Volume 23 | Number 7685 | 2 RiyalsSaturday 20 October 2018 | 11 Safar I 1440 www.thepeninsula.qa

BUSINESS | 14 SPORT | 19Trail Blazers spoil James' Lakers debut

EU signs Singapore trade deal, urges China to open up

First 5G network in the world!

Defence Minister opens Typhoon,

Hawk T2 production lines in UKTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs, H E Dr Khalid bin Mohammad Al Attiyah, inaugu-rated yesterday the production lines of Typhoon and Hawk T2 for Qatar in Warton, United Kingdom.

The project, named “Al-Dhariyat”, aims to develop the capabilities of the Qatari Amiri Air Force and within its plans to modernise its fleet of modern fighters to protect the country’s capabilities.

H E Dr Al Attiyah, who is currently visiting the UK, was briefed on the preparations and equipment to be adopted by a technical college to be estab-lished in the State of Qatar, which will have a prominent role in serving the Qatari Armed

Forces in particular and all sectors and state institutions in general.

The inauguration of Typhoon and Hawk T2 aircraft follows Amir and Com-mander-in-Chief of the Qatari Armed Forces’ H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani inauguration of the operations of the Qatari Amiri Air Force and the British Royal Air Force

joint squadron last July. The project is unique in its

ability to enhance the capabil-ities of the Amiri Air Force and the joint action and defense, and the joint squadron will have a prominent and effective role in protecting the Qatari airspace during the 2022 World Cup.

The inauguration ceremony was attended by the Qatari Mil-itary Attache in the United Kingdom, Brig General (Air Force) Hamad bin Jassim Al Marri, Director of Al Dhariyat Project, Brig General (Pilot) Jassem Mohammad Al Mannai, and a number of senior officers in Qatar Armed forces.

Dr Khalid bin Mohammad Al Attiyah and British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson signed a contract to supply 24 Typhoon and 9 Hawk aircraft on December,10, 2017.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs, H E Dr Khalid bin Mohammad Al Attiyah, during the inauguration of the production lines of Typhoon and Hawk T2 for Qatar in Warton, United Kingdom, yesterday.

Qatar dealt wisely with siege crisis: Sheikha AlyaTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The State of Qatar affirmed that it has demon-strated its ability to deal wisely with the unprecedented siege crisis in the Gulf region by continuing the policy of opening up and building bilateral and multilateral partnerships in various fields, and despite campaigns of hatred, misinfor-mation and falsehood by the siege countries, which seeks in vain to justify the irresponsible actions taken against the people and residents of Qatar.

This came in a statement delivered yesterday by Per-manent Representative of Qatar to the United Nations, Ambassador H E Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif Al Thani, before the UN Security Council on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian issue.

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UN praises Qatar’s urgent response to Gaza's power crisisTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The United Nations (UN) Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov has thanked the State of Qatar for its urgent and generous response by providing $60m for the purchase of fuel to increase the supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip.

This came in his speech at the meeting of the UN Security Council held Thursday on developments in the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian issue and the situation in the Gaza Strip, QNA reported.

Mladenov warned of the

repercussions of the deterio-ration of the situation in the Gaza Strip in light of the possi-bility of war in the Strip, and the continued decline of economic, security and political indicators.

The UN official urged all sides to calm the situation, oth-erwise the consequences will be terrible for everyone.

The warnings of the UN official to the possibility of war in the Gaza Strip come after the council of ministers of the Israeli entity issued on Wednesday instructions to the occupation army to escalate its response to the marches of return, which continue since March 30, describing the

demonstrations as riots on the security fence in the Gaza Strip.

The occupation forces have faced marches calling for the return of Palestinian refugees and the lifting of the Israeli siege imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2006, with extreme violence, which resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Pal-estinians and thousands of injured.

He called on the Israeli and Palestinian sides to return to the negotiating table, adding that the Israeli entity continues to demolish Palestinian buildings and property in the occupied West Bank and imposes the reality of one state on the ground.

New winter vegetable market to open in Al Shamal on ThursdaySANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Municipality and Environment represented by Agricultural Affairs Department is preparing to open the fourth winter vegetable market in Al Shamal on Thursday offering farm fresh vegetables at attractive prices.

“The new market will serve as another platform to market local agricultural produce offering fresh vegetables to the customers straight from the local farms without brokers or middlemen,” Yusuf Khalid Al Khulaifi, Director of Agriculture Affairs at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment told The Peninsula on the sidelines a recent Ministry’s event.

The existing three seasonal winter veg-etable markets run by the Ministry of Munic-ipality and Environment at Al Mazrouah (Near Umm Salal), Al Khor-Dhakhira and Al Wakrah are also expected to reopen for this season bringing products of agricul-tural farms.

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The project, named

“Al Dhariyat”, aims

to develop the

capabilities of the

Qatari Amiri Air Force

and within its plans

to modernise its fleet

of modern fighters to

protect the country’s

capabilities.

Amir holds phone call with Kuwait AmirQNA

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held yesterday a telephone conversation with H H the Amir of the State of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah.

During the phone call, H H the Amir expressed his thanks and appreciation to H H the Amir of Kuwait for his country’s support for Qatar in its efforts to host the 140th session of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which will be held in Doha in April 2019.

The phone conversation reviewed the deep-rooted relations between the two countries and the latest regional and international developments.

Trump 'may consider sanctions' on Saudi over missing KhashoggiREUTERS

WASHINGTON/ANKARA: US President Donald Trump said he might consider sanctions against Saudi Arabia over the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, while emphasizing the importance of the US-Saudi rela-tionship.

In Istanbul, Turkish prosecutors investigating Khashoggi’s disappearance questioned Turkish employees of the Saudi consulate on Friday, widening the hunt for clues in a case straining Riy-adh’s alliance with Western powers.

Speaking to reporters in Scottsdale, Arizona, Trump said it was too early to say what the consequences for the incident might be. But he said the US Congress would be involved in deter-mining the American response.

Asked whether sanctions were one of the measures he was considering, Trump said, “Could be, could be.”

“We’re going to find out who knew what when and where. And we’ll figure it out,” Trump added.

Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, went missing after entering the consulate on October 2 to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. Turkish officials believe he was killed in the building. Saudi Arabia has denied the allegations.

The US Congress is controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, some of whom have called for tough action against Saudi Arabia.

“I’m going to have very much Con-gress involved in determining what to do.... I will very much listen to what Con-gress has to say. They feel very strongly about it also,” Trump said.

Trump has also been reluctant to imperil major arms deals with Riyadh.

“Saudi Arabia has been a great ally of ours. That’s why this is so sad.... Saudi Arabia has been a great ally, they’ve been a tremendous investor in the United States,” Trump said.

Turkish police searched a forest on Istanbul’s outskirts and a city near the Sea of Marmara for Khashoggi’s

remains, two senior Turkish officials said, after tracking the routes of cars that left the consulate and the consul’s res-idence on the day he vanished.

Investigators have recovered samples from searches of both buildings to analyse for traces of Khashoggi’s DNA.

State-run Anadolu news agency said the Turkish prosecutor’s office had taken testimony from 20 consulate employees, and that 25 more people including foreign nationals would be questioned.

The consulate employees ques-tioned included accountants, techni-cians and a driver, Anadolu said. The investigation is being conducted by the prosecutor’s terrorism and organised crime bureau, it added.

Turkey said on Friday it had not shared with any country audio recordings purportedly documenting Khashoggi’s murder inside the con-sulate, dismissing reports it had passed them to the United States.

�SEE ALSO PAGE 4

02 SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018HOME

Qatari Law Firm wins prestigious IFLR awardTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Qatari Law Firm (Al Sharq) was awarded the ‘Best Law Firm in the Middle East for 2018’ by the prominent Inter-national Financial Law Review (IFLR).

Qatari lawyer Rashid Al Saad, Founder of Al Sharq firm, considered this award as an achievement for Qatar as all institutions of the country are constantly seeking leadership

and excellency in all fields despite the unjust blockade imposed on Qatar.

The IFLR rating of law firms is based on three criteria, including the rating of transac-tions conducted by the firm, consultancy, legal expertise, professional standards and quality of service in accordance with international standards.

Al Sharq is the first local law firm awarded by an interna-tional institution based on

international standards which competed with thousands of other firms of the region.

“The Qatari expertise com-peted with prominent interna-tional firms in this review which proves the development of law services in Qatar,” Saad added. The firm had been pre-viously awarded in the ‘Legal 500’ among the best law firms in the Middle East in the field of conflict resolution and real estate.

MEC shuts shop for selling fake products THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Economy and Commerce has announced the two-week closure of a phone shop located in Al Rayyan for displaying and selling counterfeit batteries bearing international trade-marks.

The inspection campaign comes within the framework of the ministry’s efforts to monitor markets and commercial activ-ities in order to crack down on price manipulation and uncover violations as well as counterfeit,

fraudulent and substandard products.

The outlet was fined and closed for a two-week period in line with article (7) of law number (8) of 2008. Article 7 compels suppliers to clearly display on the product’s package or label the type and nature of the item as well as other rel-evant data in line with the law’s implementing regulations. The law also prohibits the display of fraudulent descriptions, adver-tisements and misleading statements.

The administrative closure

declaration shall be published at the expense of the company or shop that committed the vio-lation in accordance with Article (18) of Law No. (8) on Consumer Protection. The law stipulates that the closure decision shall be published on the Ministry’s website and in two daily news-papers at the expense of the vio-lating company.

The Ministry has urged all consumers to report violations or submit complaints and sug-gestions to its consumer pro-tection and anti-commercial fraud department.

QC’s programme aims to build leadership skills among youth THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The rounds of compe-tition between the participants in Al Rayyan team led by Sabah Al Kuwari, General Manager of Al Rayyan Satellite Channel, has started at the administrative building of the channel.

The programme aims at building leadership capabilities of young generation and devel-oping their skills in cooperation

with prominent figures in various fields.

The competition came as part of the “Give Them Your Experience” programme, which is being implemented by Qatar Charity and the “Do Good” ini-tiative. The aim of such com-pletion is to learn the media and administrative skills and gain the experience from prominent figures in the media in order to build young community leaders.

At first, the team members introduced themselves to each other and the team leader, Sabah Al Kuwari, General Manager of Al Rayyan Satellite Channel, posed a set of questions to create an environment conducive to learning and sharing experiences.

Sabah Al Kuwari, General Manager of Al Rayyan Satellite Channel, advised the team members not to stop at any stage

without achieving the goal, alerting them that the way to the achievement may go through difficulties, challenges and neg-ative comments.

Then, the team members, accompanied by Sabah Al Kuwari and other officials of Al Rayyan channel and the “Do Good” initiative, took a tour of the channel’s building and met many heads of the channel’s departments and sections.

HMC opens forum to discuss latest trends in urolithiasisTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Hamad Medical Corpo-ration (HMC) opened, first of its kind, an international multidis-ciplinary conference for urology experts, on Thursday, at the Sheraton Grand Doha Resort and Convention Hotel.

The ‘First Qatar Urolithiasis Forum 2018,’ will hold discus-sions about the latest develop-ments in the field of urolithiasis, over two days. It includes medical and surgical techniques for the treatment of urolithiasis as well as prevention methods.

The forum featured a live surgery demonstration, yes-terday, which provided attendees with an opportunity to observe experts performing complex surgical procedures and getting acquainted with the latest cutting-edge technology used in the field.

Urolithiasis is the formation

of stones in the kidney, bladder, and/or urethra (urinary tract). Depending on where a stone is located, it may be called a kidney stone, ureteral stone, or bladder stone. Kidney stones are a common cause of blood in the urine and pain in the abdomen, flank or groin. Each year, thou-sands of patients are hospi-talised for stones.

The event has brought together 300 professionals from Qatar and around the world. They include some of the world’s leading specialists in the diagnosis and management of urolithiasis. In addition to hearing from urolithiasis experts, attendees will benefit from live demonstrations, lec-tures, and discussions led by local and international specialists.

“The forum will feature state-of-the-art presentations on various topics in the field of

stone management. Lectures delivered by leading delegates from Qatar, the US, the UK, Italy, China, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Kuwait, Oman, and a number of other countries,” said Dr Khaled Al Rumaihi, Head of Urology at HMC’s Ambulatory Care Center and Chairman of the Forum’s organizing committee.

According to Dr Abdulla Al Naimi, Senior Consultant in Urology at HMC and Head of the Forum’s Scientific Committee, delegates from across HMC’s network of hospitals, including Hamad General Hospital, Al Wakra Hospital, and Al Khor Hospital, are among the event’s attendees. That event included workshops covering a number of topics, including the man-agement of urinary calculi. Workshops also focused on lithotripsy, prostatolithotomy, and urinary tract stone frag-mentation procedures.

Healthcare professionals pose during the first international multidisciplinary conference organised by HMC for urology experts at Sheraton Grand Doha Resort and Convention Hotel, on Thursday.

New winter vegetable market to open in Al Shamal on Thursday

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Yusuf Khalid Al Khulaifi (pictured), Director of Agri-culture Affairs at the Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment, said that agricultural produce in Qatar achieved great leap last season due to support of government and initiatives taken by local farmers to increase the productions which assumed importance after the blockade.

“We expect more pro-duction this season. The gov-ernment has earmarked QR105m to support the pro-ducers of local food products. A big portion of the allocated amount will be spent on local farms to provide them nec-essary materials including shaded farms, seeds, pesticides, fertilisers and boxes for mar-keting the products among many more,” said Al Khulaifi.

He said that all necessary steps were taken in the last season and more efforts will be made this season to increase the production. “We did not achieve the maximum pro-duction targets last year but

defiantly the self-sufficiency rate will increase remarkably this season,” he added.

He said that the efforts to address existing obstacles in agricultural field had caused major breakthrough in agricul-tural production in the country, where the production of local vegetables had increased from about 50,000 tonnes during the year before the blockade to about 65,000 tonnes after the blockade, which is an increase of 30 percent.

He said that the Ministry of Municipality and Environment is preparing a list of the farmers, the beneficiaries of the allo-cated fund, which will be announced soon.

Deputy PM meets Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, met yesterday with Prime Minister of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Imran Khan, during his official visit to Islamabad. The meeting discussed bilateral relations and means of boosting and developing them, as well as matters of common concern.

Qatar dealt wisely with siege crisis: Sheikha AlyaCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

The Ambassador H E Sheikha

Alya Ahmed bin Saif Al Thani said that it has been almost a year and four months since the illegal siege on the State of Qatar and the fabricated crisis that aimed to rob the will of the State of Qatar and hijack its political decision, by using farcical pretexts.

She added that this fabri-cated crisis has only succeeded in undermining the GCC, a regional organization that has maintained its cohesion for more than three decades. The Ambas-sador stressed that the State of Qatar, since the beginning of the crisis, has affirmed its com-mitment to deal with it within the framework of international

law, relevant international and bilateral conventions and within existing international mecha-nisms for conflict resolution.

The Ambassador reiterated Qatar’s commitment to the mediation of Amir of Kuwait H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, and its appreci-ation to the States that supported this mediation in order to resolve the crisis and its readiness to sit at the dialogue table, that respects its sovereignty without dictates, as it has emphasized in several forums.

The Ambassador added that the State of Qatar headed for the International Court of Justice in order to find solutions to the human rights and humanitarian consequences of this crisis, including the disintegration of

families and depriving students of their studies as a result of the unilateral coercive measures imposed by the siege countries.

In this context, she referred to the Court’s decision on July 23 to take interim measures in favour of Qatar against the United Arab Emirates for breaching the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

She explained that the Court’s decision requested from the UAE to ensure the reunifi-cation of families separated by measures taken by the UAE, and the granting of Qatari students affected by these measures, the opportunity to complete their studies in the UAE or obtain their educational records, as well as ensure that Qatari nationals

affected by such measures can head to the courts and judicial organs of the UAE.

With regard to the Palestine issue, the Ambassador said that the Palestinian issue had been under consideration by the Security Council for decades in light of the inability of the inter-national community to reach a settlement of the issue. She said that settlement of the issue would positively affect the sta-bility of the region and the inter-national peace and security, since the Palestinian issue is the central issue of the Arab and Islamic nation.

The Ambassador called for an immediate and complete ces-sation of settlement activities, the return of refugees and the restoration of the inalienable

rights of the Palestinian people. She also referred to the siege

imposed on Gaza, pointing out that it is unreasonable that the unjust siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, which reaches its eleventh year, becomes a rec-ognized case. She added that under the directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar provided emer-gency humanitarian aid worth $150m, and the Strip was pro-vided with fuel to secure elec-tricity in light of the humani-tarian tragedy experienced by the residents of the Gaza Strip.

About the Syrian crisis, the Ambassador said that the grave consequences of the Syrian crisis necessitated the urgent achievement of a political solution.

Speaker of Advisory Council returns homeTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Speaker of the Advisory Council H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud returned yesterday evening to Doha from Geneva after chairing the State of Qatar’s delegation partici-pating at the 139th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which announced on Thursday that the State of Qatar will host its 140th session.

At the conclusion of its work, the 139th IPU Assembly adopted a number of recom-mendations and the final doc-ument, all emphasizing the role of the parliamentary leadership in promoting peace and development in an era of innovation and tech-nological change as well as stressing the need to strengthen parliamentary cooperation among the Member States in the area of migration, in the light of the adoption of the Global Compact on Safe, Regular and Orderly Migration.

It also adopted the reports of the Committee on Peace and International Security, the Committee on Sustainable Development, the Committee on Finance and Trade, the Committee on United Nations Affairs, Committee on the Human Rights and some other administrative and organisational issues.

03SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018 HOME

WCM-Q researchers predict gender of date palm accurately THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine — Qatar (WCM-Q) can now predict whether a date palm seed will produce a male or female plant with effectively 100 percent accuracy , with huge implica-tions for the commercial use of the plant.

The team led by Dr Joel Malek, Assistant Professor of Genetic Medicine and Director of the Genomics Core at WCM-Q, already knew that the gender of the date palm plant is deter-mined by the XY system, whereby the male of the species determines the gender of the off-spring. It is similar to the way that human gender is deter-mined. They also knew that a large region of genes appeared to be always associated with gender but were unclear on the specific DNA responsible.

That uncertainty has now

been solved, and in doing so the research team has discovered how to predict the gender of all 14 palm trees species within the Phoenix genus — the genus that contains the date palm. They did this by decoding the genome of each species to calculate which genes appeared in the male plants but not the females.

Dr Malek said, “The mech-anism was narrowed down to four genes that every male plant in the entire genus had, but that were absent in the female plants. Essentially, those four genes are responsible for a tree producing pollen.”

He added that the Phoenix genus was one of only a few examples where the sex deter-minants are the same across the entire genus.

The discovery, which has been reported in the high impact journal Nature Communications could have major implications for both commercial agriculture

and horticulture.For farmers growing date

palms and harvesting the fruit, it is important to have as many female plants as possible to maximise crop yields. Con-versely, city planners and land-scape gardeners who plant palm trees for aesthetic reasons prefer male plants, as they do not produce fruit which must be cleared up when it drops.

Dr Malek, said, “Farmers must traditionally wait four or five years to find whether the trees that they have planted will yield fruit or pollen; so genetic testing of the seeds can ensure a high ratio of female plants are grown, with only a few male

plants being cultivated for pol-lination purposes.

“At the same time, the genetic test can be used on other species in the genus that are also important such as Canary Island date palm which is extremely widespread in the world at large for landscaping.”

Future research will see Dr Malek and his team identifying the genes which control features such as the date’s size, sweetness and texture, along with its resistance to certain diseases and stress factors like drought.

This research was funded by an exceptional proposal grant from the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF).

The team of researchers at WCM-Q, who discovered the new method of predicting the gender of date palms, poses for a snap.

PHCC’s clinical poster gets RCGP international awardTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC), repre-sented by Dr Samya Al Abdulla (pictured), Senior Consultant, Family Medicine, and Executive Director of Operations, received an award for their engaging clinical poster at an interna-tional conference.

The poster on ‘Integration of Mental Health into Primary Care in Qatar’ was awarded by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) at their Annual Primary Care Conference and Exhibition in Glasgow, Scotland.

The RCGP Annual Primary Care conference and Exhi-bition, hosted a wide range of general practitioners and practice teams to attend the prestigious event. Covering over 80 hours of sessions on the latest clinical and policy developments in the UK, the event brought together both national and international speakers, including Dr Al Abdullah.

“We are delighted to have participated in the RCGP Annual Primary Care con-ference and to have our poster being recognised at the prestigious international forum is a testament to our commitment in delivering quality care,” said Dr Al Abdullah.

The poster represented a key area covered by PHCC,

the integration of mental health care in Qatar,” he added.

“It was an honour to rep-resent PHCC at such an out-standing event and to hear f rom industry- leading experts as part of the dis-cussion. I hope to share this learning with my PHCC col-leagues in Qatar as we strive to deliver the very best in integrated primary care for all our patients,” she added.

The RCGP Conference and Exhibition showcased up to 300 posters and papers from different researchers and innovators to the 1,500 attendees. PHCC’s winning poster, will now be published in a mobile-app dedicated to the annual conference, allowing delegates as well as a worldwide audience to easily access their work.

Motorists urged to be cautious during rainSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

DOHA: As the rainy season starts, driving in wet weather requires more caution and alert in addition to safe driving prac-tices.

The General Directorate of Traffic at the Ministry of Interior has advised motorists to ensure that the wipers are functional and can clean the windshield.

The ministry has published, on their official Twitter account, many tips for motorists driving on wet roads during rain. Among the most important of these tips include an advice to be more alert and attentive while driving in rain.

Motorists have also been advised to stay away from eve-rything which may make them busy while driving. “Avoid driving through water-logged

areas that may endanger drivers’ safety, avoid overtaking and unnecessary lane-changes and also keep a safe distance between vehicles,” said a traffic officials.

Another official of the General Directorate of Traffic

said that the tips provided by the department are part of the ‘safety driving’ programme’ which was launched by the department.

He also added that there have been no major traffic acci-dents caused by the rain in

recent days but the drivers must deal cautiously with the rain and reduce the speed.

He also confirmed that department had deployed traffic patrols at all areas to manage traffic and provide aid in case of need. “Drivers must reduce speed when the road is wet, and don’t drive at speed that does not suit the road’s condition,” he added.

“Maintain the speed lesser than specified or mentioned on any specific road and ensure safety and validity of tires by measuring air pressure,” the ministry posted in another tweet.

As rain falls, it creates slick conditions, which could cause skidding. The best way to avoid skidding is to slow down. Driving at a slower pace allows more of the tire’s tread to make contact with the road, which leads to better traction.

Vehicles pass by an area in Doha on a rainy day .

Curtain raised on 1st ever European Film Festival DohaRAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The first-ever European Film Festival Doha kicked off to a fitting start at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) on Thursday with the screening of some of the best animation short films combining contemporary art and digital technology.

Cinemaphiles who flocked the festival opening were treated to over a dozen carefully curated short films from the 2017 edition of Ars Elec-tronica Animation Festival, a festival of global renown held in Linz, Austria.

“The Austrian films we are screening tonight are something special. We bring you the best films from the film festival that we had in Linz. These films are from different countries all over the world such as Japan, France, UK and US,” said Aus-trian Ambassador Willy Kempel, local EU Chair, as he officially opened the film festival.

While the films shown exhibited thematic diversity, they all depicted the latest trends in computer ani-mation and visual effects that proved the limitless possibilities of human imagination and innovation in this genre of art. Kemplel underscored that one of the major aims of the fes-tival was to showcase cultural values through the medium of film.

“We don’t have one festival theme. We want to show that we are diverse, yet united in the cultural

language of films,” he stressed, adding in the future editions of the festival, the audience could expect more films and the presence of film-makers and other personalities.

European Union National Insti-tutes for Culture (EUNIC) Cluster in Qatar has partnered with the MIA to organize the festival which runs until October 23 at the MIA Auditorium.

“It is a great honour for us to host the first edition of European Film Festival at the Museum of Islamic Art

in Doha. The film festival is a great opportunity for movie lovers to enjoy some of the best European films. These films will showcase the cul-tural diversity yet they will reflect the EU motto ‘United in Diversity’,” said Shaika Nasir Al Nassr, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at MIA.

As an expression of gratitude to MIA, the Austrian ambassador pre-sented Al Nassr a book on the cele-bration of 100 centennial anni-versary of Austria.

In its inaugural edition, European Film Festival Doha features free public screenings of films from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden.

Two feature films including Cherry Blossoms (Germany/2008) and L’Opera (France/2016) were screened yesterday.

To be shown this evening are Atras das Nuvens (Portugal/2007) at 5pm and La Isla Minima (Spain/2014) at 8pm, while Two Lottery Tickets (Romania/2016) will be screened tomorrow at 8pm.

Nice People (2015/Sweden) and L’intrepido (2013/Italy will be shown at 5pm and 8pm respectively on Monday. The festival concludes on Tuesday with the screening of Infinite Garden (Bulgaria/2017) at 5pm and Flying Home (Belgium/2014) at 8pm.

The films are in original language with English subtitles and are rated 15+.

Willy Kempel, Ambassador of Austria to Qatar and local EU Chair, at the opening of the first European Film Festival Doha at MIA Auditorium on Thursday. PIC: ABDUL BASIT / THE PENINSULA Attorney-General discusses legal

cooperation at Malaysian seminarTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar’s Attorney-General H E Dr Ali bin Fetais Al Marri took part in a seminar on the legal systems in the State of Qatar and the Kingdom of Malaysia, at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in Kuala Lumpur.

The seminar, moderated by MACC Chief Shukri Abdull, discussed the future

cooperation in the fields of the rule of law and the fight against corruption.

The Attorney-General toured the MACC facilities where has was briefed on the mech-anism of work of the Commission. The Attorney-General then met with Anwar Ibrahim, a member of the Malaysian Par-liament, and exchanged views on the legal and judicial cooperation between the two friendly countries.

MME removes 3.1m gallons of rainwater THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Munic-ipality and Environment (MME) represented by the Joint Rainfall Emergency Committee has removed over 3.1 million gallons of rainwater from areas like Al Rayan, Umm Salal and Al Daayen.

Safar Mubarak Al Shafi,

Head of the Joint Rainfall Emergency Committee and Director of General Clean-liness Department at the Min-istry of Municipality and Envi-ronment, said that a total of 135 tanks and work teams comprising 230 people par-ticipated in the activity of withdrawal and transfer of rainwater.

Qatar, Pakistan discuss bilateral relations

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, during his official visit to Islamabad yesterday. They discussed bilateral relations, ways of boosting and developing them, and a number of regional and international issues of common concern.

04 SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Turkey widens Khashoggi search, questions consulate staffAFP

ISTANBUL: Turkey yesterday widened the investigation into the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi after his visit to the Saudi consulate, searching a forest in the city and inter-viewing the mission’s staff.

Ankara denied giving any audio recording to US officials from the investigation about Khashoggi, a former royal insider who moved to the United States after becoming a critic of the current House of Saud leadership.

US President Donald Trump acknowledged that Khashoggi was likely dead, even as his fate remained unclear 17 days after he vanished.

Pro-government Turkish media have repeatedly claimed that Khashoggi was tortured and decapitated by a Saudi hit squad inside the consulate, although Turkey has yet to divulge details about the investigation.

But the controversy has already put the kingdom — for decades a key Western ally and bulwark against Iran in the Middle East — under unprece-dented pressure amid reports it is scrambling to provide an

explanation to take the heat off its rulers.

It is also a major crisis for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a favourite of the Trump administration who has por-trayed himself as a modernising Arab reformer, but whose image and even position at home could now be gravely undermined.

Fifteen staff, all Turkish nationals, were testifying yes-terday at the chief prosecutor’s office, state-run news agency Anadolu said. It has been reported Turkish employees were given the day off on October 2, the day Khashoggi disappeared.

Among those giving state-ments inside Istanbul’s main courthouse were the consulate driver, technicians, accountants and receptionists.

Istanbul’s Belgrad forest became a target of the investi-gation after police focused on the vehicles which had left the con-sulate on the day Khashoggi dis-appeared, NTV television reported. At least one vehicle is suspected to have gone to the forest. The forest, a vast area and sufficiently remote for even locals to regularly get lost there, is nearly 15 kilometres (over nine

miles) from the consulate. Investigators already con-

ducted two searches of the con-sulate and a nine-hour search of the consul’s residence this week.

Pro-government daily Sabah yesterday published new CCTV images of some of the Saudi team arriving in Istanbul and reported that two of the men landed in the city on October 1.

Previously, local media said the 15 men arrived in Turkey on October 2 on two private planes.

The key potential piece of evidence in the investigation is an alleged audio tape whose existence has been reported by pro-government media. They say it proves Khashoggi was tortured and then killed.

ABC News on Thursday

quoted an unnamed Turkish official saying US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heard the audio tape and was shown a transcript of the recording during his visit to Ankara.

But Pompeo said he had neither “seen” nor “heard” a tape and had not read a transcript while in Ankara where he met with President Recep Tayyip

Erdogan and Cavusoglu. Cavusoglu also denied the

claims and said it was “out of the question for Turkey to give any kind of audio tape to Pompeo or any other US official”.

Trump said he now believed Khashoggi was dead and warned of “very severe” consequences should Riyadh be proven responsible.

The New York Times reported that Saudi leaders could blame General Ahmed Al Assiri, a top intelligence official close to the crown prince.

Previously US media said Saudis were preparing a report that Khashoggi’s death resulted from a botched interrogation.

As Washington seeks to avoid a long-term rupture with its ally Riyadh, Pompeo told Trump the Saudis should be given “a few more days to com-plete” an official probe.

The furore has also blown a huge hole in next week’s Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh. It was meant to showcase Prince Mohammed’s plans for reform but has now been hit by a stream of big name cancellations including US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

ANATOLIA

BELGRADE: Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu yesterday said the outcome of probe into disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi will be shared with the world “trans-parently”.

Cavusoglu, who is on a visit to Albania, was speaking at a joint press conference with his Albanian counterpart Ditmir Bushati.

“We have some information and evidences on the basis of researches and the investigation into the case, but we will share them with the world after everything is revealed transparently,” Cavusoglu said.

Khashoggi has been missing since October 2 when he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

On the same day of Khashoggi’s disap-pearance, 15 other Saudis, including several offi-cials, arrived in Istanbul on two planes and

visited the consulate while Khashoggi was still inside, according to Turkish police sources. All of the identified individuals have since left Turkey.

On Wednesday, crime scene investigation units arrived at the official residence of Saudi Consul General Mohammad Al Otaibi around 4.40 pm local time (1340GMT). Al Otaibi had left Turkey for Riyadh on Tuesday.

Officials from a joint Turkish-Saudi team completed an investigation into the case early on Thursday after searching the residence as well as the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

The Turkish team concluded its search for evidence in nine hours and left but returned to the Saudi Consulate to continue searching the premises.

The examination results, including laboratory results, are waited now, Cavusoglu said.

Probe’s outcome to be shared with world

Rwanda names 50pc female CabinetAP

KIGALI: Two days after Ethiopia announced one of the world’s few “gender-balanced” Cabinets with 50 percent women, Rwanda has done the same.

The East African nation late on Thursday announced that women now make up half of the slimmed-down, 26-seat Cabinet.

Rwanda joins a handful of countries, mostly European, where women make up 50 percent or more of ministerial positions, according to the Inter-Parlia-mentary Union and UN Women.

The country has received international recognition for female representation in gov-ernment, with women making up 61 percent of par-liament members.

Ethiopia’s move this week was the latest in a series of dramatic political and eco-nomic reforms under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who took office in April. Abiy reportedly told lawmakers that women are less corrupt than men.

At least 130 Gazans hit by Israeli gunfireAFP

GAZA CITY: At least 130 Pales-tinians were hit by Israeli gunfire yesterday as thousands protested near Gaza’s border with Israel, the health ministry in the enclave said.

Following calls to avoid an escalation in violence, the dem-onstrators largely kept their dis-tance from the fortified frontier fence. But at least 130 Pales-tinians were injured by live fire in clashes with Israeli soldiers, the health ministry said.

An Israeli army spokesman said that while most of the pro-testers stayed back from the fence, some came close and threw explosive devices and hand grenades at troops, while burning tyres.

“The soldiers who were there responded with riot dispersal means, along with gunfire in

accordance with the rules of engagement,” he said.

Rockets fired from Gaza on Wednesday had brought the ter-ritory’s Hamas rulers and Israel closer to a widescale confrontation.

Since March, Palestinians have moved right up to the border fence every Friday and occasionally breached it, leading to clashes in which more than 200 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed.

While thousands again gathered for the latest protests in northern Gaza, the demon-strators largely remained at least 100 metres from the border.

A correspondent said Hamas security officials in at least one location were seen discouraging protesters from nearing the fence.

Kites and balloons equipped with incendiary devices were

launched across the border into southern Israel, and the Israeli army said one of its aircraft tar-geted a group of men launching balloons.

An Egyptian security dele-gation visited the Gaza Strip on Thursday and encouraged

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah to calm the protests, an Egyptian official said.

United Nations envoy Nickolay Mladenov, in a tweet, also urged all sides “to exercise restraint, to proceed in a peaceful manner, and to avoid

escalation”. On Wednesday, two rockets were fired from the Pal-estinian enclave at Israel, with one destroying a house in the southern city of Beersheba.

In response Israeli air strikes targeted around 20 Hamas targets in Gaza.

A wounded Palestinian child is being evacuated from the site during the “Great March of Return” demonstration near Israel-Gaza border, in Khan Yunis, yesterday.

32 civilians dead in coalition strikes in SyriaAFP

BEIRUT: Air strikes by the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State jihadist group in eastern Syria have killed at least 32 civilians in less than 24 hours, a monitor said yesterday.

Strikes on the village of Sousa killed 18 civilians including seven children late on Thursday and 14 more civilians on Friday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Dozens were wounded and many remained under the rubble in the village in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor near the Iraqi border, Observ-atory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said. Nine IS fighters also lost their lives in the raids, he said.

A coalition spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

IS overran large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a “caliphate” in land it controlled.

But the jihadist group has since lost most of it to various offensives in both countries.

In Syria, the group has seen its presence reduced to parts of the vast Badia desert and a pocket in Deir Ezzor that includes Sousa.

A Kurdish-Arab alliance

backed by the coalition last month launched an offensive to wrest the Deir Ezzor pocket from IS.

The Syrian Democratic Forces has said the battle will likely take longer than expected.

Since 2014 the US-led coa-lition has acknowledged direct responsibility for more than 1,100 civilian deaths in Syria and

Iraq, but rights groups put the number killed much higher.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says coalition strikes in Syria alone have killed more than 3,300 civilians.

Syria’s war has killed more than 360,000 people since it erupted in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

AP

ANKARA: A summit between the leaders of Turkey, France, Germany and Russia will be held in Istanbul this month to discuss the conflict in Syria and efforts for a lasting solution to the war in the Arab country, a Turkish official said yesterday.Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, in a written statement said the summit will take place on October 27.

Russia and Turkey reached an agreement last month to set up a demilitarized zone around the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib preventing a government offensive on the last rebel stronghold in the country. Idlib has been calm since, though some militant groups did not meet an October 15 deadline to evacuate the DMZ. Many feared that a government offensive in Idlib would trigger a new refugee crisis as the region is home to some 3 million people many of them already displaced by the war from other parts of Syria.

Also yesterday, Syrian President Bashar Assad received a Russian delegation in Damascus including special presidential envoy for Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, and Deputy Foreign Min-ister Sergei Vershinen during which they discussed political progress and the process of forming a committee focusing on the current constitution, according to state news agency Sana.

Turkey to host four-nation summit

Zimbabwe post-poll violence inquiry to summon army, policeAFP

HARARE: An inquiry probing the killing of six people after soldiers opened fire on post-election protesters in Zimbabwe will summon police and the army to appear before it, an official said yesterday.

Kgalema Motlanthe, the former president of South Africa and the commission chairman, said the military and police would give evidence next month. “We will be hearing from the army and the police,” Motlanthe told a news con-ference in the capital Harare where the killings occurred on August 1.

“We will ask all pertinent questions and expect to get per-tinent answers,” he said.

Motlanthe was appointed by President Emmerson Mnangagwa to lead a seven-member team to investigate the killings.

The deaths occurred after protesters took to the streets accusing the country’s electoral commission of delaying the announcement of results for the July 30 general election.

Mngangagwa succeeded long-time ruler Robert Mugabe who was ousted in November 2017 following a brief military

takeover. This week, several witnesses, including relatives of the deceased, gave their testimony.

Elizabeth Rubinstein, sister of one of the victims, Gavin Dean Charles, called for justice.

“I find what happened to him was brutal and it... (caused) indescribable pain to my family. The perpetrators should face justice,” a sobbing Rubinstein said in her evidence to the inquiry. She said her unem-ployed brother was hoping to get a job after Mugabe’s ouster.

“He just wanted a better life. He was harmless, and to be shot twice, unarmed. The pain has been indescribable. My mum is not well, she had a stroke (and) she is not aware of his death. If we tell her it will kill her,” she said.

Some of the relatives want the government to compensate the victims’ families. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main oppo-sition party has vowed not to take part in the inquiry calling it a “circus” and a “big sham”.

“The actual issue is sup-posed to be on how soldiers ended up in the streets, firing live ammunition at unarmed civilians,” MDC said in a statement on Thursday.

Detained ex-head of Ethiopian region tried to escapeADDIS ABABA: A former president of an Ethiopian region who was arrested on charges of human rights abuses and stoking deadly ethnic clashes tried to escape by climbing out a window while in police custody ahead of a court appearance, police said on Friday.

Abdi Mohammed Omer, a former administrator of the Somali Region, was forced to resign on Aug. 6 and arrested weeks later after violence broke out in the provincial capital Jijiga.

He has since been accused of presiding over widespread rights abuses that included torture, rapes and killings.

“In his escape attempt, he broke a window before choking a member of the police force,” the state-affil-iated Fana Broadcasting Cor-poration news outlet said, quoting a police statement.

Naidu attends EU-Korea Summit

05SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018 ASIA

At least 60 dead after train runs over crowd in AmritsarAP & IANS

NEW DELHI: A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fire-works during a religious festival in northern India yesterday, killing at least 60 people.

The victims crowded the rail track on the outskirts of Amritsar, a city in Punjab state. They didn’t see the train coming, which failed to stop after the accident.

Amrinder Singh, the Chief Minister of Punjab, told reporters that he had reports of 50 to 60 people dead. Thirty bodies had been removed from the site by evening as relief work was being hampered by nightfall.

An eyewitness said the train didn’t even whistle as it sped past the site, where hundreds were busy watching the burning of an effigy during the Hindu festival of Dussehra.

“Why did authorities allow the fireworks display so close to the railroad track,’” he asked on TV. He told the Republic tele-vision channel that he lost two

brothers. Police took several injured to nearby hospitals.

Following the accident, a large number of people rushed to the site and shouted at railway officials for not taking precautions in view of the festival.

While accidents are rela-tively common on India’s sprawling rail network, yester-day’s was among the deadliest in recent years.

In 2016, 146 people were killed when a train slid off railroad tracks in eastern India.

Chief Minister Amarinder Singh yesterday cancelled his five-day visit to Israel in view of

the terrible accident.“The Chief Minister’s visit to

Israel has been cancelled ad he is reaching Amritsar on Saturday morning,” his office said.

The Chief Minister has expressed grief over the accident and directed the administration to speed up relief and rescue operations.

The Chief Minister’s five-day visit to Israel was to start from from tomorrow.

President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and leaders of political parties expressed shock and grief over a train tragedy that claimed at least 60 lives during a Dussehra celebration in Punjab.

“Heartfelt condolences to bereaved families,” Kovind tweeted after a speeding train ran over a large number of people who were witnessing a Ravan effigy in flames while standing on a railway track.

Modi termed the disaster “heart wrenching”.

“My deepest condolences to the families of those who lost their loved ones and I pray that

Rahul, Sonia meet Sri Lankan PMBJP govt flip-flops on

change of Parrikar’s

leadership in Goa

IANS

NEW DELHI: Congress Pres-ident Rahul Gandhi, UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh yesterday held talks with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wick-remesinghe here.

“Had a positive meeting with the Sri Lankan Prime Minister. Both India and Sri Lanka are historically and culturally very close,” said Rahul Gandhi after the meet.

Wickremesinghe on Thursday arrived here on a three-day official visit during which he will hold discus-sions with his Indian coun-terpart Narendra Modi on a wide range of topics including housing projects in the north of Sri Lanka.

Two militants killed in KashmirSRINAGAR: Security forces yesterday shot dead two mili-tants yesterday in Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla town.

Police said police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) signalled a vehicle to stop at Kralhar near the Khwaja Bazar railway station in the town.

The militants who were in the vehicle opened fire. In retaliation, the security forces fired back, killing both the militants. One AK-47 rifle and two pistols have been recovered.

Moderate temblor jolts JammuSRINAGAR: An earthquake of moderate intensity jolted Jammu and Kashmir yesterday. Sonam Lotus, Director of the MET Department, said the quake measured 5.2 on the Richter scale and occurred at 6.55 pm. “The coordinates of the quake were latitude 38.4 degrees north and longitude 73.8 degrees east. The epicentre was in Tajikistan-Xinjiang region,” Lotus said.

No loss of life or damage to property was reported in Kashmir, which is located in a seismologically vulnerable zone. In October 2005, an earthquake measuring 7.6 degrees on the Richter scale killed over 80,000 people in divided Kashmir.

IANS

PANAJI: In yet another flip flop over the issue of leadership change in Goa, Power Minister Nilesh Cabral yesterday ruled out any alternative toailing Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar.

The Minister also said that his cabinet colleague and Agri-culture Minister Vijai Sardesai’s discussion with BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday about finding alternatives to Parrikar was only borne out of “personal interest”.

“It is a statement from his (Sardesai) personal interest. I am speaking for the BJP party and BJP party has a leader... We have a leader in Parrikar and he will always be our leader,” Cabral told the media at the state Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters.

On Thursday, after a meeting with Amit Shah, Sardesai had said that they had d i s c u s s e d l e a d e r s h i p

alternatives to Parrikar, who has been ailing for more than eight months now.

“BJP leadership is seri-ously looking at the lead-ership issues and I have explained to him (Shah) the aspirations of the Goan people... There are some names that are being dis-cussed,” Sardesai had said.

Cabral said it was wrong to suggest that Parrikar, who is suffering from advanced pan-creatic cancer and has been in and out of hospitals in Goa, Mumbai, New York and Delhi, was not active vis a vis his duties as a Chief Minister.

The Minister, however, con-ceded that Parrikar was now inaccessible to the people of Goa, on account of his illness.

“Accessibility to the people is not there, which you also know very well. When I am not well, accessibility is (also) a problem,” Cabral said, adding that the issue of accessibility can be resolved by keeping in touch with people online.

Temple controversy turns political as protests growREUTERS

KOCHI/NEW DELHI: A senior leader of India’s ruling party warned yesterday that protesters in the southern state of Kerala would take the law into their hands if offi-cials attempted to let women enter a hill temple at the centre of a raging contro-versy.

A political tinge for the controversy could help Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party gain ground in Kerala, where it has never made much headway, and won just one of 98 seats it contested in the last elections to the state assembly in 2016.

Protests against women entering the Hindu temple grew yesterday, with hun-dreds of hardliners blocking three women from entering the Sabarimala temple for a third day. The demonstrators were defying a Supreme Court verdict that overturned a decades-old ruling by a lower court denying entry to women of menstrual age, whom some Hindu com-munities consider to be ritually unclean.

“If the government is trying to implement its agenda in Sabarimala, we will prevent it, even by taking the law into our hands,” said K Surendran, the general sec-retary of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya

Janata Party in the state. “Sabarimala is not a place for anybody to tamper with.”

Three dozen priests staged a sit-in against the verdict overturning the ban

that kept women aged between 10 and 50 out of the temple. Television broadcast images of scores of police attempting to calm emotional protesters, who consider the verdict a challenge to tradition and interference in religious affairs. The Supreme Court called the tradition patriarchal.

Though Hindus form a majority of the state’s population of more than 35 million, it is home to millions of Muslims and Christians.

The controversy has fired up Hindu religious sentiment, with some residents supporting the view that the temple dev-otees’ feelings ought to be respected.

Members of Modi’s BJP in the state have also strongly backed those seeking to block the entry of women.

Hindu hardliners, including members of the BJP’s youth wing, have clashed with police and attacked women, including journalists, who have tried to get to the temple.

Two women who got close were forced to turn back in the face of protests and a threat by the head priest to shut the temple if they entered, senior Kerala police official S. Sreejith told reporters.

A third woman turned back at the request of police, citing the tension.

Indian journalist Kavitha Jakkal (centre), gestures as she walks with police wearing protective gear near the temple complex at Sabarimala in the southern Kerala state, yesterday.

Relatives and revellers gathered at the site of a train accident in Amritsar, yesterday. A train crashed into revellers gathered to watch the Hindu festival of Dussehra in the northern state of Punjab.

the injured recover quickly. Have asked officials to provide imme-diate assistance that is required,” Modi said.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi asked the Punjab gov-ernment and party workers to provide relief at the accident site.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said immediate relief and

rescue operations were being carried out.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to the Punjab Home Secretary and the Director General of Police of Punjab. He said the Centre would provide all possible assistance to the state.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed grief.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal expressed his pain over the loss of lives and urged his party workers to provide help at the accident site.

CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury tweeted: “Shocked... Responsibility and accountability must be fixed at the very top for such accidents.”

An eyewitness said

the train didn’t even

whistle as it sped

past the site, where

hundreds were busy

watching the burning

of an effigy during

the Hindu festival of

Dussehra.

India’s Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu (rights), walks with Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (centre), after attending an EU-Korea Summit meeting at the European Council in Brussels, yesterday.

Restrictions in Srinagar to prevent protestsIANS

SRINAGAR: Authorities imposed restrictions in parts of the city here in Jammu and Kashmir yesterday to prevent a separatist-called protest and maintain law and order, police said.

There is prohibitory orders

in place in Nowhatta, Khanyar, Rainawari, M R Gunj, Safa Kadal and Maisuma where heavy deployments of police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) have been made.

The post-Friday prayer pro-tests are against “repression”. The separatist leaders have

asked the preachers at the mosques to highlight the excesses committed by India during their sermons.

All higher secondary schools and colleges have been shut to prevent student protests. Classes at the Kashmir University have also been suspended for the day.

06 SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018ASIA

Supporters of Tehreek-e-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah, a religious party, chant slogans as they march during a protest in Lahore yesterday, demanding for hanging to a blasphemy convict, Asia Bibi, who is on death row.

Afghans vote today; polls

in Kandahar postponed AP

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN: A f g h a n i s t a n ’ s e l e c t i o n commission yesterday post-poned elections in Kandahar for a week, following a brazen attack on a high-profile security meeting there with a US dele-gation that killed at least two senior provincial officials, including the province’s police chief.

The development came as mourners gathered for the funeral of police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq, assassinated in Thursday’s attack. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the assault, saying they targeted the top US commander in the country, Gen. Scott Miller, who was at the meeting but was unharmed.

The Independent Election Commission’s deputy spokesman Aziz Ibrahimi said the post-ponement was meant to allow mourners to observe funeral rites for the slain officials.

Also killed in Thursday’s attack was the Kandahar

intelligence chief, Abdul Mohmin, but the condition of the prov-ince’s governor, Zalmay Wesa, who was wounded, has been shrouded in mystery since the assault. Some reports say Wesa has been transferred to a Nato hospital outside Kandahar.

The Kandahar meeting, con-vened to discuss security plans for today’s parliamentary elec-tions, had just concluded when an elite Afghan guard turned his gun on the departing delegation.

Two Afghan policemen were also killed and three were wounded in the attack, according to a Kandahar hospital official

who spoke on condition of ano-nymity because he wasn’t authorised to talk to reporters.

Three Americans — a US service member, a coalition con-tractor and an American civilian — were wounded and in stable condition, Nato said.

The funeral prayers for Raziq, who had been credited with single-handedly keeping the Taliban at bay in a province the winsurgents once considered their spiritual heartland, were being held yesterday at Kanda-har’s most famous shrine, Khareq Mubarak, said to contain the cloak of the Prophet Muhammad.

A Kandahar lawmaker running for parliament, Khaled Pashtun, said the one-week postponement in the polling was meant to give voters who might have stayed at home, afraid so soon after the attack, the chance to vote in the elections.

Nevertheless, the attack, more than 17 years after the Taliban were driven from power, underscores the harrowing

insecurity in Afghanistan ahead of the elections.

According to an AP television cameraman who was at the meeting, the delegates had just gathered for a group photo when gunfire broke out inside the pro-vincial governor’s compound in

Kandahar city. Everyone scattered, and the

US participants scrambled toward their helicopter. But a firefight broke out between the US service members and Afghan police when they tried to stop the US delegation from reaching

their helicopter, said the cameraman.

Pakistan closed its two official border crossings with Afghanistan, the foreign ministry said. Afghanistan’s security forces have been on high alert ahead of today’s elections.

Pakistan closed its

two official border

crossings with

Afghanistan, the

foreign ministry said.

Security forces have

been on high alert

ahead of today’s

elections.

Election commission workers carry ballot boxes outside a polling station in Kabul, Afghanistan, yesterday.

INTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Federal Infor-mation Minister Fawad Chaudhry has announced a broad outline of the newly proposed Pakistan Media Regu-latory Authority (PMRA) to oversee print, electronic and social media.

The announcement set alarm bells ringing among stakeholders

including journalists who com-plained that they had not been consulted on the issue and expressed scepticism over the government move that they said could contain media freedom in the country.

While briefing the Senate standing committee on infor-mation and broadcasting, Chaudhry said the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) government

would regulate all media and “no one will be able to defame anyone under the new law”.

Amid uneasy gestures by senators, he told the committee that the government was working on a proposal to bring all media regulatory bodies under the proposed PMRA.

This would be done by merging all existing rules and acts related to Pakistan

Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra), Press Council of Pakistan (PCP) and Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), he said, adding that it would introduce one-window operation to address complaints and other regulatory aspects of the media.

Referring to the proposed law, Information Secretary Shafqat Jalil told the committee

that in future electronic media would be allowed to air adver-tisements only after the approval of the information ministry.

The information minister said the draft had been for-warded to Pemra, PCP and other media bodies including Council of Pakistan Newspapers Editors, All Pakistan Newspapers Society and the Pakistan Broadcasting Association.

Islamabad plans new unified body to regulate media

Up in arms

Two-thirds of the winners of Pakistan by-polls notified INTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has issued notifications of 22 candidates who had won the October 14 by-elections held on 35 seats of national and provincial assemblies.

A spokesman for the ECP said the notifications of the remaining 13 successful candi-dates had been withheld as they had so far not submitted the details of election expenses as required under the law.

The by-elections had been held on 11 national and 24 pro-vincial assembly seats. Most of the seats had been vacated by those elected on more than one seat in the July 25 general elec-tions, including Prime Minister Imran Khan who had won elec-tions from all the five National Assembly (NA) constituencies he had contested.

The by-elections were held on eight NA seats from Punjab and one each in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Islamabad. Similarly, polling was held in 11 constituencies of the Punjab Assembly, nine in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and two each in Sindh and Balo-chistan.However, the ECP issued the victory notifications of seven

NA candidates, eight Punjab Assembly candidates, three KP Assembly candidates and two candidates each of the Sindh and Balochistan assemblies.

The ECP has notified the victory of Zahid Akram Durrani of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal from Bannu (NA-35), Malik Sohail Khan of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) from Attock (NA-56), Sheikh Rashid Shafique of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) from Rawalpindi (NA-60), Chaudhry Salik Hussain from Chakwal (NA-65), Moonis Elahi from Gujrat (NA-69), Khawaja Saad Rafique from Lahore (NA-131) and Mohammad Alamgir Khan of the PTI from Karachi (NA-243).

The ECP has stopped the notifications of former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi from Lahore (NA-124), Ali Awan of the PTI from Islamabad (NA-53), Mansoor Hayat Khan of the PTI from Rawalpindi (NA-63) and Ali Gohar Khan of the PML-N from Faisalabad (NA-103). The ECP spokesman said the notifications of the remaining successful candidates would be issued when they would submit the details of their election expenses to the commission.

China to launch ‘artificial moon’ to lighten streets without lamps AFP

BEIJING: China is planning to launch its own ‘artificial moon’ by 2020 to replace streetlamps and lower electricity costs in urban areas, state media reported yesterday.

Chengdu, a city in south-western Sichuan province, is developing “illumination satel-lites” which will shine in tandem

with the real moon, but are eight times brighter, according to China Daily.

The first man-made moon will launch from Xichang Sat-ellite Launch Center in Sichuan, with three more to follow in 2022 if the first test goes well, said Wu Chunfeng, head of Tian Fu New Area Science Society, the organization responsible for the project.

Though the first launch will be experimental, the 2022 sat-ellites “will be the real deal with great civic and commercial potential,” he said in an interview with China Daily.

By reflecting light from the sun, the satellites could replace streetlamps in urban areas, saving an estimated 1.2bn yuan ($170m) a year in electricity costs for Chengdu, if the man-made

moons illuminate an area of 50 square kilometers.

The extraterrestrial source of light could also help rescue efforts in disaster zones during blackouts, he added.

As China’s space programme races to catch up with that of the United States and Russia, a number of ambitious projects are in the pipeline, including the Chang’e-4 lunar probe, which

aims to launch later this year. If it succeeds, it will be the first rover to explore the “dark side” of the moon.

China is not the first country to try beaming sunlight back to Earth. In the 1990s, Russian sci-entists reportedly used giant mirrors to reflect light from space in an experimental project called Znamya or Banner.

Chengdu’s artificial moon

project was announced by Wu at an innovation and entrepre-neurship conference in Chengdu on October 10. In addition to Tian Fu New Area Science Society, other universities and institutes, including the Harbin Institute of Technology and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, are involved in developing Chengdu’s i l lumination satellites.

Six dead in Myanmar Rohingya camp fireAFP

YANGON: Six Rohingya were killed early yesterday after a blaze tore through an over-crowded camp for the perse-cuted minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the local fire service said.

Global attention has focused

on the 720,000 Rohingya Muslims forced from the state’s north into Bangladesh last year by a brutal military crackdown.

The UN Human Rights Council has accused top Myanmar generals of genocide over the bloody campaign, alle-gations the country strongly denies. But less visible are the

129,000 Rohingya confined to squalid camps further south near the capital Sittwe following an earlier bout of violence in 2012. Hundreds were killed that year in riots between Rakhine Buddhists and the stateless minority, who were corralled into destitute camps away from their former neighbours.

INTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: The Third Prize for the Best Scientific Exhibit at the annual 2018 American Society of Anesthesia Conference at San Francisco, USA, this year, went to a team from Pakistan for their inno-vative mHealth initiative to meet Lancet Commission on Global Surgery Goals for 2030.

Anesthesia log, an android app available at Google play store, was developed by Dr. Saeedah Asaf, Associate Pro-fessor of Pediatric Anesthesia at The Children’s Hospital Lahore in collaboration with Pakistan Children Heart Foundation (PCHF) to collect anesthesia and surgery data in a resource poor setting.

Data of over 20,000 sur-geries has been captured since its deployment at The Chil-dren’s Hospital Lahore in January 2017. Almost 25% of the surgical patients were infants and neonates and the new Post Anesthesia care area which opened in June 2017, was organized accordingly based on this information.

Dr. Saeedah said, “Very little data on preparedness for surgical care, delivery of sur-gical care and impact of sur-gical care in Pakistan is available. This low cost, low tech solution using mobile phones is very practical in Pakistan.”

She also commended her team of almost forty doctors and nurses who enter data for each surgery. “It hardly takes 60 seconds, but during a busy day, it does take commitment. I am very grateful to my team at Children’s and PCHF for making this a success. We want to know what we are doing.”

Pakistani team wins US award for mobile app

07SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018 ASIA / EUROPE

Asean defence chiefs sign air encounter codeREUTERS

SINGAPORE: Southeast Asian countries agreed yesterday to guidelines to manage unexpected encounters between their military aircraft, with host Singapore calling the pact a world first and saying they would encourage their international partners to join.

The agreement, signed by defence ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) at a conference in Singapore, includes a region-wide pact on the exchange of information on terrorism threats.

The voluntary, non-binding guidelines on air encounters build on an existing code to manage sea encounters adopted last year by Asean and its “plus” partners — Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

“I am happy to announce the first multilateral guidelines for air encounters between military aircraft have been adopted,” Sin-gapore’s Defence Minister, Ng Eng Hen, told a news conference. “This is a significant achievement.”

The Asean ministers will meet their eight international

partners today and Ng said they would “seek their agreement” on the guidelines.

The framework for the guidelines said a pact was needed because Asia’s rising growth and prosperity had spurred an increase of maritime and air traffic in the region.

The United States and China in 2015 signed a pact on a mil-itary hotline and rules governing

air-to-air encounters.But even with the existing

guidelines, tensions remain, especially in the hotly contested South China Sea.

China claims almost all of the busy waterway while Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei claim parts of the poten-tially energy-rich maritime territory.

Taiwan also claims the sea.

This month, China expressed anger after a US Navy destroyer sailed near islands it claims, saying it resolutely opposed an operation that it called a threat to its sovereignty.

Asked if the sea guidelines were working, Ng said, “In a way they are like seatbelts, not com-pletely protected, but at least t h e y p r o v i d e s o m e protection.”

At a lunch meeting with his Asean counterparts, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that the United States wanted a “con-structive relationship” with China but remained concerned by what it saw as the militari-sation of the South China Sea.

In August, Southeast Asian

nations and China adopted a negotiating framework for a broader code of conduct in the South China Sea.

That framework seeks to advance a 2002 Declaration of

Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, which has mostly been ignored by claimant states, particularly China, which has built seven islands in disputed waters, three of them equipped with runways, surface-to-air missiles and radars.

The Asean states also agreed to adopt the “our eyes” initiative as a platform to exchange infor-mation on “terrorism, radi-calism, and violent extremism, and other non-traditional threats”.

They also agreed to set up a “virtual” network of chemical, biological and radiological defence experts to “better share best practices and make quick contact during crises”.

Southeast Asian Defence Ministers sign a joint declaration at the Asean Defence Ministers’ Meeting in Singapore, yesterday.

The framework for the

guidelines said a pact

was needed because

Asia’s rising growth

and prosperity had

spurred an increase

of maritime and air

traffic in the region.

US Navy chopper crashes off Philippine coast; sailors injuredAP

TOKYO: A US Navy heli-copter crashed on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan yesterday, causing non-fatal injuries to a dozen sailors, the Navy said.

The Navy’s 7th Fleet said in a statement that the MH-60 Seahawk crashed shortly after takeoff yesterday morning while the carrier was off the Philippine coast.

All affected sailors were in stable condition and their injuries were non-life threat-ening, the Navy said, adding they ranged from minor abra-sions and lacerations to frac-tures. The most seriously injured were airlifted to a hos-pital in the Philippines, it said.

Lt. Cmdr. Matt Knight, the Task Force 70 spokesman, told Stars and Stripes news-paper that four crew members were aboard the helicopter when the crash happened. He said 12 people were injured and the carrier sustained minimal damage.

The crash occurred while the Ronald Reagan Strike Group was conducting routine operations in the Phil-ippine Sea, which spreads north and northeast of the Philippines. The cause was under investigation

Crimea mourns mass shooting victimsREUTERS

KERCH: Hundreds of residents in the Crimean port city of Kerch commemorated yesterday the victims of a college mass shooting in which an armed teenager killed 20 people, mostly his fellow pupils, and injured dozens more.

The suspected attacker was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after Wednes-day’s attack, which recalled shootings at schools in the United States.

Mourners laid flowers and wept as they filed past closed coffins, set out on a public square in the centre of the small city of 146,000 people.

“This is a terrible tragedy for Kerch, for such a small city,” said Galina Pesklyonova, 62.

Some residents wore only black and clutched portraits of the victims.

Vadim Vlasyuk, 18, who escaped the attack, said he was unsure if he would be able to return to the college. “I saw it all — the blood, the corpses,” he

said. “It was terrifying. We didn’t know where to run.”

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday blamed the attack on globalisation, saying a problem that began in the United States had spread around the world through online communities on the Internet.

The attack prompted calls for the security services in Russia to have greater control over the Internet.

Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

People attend a memorial ceremony before the funeral of the victims of an attack on a local college in the city of Kerch, Crimea, yesterday.

China and SE Asia to hold joint naval exercisesAFP

SINGAPORE: China and Southeast Asian states will hold their first joint maritime exer-cises next week, officials said yesterday, in a move aimed at easing tensions but which may spark US alarm.

Despite disagreements over Beijing’s territorial ambitions, China and Southeast Asia are trying to strike a more concili-atory tone in an effort to stop tensions from spiralling dan-gerously out of control.

As part of this, the navies of China and the 10-member

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) are set to hold their first joint drills, which will take place in the South China Sea.

“As we speak, the navies of Asean are en route to Zhanjiang in China for the Asean-China Maritime Exercise,” Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said.

Making the announcement at a gathering of Asean defence ministers, also attended by US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and his Chinese counterpart, Ng said the drills would help to “build trust, confidence”.

Wife of ex-Interpol president wary of Chinese envoysAP

LYON: The wife of the former Interpol president who is being detained in China on bribery charges said she’s been contacted by Chinese diplomats, who have told her they’re holding a letter from him for her.

Grace Meng said, however, that she’ll only agree to meet Chinese officials if a lawyer and reporters are present. She said Chinese officials haven’t responded since she told them that condition.

She also asked that the letter from her husband, Meng Hongwei, be given to French

police, so they can give it to her. She has been living under

French police protection in the French city of Lyon, where Interpol is headquartered, since she reported that her husband went missing while on a trip to China in late September.

“They said my husband wrote a letter to me,” she said yesterday. “They said they can only give it to me alone.”

Grace Meng said the disap-pearance and suspected slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, wasn’t a factor in her refusal to meet unaccom-panied with Chinese officials.

However, she made clear that she finds them impossible to trust, calling them “cruel.”

China says Meng Hongwei, 64, is under investigation for graft and possibly other crimes.

Meng was China’s vice min-ister of public security while also leading Interpol, and a longtime Communist Party insider with decades of experience in China’s sprawling security apparatus. He appears to be the latest high-ranking official to fall victim to a sweeping purge under author-itarian Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Grace Meng has refused in repeated interviews and phone

calls to provide her real name, saying she is concerned for the safety of relatives in China. It is not customary for Chinese wives to adopt their husbands’ names. Grace Meng said she has done so now to show her solidarity with her husband. Her English name, Grace, is one she has long used.

Grace Meng said she cannot believe the bribery accusation against her husband and claims he’s the target of “political persecution.”

“The term anti-corruption in China has become a synonym for crimes that are unjustifiable,” she said.

China’s move to secretly

detain the Interpol president, an official with international standing, was an unusually audacious action even for an administration that under Xi’s leadership has sought to assert its interests aggressively on the global stage.

Grace Meng said she is speaking out about her hus-band’s case, at risk to herself, not just to defend him but also to highlight the fate of others who have disappeared into China’s opaque police system.

“Everybody in China is at risk. Everyone should be con-cerned that something like this could happen to them.”

Two men face chargesin Thailand for graffitiREUTERS

BANGKOK: Two tourists charged with vandalism for spray painting graffiti on a wall in northern Thailand face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty, police said yesterday.

Briton Furlong Lee and Canadian Brittney Schneider, both 23, were arrested at a guest house in Chiang Mai on Thursday and are being held at the provincial court, police said.

CCTV video footage showed the pair spray-painting a red brick wall near Tha Phae Gate, the main entrance to the city’s old town.

“They admitted to the crime,” Police Major Anon Cherdchutrakulthong said. “When people visit somewhere they should know not to (leave) graffiti.”

Anon said that the young man and woman showed signs of having been intoxicated.

Video footage showed the words “Scouser Lee” painted on the wall in an apparent ref-erence to the English city of Liv-erpool. Thai police did not confirm Lee’s hometown.

The pair face up to 10 years in jail, a fine of up to $30,656 or both, if found guilty, police said.

Norway frees espionage suspectAFP

OSLO: A Russian man suspected of spying at the Norwegian parliament was released from prison yesterday after Norway’s intelligence service withdrew an appeal against the decision.

Mikhail Bochkarev, 51, was arrested on September 21 at Oslo airport after attending a seminar in Norway’s parliament, accused of having collected data on the building and its network.

Television footage showed

Bochkarev leave Oslo prison yesterday in a car from the Russian embassy.

His release came after a Norwegian judge ruled on Thursday that investigators had failed to substantiate their case.

The PST intelligence service initially appealed the decision but yesterday the agency made a U-turn. “The PST has decided to withdraw its appeal... He is released today,” the agency tweeted.

Russia had denounced the charges against Bochkarev as

“false” and “absurd”.He remains under investi-

gation but is free to leave the country, the PST said.

“This was the only solution. It shows that the PST also realises that the suspicions are unfounded,” Bochkarev’s lawyer, Hege Aakre, said.

There had been speculation that Bochkarev might be used as leverage in efforts to obtain the release of a Norwegian held in Russia on suspicion of spying, although the PST denied any con-nection between the two cases.

Regime forces

transported

more than 400

ISIL fighters late

Sunday from the

desert near the

town of Albu

Kamal.

DANIEL MOSS BLOOMBERG

08 SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018VIEWS

Assad’s strategic use of ISIL made his victory in Syria possible

On Sunday, Hay’et Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), a former Al Qaeda affiliate based in Syria’s Idlib, signalled that it

might abide by the terms of a Sep-tember 17 deal between Russia and Turkey to prevent a Syrian gov-ernment offensive on the rebel-held province. However, only a day later, the group missed a deadline to remove its fighters from a planned buffer zone around the province set in the Russia - Turkey deal. “We have not abandoned our choice of jihad and fighting towards implementing our blessed revolution,” HTS said in a statement.

Syrian authorities were quick to express their dissatisfaction. In a news conference on Monday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al Moallem said the national army was deployed near Idlib, ready to attack if the rebels didn’t withdraw. “After Idlib, our target is east of the Euphrates,” the minister added, referring to territory held by predomi-nantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) backed by the US. His statement echoed earlier comments by Syrian President Bashar Al Assad that the Russia-Turkey agreement over Idlib was only “a temporary measure”, and that the province will eventually return to the Syrian state. Assad and

Moallem’s comments signalling a military offensive on Idlib came despite assur-ances by Rus-sia’s President Vladimir Putin that no further major military actions are planned in the region.

Its vocal objection to

the presence of Al Qaeda affiliated fighters in Idlib notwithstanding, the Syrian government has a long history of using groups similar to HTS - whose predecessor, Al Nusra Front, was des-ignated a terrorist organisation by the US, the UK, France, Russia, Turkey, Iran and the UN among others - stra-tegically to undermine the opposition and seize territory. In fact, they used such groups, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, known as ISIS) chief among them, for political and military leverage quite frequently throughout Syria’s eight-year civil war.

Only a week after Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to create a demilita-rised buffer zone in Idlib to avert a

looming government offensive, the Assad regime reportedly ferried hun-dreds of ISIL fighters overnight from the eastern province of Deir az Zor near the Iraqi border to the outskirts of Idlib in northwest Syria. “Regime forces transported more than 400 ISIL fighters late Sunday from the desert near the town of Albu Kamal,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said. The controversial measure had two dis-tinct purposes: clearing the area around Al Bukamal build a stronger case for the recapture of Idlib.

In May, the Assad regime trans-ported as many as 1,600 ISIL fighters and family members from the Hajar Al Aswad district and Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp - an ISIL stronghold in southern Damascus since April 2015 - to the Badiya region, a vast stretch of desert in southeast Syria. The transfer paved the way for the government to retake full control of the capital after many years.

The government’s chief allies, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, have also supported such arrangements for mil-itary and political gains in the Syrian civil war.

Perhaps the most controversial of all was an Iran-blessed deal between Hezbollah and ISIL in August 2017 which saw hundreds of ISIL fighters and their families leaving, under Syrian military escort, an enclave on the border with Lebanon for the eastern province of Deir az Zor. According to the Hezbollah leader Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, the Iran-backed group accepted an unprece-dented arrangement with a “terrorist” foe - which drew rare criticism from the Iraqi government among others - to find out the fate of nine Lebanese soldiers in ISIL captivity since 2014.

The deal, however, served a bigger objective, purging the Syrian-Lebanese border regions of ISIL presence and handing a much-needed political

victory to Hezbollah whose reputation had suffered at home for sacrificing Lebanese interests to fight Bashar Al Assad’s civil war. It was also meant to reinforce ISIL ranks in eastern Syria in their fight against US-backed Kurdish forces and thus pit two nemeses of the Syrian government against each other. Rather unsurprisingly, the US war-planes struck parts of the convoy, blocking its progress to Al Bukamal in Deir az Zor - reportedly the fighters’ final destination - and forcing it to redirect towards lightly populated areas in the Homs province, central Syria.

The strategic use of groups like ISIL and HTS was, of course, not limited to the Syrian government and its Iranian and Lebanese allies. Turkey and the United States, traditional backers of the opposition since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, have also occasionally taken advantage of the presence of these groups in the country to obtain leverage against the Syrian regime.

Yet, it can’t be denied that the Assad regime was the actor that bene-fited the most from the emergence of groups like ISIL in Syria. Arguably their existence made Assad’s irre-versible victory in the country’s 8-year civil war possible. One of the most effective strategies the Syrian gov-ernment and its allies adopted to kill Syria’s popular revolution was to empower the extremist elements within the opposition. Syrian govern-ment’s calculated actions helped groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda to over-shadow the legitimate opposition in Syria and set the stage for the creation of a toxic secularist-terrorist binary, where the Syrian Arab Republic under Assad was promoted to represent the former and ISIL and Al Qaeda stood for the latter.

Assad’s victory in the Syrian civil war would have been much more dif-ficult absent the likes of ISIL and Al Qaeda.

MAYSAM BEHRAVESH AL JAZEERA

QUOTE OF THE DAY

The creation of Kosovo army would

jeopardise peace and stability and put the

Balkan country in big trouble.

Aleksandar Vucic

Serbian President

The economy has changed, and the Fed’s signals must too

One of the most potentially consequential parts of the Federal Reserve minutes published this week was

tucked into a brief paragraph near the end. How’s that for clear communication?

Transparency is in fact the subject of the item, which announced that Vice Chairman Richard Clarida would lead a subcommittee on the Fed’s interactions with the public. How the Fed conveys its views is becoming even more critical as officials shift toward making interest rates a bit more restrictive. Success in Clarida’s operation would go a long way toward determining whether the Fed can successfully steer investors, executives and consumers through the end of the long economic expansion. Failure would compound the central bank’s challenges and only invite more unhelpful barbs from President Donald Trump.

Vice chairs typically get tasks like this. Janet Yellen performed a similar role for Ben Bernanke. But a lot has changed. New chairman Jerome Powell isn’t a fan of the crisis-era Fed framework, the most iconic face of which is the “dot plot” - a constellation of Fed members’ predictions for interest rates. Top policy makers also want to escape from forward guidance, the practice of explicitly projecting a future path for borrowing costs. The idea is that policy no longer needs to be loose, inflation is no longer too low and the Great Recession is so far behind that all this paraphernalia has outlived its usefulness. Fair enough. The catch is that many people in markets became addicted to that information, no matter how much they complained about a lack of volatility. Rehab is gonna be tough. A classic example is the jump in bond yields that followed Powell’s Oct. 3 remarks to Judy Woodruff at a con-ference in Washington. Powell said, “we’re a long way from neutral at this point, probably.” On their face, the

remarks implied plenty more rate increases. The preceding week the Fed had ditched the word “accommo-dative” to depict the stance of policy, a step widely seen as indicating the Fed was approaching “neutral.” (Neutral is a vaguely defined area where the rate of interest neither spurs nor curbs activity.)

Minutes of the meeting didn’t contain a turn of phrase like Powell’s to Woodruff, though they did discuss in more carefully crafted terms the prospect of being a bit restrictive. The incident is instructive because it shows what can happen when there a mis-match - in tone, at least - between formal communications and more extemporaneous comments.Powell wants to have more interactions with the media; next year there will be a press conference after each FOMC meeting rather than just four times a year. More transparency is almost always a good thing, but as the form of communication evolves things can get tricky.

Qatar is

advancing this

agenda of peace

and progress in

the Arab world

with its great and

timely services

rendered for the

promotion of

education and

sports. 2022 FIFA

World Cup is

just not a mega

sports event to

be hosted by

Qatar rather it

is a catalyst of

change.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

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

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

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Catalyst for change

The Arab world has long been in the grip of conflicts and wars mainly due to dark forces of extremism and terrorism. To steer the region out of this per-

sistent, unstable situation requires promotion of education, sports, entertainment and peaceful progress.

Without any doubt, Qatar is advancing this agenda of peace and progress in the Arab world with its great and timely services rendered for the promotion of education and sports. 2022 FIFA World Cup is just not a mega sports event to be hosted by Qatar rather it is a catalyst of change. It is an opportunity for the whole region to embrace reforms that can reduce breeding space of extremists.

The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy’s (SC) Secretary-General Hassan Al Thawadi has rightly said that that the first FIFA World Cup (2022) to be held in the Arab world will be a precious opportunity to drive real change across the region. Speaking at a meeting with the Bundestags Sports Committee, on Thursday, he said that the State of Qatar was “determined to ensure we use it as a platform to drive real change across the region. We want to host an event that leaves its mark in history and

is etched into global memories for positive reasons.”

He added that the State of Qatar has made significant progress in recent years towards enhancing workers’ rights, saying that the dignity and safety of all workers in Qatar was of utmost importance.

Director of Global Initia-tives of Human Rights Watch Minky Worden also attended to update the committee on her priorities for improving workers rights in Qatar and the progress she has seen to-date. She praised Qatars progress while encouraging further enforcement and reform.

Earlier addressing the FT Live: Future of Football 2018 conference in Doha on Wednesday Hassan Al Thawadi said Qatar’s legacy projects are already making a major impact – more than four years before the 2022 FIFA World Cup kicks off. “The

way Qatar has taken leadership in terms of workers’ welfare reforms across the region is a perfect example of how major sporting events can leave a legacy even before the event is held,” he said.

Al Thawadi also reiterated Qatar’s commitment to hosting a tournament that will benefit the entire region – despite the ongoing political blockade. “This World Cup has always been a Middle East and Arab World Cup,” he continued.

“To think there are people in the region who might not enjoy the first World Cup in the Middle East is very disappointing. We look forward to this matter being sorted out. Football is for the people – and we want this tour-nament to reach the people of the region.”

Foreign business

and political leaders

are dropping out of

next week’s Future

Investment Initiative,

an annual event

started last year to

showcase the country

as a place to do

business.

09SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018 OPINION

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All thoughts and views expressed in these columns are those of the writers,not of the newspaper.

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US IT giants’ corporate governance must be upgraded

What’s at stake if investors begin to shun Saudi Arabia

THE JAPAN NEWS

DAVID McHUGH AP

One case of misconduct after another has been exposed at US information tech-nology firms that wield

overwhelming power. It can be said that this reveals a situation in which corporate governance has not kept up

with the pace at which the businesses and organizations have grown.

Facebook Inc. has announced that data on about 29 million of its users was compromised by cyberattacks. The data include names, addresses, telephone numbers and recent search histories.

Facebook’s latest data breach fol-lowed a similar incident in March, in which data on up to 87 million users was found to have been compromised.

It is difficult to prevent cyber-attacks perfectly, but the laxity in its data administration is too much to tolerate as a big business with about 2.2 billion monthly users. Facebook has announced security measures, including improvements to their human resources. But there is no denying that it came too late.

Google Inc. has announced that

there was a risk of personal data on up to 500,000 users of its social net-working site having been compromised.

It cannot be overlooked that Google did not disclose the software flaw that was the cause of the trouble for more than six months.

Google explains that there was no evidence of data being misused. But this does not excuse the delay in information disclosure.

Many businesses based in Silicon Valley have achieved rapid growth by dint of their revolutionary tech-nologies and swift top-down decision-making methods. Their business has expanded to such an extent that they can no longer be called start-ups.

They need to be aware of the weight of their social responsibility and the gravity of their influence.

The evils of top management being given too much authority have become conspicuous.

Tesla Inc., a US electric vehicle maker, is a case in point. Tesla’s Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk was charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission over dis-closing a fictitious plan to privatize the company.

Musk reached a deal with the SEC over fraud charges to pay $20 million (about ¥2.2 billion), but later pro-voked the watchdog entity with a tweet. This apparently indicates that he had not reflected on his language and behavior, which had brought a chaos to investors.

It is imperative to promptly work out measures to prevent top man-agement people from runnig out of control, including strengthening of supervision by external board

members who have a high degree of independence.

The European Union has persist-ently shown a hardline stance toward US IT companies that have been ramping up their power of market domination. Cases in which a huge amount of fines are imposed based on the EU competition law have been increasing.

The Fair Trade Commission of Japan will finally launch a full-fledged investigation to grasp the actual transactions of US IT businesses.

The objective of corporate gov-ernance is to promote strong, viable competitive corporations accountable to stakeholders. But one size doesn’t fit every company, and there’s no uniform, comprehensive set of pol-icies or practices: the “right” ones depend on several factors,

Accurate information must be collected on whether they force unfair transactions, among others, by taking advantage of their oligopolistic position.

The disappearance of a Saudi journalist last seen entering the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul has shaken busi-

nesses’ confidence in the country as a place to do business, with potential consequences for billions of dollars in investments into and out of the country.

It’s a blow, analysts say, to efforts by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to convince the world that the country is a reputable place to strike the deals needed the to power a wide-ranging transformation of the economy.

As allegations emerge that Jamal Khashoggi was gruesomely murdered, political pressure to isolate Saudi Arabia is increasing.

Here is a look at the Saudi leader’s economic plans and what is at stake if business leaders begin to shun the country.

Why does Prince Mohammed need foreign investors?

The crown prince wants to diversify the economy away from oil and transform its business and political model. For years, oil revenues paid for plenty of government sector jobs and benefits. That model has come under strain amid a growing population and a period of low oil prices.

The prince’s Vision 2030 strategy foresees the creation of a vibrant private sector. As part of that, he wants to develop new industries like alter-native energy, tourism and enter-tainment. Projects include a new business zone near the Red Sea called NEOM that would focus on advanced manufacturing, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology.

Saudi Arabia has its own com-panies in more traditional fields like construction, which would get a lot of that investment. But the country would need technology, expertise and financing from outside to carry out Prince Mohammed’s ideas. He wants, for instance, to have his Public Investment Fund - the state-backed investment vehicle - raise more money by selling a stake in chemicals company SABIC to state oil firm Saudi Aramco. Analysts say Saudi Aramco would likely have to borrow to make the deal happen. The PIF itself has already borrowed $11 billion from international banks.

“Foreign investment is a main pillar of Vision 2030,” said Sebastian Sons, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “The old tradition is on the brink. Diversification of the economy is strongly needed and Vision 2030 is the strategy for that.”

How would the Khashoggi disap-

pearance affect that?A: Foreign investors already had

doubts about the country amid regional conflicts like a blockade of neighbor Qatar and a brutal war against rebels in Yemen. Saudi Arabia ranks 92nd out of 190 countries on the World Bank’s ease of doing business index, which measures things like ability to enforce contracts and get goods in and out of the country. Another cloud was cast over the business environment when Prince Mohammed locked up several dozen members of the Saudi elite in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel and seized what the country’s attorney general said was more than $100 billion in assets.

The Kashoggi scandal comes at a time when “the private sector is cowed and hurting in many ways,” said David Butter, an analyst with the middle east and North Africa program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.

The hotel incident shows that “they don’t know if their assets are safe from sequestration.” And grisly details reported in news media about Khashoggi’s alleged killing “are just going to make the private sector even more worried,” he said.

The war in Yemen has led to horrors such as an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition that killed 40 children, but the Khashoggi incident is harder to play down as a regrettable mishap of war. Butter said Prince Mohammed’s image as the “face of future reform is now much more dif-ficult to sustain.”

Turkish authorities say Khashoggi was killed. The Saudis have denied involvement.

Are people losing faith in Saudi Arabia as a business destination?Foreign business and political leaders are dropping out of next week’s Future Investment Initi-ative, an annual event started last year to showcase the country as a place to do business. Among those cancelling are US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Ford Motor Co. Chairman Bill Ford and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Sons of the German Council on Foreign Relations, said the no-shows “are a serious indicator for Mohammed Bin Salman that he is losing trust, that Saudi Arabia is not seen as the ideal place to invest.”

Why are the Saudis investing abroad as well?

A: They’ve been buying stakes mainly in technology firms to diversify their revenue and show the country as forward-looking and tech-friendly place.

It is difficult to

prevent cyber-

attacks perfectly,

but the laxity in its

data administration

is too much to

tolerate as a big

business with about

2.2 billion monthly

users.

The European Union has

persistently shown a

hardline stance toward

US IT companies that

have been ramping up

their power of market

domination. Cases in

which a huge amount of

fines are imposed based

on the EU competition

law have been increasing.

The sovereign fund has invested $3.5 billion in Uber, for example. It has pledged $45 billion for the SoftBank Vision Fund, a private equity fund that has taken stakes in Uber and messaging software maker Slack Technologies Inc.

The question now is, whether companies will be leery of Saudi money for fear it will taint their reputations. Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin Group, has said he is freezing talks for Saudi investment in his space com-panies. Other executives have limited themselves to the symbolic rebuke of shunning next week’s Saudi conference. Others have simply kept quiet.

How likely are sanctions against Saudi Arabia?

A: Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham called for Saudi Arabia to be punished if it is confirmed it organized Khashoggi’s disappearance. But they did not specify what that might mean in practice.

The 2016 Global Magnitsky Act makes it possible to impose visa bans barring entry into the US and targeted sanctions on individuals for committing human rights viola-tions or acts of significant cor-ruption. Congress can submit pro-posed names.

Analyst Butter at the Royal Institute said the prospect of sanc-tions was unclear but that “any kind of sanctions would have a strong symbolic effect.”

President Donald Trump has promised “severe punishment” if regime involvement is proved, but has also said he does not want to cost US jobs by curtailing US sales of military equipment to the Saudis.

10 SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018EUROPE

Bulgaria indicts reporter’s murder suspectAFP

SOFIA: Bulgarian prosecutors yesterday indicted a man accused of the rape and murder of a television journalist and the court hearing the case ordered him to remain in custody pending trial.

Severin Krasimirov, 21, was handcuffed and under heavy guard when he appeared before the regional court in the northern town of Ruse.

He told journalists that he had approached journalist Viktoria Marinova and hit her in the face.

“Yes, I am guilty. I am sorry, I can’t believe I did this,” he said.

Prosecutors called for him to be tried for Marinova’s rape and murder.

According to media reports, he had already admitted that to police in Germany where he was arrested.

But he said he had not known

that Marinova had died and denied raping her.

If convicted, Krasimirov faces a jail sentence of 10-20 years for the rape and a possible life sentence for the murder.

The body of the 30-year-old television presenter was found near a jogging path along the Danube in Ruse on October 6.

Authorities said she died from blows to the head and suf-focation, and that she was raped after her death.

The case shocked Bulgaria and drew strong international

condemnation as observers sus-pected a possible connection between the crime and Mari-nova’s work.

However investigators found no evidence to support this theory. They said the crime appeared to be “a spontaneous attack”.

Ruse prosecutor Kremena Kolitsova told the court that evi-dence and medical expertise showed the journalist had been punched seven times in the face and the resulting nasal fracture led to her suffocation.

Investigators said Marinova’s blood had also been found on Krasimirov’s clothes.

The prosecutor said the suspect should remain under arrest because of the risk of flight.

Krasimirov was arrested in the German town of Stade, near the northern city of Hamburg, on October 9, after leaving Bulgaria by car on the day after the killing.

Police stand guard next to Severin Krasimirov, 21, who was arrested in Germany over the killing of TV journalist Viktoria Marinova, during his first appearance in court in Ruse, Bulgaria, yesterday.

UK-US military cooperation under threat: Former generalAP

LONDON: The former commander of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan warned yesterday that the United States’ military cooperation with the UK could be threatened by the growing use of human rights laws to target British soldiers.

Writing in the Times of London, retired Gen David Petraeus says the European Court of Human Rights is increasingly extending domestic

human rights legislation to the battlefield. This has led to British soldiers being charged with human rights abuses — some-times decades after the events in question.

“The current ‘fog of law’ may undermine the operational effectiveness of British troops engaged in multinational coali-tions,” he wrote. “The very special relationship between our two militaries, which has been built over decades of serving together in the hardest tests of

battle, could be put at risk by the present situation.”

He said Britain’s fighting capacity will be reduced if it can’t reform the legal framework under which it operates.

He said the United States has not had to deal with situations such as that of Northern Ireland, which he said was marked by “the relentless and seemingly unending pursuit of veterans from the 1970s.”

“No court, and especially no international court, can force our

authorities to subject US per-sonnel to the legal processes that have confronted some British soldiers and veterans in recent years,” he wrote.

Britain’s political and mil-itary establishment has expressed concern in recent years over allegations of abuse by UK troops in war zones. Brit-ain’s 2003-2009 military deployment in southern Iraq, for example, spawned multiple alle-gations of torture and abuse.

Some of the claims have also

proven to be true. Nicholas Mercer, the army’s chief legal adviser in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, said last year that the Ministry of Defense had paid $29m to settle 326 abuse cases.

In the most notorious case, 26-year-old hotel receptionist Baha Mousa died while in custody at a British base after being detained in a raid in Basra in Sep-tember 2003. Six soldiers were cleared of wrongdoing at a court martial, while a seventh pleaded guilty and served a year in jail.

Severin Krasimirov, 21

told journalists that

he had approached

journalist Viktoria

Marinova and hit her

in the face.

Marie Antoinette’s jewels up for auctionAFP

LONDON: Marie Antoinette’s dazzling jewellery, unseen in public for two centuries, went on show in London yesterday-before going on sale next month in a rare auction of such treasures.

The collection, held by the historic Italian royal House of Bourbon-Parma, is being sold by Sotheby’s auction house in Geneva on November 14.

On show at their London headquarters, the lots include 10 jewels which belonged to Marie Antoinette, the last queen

of France before the French Revolution. She was guillotined in Paris aged 37.

The highlight is Queen Marie Antoinette’s Pearl, a natural pearl and diamond pendant valued at $1m to 2m.

A natural pearl and diamond necklace composed of three rows of more than 100 slightly graduated pearls is expected to fetch $200,000-300,000, as are a pair of natural pearl and diamond pendant earrings.

A monogrammed ring con-taining a lock of her hair is valued at $8,000-10,000.

“The romance, magic and

universality of her name is because she represents that sophistication of l’ancien regime. She is it,” Andres White Correal, Sotheby’s senior director of jewellery, said.

“It is the sale of the 21st century. Because how do you top Marie Antoinette? Also because it’s so scarce. There isn’t much left.”

White Correal compared her to Egypt’s Cleopatra and Brit-ain’s Diana, princess of Wales.

He said there were queens with greater political and his-torical stature but Marie Antoi-nette “had the allure”.

The ‘Queen Marie Antoinette’s Pearl’ (centre) is pictured with other jewellery during a photocall for the sale of ‘Royal Jewels from the Bourbon Parma Family’ at Sotheby’s auction house in London, yesterday.

EU orders Poland to halt court retirements lawAFP

LUXEMBOURG: The European Union’s top court yesterday ordered Poland to “immediately suspend” its decision to lower the retirement age of its Supreme Court judges, which it said threatens judicial independence.

The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, last month took Poland’s rightwing government to the European Court of Justice for lowering the age at which Supreme Court

judges must retire from 70 to 65.“Poland must immediately

suspend the application of the provisions of national legislation relating to the lowering of the retirement age for Supreme Court judges,” the European Court of Justice said.

The Commission had asked the court in Luxembourg to take a decision as “soon as possible”, warning that Warsaw was accel-erating retirements.

Speaking in Brussels, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz

Morawiecki said his government had during “the last few hours received the court of justice decision”.

“We will certainly respond to it,” he added. “We will see what these (EU) institutions are pro-posing. When we take them into consideration, several possibil-ities will be analysed.”

The court said the order to suspend retirements “is to apply with retroactive effect” after noting that several judges had already been forced to retire.

The court, which said it would issue a final ruling at a later date, could impose fines if it finds Poland in breach of EU law.

The Commission has expressed concern the new retirement age will hasten the departure of judges appointed under previous govern-ments, allowing the appointment of figures seen as loyal by War-saw’s current leadership.

The new retirement age requires more than a third of current Supreme Court judges to step down.

Macron to join Putin and Merkel for Syria SummitBLOOMBERG

PARIS: Leaders from Russia, Turkey, Germany and France will meet in Istanbul next week in an effort to shore up a truce preventing further violence in Syria’s last rebel-held region and bolster the political process toward ending the seven-year civil war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron in Istanbul on October 27, the governments confirmed yesterday.

The idea of a summit first emerged in talks between Merkel and Erdogan last month, although France in particular was reluctant to commit to a meeting while Russia refused to consider a transition away from Bashar Al Assad’s rule. Russia has instead stressed the need for Europe to help pay for reconstruction once the war ends in Syria.

Macron agreed to the half-day summit on the condition that there be no military offensive in the northwestern Syria province of Idlib, the country’s last major rebel outpost, a French official said.

“The hope is that there will be gradual progress toward sta-bilisation in Syria, in the knowledge that it will likely be a very difficult and lengthy process,” German government spokeswoman Martina Fietz said.

Russia and Turkey last month locked in a truce to hold off an offensive by Assad’s forces on Idlib by setting up a demilitarized zone between rebels and pro-government forces. An assault threatened to trigger a fresh wave of refugees across Syria’s border, directly impacting Turkey and Europe.

The Istanbul summit should be focused on stabilising the Russian-Turkish agreement in Idlib and starting a political process despite resistance from the Assad regime, the French official said.

Putin’s government has dis-played sufficient interest in a political process for Macron to come to the meeting, the official said.

One of the key topics to be addressed will be the rebuilding of the Syrian economy, a task that will require at least $100bn, according to Moscow-based Middle East analyst Elena Suponina. She added that some experts estimate the cost to be as high as $500bn.

Shooting in Germany town leaves two deadAP

BERLIN: Authorities said that two people have been killed and two police officers seri-ously injured in a shooting in southwestern Germany.

Police and prosecutors said in a joint statement that police had been deployed at about 8:30am yesterday to deal with a “dangerous situ-ation” in Kirchheim an der Weinstrasse, a small town near Mannheim.

They said that a shooting ensued in which two people died and a male and a female police officer were seriously injured, adding that there was no longer any danger, but didn’t elaborate on the identity of the people who were killed or what exactly triggered the police deployment.

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki arrives for a Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) at the European Council in Brussels, yesterday.

20 jailed for abuse offences in EnglandAP

LONDON: Twenty men have been jailed for abusing more than a dozen teenage girls in the city of Huddersfield in northern England.

The men were found guilty in a series of trials this year. A judge lifted the reporting restrictions yesterday.

Amere Singh Dhaliwal, whom prosecutors said was the gang’s ringleader, was found guilty of 22 counts of child exploitations and sen-tenced earlier this year to a minimum of 18 years in prison. The judge told him “your treatment of these girls was inhuman.”

The cases have heightened tensions and spurred criticism of both local authorities who failed to protect vulnerable girls and police, who often did not listen to the victims.

11SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018 AMERICAS

US worried on foreign

election interferenceAP

WASHINGTON: Russian, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in continuous efforts to influence American policy and voters in the upcoming elec-tions and beyond, US national security officials said yesterday.

“We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic insti-tutions and influence public sen-timent and government pol-icies,” the officials said in a joint statement.

“These activities also may seek to influence voter percep-tions and decision-making in the 2018 and 2020 US elections.”

The two-page statement about foreign influence in US elections was issued just weeks before the November 6 elections by the Office of the Department of National Intelligence, the

Justice Department, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

Other countries are using social media to amplify divisive issues in American society, sponsor content in English-lan-guage media, such as Russia’s

RT and Sputnik news outlets, the statement said. They also dis-tribute propaganda and plant disinformation against political candidates, the departments said.

They statement did not provide specific examples of foreign interference.

The agencies said they cur-rently do not have any evidence that voting systems have been disrupted or compromised in ways that could result in changing vote counts or ham-pering the ability to tally votes in the midterms, which are fewer than 20 days away.

“Some state and local gov-ernments have reported attempts to access their net-works, which often include online voter registration data-bases, using tactics that are available to state and nonstate cyber actors,” they said.

But so far, they said state and local officials have been able to prevent access or quickly mitigate these attempts.

President Donald Trump has often cast doubt on US intelli-gence findings that Russia inter-fered with the 2016 election, as special counsel Robert Mueller investigates potential ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign.

But Trump recently accused China of meddling in the mid-terms, and Vice President Mike Pence said in a speech this month that Russia’s actions in 2016 pale in comparison to the covert and overt activities China is taking to interfere in the US midterm elections and counter Trump’s tough trade policies against Beijing.

China has denied that it is interfering in US affairs.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said recently that Russia has no intention to interfere in the midterm elec-tions in the US or meddle elsewhere.

Mexico seeks UN help on migrant caravan

US officials said in

a statement: We

are concerned about

ongoing campaigns

by Russia, China and

other foreign actors,

including Iran, to

undermine confidence

in democratic

institutions and

influence public

sentiment and

government policies.

REUTERS

MEXICO CITY: Mexico’s government yesterday vowed to meet the challenge of a caravan of Central American migrants heading north that has angered US President Donald Trump, who threatened to shut down the US-Mexico border to halt its passage.

Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met in Mexico City and discussed the caravan of several thousand people, which set off from Hon-duras last weekend, and is now at Mexico’s border with Guatemala.

“It’s a challenge that Mexico is facing, and that’s how I expressed it to Secretary

Pompeo,” Videgaray told a news conference alongside his US counterpart.

Yesterday afternoon, hun-dreds of the migrants poured through Guatemala’s frontier posts towards the closed Mexican border on a bridge spanning the Suchiate River that bisects the two countries, Mexican television footage showed.

Mexico’s government has sought assistance from the United Nations High Commis-sioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to help process migrants claiming refugee status at the border, which could allow it to disperse the train of people and placate Trump.

Pompeo said he and Vide-garay spoke of the importance of stopping the caravan before

it reaches the US border. Pompeo thanked Mexico for its efforts to address the migrant flow, including calling in the United Nations for assistance.

Several thousand Honduran migrants seeking to escape vio-lence and poverty moved through Guatemala on the way to Mexico, with some hoping to enter the United States.

Earlieryesterday, Videgaray said the caravan had close to 4,000 people and that the migrants could individually present their claims to enter Mexico or seek refugee status.

“We haven’t had a caravan or group of this size seeking refuge at the same time, that’s why we’ve sought the support of the United Nations,” Vide-garay told Mexican television.

Senate candidate would vote to impeach TrumpAP

AUSTIN: Democratic Senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke (pictured) told a national tele-vision audience that he’d vote to impeach President Donald Trump and believes Texas can lead the way to a national embracing of relaxed immi-gration policies and gun control — unapologetically liberal posi-tions that may be hard for some in his deep-red state to stomach.

O’Rourke, an El Paso con-gressman giving up his seat to challenge Republican Senator Ted Cruz, had previously sug-gested that he’d support impeaching the president over alleged collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice. But he went further while appearing at a CNN town hall from the US-Mexico border town of McAllen, saying that even as members of Congress wait for more evidence to emerge during federal investi-gations, “I do think there’s e n o u g h t h e r e f o r impeachment.”

Cruz has accused O’Rourke of being the only Democratic Senate candidate in the nation to support impeachment. At least one other, California state Sen Kevin de Leon, who is chal-lenging US Senator Dianne Feinstein, has said he too would vote to do so. Still, it’s a position that most candidates from both parties have avoided.

Even O’Rourke conceded to moderator Dana Bash, “I know

that this not politically easy or convenient to talk about.”

O’Rourke fielded audience questions for nearly an hour. Bash said Cruz was invited to attend and declined — even though the Republican’s cam-paign said he offered to make the McAllen event a debate and O’Rourke didn’t respond.

O’Rourke said he opposed Trump’s proposed border wall and that Texas should be a national model in how to overhaul federal immigration policy in a humane way.

He said he was a strong supporter of the Second Amendment and Texas gun culture but added, “We lose 30,000 of our fellow Americans every year to gun violence.”

“Either there’s something wrong with us, something bad, something evil about the United States of America, or there’s a human solution to a human-caused problem,” he said to sustained applause.

“The people of Texas should be able to lead the way on this conversation.”

Prosecutors drop some charges against former Trump aideREUTERS

ALEXANDRIA: US prosecutors yesterday agreed to drop criminal charges against Paul Manafort that a jury deadlocked on earlier this year, as a federal judge set a February 8 date for Manafort’s sentencing on charges of bank fraud and filing false tax returns.

Prosecutors had favoured waiting until the former Trump campaign chairman finished cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election before addressing the remaining charges.

But US District Judge T.S. Ellis rejected the timetable so he could move forward with sen-tencing Manafort, who appeared in court in a wheelchair and was said to be suffering significant health issues.

“I have not heard any

estimation from the government of when his cooperation will be complete,” Ellis said, referring to the special counsel investi-gation. “I’m not willing to go on endlessly” before sentencing Manafort, he added.

Ellis dropped the charges on which the jury had deadlocked, but did so without prejudice, meaning the prosecution could reintroduce them at a later date.

He set a February 8 sen-tencing date for the tax and bank fraud charges on which Man-afort was convicted.

At his trial in August, Man-afort was convicted on eight counts of bank fraud, tax fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. But the jury was unable to reach a verdict on 10 other charges, including failure to register foreign bank accounts and conspiracy to commit bank fraud, so a mistrial was declared on those.

Ellis’ decision to push ahead with sentencing on the eight convictions could result in Man-afort receiving a higher prison sentence at first, which prose-cutors could then seek to have reduced if he furthers the Mueller probe.

Several sentencing experts predicted Manafort, a 69-year-old former political consultant, would receive a prison term of about 10 years.

Manafort appeared in court in green prison uniform that said “Alexandria inmate.” He was in a wheelchair and had a bandage on his right foot. A source familiar with his health said he had a “serious medical condition related to his diet.”

Manafort had asked per-mission to wear a suit but Ellis rejected the request, saying he should be treated no differently from other defendants in custody post-conviction.

Russian woman faces charges of attempted US election interferenceREUTERS

WASHINGTON: The US government yesterday charged a Russian national with playing a key financial role in a Kremlin-backed plan to conduct “infor-mation warfare” against the United States, including to influence next month’s congres-sional elections.

The criminal complaint unsealed yesterday makes Elena Alekseevna Khus-yaynova, 44, the first indi-vidual to be indicted for attempting to interfere in the 2018 US elections, according to a government official with knowledge of the matter.

The complaint said

Khusyaynova was the chief accountant for Project Lakhta, which it said was funded by Russian oligarch Evgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering.

Concord Management and Concord Catering were among the three entities and 13 Russian individuals who were indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in Feb-ruary in an alleged criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper with the 2016 US pres-idential race, boost Trump and disparage his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (left) and Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Minister Luis Videgaray Caso during a news conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Mexico City, Mexico, yestercay.

Trump supports farmersUS President Donald Trump speaks prior to signing a presidential memorandum focused on sending more water to farmers in California’s Central Valley, at a conference center, in Scottsdale, Arizona, yesterday.

Fugitive Peruvian judge arrested in Spain for graftAFP

LIMA: A sacked Supreme Court judge on the run as he faces trial for corruption in Peru was arrested in Spain yesterday, the South American country’s president, Martin Vizcarra said.

“Today at dawn, ex-supreme judge Cesar Hinos-troza was captured by Spanish police and Interpol Peru,” Vizcarra said on twitter.

Spanish police in Madrid confirmed Hinostroza’s arrest and said he would be brought before a court for extradition proceedings.

Vizcarra had sent a request to Spain on Thursday to arrest and extradite Hinos-troza, who is accused of being the ringleader in a scandal involving influence peddling and the sale of lighter sentences.

In one of them, Hinos-trroza can allegedly be heard offering someone found guilty of raping a minor either a reduced sentence or even an acquittal.

A Spanish foreign min-istry source confirmed on Thursday that Hinostroza had entered Spain the day before.

On Wednesday, Peru’s interior minister, Mauro Medina, resigned after it was revealed that Hinostroza had slipped over the border into Ecuador and boarded a flight to Madrid, via Amsterdam.

12 SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018AMERICAS / CLASSIFIEDS

Assange sues Ecuador

for violation of rightsAFP

LONDON: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sued the Ecuador government yesterday for violating his “fundamental rights” and limiting his access to the outside world while in asylum at its London embassy.

The 47-year-old Austral-ian’s legal action comes with speculation mounting that Ecuador is preparing to end its standoff with the British gov-ernment by terminating his high-profile stay.

Assange found refuge in the embassy in 2012 after a British judge ruled he should be extra-dited to Sweden to face allega-tions of sexual assault.

That case has since been dropped but Assange fears being extradited to the United States to face charges over the WikiLeaks website’s release of troves of sensitive US gov-ernment files.

WikiLeaks said its general counsel arrived in Ecuador on Thursday to launch a legal case against the government for “vio-lating (Assange’s) fundamental rights and freedom”.

“The move comes almost seven months after Ecuador threatened to remove his pro-tection and summarily cut off

his access to the outside world, including by refusing to allow journalists and human rights organisations to see him,” WikiLeaks said.

It added that the embassy was requiring Assange’s vis-itors — including journalists and lawyers — to disclose “private or political details such as their social media usernames”.

The Ecuador government issued no immediate statement in response.

Quito confirmed blocking Assange’sInternet and mobile phone access in March after accusing him of breaking “a written committment” not to interfere in Ecuador’s foreign policies.

A protocol governing Assange’s stay at the embassy

— revealed by Ecuadoran internet site Codigo Vidrio and never denied by Quito — warns that further breaches will lead to “termination of asylum.”

The website reported that the embassy intends to stop paying for Assange’s food and medical care in December.

WikiLeaks lawyer Baltasar Garzon told a press conference in Ecuador yesterday that Assange’s conditions were “inhuman”.

“It is not a comfortable sit-uation, it is an inhuman situ-ation, because the solution that should already have been reached by the involved states is extending over time,” said the lawyer.

“We have to find a solution, to comply with what is estab-lished by the international law and certainly not aggravate the humanitarian situation of an individual, as I say, who is not deprived of liberty.”

Britain’s Press Association news agency said the case is expected to be heard in Ecuador next week.

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in March 2017 that arresting Assange for leaking sensitive US government files through his websites was a “priority”.

Former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon (left) and Ecuadorean Carlos Poveda, lawyers of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, during a press conference in Quito, yesterday.

WikiLeaks lawyer

Baltasar Garzon told

a press conference

in Ecuador yesterday

that Assange’s

conditions were

“inhuman”.

12-pound lunar meteorite sells for $612,500AP

BOSTON: A 12-pound (5.5 kilogram) chunk of the moon that fell to the Earth as a lunar meteorite has been sold at auction for more than $600,000.

Boston-based RR Auction announced yesterday that the $612,500 winning bid for the meteorite, composed of six fragments that fit together like a puzzle, came from a representative working with the Tam Chuc Pagoda complex in Ha Nam Province, Vietnam.

RR predicted that it would get $500,000 at auction.

The meteorite was found last year in a remote area of Mauritania in northwest Africa.

It is composed of six frag-ments that fit together like a puzzle. The largest of those pieces weighs about 6 pounds.

The meteorite’s “partial fusion crust” was caused by the tremendous heat that sears the rock as it falls to Earth. It is considered one of the most significant lunar meteorites ever found.

WhatsApp bans over 100,000 accounts for spam amid Brazil votesBLOOMBERG

BRASILIA: WhatsApp banned hundreds of thousands of accounts in Brazil as the Facebook Inc. messaging service struggles to contain spam, misinformation and other political shenanigans ahead of a runoff election in Latin America’s largest country.

“We have cutting-edge technology to detect spam that identifies accounts with abnormal behavior so that they can’t be used to spread spam or misinformation,’ a WhatsApp spokesperson wrote in an email.

‘We are also taking imme-diate legal measures to prevent companies from sending mass messages via WhatsApp and have already banned accounts associated with those companies.’

Facebook set up a ‘war room’ to spot and eradicate misinformation, hate speech and other damaging content during Brazil’s election this month. It’s a test for the social network ahead of midterm

elections in the US later this year. While the company said it was able to thwart false infor-mation on its main social network, it’s had more trouble controlling misbehavior on WhatsApp, which is encrypted and virtually impossible to monitor.

Brazil’s runoff election is October 28, when far-right pol-itician Jair Bolsonaro faces leftist Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad.

Yesterday, the latter accused his competitor of receiving illegal and undeclared corporate donations after local newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported companies are paying for a mass social media cam-paign against Haddad. Bol-sonaro wrote on Twitter that his opponent’s party “isn’t being damaged by fake news, but rather by the TRUTH.”

WhatsApp said yesterday that it’s taking the accusation seriously. ‘We are committed to reinforcing WhatsApp pol-icies equally and in a fair way to protect the users’ expe-rience,’ it added.

13SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER 2018 CLASSIFIEDS

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Residents enjoying pleasant weather at Doha CornicheOwing to rainy season, weather has turned pleasant in Qatar providing people opportunities to spend leisure time outdoors with family and friends. A large number of people witnessed yesterday picnicking at Doha Corniche that also increased business of Dhow operators significantly. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT / THE PENINSULA

Giant galaxy supercluster found lurking in early UniverseAFP

PARIS: Scientists have discovered a primitive “supercluster” of galaxies forming in the early Universe, just 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang.

The structure, nicknamed Hyperion, is the largest and most massive to be found so early in the formation of the Universe, which sprang into existence around 13.7 billion years ago.

Its titanic mass is one million billion times that of the Sun.

“This is the first time that such a large structure has been identified at such a high redshift, just over two billion years after the Big Bang,” said Olga Cuc-ciati, a researcher at the Astrophysics and Space Sciences Observatory in Bologna and lead author of a study detailing the discovery.

Redshift is a measure of the changing wavelength of light travelling away from an observer. “Normally these kinds of structures are known at lower redshifts, which means when the Universe has had much more time to evolve and construct such huge things,” Cucciati said.

Located in the constellation of Sextans (The Sextant), Hyperion was identified by analysing the vast amount of data obtained

A colossal structure in the early Universe uncovered by an international team of astronomers using the VIMOS instrument of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. This galaxy proto-supercluster — which they nickname Hyperion — was unveiled by new measurements and a complex examination of archive data.

from the VIMOS Ultra-deep Survey, which provides a unique 3-D map of how more than 10,000 galaxies are distributed in the distant Universe.

Hyperion is similar in size to nearby superclusters, though it has a very dif-ferent architecture, the researchers said. The findings were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

“Superclusters closer to Earth tend to have a much more concentrated dis-tribution of mass with clear structural features,” explains co-author Brian Lemaux, an astronomer from University

of California at Davis.“But in Hyperion, the mass is dis-

tributed much more uniformly in a series of connected blobs populated by loose associations of galaxies.” This contrast is most likely due to the fact that nearby superclusters have had billions of years for gravity to gather matter together into denser regions -- a process that has been acting for far less time in the much younger Hyperion. Over time, Hyperion will likely evolve into something like the Virgo Supercluster, which contains our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Carrots could be key to making greener buildings, say researchersREUTERS

LONDON: Crunchy and tasty, yes, but could carrots also strengthen cement and cut carbon dioxide emissions for the building industry?

A group of researchers at Britain’s Lancaster University has been using a household food blender to mix particles from the root vegetable with concrete to see if they can produce a stronger and more environmen-tally sound product.

“We found out you could increase the strength of con-crete by 80 percent by using a small amount of this new material,” lead researcher Mohamed Saafi told Reuters.

The addition of carrots prevent any cracks in the con-crete, the team said. It also means less cement is required, therefore lowering the global carbon dioxide (CO2) output.

Cement is responsible for seven percent of total global CO2 emissions, according to International Energy Agency estimates. “Our preliminary results show that adding about half a kilogram of carrot nanomaterial will reduce about 10kg of cement per one cubic metre of con-crete,” Saafi said.

The team have also tried sugar beet fibres in cement mixtures, with all their vege-tables coming from food waste. They will continue to test their mixtures alongside their commercial partners, a Scottish company which makes paint using root veg-etable fibres.

New tool can track your alertness at workIANS

NEW York: To track level of alertness during work, a team of researchers has developed a tool that tracks alertness by measuring pupil size, captured through a burst of photographs taken every time users unlock their smartphones.

The findings, published in the journal ACM Digital Library, showed that the pupil-scanning reliably predicted alertness. “Since our alertness fluctuates, if we can find a pattern it will be very useful to manage and schedule our day,” said lead author Vincent W S Tseng from the Cornell University in New

York. When people are alert, the sympathetic nervous system causes the pupils to dilate to make it easier to take in information. When they’re drowsy, the para-sympathetic nervous system causes the pupils to contract. Under-standing alertness patterns could be helpful to people in many kinds of workplaces, Tseng added.

Colours of autumnA man stands on a boat as autumn foliage is reflected off Loch Faskally, in Perthshire, Scotland, Britain, yesterday.

50% Americans don’t know who owns WhatsAppIANS

SAN Francisco: It may sound bizarre but nearly 50 percent of Americans who have used WhatsApp in the last six months have no idea who owns the popular mobile messaging platform.

According to a survey by DuckDuckGo, the US-based pri-vacy-protecting search engine, just over half of US citizens (50.42 percent) do not know WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.

“We randomly selected 1,297 US adults (not just DuckDuckGo users) who are collectively demo-graphically similar to the general

population of US adults and sur-veyed them on August 16, 2018. “Half of those who used WhatsApp in the past six months weren’t aware that Facebook owns WhatsApp,” said the survey.

The findings also showed that nearly 60 percent of those who used Waze in the past six months didn’t know that Google owns Waze.

Waze is a popular GPS nav-igation software. It works on smartphones and tablet com-puters that have GPS support.

“This means that a majority of Americans who are using WhatsApp and/or Waze are doing so without realising that all of their information, whether

it be routes, travel time, mes-sages, photos, or location data, is privy to Facebook (for WhatsApp) and Google (for Waze),” said the survey.

According to the survey, the lack of awareness over Facebook and Google’s reach is even more alarming as more and more Americans are looking to take control of their privacy online.

A previous survey by Duck-DuckGo found that 56.9 percent of American adults were unaware that Facebook owns Instagram and 44.6 percent did not even know that Google owns YouTube. Facebook in 2014 acquired WhatsApp for $19bn.

Apple to launch new iPads, MacsSAN FRANCISCO: Apple is likely to launch new iPads and Mac computer lineup on October 30 at an event in Brooklyn. Apple sent at least two versions of its invite. One, colourful with sketched of images of people, buildings and other items, possibly indicating a new Apple Pencil or other artistic features, CNET reported.

The other, a black and white that appeared to be water droplets, which could mean the new iPads may be water resistant, the report added. According to the report, the new iPad Pros would get bigger displays and lose the “Touch ID” fingerprint-sensing home button in favour of Apple’s “Face ID” facial-recognition technology.

The tablets may also have USB-C connectivity, as well as updated Apple Pencil styluses.