Volume 24 | Number 7981 | 2 RiyalsMonday 12 August 2019 | 11 Dhul-Hijja 1440 www.thepeninsula.qa

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BUSINESS | 13 SPORT | 20

Dovizioso wins last corner thriller in Austria

Yen, Swiss franc advance

on trade fears

Amir performs Eid prayer, receives well-wishers

QNA DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani performed Eid Al Adha prayer along with a group of loyal citizens at Al Wajba praying area yesterday morning.

Personal Representative of H H the Amir, H H Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, H H Sheikh Mohamed bin Khalifa Al Thani, and H E Sheikh Jassim bin Khalifa AlThani took part in the prayer.

It was also attended by a number of Their Excellencies Sheikhs, Ministers and members of diplomatic corps in addition to citizens.

Sheikh Dr Thaqeel Sayer Al Shammari, Court of Cassation Judge and Supreme Judiciary Council member, who led the prayer, delivered the Eid sermon in which he urged worshippers to ponder the deep meanings of Eid

Al Adha and performing the Eid prayer because it is a ritual of Islam. He also called for the exploitation of this occasion by increasing the acts of worship, good deeds and devotion, and by worshiping Allah the Almighty and following the sunnah of our Prophet Mohammed (Peace and Blessing Be Upon Him).

In the sermon, Dr Al Shammari highlighted the impor-tance of the day of sacrifice, which was marked yesterday.

He also said that the religion of Islam is the religion of love

and peace. This urges us to meet the sense of belonging to the nation and that the nation’s sons strive to meet its interests and protect it from all evils through cooperation between all on the basis of good governance that is based on justice and love for all, as well as on the basis of pro-moting unity and love and staying away from intolerance.

Scores of worshippers per-formed the Eid prayer in mosques and praying areas across the country.

H H the Amir received yes-terday morning scores of Eid Al Adha well-wishers at Al Wajba Palace. His Highness received Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani and Their Excel-lencies Sheikhs, Ministers, Ministries’ Undersecretaries, Shura Council members and citizens.

H H the Amir also received heads of diplomatic missions accredited to the state as well as officers of the armed forces and police, and heads of national institutions and departments.

The well-wishers extended greetings to H H the Amir, praying that Eid carries good and blessings to the Qatari people and the Arab and Islamic nations.

Personal Representative of H H the Amir, H H Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, and H H Sheikh Mohamed bin Khalifa Al Thani attended the reception.

H H the Amir also received yesterday afternoon at Al Wajba Palace more Eid Al Adha well-wishers that included their excel-lencies Sheikhs and citizens.

The well-wishers expressed their sincere congratulations to

His Highness on this happy occasion praying the Almighty Allah for many happy returns to the Qatari people and the Arab and Muslim nations.

Personal Representative of H H the Amir attended the reception.

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani performing Eid Al Adha prayer along with Their Excellencies the Ministers, Sheikhs, diplomats and a group of loyal citizens at Al Wajba praying area yesterday. �P2

Thousands throng Katara to take part in Eid celebrationsRAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

The Cultural Village Katara has once again reaffirmed its position as a prime Eid destination as visitors in large numbers thronged the Esplanade for its Eid Al Adha celebrations which kicked off on a high note yesterday.

Visitors comprising mostly families witnessed and took part in the variety of activities Katara had lined up for its four-day Eid celebrations.

Doha Metro’s Red Line, which was in full operation yes-terday, further contributed to the influx of visitors from as far as Al Wakrah who all enjoyed the activities. Qatar Rail earlier announced yesterday in its social media platforms Doha Metro Red Line will be operating till Friday from 6am to 11pm.

“We are very happy to be here, thanks to the cheap and fast transport provided through

the Doha Metro. It just took QR2 and 30 minutes for us to reach Al Qassar,” said Ahmed, who came to Katara all the way from Al Wakrah along with his friends.

While some of the visitors had fun on the beach, many of the people stayed on the Esplanade where all the activ-ities took place.

As early as 5pm,the desig-nated play area began receiving young children who took delight on several giant bouncy castles specially set up for the cele-bration. They later flocked to the two stations in the middle of the Esplanade to receive gifts dis-tributed by Katara volunteers.

“Katara has always been the favourite of our family during Eid because it is spacious and has a nice ambience since it is facing the sea. There are many activ-ities available for the entire family plus there are many res-taurants where we can take our dinner later tonight,” said Josel,

a regular visitor to Katara.In addition to the plethora of

cuisines available in restaurants and cafes, visitors savoured the wide selection of delectable food and beverages offered by food trucks and carts scattered around the Esplanade.

The Police Training Institute (PTI) military band entertained

hundreds of people with their excellent performance playing musical instruments while moving in sync as they marched along the beachfront in neat rows.

Capping the day’s events was a breathtaking fireworks display which painted Katara’s skies in stunning colours. Many visitors aimed their phones towards the

sky to capture the beautiful sight.The fun doesn’t stop there.

The next three days promises more fun activities. From today until Wednesday, Al Thurayya Planetarium will screen 3D movies in Arabic and English starting with “Dawn of the Space Age at 5pm (Arabic) and 7pm (English). Scheduled for

tomorrow’s screening is “The Perfect Little Planet,” and “The Astronaut” on Wednesday with the same timing.

The PTI military band per-formance, Eid gifts distribution and fireworks display will con-tinue today until Wednesday at 8pm, 9pm and 10pm respec-tively. �P3

QNA/DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani yesterday exchanged greetings with the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Dr Hassan Rouhani, on the advent of Eid Al Adha, during a phone call His Highness made yesterday afternoon. H H the Amir also exchanged greetings with Interim President of the Republic of Tunisia, Mohamed Ennaceur, on the advent of Eid Al Adha, during a phone call His Highness made last evening.

H H the Amir exchanged greetings with the Interim President of the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, Abdelkader Ben-salah, on the occasion of the blessed Eid Al Adha in a telephone conversation last evening.

H H the Amir exchanged greetings with the Crown Prince of the sisterly State of Kuwait, Sheikh Nawaf Al Ahmed Al Jaber Al Sabah, on the occasion of the blessed Eid Al Adha in a telephone call last evening.

Amir exchanges Eid greetings with leaders of Arab, Islamic countries

Officials from the Ministry Of Interior during the Eid Al Adha 2019 Celebration for Communities in Asian Town in Doha yesterday. �P3

PIC:SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

On the occasion of Eid Al Adha, I congratulate citizens and residents, may Allah Almighty return it to us and to our Arab and Islamic nations fulfilling their aspirations to more peaceful and prosperous future.

02 MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019HOME

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum34oC 45oC

HIGH TIDE 01:17 – 15:36 LOW TIDE 08:27 – 23:23

Strong wind expected at some places

by afternoon. Expected strong wind with

high sea at some places at first.

FAJRSHOROOK

03. 44 AM

05. 06 AM

11. 39 AM

03.08 PM

06. 14 PM

07. 44 PM

ZUHRASR

MAGHRIBISHA

PRAYER TIMINGS

Amir receives well-wishers on Eid Al Adha

H H the Amir’s Personal Representative H H Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, H H Sheikh Mohamed bin Khalifa Al Thani, and H E Sheikh Jassim bin Khalifa Al Thani during the prayers.

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani receiving the Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani at Al Wajba Palace. The pictures below show H H the Amir receiving Eid Al Adha well-wishers, that included Their Excellencies sheikhs and citizens at Al Wajba Palace yesterday. The well-wishers expressed their sincere congratulations to His Highness on this happy occasion praying the Almighty Allah for many happy returns to the Qatari people and the Arab and Muslim nations.

03MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019 HOME

Flag hoisting to mark Indian Independence DayTHE PENINSUL /DOHA

To celebrate the 73rd Inde-pendence Day of India, a flag-hoisting ceremony will be held at Indian Cultural Center, Street No. 916, Wahb Bin Omair, Al Mamoura at 7am on Thursday (August 15).

P Kumaran, Ambassador of India, will hoist the National Flag and read the address of Hon-ourable President of the Nation.

DFI-TAW partnership to develop dynamic animation community THE PENINSULA DOHA

Doha Film Institute (DFI) has announced a new and inno-vative partnership with VIA University College Denmark’s premier animation school — The Animation Workshop (TAW) — to offer world-class education and training to nurture the next generation of animation profes-sionals in Qatar.

Through the partnership, DFI hopes to promote, strengthen, and expand ani-mation as a cinematic art form in Qatar and the wider region, and help support the devel-opment of a dynamic animation community.

The partnership will see TAW and DFI deliver a five-part programme that includes an

artist residency for Qatari ani-mators at TAW’s campus in Denmark; a series of practical labs and workshops for aspiring animators in Doha with pro-grammes on VR and VFX and the establishment of a think tank that will research and develop guidelines on children’s ani-mated TV programmes in Qatar.

Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, Chief Executive Officer of DFI, said: “Animation and motion capture, the new frontiers in cinema, highlights the evolution of this rapidly-evolving tech-nology which has opened doors to new and unlimited possibil-ities in content creation. From film to advertising and social media engagement, animation offers exciting career opportu-nities and has the potential to evolve into something much

bigger.”“Even though the Qatari ani-

mation industry is still in the formative stages, the interest the medium has gained from local filmmakers signals strong growth over the coming years and we are confident they will

pave the way for a major presence in the global market. Our partnership underlines our commitment to provide the best in knowledge and resources to the Qatari community, and to strengthen their skills in an industry that is undergoing a fas-cinating transformation.”

Morten Thorning, Chief Executive Officer of TAW, VIA University College said: “Imag-ination, creativity and inno-vation are tools that are much needed in the future as they are the foundation of humanity’s existence on planet earth. Per definition, animation is always trying to create something new or unique, trying to explain com-plicated feelings, complicated processes or complicated stories. My wish for our partnership with DFI is to create programs and

activities that can enhance ani-mation, creativity and imagi-nation among professionals, stu-dents and youth generations in Qatar and beyond.”

To mark the programme’s launch, DFI has selected emerging local filmmaker Hassan Al Jahni (pictured) as the first Qatari artist in residence at TAW’s campus in Denmark. Al-Jahni is currently working on a short animation film, “Emsahar”, about a young girl who battles her fear of the dark to save her dying grandmother. The film is a recipient of the Qatari Film Fund’s Fall 2018 cycle. Al-Jahni will work on the film’s devel-opment during his residency at TAW in 2020, where he will have access to the highly skilled industry consultants from around the world.

Amir greets

President of Chad

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh

Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani,

Deputy Amir H H Sheikh

Abdullah bin Hamad Al

Thani and Prime Minister

and Interior Minister H E

Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser

bin Khalifa Al Thani sent

yesterday cables of con-

gratulations to President

Idriss Deby of Chad on the

occasion of his country’s

independence anniversary.

QNA

OFFICIAL NEWS

Qatar condemns

shooting attack inside

Mosque in Norway

DOHA: Qatar expressed yes-

terday its condemnation and

denunciation of a shooting

attack that took place inside

a mosque in the Norwegian

capital Oslo, and led to one

injury. The Ministry of Foreign

Affairs renewed Qatar’s firm

position of rejecting violence

and terrorism, regardless of

the motives and reasons. The

statement stressed Qatar’s

rejection of targeting places

of worship and of terrorising

the innocent. QNA

Sheikh Abdul Basit delivering Khutbah at the Eid prayers organised by the Qatar Indian Islahi Centre (QIIC), in association with Abdullah Bin Zaid Al Mahmoud Islamic Cultural Center (FANAR), at the Abu Bakr Al Siddiq Independent School in Al Muntazah, Doha, yesterday. Dr. Hussain Madavoor, Vice-President of Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen (KNM), the parent body of QIIC, translated Khutbah into Malayalam. More than six thousand worshippers including women and children took part in the special Eid prayer, which QIIC, in association with FANAR, organises every year. BOTTOM: Various Eid activities at Katara. PICS: SALIM MATRAMKOT & BAHER AMIN / THE PENINSULA

MoI Eid events entice expatriate communities SIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

Thousands of people from expa-triate communities yesterday celebrated Eid Al Adha with a variety of cheerful cultural and sports activities at Asian Town, Labour City and many other places.

The activities included musical concerts, traditional stage shows, cultural perform-ances, magic shows in Hindi, Bangladeshi, Nepalese and Bhojpuri.

It also included educative awareness programmes by dif-ferent departments of the Min-istry of Interior such as Traffic Department, Al Fazaa Police, Civil Defence, Community Policing Department, Search and Follow up Department, Drugs Enforcement Department and Human Rights Department.

The events were mainly organised by the Public Rela-tions Department of the Ministry of Interior (MOI), in collabo-ration with other entities.

The Ministry said that the celebrations organised in various locations of Qatar with the aim of providing a safer environment in a closer location for the members of the expa-triate communities residing in Qatar including the employees and workers of the companies to celebrate Eid Al Adha.

It also aimed to enhance and strengthen cooperation and communication between the Ministry of Interior and expa-triates in Qatar by providing safety and security tips during these events.

Special prizes sponsored by Safari group and Grand Mall were presented to the audience through raffle draws as well as through the security awareness quiz by the Public Relations Department of the MoI.

The colourful activities attracted thousands of residents all the day and till late at night who celebrated Eid Al Adha away from their homes with joy and shared their happiness with their colleagues and friends. In celebrations, events were

presented in multiple languages such popular Asian orchestra teams presented musical shows in Hindi, Urdu, Sinhalese, Nepali, Malayalam, Tamil and Bangla-deshi languages.

The celebration at the Asian Town was held at the car parking area of the Cricket Stadium. “Today, we enjoyed many activities including sports, music, and awareness prog-ammes. Some of my friends pre-ferred playing cricket while others amused themselves with watching cultural activities,” said Zeeshan, an expatriate from Pakistan.

Mohammad from Bang-ladesh said that it was a beau-tiful day for him and his col-leagues. “We fully enjoyed by indulging ourselves in leisure hobbies and listening to good music and songs in our national language. I also took part in a cricket match. It was a nice day for everyone and there are friends who prefer to go out with their friends to enjoy music and barbecue on the beaches.”

“Thanks to organizers it was a great day for expatriate com-munities. We feel as if we are in our country due to the variety of events and huge number of people from same nationality gathered at one place cele-brating Eid Al Adha together,” said another expatriate, Noruddin.

This year’s Eid Al Al Adha celebration is being organized in collaboration with Indian Cul-tural Centre and is sponsored by Ibn Ajyan projects, Naaas Group, Safari Mall, Grand Mall, Trsn-scind Group and Emco Qatar.

Also the Barwa Group in association with Waseef and in collaboration with Ministry of Interior conducted two mega cultural events at Barwa Al Baraha in Doha Industrial Area and Barwa Workers Recreation Complex in Al Khor Industrial Area.

Orchestra troupes and com-munity artists performed in both venues, where the audience have got chances for showcasing their cultural talents on the stage in front of a huge crowd.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met yesterday with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is currently visiting the country. During the meeting, they reviewed bilateral relations and ways of enhancing them, in addition to issues of common interest.

FM meets Iranian counterpart

Thousands throng Katara to celebrate Eid Al Adha

FROM PAGE 1The children’s play area will

also remain open every day until Wednesday from 5pm till 10pm. The malls participating in the ongoing Summer in Qatar programme also witnessed increase in footfall.

“The Little Mermaid” at Lagoona Mall, “Cinderella Story” at Hyatt Plaza Mall, “The Carnival” at Mirqab Mall and “Nickelodeon Rocks” show and meet-and-greet at Mall of Qatar attracted large number of fam-ilies as well as the roaming Under the Sea characters and The Avengers and Spider-Man. The ongoing Lego Festival at Doha Festival City and the Balloon Drop at Landmark Mall were also crowd-pullers on the first day of Eid.

Qatar condemns

storming of Al Aqsa

and Israeli aggression

against worshipers

DOHA: Qatar has con-

demned in the strongest

terms the storming of doz-

ens of Israeli settlers into

the courtyards of Al Aqsa

Mosque and the Israeli occu-

pation forces attacking

worshipers on the first day

of Eid Al Adha, considering

it a provocation to the feel-

ings of millions of Muslims

around the world. The Minis-

try of Foreign Affairs stressed

the need for the international

community to act urgently

to stop the repeated Israeli

attacks against the brotherly

Palestinian people and Al-

Aqsa Mosque.

The statement reiterated

Qatar’s firm and perma-

nent stance in supporting

the Palestinian cause and the

steadfastness of the broth-

erly Palestinian people to

ensure the establishment of

their independent State on

1967 borders with East Jeru-

salem as its capital. QNA

04 MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019MIDDLE EAST

Haj pilgrims perform Satan stoning ritualAFP MINA, SAUDI ARABIA

Almost 2.5 million Muslim pilgrims took part yesterday in the “stoning of the devil”, the last major ritual of the annual Haj pilgrimage and one that has in past years led to deadly stampedes.

Carrying pebbles in the scorching heat, worshippers made their way across Mina Valley near Mecca in western Saudi Arabia to symbolically “humiliate” the devil.

Under the watchful eyes of security forces, waves of pil-grims clad in white threw seven stones each at a pillar symbol-ising Satan.

“It is hot, I drink a lot of water and I am still hidden under my umbrella,” said Jaker

Akjar, a 48-year-old Indian pilgrim, sporting a henna-dyed beard.

This was Akjar’s first Haj, one of the five pillars of Islam that every Muslim is required to complete at least once in their lifetime if they are healthy enough and have the means to do so.

Muslim tradition holds that pilgrims must throw seven stones each at a pillar repre-senting Satan on the first day of Eid Al Adha, following two days of prayer and meditation.

“I am well equipped and ready” to fight the devil, said Umar, a 33-year-old Saudi engineer, carrying pebbles in a plastic bottle.

The Haj, one of the world’s largest religious gatherings, this

year officially drew 2.49 million pilgrims to Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi Arabia. Mina has been the site of deadly stampedes such as in 2015 when more than 2,300 pilgrims crushed or suf-focated to death. Authorities have since reinforced safety and security measures.

Tens of thousands of security forces, including police and civil defence, have been deployed for Haj, according to Saudi authorities.

Ambulances are mobilised to assist the faithful, cameras follow their movement, heli-copters constantly fly over this valley of white tents that only comes alive once a year during the hajj. Large fans sprayed water over the crowd amid soaring temperatures.

Pilgrims can purchase

coupons from the Saudi gov-ernment, which organises the slaughter and freezing of the

meat to avoid public health problems. After the stoning ritual, pilgrims return to the

Grand Mosque in Makkah to perform a final “tawaf” or cir-cling of the Kaaba.

Muslim worshippers throw pebbles as part of the symbolic Al A’qabah (stoning of the devil ritual) at the Jamarat Bridge during the Haj pilgrimage in Mina, near Saudi Arabia’s holy city of Makkah, yesterday.

Palestinians, Israeli police clash at Jerusalem holy siteAGENCIES JERUSALEM

Israeli police fired sound grenades to disperse Palestinians during confrontations yesterday outside Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque where tens of thousands of Muslim worshippers gathered for the Eid Al Adha holiday, witnesses said.

Separately on the Gaza border, a Palestinian was killed by Israeli soldiers in the third such incident in recent days, the army and Hamas’s health min-istry said.

A Palestinian ambulance service said that at least 14 Pal-estinians were taken to hospitals for treatment. Israel’s Kan public radio said four police officers were injured. Facing off with police in the packed compound outside Islam’s third-holiest site, Palestinians chanted “With our soul and blood we will redeem you, Aqsa”.

Scuffles ensued and the

crowd fled as the sound grenades exploded and smoke wafted through the compound, wit-nesses said.

Tensions had mounted at the flashpoint complex at the start of Eid Al Adha as the holiday overlapped this year with the Jewish fast day of Tisha B’Av, amid calls by Jewish nationalist and religious politicians for Jews to visit the holy compound.

In a statement, police said they had deployed forces at the site in anticipation of distur-bances and “dispersed rioters”. It put the number of Muslim wor-shippers at the site at some 60,000.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liber-ation Organization, accused Israel of provoking religious and political tension. “The storming of Al Aqsa mosque compound by Israeli occupation forces this Eid morning is an act of recklessness and aggression,” she said in a statement. The compound is

situated in a part of Jerusalem captured by Israel in the 1967

Middle East war and annexed in a move that has not been

recognised internationally. In an effort to avoid friction at the site,

police barred the entry of non-Muslim visitors, including Jews, before the clashes erupted.

After the confrontations died down, Jerusalem District Police Chief Doron Yedid said on Kan radio that he had lifted the ban. Jewish visitors then entered the area under heavy police guard and no serious violence was reported. Regular protests and clashes erupted along the border of the blockaded Gaza Strip in March 2018.

At least 302 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza or the border area since then, the majority during dem-onstrations and clashes. Seven Israelis have also been killed in Gaza-related violence.

The protests have declined in intensity in recent months fol-lowing a UN and Egyptian-bro-kered truce. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya spoke of the Al Aqsa clashes, saying it “shows the reli-gious dimension of the conflict.”

Israeli security forces fire sound grenades inside the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem, yesterday.

UAE-backed separatists withdrawing from AdenAP SANA’A, YEMEN

Yemeni separatists backed by the United Arab Emirates began withdrawing yesterday from positions they seized from the internationally-recognised government in the southern port city of Aden.

The Southern Transitional Council had wrested control of the city from government forces after four days of fighting that killed more than 70 people and exposed a major rift in the Saudi-led coalition, which has been battling Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in northern Yemen since 2015.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates lead the coa-lition, which is ostensibly fighting the rebels on behalf of the government. But the UAE is the dominant force in the south, where it has an estimated 90,000 allied militiamen and has long been at odds with the

government, which is largely based in Saudi Arabia.

The two US-allied Gulf monarchies appear to have diverging interests in Yemen, where the stalemated war has spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and drawn mounting cri t icism in Washington.

Saudi Arabia views the Houthis as a major national security threat, in part because the rebels have launched numerous cross-border missile

attacks targeting its capital and other cities. The UAE, which recently began withdrawing troops from Yemen, appears more interested in securing its interests in the south — which lies along major trading routes linking Africa to Asia — than waging a war that appears increasingly unwinnable.

Saudi Arabia had responded angrily to the takeover in Aden, calling for an immediate cease-fire and ordering the separatists to pull back as Saudi troops moved to secure government buildings. Yesterday, Saudi state TV reported that the separatists had begun withdrawing.

The coalition said yesterday it struck a target that posed a “direct threat” to the gov-ernment, without elaborating, and warned of further military action if the separatists did not pull back. Yemeni officials said the UAE-backed fighters had withdrawn from the streets but still held military positions

seized in recent days and were still stationed outside the pres-idential palace. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief media. The crisis began

last week during the funeral of a separatist leader killed in a Houthi rocket attack who was laid to rest by supporters in a cemetery near the presidential palace.

Syrian troops capture key village in rebel-held IdlibAP BEIRUT

Syrian government forces captured an important village in the northwestern province of Idlib yesterday, drawing close to a major town in the last rebel stronghold in the country, state media and opposition activists said.

The capture of Habeet opens up an approach to southern regions of Idlib, which is home to some 3 million people, many

of them displaced by fighting in other parts of the country. Habeet is also close to the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which has been held by rebels since 2012, and to parts of the highway linking the capital, Damascus, with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest.

Syrian troops have been trying to secure the M5 highway, which has been closed since 2012. Idlib is a stronghold for Al Qaeda-linked militants and other armed groups. Syrian troops

have been attacking Idlib and a stretch of land around it since April 30. The three-month cam-paign of airstrikes and shelling has killed more than 2,000 people on both sides and dis-placed some 400,000.

The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said the Syrian army captured the village after fierce fighting with Al Qaeda-linked militants.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war

monitor, described the capture of Habeet as “the most important advance” by government forces since April 30. It said the over-night fighting left 18 insurgents and nine pro-government gunmen dead.

Syrian troops have been pushing their way into Idlib and rebel-held northern parts of Hama province in recent weeks under the cover of intense air-strikes and shelling.

In Damascus, meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad

attended Eid al-Adha prayers in a mosque.

State news agency SANA showed Assad attending the Muslim prayers early Sunday at Afram Mosque along with top officials, including the prime minister and the country’s grand mufti.

Over the past few years, Assad’s forces have been able to capture most areas controlled by rebels in other parts of the country, including the eastern suburbs of Damascus.

AFP DUBAI

Fighting between pro-government forces and sepa-ratists in Yemen’s second city Aden has killed around 40 people and injured 260 others including civilians, the UN said yesterday.

“Scores of civilians have been killed and wounded since August 8 when fighting broke out in the city of Aden. Preliminary reports indicate that as many as 40 people have been killed and 260 injured,” a UN statement said.

“It is heart-breaking that during Eid Al Adha, families are mourning the death of their loved ones instead of cel-ebrating together in peace and harmony,” UN Humanitarian

Coordinator in Yemen Lise Grande said. “Our main concern right now is to dis-patch medical teams to rescue the injured,” she said.

“We are also very worried by reports that civilians trapped in their homes are running out of food and water,” Grande added, urging the belligerents to protect civilians. “Families need to be able to move freely and safely to secure the things they need to survive.

“We are asking authorities to guarantee unimpeded access for humanitarian organisations,” she said.

Both the Yemeni gov-ernment and separatists said early yesterday they backed Riyadh’s call for dialogue and a suspension of fighting.

40 killed in Aden: UN

The coalition said yesterday it struck a target that posed a “direct threat” to the government, without elaborating, and warned of further military action if the separatists did not pull back.

Turkey to continue drilling in E Med: VPANATOLIA ANKARA

Turkey will “resolutely” continue its drilling activities in Eastern Mediterranean, Vice-President Fuat Oktay said yesterday.

“Now, Fatih, Yavuz, and Barbaros drilling vessels are in the region. Oruc Reis is sailing to the region. Our determi-nation at this point is extremely certain,” Oktay said following the Eid Al Adha prayer in Istanbul.

“Without any hesitation, Turkey will continue to defend rights of its own and Turkish Cypriots,” he said.

Turkey will maintain its commitment to continue drilling activities and equal and fair sharing of resources by Turkish Cypriots, he added.

Oktay also reiterated that the drilling activities are being held in Turkey’s own conti-nental shelf and within the framework of an agreement with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).

Turkey has consistently contested the Greek Cypriot administration’s unilateral drilling in the Eastern Mediter-ranean, asserting that the TRNC also has rights to the resources in the area.

Since spring this year, Ankara has sent two drilling vessels — Fatih and most recently Yavuz — to the Eastern Mediterranean, asserting the right of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC) to the resources of the region.

Athens and Greek Cypriots have opposed the move.

05MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019 AFRICA

Rocket fire hits Libya airport, breaking Eid truceAFP TRIPOLI

Rocket fire hit the Libyan capi-tal’s sole functioning airport yesterday, violating a temporary truce between the unity government and forces loyal to strongman Khalifa Haftar, airport authorities said.

“Mitiga airport has been tar-geted by fire this morning, the first day of Eid Al Adha”, the air-port’s management said in a statement on Facebook.

The three-day Eid Al Adha began yesterday.

Air traffic was suspended “until further notice”, the

statement added, alongside photos showing columns of smoke rising from the runway and parked planes.

Haftar launched an offensive to take Libya’s capital in early April, but encountered stiff resistance, resulting in months of stalemate in southern Tripoli’s outskirts.

His self-styled Libyan

National Army (LNA) and the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord had on Saturday agreed to a UN-sponsored humanitarian truce for Eid Al Adha, although the GNA had listed conditions, including a ces-sation of troop movements.

The GNA blamed Haftar’s forces for the attack against the airport, and for a separate alleged attack in the Soug al-Jomaa district of Tripoli.

“Haftar’s militias have vio-lated the truce twice,” GNA spokesman Mustafa al-Mejii said.

“The first time targeted a home in Soug al-Jomaa, wounding three civilians, and the

second hit Mitiga airport,” he added.

Located east of Tripoli, Mitiga is a former military airbase that has been used by civilian traffic since Tripoli’s international airport suffered severe damage during fighting in 2014. Mitiga is in a zone under the control of forces loyal to the UN-recognised GNA and has often been targeted.

“We have noted the coordi-nates of the rocket fire from zones controlled by Haftar’s militias south of the capital” and passed them on to the UN mission in Libya (UNSMIL), Mejii said. Libyan TV channels also

reported exchanges of fire around the road to the closed international airport yesterday.

The truce had come after UN envoy Ghassan Salame had already called several times for humanitarian ceasefires, without success.

Over the past four months, 1,093 people have been killed in the fighting and 5,752 wounded, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), while more than 120,000 people have been displaced.

Libya has been mired in chaos since a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

Tanzania mourns 69 victims of tanker blastAFP MOROGORO, TANZANIA

Tanzania was in mourning yesterday, as the East African nation prepared to bury 69 people who perished when a crashed fuel tanker exploded as crowds rushed to syphon off leaking petrol.

The deadly blast, which took place on Saturday near the town of Morogoro, west of the eco-nomic capital Dar es Salaam, is the latest in a series of similar disasters in Africa.

President John Magufuli declared a period of mourning until today. He will be repre-sented at the funerals by Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa, an official statement said.

“We’re currently mourning the loss of 69 people, the last of whom died while being trans-ferred by helicopter to the national hospital in Dar es Salaam,” Majaliwa told residents in Morogoro, 200km west of Dar es Salaam.

The number of injured stood at 66, Majaliwa said.

The burials were due to start yesterday afternoon after rela-tives had identified the dead.

“The preparations for the burials have been completed. Individual graves have been dug and the coffins are ready,” Par-liamentary Affairs Minister Jenista Mhagama said yesterday, adding that experts were available to offer psychological counselling to the victims’

relatives.DNA tests would be carried

out on bodies that were no longer recognisable, Mhagama said, adding that families could take the remains of their loved ones and organise their own burials if they preferred.

Witnesses said the truck tipped over trying to avoid a motorcycle, before drivers of motorcycle taxis known as “boda-boda” as well as locals flocked to the scene to collect fuel.

The explosion was triggered when a man tried to retrieve the truck’s battery, creating sparks that ignited the fuel, according to the region’s governor.

Footage from the scene showed the truck engulfed in fierce flames and huge clouds of black smoke, with charred bodies and the burnt-out remains of motorcycle taxis scat-tered on the ground among scorched trees.

A video posted on social media taken before the explosion showed dozens of people car-rying yellow jerricans around the truck.

“We arrived at the scene with two neighbours just after the truck was overturned. While some good Samaritans were trying to get the driver and the other two people out of the truck, others were jostling each other, equipped with jerricans, to collect petrol,” teacher January Michael said.

“At the same time, someone

was trying to pull the battery out of the vehicle. We warned that the truck could explode at any moment but no one wanted to listen, so we went on our way, but we had barely turned on our heels when we heard the explosion.”

President Magufuli yesterday visited some of those injured in the blast who had been trans-ferred to a hospital in Dar es Salaam. “May God heal you,” he said to the 43 patients, some in very serious condition, according to the doctors who accompanied the president.

Prime Minister Majaliwa meanwhile announced yesterday that a special commission would

be established to investigate if any management failures had contributed to the disaster.

“While our now-dead com-patriots were gathering to syphon fuel, did anyone try to stop them?” Majaliwa asked.

Magufuli has called for people to stop the dangerous practice of stealing fuel in such a way, a common event in many poor parts of Africa.

He issued a statement saying he was “very shocked” by the looting of fuel from damaged vehicles.

“There are vehicles that carry dangerous fuel oil, as in this case in Morogoro, there are others that carry toxic chemicals or

explosives, let’s stop this practice, please,” Magufuli said.

Last month, 45 people were killed and more than 100 injured in central Nigeria when a petrol tanker crashed and then exploded as people tried to take the fuel.

In May, a similar incident occurred in Niger just a short dis-tance from the airport in the capital Niamey, leaving almost 80 people dead.

Among the deadliest such disasters, 292 people lost their lives in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in July 2010, and in September 2015 at least 203 people died the South Sudan town of Maridi.

Charity ships rescue 81 more migrants off Libya coastAFP ON BOARD THE OCEAN VIKING

French charities SOS Mediter-ranean and MSF rescued another 81 migrants off the coast of Libya yesterday, who joined 130 others aboard the ship the Ocean Viking, an AFP reporter said.

The young men, mostly Sudanese, who had left Libya late Saturday in a blue rubber dinghy, clapped and cheered as the ship came into view.

Yesterday’s rescue was the third in as many days.

The ship, jointly operated by SOS Mediterranean and Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF — Doctors Without Borders), has been patrolling interna-tional waters some 50 nautical miles off the coast of Tripoli.

“We’re the only ones in the area, the Libyan coastguard don’t respond” to distressed migrant vessels, SOS Mediter-ranean search and rescue c o o r d i n a t o r N i c h o l a s Romaniuk told AFP.

Romaniuk said fair weather conditions would likely encourage more depar-tures from Libyan shores.

A further incentive is that a three-day Muslim holiday, Eid Al Adha, which kicked off yesterday, may reduce the presence of authorities patrolling Libyan beaches.

About two-thirds of those aboard the Ocean Viking are Sudanese.

The group rescued on Friday were from West Africa, mainly from Senegal as well as Ivory Coast, who had come to Libya to work but got caught up in the fighting in the lawless North African country.

MSF, which registers the migrants on board, said Sunday that four-fifths of the latest group to be rescued were aged between 18 and 34, while 17 percent were under 18.

The rescues come at a time of tension between Italy and other EU states, with the Italian government refusing to let migrants land on its shores unless its EU partners help take them in.

The Ocean Viking is reg-istered in Norway, and Italy’s far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini sent a warning to Oslo last week.

“Italy is not legally bound, nor disposed to take in clan-destine, unidentified migrants from on board the Ocean Viking,” Salvini wrote.

European parliament speaker David Sassoli wrote to EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Thursday urging immediate aide for the migrants and a quick deal between the member states to take them in.

Muslims gather to perform the Eid Al Adha prayer at Addis Ababa Stadium in Ethiopia, yesterday. Muslims across the globe are celebrating the Eid Al Adha festival.

Ethiopian Muslims mark Eid Al Adha with religious zealANATOLIA ADDIS ABABA

Muslims in Ethiopia celebrated the first day of the Eid Al Adha with religious fervour yesterday.

In the capital Addis Ababa, hundreds of thousands of Muslims turned out for the Eid prayer in and around the city’s old stadium which is located in the capital downtown.

Ethiopia hosts the second largest Muslim population in Sub-Saharan Africa with Muslims accounting for 34% of the over 100 million population of the country. Sheikh Sultan Aman Ebba, head of the Addis Ababa Islamic Affairs Supreme Council, said on the occasion that com-passion and charity were the values that Muslims uphold at all times. He said Muslims celebrate Eid Al Adha by praying for unity

of Ethiopia — a country that has been reeling under ethnic tensions.

Eid Al Adha is an Islamic holiday during which animals are generally sacrificed, the meat from which is distributed to the poor. Ethiopian Muslims have recently welcomed a new Majlis (Supreme Council) that enjoys the support of all after decades of sec-tarian divisions and a political interference before Abiy Ahmed taking the office of the prime min-ister, who spearheaded the latest successful efforts at unifying the Muslim community.

An episode in the early history of Islam says the first followers of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) fled persecution at the hands of the ruling Qurayish of Mecca and found safe haven in Ethiopia, where they had been told to go by the Prophet (PBUH).

No new Ebola case in Goma; over 1,300 vaccinatedREUTERS GOMA

The World Health Organisation said it has vaccinated over 1,300 people who potentially came into contact with the Ebola virus in the Congolese city of Goma, helping contain what many feared would be a rapid spread in an urban centre.

A year-long Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic

Republic of Congo has killed at least 1,800, the second biggest toll ever, and efforts to contain the virus have been hobbled by militia violence and some local resistance to outside interference.

Goma, a lakeside city of nearly 2 million people on the Rwandan border, has been on high alert over the past week after a gold miner with a large family contaminated several people before dying himself.

“Ongoing vaccination activities have reached the majority (98%) of eligible con-tacts, and 1,314 contacts, con-tacts of contacts and frontline workers (have been) vacci-nated to date,” the WHO said in a statement last week.

No new confirmed cases had been reported in Goma since the WHO’s previous report on August 2. The use of an experimental Ebola vaccine, developed by Merck, has

proven to be a key weapon against the haemorrhagic fever, although reaching con-tacts in rural areas beset by violence has proven difficult.

The vaccine’s success has been most obvious in cities where contacts can be easier to trace, helping avoid the widespread havoc seen in densely populated areas during a 2013-2016 outbreak in West Africa that killed over 11,000 people.

Nigerian, South African leaders to meet in OctBLOOMBERG ABUJA

N i g e r i a n P r e s i d e n t Muhammadu Buhari will meet with South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa in October for talks on trade and the security of citizens, Nigeria’s presi-dency said.

Buhari accepted an invi-tation to visit the South African leader to discuss “recurrent issues concerning well-being of the Nigerian community in South Africa, and the need to promote trade and investment,” Garba Shehu, a Nigerian government spokesman, said in an emailed statement. A specific date wasn’t given.

Dozens of Nigerian have been killed in South Africa in anti-immigrant attacks, drawing outrage from the Nigerian Parliament in Abuja.

A bilateral commission will also be inaugurated during the visit tasked with implementing cooperation agreements on energy, transport and security made in 2016 during a state visit to Nigeria by former South African President Jacob Zuma.

Nigeria and South Africa vie as the continent’s biggest economies, with trade between the two nations doubling to $4.5 billion in 2018 from the previous year, according to Bloomberg estimates.

The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord blamed Haftar’s forces for the airport attack.

Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli talks to medical staff and victims of the Morogoro petrol tanker explosion, at the Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam, yesterday.

06 MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019ASIA

India floods toll rises to 147; mass evacuationsREUTERS NEW DELHI/BENGALURU

The death toll from floods in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra rose to 147, state authorities said yesterday, as rescue teams raced to evacuate people and waters submerged parts of a world heritage site.

Heavy rain and landslides forced hundreds of thousands of people to take shelter in relief camps, while train services were cancelled in several flood-hit areas.

In the southern state of Kerala, at least 57 people were killed in rain-related incidents while over 165,000 people were in relief camps in the state, state authorities said yesterday.

“Several houses are still covered under 10-12 feet deep mud. This is hampering rescue work,” Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said.

Authorities worried that rescue operations would be hit by thunderstorms and rainfall predicted in some parts of Kerala.

Last year, more than 200

people were killed in Kerala and over five million affected in one of worst floods in 100 years in the state.

In Karnataka, several struc-tures at world heritage site Hampi, an ancient town, were flooded. So far 60 people have died in rain-related incidents, said state chief minister B S Yedi-yurappa, adding nearly 227,000 people were staying in relief camps. While Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra have been the worst hit this year, several other states including Gujarat, Assam and Bihar have also seen heavy damage due to floods.

In Maharashtra, where the death toll stood at 30, the flood situation was improving,

according to state-run All India Radio, though authorities said it would be difficult to restore rail services in some flood-hit areas within the next two weeks.

India’s main opposition Con-gress party called on Prime

Minister Narendra Modi to provide relief packages.

Citing media reports, the Congress party said so far this year 446 people have been killed in six flood-hit states including Assam, Bihar and Gujarat.

“Despite the mammoth loss of lives and displacement caused due to floods, the government is failing to realize the gravity of the flood fury,” the Congress party said in a statement on Sunday.

Volunteers, local residents and members of National Disaster Response Force search for survivors in the debris left by a landslide at Meppadi in Kerala’s Wayanad district, yesterday.

Kashmiri women shout slogans during a protest in Srinagar, yesterday.

Abrogation of Article 370 a national, not political issue: NaiduIANS CHENNAI

Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu said here yesterday the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution that conferred special status on Jammu & Kashmir was in the interest of the nation and it should be looked as a national issue and not a political issue.

The Vice-President was speaking at the launch of the book tilted `Listening, Learning and Leading’ that chronicles his two years in office.

On judiciary, Naidu pointed to the recommendation of a standing committee and said Supreme Court Benches should be in various cities to save people of difficulties they face. “It’s high time to have the Supreme Court Benches in at least four major cities. To start with, one could be set up in Chennai,” Naidu said.

The Vice-President said it’s time to review the system of judges’ appointment and stressed creation of a trans-parent and credible system.

He said the judicial process should be people-friendly and certain types of cases, like election petitions and those linked to the anti-defection law, should be decided early.

He pointed to a petition challenging election of a Lok Sabha member that was filed in

2009. Two Lok Sabha elections had taken place after that but the case was still pending, he added.

He also supported use of regional languages in high courts.

The Vice-President called for review of the anti-defection law and said it’s the time to strengthen the legislature and the executive.

Stating that the legislature should be dynamic and there was huge scope for improvement, Naidu said it should discuss, debate and decide without disruptions.

The credibility, capacity and capability should be the deciding factor for a person to enter the legislature and not the caste, cash and criminality, he added.

Sharing his private feelings, Naidu said he was planning to retire from politics and get into social service 2019 onwards. “I had told Prime Minister Narendra Modi about this. I had also told my wife to be ready to leave Delhi and head back to village,” Naidu recalled.

“During discussion for selection of the vice-presi-dential candidate, I had sug-gested that he/she should be from the South, from a farmer’s family and be a capable person,” Naidu said. Naidu said when he heard his name was being proposed, he was in tears.

President: Eid symbolises love & service to humanityIANS NEW DELHI

President Ram Nath Kovind yesterday greeted citizens on the occasion of Eid Al Adha, saying the festival symbolises love and service to humanity.

In a message, the President said: “On the occasion of Eid Al Adha, I offer my greetings and good wishes to all fellow cit-izens, especially our Muslim brothers and sisters in India and abroad.

Eid Al Adha symbolizes love, fraternity and service to humanity. Let us commit our-selves to these universal values that represent our composite culture.”

IB issues terror alert on eve of Eid Al AdhaIANS NEW DELHI

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has issued an alert about Islamic State (IS) and ISI-backed terrorist groups planning attacks in India on the occasion of Eid Al Adha today.

In a confidential report issued to state police units and police headquarters on Friday, the IB said that ISI-backed groups may carry out terror acts in Jammu and Kashmir and other places in the country around Eid.

According to sources, the Islamic State-backed pro-radical terrorist organisations may target crowded places such as bus stops, railway stations, airports and other important places.

Top IB sources said that even though the IS has not been able to spread terror in India for a long time, the govern-ment’s decision on Jammu and Kashmir has left it enraged.

Of late, there have been reports of the presence of some sleeper modules backed by Taliban in India.

The National Intelligence Agency (NIA) had recently carried out raids in several states, including Kerala, to look for terror cells allegedly linked to the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka that left over 250 people dead.

Magsaysay Awardee under house arrestIANS/LUCKNOW

Social activist and Magsaysay Award winner Sandeep Pandey was put under house arrest yesterday after he announced a dharna to protest against the scrapping of Article 370 and the shut-down in Jammu and Kashmir.

The protest ‘Stand for Kashmir’ was to be held yes-terday evening at GPO Park.

“All of a sudden, police arrived at our house in the morning and told us that we cannot stage the dharna, because of prohibitory orders in the city. They said the prohibitory orders would be lifted after Inde-pendence Day. So I told them that we would stage the dharna after the orders are lifted. Yet, they are standing outside my house and no one is allowed to enter or leave the house,” said Pandey over telephone.

‘Congress leaders feared splits under Non-Gandhi chief’IANS NEW DELHI

The spectre of a split in the coun-try’s oldest political party was looming at the Congress Working Committee meeting on Saturday as leaders got emotional at the mention of a non-Gandhi to lead the Congress.

It had to be a Gandhi, and no one else. Some leaders even threatened to sit at home rather than attend party meetings under a non-Gandhi.

That decided the matter, and party seniors, including Ahmed Patel, approached former Pres-ident Sonia Gandhi to lead the party yet again.

Sonia Gandhi, who has not been keeping good health, was surprised at the CWC recom-mending her name as interim President.

“You have suddenly come up with this idea. I am not ready for it,” she told the party leaders, according to a senior leader who

was present at the deliberations.

“Sonia Gandhi was not ready to accept the post of interim President,” the leader told IANS, not wishing to be named.

“But she was convinced after a number of them told her that

the party will split if the Gandhi family leaves the helm at this crucial juncture,” the leader added. The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s top decision-making body, sat twice on Saturday to decide a new party chief after Rahul Gandhi

quit the post following the party’s disastrous showing in the Lok Sabha election. The second meeting ended at around 11pm.

None of the leaders was pre-pared to accept the name of a non-Gandhi as President. Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar declared that he would prefer to remain at home than accept a non-Gandhi as party President.

“Jakhar’s opinion was sup-ported by many others who told the CWC members that the names of those leaders doing the rounds as party chief were not acceptable to them,” the leader told IANS.

Another Punjab party leader, Pratap Singh Bajwa, told the CWC that if any non-Gandhi comes to occupy top post, “then many senior leaders will leave the party and join other parties”.

“When the name of Priyanka Gandhi was suggested, she herself objected to it, saying it is not possible,” the party leader said.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi talks to media at the All India Congress Committee headquarters in New Delhi.

2cr farmers to be enrolled under PM-KMYIANS NEW DELHI

The Common Service Centre (CSC), a part of national e-governance scheme under the Central government, has set a target of enrolling 2 crore small and marginal farmers under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maan-Dhan Yojana (PM-KMY) by August 15.

PM-KMY, a central sector social security scheme admin-istered by the Agriculture Min-istry, was launched by Agri-culture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar here on Friday.

Under PM-KMY, announced in the Budget 2019-20, a monthly pension of Rs3,000 will be provided to eligible farmers on attaining the age of 60.

The Ministry has roped in CSC, a Special Purpose Vehicle under the Ministry of Elec-tronics and IT (MEITY), as exclusive “enrolling agency” to enrol subscribers.

“I have asked all village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) who run over 2 lakh CSCs in villages across India to register at least 100 small and marginal farmers by Independence Day,” said CSC CEO Dinesh Tyagi.

Kashmir lockdown to continue over EidAFP SRINAGAR

Indian authorities are expected to extend a military clampdown of Kashmir ahead of start of the Eid Al Adha festival today, on fears protests could break out over its stripping of the Muslim-majority region’s autonomy.

Jammu and Kashmir has been in a security lockdown since last Monday when India’s government rescinded years of autonomy and gave full control to New Delhi.

Officials eased restrictions earlier yesterday but imposed them again in the afternoon amid a tense atmosphere in the

main city of Srinagar.They are expected to keep

security tight today to block any big gatherings of people during Eid Al Adha, a major religious holiday for Muslims, sources said in Srinagar. Some 500 people took part in protests yes-terday but there were minimal injuries reported. Indian authorities have stressed that no violence has broken out in the picturesque valley.

Local leaders have warned the loss of autonomy could lead to unrest in a region that has mounted an armed insurgency against Indian rule for three decades, leading to tens of thou-sands of deaths. Tensions also

remain fraught in the moun-tainous Ladakh region, where a local activist said dozens of protesters took part in rallies on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with at least 10 people injured by security forces using tear gas and sticks.

Residents in Indian-con-trolled Kashmir, meanwhile, said they were struggling to prepare for Eid because of the security crackdown. A mother who gave her name as Razia said she tried to explain to her daughter that she would not be able to buy her clothes to mark the occasion.

“What sort of Eid is this?” asked the 45-year-old.

At least 57 people have died in Kerala with more than 165,000 displaced. The death toll in Karnataka stood at 60, while 30 deaths have been reported from Maharashtra state.

07MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019 ASIA

Pakistan envoy urges UN to play role in Kashmir crisis INTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Reaffirming Pakistan’s intention to take the case of India’s ‘illegal’ annexation of Jammu and Kashmir to the UN Security Council, Permanent Represent-ative of Pakistan to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, said the government was prepared to use any diplomatic and political option to secure justice for the oppressed Kashmiri people.

The Indian government this week rushed through a presi-dential decree to abolish Article 370 of the Constitution which grants special status to Indian- administered Kashmir, as ten-sions mounted in the disputed valley with unprecedented numbers of Indian troops deployed in the region.

“We are ready for bilateral, multilateral, any format (of mediation) so long as we can get justice for the people of occupied Kashmir,” she said in an interview with Sky News.

Lodhi said India had com-mitted violations of the UN res-olutions on Kashmir, besides sabotaging peace efforts made by Pakistan for the region. “Step by step diplomacy is being put in place to address the long-standing issue of Kashmir,” she

added. The Pakistani envoy added, as per the UN charter and clauses, India cannot amend the status of Kashmir.

Earlier, the ambassador while meeting with a top aide of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had urged the UN chief to play his due role in the crisis sparked by India’s unlawful action in occupied Kashmir.

During the meeting with Chief of Staff of the UN Sec-retary-General Maria Louisa Ribeiro Viotti, the Pakistani envoy asked for the UN chief to demand that India comply with UN Security Council’s resolu-tions on Kashmir that prohibit any alteration in the status of the disputed state.

The Pakistani ambassador had underscored the need for the establishment of a Com-mission of Inquiry, as recom-mended by the two reports of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that exposed India’s abuses in the valley.

Residents gather in support of Kashmiri people during a protest in Quetta, Pakistan, yesterday.

Qureshi urges India to lift J&K curfew on EidINTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Pakistan has demanded India to ease curfew in occupied Kashmir on the eve of Eid Al Adha and allow Kashmiri people to offer sacrifices of animals on this occasion freely.

This was stated by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi while talking to Radio Pakistan yesterday.

He said this year Pakistan will celebrate Independence Day to express solidarity with

Kashmiri brethren of ‘occupied Kashmir’.

Qureshi said due to curfew and clamp down in the valley all the countries have issued travel advisories and business of tourism has been shut down.

Qureshi said protests had been held across the world to condemn India’s move.

He said not only Kashmiris but people from all walks of life are participating in these pro-tests as they believe that human rights violations in Indian-administered Kashmir

are being carried out to bring demographic change.

He said that he will visit Azad Kashmir today to show solidarity with Kashmiri people.

The Foreign Minister will offer Eid prayers in Muzaf-farabad with people of Azad Kashmir.

He will have meetings with President, Prime Minster and Hurriyat leadership of Azad Kashmir. He will participate in a rally and will also visit a refugee camp there.

India attempting to alter Kashmir demography: PM

INTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan says curfew, crackdown and ‘impending genocide’ of Kashmiris in occupied Kashmir is unfolding exactly according to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideology inspired by Nazi ideology.

In a tweet yesterday, he said the attempt is to change demography of Kashmir through ethnic cleansing and question is: Will the world watch and appease as they did Hitler at Munich? In another tweet, the Prime Minister expressed fear that “this RSS ideology of Hindu Supremacy, like the Nazi Aryan Supremacy, will not stop in IOK; instead it will lead to suppression of Muslims in India and even-tually lead to targeting of Pakistan.

He said ‘the Hindu supremacists’ were a version of ‘Hitler’s Lebensraum’.

Former Sri Lankan strongman’s brother to run for presidentAP COLOMBO

Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was a live wire in Sri Lanka’s military campaign to end a long civil war but faces allega-tions of human rights violations, was nominated yesterday as the opposition’s candidate for the presidential election to be held later this year.

Gotabaya, a brother of former strongman President Mahinda Rajapaksa, was a pow-erful defence bureaucrat under his brother’s government, which defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels’ 26-year insurgency in 2009.

Rajapaksa announced his brother’s candidacy to cheering supporters at a rally in Colombo, the capital. Earlier at the rally, Rajapaksa was named leader of the Sri Lanka People’s Front, under which Gotabaya will contest.

As secretary of defence min-istry under his brother’s rule, Gotabaya played a key role in ending the Tamil Tigers’ cam-paign for an independent state

for ethnic minority Tamils. But he was accused of using ext-ralegal methods and cracking down on those who criticized his style.

Gotabaya was accused of running abduction squads known as “white van” squads that whisked away rebel suspects and journalists deemed to be overly critical. Some of the abductees were released after torture, while others were never seen again.

Gotabaya was also impli-cated in the killing of rebels and civilians who tried to surrender with white flags under a pre-arranged deal in the final days of the civil war. Ethnic Tamils say they handed over their children for investigations at the request of the military but did not see them again.

According to a UN report, some 45,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the last months of the war alone.

In his speech yesterday, Gotabaya said he has always strived to fulfil his duties to his best and in doing so he has never

been confined to laid-out norms. He will follow the same phi-losophy even as president, he said.

“In fulfilling my duties for the country I have never allowed room for any foreign forces to interfere,” he said. “Even in the future I will never allow anyone to lay hands on the country’s sovereignty.” In his years at the defence ministry, Gotabaya was known to be a straight speaker on foreign relations.

The government quickly reacted to Gotabaya’s candidacy, with Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera tweeting, “Do #SriLankans want to return to the isolation and darkness of the past?” Sri Lanka must hold the presidential election between November 8 and December 8. Incumbent President Maithripala Sirisena’s first term ends on Jan. 8. No other party has put forward a presidential candidate yet.

Sri Lanka’s former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa (right) waves next to his brother and former president Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo, yesterday.

Torrential rains leave 24 dead across PakistanANATOLIA KARACHI

Torrential rains and flash floods have killed at least 24 people in southern and northwestern Pakistan over the last 24 hours, officials and local media said yesterday.

The massive downpour struck Karachi on Saturday night, which lasted next 16 hours with short intervals.

At least 12 people were killed, mostly by electric current, in different parts of the commercial capital as the gov-ernment called on the army to rescue stranded people, local broadcaster Geo News reported.

The floods also triggered landslides, power cut-off, and downed trees and utility poles in many areas. According to the metrological department, the city received 150 mm rains.

In the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, at least 12 people were killed and 22 injured in rain related acci-dents, mainly landslides and roof collapses, the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) said in a statement.

The meteorologists yes-terday forecast more rains in Karachi and other parts in the next 24 hours.

Ghani: Peace will come to AfghanistanREUTERS KABUL

President Ashraf Ghani said yesterday peace would come to Afghanistan, but he appeared to question an expected deal between the United States and the Taliban, saying his nation would decide its future, not outsiders.

“Peace is a desire for each Afghan and peace will come, there shouldn’t be any doubt about it,” Ghani told a gathering for Eid Al Adha prayers yesterday.

“But we want a peace in which each Afghan has dignity... We don’t want a peace that would cause our people to leave their country.” Zalmay Kha-lilzad, the veteran Afghan-American diplomat leading negotiations with the Taliban for Washington, said he hoped this would be the last Eid that Afghanistan was at war.

“I know Afghans yearn for peace. We stand with them and are working hard toward a lasting & honourable peace agreement and a sovereign Afghanistan which poses no threat to any other country,” he said in a post on Twitter.

The Taliban and the United States have both reported sig-nificant progress in their nego-tiations, with one Taliban official saying a pact could be signed after the Eid holiday.

Ghani made no reference to the United States or to the expected US-Taliban pact but said Afghans should decide their fate, not outside powers, even if they were allies.

He also said a presidential election, scheduled for Sep-tember 28, in which he hopes to win a second term, was essential.

The Tal iban have denounced the election as a sham and threatened to attack rallies. There has been specu-lation the vote could be post-poned if the United States struck the deal with the mili-tants, but Ghani said it was vital.

“The Afghan people want a strong, efficient and responsible government, and this is not pos-sible without elections,” he said.

Ghani and his government have not been involved in months of negotiations between Washington and the Taliban.

Myanmar battles floods after 52 die in landslideAFP MAWLAMYINE, MYANMAR

Myanmar troops and emergency responders scrambled to provide aid in flood-hit parts of the country yesterday after rising waters forced residents to flee by boat and a land-slide killed at least 52 people.

Every year monsoon rains hammer Myanmar and other countries across Southeast Asia, submerging homes, dis-placing residents and triggering landslides.

But this season’s deluge has tested dis-aster response after a fatal landslide on Friday in southeastern Mon state was fol-lowed by heavy flooding that reached the roofs of houses and treetops in nearby towns.

Hundreds of soldiers, firefighters and local rescue workers were still pulling bodies and vehicles out of the muddy wreckage of Paung township on Sunday.

“The latest death toll we have from the landslide in Mon state was 52,” Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun said.

As the rainy season reaches its peak, the country’s armed forces are pitching in and have readied helicopters to deliver supplies.

“Access to affected regions is still good. Our ground forces can reach the areas so far,” Zaw Min Tun said.

Heavy rains pounded other parts of Mon, Karen and Kachin states, flooding roads and destroying bridges that crumbled under the weight of the downpour.

But the bulk of the relief effort is focused on hard-hit Mon, which sits on the coast of the Andaman sea.

About two-thirds of the state’s Ye township remained flooded, an administrator said, as drone footage showed only the tops of houses, tree branches and satellite dishes

poking above the waters. Families realised they had to leave in the early hours yesterday, packing possessions into boats, rowing towards higher ground or swimming away.

Than Htay, a 40-year-old from Ye town, said that water rose to their waists around 02:00 am and she and her family members started shouting for help.

The heavy rains muffled their pleas but a boat happened to pass by and gave them a ride.

“That’s why we survived. We thought we were dead,” she said.

Another resident said this year’s flooding was the worst they had experienced.

Floodwaters have submerged more than 4,000 houses in the state and displaced more

than 25,000 residents who have sought shelter in monasteries and pagodas, according to state-owned Global New Light of Myanmar.

Vice-President Henry Van Thio visited landslide survivors in a Paung township village on Saturday and “spoke of his sorrow” while promising relief, the paper reported.

The search for victims continued later Sunday though the rain has made the process more difficult.

“We are still working. We will continue searching in the coming days as well,” Paung township administrator Zaw Moe Aung said.

Climate scientists in 2015 ranked Myanmar at the top of a global list of nations hardest hit by extreme weather.

An aerial view of submerged areas of Ye township in Mon State, Myanmar, yesterday.

Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi says India is violating UN resolutions on Kashmir, and sabotaging peace efforts by Pakistan.

During the next two decades, South Korea not only received the promised development aid from Japan, but it also became a prime destination for Japanese trade and investment. With the South Korean and Japanese economies benefiting greatly from the new partnership, Seoul and Tokyo were loath to quarrel over historical issues.

AFP

08 MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019VIEWS

How Japan’s failure to atone for past sins threatens the global economy

The price of your Samsung phone and tablet could soon go up. The reason? Disputes that stretch back to Japanese

atrocities during World War II have pushed Japan and South Korea to the brink of economic war.

Japan has recently implemented several measures that can hurt the South Korean economy. It has removed South Korea from its list of preferred trading nations and imposed controls on the export of semicon-ductor materials. South Korean Pres-ident Moon Jae-in has vowed not to surrender to Japan and is planning reciprocal measures.

Although Japan permitted a shipment of some semiconductor materials to South Korea on Wednesday, the situation is far from resolved. Japan’s moves have already caused a spike in the price of memory chips and are having a chilling effect on the global tech market. While Tokyo cites national security concerns as the reason for the sanctions, most experts believe it is retaliating against South Korea for recent court rulings that require Japanese companies to pay restitution to Koreans forced to labor in their factories during World War II.

For decades, the two countries have disagreed about how Japan should atone for its colonial past. Now,

this failure to reckon with past atroc-ities may have an eco-nomic effect that will extend far beyond East Asia. For a more peaceful and prosperous future, coun-tries must contend with history - no matter how ugly.

From the time Japan

relinquished its empire at the end of World War II, deep-seated resent-ments against it lingered in former colonies like Korea. First as an imperial power and then during World War II, Japan committed atrocities that were among the most horrific in recorded history. This included the sexual enslavement of hundreds of thousands of “comfort women” and efforts to eradicate Korean culture by forcing Korean schoolchildren to learn Japanese.

When US forces occupied Japan and South Korea in 1945, reconcili-ation between Japan and its former

victims was not a high priority. Instead, the United States sought to brush aside resentments over the recent past and to re-establish the economic linkages that had existed during the colonial era. Focused on stopping communism, the United States believed Japan and South Korea needed to be united in their resistance to this threat, and so US diplomats pressured the Japanese and South Korean governments to cooperate and quickly settle their historical disputes.

South Korea finally normalized relations with Japan in 1965 with the support of the Johnson administration. The Republic of Korea (ROK) president at the time, Park Chung-hee, was intent on achieving double-digit economic growth rates and was more willing to compromise with Japan than his prede-cessors had been. Although the treaty was highly unpopular, Park controlled an autocratic government with a pow-erful security apparatus and was able to ram it through the assembly.

This treaty successfully created a new economic relationship between Japan and South Korea. Japan agreed to provide Korea with $800 million in grants and loans while the South Korean government relinquished its rights to seek formal reparations from Japan for colonial and wartime abuses against it.

During the next two decades, South Korea not only received the promised development aid from Japan, but it also became a prime des-tination for Japanese trade and investment. With the South Korean and Japanese economies benefiting greatly from the new partnership, Seoul and Tokyo were loath to quarrel over historical issues.

But the treaty also allowed Japan to evade a reckoning with its past atrocities. Neither government took the perspectives of the victims into account when negotiating, and so, the agreement nullified the rights of indi-vidual citizens to seek compensation from the Japanese government.

Instead, the Park government accepted a lump sum from Japan that could be used to pay victims of Jap-anese war crimes, and the Japanese government considered the issue of compensation for its former victims resolved. But it wasn’t so easy. As mil-itary rule gave way to democracy in South Korea during the late 1980s and early 1990s, victims of Japanese atroc-ities who had previously been reluctant to speak started to come forward. Among them, the “comfort women,” victims of sexual enslavement by the Japanese military, sparked the most emotional outrage. The treaty proved wholly inadequate to addressing their grievances.

And so, today, the historical injus-tices of World War II continue to divide the countries. For South Koreans, much of the anger stems from both the struggle to financially compensate victims and Japan’s unwillingness to hear their concerns.

In 2015, Park Chung-hee’s daughter, former South Korean pres-ident Park Geun-hye, concluded an agreement with Japan on the comfort women issue that had almost the same flaws as the treaty negotiated by her father 50 years earlier. Japan agreed to pay $8.9 million as a lump sum to a foundation that assisted former comfort women. Once again, the victims were denied a voice in the negotiations, and the agreement pro-voked a storm of criticism.

Moon has reversed course, dis-solving the foundation supported by the treaty last November and ren-dering the agreement useless. In its place, he has put forward a new pro-posal for a joint compensation fund that both South Korean and Japanese companies would contribute to, but Tokyo has flatly rejected this. The latest South Korean court rulings in favor of forced laborers seeking resti-tution from Japan reflect the same principle as Moon’s proposal: that Jap-anese firms should be held liable for their actions during World War II.

GREGG A BRAZINSKY THE WASHINGTON POST

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Peace is a desire for each Afghan

and peace will come, there

shouldn’t be any doubt about it.

Ashraf Ghani Afghan President

Italy coalition in crisis after Salvini calls for snap polls

Italy’s coalition gov-ernment was in crisis Friday after far-right Interior Minister Matteo

Salvini pulled his support and called for snap elections.

The heightened political tensions in the heavily-indebted country rattled financial markets, where yields rose on Italian gov-ernment bonds on Friday.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who has held several rounds of talks to try to ease the crisis in the 14-month old government, angrily called on Salvini to justify his move.

Salvini has frequently clashed with his fellow Deputy Prime Minister Luigi di Maio of the anti-estab-lishment Five Star Movement (M5S) party over a range of policies. He stepped up the

pressure on Thursday, saying there was no longer a majority to support a gov-ernment and calling for new elections. “Let’s go straight to parliament to say there is no longer a majority... and quickly go back to the voters,” Salvini said.

The move sparked a political crisis described by the left-wing newspaper La Repubblica as “a farce that makes no-one laugh”.

Conte, who has held sep-arate talks with Salvini and President Sergio Mattarella, went on the offensive, saying it was not for the firebrand interior minister to summon parliament.

“It’s not up to him to dictate the steps of the political crisis,” he added.

Conte called on Salvini “to explain to the country and justify to the electorate, who believed in the possibility of

change, the reasons that brought him to abruptly interrupt” the activities of government.

Both houses of par-liament are currently on recess for the holidays and are not due back until September.

Long-rumbling tensions between the coalition’s pop-ulist leaders have peaked in recent days, with the row centred on the financing of a multi-billion-euro high-speed train line between the Italian city of Turin and Lyon in neighbouring France.

On financial markets, the yield on 10-year government bonds jumped to 1.738 percent from 1.530 percent on Thursday while the spread between Italian and German bonds jumped to 233 basis points.

An early election may benefit Salvini, with opinion

polls putting his League party ahead, leaving open the pos-sibility that it could govern in alliance with another, smaller far-right party, Fratelli d’Italia.

That contrasts with the popularity of the coalition partners in the June 2018 after an election that saw M5S take 32 percent of the vote, while the League scored 17 percent.

In the European election in May this year, however, the League took the most votes in Italy with 34 percent against about 17 percent for M5S.

Italian media has reported that Salvini, in earlier talks with Conte, set conditions for staying in the coalition -- including the res-ignation of the transport, defence and economy min-isters, who have resisted his projects and policies.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI

osman@pen.com.qa

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Peace for allThe citizens and residents of Qatar are celebrating Eid

Al Adha along millions of Muslims from across the globe with a message of understanding the impor-

tance of sacrifice for attaining universal peace, justice and prosperity.

On the occasion of Eid Al Adha, Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said in a tweet: “I congratulate citizens and residents, may Allah Almighty return it to us and to our Arab and Islamic nations fulfilling their aspirations to more peaceful and prosperous future.”

Qatar no doubt has always played its positive and con-structive role in the region and beyond to bring a peaceful and prosperous future for all nations. On this Eid, Muslims from across the globe and Islamic countries need to end their differences with a new resolve to sacrifice their small, temporary interests for the greater good of maintaining peace and a long-lasting brotherhood.

At the domestic level, Qatar government has provided expatriate communities particularly migrant workers with complete facilitation so that they can celebrate Eid Al Adha with full fervor away from their homes and relatives.

The Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Interior (MoI) organises ‘Mega Eid Al Adha Cultural Celebration for Expat Communities’ at the Asian Town and Asian Accom-modation City (Labour City) in Doha Industrial Area.

The Eid celebrations included musical and traditional thematic shows and cultural performances by community orchestra teams and school stu-dents, magic shows and safety and security related awareness programmes by different depart-ments of the MoI such as Traffic, Al Fazaa Police, Civil Defence, C o m m u n i t y P o l i c i n g Department, Search and Follow up Department, Drugs Enforcement Department and Human Rights Department. Popular Asian orchestra teams presented musical shows in mul-tiple languages including Hindi,

Urdu, Sinhalese, Nepali, Malayalam, Tamil and Bangladeshi languages in Asian Town and Asian Accommodation City.

The celebrations are organised in various locations of Qatar by the MoI with the aim of providing a safer envi-ronment in a closer location for the members of the expa-triate communities residing in Qatar including the employees and workers of the companies to celebrate Eid Al Adha and to enhance and strengthen cooperation and communication between the MoI and expatriates in Qatar by providing safety and security tips during these events.

In the same manner, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment prepared a number of beaches across the country for visitors of all categories, including labourers, during Eid Al Adha holidays.

Al Kharij beach has been allocated to singles and labourers during the Eid holidays as part of the keenness of the entities concerned in the country on providing good services to such an important category of people and the services they offer the country.

On the occasion of Eid Al Adha, Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said in a tweet: “I congratulate citizens and residents, may Allah Almighty return it to us and to our Arab and Islamic nations fulfilling their aspirations to more peaceful and prosperous future.”

South Korean people chanting slogans during an anti-Japan rally near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

Slavery was abolished 150 years ago, but racism and the psychological effects it left behind have not disappeared. In fact, a lot of what Du Bois described coincides with what modern psychology has identified as the attributes of the narcissistic personality disorder.

09MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019 OPINION

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In New Zealand, young Maori women lead thebattle for indigenous rights

Racism and narcissism: America’s original sin

CHARLOTTE GREENFIELD AND PRAVEEN MENON REUTERS

DONALD EARL COLLINS AL JAZEERA

Five years ago, law graduate Pania Newton and her cousins got together around a kitchen table and agreed to do every-

thing in their power to prevent a housing development on a south Auckland site considered sacred by local Māori.

Newton, now 29, is today leading thousands of protesters occupying the

land at Ihumātao, one of a number of grassroots movements spearheaded by young, educated and tech-savvy Māori women. Using social media and crowd-funding websites, the groups are mobilising community support to demand land rights and other reforms for Māori in the highest profile indig-enous rights campaigns in more than a decade.

“When you look at our campaign you’ll see the majority of us involved are women and that’s because we feel this great sense of connection to Mother Earth,” Newton told Reuters.

“We are the nurturers, we are the carers. We’ve had to overcome many, many challenges for thousands of years and we’re strong, we’re resilient, we’re feisty and we’re fierce.” In another demonstration, thousands marched in the capital Wellington last week protesting the removal of at-risk Māori children from their families.

The issues have become proxies for a wider discontent among young Māori about modern New Zealand,

and disenchantment with the gov-ernment which some say has done little to break cycles of poverty and violence.

Māori, who account for about 15% of New Zealand’s population, were dispossessed of much of their land during colonisation by Britain in the 19th century.

A legal settlement process drawing on the nation’s founding doc-ument, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, has restored some rights and assets, but many Māori say those measures have not gone far enough.

Without their ancestral lands, with which people are spritually connected to in the Māori world, and with the erosion of many cultural rights until the late 20th century, Māori families are disproportionately affected by a raft of social problems from impris-onment to homelessness.

While eating a hot lunch of bacon bone stew, Iru Iti, a Māori language orator with ancestral ties to Ihumātao and related to Newton, waited out the pouring winter rain beneath a large tarpaulin covering a makeshift meeting ground at the protest site.

The 53-year old said his nieces’ leadership and knowledge of how to navigate both the Māori and Western worlds was revitalising his people’s fight for social justice.

“Until very recently I never believed we could do what we did. If my father were still alive he’d think this is amazing,” said Iti, sitting on a plastic chair between the protesters’ campsite and a line of police.

Māori have a long history of activism to fight for their rights and culture. The protests at Ihumātao echo a 1977-78 occupation of Auck-land’s Bastion Point by a local tribe, which ended after 507 days when police forcibly removed and arrested hundreds of protesters.

But many notice a difference in the new wave of protest that has emerged, which is also challenging

some traditional leaders and spokespeople.

The protesters occupying Ihumātao do so in disagreement with a tribal authority with links to the area, which has supported the housing project after gaining a number of concessions from the developer, including moving the planned housing back from the main protected heritage area.

“I think to a large extent it’s people traditionally shut out of power who are beginning to assert themselves more powerfully in public,” said Morgan Godfery, a Māori political commentator.

Many of those behind the protests against the removal of Māori children from their homes are young mothers, grandparents, midwives and adults who suffered abuse in state care as children. They have formed a network called ‘Hands Off Our Tamariki’, using the Māori word for ‘children’.

Laura O’Connell Rapira, 30, the director of campaign organisation ActionStation, helped organise the recent Wellington march and uses social media and crowd-funding to build support the “Tamariki” campaign as well as the protesters at Ihumātao.

“Māori communities have always organised collectively...but digital tools have made it a lot easier for us to do that from different areas and at a speed and scale like never before,” she said. Prime Minister Jacinda Ard-ern’s centre-left government refused to intervene in the Ihumātao stand-off at first and she has not visited the site but, as the protests grew, she announced there would be no building on the land until the dispute was resolved.

On the removal of children, Ardern has said she did not watch a documentary by online new site Newsroom showing state officials trying to take away a new-born baby from his Māori mother, which sparked the protests.

US President Donald Trump is an unrepentant racist and a malignant narcissist, who also readily espouses Islamo-

phobia, xenophobia, and misogyny. Evidence of his bigotry extends at least as far back as May 1989, when he placed a one-page advertisement in the New York Daily News calling on New York state to execute the Central Park Five - five African American and Latino teens wrongfully accused of beating and raping a jogger.

As president, he has spewed so much hatred in his tweets and public speeches that white supremacists have felt emboldened and more comfortable publicly displaying and acting on their racist beliefs. This uncontrollable resurgence of nationalism has inspired various acts of racist aggression: From chants of “send her back” aimed at Congresswoman Ilhan Omar to mass shootings across the country, including most recently in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.

So many in the United States bend over backwards to separate Trump’s supporters from their expressions of racism and their admiration for his narcissism. Others seek to present Trumpism as a new phenomenon or an exception in American political history. The truth is the American society has always been a racist and narcissistic one.

Perhaps the most serious effort to address the psychological effect of American racism on white people belongs to African American sociologist

and historian WEB Du Bois in his emblematic work, Black Recon-struction. In his book, he observes the behaviour of southern plantation owners and the corrosive effect of slavery on their psyche, concluding the following:

“[It] tended to inflate the ego of most planters beyond all reason; they became arrogant, strutting, quar-relsome kinglets; they issued com-mands; they made laws; they shouted their orders; they expected deference and self-abasement; they were choleric and easily insulted ... “

Slavery was abolished 150 years ago, but racism and the psychological effects it left behind have not disap-peared. In fact, a lot of what Du Bois described coincides with what modern psychology has identified as the attributes of the narcissistic personality disorder. According to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Dis-orders, those include:

“1. A grandiose logic of self-importance

2. A fixation with fantasies of unlimited success, control, brilliance, beauty, or idyllic love

3. A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions

4. A desire for unwarranted admiration

5. A sense of entitlement6. Interpersonally oppressive

behavior

7. No form of empathy8. Resentment of others or a con-

viction that others are resentful of him or her

9. A display of egotistical and con-ceited behaviors or attitudes”

A racist’s narcissism need not be a personality disorder. As psychologists Jean Twenge and W Keith Campbell pointed out in The Narcissism Epi-demic, many narcissists may appear to be “functioning well” by most social standards. At the societal level, racism and narcissism are really a flaw of the human condition, not a disorder.

Where American racism and nar-cissism come together is in the constant urge to maximise advantage over others and satiate the desire for greatness and wealth. This is mixed with a disdain for those who have been deemed lesser and the willful igno-rance of the conditions in which they may suffer. In other words, racism and narcissism are two separate yet inter-dependent constructs, not a mental illness.

The American roots of these con-structs are quite clear and reach back as far as the first colonies. Take the history of the Jamestown colony estab-lished in 1607. For four centuries, its story has been one of hard-working Englishman John Smith in the US and of the “good” Native American Poca-hontas (her actual name was Amonute or Matoaka) saving his life when her “bad” Native American father Pow-hatan attempted to kill him.

This, however, never happened: Smith invented this story in 1624, years after Matoaka’s death. And the actual story of Jamestown provides many examples of the racism and narcissism of the US’s early colonialists.

Despite all the self-praise, the fact is that colonialists managed to survive only thanks to the help of Matoaka’s tribe, the Pamunkey, during the winters of 1607, 1608, and 1609. The gold- and silver-seeking Englishmen, having no experience in farming or fishing, would have all died of star-vation and disease before a resupply reached their colony.

Matoaka was also not the heroine of a wonderful romantic story. Colo-nists kidnapped her at the age of 16 in 1612 and held her captive for two years before another Englishman, John Rolfe, married her in 1614 and took her to England in 1616. She gave birth to a son along the way. Matoaka died in 1617 before she could make it back to Jamestown and to her people.

In the half-decade after her death,

Many of those behind the protests against the removal of Māori children from their homes are young mothers, grandparents, midwives and adults who suffered abuse in state care as children. They have formed a network called ‘Hands Off Our Tamariki’, using the Māori word for ‘children’.

the Jamestown colony began growing tobacco as a cash crop and waged a war on the Pamunkey to conquer more land. Many of the growers of this cash crop were indentured servants from England, as well as the first African slaves in North America, kidnapped and brought to the Jamestown colony in August 1619.

Even at this early stage of what would become the US, all the ele-ments of the US’s racism and nar-cissism were in place: A sense of entitlement, a belief in one’s own exceptionalism and oppressive behaviour towards others, a lack of empathy and an obsession with power.

They remain just as strong today. The successors of those early colo-nists are still obsessed with myth-making, engage in self-aggran-disement and pursue riches, greatness, and empire. They still seek to exploit those designated as “others” and are indifferent to their suffering. They also use any slight or excuse to resort to the wanton destruction of people and the erasure of their cultures.

American racism and narcissism stand at the core of government pol-icies that aim to: maintain detention camps for Latinx asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, cut social welfare programmes for vulnerable populations to shield perpetrators of police brutality, criminalise commu-nities of colour, dispossess Native Americans of their land and ban Muslims from entering the country.

While Trump and his supporters epitomise American racism and nar-cissism, millions of Americans exhibit such tendencies across the political spectrum. This is why racism and narcissism remain the core elements of the US’s original sin.

People take part in a rally against hate a day after a mass shooting at a Walmart store, in El Paso, Texas.

10 MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019ASIA / EUROPE

N Korean leader oversaw ‘new weapon’ test: KCNAAFP SEOUL

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un personally supervised the “test-fire of a new weapon”, the latest in a series of missile launches, state media reported yesterday — as US President Donald Trump said Pyongyang wants to resume denucleari-sation talks.

The country’s official Korean Central News Agency did not specify the nature of the weapon tested in Saturday’s launch.

But a statement from the North Korean foreign ministry called it a “test for developing the conventional weapons”.

The missile launches

— Saturday’s test was the fifth in two weeks — are in protest at regular US-South Korean war games already in progress, which have long angered Pyongyang.

Kim “mounted the obser-vation post and guided the test-fire”, KCNA said of Saturday’s

launch, adding that he expressed “great satisfaction” with the result.

Defence officials in Seoul said what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles were fired at daybreak Saturday from near the northeastern city of Hamhung, flying 400km before splashing down in the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan.

Kim had ordered that the test be carried out “immediately” after getting a report on the development of the new weapon, KCNA said.

“The detailed analysis of the test-fire result proved that the new weapon system’s advanta-geous and powerful demand of

the design was perfectly met,” it added.

In the foreign ministry statement carried by KCNA, Pyongyang said Seoul had “defi-antly staged an aggressive war exercise against us”.

Any future talks will be “held strictly between the DPRK and the US, not between the north and the south”, it said.

Trump has appeared deter-mined to secure a denucleari-sation agreement with North Korea ahead of next year’s US presidential elections, despite a breakdown in talks since he first met Kim in a historic summit in Singapore in June 2018.

Even after their abortive second summit in February

— and even as Pyongyang has continued to test short-range missiles — Trump has been reluctant to criticise the North Korean leader.

On Friday, the Republican president said he agreed with Kim’s opposition to the war games — albeit for financial rather than military reasons —and indicated the missile launches were not important.

Then on Saturday, Trump said Kim had expressed will-ingness to meet and resume negotiations once the US-South Korean exercises are over.

Kim also offered a “small apology for testing the short range missiles,” the US leader noted, and said the tests would

end once the military drills wrap up on August 20.

Trump said he looks “forward to seeing Kim Jong-Un in the not too distant future!”

The pair last met in late June for brief talks in the Demilita-rised Zone separating the two Koreas.

The North Korean foreign ministry said Trump’s comment “in effect recognises the self-defensive rights of a sovereign state, saying that it is a small missile test which a lot of coun-tries do.”

It added that any contact with Seoul would be difficult going forward unless the military exercises stop or a “plausible excuse” is given.

Hunt for missing teen in Malaysia continues despite major holidayAFP SEREMBAN

A hunt for a Franco-Irish teen who disappeared from a Malaysian resort stretched into a second week yesterday, with hundreds of people scouring the jungle despite it being a major Muslim holiday.

Nora Quoirin, a 15-year-old with learning difficulties, dis-appeared on August 4, a day after checking into the resort with her London-based family.

They believe she was abducted, but police have clas-sified it as a missing person case.

Even as millions celebrated the Eid Al Adha festival in the Muslim-majority country, a search team almost 300 strong trekked through dense jungle near the resort in southwest Malaysia in an increasingly des-perate hunt.

The search team includes helicopters, sniffer dogs and drones, but no trace of the teenager has been found so far.

Officials narrowed the search area over the weekend as they believe that the teen cannot have strayed far from the resort, and have also been playing a recording of her mother’s voice through megaphones.

Yesterday police launched a new hotline number for the public to report any infor-mation about her.

The schoolgirl went missing from the five hectare Dusun Resort, which lies near a forest reserve not far from Kuala Lumpur, in the foothills of a mountain range.

Typhoon Lekima toll rises as 16 still missing in ChinaAP BEIJING

The death toll from a powerful typhoon that hit southeastern China rose to 33 yesterday, as rescue workers used rubber dinghies to rescue stranded people as swift currents swept by homes.

China’s emergency broad-casting network said that 16 people were still missing in

Zhejiang province, where 32 died. It reported one more death in neighbouring Anhui province.

Typhoon Lekima triggered landslides and floods after making landfall in Zhejiang early Saturday, about 300km south of Shanghai.

Most of the victims were in a village in Yongjia county, where a landslide blocked a river that then poured into the small town, killing 23 people.

Nine others were unac-counted for. Footage on state broadcaster CCTV showed buildings that had been smashed by the raging waters and workers using backhoes to clean up the debris.

To the north, parts of the city of Linhai remained flooded on Sunday, with water reaching up to the top of the first floor of buildings, leaving only treetops sticking out.

CCTV footage showed that people being rescued with life vests and boats in nearby Xianju county.

Lekima, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm, is expected to dump heavy rain on China’s northeast in the coming days as it moves up the Pacific coast.

It forced the closing of Shanghai Disneyland on Saturday.

HK police fire tear gas at protesters as confrontation loomsREUTERS HONG KONG

Hong Kong police fired tear gas at protesters yesterday as a tenth straight weekend of anti-government demonstrations intensified amid an increasingly aggressive response from the police and Beijing.

Riot police fired volleys of tear gas at crowds of mostly young protesters outside a police station in the working class dis-trict of Sham Shui Po. In nearby Cheung Sha Wan, protesters threw objects at police who fired back with tear gas.

The action followed a day of marches by demonstrators of all ages as increasingly violent pro-tests since June have plunged Hong Kong into its most serious crisis in decades, and pose a challenge to the central gov-ernment in Beijing.

Chants of “Liberate Hong Kong” had earlier echoed through the streets when more

than a thousand black-shirted protesters marched, some with their pets, amid a carnival atmosphere.

“We have lived in Hong Kong all our lives and this is the hardest time because the gov-ernment is not listening to the citizens,” said a 63-year-old man surnamed Leung, who was accompanied by his 93-year-old father in a wheelchair.

“All citizens need to stay together. We will always support the children.” Residents, some cheering, came outside to see them march past. Drivers honked their horns and leaned out of car windows, giving the protesters a thumbs up.

Police have shown a growing willingness to quickly clear pro-testers from the streets — also firing tear gas on Saturday evening — while China has begun applying pressure to the city’s corporate giants, including flag carrier Cathay Pacific.

Yesterday, protesters had

gathered outside Sham Shui Po police station when the police began firing tear gas, but the activists stood their ground.

The protest movement, which began in response to a now-suspended law that would have allowed suspects to be extradited to stand trial in mainland China, still seems to enjoy broad support.

Thousands of activists also occupied the airport arrivals hall for a third day, while others turned out earlier at a downtown park.

Their demands have grown to include greater democracy and the resignation of the city’s leader, Carrie Lam.

Hong Kong was guaranteed freedoms not granted in

mainland China, including an independent judiciary, under a “one country, two systems” formula, when Britain handed it back to China in 1997.

Hong Kong’s government has said the protests were pushing the city to an extremely dangerous edge, while China has said the city faces its biggest crisis since the handover.

Kim Jong-Un “mounted the observation post and guided the test-fire”, KCNA said of Saturday’s launch, adding that he expressed “great satisfaction” with the result.

Anti-extradition bill protesters throw tear gas back at police during clashes outside the police station in Kwai Fong in Hong Kong, yesterday.

22 migrants found packed into SUV in N MacedoniaAP SKOPJE

Police in North Macedonia said border patrol officers found 22 migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh packed into an SUV and arrested the driver.

A media statement issued yesterday said the officers made the discovery on Saturday afternoon in southern North Macedonia, near the town of Demir Kapija.

Police alleged the migrants entered the country illegally from Greece and said they will be deported back there.

The statement said the pas-sengers were taken to a shelter in the border town of Gevgelija.

Thousands of migrants attempt to go from Greece to wealthier European countries along the so-called Western Balkan route even though countries along the way have beefed up their borders.

Last month, North Mace-donia police have discovered 21 migrants from Pakistan, Iraq and Syria left in the woods after the driver abandoned the vehicle carrying them near the border with Serbia.

Police said that a patrol had tried to stop a jeep near the border crossing of Tabanovce, but the driver had run away.

Last week, 161 migrants were stopped overnight trying to enter illegally from Greece. The migrants were discovered in the south of the country by local police and officers from other EU countries who are helping patrol North Macedonia borders.

North Macedonian police said they prevented 10,017 migrants from illegally entering the country in the first half of the year.

A tractor clear rubbles after a tornado ripped through across the southern part of Luxembourg, in Bascharage, yesterday.

Luxembourg PM vows aid for tornado victimsAP BERLIN

Luxembourg’s Prime Minister yesterday has promised that financial aid will be available to help people who had homes damaged or destroyed by a rare tornado.

Luxembourg newspaper Tageblatt reported that tornado victims would soon be able to

access application forms on a government website and quoted Prime Minister Xavier Bettel as saying, “We’re ready to take on responsibility.”

The Friday tornado injured 19 people. Tageblatt said one of the two with serious injuries suf-fered a heart attack and remained in critical condition.

Hundreds of firefighters, sol-diers, police officers and

volunteers were cleaning up debris left behind.

The newspaper added that tornado-related damage has been reported at 314 buildings and around 80 homes are inhabitable.

Tornadoes are very unusual in Europe, where fierce gales that are more the norm also pose danger and cause damage.

Russia mourns victims of nuclear site explosionAFP MOSCOW

The city that hosts Russia’s main nuclear research site announced a day of mourning yesterday for five of its staff killed during a missile test that provoked elevated radiation levels.

Russia has said that five nuclear agency workers were killed Thursday by a blast during testing of a nuclear-powered missile at an Arctic facility.

The closed city of Sarov in the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 500km east of Moscow, declared 24 hours of mourning from 1:00pm yesterday, with flags lowered and entertainment events cancelled, RIA Novosti state news agency reported.

The decree identified the five victims as staff of the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre.

The centre’s chief said that the Rosatom nuclear agency had asked President Vladimir Putin’s administration for those who died to be awarded posthumous medals.

“They are heroes of modern Russia and we will remember them,” chief Valentin Kostyukov

said in a video statement posted by Sarov media.

Rosatom said memorial services would be held today.

During the Cold War, Sarov was a top-secret city known as Arzamas-16. The centre pro-duced the Soviet Union’s first nuclear weapons. It is still a closed city accessible only with special passes.

Rosatom said the accident occurred while a missile was being tested on an offshore platform in the far northern Arkhangelsk region.

Fuel exploded and the blast blew staff into the sea, it said.

Russia’s military initially said two people had been killed in the accident and it was not known whether they were among the five that Rosatom reported.

The nearby city of Severod-vinsk recorded elevated radi-ation levels following the accident.

Alexander Chernyshov, deputy head of research at the Sarov nuclear centre, said in a video statement that researchers had checked levels in Severod-vinsk and confirmed a brief spike.

11MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019 EUROPE

Russian watchdog tells Google not to advertise ‘illegal’ eventsREUTERS MOSCOW

Russia’s state communications watchdog has asked Google to stop advertising “illegal mass events” on its YouTube video platform, it said yesterday.

Tens of thousands of Rus-sians staged what observers called the country’s biggest political protest for eight years on Saturday, defying a crackdown to demand

free elections to Moscow’s city legislature. Multiple YouTube channels broadcast the event live.

The watchdog, Roscom-nadzor, said some entities had been buying advertising tools from YouTube, such as push notifications, in order to spread information about illegal mass protests, including those aimed at disrupting elections.

It said Russia would consider a failure by Google to respond to

the request as “interference in its sovereign affairs” and “hostile influence (over) and obstruction of democratic elections in Russia”.

If the company does not take measures to prevent events from being promoted on its platforms, Russia reserves the right to respond accordingly, Roscom-nadzor said, without giving details.

Over the past five years, Russia has introduced tougher

laws requiring search engines to delete some search results, mes-saging services to share encryption keys with security services, and social networks to store Russian users’ personal data on servers within the country.

A Google spokesperson in Russia declined to comment yesterday.

Moscow has a track record of putting regulatory pressure on Google, one of the main rivals of

Russian Internet search company Yandex.

In late 2018, Russia fined Google $7,663 for failing to comply with a legal requirement to remove certain entries from its search results.

Earlier that year, Google removed a YouTube advert by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after authorities com-plained the videos violated a law prohibiting campaigning ahead of a vote for regional governors.

Norway mosque shooting probed as terror act

Ukraine searches Russian vessel over fuel delivery to CrimeaREUTERS KIEV

Ukrainian prosecutors said they had searched a Russian vessel in the Black Sea port of Kherson as part of an investigation into a suspected illegal delivery of Russian fuel to annexed Crimea in 2015.

Relations between Kiev and Moscow plummeted after Rus-sia’s annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and its backing for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian law stipulates that it is illegal to enter Crimean waters without the permission of the Ukrainian authorities.

The prosecutors said in a statement yesterday that the ship, the Maria, had delivered fuel to Crimea in 2015 and was now being searched in relation

to that delivery.“The prosecutors office...

conducts a search in Kherson on the vessel Maria which is sus-pected of smuggling oil products,” the prosecutors office said in a statement. “In June 2015, the same vessel, but under the name Vilga, supplied fuel to the units of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.”

The office gave no more details.

Last month, Ukraine seized a Russian tanker over its alleged involvement in Russia’s capture of three Ukrainian navy vessels last year.

Russia seized the Ukrainian ships after opening fire on them and is still holding 24 Ukrainian sailors who were on board at the time, accusing them of illegally entering its territorial waters, a charge they deny.

Johnson to meet Irish leader over Brexit: ReportREUTERS LONDON

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has accepted an offer to meet Irish leader Leo Varadkar to discuss Brexit and the Northern Irish backstop, the Sunday Telegraph said citing UK government sources.

“The UK has accepted Var-adkar’s offer to meet and dates are being discussed,” a UK source told the newspaper.

Johnson has told the European Union there is no point in new talks on a with-drawal agreement unless nego-tiators are willing to drop the Northern Irish backstop agreed by his predecessor Theresa May.

The EU has said it is not pre-pared to reopen the divorce deal it agreed with May, which includes the backstop, an insurance policy to prevent the return to a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland.

May’s agreement, rejected three times by the British par-liament, says the UK will remain in a customs union “unless and until” alternative arrangements are found to avoid a hard border.

Johnson has said Britain will leave the EU on October 31 with or without a deal. He has stepped up preparations to leave without a divorce agreement if Brussels refuses to renegotiate, prompting some lawmakers to suspect a no-deal Brexit is his goal.

The Telegraph said it was hoped a meeting between Johnson and Varadkar could take place before the G7 summit in France later in August.

AFP OSLO

The shooting at a mosque near Oslo is being treated as an “attempted act of terror”, Norwegian police said yesterday, with the suspect appearing to harbour far-right, anti-immi-grant views.

“We are looking at an attempted act of terror,” acting chief of the police operation Rune Skjold told a press conference.

Skjold said the investigation had shown that the man appeared to hold “far-right” and “anti-immigrant” views.

The suspect entered the Al Noor Islamic Centre on Saturday afternoon armed with multiple weapons and opened fire before being overpowered by a man who suffered “minor injuries” in the process.

Only three people were inside the mosque at the time of the attack, and police said they recovered two firearms from the scene but did not specify which type.

Norway was the scene of one of the worst-ever attacks by a right-wing extremist in July 2011, when 77 people were killed by

Anders Behring Breivik. Hours after the attack on Sat-

urday, the body of a young woman related to the suspect was found in a house in Baerum.

Investigators are treating her death as suspicious and have opened a murder probe.

Yesterday, police confirmed that the deceased woman was the suspect’s 17-year-old stepsister.

Police said they had tried to question the suspect — described as a “young man” around 20 years old with a “Norwegian background” who was living in the vicinity — but he did not want to “give an explanation to police”.

The man had been known to police before the incident, but according to Skjold, he could not be described as someone with a “criminal background”.

There has been a recent

spate of white nationalist attacks in the West, including in the United States and in New Zealand where 51 Muslim wor-shippers were killed in March at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.

The Al Noor Islamic centre in Norway shares its name with the worst affected mosque in the New Zealand attacks.

On Saturday, Norwegian media reported that the suspect was believed to have put up a post to an online forum hours before the attack where he seemingly praised the New Zealand assailant.

In the online post, references were made to a “race war” and

it ended with the words “Valhalla awaits”.

The suspect in the Christchurch killings wrote a hate-filled manifesto in which he said he was influenced by far-right ideologues including Breivik.

Breivik detonated a massive bomb in Oslo that killed eight people and then opened fire on a gathering of the Labour Party’s youth wing on the island of Utoya, killing another 69 people, most of them teenagers.

Local Norwegian newspaper Budstikka said it had contacted the mosque in Baerum in March after the Christchurch massacre and that officials there had said security would be tightened.

The attack took place on the eve of the Muslim celebration of Eid Al Adha, marking the end of the Muslim pilgrimage Hajj, stoking fears among Norway’s muslims.

“The terror attack in Baerum is the result of a long-lasting hate of Muslims that has been allowed to spread in Norway, without Norwegian authorities having taken this development seri-ously,” the Muslim organisation Islamic Council Norway said in a statement.

Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg, called the shooting a “direct attack on Norwegian Muslims,” as well as an “attack on freedom of religion.”

Armed police officers stand guard as Muslims from the Al Noor Mosque in Baerum arrive at the Thon hotel to attend the prayers during the first day of Eid Al Adha, in Oslo, yesterday.

Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg, called the shooting a “direct attack on Norwegian Muslims,” as well as an “attack on freedom of religion.”

Gran Canaria towns evacuated as wildfire ragesREUTERS/MADRID

About 1,000 people were unable to return home in Gran Canaria yesterday after several towns were evacuated as a vast wildfire spread towards a National Park and an area popular with holidaymakers on the Spanish island, emergency services said.

Firefighters used planes and helicopters to fight the fierce blaze about 20 miles from the capital Las Palmas. The fire poses a threat to several towns as well as the Tamadaba national park on the west of the island, authorities said on Twitter.

Witness Carla Rodriguez described the scene as “one of the most painful images I’ve seen in my life”.

Police said they believe the fire was started by someone using a soldering iron. A 55-year-old man was arrested on Saturday.

Salvini’s quest for snap Italian election faces hurdlesREUTERS MILAN

League chief Matteo Salvini’s (pictured) call for snap Italian elections after he turned on his own coalition partner faced mounting resistance, with both his former Five-Star ally and the centre-left opposition seeking to put the brakes on.

Salvini’s far-right League on Friday filed a no-confidence motion to bring down the gov-ernment it formed with the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement, a move that he hopes will trigger new elections as soon as October and install him as Italy’s new leader.

But that plan is facing crit-icism from other parties, whose

support the League would need in parliament for the no-confi-dence vote to succeed.

Former Democratic Party leader Matteo Renzi, who still wields strong influence over his centre-left party, said yesterday that going back to the polls just when the government is due to start preparations for the 2020 budget would be “crazy”.

In an interview with Corriere della Sera daily, Renzi called instead for a caretaker gov-ernment to be installed with the support of parties across the political spectrum.

Such an administration’s first task would be to find some $25.8bn to avert a rise in sales tax which will otherwise kick in from January.

“We will head back to the polls, of course. But the savings of Italians must come first,” he said.

He also backed Five-Star’s call for legislation cutting the number of MPs and senators in Italy by 345 to be passed before

new elections. There are cur-rently 630 members of the lower house and 315 senators.

Five-Star leader Luigi Di Maio also said yesterday that triggering a government crisis now was “foolish and dangerous.”

While the PD and Five-Star remain far apart on many issues, commentators sensed a rap-prochement between the two sides, united by their desire of foiling Salvini’s plans given that he would likely emerge as the winner of a snap election.

The draft bill cutting the number of lawmakers is at an advanced stage, with a final vote due next month, but such a measure would have to follow a lengthy constitutional procedure

that would make new elections unlikely for another year.

Salvini, who effectively trig-gered the crisis on Thursday by declaring the ruling coalition unworkable, accused his critics of scheming to save their posts and keep him from power.

“Under-the-table stitch-ups, palace intrigues, technocrat or caretaker administrations will not stop Italians who want a strong government,” he said on Facebook yesterday.

Despite the summer recess, Salvini has summoned all League lawmakers back to Rome today and is pushing for a vote on the no-confidence motion against the government this week, while opposition parties would prefer to wait until August 19 to 20.

UK probes cause of sore eyes in seaside townAP/LONDON

Police in England said they are responding to a “hazardous material incident” after people in a seaside town reported vomiting and sore eyes.

The Sussex Police force said officers were investigating symptoms reported by “a small number of people” in Worthing, 80km south of London on Eng-land’s south coast.

The Worthing Fire Station tweeted yesterday that a section of the seafront had been cor-doned off, and it advised resi-dents to shut their windows and doors.

In 2017, a mysterious chemical haze left scores of people on the coast about 48km away with streaming eyes, sore throats and breathing problems.

Albania Muslims perform Eid prayerMuslims perform the Eid Al Adha prayer at Skanderbeg Square in Tirana, Albania, yesterday. Muslims worldwide celebrate Eid Al Adha, to commemorate the holy Prophet Ibrahim’s (Prophet Abraham) readiness to sacrifice his son as a sign of his obedience to God, during which they sacrifice permissible animals, generally goats, sheep, and cows.

12 MONDAY 12 AUGUST 2019AMERICAS

Bannon floats idea of Michelle Obama run in 2020 against TrumpBLOOMBERG WASHINGTON

Democrats eager to oust Pres-ident Donald Trump in 2020 could pin their hopes on an eleventh-hour bid by former first lady Michelle Obama rather than the roughly two dozen candi-dates now in the mix, former White House strategist Steve Bannon suggested.

“I don’t see anybody that’s on this stage right now that can take President Trump one-on-one,” Bannon, a key player in Trump’s 2016 victory, said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“Democrats whose No. 1 pri-ority is beating Trump could find their best option with candidates who aren’t yet in the race,” Bannon said.

“I’m not so sure his opponent has even declared yet. You’ve got to watch guys like Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama — a whole raft of potentials,” Bannon said. “There’s a number of potential Democratic candi-dates still out there that could join this race.”

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, has already said he won’t run for

president and reiterated that decision on CBS’s “Face the Nation”. Hillary Clinton, the 2016 nominee, said in March she has no plans to run again.

Obama, the wife of former President Barack Obama, also recently said there was “zero chance” she would make a bid for the White House.

But that hasn’t stopped Dem-ocrats from raising her name, or from flirting with the idea of a celebrity candidate from outside the world of politics, from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to TV personality Oprah Winfrey.

Filmmaker and activist Michael Moore recently called on Michelle Obama to run as the best hope for Democrats to beat Trump in 2020, saying the popular former first lady would “crush” the president.

“She is a beloved American, and she would go in there, and she would beat him,” Moore said on MSNBC. “She would beat him in the debates, he wouldn’t be

able to bully her, he wouldn’t be able to nickname her.”

In a hypothetical match-up, 50% of likely US voters would vote for Obama over Trump, according to a Rasmussen Reports survey in November. Winfrey had a 10-point edge over Trump in similar Ras-mussen polling in January 2018.

Obama, 55, was named the world’s most admired woman in a 2019 YouGov survey, ahead of Winfrey and actress Angelina Jolie.

Fuelling the dreams of a Democratic star turn may be concern about the electoral chances of the party’s current front-runner, 76-year-old former vice-president Joe Biden.

An August 6 Quinnipiac Uni-versity poll found Biden has the support of 32% of Democrats and independent voters who lean Democratic, followed by Sen-ators Elizabeth Warren of Mas-sachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kamala Harris of California.

Bannon cast doubt on Biden’s chances.

“If the Democratic Party thinks that Joe Biden is going to be able to go mano-a-mano with Donald Trump in a general election campaign, they’ve got another thing coming,” Bannon said. “He will run the tables on Biden.”

Migration raids timing unfortunate: DHS chiefBLOOMBERG WASHINGTON

The timing of immigration raids at Mississippi food processing plants after a mass shooting apparently targeting Hispanics in Texas was “unfortunate,” the top US Homeland Security official said.

Kevin McAleenan, acting sec-retary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) , said the actions, part of broader enforcement efforts that include employers as well as workers, had been planned for more than a year.

About 680 immigrant workers

were arrested on August 7 at seven facilities in the southern state, the largest workplace raid in about a decade, US authorities said. Videos and images in news reports and on social media showed children whose migrant parents were detained pleading for their release.

Asked whether he wished the raids hadn’t happened this week after a mass shooting last weekend in El Paso, Texas, in which the police said the man accused of the killings said he was targeting Mexicans, McAleenan said “the timing was unfortunate.”

Still, McAleenan said that the

operation “was done with sensi-tivity” — with caseworkers on hand, and agents from US Immi-grat ion and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, at local schools as liaisons.

“ICE took great pains to make sure there were no child-dependent care issues that were ignored.”

Asked why the adminis-tration went after the workers and not the employers who hired them by the hundreds, McAleenan said employers were being targeted in the investi-gation but that more than 200 of the workers detained had criminal records.

The members of the Jewish community holding a protest to demand an end to the Trump administration’s detention of migrants programme outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, yesterday.

Honduran government to analyse any US safe third country migration planREUTERS TEGUCIGALPA

Honduras will analyse any US plan to have the Central American country act as a so-called safe third country to help contain migration north, but it has yet to receive any official proposal, the Honduran foreign minister said yesterday.

Central America has come under pressure from US Pres-ident Donald Trump to stop migrants reaching the US border, and last month Wash-ington struck a deal with Gua-temala that requires migrants to seek asylum there rather than the United States.

After the Guatemala deal was announced, US Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said the United States wants similar agreements with Honduras and El Salvador.

“Officially, we have not received any proposal from the United States about (becoming a) safe third country,” Honduran Foreign Minister Lisandro Rosales said. “If we receive it, we will look into it, analyse it and make decisions.”

Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are three of the most violent and impoverished coun-tries in the Americas, and critics of the Trump administration plan are sceptical they could

cope with a potential surge in asylum applications.

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Dem-ocrat visiting Central America with a bipartisan congressional delegation, said during a news conference later on Saturday they had met with Rosales and the Honduran attorney general.

“The timing of our trip relates to the migration issue, which is important to our coun-tries in the Northern Triangle as well as in the US and Mexico.”

Pelosi gave no details on whether the delegation had dis-cussed a safe third country deal.

But she had expressed con-cerns about Guatemala and El Salvador’s ability to handle a safe third country accord during stops there earlier this week.

“We are neighbours in this Hemisphere and our interest in Central America and Northern Triangle is very important to all countries concerned,” Pelosi said, adding that the purpose of the trip was to promote regional security and stability.

“In each of the countries we visited, we made the point that you could not have security unless you end corruption.”

The Trump administration is trying to restrict applications for asylum in the US by requiring Central American migrants to apply in Guatemala rather than at the US border.

‘Brazil doesn’t need Germany’s funds in Amazon’AFP BRASÍLIA

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (pictured) yesterday said his country has “no need” for German aid aimed at helping protect the Amazonian forest, after Berlin said it would suspend some payments because of surging deforestation.

Brazil is home to more than 60 percent of the Amazon forest, which is being cleared at an increasing rate to create more cropland.

The Amazon is vital to the exchange of oxygen for carbon

dioxide in the atmosphere — a check on global warming — but concern about the forest has grown since Bolsonaro took office in January.

“They can use this money as

they see fit. Brazil doesn’t need it,” Bolsonaro, a far-right pop-ulist, told journalists in Brasilia.

His comments came after Germany on Saturday said it would block payment of $40m to Brazil for forest conservation and biodiversity programs until the Amazon’s rate of decline attained encouraging levels once again.

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) said on Tuesday that roughly 2,254 sq km of the Amazon were cleared in July, a spike of 278 percent from a year earlier.

“Brazilian government

policies in the Amazon raise doubts about continued, sus-tained declines in the rate of deforestation,” German Envi-ronment Minister Svenja Schulze told Tagesspiegel.

From 2008 until this year, Berlin paid 95 million euros in support of various environ-mental protection programmes in Brazil.

Asked about Brazil’s image abroad, Bolsonaro replied with another provocation.

“You think that the big coun-tries are interested in Brazil’s image, or do they want to appro-priate Brazil?” he said.

Democrats whose No. 1 priority is beating Trump could find their best option with candidates who aren’t yet in the race: Steve Bannon

Former Eagle Scout accused in online drug empire to stand trialAP SALT LAKE CITY

Former Eagle Scout Aaron Shamo, 29, will stand trial beginning today on allegations that he and a small group of fellow millennials ran a multi-million-dollar empire from the basement of his suburban Salt Lake City home by trafficking hundreds of thousands of pills containing fentanyl, the potent synthetic opioid that has exac-erbated the country’s overdose epidemic in recent years.

The federal government’s

case is expected to offer a glimpse at how the drug, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans, can be imported from China, pressed into fake pills and sold through online black markets to people in every state.

Prosecutors have alleged that dozens of the ring’s cus-tomers died in overdoses, though the defence disputes that and Shamo is charged only in connection to one: a 21-year-old identified as RK, who died in June 2016 after snorting fentanyl allegedly passed off as pre-scription oxycodone.

Guatemala votes in presidential runoffREUTERS GUATEMALA CITY

Guatemalans yesterday were voting for a new president who will face a major challenge after the country signed an unpopular deal with Washington to act as a buffer against illegal immi-gration under pressure from US President Donald Trump.

Threatened with economic sanctions if it said no, the admin-istration of outgoing President Jimmy Morales reached an accord in late July to make Guatemala a so-called safe third country for migrants, despite the endemic poverty and violence plaguing the

Central American nation.Both candidates to replace

Morales, conservative Alejandro Giammattei, the slight favorite, and the centre-left former first lady Sandra Torres, have criti-cised the deal. But it is unclear that either will be able to do much to stop it.

A CID-Gallup opinion poll of 1,216 voters conducted between July 29 and August 5 gave Giam-mattei the advantage going into the run-off vote, with 39.5% support, versus 32.4% for Torres.

Whoever takes office in January will inherit a country with a 60% poverty rate, wide-spread crime and unem-

ployment, which have led hun-dreds of thousands of Guate-malans to migrate north.

Between them, the two can-didates have failed to win the presidency five times. Although Torres came out on top in a first round of voting in June, she is a polarizing figure.

Many Guatemalans are fed up with the political class after investigations by the Interna-tional Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN anti-corruption body, led to the arrest of then-President Otto Perez in 2015, and then threatened to unseat his suc-cessor Morales.

Presidential candidate Sandra Torres casts her vote at a polling station during the presidential election second round runoff vote in Guatemala City, yesterday.

Ex-congressman backs national gun licencing programmeAP EL PASO

Beto O’Rourke is joining a number of his Democratic pres-idential rivals in support of a national gun licencing programme.

The former Texas con-gressman said yesterday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that states that require gun licencing, mandate universal background checks or stop the sales of assault-style weapons are saving lives.

He added that it makes sense to “adopt these solutions nationally.”

O’Rourke has remained in his hometown of El Paso, Texas, since shortly after a gunman killed 22 people at a Walmart store on August 3. Law enforcement officials said the suspect had an AK-47 rifle and was targeting Mexicans.

Other 2020 contenders who have released plans for national gun licencing include Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Mas-sachusetts and Sound Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Democratic presidential contenders urged Congress to take action to curb gun violence following mass shootings last weekend in Texas and Ohio that left 31 dead.