assment, Akbar has tried to hide inside his supposedly ‘very tiny cubicle, patched together by plywood and glass’.

“Either he is lying, or age has caught up with him. I would prefer believing the latter, so here is something to refresh his memory,” Wahab wrote.

She proceeded to recount that the refurbished office of the Asian Age newspaper, of which Akbar was then Editor, in Surya Kiran building was “big” and Akbar’s room “soundproof”. “It was big. His polished wood desk was huge (lined with a row of Ganeshas) and had a small work station attached to it. At his back was polished wood (all gloss) wall-to-wall hutch cabinet with storage at the bottom and book shelves at eye level.

Akbar in his statement had said that he had a “a very tiny cubicle, patched together by plywood and glass” at the office where Wahab and he worked.

UN envoy visits Myanmar border town

14 TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018ASIA

INTERNEWS & REUTERS

LAHORE: Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) suffered a severe blow in the by-polls, as the opposition alliance gained five more seats in delicately balanced National Assembly, further reducing the ruling party’s margin for formation of the federal government.

By-elections were held on total 34 National and provincial assembly seats. The PTI had a major upset, as voters in two constituencies —NA-131 Lahore and NA-35 Bannu — changed their minds and elected members of the opposition parties.

These seats were won by PTI Chairman Imran Khan just two months back in the general election. The by-election results have changed the party position in the National Assembly. Now the opposition numbers have increased by five more seats, while the ruling alliance secured six more seats.

The PTI number of seats in the National Assembly has increased by four, its ally party, PML-Q’s seats went up by two, the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N’s) number of seats increased

by four to 85, and MMA got one more seat in the NA.

The major setback for the PTI came in NA-131 (Lahore), where the PML-N candidate Khwaja Saad Rafique defeated PTI’s Humayun Akhter Khan. This seat was vacated by Prime Minister Imran Khan.

In Punjab, the by-elections were held for 11 seats, out of which the PML-N won six seats, PTI stood second with three seats and two seats were won by independents.

In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf won five seats, three were won by Awami National Party (ANP), and the PML-N bagged one seat.

For two Sindh Assembly seats, by-elections were held in PS-30 and PS-87 constituencies, and both were won by Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP). In Balochistan, one seat was won by Balochistan National Party (BAP) while the other was won by an independent.

Prime Minister Imran Khan polled his vote in NA-53 (Islamabad) where Ali Awan, nominated by the PTI, won the by-election. By-elections also set a new precedent as the overseas Pakistanis cast their votes for the first time. According to the Election Com-mission of Pakistan, 84 per cent registered overseas voters cast their vote in by-polls.

It has also been learnt that it was a tough day for the IT offi-cials handling e-voting in Pakistan, as more than 10,000 cyber attacks were reported on the officials website. However, all the attacks were foiled and the process completed without any major hindrance.

The National Assembly con-stituencies where the by-elec-tions were held included NA-35 Bannu, NA-53 Islamabad, NA-56 Attock, NA-60 Rawalpindi, NA-63 Rawalpindi, NA-65 Chakwal, NA-69 Gujrat, NA-103 Faisalabad, NA-124 Lahore, NA-131 Lahore and NA-243 Karachi East.

Elections were held on 24 seats of the provincial assem-blies including 11 seats of the Punjab Assembly, nine of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and two each of Sindh and Balo-chistan. For 11 National Assembly seats, by-elections were held in nine constituencies in Punjab, one in Sindh and one in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The by-elections come after a national vote on July 25 pro-pelled former World Cup cricketer Khan to power, an outcome that was rejected by the main opposition parties.

Most of the national assembly seats had been open as Pakistan allows candidates to run in multiple constituencies, but keep only one seat.

Widow of slain Haroon Bilour wins by-electionREUTERS

ISLAMABAD : The wife of Awami National Party’s (ANP) Haroon Bilour, who was martyred in a Taliban suicide attack during campaigning, won her husband’s provincial seat in by-elections.

Samar Bilour (pictured), on Sunday won the provincial assembly seat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that her husband Haroon, a member of the ANP, had been scheduled to contest in July. She became the first woman MPA elected on a

general seat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the last 16 years

Haroon was martyred along with 19 others in a suicide attack

in Peshawar, the provincial capital, claimed by the Pakistani Taliban weeks before the July 25 polls. The attack prompted a delay in voting for that seat.

Haroon’s father, senior ANP leader Bashir Bilour, was killed in a suicide bombing in the run-up to Pakistan’s last election in 2013.

The last time a woman who won a seat through direct elec-tions was Ghazala Habib Tanoli, a female MPA elected on ticket of the then Pakistan People’s Party-Sherpao, now renamed as Qaumi Watan Party.

Before that Begum Nasim Wali Khan, the widow of great Pakhtun nationalist leader Abdul Wali Khan, remained opposition leader in the then NWFP Assembly after being elected as MPA in the 1997 general election.

Sunday’s by-elections were for 24 seats across the four pro-vincial assemblies and 11 in the National Assembly. Most of the national parliamentary seats were open because a candidate is allowed to contest in multiple constituencies, but can only keep one seat.

INTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was not allowed to vote in the by-election after he forgot to bring his identification card to the polling station, Express News reported. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo had arrived only minutes before the closing of polling at the Government College of Technology on Lahore’s Rail Road with party leader Maryam Nawaz, where party supporters had gathered to welcome him.

PML-N supporters chanted slogans in Nawaz’s favour and showered his vehicle with flowers.

Notwithstanding, the former premier forgot his ID card at home, as a result, he was not permitted to vote by polling staff.

The pair had gone to vote in Lahore’s NA-124, in which PML-N leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi emerged successful by overcoming Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate Ghulam Muhiuddin.

Pakistan’s ruling PTI suffers big electoral upset in by-polls

Members of the Newspaper Editors’ Council of Bangladesh form a human chain in front of National Press Club demanding an amendment to the newly enacted digital law, yesterday.

Bangladesh editors protestnew digital security lawAP

DHAKA: Editors of major daily newspapers in Bangladesh’s capital formed a human chain yesterday to protest a new digital security law they say will stifle freedom of speech and media freedom.

Members of the Editors’ Council formed the chain in front of the National Press Club in Dhaka and demanded amendments to the recently enacted Digital Security Act, saying many provisions could be used against journalists.

Some editors sympathetic to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also joined the rare protest, which was backed by most jour-nalists across the country.

The editors acknowledged the existence of media mal-practice and widespread ethics violations, but urged that a press council be strengthened to resolve disputes over any mis-reporting, and said regular courts can handle defamation and libel cases without the need for police to search journalists and seize digital equipment.

Mahfuz Anam, the editor of

the country’s leading English-language newspaper, Daily Star, read the editors’ demands and urged Parliament to change the law.

Anam, who is also general secretary of the council, said nine provisions of the law needed to be changed to ensure that freedom of speech is not compromised.

President Abdul Hamid signed the bill into law despite promises by three Cabinet min-isters and an adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that journalists’ concerns would first be addressed.

Hasina has defended the law, saying it is meant to protect the country from propaganda and misinformation.

“Journalism is surely not for increasing conflict, or for tar-nishing the image of the country,” she said earlier.

Opponents say the law is part of a broader campaign to silence government critics.

Journalists in Nepal are fighting a similar law, part of an expansive rewriting of that country’s civil and criminal codes meant to define the

parameters of the country’s new constitution.

Journalists say such laws could make it more difficult to expose corruption.

Bangladeshi journalists are particularly concerned about a section of the new law that pro-vides for up to 14 years in prison for anyone who gathers, transmits or preserves classified infor-mation from any government agency using a computer or other digital device. They say publishing such information is a way to hold officials accountable. The section evokes the sentiment of a British colonial-era law protecting official secrets.

The law also authorises prison sentences of up to three years for publishing information that is “aggressive or fright-ening” and up to 10 years for posting information that “ruins communal harmony or creates instability or disorder or disturbs or is about to disturb the law and order situation.”

Human Rights Watch said the law is open to abuse because it allows police to search or arrest suspects without a court order.

Maldives leader blames defeat on ‘disappearing ink’AFP

COLOMBO: Outgoing Maldives President Abdulla Yameen has told the Supreme Court that disappearing ink and specially treated ballot papers were to blame for his heavy election defeat last month.

The comments came as the court considered a petition by Yameen to have the September 23 election result annuled due to what his party called “rampant” vote-rigging.

Yesterday afternoon, the five-judge bench put off the case until Tuesday when it will announce whether to allow testimony from three unnamed witness named by Yameen’s lawyers.

His lawyers told a packed court room that the trio of yet unnamed witnesses could substantiate Yameen’s allegations.

However, the country’s independent Elections Commission (EC) through its lawyers insisted that the petition was based on false allegations and should be dismissed.

Local media also reported four of the five election commis-sioners have fled the country and sought refuge in neighbouring Sri Lanka following death threats after Yameen lost the September 23 vote.

Sharif unable to cast vote after forgetting ID card at home

Three million Afghans in urgent need of food: UNAFP

KABUL: At least three million Afghans are in “urgent” need of food and could face famine if they do not get help, the United Nations warned yesterday, as the war-torn country battles the worst drought in living memory.

A dry spell mainly across northern and western Afghan-istan has devastated crops, live-stock and water supplies, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

The drought comes at a ter-rible time for the country, which is already grappling with a 17-year conflict and preparing to hold a parliamentary election that is three years late.

The United Nations is spearheading international efforts to reach 2.5 million of the three million most in need of food by mid-December, UN humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan Toby Lanzer said.

“Those people are sur-viving on less than one meal a day and in all likelihood that meal is bread and tea,” Lanzer said.

Lanzer said the three million people hardest hit were in the “emergency” phase four of a widely-used food insecurity index — one level below famine.

The figure was “among the highest in the world” and required “the most urgent response”.

“If we don’t (reach them)

there’s a risk that these people go into level five,” Lanzer said.

Aid groups distributed basic commodities, including wheat flour fortified with min-erals, vegetable oil and lentils, to 600,000 people last month, Lanzer said.

They hope to reach another 600,000 by the end of October.

Another eight million people were in the “crisis” phase three of the food inse-curity index, which includes people with “food consumption gaps with high or above usual acute malnutrition”.

Lanzer said the figures were “far worse than we had antici-pated” and he warned the sit-uation could worsen as temper-atures plummet during the winter months.

The drought affecting more than half of Afghanistan was triggered by a huge shortfall in snow and rain last winter.

Many of the displaced have set up makeshift tents in camps on the edge of urban areas, including the western city of Herat.

Afghan officials and foreign aid groups are struggling to meet demand for food, shelter and health services.

People at the camps said in August they had been sur-viving on a diet of bread and tea for months because they did not have enough money to buy fruit, vegetables or meat.

UN Special Envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, arrives at Sittwe Airport yesterday after visiting Rohingyas at Maung Daw Township at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border area in Rakhine State.

The PTI had a major upset, as voters in two

constituencies — NA-131 Lahore and NA-35

Bannu — changed their minds and elected

members of the opposition parties. These seats

were won by PTI Chairman Imran Khan just two

months back in the general election.

The two sides agreed

to hold ceremonies

in late November

or early December

to inaugurate work

on reconnecting the

railways and roads

that have been cut

since the 1950-53

Korean War.

15TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018 ASIA

North, South Korea

agree to reconnect

rail and road links REUTERS

SEOUL: North and South Korea agreed yesterday to begin recon-necting rail and road links, another step in an improving relationship that has raised US concern about the possible undermining of its bid to press the North to give up its nuclear programme.

The agreement on transport links came during talks in the border village of Panmunjom, aimed at following up on the third summit this year between South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, last month.

“The South and North reached the agreement after sin-cerely discussing action plans to develop inter-Korean relations to a new, higher stage,” said a joint statement released by the South’s Unification Ministry.

They agreed to hold cere-monies in late November or early December to inaugurate work on reconnecting the railways and roads that have been cut since the 1950-53 Korean War. The two sides will carry out joint field studies on the transport plans from late this month, according to the joint statement. They also agreed to discuss late this month a plan to pursue a bid to co-host the 2032 Olympic Games.

The talks were led by the South’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon and Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the North’s com-mittee for peaceful reunification that handles cross-border affairs.

“We are at a very critical moment for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and the advancement of inter-Korean

relations, and there’s also a second North Korea-US summit coming up,” Cho told reporters before leaving for Panmunjom.

Talks between the two Koreas are running in parallel with US efforts to press North Korea to give up nuclear weapons and missiles that the North says can hit the US mainland. Kim held an unprec-edented summit with US Pres-ident Donald Trump in June in Singapore and the two sides are arranging a second meeting, which Trump said would likely happen after US congressional elections on November 6.

But despite the meeting between Kim and Trump, the United States is still pursuing a policy of “maximum pressure” to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programmes. Trump said on Wednesday that South Korea would not lift sanctions on North Korea without US approval.

The rail and road initiative and the joint Olympics bid were agreed by Moon and Kim at their latest summit, in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. Moon also said the North would permanently abolish key missile facilities in the presence of foreign experts.

French President Emmanuel Macron (right) and South Korean President Moon Jae-in shake hands during a joint news conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, yesterday.

South Korean President lobbies for Kim Jong Un on Europe tourAFP

PARIS: South Korean President Moon Jae-in said yesterday that world powers needed to reassure North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that he had taken the right decision in committing to scrap his nuclear weapons programme.

Moon, who has met Kim three times this year, is on a seven-day tour of Europe where he is expected to update leaders in Paris, Rome and Brussels on the rapidly thawing relations between Seoul and Pyongyang.

Moon, who met with French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday, said the UN Security Council needed to play an “active role” in helping convince the reclusive North Korean leader to fully abandoned his atomic programme.

“They need to feel confident

that they have made the right choice in accepting to destroy their nuclear weapons,” Moon said at a joint press conference in Paris, adding that France had “a major role to play”.

Ahead of his meeting with Macron, Moon told France’s Le Figaro newspaper that Kim had “expressed his frustration at the continued scepticism of the international community” during their talks.

Moon, who met with his North Korean counterpart in April, May and September, was instrumental in brokering a his-toric summit in Singapore between US President Donald Trump and Kim in June.

Macron ruled out any sanc-tions relief or making further concessions to North Korea amid continued fears that Kim might not be prepared to commit to an “irreversible and verifiable” deal

to abandon his nuclear ambitions.

“We need to have progress to do anything more diplomati-cally,” Macron said, adding that France remained in favour of keeping UN sanctions in place and would argue for this at the UN Security Council, where it has a permanent seat.

Macron also ruled out the symbolic gesture of re-estab-lishing a French embassy in North Korea. “It’s good to keep some leverage to help ensure that there are changes,” Macron said in a veiled warning about the dangers of giving up too much, too soon to Pyongyang.

Moon defended his strategy in the Le Figaro interview, saying that “despite his young age, Kim Jong Un has demon-strated sincerity, simplicity, calm and politeness” during their talks.

Philippines’ resort island reopens for test runIANS

MANILA: Philippines’ Boracay island, one of the world’s most famous beach destinations, reopened yesterday for a test run almost six months after being closed for a cleanup operation.

A small group of tourists arrived from the province of Aklan, where the island is located, reported CNN.

The group was invited to test the newly improved facil-ities, which include a com-prehensive overhaul of the island’s outdated and insuf-ficient sewerage.

The resort island, which was shuttered in April for six months for rehabilitation work, is scheduled to re-open later this month — labelled a “soft opening” by authorities. Its famous white-sand beaches were signed off in August as “very clean” and safe for swimming, according to Envi-ronment Secretary Roy Cimatu.

While the cleanup has left the beaches immaculate and the waters crystal clear, sig-nificant work needs to be done to get the road system up to speed before larger numbers of tourists are allowed back on the island.

The system overhaul cost over $18m, according to Tourism Secretary Berna Romulo-Puyat. However, full rehabilitation of the island could take up to two years. The archipelago nation of the Philippines boasts well over 7,000 islands. Last year, almost 1.7 million tourists, including cruise line pas-sengers, visited the island during a 10-month period, according to Philippines Information Agency.

Anwar Ibrahim (centre) talks to the media after the swearing-in ceremony at the Parliament House in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, yesterday.

Malaysia’s leader in waiting Anwar in triumphant return to parliamentAFP

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s leader in waiting Anwar Ibrahim returned to parliament as a lawmaker yesterday, and vowed to give former nemesis Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad space to get on with running the country.

MPs applauded as Anwar took the oath of office following his weekend local election victory, a sight that would have been unthinkable just months ago when he was an opposition leader languishing behind bars.

The former deputy premier’s remarkable political resur-rection was triggered by his alli-ance’s shock election victory in May, which toppled a cor-ruption-riddled coalition that

had ruled Malaysia for six decades.

Following the triumph, Anwar was pardoned and released from jail, where had been imprisoned since 2015 on widely criticised sodomy charges, and is now the pre-sumptive successor to the coun-try’s leadership.

Mahathir, 93, has pledged to hand power to Anwar within two years. The deal was struck when the pair, whose up-and-down relationship has long loomed over Malaysian pol-itics, formed an unlikely alliance to take on the gov-ernment of Najib Razak.

Anwar needed to be elected as an MP again to succeed Mahathir, and he cruised to a thumping victory in Saturday’s

poll in Port Dickson, where his opponents included a former aide whose accusations landed him in jail. It is the first time that Mahathir — who, during a first stint as premier, sacked Anwar and had him thrown in jail — and his former foe have been in the same government since the 1990s.

Anwar, wearing a traditional black Muslim cap, brushed aside questions about when he will become premier, and insisted he would let Mahathir have “the space, the latitude” to get on with governing. “That’s very important because some of the decisions that have to be made by the prime minister and the cabinet are key, fundamental decisions of policy,” the 71-year-old told reporters.

Some voters warming to Australia’s new PM: PollREUTERS

SYDNEY: Australia’s new prime minister extended his party’s nascent recovery, one widely watched opinion poll showed yesterday, six days before a crucial by-election, but the main Labor opposition still holds a landslide-sized lead before elections due by May.

The Newspoll, published in The Australian newspaper, showed the ruling Liberal-National coalition trailing Labor 47 percent to 53 percent on a two-party preferred basis, under which votes for minor parties are redistributed according to Aus-tralia’s preferential voting system. The gap between the two main parties, twice as wide a month ago, tightened by two points since the previous poll.

However, another poll in The Sydney Morning Herald showed the gap between the government and Labor wid-ening significantly. The Herald’s Fairfax-Ipsos poll, based on a smaller sample than the

Newspoll, showed Labor leading 55-45, an increase of four points since September.

Both polls suggest a resounding defeat for the gov-ernment at a general election, which must be held by May.

Nevertheless, Prime Min-ister Scott Morrison did perform better with voters than Malcolm Turnbull, the man he replaced in a party-room coup in August, on a range of Newspoll personal measures including “capable of handling the economy”.

Morrison is also seen as more capable of delivering tax cuts, a key policy battleground where he burnished his credentials last week with a promise to reduce taxes on small businesses.

“He’s doing better than Turnbull. That’s not what you would have expected three months ago,” said Haydon Manning, a political science professor at Flinders University in South Australia state. However, Morrison faces a by-election on Saturday in Turn-bull’s harbourside Sydney seat.

Blogger punished for disrespecting national anthemREUTERS

BEIJING: Chinese authorities detained a blogger for five days for “being disrespectful to the national anthem”, police in the city of Shanghai said.

Last year, China intro-duced a law mandating up to 15 days in police detention for those who mock the “March of the Volunteers” national anthem. In a video circulating online, 20-year-old blogger Yang Kaili was shown humming marching music before she started to recite the first line of the national anthem while waving her hands as if conducting an orchestra.

She then greeted her audience with: “Hello, good evening, comrades.” Shanghai police said Yang “was disre-spectful to the dignity of the national anthem and invited disgust among netizens”.

Yang apologized last week in a Weibo post. The national anthem law also covers the territories of Hong Kong and Macau.

Chinese zookeeper feeds newborn white Bengal tiger cubs in Yunnan Wildlife Zoo in Kunming, China.

China purrs over white tiger tripletsAFP

KUNMING: Three playful white Bengal tiger cubs are charming visitors as they clamber around their enclosure at a zoo in China.

The rare, blue-eyed tri-plets were born nearly three months ago at the Yunnan Wildlife Zoo in Kunming, and made their public debut in early October. “The oldest one — the largest — is very naughty and has a real appetite. He’s the naughtiest.

The youngest is like a baby, she’s gentle. She never wins when fighting for food,” zoo-keeper Hao Li said.

The cubs’ busy mother is getting a helping hand keeping her youngsters from getting hungry, with keepers always ready to step in with a bottle. The tigers’ white fur is a genetic variation of the common orange Bengal tiger.

A competition is being held to name the three new-borns, with final names chosen at the end of October.

16 TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018EUROPE

Merkel vows to win backtrust after Bavaria debacleAP

BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed yesterday to do more to restore Germans’ confi-dence in her unhappy coalition after a battering for both of her governing partners in Bavaria’s state election added to tensions in the alliance.

Sunday’s vote stripped Mer-kel’s conservative allies in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, of their absolute majority in the state legislature for only the second time in 56 years. The centre-left Social Democrats, Merkel’s other federal partner, slumped to a humiliating fifth-place finish in the wealthy state.

Both parties pinned much of the blame on the national gov-ernment’s constant public infighting over migration and other issues since it took office in March.

“(The election) showed that even with the best economic data, with near-full employment in almost all parts of Bavaria, that

isn’t enough for people when something is missing that is so important - confidence,” Merkel said.

Merkel’s Christian Demo-cratic Union party wasn’t on the ballot on Sunday, but an electoral challenge looms in two weeks as it defends its 19-year-hold on the governor’s office in Hesse, a central state that includes Frankfurt, on October 28.

“My lesson from yesterday is that I, as chancellor of this ‘grand coalition,’ must do more to

ensure that this confidence is there and that the results of our work are visible,” Merkel said. “And I will do that emphatically.” The Social Democrats hope to win back Hesse but polls show them trailing and support for both parties is weak.

Sunday’s outcome rekindled speculation about whether the Social Democrats will leave Mer-kel’s federal government before its term ends in 2021. They only reluctantly joined Merkel’s coa-lition in March after a national election debacle last year.

Social Democrat leader Andrea Nahles brushed aside questions yesterday about her party’s pain barrier.

“I don’t think that defining red lines is appropriate at this point,” she said. “Above all, we have an election in Hesse in two weeks in which we are now investing all our power. We are not going to waste our strength and time now on internal debates.” As for the national gov-ernment, “it is obvious that the

whole style of our work together must change, and that hopefully was a message from this Bavarian election,” Nahles said.

Much of the blame for the squabbling has been pinned on the CSU leader, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who has con-tinued a three-year feud over migration with Merkel. He

nearly brought down the ruling coalition in June with a demand to turn back small numbers of asylum-seekers at the German-Austrian border.

Those tactics turned off Bavarian voters on both the right and left, and polls sug-gested that migration was some way down on voters’ list of

priorities.Seehofer appeared to have

no intention of stepping down after his party received 37.2 percent of the vote, down from 47.7 percent five years ago, for its worst showing in Bavaria since 1950. “I won’t hold a dis-cussion about my position,” the 69-year-old said.

Navalny facing new criminal charge for slanderAFP

MOSCOW: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said yesterday he faces a new criminal charge for slander just a day after his release from two consecutive terms behind bars for organising anti-Kremlin protests.

The fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin announced on his website that he had been sum-moned for questioning by

interior ministry investigators and expected to be charged with slander.

He said this related to accu-sations he made in 2015 about former interior ministry inves-tigator Pavel Karpov, a key figure in the case of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian jail in 2009.

Navalny wrote in 2015 that Karpov owned a flat worth almost $1m and luxury cars including a Porsche Cayenne. He

ridiculed Karpov’s claim to have received these as gifts.

Authorities opened a slander case and searched Navalny’s home in 2016, after which he said he heard nothing for two years and that the statute of lim-itations passed in the case.

Slander charges do not call for arrest but only large fines, Navalny said, adding that “Who knows how the elaborate and inventive legal machine in Putin’s head works?” Karpov is

one of the Russians blacklisted by the US over involvement in the death of whistleblowing lawyer Magnitsky, who accused him of being behind an embez-zlement scam.

Navalny was released from a Moscow detention centre on Sunday after being sentenced to 20 days for organising anti-Kremlin protests just a day after being released from a 30-day term.

The 42-year-old activist told

journalists as he left the detention centre: “If anyone thinks that with arrests... they can scare or stop us, that is clearly not the case.” Navalny said his latest legal woes came as he had planned to respond to a bizarre summons to fight a duel from a top Putin ally.

Viktor Zolotov, the head of Russia’s National Guard, chal-lenged Navalny to a duel last month over allegations of corrupt practices by his agency.

Greek coalition ally threatens to quit if Macedonia name deal goes to parliamentREUTERS

ATHENS: The leader of a small right-wing party threatened yesterday to pull it out of Greece’s governing coalition if a deal settling a row over Mace-donia’s name comes to parliament, increasing uncer-tainty in a country that just emerged from bailouts.

Leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Panos Kammenos, leader of the Independent Greeks party, joined forces in 2015 with the stated aim of pulling Greece out of its then-debt crisis and fight corruption that flourished under socialist and conservative rule and pushed Greece to the verge of bankruptcy.

But the new deal Tsipras’s government struck with Mace-donia that changes its name to North Macedonia has shattered the coalition’s honeymoon after

Greece’s bailout exit in August, refocusing attention on the coa-lition’s contradictions.

“I won’t vote for this deal if it comes to parliament,” Kam-menos, who is defence minister, told state TV ERT after a trip to the United States, where he pre-sented his party’s stance and what he called an alternative scenario, if the deal fails.

“If the parliamentary majority decides a divorce, so be it, there will be one,” he said, adding that his personal rela-tionship with Tsipras remained “harmonious.” Greek nation-alists have opposed the name deal, contending that Macedonia is historically Greek and part of Greek heritage.

Greece maintained for 27 years that Macedonia’s name implied territorial claims to its northern province of the same name, and so blocked Skopje’s path to European Union and

Nato membership. The June deal approved by Tsipras removed that obstacle, and has been embraced by both Nato and the EU. But the deal has been thrown into doubt by the failure of a Macedonian referendum to achieve the minimum turnout needed to uphold the accord. In that light, Kammenos said, the deal is unlikely to come before the Greek parliament for approval. Greece’s coalition government, whose term ends late next year, is backed by 153 lawmakers in the 300-seat par-liament. Kammenos’ party holds 7 seats. Tsipras has repeatedly ruled out early elections.

But in an effort to ease fears of a government collapse if the Macedonia deal comes to the Greek parliament for a vote, government officials have said that support from independent and centre-left lawmakers has already been secured.

Hungary enforces‘inhumane’ ban on rough sleeping REUTERS

BUDAPEST: A tough new law that bans homeless people from sleeping on Hungary’s streets came into force yesterday, prompting criticism from human rights groups who say it is inhumane.

The law, which follows a constitutional amendment approved in June that brands rough sleeping a crime, empowers police to order homeless people to move into shelters. If they disobey three times within a 90-day period, the police can detain them and destroy their personal belongings.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s right-wing gov-ernment has said the new law aims to provide proper living conditions for the homeless and has set aside money to help them.

But Gabor Ivanyi, who leads the group Oltalom (Shelter) which operates homeless shelters with 600 beds in Budapest, said the government had failed to conduct a proper dialogue with charity organisations before it passed the legislation.

“This law serves the aim of scaring the homeless to prompt them to flee (the streets),” Ivanyi said. “They are scared and don’t know what to do now. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow.” Homeless people had all but disappeared yes-terday morning from under-passes in central Budapest where there would normally be plenty.

The government says it has allocated about 9bn forints ($32.17m) to homeless care in its 2018 budget plus an additional 300m forints to expand shelter capacities.

“We believe we need to give additional help and not additional rights to homeless people,” Bence Retvari, state secretary, told reporters on Saturday according to a video posted on HirTv website.

Retvari said further help would be available from M o n d a y , w i t h o u t elaborating.

On Sunday around 500 protesters demonstrated against the law outside the Hungarian parliament.

“I bel ieve this is shameful... that they crimi-nalise the impossible and helpless situation that these people are in,” said Agnes Merenyi , one of the demonstrators.

An activist group called “Varos Mindenkie” (which means “the city is for eve-ryone”) said in a statement: “ ( T h e c o n s t i t u t i o n a l amendment) allows the authorities to persecute the most helpless people with a wider range of police tools from October 15.”

Last month the European Parliament voted to sanction Hungary for flouting EU rules on democracy, civil rights and corruption in a move the Orban government said was an attempt to punish Budapest for its anti-migration stance.

Orban’s Fidesz party won a third consecutive four-year term on a landslide in an election in April.

Germany to deport convicted9/11 suspectAP

BERLIN: A Moroccan man convicted of helping three of the September 11 attackers as they plotted to strike New York and Washington was flown from a Hamburg jail yesterday to the city’s airport in preparation for his depor-tation to his home country.

Mounir El Motassadeq, who was convicted in 2006 of membership in a terrorist organisation and accessory to murder for his part in the plot, was expected to be put on a flight later in the day to Marrakesh, Morocco.

The 44-year-old was flown by helicopter to the airport, and then escorted from the helicopter by two heavily armed police officers to another waiting helicopter. It took off shortly after, pre-sumably to take El Motassadeq to a larger airport for the international flight to Morocco.

El Motassadeq, who denied knowing his friends were preparing the attacks on the US, was sentenced to the maximum 15 years, but received credit for time served after his November 2001 arrest. Earlier yesterday, Hamburg Interior Ministry spokesman Frank Reschreiter said El Motassadeq would “leave the country soon,” but wouldn’t specify exactly when he’d be returned to Morocco.

Bulgaria withdraws from Eurovision song contest 2019AFP

SOFIA: Bulgaria will not take part in the next edition of the Eurovision song contest to be held in Tel Aviv in May 2019, the public BNT broadcaster announced yesterday, citing financial constraints.

“The decision is part of measures taken by television management in order to optimise the spending of public funds,” BNT said.

The broadcaster has acted as the organiser and producer of Bulgaria’s entry in the annual music contest for the past two editions. But BNT said that it could no longer afford the associated expenses, which also include a share of the costs for the organisation of the contest.

FROM LEFT: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen and other officials at a meeting in Berlin yesterday.

Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev speaks on Macedonia’s name change in Skopje, Macedonia.

“My lesson from

yesterday is that I,

as chancellor of this

‘grand coalition,’ must

do more to ensure

that this confidence

is there and that the

results of our work

are visible. And I will

do that emphatically,”

Merkel said.

17TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018 EUROPE

EU adopts new chemical weapons sanctionsAFP

LUXEMBOURG: The EU announced the new sanctions mechanism targeting those who use and develop chemical weapons yesterday, as part of a crackdown in the wake of the Skripal attack.

The framework gives the European Union the power to impose restrictive measures on anyone identified as being involved in the development or deployment of chemical weapons, regardless of their location or nationality.

Fears have been growing among world powers that the century-old taboo on the use of chemical weapons is being eroded, following the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain and repeated uses of gas and banned substances in the Syrian conflict.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg agreed to the new measures, which will freeze the

assets held in the block by targeted individuals and organisations and ban them from travelling to any of the 28 member states.

“The restrictive measures target persons and entities who are directly responsible for the development and use of chemical weapons as well as those who provide financial, technical or

material support, and those who assist, encourage or are associated with them,” the European Council, which groups the member states, said in a statement.

“This decision contributes to the EU’s efforts to counter the proliferation and use of chemical weapons which poses a serious threat to international security.”

While yesterday’s decision sets up the framework to impose measures, for the moment no individuals or organisations have been sanctioned. Decisions on this will be taken at a later date.

The targeting of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter by a Soviet-designed chemical agent called Novichok in the English town of Salisbury in March caused outrage around the world.

Investigative journalists have identified two suspects named as wanted by British police as agents of Russia’s GRU military intelligence, though Moscow denies involvement.

The framework gives

EU the power to

impose restrictive

measures on

anyone identified

as being involved

in the development

or deployment of

chemical weapons,

regardless of their

location or nationality.

Prince Harry & Meghan expecting first childREUTERS

SYDNEY: Prince Harry and his wife Meghan are expecting their first child in the Spring of 2019, around a year after their glittering wedding injected Hollywood glamour into the British royal family.

Harry, 34, younger son of heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, married the US television star Meghan Markle in May at a ceremony that mixed traditional British pomp with a gospel choir and other nods to her American heritage.

ritish media said Meghan, 37, was believed to be about 12 weeks pregnant. The baby will be seventh-in-line to the British throne.

“Their Royal Highnesses have appre-ciated all of the support they have received from people around the world

since their wedding in May and are delighted to be able to share this happy news with the public,” the couple’s Ken-sington Palace office said in a statement.

The news emerged shortly after the royal couple landed in Australia for their first overseas tour, a busy trip which will also take in New Zealand and the South Pacific islands of Tonga and Fiji.

British media said Harry and Meghan broke the news of their pregnancy to the royal family on Friday, when they attended the wedding of Harry’s cousin Princess Eugenie at Windsor Castle, where Harry and Meghan themselves were married five months ago.

There had been media speculation for a number of weeks that Meghan might be pregnant, and the couple had made no secret of their desire to have children.

“Hopefully we’ll start a family in the

near future,” Harry had said in a TV interview when they announced their engagement in November last year.

The child will not be a prince or a princess unless the queen authorises such a title before the birth. Instead, royal experts said if a boy, the child would offi-cially be styled the Earl of Dumbarton - one of Harry’s subsidiary titles - and Lady Windsor if a girl.

“My warmest congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on the happy news they are expecting a baby in the Spring,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Twitter. “Wishing them all the best.”

After their arrival in Australia yesterday, Meghan and Harry were escorted by a motorcade to the residence of Australia’s Governor-General on Sydney’s north shore.

Britain and Baltics seek Italian support for EU cyber sanctions REUTERS

LUXEMBOURG: A European Union sanctions plan to punish computer hackers is not directed at Russia or any one single country, Lithuania’s foreign minister said, as Italy came under pressure from a group of EU members states to back the proposal.

Seven EU countries including Britain, the Nether-lands and Lithuania are pushing for the EU to be able to impose sanctions more quickly on spe-cific individuals anywhere in the world, freezing their assets in the bloc and banning them from entry, according to an EU document.

Russia has made cyber and electronic warfare a key part of its military operations, Western officials say, and Britain, the Netherlands and the United States have accused Moscow of conducting a global campaign of computer hacks against the West.

But Rome, where the anti-establishment government wants to have better ties with Russia, fears the sanctions would alienate Moscow and it opposes the EU plan, according to a document.

“We would not target a single geography. This is not against Russia by default,” Lithuania’s Linas Linkevicius said before a meeting with

other EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.

“If Russia attacks us, we will target Russia. If someone else attacks us, then we will target them,” he said.

Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s co-ruling far-right League, has expressed his admi-ration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and has rejected allegations of Russian meddling in Western elections.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt will try to reassure his Italian counterpart Enzo Moavero Milanesi that the pro-posal, which London hopes to have agreed before it leaves the EU next March, is not against Russia, diplomats said.

Flash floods leave 13 dead in FranceAFP

TOULOUSE: At least 13 people died when violent rainstorms turned rivers into raging torrents in southwest France yesterday, prompting some of the deadliest flooding in years, officials said.

The equivalent of three months of rainfall was dumped overnight in the Aude region in just a few hours, swelling rivers and flooding fields and towns, officials added.

President Emmanuel Macron’s office said he would visit the affected areas “as soon as possible,” while Prime Min-ister Edouard Philippe, who is also the acting interior minister, was headed to the Aude region later yesterday.

The rescue operations also appear to have postponed an expected announcement on a government reshuffle, prompted by the sudden resignation of

interior minister Gerard Collomb nearly two weeks ago.

One of the overnight victims was an 88-year-old nun who was swept from her room by floodwaters at the Burning Bush priory in the village of Villar-donnel, north of the fortress city of Carcassonne.

“The water crashed through the building’s main door and on through the door to her room, the lowest in the convent. It carried away her furniture which ended up on the veranda,” said Sister Irene, the mother superior.

The nun’s body was later found under trees outside the convent.

Elsewhere, flash floods overturned cars, ripped up streets and battered buildings and bridges, especially to the north of Carcassonne where authorities ordered bridges closed because of the rising

Aude river.Authorities rushed hundreds

of firemen and half a dozen hel-icopters to the region to help with rescue operations, partic-ularly in the floodplain of the Aude river which hit its highest level in 100 years, according to the Vigicrues flood agency.

In the town of Trebes, near Carcassonne, the water in the Aude rose eight metres in just five hours, officials said.

In total nine residents died in the city, which made head-lines earlier this year after a jihadist attacker killed four people in a shooting spree, including a police officer who took the place of a hostage.

Two more died in Ville-gailhenc, and one in Villalier.

Around 1,000 people were evacuated in the area of Pezens, also near Carcassonne, amid fears that a nearby dam could burst.

An aerial view shows a collapsed bridge following heavy rains that saw rivers bursting banks, in the city of Villegailhenc, near Carcassonne, southern France, yesterday.

Cologne hostage standoff ends, suspect arrested

AFP

COLOGNE: German police said yesterday that they had subdued and detained a man who took a woman hostage in a pharmacy in Cologne’s central train station.

“The perpetrator is under control. Police measures are continuing,” Cologne police wrote on Twitter just after 3:00pm after commandos had stormed the shop.

“A female hostage has been lightly wounded and is being cared for,” they added, calling on the public to keep their distance from the area.

The hostage-taker also suffered injuries, a police spokesperson said, adding that the man’s motives were not yet known.

A witness said he heard two stun grenade explosions as police stormed and secured the pharmacy.

Several heavily armed officers from a special response unit were seen immediately afterwards running across the Breslauer Platz square, on the opposite side of the tracks from the city’s famous twin-spired cathedral.

Earlier yesterday, eye-witnesses had reported hearing shots and possible smoke bombs being let off inside the massive station, which hosts many shops and cafes.

But police could not confirm any details as they rushed to evacuate the building.

Officers had later been in touch with the attacker to determine his demands and whether he was armed.

A file photo of Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (right) and Britain’s Meghan, Duchess of Sussex during a visit to Joff Youth Centre in Peacehaven in East Sussex, southern England.

May still hopeful of Brexit dealAFP

LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May (pictured) said yesterday she still believes a Brexit deal is “achievable”, despite talks with the European Union becoming deadlocked on the issue of the Irish border.

“We cannot let this disa-greement derail the prospects of a good deal, and leave us with the ‘no deal’ outcome that no-one wants,” she told MPs in the House of Commons.

“I continue to believe that a negotiated deal is the best outcome for the UK and for the EU. I continue to believe that such a deal is achievable.”

The prime minister was speaking the day after her Brexit minister Dominic Raab visited Brussels but failed to make a breakthrough as hoped ahead of a crucial summit of EU leaders today and on Thursday.

There is now growing concern that Britain could crash out of the bloc without any deal at all in March, risking legal and economic chaos.

May said both sides had made “real progress” on the terms of Britain’s divorce from the bloc and the outline plan for future trading relations.

The sticking point is how to keep open the land border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland after Britain leaves the bloc’s single market and customs union.

May said the EU had agreed to “explore” her proposal to keep Britain aligned with the bloc’s customs rules until a wider trade deal could be agreed that resolved the need

for frontier checks.But Brussels had said there

was not time to work out the details, she said, and proposed its own fall-back plan — the “backstop” — that would see only Northern Ireland align with EU rules.

“Even with the progress we have made, the EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’, effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy,” the prime minister said.

“And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previ-ously proposed.

“We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom.”

May also confirmed a disa-greement over whether the backstop would be temporary — Brussels wants no time limit, arguing that by its nature, the insurance policy must be permanent.

“If the EU were not to co-operate on our future rela-tionship, we must be able to ensure that we cannot be kept in this backstop arrangement indefinitely,” Theresa May said.

18 TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018AMERICAS

Trump assesses storm

damage in Florida

Trump reiterates doubts on climate changeAP

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump is backing off his claim that climate change is a hoax but said he doesn’t know if it’s manmade and suggests that the climate will “change back again.”

In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired yes-terday, Trump said he doesn’t want to put the US at a disad-vantage in responding to climate change.

“I think something’s hap-pening. Something’s changing and it’ll change back again,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a hoax. I think there’s probably a dif-ference. But I don’t know that it’s manmade. I will say this: I don’t want to give trillions and

trillions of dollars. I don’t want to lose millions and millions of jobs.”

Trump called climate change a hoax in November 2012 when he sent a tweet stating, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufac-turing non-competitive.”

He later said he was joking about the Chinese connection, but in years since has continued to call global warming a hoax.

“I’m not denying climate change,” he said in the interview. “But it could very well go back. You know, we’re talking about over a ... millions of years.”

As far as the climate “changing back,” temperature records kept by Nasa and the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration show that the world hasn’t had a cooler-than-average year since 1976 or a cooler-than-normal month since the end of 1985.

Trump also expressed doubt over scientists’ findings linking the changing climate to more powerful hurricanes.

“They say that we had hur-ricanes that were far worse than what we just had with Michael,” said Trump, who identified “they” as “people” after being pressed by “60 Minutes” corre-spondent Leslie Stahl.

She asked, “What about the scientists who say it’s worse than ever?” the president replied, “You’d have to show me the sci-entists because they have a very big political agenda.”

Trump’s comments came just days after a Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a warning that global warming would increase climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security and economic growth.

The report detailed how Earth’s weather, health and eco-systems would be in better shape if the world’s leaders could somehow limit future human-caused warming.

Citing concerns about the pact’s economic impact, Trump said in 2017 that the US will leave the Paris climate accord. The agreement set voluntary green-house gas emission targets in an effort to lessen the impact of fossil fuels.

Senator Warren releases DNA analysis to prove Native American lineageAFP

WASHINGTON: A US Senator seen as a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomi-nation in 2020 has released a DNA test providing “strong evidence” that she has Native American ancestry after her claims had been mocked by Donald Trump, a report said.

Elizabeth Warren, a leading voice from the left of her party, has been derisively called “Poc-ahontas” by the president and accused of lying about her her-itage in order to gain advan-tages in her career including a plum teaching job at Harvard.

But an analysis of her DNA performed by Stanford Uni-versity professor Carlos D. Bus-tamante concluded that while “the vast majority” of Warren’s ancestry is European, “the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor,” the Boston Globe reported.

Bustamente calculated that Warren’s Native American ancestor appeared in her family tree “in the range of 6-10 gen-

erations ago.” The result appears to tie in

with what Warren has said about her family lore of a great-great-great-grandmother who was at least partially Native American.

Warren, who was raised in Oklahoma but represents Mas-sachusetts, was planning an elaborate rollout of the results in order to dispel questions from Republican critics that have dogged her for years, the Globe said.

At a campaign-style rally in July Trump revived the attack in a challenge to Warren: “I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.”

“I have a feeling she will say no,” the US president added.

Warren’s move is remi-niscent of Barack Obama’s decision in 2011 to release his long form birth certificate fol-lowing years of haranguing led by Trump, who pushed the con-spiracy theory that the nation’s first black president was born in Kenya.

A file photo of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) during the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Suspension on F-35 jets lifted following crashBLOOMBERG

W A S H I N G T O N : T h e Pentagon has lifted a suspension on flights for most of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35s after the jet’s first crash prompted inspections of the fleet.

“After completing inspec-tions, more than 80 percent of operational F-35s have been cleared and returned to flight operations,” the Defense Department’s F-35 program office said yesterday in a statement. “All US services and international partners have resumed flying with their cleared aircraft.”

Flights had been sus-pended last week for inspec-tions of a fuel line that inves-tigators believe may have contributed to the crash of an F-35B, the Marine Corps model of the plane, near Beaufort, South Carolina, on September 28.

Replacement fuel lines are available for about half of the remaining planes and others “are expected to be cleared for flight over the coming weeks,” according to the statement.

More than 320 F-35s are already operating from 15 bases worldwide, although the Pentagon and Lockheed continue to wrestle with resolving more than 900 deficiencies.

AFP

PANAMA CITY: President Donald Trump visited Florida yesterday to view the destruction caused by the hurricane.

Michael smashed into Flor-ida’s western coast on Wednesday as a powerful Cat-egory 4 storm, packing winds of 250 km per hour as it began a northern march through several states on the United States’ southeast coast, killing at least 17 people.

“Just arrived in Florida,” Trump tweeted upon arrival, having left Washington with his wife Melania in the morning. “Also thinking about our GREAT Alabama farmers and our many friends in North and South Carolina today. We are with you!”

The president, who was also due to visit Georgia, spoke briefly with reporters alongside Flor-ida’s Governor Rick Scott, whom he praised for “doing an incredible job.”

The governor thanked Trump for federal aid, saying that everything the state asked for had been delivered.

Florida’s Panama City, along with the small seaside resort of Mexico Beach, were left partic-ularly devastated, with thou-sands of homes and businesses destroyed.

Power lines and telephone networks remained out of service in many neighborhoods, with only major highways cleared.

“You wouldn’t even know

they had homes,” Trump said of people whose houses were swept off their foundations as the monster storm hit.

Relief workers who arrived in the aftermath of the hur-ricane set up water and food distribution centers, as cars formed long queues in front of the few gas stations open for business.

More than half of Bay County, which includes Panama City, was still without electricity yesterday morning, while several inland counties were more than 80 percent cut off, according to emergency service officials.

“Right now it’s just survival,” said Daniel Fraga, a resident of Panama City. “The good thing is we all came together, we all help each other. We are in this together.”

The US Army, National Guard and police have been criss-crossing the area, which at dusk goes dark.

Tyndall Air Force Base,

located between Panama City and Mexico Beach, suffered extensive damage and reports had speculated on the fate of a number of F-22 fighter jets that could not be flown out ahead of Michael’s arrival.

The unit cost of the aircraft

is around $150m, which soars to over $330m when research and development are priced in.

“Visually, they were all intact and looked much better than expected considering the sur-rounding damage to some struc-tures,” the Air Force said in a

statement.“Our maintenance profes-

sionals will do a detailed assessment of the F-22 Raptors and other aircraft before we can say with certainty that damaged aircraft can be repaired and sent back into the skies.”

Florida’s Governor

Rick Scott thanked

Donald Trump for

federal aid, saying

that everything the

state asked for had

been delivered.

Trial begins on Harvard University admissions bias lawsuitREUTERS

BOSTON: Harvard University discriminates against Asian-American applicants in order to illegally limit how many it admits, a lawyer for a group suing the school said yesterday at the start of a closely watched trial.

The trial in federal court in Boston pits the Ivy League school against Students for Fair Admis-sions, whose 2014 lawsuit

challenges the use of race as a factor in college admissions decisions.

The lawsuit, backed by Trump administration, could eventually reach the Supreme Court, giving the newly cemented five-member conserv-ative majority a chance to bar the use of affirmative action to help minority applicants get into college.

Conservatives have long argued that affirmative action,

which aims to offset historic pat-terns of racial discrimination, hurts white people and Asian-Americans, who outperform other minority groups on aca-demic measures.

SFFA, which is headed by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, claims Harvard illegally engages in “racial bal-ancing” that artificially limits the number of Asian-American stu-dents at the elite school.

Even statistics showed

Asian-Americans applicants out-performed other racial groups on academic measures, yet that was not necessarily borne out on Harvard’s campus, Adam Mortara, a lawyer for SFFA, said in his opening statement yesterday.

Harvard pushes down the scores Asian-Americans receive on “personal” rating that measures an applicant’s sub-jective likability, grit and posi-tivity and improperly allows race

to play a factor in those scores, Mortara said. “There’s no other possible explanation”.

But William Lee, a lawyer for Harvard, told US District Judge Allison Burroughs that SFFA’s claims were based on heavily manipulated data and “invective accusations and innuendo.”

“Harvard never considers an applicant’s race to be negative,” Lee said. “If it considers race at all, it is always considered in a positive way.”

Electoral campaignDemocratic candidate for Congress, Harley Rouda speaks to supporters in Huntington Beach, California, yesterday. Rouda is running as a Democrat in traditionally Republican Orange County to unseat the 15-term Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher.

US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump (second right) with other officials during their tour to the areas ravaged by Hurricane Michael, in Lynn Haven, Florida, yesterday.

19TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018 AMERICAS

US unveils task force on

transnational crimesAP

WASHINGTON: Attorney General Jeff Sessions created a new task force aimed at zeroing in on the three of the world’s most notorious drug cartels and the brutal MS-13 street gang, already considered a top priority for federal law enforcement.

Speaking to a group of federal prosecutors yesterday, Sessions designated five groups as top transnational organized crime threats and said the new task force will “develop a plan to take each of these groups off of our streets for good.”

Sessions, who been on the receiving end of relentless verbal jabs from President Donald Trump and may be in the final stretches of his tenure, was speaking directly to one of the president’s prime targets amid the administration’s broader crackdown on immigration: MS-13.

Trump has said MS-13 gang members from the stronghold of El Salvador are coming to the US

both illegally and as unaccom-panied minors to wreak havoc. He has held up the gang as a reason for stricter immigration policies meted out by Sessions and others.

“With more than 10,000 members in the United States, this gang is the most violent gang in America today,” Sessions said.

Last year, Sessions directed officials to pursue all possible

charges against MS-13 members, including racketeering, gun and tax law violations. He also des-ignated the gang as a “priority” to a multiagency task force that has historically focused on drug trafficking and money laun-dering, which he called a “pow-erful weapon to use against this vicious gang.”

The gang, also known as La Mara Salvatrucha, is generally known for extortion and violence rather than distributing and selling narcotics. MS-13 members are suspected of committing several high-profile killings in New York, Maryland and Vir-ginia. On New York’s Long Island, where more than two dozen people are believed to have been killed by the gang since 2016, officials have arrested hundreds of MS-13 members, Sessions said.

The task force announced yesterday will allow federal prosecutors to better target pri-ority organizations and make prosecutions “more effective,” the attorney general said.

As part of initiative, prose-cutors will lead specialized sub-committees focusing on each of the organizations and will report back to Sessions within 90 days on the best ways to prosecute the groups, he said.

The groups include the Sinaloa Cartel, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Clan del Golfo, as well as Lebanese Hez-bollah, which the US considers a terrorist organization.

The subcommittees investi-gating the drug cartels are led by prosecutors who have charged drug kingpins and led cases that resulted in the seizures of mil-lions of dollars.

The group focusing on Hez-bollah will include prosecutors who specialize in narcotics traf-ficking, terrorism and organized crime and will also investigate anyone providing support for the organization, Sessions said.

Formed by the Iranian Rev-olutionary Guard in 1982 to fight Israel’s invasion of Beirut, Hez-bollah has morphed into a pow-erful political player in Lebanon, running its own media and com-munication channels and pro-viding government-like services to followers in its strongholds.

The US considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization and has previously hit the group with sanctions.

US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions (centre) during a news conference on efforts to reduce transnational crime at the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, in Washington, DC, yesterday.

Attorney General Jeff

Sessions designated

five groups as

top transnational

organized crime

threats and said the

new task force will

“develop a plan to

take each of these

groups off of our

streets for good.”

Ecuador ends isolation of WikiLeaks founderREUTERS

QUITO: Ecuador has restored partial Internet access to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who took refuge in the country’s London Embassy more than six years ago, WikiLeaks and an Assange lawyer said separately.

The move comes nearly six months after the Ecuadorean government suspended Assange’s communications in March, after he discussed issues on social media that could damage the country’s diplo-matic relations, including a dip-lomatic crisis between London and Moscow as well as Cata-lonian separatism.

“Ecuador rolls back @Julia-nAssange isolation,” WikiLeaks said in a message on Twitter.

The change was also con-firmed by Assange’s Australian legal adviser, Greg Barns, who called it “a welcome development.”

An Assange spokesman said that his communications have been only partially restored.

Assange took refuge in Ecuador’s London Embassy after British courts ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning in a molestation case. That case has since been dropped.

But friends and supporters said Assange now fears he could

be arrested and eventually extradited to the United States if he leaves the embassy.

WikiLeaks, which pub-lished US diplomatic and mil-itary secrets when Assange ran the operation, faces a US grand jury investigation.

“The main issue, the requirement for the United Kingdom to give an under-taking that Julian would not be extradited to the US, remains unresolved,” Barns said yesterday.

Friends and supporters of Assange said he has had contact only with lawyers since Ecuador suspended his com-munications with the outside world.

WikiLeaks recently announced that one of Assange’s longtime associates, Kristin Hrafnsson, had taken over from him as WikiLeaks editor in chief.

As a 2016 presidential can-didate, President Donald Trump praised WikiLeaks for pub-lishing hacked emails that embarrassed his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

But Trump administration officials have condemned Assange, while a federal grand jury continues a long-running criminal investigation of WikiLeaks and its personnel, a US off ic ia l recent ly confirmed.

Over 1,500 Honduran migrants join caravan to USAP

MEXICO CITY: Hundreds more Hondurans have joined a caravan of migrants moving toward the country’s border with Guatemala in a desperate attempt to flee poverty and seek new lives in the United States.

Dunia Montoya, a volunteer assisting the migrants, said that the group had grown to an esti-mated over 1,500 people from an initial 160 who first gathered early Friday in a northern Hon-duras city.

Montoya said many in the group might not be allowed to

enter Guatemala because they lack official identification documents.

The migration began to swell after local media coverage of the initial group whose members had agreed to depart together on Friday from a bus station in San Pedro Sula, one of the most dan-gerous cities in Honduras.

Hundreds more soon joined the ranks, wagering a mass exit could improve their chances for getting over borders.

Many had already planned to leave Honduras and also felt traveling in numbers could lessen chances of falling victim

to robbery and assault that often plague migrants.

Families arrived with infants in their arms and toddlers in strollers. They packed light, most carrying little more than a backpack.

The caravan formed just one day after US Vice-President Mike Pence urged the presidents of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to persuade their cit-izens to stay home. “Tell your people: Don’t put your families at risk by taking the dangerous journey north to attempt to enter the United States illegally”.

Report finds Oklahoma school bus traveling too fast during crash

Man charged in Detroit eatery shooting deathsAP

DETROIT: A 29-year-old man has been charged with murder in the deaths of three men who were gunned down inside a fastfood restaurant in Detroit .

William Wilbourn-Little of Detroit was jailed pending his next court hearing after appearing on Saturday by video for arraignment on charges including first-degree murder, being a felon in pos-session of a firearm and using a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Court records yesterday don’t list a lawyer who can speak on his behalf.

Police have said two men wearing masks walked up to the White Castle on Detroit’s west side just after midnight September 9 and fired shots inside the restaurant before fleeing on foot.

Authorities said that 25-year-old Rashawn Har-rington, 24-year-old Trevaughn Anthony and 20-year-old DeShawn Gadson were pronounced dead at the scene.

Honduran migrants fleeing from poverty and violence travel in a truck as part of their journey in a caravan toward the United States, after leaving Ocotepeque, Honduras, yesterday.

California cuts electricity as wildfire precaution

AP

LAMPASAS: An Oklahoma school bus that hydroplaned on a wet road and crashed in Central Texas last month, injuring nearly everyone onboard, was traveling at an unsafe speed for the condi-tions, according to a Texas Department of Transpor-tation report.

The bus crossed into the wrong lane on September 29 as it was making a left hand curve on US 281 near Lam-pasas, 100km northwest of Austin, the report said. C

leveland Elementary School principal Ty Bell, who was driving the bus, took “faulty evasive action” and overcorrected, which caused him to lose control of the vehicle, the report said.

Officials said the bus rolled over and struck a fence.

AP

SAN FRANCISCO: Concerned about downed power lines sparking wildfires, a major Cali-fornia utility for the first time cut power to tens of thousands of customers amid high winds — and other power providers were considering similar action.

Pacific Gas & Electric began cutting power on Sunday night in Northern California after the National Weather Service warned of extreme fire danger across the state because of high winds, low humidity and dry vegetation.

PG&E previously announced its plan to shut off power preemptively after authorities blamed its power lines for sparking some of California’s most destructive wildfires.

The utility expects to pay

billions of dollars in wildfire damages and has sought ways to limit its liability in the courts and the state Legislature.

PG&E said about 87,000 cus-tomers had their power halted and more could be left in the dark depending on the weather. Some 60,000 customers remained without power Monday afternoon. Schools in those affected areas canceled classes.

PG&E said it expected to restore power yesterday night to most customers — though some residents won’t get elec-tricity back until today.

“We know how much our customers rely on electric service, and we have made the decision to turn off power as a last resort given the extreme fire danger conditions these commu-nities are experiencing,” PG&E spokesman Pat Hogan said.

PG&E said it began notifying affected customers on Saturday about possible outages. However, many said Monday they had received little or no notice.

Stewart Munnerlyn was scrambling to find generators to save $8,000 worth of ice cream at his creamery shop in Pine Grove, about 89km east of Sacramento.

Munnerlyn said he is in Vir-ginia visiting a sick relative and received three text messages Sunday night from PG&E saying it might cut power, but he didn’t know it actually happened until a friend called him.

“They knew what they were going to do obviously,” Munnerlyn said. “We weren’t given enough notice to properly prepare.”

PG&E spokeswoman Melissa Subottin said power was also cut to hospitals and other medical providers that are required to have backup power sources.

PG&E officials visited 4,400 medical customers in the affected areas to personally warn them of the outages, she said.

The weather service pre-dicted winds gusting to 89 kph in the Sierra foothills east of Sacra-mento. High winds were also expected in the state’s wine

country north of San Francisco.Utilities in Southern Cali-

fornia also said they were con-sidering shutting off power to an undetermined number of customers.

Strong wind gusts swept across the region with the arrival of the first fall Santa Ana winds — hot, sustained gusts that blow from the desert to the ocean.

A motorist in the Orange County city of Tustin was killed when a eucalyptus tree fell on her car in an apartment complex. The victim was 34. No further details were released.

Southern California Edison spokesman David Song said about 32,000 of its 5 million cus-tomers were experiencing power outages, but no shutdowns had been ordered by the utility. Song said Edison was investigating the cause of those outages.

PG&E previously

announced its plan

to shut off power

preemptively after

authorities blamed

its power lines for

sparking some of

California’s most

destructive wildfires.

20 TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2018MORNING BREAK

FAJRSHOROOK

04. 16 AM

05. 32 AM

11. 20 AM

02. 38 PM

05. 08 PM

06. 38 PM

ZUHRASR

MAGHRIBISHA

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 10:15 – 20:00 LOW TIDE 02:00 – 19:15

Expected thundery rain associated with

strong wind and high sea.

WEATHER TODAY

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum30oC 38oC

GE brings supersonic private jets closer to reality

BLOOMBERG

DALLAS: General Electric Co. has completed its initial design for the first commercial supersonic aircraft engine in decades, a major hurdle for devel-oping private planes and, perhaps eventually, jetliners that fly faster than the speed of sound.

The twin-shaft, twin-fan design will slash travel times by hours after 50 years in which the average speed of private jets has increased only 10 percent, GE said in a statement yesterday.

The engine is being designed for Aerion, a startup backed by Texas bil-lionaire Robert Bass, who has been trying to develop a supersonic business jet for more than a decade.

“Instead of going faster, cabins have increased in size and become more comfortable and range has become longer,’’ Brad Mottier, GE vice president for business aviation, said in a statement. “The next step is speed.’’ The engine design bolsters Aerion’s goal of putting a supersonic plane in the sky next decade. Lockheed Martin Corp. is helping with design and production of Aerion’s AS2 plane, which would seat 12. Flexjet, which

flies clients who buy fractional own-ership of an aircraft, agreed in 2015 to buy 20 of the planes. Aerion is tar-geting the aircraft’s first flight in 2023, followed by a commercial debut in 2025.

The engine will be able to meet noise and emissions rules while flying faster than the speed of sound over water and decelerating to slower speeds over land.

Most countries still ban breaking the sound barrier because of sonic booms. The booms and loud engine noise hobbled flights of the Concorde,

contributing to the demise of the last supersonic commercial plane. Aerion is hardly alone in the race to develop civilian planes that fly faster than the speed of sound.

Boom Technology Inc., a Colorado startup, is developing a 45-to-55 seat plane capable of connecting New York and London in about three hours. Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. and Japan Airlines Co. have said they intend to purchase the aircraft.

GE is paving the way for non-mil-itary aircraft to return to supersonic flight, Aerion Chief Executive Officer

Tom Vice said in the statement. The AS2 will fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound. If that plane is successful, Aerion is planning other aircraft including a commercial jet, Vice said.

“Our mission is to enhance global mobility with supersonic speed, starting with business aviation, and following with successively faster and larger designs for business and com-mercial aviation,’’ he said.

The next milestone for the GE engine is in 2020 when it will be ready to begin detailed design and “test-article production,’’ Mottier said.

The twin-shaft, twin-fan

design will slash travel

times by hours after 50

years in which the average

speed of private jets has

increased only 10 percent,

GE said in a statement

yesterday.

A digital rendering of the Aerion AS2 Supersonic Business Jet provided by Aerion yesterday.

Robots can save us from phone scammersBLOOMBERG

LOS ANGELES: These days it seems that virtually every phone call is either spam or a scam — someone is trying to sell you a cheap credit card, Lasik eye surgery or land someplace you can’t find on a map. And you don’t even get the pleasure of real human interaction — the call comes from a robot, who only puts a person on the line once you’ve signalled you’re an easy mark.

Of course there’s a National Do Not Call Registry, but the investigators who operate it can’t keep up with the scale of robocalling — and scammers aren’t worried about breaking the law anyway.

It’s gotten to the point that most of us (this correspondent included) don’t pick up calls from numbers we don’t rec-ognise. And consequently, everyone misses hearing about homeowners asso-ciation meetings, rescheduled dentist

appointments, and/or Nobel prizes. But maybe Google is going to change that. Last Tuesday, the company announced Google Call Screening, a new feature on the company’s Pixel phones, which can pick up calls from unknown numbers and ask questions so you can figure out whether you actually want to speak with the caller.

It’s not yet clear how well the tech-nology will work. But even just as a glimpse of things to come, it’s pretty exciting.

Google’s antispam bot will save you from the spam bot! (“Exciting news: You can improve your credit score today!” “I’m sorry Dave; I’m afraid I can’t do that.”) The screening bot will verbally engage the spam robocall; you can glance at a screen readout of their exchange in amusement if you want to, or just ignore it.

Of course, sometimes one of your

friends or family members will get a new cell phone, and they’ll have to chat with your robot before getting to talk with you. But at least eventually they will get to talk with you -- which might not happen at all in today’s equilibrium, where you just ignore unknown numbers.

Answering robots will be even more valuable when they get good enough to identify non-spam callers and put them through directly. But maybe most intriguing is the potential for antispam robots to turn the tables on the spammers. If enough people have robots screening their calls, then robospammers might find it hard to get through to real humans — dealing with the roboscreeners will take up much of their time. Perhaps one day the roboscreeners might even be designed to talk to the robospam bots and convince them to put their human operators on the line.

A worker puts finishing touches to an iPal social robot, designed by AvatarMind, at an assembly plant in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, China.

IANS

SAN FRANCISCO: A team of researchers in the US is set to use Apple iPhone and Watch to track binge eating disorder among people.

According to University of North Carolina’s Center of Excellence for Eating Dis-orders, if you are 18, have an iPhone (model 5 or newer), and have a current or lifetime expe-rience with binge eating dis-order (BED) or bulimia nervosa (BN), you can participate in the study titled “Binge Eating Genetics Initiative” (BEGIN).

“The goal of the BEGIN study is to better understand the genetic factors that may be associated with binge-eating disorder and bulimia nervosa in order to develop better treatments for the millions of people who suffer from these illnesses,” the university said on its website.

The researchers will use the Recovery Record app on iPhone to record the participants’ mood, food and goals for 30 days.

They will ask the partici-pants to provide a sample of their saliva and bodily bacteria.

“Once you enroll in the BEGIN study using your iPhone, we will send you a ‘BEGIN box’ via FedEx that will include everything that you need to participate in the study,” the university said.

According to a report in CNBC on Monday, the uni-versity hopes to recruit 1,000 participants. Each participant will be given a free Watch from Apple and researchers will monitor their heart rate.

Apple iPhone to soon decode binge eating disorder

iPal social robot

IANS

NEW YORK: Parents, take note. Your less affectionate and harsher behaviour towards your children can make them aggressive and anti-social, a new study has found.

The findings suggest that less parental warmth and more harshness in the home envi-ronment affect how aggressive children become and whether they lack empathy and a moral compass — a set of character-istics known as callous-une-motional (CU) traits.

“The study convincingly shows that parenting — and not just genes — contributes to the development of risky callous-unemotional traits,” said co-author Luke Hyde, Associate Professor at the Uni-versity of Michigan, US.

“Because identical twins have the same DNA, we can be more sure that the differences in parenting the twins received affects the development of these traits,” Hyde added.

For the study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Ado-lescent Psychiatry, the research team involved 227

identical twin pairs. The team analysed small differences in the parenting that each twin experienced to determine whether these differences pre-dicted the likelihood of anti-social behaviours emerging. They also assessed child behaviour by asking the mother to report on 35 traits related to aggression and CU traits.

The researchers found that the twins who experienced stricter or harsher treatment and less emotional warmth from parents had a greater chance of showing aggression and CU traits. A subsequent adoption study, of parents and children who were not biolog-ically related, turned up con-sistent results.

“We couldn’t blame that on genetics because these children don’t share genes with their parents,” said lead author Rebecca Waller, Assistant Pro-fessor at the University of Pennsylvania.

“But it still didn’t rule out the possibility that something about the child’s genetic char-acteristics was evoking certain reactions from the adoptive parent,” Waller added.

Being less affectionate can make your child anti-social

IANS

NEW YORK: Consuming a ketogenic diet — high levels of fat and low levels of carbohy-drate — can help prevent cognitive decline, according to a new study on mice.

The findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, showed that the stomach and the brain are more closely connected than we once thought, and in fact the health of one can affect the other.\

“Recent science has

suggested that neurovascular integrity might be regulated by the bacteria in the gut, so we set out to see whether the ketogenic diet enhanced brain vascular function and reduced neurode-generation risk in young healthy mice,” said Ai-Ling Lin from the

University of Kentucky in the US.“Neurovascular integrity,

including cerebral blood flow and blood-brain barrier function, plays a major role in cognitive ability,” Lin added. The team examined the effect of diet on cognitive health on mice.

Ketogenic diet prevents cognitive decline: Study

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