Volume 24 | Number 7991 | 2 RiyalsThursday 22 August 2019 | 21 Dhul-Hijja 1440 www.thepeninsula.qa

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BUSINESS | 13 SPORT | 19

‘Kaiser Franck’ Ribery joins Fiorentina

QFC joins World Alliance of

International Financial Centres

Deputy Amir meets outgoing Swedish Ambassador

Included withtoday’s edition is a

special supplement

Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani met at the Amiri Diwan yesterday with Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to the State of Qatar, Ewa Polano, who called on H H the Deputy Amir to greet him on the occasion of the end of her tenure in the country. The Deputy Amir granted the outgoing Ambassador the Decoration of Al Wajbah in recognition of her role in enhancing bilateral relations, wishing her success in her future assignments and further progress and prosperity in the relations between the two countries. The Ambassador of Sweden expressed her thanks and appreciation to H H the Deputy Amir and to the State’s officials for the cooperation she received during her term of office.

MoI departments ready to ensure safety and security for new academic yearTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The Ministry of Interior (MoI) has announced that all prepa-rations for the new academic year, which starts next week, have been completed.

All concerned departments of the MoI have taken precau-tionary measures to ensure the

safety and security require-ments in schools and educa-tional buildings and other works to enable all road users to reach their destinations easily.

Major Naif bin Faleh Al Thani, Director of Al Fazaa Police Department, said that the Department has security plans to receive the new aca-demic year aimed at

intensifying the presence of Al Fazaa police patrols near schools to facilitate movement in the streets around and in front of schools.

He pointed out that the Department cooperates with the General Directorate of Traffic and Lekhwiya force to work to ease traffic jam around schools, and facil i tate movement in the streets when students enter and exit.

He also called on parents to drop their children early and take into account the change of traffic on some roads and streets as a result of closures, so going out early ensures the driver to arrive on time without any psychological pressure.

Major Naif called on motorists to cooperate with police and other road users and to abide strictly by traffic reg-ulations and rules in terms of adherence to the right path and not to overtake from the right and avoid the wrong parking of all kinds, especially near schools. �P2

QNA/DOHA

An official source from the Department of Consular Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the authorities of the Republic of South Africa decided to exempt Qatari passport holders from the require-ments of entry visa and allow them to stay for a period of 90 days, as of August 15, 2019.

Credible information about forced disappearance of Qatari citizen and son in Saudi Arabia: NHRCQNA/DOHA

The National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) said it received credible information about the enforced disappearance of 70-year-old Qatari national Ali Nasser Ali Jarallah and his 17-year-old son Abdulhadi in Saudi Arabia, pointing

out that the Qatari citizen and his son entered Saudi Arabia under a family permit on August 15, 2019.

The NHRC said that the Qatari citizen and his son were forcibly dis-appeared on Sunday, August 18, 2019, at 1 pm, in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, where they were arrested and kept in an undisclosed

location. The NHRC condemned the enforced disappearance, which vio-lates all international and regional covenants, especially Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 14 of the Arab Charter on Human Rights, as a clear violation of their rights to freedom and security. �P3

South Africa exempts Qatari citizens from entry visa

Education will remain Qatar’s primary investmentQNA DOHA

Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr Mohammed bin Abdul Wahed Ali Al Hammadi, said yesterday that education will remain the primary investment for the State of Qatar, given its an investment in human capital that makes great returns in all fields.

His Excellency was speaking during the annual reception ceremony held for new Qatari teachers who will begin in the 2019-2020 aca-demic careers. He praised the new teachers for joining the profession, stressing that it is one of the main pillars of Qatar’s progress.

The minister said that the quality of education will remain the responsibility of all teachers in the country, stressing that they have a great responsibility in preparing strong cadres that can provide great services to Qatar in many fields.

Al Hammadi said that the 2019-2020 academic year will see 219 teachers from Qatar join public schools. He noted that the ministry through its “Tomouh” program sends stu-dents to the College of Edu-cation at Qatar University. A

total of 511 students joined the program, 420 of which were Qataris and 91 were residents who will all play a part in pro-viding the educational system with teachers.

The Minister said the ministry is working on attracting the College of Education graduates outside of its program. The Min-istry is also cooperating with the

Ministry of Administrative Devel-opment, Labor, and Social Affairs to attract students from other colleges in Qatar University such as the College of Arts and Sciences.

He stressed that the Ministry of Education and Higher Edu-cation is doing its utmost to provide an inspiring educational environment that appreciates

teachers, expressing his thanks to all the ministry’s partners who contributed to adding more Qatari teachers.

Teacher Nada Ali gave a speech at the annual ceremony and praised the new teachers, saying that the profession has deep-rooted principles that must never waiver regardless of the challenges. �P3

Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr Mohammed bin Abdul Wahed Ali Al Hammadi, during the annual reception ceremony held for new Qatari teachers who will begin 2019-2020 academic careers, in Doha yesterday.

Parents are advised to drop

their children early and take into

account the change of traffic on some roads and streets

as a result of closures, so going out early ensures

the driver to arrive on time without

any psychological pressure.

Chinese envoy sees more investments and energy ties with QatarSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Zhou Jian, has said that China and Qatar are good partners expecting more development and investment between both the countries.

“China’s development is Qatar’s opportunity. We can integrate our development strategies; enhance our coop-eration with energy as the core, infrastructure as the key, financial investment as the new starting point and strengthening people-to-people exchanges. In this way, we can build a community with shared energy, shared interest and shared destiny,” he said while talking to media persons yesterday.

Zhou Jian pointed out that Qatar is among the first group of countries joining the “One Belt One Road” Initiative and a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Our mission, the Ambas-sador said, is to integrate the

Belt and Road Initiative with Qatar’s “2030 National Vision”, so as to contribute to Qatar’s economic diversity and independence.

About bilateral energy cooperation, the Chinese Ambassador said that it is the bedrock of bilateral relations. “Oil and gas is the core of Qatar’s economy, and Qatar is increasing its LNG production. Meanwhile in China, the demand of natural gas is sky-rocketing, as we are pursuing for green, low-carbon, sus-tainable development to fulfill our promise in climate change. At present, Qatar has become China’s second largest source of LNG import. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people are using the gas from Qatar.”

In 2018, the Ambassador said, companies from both sides signed a new long-term con-tract. “China is the largest growing market for natural gas, which brings Qatar new stra-tegic opportunities. With China’s huge market of 1.4 billion people, a bright future is waiting for us,” he added.

02 THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019HOME

Qatar condemns attack on military patrol in MaliDOHA: The State of Qatar has strongly

condemned the attack on a military

patrol in central Mali which resulted on

the killing of five soldiers. In a state-

ment issued yesterday, the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs reiterated the State of

Qatar’s firm stance of rejecting violence

and terrorism, regardless of motives and

reasons. The statement expressed the

condolences of the State of Qatar to the

victims families, the governments and

people of Mali. QNA

OFFICIAL NEWS

Al Sulaiti meets Swedish Ambassador

Minister of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti met yesterday with the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to Qatar, Ewa Polano. The meeting discussed cooperation relations between the two friendly countries in the fields of transportation and communications and means of further enhancing them.

Ministry of Education resumes student registration & transfer in public schoolsQNA DOHA

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education announced the opening of the registration and transfer of students for the academic year or 2019/2020, starting from today in public schools for all the educational levels until the 5th of September.

The Ministry said that registration and electronic transfer will be through chil-dren’s guardians and will be available from September 8 to 19, through (http://tasjeel.edu.gov.qa), pointing out that Al Ahnaf Bin Qais Independent Preparatory School and Abu Hanifa Elementary School for Boys were allocated to provide guidance and support regarding regis-tration from 7 am to 12 pm. The Ministry

specified the minimum age of acceptance into kindergarten for 31/12/2014, and the minimum age of acceptance into primary schools for 31/12/2013, the minimum age for the first grader to be 31/12/2012, along other more specific requirements.

The Ministry stated the requirements for registration and transfer to include documents such as the identity card or original passport, in addition to an

original birth certificate, a valid residence if applicable, an approved academic cer-tificate for the end of the academic year along other necessary certificates and documents.

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has previously opened the reg-istration portals for students wishing to enroll in public schools for the academic year 2019/2020.

MoI departments ready to ensure safety, security for new academic year

FROM PAGE 1Colonel Mohamed Radi Al

Hajri (pictured), Director of Traffic Awareness Department at the General Directorate of Traffic, confirmed that all prep-arations of the department have been completed through an integrated plan, that includes providing educational guidance to students, in addition to the role of the Department of Patrols and Traffic Investigation at the General Directorate of Traffic in spreading traffic patrols in the roads leading to schools and intersections to facilitate movement in the streets.

“The ‘Back to School’ cam-paign organised by the Traffic Awareness Department covers all areas of the country and includes all categories of school

students, to urge them to adhere to the values of traffic safety through the distribution of gifts and guidebooks, espe-cially for the primary and pre-school levels, where these booklets contain educational content appropriate for their ages,” Al Hajri said.

He said that the General Directorate of Traffic is also keen to guide some students to play a leading role in intro-ducing their fellow students to these rules, and remind parents of some of the conditions of traffic safety, including the obli-gation to fasten the seat belt and other safety measures.

The Ministry said that registration and electronic transfer will be through children’s guardians and will be available from September 8 to 19, through (http://tasjeel.edu.gov.qa), pointing out that Al Ahnaf Bin Qais Independent Preparatory School and Abu Hanifa Elementary School for Boys were allocated to provide guidance and support regarding registration from 7am to 12pm.

WEATHER TODAY

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum32oC 39oC

HIGH TIDE 09:49 – 19:41 LOW TIDE 03:29 – 15:21

Misty at some places by early morning be-

comes relatively hot daytime with chance

of local cloud formation during afternoon,

slight dust.

FAJRSHOROOK

03. 50 AM05. 10 AM

11. 37 AM03.06 PM

06. 05 PM07. 35 PM

ZUHRASR

MAGHRIBISHA

PRAYER TIMINGS

03THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019 HOME

Ooredoo ONE 500Mbps and above plans to get beIN ELITETHE PENINSULA DOHA

Customers of Ooredoo ONE 500Mbps and above plans will now get premium entertainment for the whole family with beIN ELITE, as well as super-fast internet, smart Wi-Fi and unlimited landline calls that are standard with Ooredoo’s new complete home package, Ooredoo ONE.

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Speaking of the new package inclusion, Yusuf Abdulla Al Kubaisi, Chief Operating Officer, Ooredoo Qatar – said: “We know our Ooredoo ONE service is second to none when it comes to providing everything our customers need at home,

from staying connected to being entertained, and we’re delighted to now be able to offer them an enhanced entertainment experience with the addition of beIN ELITE. We’re confident they’ll enjoy the awesome sports, events, series and movies, and of course the incredible value they’re getting for their money.”

Ooredoo ONE offers customers super-fast home internet, reliable Wi-Fi, great coverage and awesome entertainment for the whole family, all in one package . Customers who do not yet sub-scribe can do so at any Ooredoo shop.

Director of Public Security meets Kuwaiti official

The Director of Public Security H E Staff Major General Saad bin Jassim Al Khulaifi met yesterday with the Assistant Undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior for Ports Security Affairs of the State of Kuwait, Mansour Al Awadhi, who is visiting the country. During the meeting, they discussed a number of issues that are of interest to the two countries, in addition to ways of enhancing cooperation in areas of common concern.

Seven DFI-backed films to screen at Venice festivalTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Seven films supported by the Doha Film Institute (DFI) have been officially selected to screen at the longest-running film event in the world, the 76TH Venice International Film Festival, from August 24 to September 7.

The diverse line-up of DFI-supported films selected to screen at the festival comprises exciting works from emerging and established filmmakers – five from the Arab world, one from India, and one from Mexico. The films are all feature narra-tives, including one animation.

DFI’s Chief Executive Officer, Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, said, “It is a great honour for the Doha Film Institute that films we sup-ported gain recognition at some of the world’s leading film events. These seven diverse and exciting films shine a light on powerful stories from the Arab world and beyond.

“Our grants programme is dedicated to supporting new cin-ematic talent and there is no doubt that these films are among the most anticipated projects to emerge this year. Their Venice debut will mark the beginning of

an exciting journey for all these films and I congratulate the teams behind them on their inclusion at this prestigious festival.”

“A Son”(Tunisia, France, Lebanon, Qatar) by Mehdi Bar-saoui – has been selected to the Official Orizzonti section of the festival, which is an international competition dedicated to films that represent the latest aesthetic and expressive trends in global cinema. The film follows the story of a wealthy Tunisian family during an armed ambush of their car, prompting buried family truths to resurface.

Gitanjali Rao’s “Bombay Rose” (India, France, UK, Qatar), will open the festival’s prestigious Critics Week Programme, which will be closed by Joshua Gill’s “Sanctorum” (Mexico, Dominican Republic, Qatar). Bombay Rose, painted frame by frame, is an animated love story set on the streets of the eponymous city, while Sanctorum presents a wartime tale of a child’s spiritual and magical quest for his disap-peared mother in a small town racked between the army and drug traffickers.

Other titles in the Critics Week programme include

Shahad Ameen’s “Scales” (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq, Qatar) that tells the story of a young girl Hayat who lives in a dystopian land-scape and overturns her village’s tradition of sacrificing girls to mysterious creatures living in close by waters and “All This Victory” by Ahmad Ghossein (Lebanon, France, Qatar), a dark comedy that chronicles the lives of five people trying to escape the bombing in a small village in the south of Lebanon, during the last days of the July War.

“You Will Die At Twenty” by Amjad Abu Alala (Sudan, France, Germany, Norway, Egypt, Qatar) premieres in the parallel pro-gramme Venice Days, and takes a poignant look at the life of Muzamel, a Sudanese boy cursed by a Dervish prophecy that he will die at the age of 20, and how an old cinema projector opens a window to a whole new world for him. Premiering in the Venice Production Bridge, “Alam, The Flag” by Firas Khoury (Palestine, France, Qatar) examines the awakening of Palestinian student Tamer’s political consciousness under the influence of his classmate Maysaa as they struggle to commemorate the Nakba.

Stills from the film You Will Die At Twenty.

Sidra Medicine achieves ACGME-I institutional accreditationTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Sidra Medicine, a Qatar Foun-dation entity, has been awarded institutional accreditation by the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education International (ACGME-I).

The accreditation process included a comprehensive eval-uation of Sidra Medicine, its aca-demic and administrative effec-tiveness, with a specific focus on the robustness of its internal

quality assurance system. This includes policies, practices and how they impact the quality of all the medical programs offered by Sidra Medicine. The accredi-tation is valid from July 1, 2019 and is effective for two years.

ACGME-I accreditation dem-onstrates that graduate medical education programs outside the United States meet established standards for institutional, foun-dational, and advanced specialty education. The ACGME-I employs a comprehensive,

peer-review process not only to evaluate, but also to improve and publicly recognize programs and sponsoring institutions in graduate medical education that meet – and often exceed –standards of educational quality.

Prof. Ibrahim Janahi, Chair of Medical Education, said: “We are thrilled with the overwhelm-ingly positive feedback we received by the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education International. We were commended on

our documentation, policies and procedures; our facility; edu-cation and simulation rooms; on-call rooms and faculty devel-opment programs. This pres-tigious, international accredi-tation is testimony to the out-standing quality of our medical education programs which will support the delivery of safe, quality care for the women and children of Qatar.” Sidra is pre-paring to accredit its fellowship programmes as the next stage of its accreditation process.

LEFT: Minister of Education and Higher Education H E Dr. Mohammed bin Abdul Wahed Ali Al Hammadi speaking during the annual reception ceremony for new Qatari teachers. ABOVE: Teachers, officials and other participants during the ceremony.

Education will remain Qatar’s primary investment

FROM PAGE 1

Teacher Nada Ali, during her speech, called for stronger coop-eration between teachers, stu-dents, and parents in order to create a more inspiring

educational process and to promote important values in the new generations.

For his part, student Jaber Al Athba said in a speech that the new teachers will be a strong addition to the educational

system in the State of Qatar. He highlighted that education remains one of the main prior-ities of Qatar National Vision 2030, given education is a pillar of human capital development. He called on his fellow students

to remain dedicated to education in order to make themselves and their families proud, as well as to continue the country’s devel-opment journey. The new 2019/2020 year will begin next Sunday for students.

Indigo adds two more direct flights from Doha to IndiaTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Indigo, the budget airline from India, has announced two more direct flights from Doha to India.

The airline has added a second direct flight each to Hyderabad, capital of Tel-angana, a southern Indian state and Indian capital city New Delhi.

The second direct flight on the Hyderabad-Doha route will start from September 16, 2019. The flight, 6E 1727, will depart Hyderabad at 2340 and will arrive Doha at 0125.

The Doha-Hyderabad flight 6E 1731 will depart at 0225 (first flight on Sept 17) and will arrive at 0905. Booking for the flight are currently available till December 31, 2019 on the air-line’s website.

The existing Hyderabad-Doha, 6E 1713, leaves at 06:50 and arrives at 09:00 and Doha- Hyderabad, 6E 1714, leave at

22.05 and arrives at 04.50. The airline, which is the biggest in India in terms passenger volume, has also announced a second direct flight to the Indian capital from September 16,2019.

The Delhi-Doha flight 6E 1775 will depart at 20.20 and will arrive HIA at 22.00. The Doha-Delhi flight 6E 1776 will depart at 23.00 and will arrive in Delhi at 05.15. Booking for the flight are currently available till December 31, 2019 on the air-line’s website. The airline will be flying a A320 in the route.

The existing Delhi-Doha, 6E 1701, leaves at 01:55 and arrives at 03:40 and Doha-Delhi, 6E 1702, leave at 14.15 and arrives at 20.35.

Indigo flies to nine desti-nation in India from Doha, which includes daily non-stop to Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai and four airports in Kerala - Kozhikode, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kannur.

Credible information about forced disappearance of Qatari citizen and son in Saudi Arabia: NHRC

FROM PAGE 1The committee expressed its

concern about this enforced dis-appearance, especially as the Saudi authorities have recently adopted a policy of enforced dis-appearance of a number of Qatari citizens due to the political crisis. The NHRC holds Saudi fully responsible for the life, physical and health safety of Qatari national and his son,

and called upon that the Saudi authorities disclose their fate and release them immediately.

It also urgently called on the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Dis-appearances and the Human Rights Council to intervene immediately to stop these sys-tematic and gross violations against Qatari citizens.

04 THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019HOME

PISQ students excel in FBISE’s HSSC-II Exam 2019 resultsTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The students of Pakistan Inter-national School-Qatar (PISQ) have achieved excellence in HSSC-II exam results (session 2018-19) of FBISE.

On the whole, the school bagged top 10 positions; first three scorers include Heba-tu-Rehman Asif Butt (997/1100), Amna Nasir (994/1100) and Nawal Nawaz (987/1100).

Collectively, this year, the school has bagged nineteen A1 and twenty-one A grades. As many as 146 students of the school appeared in the exam of which 139 passed that elevates school pass ration to 95.20%.

The other A1 and A grade holders include Hoorya Suleman (978 marks), Syeda Aliza (977),

Fatimah (969), Hamza Murtaza (962), Eman Javed (961), Ilyas Haider (959), Umrah Shahid (956), Aisha Mohammad Israr Khan (936), Laiba Maryam (929), Abdullah Rasheed (928), Mahnoor Ejaz (928), Numra

Bokhari (920), Areeba Arshad (914), Eman Hanif Abbasi (911), Muhammad Qazi (892), Samreen Akram (883), Muhammad Abdullah (873), Mohammad Subhaan (862), Najla (860), Abdullah Siddique (859),

Muhammad Ashir Rauf (859), Maryam Rizwan (856), Saamia Shahzad (845), Amna Asif (841), Aliha Tanveer (834), Muhammad Kamran (828), Amna Mohammad Salim (828), Muhammad Owais (823), Malaika (818), Marwa (811),

Mirza Wajih Ul Hassan (807), Sadaf (797), Maha Mohammad Nasir (790), Rimsha Shiraz (790), Kholoud (780), Kamran Shah (777), Hussam (770).

Nargis Raza Otho, Principal, expressed her gratitude to the Almighty and said that success is made possible with team work and it becomes more true when it comes to academics. She con-gratulated the students, their parents, and teachers and urged them all to play their roles in the best possible way in shaping the face of the future.

Syed Ahsan Raza Shah, Ambassador of Pakistan, also applauded the students and urged them to take education as the only key for them to unlock the fortunes of tomorrow. He praised the teachers, school management and parents.

FROM LEFT: Heba-tu-Rehman Asif Butt (997/1100), Amna Nasir (994) and Nawal Nawaz (987).

BPS Principal moderates elite paneldiscussion at World Education SummitTHE PENINSULA DOHA

A P Sharma, Principal of Birla Public School (BPS), moderated an elite panel discussion at the 14th World Education Summit at Leela Ambiance in New Delhi on August 9 and 10.

He moderated the session “Role of teacher and teaching methods in creating an effective pedagogical environment” with panellists from different

countries with diverse backgrounds.

The panellists expressed their views regarding the chal-lenges the education system faces. Sharma elaborated further that there are many foreseen and unforeseen challenges ahead, hence the world has to think in advance about the universal full proof pedagogy. Educationists from UK and Scandinavian countries also stressed upon development of soft skills,

experiential learning and design think approach.

The illustrious panellists received overwhelming response from full house audience which made it very interesting and memorable. Sec-retary of NCERT Major Harsh Kumar lauded the discussions and gave away mementos.

The summit was attended by more than 400 principals, directors, owners of schools and other educationists.

A P Sharma, Principal of Birla Public School, at the 14th World Education Summit in Delhi on August 10.

HBKU’s CSE student works with UN to improve access to data on educationTHE PENINSULA DOHA

A PhD in Computer Science and Engineering student at the College of Science and Engineering (CSE), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), recently completed a prestigious fellowship at the Centre for Humanitarian Data in The Hague, the Netherlands.

The 2019 Data Fellows Program, now in its second year, was offered to only four candi-dates from a global applicant pool.

Ghadeer Abuoda, who is also an intern at the Data Analytics group at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), was selected as a Data Science Fellow by the United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Human-itarian Affairs (OCHA). One of the main themes of the 2019 Data Fellows Program, which is made possible through a partnership with the Education Above All Foundation (EAA), is a focus on education data, which signifies their shared goal of increasing the participation of persons with dis-abilities through a clear com-mitment to the social devel-opment goal of equality and

inclusion.The 2019 class of data fellows

focused on four areas: Business Strategy, Data Science (education data), Predictive Analytics, and Statistics (disability data). The inclusion of a focus on disability data is of particular significance to EAA this year reflecting their continuous commitment to the social development goal of quality and inclusion.

Ghadeer said: “During my fel-lowship, I explored different tech-nologies that improve access to humanitarian data sets and help humanitarian actors who transform people’s lives, partic-ularly in the education domain. The experience afforded me a unique opportunity to apply rel-evant knowledge and problem-solving skills that I have gained as a student at HBKU. Working closely with a diverse team also gave me the chance to develop m y t e a m w o r k a n d

communication skills.” Ghadeer applied machine-learning tech-niques to improve the tagging of data sets related to education on the Humanitarian Data Exchange. Her model will improve access to and use of data about education in conflict environments. It will help teams explore how war and conflict can detrimentally affect children’s rights and access to education.

Dr. Dena Ahmed S. Al Thani, assistant professor at CSE, said: “As part of the college’s com-mitment to supporting students at HBKU, CSE collaborates with EAA each year to offer students the opportunity to apply for this highly selective UN Data Fel-lowship Program at the Centre for Humanitarian Data in The Hague. An annual awareness workshop that is jointly hosted by EAA and

CSE is specifically designed to help HBKU students learn more about obtaining the Data Fellow-ships; thereby fulfilling a common commitment to exposing appli-cants to a globally applicable learning experience.”

Ghadeer’s ongoing research as a PhD candidate at CSE aims to develop artificial intelligence algorithms that improve under-standing of complex networks of connections between people and predict their future properties. She also works with a team of sci-entists and engineers at QCRI exploring machine learning and graph databases.

Dr. Ashraf Aboulnaga, senior research director at QCRI and Ghadeer’s advisor, said: “Ghadeer is an exceptional addition to our team and has access to data and computing resources that have been very helpful in building her skills. Her experience with us has enabled her to ground her work in tackling real-life challenges and design practical approaches. The team at QCRI fully supported her application for the Data Fellows Program at the UN OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data and I am delighted to see that Ghadeer has been successful in her work there.”

HBKU’s CSE student Ghadeer Abuoda who recently completed a prestigious fellowship at the Centre for Humanitarian Data in the Hague, The Netherlands.

Traffic closure on Tilted Interchange towards Huwar Street for 28 hoursTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced a temporary closure for 28 hours, for the southbound direction towards Huwar Street coming from Al Gharrafa Street and Al Luqta Street through the Tilted Interchange starting 1am tomorrow until 4am Saturday (August 24) to enable the finishing of asphalt works as part of Khalifa Avenue Project.

During this traffic change which is in coordination with the General Directorate of Traffic, road users heading towards

Huwar Street through the Tilted Interchange will be directed to Bani Hajer Interchange in the

direction of Al Rayyan Road to reach their destinations, as shown on the attached map.

Al Jazeera Investigative Unit wins Kennedy AwardTHE PENINSULA / DOHA

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has won the “Outstanding Investigative Reporting” prize at the Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism.

The award was accepted by the Executive Producer Peter Charley (pictured) at a cer-emony in Sydney on August 9. The NMRA Kennedy Awards recognises the best journalism published in Australia and Al Jazeera was the only interna-tional broadcaster to be hon-oured. The two-part docu-mentary series, How to Sell a Massacre, revealed attempts by Australia’s populist party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, to gain funding from the National Rifle Association of America and other pro-gun organisations in the US.

Australia has strict gun control laws, which were intro-duced following a mass shooting in 1996 when a gunman killed 35 people at a tourist site in Tasmania.

Al Jazeera’s investigation triggered front-page headlines in Australia and news coverage around the world. Material gathered during the investi-gation resulted in the resig-nation of a senate candidate who was also senior confidant of Pauline Hanson.

Acting Director of Investi-gative Journalism, Phil Rees, described the award as ‘a great achievement that validates the Investigative Unit’s bold jour-nalism’. The investigation was also nominated in the “Scoop of the Year” category and Peter Charley was honoured with a “Journalist of the Year” nomination.

The 2019 Data Fellows Program, now in its second year, was offered to only four candidates from a global applicant pool.

InterContinental Doha appoints new revenue directorTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The iconic InterContinental Doha Hotel & Residences has announced the appointment of Pankaj Bhardwaj (pictured) as the new Revenue Director.

Pankaj’s great deal of pro-fessional and life experience will provide strategic leadership and oversee the hotel’s thriving revenue centres; namely 13 award-winning restaurants and bars, 375 luxurious guest rooms, 94 upscale residences, world-class recreation facilities, and prestigious Spa InterContinental.

Pankaj also brings his invaluable experience from global luxury brands such as Marriott, Le Meridien, and Hyatt prior to joining the InterContinental family. He has spent the past one year as the Cluster Revenue Manager - Mumbai at ITC Hotels, based in Mumbai, India.

“Pankaj’s 14 years of expe-rience, strategic leadership, and understanding of revenue man-agement will make him a key player in the continuous success of InterContinental Doha’s overall revenue strategy,” says Andreas Pfister, Director of Operations for IHG® Northern

Gulf and General Manager of InterContinental Doha.

Pankaj hails from Gurgaon, India. For hotel inquiries or res-ervations, please visit www.doha.intercontinental.com, or contact the hotel at icdoha@ihg.com or +974 4484 4444.

05THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019 HOME

QRCS provides vital medical equipment for Gaza health centresTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Dr Mona Al-Ailah, obstetrics and gynaecology specialist at the Daraj Primary Health Care Centre in eastern Gaza, took notes as she was attending training for the centre’s medical staff, to learn how to use the ultrasound machines recently provided by Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS).

These provisions are part of a larger project to upgrade medical imaging services at the blockade’s public health centres.

According to her, this much-needed specialised training enabled the participants to explore the capabilities of the newly supplied state-of-the-art equipment.

“From day one, the instructor taught us new skills and infor-mation,” Dr Al-Ailah said.

“With these machines, we can identify normal and abnormal fetal development signs. They can be used to collect accurate and detailed data about the formation of the fetus (such as the head, heart, kidneys, and bones) throughout pregnancy.

Based on such input, we will be able to decide on how to best deal with different cases”.

Regarding the importance of this medical training, Dr Mohamed Al-Ajlah, the pro-gramme’s instructor and diag-nostic radiologist at Al-Shefaa Medical Complex, explained, “We focused on the early detection of fetal abnormalities, using 2D-ultrasounds. This will be beneficial in reducing the number of pregnant women referred to Al-Shefaa Medical Complex from all health centres of Gaza”.

So far, 26 female physicians have acquired new skills to diagnose and treat the cases effectively. He revealed plans to expand the in-service training programme later.

At a total cost of $326,000

(QR 1,189,900), QRCS procured 14 2D and 4D ultrasound machines and secured the medical staff training.

“We offer comprehensive prenatal care services at 28 health centres across Gaza,” said Dr Nahla Halas, Director of Women’s Centre at the Pales-tinian Ministry of Health’s Primary Health Care Centres.

“The past few years saw inadequate ultrasonography resources. Only eight health centres had ultrasound machines”.

In relation to quality, the old ultrasound machines gave unclear and inaccurate results. Many pregnant women had to visit health centres in distant places, or even to seek costly services at private medical clinics.

With QRCS’s latest project, Dr Halas expected lower fetal morbidity and mortality rates, as well as more pregnant women visiting health centres, instead of outpatient and obstetrics departments at public hospitals. Dr Mohamed S Ibrahim, Exec-utive Director of QRCS’s Relief and International Development

Division, considered the enhancement of the health sector a “top priority for QRCS’s inter-ventions in Gaza”.

“Over a decade, we have contributed greatly to the health

care services provided for our Palestinian brothers and sisters, by supporting the medical pro-fessionals, facilities, equipment, supplies, and community health education,” he added.

In the face of persistently dif-ficult living conditions, Dr Ibrahim called upon all the indi-vidual and institutional donors in Qatar to continue to help the vulnerable in Gaza.

Medical staff attending a training on using new ultrasound machines and other equipment provided by the Qatar Red Crescent Society at a health centre in Gaza, Palestine.

Teachers, parents prepare as students head back to schools next week AYESHA MUZAFFAR THE PENINSULA

As schools are set to open after a long summer break, not only children but their parents are also engaged in ‘back to school’ activities.

With students rejoining schools on Sunday, their teachers and parents are busy to give final touches to ‘back to school’ arrangements.

Parents are in contact with schools’ management regarding syllabus, transportation etc. while the schools’ administrators are finalising arrangements to welcome back students.

Talking to The Peninsula, a parent said that she was devel-oping new sleep pattern for her children. “During summer vacation, they would go late to bed and wake up late but now the old pattern of waking up early in the morning is back so

that the kids should not go through any trouble after opening of schools,” she said.

Another parent, Sidra, said that they had completed shopping for new uniforms and school shoes. “To get our child excited about starting a new grade, we shop for his school supplies together. We allowed him to select his school bag, sta-tionery and lunch boxes himself. In this way, I think he gets a great confidence and responsibility too.”

Talking to The Peninsula, Fahad, a grade four student, said that he will remember these hol-idays ever as he said he had enjoyed a lot of outdoor activ-ities during summer vacation.

He further said that he will

miss watching television for long hours and playing video games with brother. “During school days, it is not easy to enjoy all that.”

Another parent told The Peninsula that she had started spending evening time with kids doing their homework.

Ayan, a student of grade 2, expressed his excitement over opening of school after a weeks-long break and his reunion with his classmates.

Zainab, a Pakistani expa-triate, said that most of the sta-tionery items are not very expensive.

“This year, there are no special promotions on school supplies especially schoolbags.”

Abdullah, a parent, said that he was not allowing his son to watch television or playing video games more than one hour in order to adjust to change in daily routine.

Parents and children shop for school items at a local store. A number of malls have announced special offers under the ‘Back to School’ campaign. PIC: BAHER AMIN/THE PENINSULA

Doha Festival City launches ‘Back to School’ initiative with Qatar CharityTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Doha Festival City (DHFC), Qatar’s unique and world-class retail, entertainment and dining destination is launching its ‘Back to School’ season with a community initiative in collab-oration with Qatar Charity.

Shoppers are invited to donate new school backpacks including items such as pencil cases, stationery and more, in a giant backpack, located opposite Monoprix store on the ground floor, from today until August 30.

After donating, shoppers will receive vouchers worth up to QR50 to be spent in participating stores at DHFC. Customers can register themselves, donate and receive gift cards from one of the participating sponsor retailers, including Salam Kido, Kipling, Daiso, Abercombie & Fitch, Hol-lister, Centrepoint, Harvey Nichols, FNAC and Marks & Spencer.

Robert Hall, General Manager, said: “We are very excited to kick off our Back-to-School season with our biggest donation box. I would like to

thank Qatar Charity for their cooperation. We are part of the community and we are very happy to be able to facilitate opportunities such as this one. I would also like to thank our retailers for participating by offering their best goods to Doha Festival City shoppers. We invite everyone to join us and to enjoy the new school year collection at the mall.”

Parents can avoid the stress of last-minute ‘Back to School’ shopping with offers and pro-motions at DHFC and kick-start the new school year in style.

QRCS has provided 14 new 2D and 4D ultrasound machines to Gaza health centres and trained their staff at a total cost of $326,000.

MME approves 15 procedures to facilitate planning of infrastructure projectsTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment represented by Infrastructure Planning Department (IPD) has adopted 15 procedures that aim to facil-itate, regulate and standardise the process of planning, evaluating and approving infrastructure facilities at the state level.

These procedures are intended to be used by all citizens, service agencies, consultants and contractors.

Furthermore, Infrastructure Planning Department (IPD) of the Ministry is currently in the process of finalising an additional set of

procedures adopted by the department and will be published at the Ministry’s website upon com-pletion, the ministry has said on its official Twitter account.

Among the approved procedures that the min-istry has mentioned include Procedure for Sub-division Assessment and Approval; Guidelines for Utility Impact Assessment for Local Roads in Developed Areas MME 2012 Cross Section; General Procedure for Tunneling Easement; Guidelines for Adopting Multi Use of Stormwater Man-agement Facilities; On-Hold Projects Without Land Acquisition; and Procedure For Geotech-nical Borehole Drilling Outside Road Row among others.

Schools reopen on Sunday after weeks-long summer break.

06 THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Iranian tanker too big to dock in Greece: MinisterAFP ATHENS

An Iranian tanker that has sparked a diplomatic row between Tehran and Wash-ington is too big to dock in Greece, the country’s junior foreign minister said yesterday.

“This is a very large crude carrier, it is over 130,000 tonnes... It cannot access any Greek dock,” junior foreign min-ister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis told Ant1 TV. Varvitsiotis said the Greek government had “faced pressure” from US authorities over the vessel but insisted that Athens “has sent a clear message that we would not wish to facil-itate the transport of this oil to S y r i a u n d e r a n y circumstances.”

The British Royal Marines seized the ship on July 4 off British territory Gibraltar on sus-picion it was transporting oil to Syria in breach of European

Union sanctions.Iran has repeatedly denied

any violations. The incident has come at a difficult time for Greece’s new conservative gov-ernment which was elected just over a month ago. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ office yesterday said the PM is expected to visit Washington “soon”, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to visit Greece in the autumn, Varvit-siotis said.

Greece must also tread care-fully as its influential shipping sector does major business in the Persian Gulf. Varvitsiotis said Athens was not in contact with

Tehran over the tanker, which was originally called Grace 1 but has been renamed the Adrian Darya, and had received no request from Iran.

The website Marine Traffic, which earlier this week gave the ship’s reported destination as the Greek port of Kalamata, had placed the supertanker carrying 2.1 million barrels of oil some 100km northwest of the Algerian port of Oran.

The maritime tracker says the tanker is expected to arrive in Kalamata on Monday, but Varvitsiotis suggested it may not dock in Greek waters at all.

“It has named Kalamata as its port of destination but this doesn’t mean anything,” adding: “It could drop anchor some-where” else. “It could unload the oil at any non-EU refinery. It could head south” to North Africa, he added. Gibraltar’s Supreme Court ordered the tanker’s release last Thursday.

Zarif to US: Tehran mayalso act ‘unpredictably’ REUTERS STOCKHOLM

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said yesterday that Tehran may act “unpredictably” in response to the United States’ “unpre-dictable” policies under US President Donald Trump.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have risen since President Trump’s administration last year quit an international deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“Mutual unpredictability will lead to chaos. President Trump cannot expect to be unpredictable and expect others to be predictable. Unpredictability will lead to

mutual unpredictability and unpredictability is chaotic,” Zarif said in a speech at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Zarif said: “No amount of foreign military presence can prevent insecurity.” He denounced sending naval forces to the Gulf.

“(If you) want to talk about security, don’t send flotillas to the Gulf. This is a small body of water. By sending flotillas, you do not protect freedom of navigation, you impede freedom of navigation.” “You cannot have an island of security by your fleet in the Gulf when the United States is waging an economic war against Iran,” Zarif said.

Sudan top general to lead new ruling bodyAFP KHARTOUM

Sudan took further steps in its transition towards civilian rule yesterday with the swearing in of a new sovereign council, to be followed by the appointment of a prime minister.

The body replaces the Tran-sitional Military Council (TMC) that took charge after months of deadly street protests brought down longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir in April.

As a result of yesterday’s move, it was the first time that Sudan was not under full military rule since Bashir’s coup d’etat in 1989.

The first steps of the tran-sition after the mass celebrations that marked the August 17 adoption of a transitional con-stitution proved difficult however.

The names of the joint civilian-military sovereign coun-cil’s 11 members were eventually announced on late Tuesday after differences within the opposition

camp held up the process for two days.

General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, who already headed the TMC, was sworn in as the chairman of the new sovereign council in the morning.

Wearing his usual green beret and camouflage uniform, Burhan took the oath in a short ceremony, one hand on the Quran and the other holding a military baton under his arm.

He will be Sudan’s head of state for the first 21 months of the 39-month transition period, until a civilian takes over for the remainder.

The council’s 10 other members were sworn in shortly afterwards and Abdalla Hamdok, who was chosen by the oppo-sition last week to be prime min-ister, was due to be sworn in later yesterday.

The sovereign council includes two women, including a member of Sudan’s Christian minority, and it will oversee the formation of a government and of a legislative body.

The inauguration of the civilian-dominated ruling council, which held its first meeting in the afternoon, was widely welcomed.

The transition’s key docu-ments were signed on Saturday at a ceremony attended by a host

of foreign dignitaries, signalling that Sudan could be on its way to shedding its pariah status.

Sudan’s new rulers are expected to push for the lifting of the suspension from the African Union that followed a deadly crackdown on a sit-in in

June. The ruling council will also seek to have the country removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for his role in mas-sacres in the Darfur region,

General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan (centre, right), the head of Sudan’s ruling military council, during a swearing in of the new sovereign council, in Khartoum, yesterday.

Israeli authorities use heavy machinery to demolish a house belonging to a Palestinian family in the Arab east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina, yesterday.

Israel demolishes Palestinian buildings, arrests sevenQNA OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Israeli forces and staff of the so-called Israeli Municipality of West Jerusalem yesterday ordered the demolition of over 20 Pales-tinian structures in al-Matar neigh-bourhood, north of Jerusalem.

Security sources confirmed that Israeli forces and municipality staff stormed Al-Matar neighbourhood, opposite to Qalandiya refugee camp, where they handed demo-lition orders for over 20 Palestinian structures purportedly for being built without licenses.

Israeli police also escorted a bulldozer to the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina, where the heavy machinery

demolished a house. Using the pretext of illegal building, Israel demolishes houses on a regular basis to restrict Palestinian expansion in occupied Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces have arrested seven Pales-tinians, including a child and a girl, from the West Bank.

The Palestinian news agency reported that four Palestinians were arrested from occupied Jerusalem, including a girl from Shu’fat refugee camp, east of the city. A Palestinian from Az-Zawiya town and another from Biddya town in Salfit gover-norate were arrested, as well as a 13 year old girl from Qalqilya. The Israeli occupation forces arrested on Tuesday evening a Palestinian woman from Jenin governorate.

S African court restricts display of apartheid-era national flagAFP JOHANNESBURG

In a landmark ruling, a Johan-nesburg court yesterday barred the unjustified display of South Africa’s apartheid-era national flag, saying such gestures amounted to “hate speech” and “harassment”.

Judge Phineas Mojapelo said in Johannesburg that any gratuitous display of the old flag w a s “ r a c i s t a n d discriminatory”.

“It demonstrates a clear intention to be hurtful, to be harmful and incite harm and it in fact promotes and propa-gates hatred against black people... it constitutes hate speech”.

The ruling followed a petition to the court by the Nelson Mandela Foundation Trust after the flag was dis-played in October 2017 by white South Africans protesting at the murders of white farmers.

The judge said those who publicly displayed the flag “wish to remind black people of the oppression, humiliation, indignity, demonisation that they moved away from and do not wish to relive.”

The former flag was used from 1928 until 1994 by the Union of South Africa, then a British dominion, and by the Republic of South Africa that succeeded it.

It was widely known as the “apartheid flag” before being dumped in 1994.

Uganda, Rwanda leaders sign pact to end standoffAFP LUANDA

The presidents of Rwanda and Uganda yesterday signed an agreement in Angola to ease months of tensions after the two leaders exchanged accu-sations of spying, political assassinations and meddling.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni were once close allies but their relations have turned deeply hostile in a dispute that damaged trade between the east African neighbours.

Trade has been severely disrupted since late February when Rwanda abruptly closed the border with its northern neighbour, severing a major economic land route.

In May, Ugandan police accused Rwandan soldiers of entering the country and killing two men, drawing an angry denial from Kigali.

The two leaders agreed yes-terday to respect each other’s sovereignty and that “of the neighbouring countries”, according to a statement.

They undertook to refrain from actions conducive to destabilisation.

The Greek minister said Athens was not in contact with Tehran over the tanker, and had received no request from Iran.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels shoot down US drone REUTERS WASHINGTON

A US military MQ-9 drone was shot down in Yemen’s Dhamar governorate, southeast of the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa, US officials said yesterday, the second such incident in recent months.

A Houthi military spokesman had earlier said that air defences had brought down a US drone.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the drone was shot down late on Tuesday.

This is not the first time a US drone has been shot down in Yemen. In June, the US military said that Houthi rebels had shot

down a US government-operated drone with assistance from Iran.

US forces have occasionally launched drone and air strikes against Yemen’s al Qaeda branch.

One of the officials said that it appeared that the armed mil-itary drone, made by California-based General Atomics, had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile operated by the Houthi group. “It appears to have been fired by the Houthis and enabled by Iran,” the official said, without providing details or specific evidence.

The official said that while losing a drone was expensive, it was not unprecedented and it

was unlikely to lead to any major response by the United States.

The other official cautioned that it was too early to tell who was responsible for the incident.

In a statement, the US mil-itary said it was investigating reports that a drone had been attacked “in authorised airspace over Yemen.”

The White House said it was aware of the reports and Pres-ident Donald Trump had been briefed on the matter.

“This attack is only possible because of Iran’s lethal aid to the Houthis and serves as yet another example of the regime’s relentless efforts to escalate con-flict and threaten regional sta-bility,” National Security Council

spokesman Garrett Marquis said.Iran rejects accusations from

the United States that Tehran is providing military and financial support to the Houthis and blames Riyadh for the deepening crisis there.

Overnight, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saria said that the drone had been shot down.

“The rocket which hit it was developed locally and will be revealed soon at a press con-ference,” Saria said on Twitter.

“Our skies are no longer open to violations as they once were and the coming days will see great surprises,” he added.

In June, Iran shot down a US Global Hawk drone, far larger than the MQ-9 drone.

Activists: Air strikes targetSyria hospitalAP BEIRUT

Air strikes hit a hospital in a rebel-held village in north-western Syria, knocking it out of service early yesterday, opposition activists said as government forces pressed their offensive on the last major rebel stronghold in the war-torn country.

There was no immediate word on casualties from the air strike on the Rahma hospital in Tel Mannas, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Thiqa news agency, an activist collective.

The Observatory said the hospital was struck four times but that it had been evacuated hours earlier.

Earlier this month, UN Sec-retary-General Antonio Guterres authorised an inves-tigation into attacks on health facilities and schools in the rebel-held enclave, following a petition from Security Council members.

The air strike yesterday was one of several to hit Idlib province, home to some 3 million people and the area where government forces have been on the offensive for months.

The violence came a day after the main insurgent group in Idlib pulled out of Khan Sheikhoun, a key rebel town, as government forces advanced in the area slowly, clearing land mines and explosives.

Zambian President in India

Rising water levels

07THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019 ASIA

Bangladesh backs India, says Kashmir an internal matterIANS/DHAKA

Bangladesh yesterday backed India on the Kashmir issue, saying that the abrogation of special status for Jammu and Kashmir is an internal issue of India.

As Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar concluded his three-day visit to Dhaka, the Bangladesh Foreign Affairs Min-istry, in a statement, also called for regional peace and stability.

“Bangladesh maintains that the abrogation of Article 370 by the Indian government is an internal issue of India. Bangladesh has always advocated, as a matter of principle, that maintaining regional peace and stability as well as development should be a priority for all countries,” the statement said.

Jaishankar on Tuesday handed over an invitation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina to visit India in October.

India on August 5 revoked special status for Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated the state into two Union Territories - J&K and Ladakh - for better governance.

Rumblings in Karnataka BJP over cabinet expansion

Yogi brings in 23 new ministers in UP; eyes by-polls, 2022 polls

Zambia’s President Edgar Chagwa Lungu (left), shaking hands with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi as President Ram Nath Kovind looks on during a ceremonial reception at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, yesterday.

Two dead in Kashmir as Trump offers to mediateAFP SRINAGAR

A suspected militant and a policeman were killed in the first gun battle since New Delhi stripped Indian Kashmir of its autonomy, police said yesterday after US President Donald Trump offered to mediate the “explosive” situation.

In a further sign of rising tensions, Pakistan said mean-while that three of its civilians died in Indian gunfire from across the de-facto border in Kashmir known as the Line of Control (LoC).

The Press Trust of India news agency quoted officials as saying one Indian soldier died and four were wounded when Pakistani troops opened fire on forward posts and villages along the LoC in the Poonch district on Tuesday.

Trump — who has previously spoken of his willingness to mediate — said he would raise the situation over the weekend with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both men are expected in France for a summit of the Group of Seven industr-ialised nations. “Kashmir is a

very complicated place. You have Hindus and you have the Muslims and I wouldn’t say they get along so great,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I will do the best I can to mediate,” he added.

Clashes are common between Indian security forces and militants opposed to Indian rule, with tens of thousands of people killed in the past 30 years, most of them civilians, adding to public resentment towards New Delhi. But since India’s August 5 revoking of

special status for Jammu and Kashmir, this is the first casu-lities in the gun battle.

“One terrorist killed... Arms and ammunition recovered. Our colleague SPO (special police officer) Billal attained mar-tyrdom. SI (subinspector) Amardeep Parihar injured in the incident is being treated at Army Hospital,” Kashmir Zone Police said on Twitter.

A later tweet said that the dead militant was identified as a local man “affiliated” with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

At least 4,000 people have been detained in Kashmir, according to security and gov-ernment sources, since early August when authorities imposed a communications blackout and restricted freedom of movement in the region.

Highlighting the growing international concern, a senior US official, who has just returned from a visit to the region, called on India Tuesday to quickly release detainees and restore basic liberties.

“We continue to be very con-cerned by reports of detentions, and continued restrictions on the residents of the region,” the State Department official told reporters. “We urge respect for individual rights, compliance with legal procedures and an inclusive dialogue,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Officials in France said that President Emmanuel Macron would bring up Kashmir with Modi when the two meet in Paris ahead of the G7 summit.

Earlier this year India and Pakistan again came close to all-out conflict over the region after a militant attack in Indian-held Kashmir in February was claimed by a group based in Pakistan, sparking tit-for-tat air strikes. India has bristled at any suggestion of foreign mediation and strenuously denied a claim by Trump last month that Modi had invited him to act a peacebroker.

IANS BENGALURU

Trouble is brewing in the ruling BJP from a dozen legis-lators left out of Tuesday’s cabinet expansion, as Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa could induct only 17 members, a party official said yesterday.

“Disappointment or resentment is natural from those who were expecting or aspiring for a cabinet post. Our leaders will meet them soon and address their concerns, as it is difficult to take all or even many of them,” BJP’s state unit official G Madhusudana said.

Of the 17 legislators inducted, one is an Inde-pendent (H. Nagesh) who pledged support to the party and other two from the party

— Kota Srinivasa Poojary is a member of the legislative council (MLC) and Laxman Savadi is not a legislator and has to be elected from an assembly segment or nomi-nated to the council over the next 6 months.

Shashikala Jolle from Nippani in the state’s northwest region is the lone woman minister in the cabinet, expanded over three weeks after Yediyurappa assumed office for the fourth time in the southern state on July 26.

“I am surprised for not being taken in the cabinet despite my seniority and expe-rience as a minister earlier. I will wait till the next cabinet expansion and decide my future if the party does not need my services,” Katti told

reporters at Belagaivi, about 500km northwest from here.

Among those who also felt let down and voiced resentment include Bal-chandra Jarkiholi, Haladi Srinivas Shetty, K Poornima, Basanagouda Patil Yatnal and S Angara.

“Though I am disappointed for not being made minister, I hope to be rewarded in the next cabinet expansion or given a chairman’s post of any board or corporation,” Shetty told reporters at Mangaluru, about 350km west of Bengaluru.

The party has 105 legis-lators in the 225-member Assembly, whose strength is reduced to 208 after 17 rebel lawmakers of the Congress and the Janata Dal-Secular

(JD-S) were disqualified for defying their whip and causing the collapse of their 14-month-old coalition gov-ernment on July 23 after its chief minister H D Kumar-aswamy resigned for failing to prove majority in the House.

“As only 34 legislators, including the chief minister can be accommodated in the 34-member ministry, 16 vacancies will be filled in the second expansion when some of them left out in the first round will be considered. If the party is unable to make them ministers, they can still serve the people as heads of state-run boards and corpo-rations, which have a cabinet r a n k s t a t u s , ” s a i d Madhusudana.

IANS/NEW DELHI

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) will approach the CBI for requesting Interpol to issue a red corner notice, commonly known as RCN, against Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who is residing in Malaysia. Naik is wanted in India for alleged money laundering and deliv-ering inflammatory speeches.

In India, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is the nodal agency and one of the oldest members of Interpol which issues RCN. Once the RCN is issued, a request is sent to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and arrest the person pending his or her extradition.

ED to approach CBI to issue notice against Zakir Naik

IANS LUCKNOW

In what can be termed as a near-total revamp of the Yogi Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh, 23 new ministers were sworn in yesterday at the Raj Bhawan by Governor Anandiben Patel. The newly-inducted ministers include six cabinet ministers, six ministers of state with inde-pendent charge and 11 ministers of state.

The cabinet reshuffle has been done with an eye on the upcoming assembly by-polls and the 2022 assembly elections.

The BJP has made a conscious effort to consolidate its base among the Dalits and the OBCs. Among those who have been sworn in as ministers are six Brahmins, two Kshatriyas, two Jats, one Gujjar, three Dalits, two Kurmis, one Rajbhar, one from Pal com-munity, three from Vaishya community, one

Shakya and one Mallah. The party has focused on small caste groups like Rajbhar, Shakya and Mallah —all non-Yadavs. An effort has been made to give representation to communities that till now did not find a foothold in the state government.

The Yogi government, in this expansion, has also given due representation to western Uttar Pradesh. Five legislators from western UP have been made ministers while one from Mainpuri, which is Sama-jwadi Party’s bastion, has also been included in the council of ministers. This is an obvious attempt to marginalise the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which had made maximum gains from western UP in the recent Lok Sabha elections.

The Yogi government has also included legislators from eastern and central UP in the ministry, making it a very balanced rep-resentation of the state.

An aerial view shows villagers using boats to cross a flooded River Ganges as water levels in the Ganges and Yamuna rivers rise, in Allahabad, yesterday.

Trump — who has previously spoken of his willingness to mediate — said he would raise the situation over the weekend with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both men are expected in France for a summit of the Group of Seven industrialised nations.

Ex-finance minister Chidambaram arrested, says not hiding from lawIANS NEW DELHI

High drama preceded the arrest of senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram as officials of the CBI scaled the walls of his Jor Bagh residence here, minutes after his press conference at the party headquarters where he said he was “not hiding from the law but seeking protection of the law”.

After the press conference, as soon as Chidambaram returned to his house, officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate were present at his house, a 10-minute drive away from Akbar Road, only to find the gate locked. CBI officers then jumped over the boundary wall while another team of agency officials entered the house from the back door.

Delhi Police personnel b l o c k e d a c c e s s t o Chidambaram’s house, even as milling media persons tried to get a better view of the

happenings inside. Later, a CBI team arrived in a car to take the senior Congress leader into custody. The otherwise quiet neighbourhood saw slogan shouting and a minor scuffle between a small group of Chidam-abaram supporters who roughed up a person who allegedly made some unsavoury remarks against the former minister.

The entire operation was swiftly executed within half an hour of his arrival in Jor Bagh.

Once inside, the CBI team completed the formalities of Chidambaram’s arrest in the presence of his team of lawyers.

Chidambaram was driven to the CBI headquarters in a white car, with him seated in the middle and CBI personnel on either side. Sources said CBI Director Rishi Kumar Shukla himself was present at the head-quarters along with top officers for the questioning of the former Union Minister.

Earlier, Chidambaram made a dramatic entry into the

Congress office, claiming he was not hiding from the law but seeking its protection.

“I was aghast that I was accused of hiding from the law. On the contrary, I was seeking the protection of the law. I was accused of running away from justice.On the contrary, I was engaged in the pursuit of justice,” Chidambaram told reporters.

He said he would wait till Friday, when the Supreme Court had decided to hear his plea against his arrest.

“In the INX media case, I have not been accused of any offence, nor is anyone else, including any member of my family been accused of any offence. In fact, there is no charge sheet filed by either the CBI or the ED before a competent court. And statements recorded by the CBI does not impute to me any wrongdoing. Yet there is a wide-spread impression that grave offences have been committed, and my son and I have com-mitted those offences.

Saudi Arabia’s position on what happened in Aden in early August has been rather murky. News reports from the city and statements by Hadi government officials point to Saudi inaction against the secessionists. But no matter its current stance, Riyadh appears incapable of delivering on promises it made to Hadi when it decided to launch Operation Decisive Storm.

SAM JAHAN AFP

08 THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019VIEWS

The looming partition of Yemen

The success of Yemen’s southern secessionists in taking over the city of Aden has opened a new chapter in the country’s sordid

history. It has effectively undermined all efforts to restore legitimate authority to the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and is endan-gering the territorial integrity of the country.

After the United Arab Emirates (UAE) decided to withdraw the bulk, if not all, of its soldiers from Yemen, it was inevitable that the secessionists would make a move against Hadi’s forces in the south. In fact, what hap-pened is very much part of the Emirati plan for southern Yemen, and particu-larly Aden and its seaport.

The UAE’s love-hate relationship with Yemen

Geographically distant from Yemen, the UAE did not have the same degree of trepidation Saudi Arabia felt about threats and developments in that country over the past decade. Whether these emanated from the Houthi rebels on the kingdom’s southwestern border or from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to its immediate south, they generally did not affect the security of the UAE.

This was the case before Yemen’s descent into civil war in 2015 following the collapse of the multi-party dialogue under the so-called Gulf Initiative. Several factors precipitated the change in the UAE’s nonchalant attitude

toward Yemen, including the Houthis’ move to control central authority, their alliance with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and their advance in the south and occu-pation of Aden and its environs.

Emirati decision-makers could not com-pletely ignore the potential danger that instability in Yemen might present to the collective

security of the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Furthermore, the Houthis threatened their interests in Yemeni ports (most importantly Aden), which has been part of the UAE’s roadmap to become a major naval and commercial player in the wider region that stretches from the

Arabian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.Since the mid-2000s, the UAE has

succeeded in striking deals with several states along this stretch to manage commercial ports and establish military bases. The UAE has footprints in Dji-bouti, Somaliland and Puntland, and Eritrea.

These considerations have been at the heart of the Emirati strategy in Yemen since the launch of Operation Decisive Storm in March 2015. However, for the Emiratis, stopping the Houthis and maintaining the collective security of the GCC did not necessarily mean the restoration of Hadi’s legit-imate authority over the country.

To be sure, the Yemeni president never believed that the UAE was working to restore his legitimate rule and had fallen out with its strongman, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) a long time ago. Indeed, the UAE has had a Janus-faced relationship with Yemen since the start of the Saudi-led coalition’s operations there in March 2015. While officially supporting the Hadi government, in practice, the UAE has been helping and sustaining its opponents in the south and paving the way for secession.

After recapturing Aden from the Houthis, Emirati forces and their Yemeni allies continued to push northward toward Mokha and Hodeida, which both possess strategic maritime facilities, and imposed a siege on Yemen’s western coast to limit the Houthis’ ability to import weapons.

The last UAE military action on the ground occurred toward the end of 2018 when it supported Yemeni troops against the Houthis around Hodeida. Following that push, Martin Griffiths, the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen, negotiated the Stockholm ceasefire agreement around Hodeida that continues to hold today.

The seemingly endless nature of the Yemeni war - now a quagmire in its fifth year - a slowing UAE economy, and tensions in the Gulf necessitated retrenchment and withdrawal from Yemen. Still, gains in the south of the country could not be forfeited, nor could the UAE’s local allies be aban-doned. That is why Abu Dhabi decided to allow the secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC) to execute a coup against the Yemeni president and his government.

It is quite likely that the battle for Aden and its strategic facilities is only the beginning of a series of showdowns elsewhere whose ultimate aim is to remove all vestiges of Hadi’s control in the south.

Whither Saudi Arabia?Saudi Arabia’s position on what

happened in Aden in early August has been rather murky. News reports from the city and statements by Hadi gov-ernment officials point to Saudi inaction against the secessionists. But no matter its current stance, Riyadh appears incapable of delivering on promises it made to Hadi when it decided to launch Operation Decisive Storm.

Things did not have to be this way. With its extensive relations with Yemeni political factions, Saudi Arabia could have helped the negotiators during the multi-party dialogue meetings after 2012 to arrive at a com-promise for a new Yemen in which all factions could have a role. It also could have assisted United Nations envoys Jamal Benomar and Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed when they were negotiating for compromises between the Yemeni government and the Houthis.

Instead, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) hitched his wagon to MBZ’s horse, apparently with no clue as to where the UAE was taking Saudi Arabia and Yemen. After four and a half years of military action in Yemen, MBS can hardly claim any success, as MBZ runs away with Yemen’s south. The Houthis are still entrenched in Sanaa and other areas and continue to attack vital installa-tions in Saudi Arabia with missiles and drones. The humanitarian disaster in Yemen - caused in almost equal measures by the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis - is mostly blamed on Saudi operations, earning Riyadh unwanted international opprobrium.

Saudi Arabia’s anti-Iran axis also appears to give way. While Riyadh con-tinues to insist that the US take more aggressive action on Iran, its partner, the UAE, has started trying to de-escalate tensions with the Islamic republic. Abu Dhabi went out of its way to avoid accusing Tehran of responsi-bility for attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf region over the last two months and in late July dispatched delegations to Tehran to talk maritime security.

IMAD K HARB AL JAZEERA

QUOTE OF THE DAYWe must recognize

that China is a growing power and

increasingly assertive towards its place

in the international order. But make no

mistake - we will always defend Canadians and

Canadian interests.

Justin Trudeau Canadian Prime Minister

Welcome wears thin for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

When hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Myanmar into Bangladesh two years ago, local communities

were mostly welcoming. Today that welcome has worn thin, and resentment, anger and fear are creeping in.

“At first, as a member of the Muslim community, we helped them,” said Riazul Haque, 28, a labourer from Hak-impara, near the border town of Ukhiya. Haque allowed around 60 Rohingya families to settle on a piece of his land, thinking they would remain for two or three months at most.

“Now it seems the rest of the Rohingya living in Burma (Myanmar) will arrive soon in Bangladesh,” he complained.

Ukhiya was home to around 300,000 people, but the refugee influx of August 2017 has swelled the population to more than three times that many.

Most of the refugees are housed in the sprawling Kutupalong camp, but others — particularly those with

resources — ventured out in search of opportunity.

Locals blame them from everything from increased pollution and a rise in petty crime, to a lack of work.

Mohammad Sojol said he lost his job as a rickshaw driver because vehicle owners now prefer to hire refugees for less pay -- even though officially they aren’t allowed to work.

“They are stealing marginal jobs from us by bribing law enforcers,” he said.

Some of the Rohingya who settled outside the official camps are now being forced to return and children enrolled in local schools are being expelled.

The largely Muslim Rohingya fled a military crackdown in Myanmar that the UN has likened to ethnic cleansing, joining some 200,000 already in Bang-ladesh. Only a handful have returned, fearing for their safety in a country where they are denied citizenship and treated as illegal immigrants.

Ikbal Hossain, the acting police chief of the Cox’s Bazar district, said the enforced “idle and workless” lifestyle of the refugees made them “unstable”.

“They are receiving all sorts of aid,

but they have ample idle time as they don’t have any other work,” he said. This is driving many in the hands of drug gangs, he said. Tens of millions of meth-amphetamine pills enter Bangladesh from Myanmar through Cox’s Bazar and drug kingpins frequently use Rohingya as mules to carry the narcotics to nearby cities.

At least 13 Rohingya were shot dead in what police said were gunfights with officers while allegedly carrying thou-sands of the “yaba” pills.

The presence of the narcotics mafia has in turn led to violence inside the camps, prompting police to increase their presence. Crime and murder rates in the camps were higher than national sta-tistics, according to police, which record roughly 3,000 murders annually in a country of 168 million.

Police chief Hossain said some 318 criminal complaints had been filed against Rohingya since August 2017 -- including 31 murder cases.

But experts warned the number of murders in the Rohingya camps were far higher than the figures quoted by police.

This has added to mistrust by locals.

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

QSL: Battle for crown begins

The highly-anticipated QNB Stars League (QSL) 2019-2020 season began yesterday, with national and international stars representing 12 elite clubs of

Qatar setting sights on the glory. QSL is the highest professional league in Qatari football

and brings intriguing matches as top-notch footballers continue to battle for the Falcon Shield – the winners’ trophy.

Al Sadd are the most successful side of the compe-tition, claiming the prestigious title 14 times while Qatar SC and Al Rayyan have both notched the coveted trophy eight times apiece.

Al Sadd are also the defending champions this season, and face stiff competition from their opponents particu-larly Al Duhail, Al Rayyan and Al Gharafa in their title defence.

Every season, the QSL offers more excitement and this year will also not be different as all the teams have come up with solid preparations, spending the off season in training camps mostly in Europe.

Spanish legend Xavi Hernandez, who gave up Al Sadd captain’s arms band to start his coaching career with the team, will be in focus in his first QSL challenge as a manager.

Xavi has already guided the Wolves to the quarter-finals of AFC Champions League and just last week clinched his first trophy as a coach when his side defeated Al Duhail in the Sheikh Jassim Cup.

The Spanish influence on this year’s QSL will be profound as apart from Xavi, five more coaches from the Iberian country are guiding the for-tunes of the QSL clubs in the 12-team double leg competition.

Besides, Xavi the other Spaniards hired by their

respective Qatari clubs are Marquez Lopez of Al Wakrah, Alos Ferrer of Qatar SC, Jose Murcia of Al Shahaniya, Ruben de la Barrera of Al Ahli and Raul Caneda of Umm Salal.

Among the new foreign players who will be seen in action in the QSL this season is Mexican international Hector Moreno, who joined Al Gharafa last month. The 31-year-old moved to Qatar from Spanish club Real Sociedad.

Fans have been offered a unique experience this season as QSL’s mobile application for smartphones, designed by Qatari company Al Konat, has been launched and will be a new media platform for Qatar football fans. It allows users functions such as news of tournaments organised by QSL, news and follow-up of clubs, special pages about clubs to help the fans keep in touch with everything related to their favourite club and purchase of e-tickets and Season Cards.

QSL, which is expected to continue till April next year, will certainly add spice to the busy football season, which will also see Qatar hosting the 24th Gulf Cup from November 27 to December 9, and FIFA Club World Cup from December 11 to 22.

QSL is the highest professional league in Qatari football and brings intriguing matches as top-notch footballers continue to battle for the Falcon Shield – the winners’ trophy.

People walking on a street in Aden, Yemen, yesterday.

09THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019 ASIA

Death toll from Kabul wedding attack rises to 80AP KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

The death toll in a suicide bombing at a Kabul wedding claimed by the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan has risen to 80, an official said yesterday, as a US envoy was set to resume talks with the Taliban on ending America’s longest war.

The initial toll in Saturday’s blast was 63, but 17 people later died of their wounds, Interior Ministry spokesman Nusrat Rahimi said. Thirty people were in critical condition after the attack.

The suicide bombing renewed concerns that the growing threat by the IS affiliate will mean little peace for Afghan civilians despite the US-Taliban

negotiations to end nearly 18 years of fighting.

“We will try and close on remaining issues,” envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said on Twitter.

“We’re ready. Let’s see if the Taliban are as well.” President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that about 13,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan. He wants to bring at least some of them home before next year’s election.

“We’ve been there for 18 years. It’s ridiculous,” Trump said, adding that “we’re not really fighting; we’re a — almost more of a police force over there.”

But Afghanistan remains dangerous and some US presence is needed, he said.

The top Taliban demand is for the estimated 20,000 US and

allied forces to leave, a prospect that has created widespread concern that another civil war in Afghanistan could follow as various armed parties jostle for power.

Afghanistan was the world’s deadliest conflict in 2018, and the United Nations has said more civilians died there last year than in the past decade. Over 32,000 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan in the past 10 years.

Khalilzad’s new discussions in Qatar will seek guarantees from the insurgent group that

Afghanistan will not be used as a launch pad for global terror assaults.

Khalilzad also plans to meet with the Afghan government, which has been sidelined from the negotiations.

The Taliban have refused so far to negotiate with the gov-ernment. The insurgent group now controls roughly half of Afghanistan and is at its strongest since its 2001 defeat in the US-led invasion.

There have been calls for transparency in the talks, espe-cially from Afghan women, who fear that the progress they have made in a generation since the Taliban’s harsh rule could be bargained away.

“There’s no way to get used to the idea that the Afghan govt

which, for all its flaws, was elected by Afghans to represent Afghans is not a party to these talks about the future of all Afghans,” the co-director of Human Rights Watch’s women’s rights division, Heather Barr, tweeted yesterday.

Intra-Afghan talks on the country’s political future are expected to follow a US-Taliban agreement, which both sides earlier this month signalled was close to being finalised.

The current conflict remains largely a stalemate, with the Taliban unable to expand their territorial holdings and the Afghan government forces unable to reclaim lost land, the Pentagon’s special inspector general for Afghanistan reported on Tuesday.

Imran briefed about polio immunization efforts ISLAMABAD INTERNEWS

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan yesterday chaired an emergency meeting on the polio crisis in Pakistan.

According to reports, the prime minister’s focal person on polio, Babar Atta, briefed the meeting which was also attended by the chief minister and chief secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, federal ministers and heads of global institutions.

A report prepared by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa pro-vincial government for the meeting states that in the last year no polio case surfaced in the province. The situation this year was different as 41 cases were reported in 10 districts of the province. Three of the cases were from the Bannu division of the province.

Further, the report stated that 80 percent of polio cases were reported from Pakhtun community areas. A major reason attributed to the rise of polio cases was the security sit-uation in the province.

Chief Secretary Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Saleem Khan, said polio eradication was the top priority of the government and vowed to stamp out the crippling disease from the region with concerted efforts at all levels.

Polio, a disease transmitted through sewage which can cause crippling paralysis par-ticularly in young children, is incurable and remains a threat to human health as long as it has not been eradicated. Immu-nisation campaigns have suc-ceeded in most countries and have come close in Pakistan, but persistent problems remain.

Members of civil society and left parties carry placards as they shout slogans during a protest rally to condemn Indian actions in Jammu and Kashmir, in Lahore, Pakistan.

Pakistan may take Kashmir issue to UN rights councilINTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Pakistan’s Foreign Office Spokes-person Dr Muhammad Faisal yesterday said the country was considering raising the issue in occupied Kashmir at the Human Rights Council.

Faisal, while briefing the Senate Standing Committee on Kashmir, said the United Nations Security Council called for a session on Kashmir in response to Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s letter on August 13.

“India had issues with the Security Council meeting being called following its actions in Kashmir,” he said.

“They [India] took the stance

that this was their internal issue and tried to make sure that the session did not happen.” He further told the members of the committee that nearly a million people are under house arrest in the valley and that there has been a curfew for the last 16 days.

“There are reports of 2,000 to 4,000 Kashmiris being picked up by Indian occupying forces. India is afraid if they lift the curfew there will be a strong reaction,” Faisal said.

“We are fearful that the situ-ation is heading towards Pulwama 2,” he said.

Faisal added Pakistan Army was ready and they were effec-tively responding. “We are planning to raise the issue at the Human Rights Council.”

SC reserves verdict in judge video scandal caseINTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Asif Saeed Khosa said that thou-sands of judges in the country, who are honest and upright, feel ashamed due to former account-ability court judge Arshad Malik’s conduct, while reserving the verdict in the controversial video scandal case.

A three-member SC bench, headed by CJP Khosa and com-prising Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed and Justice Umar Ata Bandial, heard three identical petitions regarding conducting an inquiry into the conduct of Judge Arshad Malik in the wake of the controversial video.

During the course of pro-ceedings, the CJP observed that the case was related to two videos, including the one through which the judge was blackmailed while the other was made public

by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Vice-President Maryam Nawaz at a press conference.

The chief justice inquired that Judge Arshad Malik had already stated that the objec-tionable video was real but how could the veracity of the other one played at Maryam’s press conference be confirmed.

Attorney General for Pakistan Anwar Mansoor Khan said a forensic examination of the first video had been carried out, but it was difficult to ascertain the authenticity of the second one played at Maryam’s press conference, because it was taken from YouTube.

Upon this, Chief Justice Khosa remarked that experts should be consulted as to whether a forensic audit of the video could be done.

Discussing the interim report of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the chief justice

observed that Nasir Janjua, one of the main suspects in the case, had said that he played a key role in the judge’s appointment.

He asked why the judge was not being repatriated to the Lahore High Court so that disci-plinary proceedings could be ini-tiated against him.

The attorney general replied that Judge Malik had not been relieved by the federal gov-ernment due to the ongoing investigation against him.

The chief justice asked whether anyone had moved the high court to get relief on the basis of the video.

The attorney general replied in the negative. The SC bench, after hearing the case, remarked that an appropriate order would be passed in a couple of days.

The FIA report revealed that the video of Judge Arshad Malik was made by the accused Mian Tariq Mehmood, a resident of

Multan, between 2000 and 2003, when the former was posted as an additional district and sessions judge in Multan.

“As per Affidavit dated July 11, 2019 of Judge Muhammad Arshad Malik complainant, he was contacted by two acquaint-ances namely Maher Ghulam Jilani and Mian Nasir Janjua. During the meeting, accused Janjua claimed that he was appointed as the judge on his specific and personal recom-mendation to an influential person in the then PML-N government.

“The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Reference No 18/2017 (Flagship Reference) and Reference No 19/2017 (HME Ref-erence) were transferred for trial to Accountability Court No II, Islamabad in August 2018 after five months of [the] appointment of the complainant judge.” the report said.

Fighting in Myanmar leaves 19 dead REUTERS YANGON

More than 2,000 people have been forced to flee from their homes, and 19 have been killed, since fighting broke out between government troops and ethnic minority insurgents in northern Myanmar last week, government officials said yesterday.

The escalation in hostilities in Myanmar’s fractured north is another setback for civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s bid to bring peace amid a stut-tering transition from full mil-itary rule.

The people displaced in the latest fighting are sheltering in monasteries around Lashio town in the north of Shan State, and are depending on aid groups and the government for their supplies, aid workers said.

“We are providing basic rescue materials as well as cash to displaced people in the camps, the injured people and also to family members of those who got killed,” Soe Naing, director of the Department of Disaster Man-agement in Shan State, said.

Aid would be delivered as long as people needed to stay in the camps, he said.

Tension in the region has risen since Thursday, when a coalition of anti-government insurgent groups known as the Northern Alliance staged attacks including on an elite army college that killed more than a dozen people, mostly security forces personnel.

Nobel laureate Suu Kyi came to power following a landslide election win in late 2016, vowing to prioritise peace talks between ethnic minority guerrilla groups, the mil i tary and civi l ian government.

But conflict has escalated in Kachin State in the north and in Shan State, as the western Rakhine region on the border with Bangladesh.

Nepal bans single-use plastic in Everest regionAFP KATHMANDU

Single-use plastics have been banned in the Everest region to reduce the vast amounts of waste left by trekkers and mountaineers, Nepali author-ities said yesterday.

In addition to seeing a record number of climbers this year, a government-led cleaning initiative on Everest – the world’s highest mountain — also collected over 10 tonnes of trash.

The new ban in Khumbu Pasang Lhamu rural munici-pality, home to Mount Everest and several other snow-capped mountains, covers all plastic of less than 30 microns in thickness as well as drinks in plastic bottles, and will be effective from January.

“If we start now, it will help keep our region, the Everest and the mountains clean long term,” local official Ganesh Ghimire said.

The region receives over

50,000 tourists every year, including climbers and trekkers.

The local body will work with trekking companies, air-lines and the Nepal Mountain-eering Association to enforce the ban, though no penalty has yet been decided for violation.

Environmentalists are also concerned that the pollution on Everest is affecting water sources down in the valley.

Six years ago, Nepal intro-duced a US$4,000 deposit per team of climbers on Everest that would be refunded if each climber brought down at least eight kilos of waste, but only half of the climbers return with the required amount.

Melting glaciers caused by global warming are now exposing bodies and litter that have accumulated on the mountain since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first successful summit 66 years ago. This year’s climbing season saw a record 885 people summit Everest.

Rohingya refugees unwilling to return to Myanmar unless granted citizenshipAP COX’S BAZAR, BANGLADESH

Members of about 200 Rohingya Muslim families interviewed yesterday by officials from the UN refugee agency and the Bangladesh government all said they do not want to return to Myanmar unless their citizenship and safety are ensured, an official said.

Khaled Hossain, a senior official with the Refugee, Relief and Rehabilitation Commis-sioner’s office, said they dis-cussed the families’ concerns with them ahead of a planned repatriation scheduled to start Thursday.

“We have not found anybody yet who has agreed to go back, but all our preparations are in place,” he said.

The repatriation is unlikely to proceed if no one comes forward voluntarily, a condition Bangladesh says it will follow.

Myanmar has certified 3,450 refugees from 1,056 families as

eligible to join the repatriation from Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, where about 1 million Rohingya refugees are sheltered.

On Tuesday, 21 families told officials in the “intention inter-views” that they won’t go back.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said her gov-ernment will not force the ref-ugees to return and the repatri-ation will only happen if they are willing.

Myanmar has refused to rec-ognize Rohingya as citizens.

Maryam’s remand extended by 14 daysLAHORE INTERNEWS

An accountability court in Lahore yesterday extended Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice-President Maryam Nawaz’s remand by 14 days.

Maryam is in NAB custody in connection with the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case.

Yousaf Abbas, a cousin of Maryam who was also arrested by National Accountability Bureau (NAB) the same day, was also remanded into the accountability watchdog’s custody for 14 days.

NAB arrested Maryam and Abbas on August 8.

Officials of UN and Bangladesh police stand guard in front of a camp where UN and refugee commission interviewed Rohingya families at a refugee camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh, yesterday.

Over 32,000 civilians have died in Afghanistan in the past 10 years, according to the UN.

10 THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019ASIA / EUROPE

China confirms detention of UK consulate stafferBLOOMBERG BEIJING

China confirmed that it has detained a UK consulate worker from Hong Kong, underscoring security fears of people travelling between the Asian financial hub and the mainland as Beijing struggles to contain weeks of unrest.

China’s foreign ministry said yesterday that the consulate worker, Simon Cheng, 28, was being held under in adminis-trative detention in the adjacent city of Shenzhen on allegations of violating local laws. While the UK has expressed concern over Cheng’s detention and offered him consular support, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang described the case as a domestic matter and warned

London against meddling in its former colony.

The case adds a new layer of diplomatic tension to Hong Kong’s political crisis, which has seen China sparring with the US and the UK over their defence of the pro-democracy protests rocking the city for more than two months. Activists seized on Cheng’s detention as an example

of the kind of opaque justice people were afraid of when hun-dreds of thousands of people began protesting now-sus-pended legislation that would’ve allowed extraditions to mainland China.

“The timing of this is very unfortunate because in some ways it plays up, fairly or not, a lot of the fears people have about the mainland justice system,” said Kevin Yam, a political com-mentator and member of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Pro-gressive Lawyers Group. “Beyond that, I think it’s hard to comment at this stage, because we don’t know what the details are.”

Cheng was revealed to be missing on Tuesday after failing to return from an August 8 meeting in Shenzhen and hasn’t

contacted his family since. The case was quickly subsumed into the broader protest movement, which in recent weeks has seized on specific incidents — from injured demonstrators to aggressive police tactics — to frame new rallies.

Last evening, a small group of protesters staged a “Save Simon Cheng” rally outside the UK Consulate General in central Hong Kong. His case fuels con-cerns about the safety of diplo-matic staff in China after Michael Kovrig, a Hong Kong-based security analyst on leave from Canada’s foreign service, was detained in December and later accused of espionage.

Cheng is being held under China’s Public Security Admin-istration Punishment Law, a broad statute that lets police jail

individuals without trial for up to 15 days for a wide range of rel-atively minor violations, including disrupting public order. The process doesn’t trigger an agreement requiring mainland authorities to notify when Hong Kong residents are detained, the city’s police force said.

The UK’s foreign office said Tuesday it was “extremely con-cerned” and was seeking infor-mation from authorities in Hong Kong and the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab spoke with Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam on August 9 to discuss “concerns about the situation in the city and the protests there,” the foreign office said in a statement at the time that made no mention of Cheng.

The UK returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997 on the promise that Beijing would maintain the city’s independent courts, democratic institutions and capitalist financial system.

Tensions between the two sides have simmered in recent weeks, after Beijing accused London of meddling by defending the rights of anti-gov-ernment protesters.

China has stepped up border controls near Hong Kong as authorities seek to prevent the financial hub’s unrest from spreading.

Travellers into China are being asked to unlock their smartphones so Chinese agents can examine their chats and social media, Bloomberg News reported last week, citing a person familiar the procedure.

Thailand govt to set up centre to curb ‘fake news’AP BANGKOK

Thailand’s government yesterday announced a plan to set up a centre to combat unverified news on social media platforms, rejecting concerns that it might be used to suppress free speech.

The planned centre’s goal would be to fight all kinds of fake news, with a focus on mis-information about disasters and financial matters, Minister of Digital Economy and Society Buddhipongse Punnakanta said.

“Fake news is embedded within every aspect of our society, so it’s very hard to spe-cifically pinpoint anything right now besides the obvious problems, disasters and financial news, but as we progress — slowly but effec-tively — we’ll try to cover every aspect possible,” Buddhipongse said at a news conference.

He said the centre would also teach media literacy and launch a website that would act as a digital verifier of news that people suspected of being fake.

“People can submit any news they’re suspicious of being unauthenticated, or that could incite fear and confusion to the public, to the website and our officials would verify its authenticity within two hours,” he said.

The centre and the website are expected to be launched by October.

The plan has already drawn criticism.

A spokeswoman for the opposition Future Forward Party said last month that it shared concerns about fake news, which it said has been used to attack the government’s opponents, but was sceptical about setting up such a centre.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang described the detention as a domestic matter and warned London against meddling in its former colony.

US ready to resume nuclear talks with North Korea: EnvoyAFP SEOUL

The United States is ready to sit down with North Korea to resume long-awaited working-level nuclear talks, a US envoy said yesterday.

Nuclear discussions between Washington and Pyongyang have stalled since a second summit in Hanoi in February ended without an agreement over differences on the extent of denuclearisation and sanctions relief in return.

But anticipation for renewed dialogue has been on the rise after the US and its security ally South Korea wrapped up their two-week joint military drill on Tuesday.

“We are prepared to engage as soon as we hear from our counterparts in North Korea,” said Stephen Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea, after his meeting with South Korean counterpart Lee

Do-hoon in Seoul. The comments come amid

speculation that Americans could meet with North Koreans at the demilitarised zone dividing the North and South to kick start working-level talks during Bie-gun’s three-day stay in Seoul, which began on Tuesday.

The US envoy denied media reports he would soon take a diplomatic posting in Russia, saying he remained “focused on making progress” with North Koreans and “fully committed” to the goal of the denucleari-sation in the North.

Pyongyang considers the joint military exercise by the allies a rehearsal for invasion and has routinely expressed anger at the war games.

The drills are a “grave mil-itary provocation” and a “chal-lenge to and mockery of our efforts for peace”, the North’s official Rodong Sinmun news-paper said yesterday in a commentary.

The piece also said that the North’s own “measures for bol-stering up military capability for self-defence” are consequently “very just ones”, in reference to a slew of missile launches in recent weeks.

It added the drills are an

“open disregard and wanton vio-lation” of the joint statement adopted in the first US-North summit in Singapore last year, in which US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un agreed to pursue new US-North relations for

“peace and prosperity”. North Korea last week called

South Korean President Moon Jae-In an “impudent guy rare to be found” for hoping to resume inter-Korean talks while con-tinuing military drills with the US.

Anti-war activists rallying as US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun (not pictured) arrives at the Foreign Ministry, in Seoul, yesterday.

North Macedonia prosecutor held in alleged briberyREUTERS SKOPJE

North Macedonia’s special prosecutor for organised crime was arrested yesterday on suspicion of offering leniency in exchange for cash to a busi-nessman after her office indicted him for corruption, the public prosecutor said.

Special Prosecutor for Organised Crime, Katica Janeva offered her resignation last month after local papers reported her alleged involvement in extorting well-known businessman Orce Kamcev.

Two other suspects have already been arrested on sus-picion of extorting a total of $1.66m from Kamcev.

One of them is former reality television personality Bojan Jovanovski, who has made much of his ties to top officials, including Janeva and Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, by posting images of himself in their company on social media.

The office of special prose-cutor for organised crime was created under a 2015 EU-bro-kered agreement which ended a political crisis partly fuelled by anger over high-level organised crime and corruption.

State Prosecutor Ljubomir Joveski said evidence suggested Janeva had committed “a criminal act” by abusing her position of power. “The prose-cution has decided to widen the investigation against the pros-ecutor (Janeva), who has been taken under arrest and we will ask the court in charge to approve the detention.”

Residents begin to return home as Canary Islands blaze weakens

AFP ARTENARA

Residents forced from their homes when a devastating wildfire erupted on the Spanish holiday island of Gran Canaria began returning, although firefighters were still battling to contain the blaze, officials said.

Flames as high as 50 metres had com-plicated the battle against the blaze burning since Saturday on the western slopes of the volcanic island located off northwest Africa, prompting the evacu-ation of several villages with a combined population of around 10,000.

But as winds fell on Tuesday, the fire was beginning to “stabilise” and residents were returning home, Canary Islands President Torres said in a tweet.

“The degree of severity we initially expected is much lower, which is very good news,” Federico Grillo, the island’s chief of emergency services, said.

The decline in wind speeds prevented

the blaze, Spain’s worst wildfire this year, from entering the Inagua national reserve, which is home to the blue chaffinch, a rare native bird species.

There are only some 400 blue chaffinches left. Inagua was partly destroyed in another major fire in 2007.

The flames did enter Tamadaba, a national park north of Inagua, which is considered the “green lungs” of the island that lies at the heart of the Canary archi-pelago, but local officials said there was less damage than initially feared.

Many of the pine trees in the park “remain intact”, Torres told news radio Cadena Ser. “There was a miracle last night.”

Some 700 firefighters and other crew backed by 16 water-dropping helicopters and planes were working on controlling the blaze, which is estimated to have destroyed 10,000 hectares, according to emergency services.

No fatalities have been reported and tourism on Gran Canaria, which is

concentrated on its coast, has not been affected.

Two other fires hit the island’s centre last week without causing any injuries.

“Tamadaba is one of the great reser-voirs of biodiversity in Gran Canaria,” Manuel Nogales of the Spanish National Research Council said.

Smoke from a forest fire seen in the village of Agaete, on the Canary Island of Gran Canaria, Spain, yesterday

China warns of retaliation over US arms sale to TaiwanBLOOMBERG BEIJING

China vowed retaliation against a proposed $8bn US sale of advanced fighter jets to Taiwan, threatening to impose sanctions on American firms participating in such a deal.

“China will take all nec-essary measures to defend its own interests, including imposing sanctions on the US companies involved in the arm sales,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a briefing in Beijing. “They constitute severe interference in China’s internal affairs and undermine China’s sovereignty and security interests.”

The 66 advanced Lockheed Martin Corp. F-16 jets, approved by the Trump administration, represents a boost for the island’s military — and an even bigger boon for President Tsai Ing-wen as she faces a stiff cam-paign for re-election. It marks a major advance for the island’s aging air defence capabilities, even if a base model of the fighter plane has been in its skies for almost half a century.

The US State Department formally notified Congress this week that it supports a potential sale of the jets.

China, which considers democratically-run Taiwan part of its territory, has long con-sidered such arms sales to the

island as a violation of its agree-ments with US.

The US committed to pro-viding Taiwan with the means to defend itself when it switched diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. Beijing had warned against the move even before the Trump adminis-tration formalised it.

Beijing’s military is much larger and more advanced, with a missile arsenal that could likely wipe out the island’s air strips in the event of any con-flict across the Taiwan Strait. That makes the deal more of a political coup for Tsai than any significant change to the military balance between Beijing and Taipei.

“Regardless of whether it can actually use US arms in combat, Taiwan has always appreciated any US arms sale, and especially the big ticket items such as F-16s, to sym-bolize Washington’s continued security commitment to the island,” said Derek Grossman, a senior defence analyst with Rand Corp. “Taiwan’s political calculation in the sale is purely to signal to Beijing that the US will defend the island if China decides to attack.”

While the US declined to sell Taipei more advanced F-35 jets owned by both Japan and South Korea, the F-16V variant on offer is still a significant improvement over Taiwan’s fleet.

11THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019 EUROPE

‘Russia’s readmission to G7 depends on Ukraine peace talks progress’RUETERS PARIS

Russia’s readmission to the Group of Seven nations depends on progress in Ukraine peace talks, a French diplomatic source said, responding to comments by US President Donald Trump that Moscow should be allowed to rejoin the group.

Trump said on Tuesday that it would be appropriate to let Russia return to the G7 group of advanced industrialized coun-tries, telling reporters at the White House that his Democrat predecessor Barack Obama had wanted Russia out of what used to be the G8.

“We have taken note that the Americans want to reintegrate them next year. Ukraine is vital. There is a context that could be favourable to some progress,” the diplomatic source said yes-terday, referring to comments by new Ukrainian president.

Russia was pushed out of the G8 in 2014 because of its annex-ation of Crimea from Ukraine. The European Union subse-quently slapped sanctions on Moscow after it supported rebels fighting Kiev troops in the east of the country.

It is not the first time that Trump has floated the idea of Russia getting back together

with the G7, which groups the United States, Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Italy and Canada. Their leaders meet this weekend in the southwestern French town of Biarritz.

France holds the group’s rotating chair this year and will hand over to the United States in 2020. CNN reported that in a call with Trump on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron had suggested Russia return to the fold next year.

The French source neither confirmed nor denied that Macron had made the suggestion. Until now, Macron has repeatedly said there had to be progress on the crisis in Ukraine before Russia could return to the G7.

Speaking alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, Macron repeated that position, but insisted that there was a window of opportunity to make progress on the crisis after new President Volodymyr Zel-enskiy on August 6 pressed Putin for a resumption of peace talks.

Conflict between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed forces has killed an estimated 13,000 people since 2014.

French officials hope a leaders’ summit between Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, known as the Normandy format, could be held before the end of the year.

EU states to take in rescued migrantsREUTERS BRUSSELS

Five EU states agreed to take in scores of migrants stranded for weeks on board a crowded rescue ship, EU authorities said yesterday, ending a prolonged standoff with Rome over their fate.

The around one hundred mostly African migrants, picked up in the Mediterranean from early August onwards by the Open Arms, had been forced to remain on the Spanish-regis-tered vessel after the Italian gov-ernment refused to allow it to dock in line with a closed ports

policy it adopted last year.They finally disembarked on

the Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Tuesday night after an Italian prosecutor ordered the ship’s seizure and evacuation. Several of the migrants jumped over-board and tried to swim to shore.

Spain, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal had agreed to take all of them in, said a European Commission spokes-woman in Brussels. Authorities in Madrid and Lisbon confirmed their readiness to participate.

A succession of charity vessels has struggled over the past year to bring migrants

rescued at sea to Italian shores. The country’s far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has taken a tough line on migrant entry since the coalition government he forms part of took office in June 2018.

With the continuous flow of refugees desperate to cross from Africa to Europe, the Com-mission said it was seeking recipient states for the migrants on board a second charity ship, the Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, whose disembarkation Salvini had also sought to prevent. The ship is carrying 356 migrants.

A photo shows migrants disembarking from Proactiva Opens Arms charity ship, upon their arrival at the port of Lampedusa, yesterday.

US in position to deploy cruise missile in Europe: PutinREUTERS HELSINKI

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that the United States was now in a position to deploy a new land-based cruise missile in Romania and Poland, a scenario he considered a threat that Moscow would need to respond to.

The Pentagon said on Monday that it had tested a con-ventionally-configured cruise

missile that hit its target after more than 500km of flight, its first such test since the demise of a landmark nuclear pact this month.

The test followed the US for-mally withdrawing from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) on August 2 after accusing Moscow of violating it, a charge dismissed by the Kremlin.

Putin, speaking during a visit to Helsinki, said that Washington

could potentially now use existing launch systems in Romania and Poland to fire the new missile, meaning it could deploy it easily and swiftly if it chose to.

“Launches of this missile can be carried out from (launch) systems already located in Romania and Poland. All you have to do is change the software. And I don’t think our American partners will inform even the European Union about

this. This entails new threats for us that we must react to,” Putin said.

The test would have been banned under the INF, which prohibited land-based missiles with a range of between 310 and 3,400 miles, reducing the ability of both countries to launch a nuclear strike at short notice.

The United States has said it has no imminent plans to deploy new land-based missiles in Europe.

Putin was speaking to reporters following talks with his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinistö.

The Russian leader used a joint news conference to defend the authorities’ response to a series of political protests in Moscow and to reassure people that an accident at a military testing site in northern Russia this month did not pose any threat to neighbouring countries or people living nearby.

Albania demolishes restaurant after owner attacks Spanish touristsAFP TIRANA

Albanian officials yesterday demolished a beachfront restaurant whose owner was captured on camera attacking a car rented by Spanish tourists,

as the country scrambles to clean up its reputation as a burgeoning holiday destination.

The incident, filmed by the victims’ tour guide from inside their vehicle, took place at the weekend in Porto-Palermo in southern Albania.

The viral video shows the restaurateur punching through the windshield of the vehicle and ripping the glass while he clings to the bonnet for several minutes as the tourists drive away.

The restaurant owner, 51-year-old Mihal Kokedhima,

was arrested and faces trial for “verbally assaulting a group of Spanish tourists for futile reasons”, damaging their car and causing minor injuries, police said.

According to local media reports, the tourists were not

happy with the service at the res-taurant and left after the owner became aggressive.

Kokedhima told the court the Spaniards had tried to leave without paying.

During their probe, officials found that his restaurant

“Panorma” had been built without an official permit three years ago and that no taxes were ever paid.

Yesterday, a demolition team bulldozed the restaurant perched above the white beach and azure waters.

German boy takes joyride on highwayAP BERLIN

Police said an 8-year-old boy took his mom’s car and went for a nighttime joyride on a highway in western Germany.

Soest police said the boy’s mother called them early yes-terday after she noticed that both her son and her VW Golf had disappeared.

Mother and police even-tually found the boy at a highway service area where he’d parked the car, turned on the hazard lights and put up the warning triangle.

According to police, the boy said he started feeling “uncom-fortable” once he hit 140kph on the highway.

The boy’s mother said her son regularly drives go-carts and bumper cars and has in the past practiced driving a real car on private property.

The legal age for driving in Germany is 18.

Two hurt as gang ambush rapper’s video shootREUTERS PARIS

At least two people were injured after gunmen ambushed a video shoot involving French rapper Booba, authorities said yesterday, in the latest incidence of violence marring the suburbs of Paris.

Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said around 15 individuals — some armed with baseball bats and firearms — had attacked people on the video shoot, which took place late on Tuesday in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north of Paris.

Shots were fired as they attacked people on the set, added the officials. Booba — whose real name is Elie Yaffa — was not injured as he had left shortly beforehand.

No arrests have been made over the attack.

Merkel gives Johnson ultimatum to solve BrexitREUTERS BERLIN

German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday gave Britain 30 days to come up with an alter-native solution to the contested Irish border backstop, opening up the possibility of what Prime Minister Boris Johnson quipped could be a “final furlong” deal.

More than three years after the United Kingdom voted to quit the European Union, it is still unclear on what terms — or indeed whether — the bloc’s second largest economy will leave the club it joined in 1973.

Johnson, a Brexiteer who won the premiership a month ago, is betting that the threat of “no-deal” Brexit turmoil will convince Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron that the EU should do a last-minute deal to suit his demands.

Speaking beside Merkel at the German Chancellery, Johnson repeatedly said that the Irish border backstop — which is a protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement struck by his prede-cessor Theresa May — needed to be removed in full.

“It was said we will probably find a solution in two years. But we could also find one in the next 30 days, why not?” Merkel, Europe’s most powerful leader, said.

Johnson confirmed that she had given him 30 days to come up with alternatives and said there was ample scope for a deal. A British government source noted the more positive tone of Merkel’s comments.

Asked about the distance between the positions of London and the other 27 members of the EU, Johnson said: “About the seeming impossibility of the negotiations, in my life I’ve watched a lot of European

negotiations and it looks at first as if it’s irresistible force and immovable object.”

“If we approach this with sufficient patience and optimism, we can get this done. It’s in the final furlong generally when the horses change places and the winning deal appears.”

But with just over 10 weeks left until the scheduled departure, the EU has repeatedly said it will not renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement and that it will stand behind member state Ireland.

As Johnson arrived, pro-testers outside the Chancellery gates shouted “Stop Brexit”. Johnson and Merkel smiled and they joked about the British pre-mier’s German language skills.

Merkel has previously promised to discuss “practical solutions” to the Irish border insurance policy or “backstop” that Johnson says is unacceptable — but she has said the With-drawal Agreement would not be reopened.

Wrenching Britain out of the EU without a deal means there would be no arrangements to cover everything from post-Brexit pet passports to the trade

arteries that pump capital, food and car parts between the two neighbours.

Many investors said a no-deal Brexit would send shock waves through the world economy, hurt the economies of Britain and the EU, roil financial markets and weaken London’s position as the pre-eminent

international financial centre.In Washington, US President

Donald Trump, who has been enthusiastic about Brexit but critical of May’s negotiating strategy, offered Britain help while criticising the EU.

They have not treated the UK very well,” he said. “That’s a very tough bargain they are driving,

the European Union. We are going to see if we can work With such a gulf between the British government and the other 27 members of the EU — whose economy combined is worth $15.9 trillion — some diplomats said Johnson was using interna-tional diplomacy for domestic politics.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel with Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the Chancellery in Berlin, yesterday.

Boris Johnson repeatedly said that the Irish border backstop — which is a protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement struck by his predecessor Theresa May — needed to be removed in full.

12 THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2019AMERICAS

US government issues new rule on migrant children in custodyAFP WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump’s adminis-tration announced that it would remove tough legal limits on how long migrant children can be detained as part of its broader crackdown on undocumented immi-grants.

The Department of Homeland Security said it was terminating the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement, a binding legal ruling that said the government could not hold migrant children in detention for more than 20 days.

A new policy, to be implemented in 60 days, will not limit how long

children or their families can be detained.

The move is aimed at deterring migrant expectations that they will be released after being arrested by the US border authorities and able to disappear into the US population.

“To protect these children from abuse, and stop this illegal flow, we must close these loopholes. This is an urgent humanitarian necessity,” Trump said in a statement.

Kevin McAleenan, the acting DHS secretary, cited the challenge of “an unprecedented flow of family units” crossing the southern US border this year, most of them from Central America.

The Flores Settlement “has

generally forced the government to release families into the country after just 20 days, incentivizing illegal entry,” he said.

“Human smugglers advertise, and intending migrants know well, that even if they cross the border illegally, arriving at our border with a child has meant that they will be released into the United States to wait for court proceedings that could take five years or more.”

The Flores rule was the result of a lawsuit citing chronic abuse of migrants in detention.

It required they receive adequate, humane care and that migrant children would have to be released within 20 days and placed in the

custody of their parents or relatives.McAleenan said that in the 10

months to July, some 475,000 people in family units crossed the border illegally from Mexico, aiming to stay in the United States.

DHS said new rules would guar-antee that Flores standards of detention would be upheld but allow authorities “to maintain family unity.”

New regulations to be announced would be “a pathway to ensure the humane detention of families while satisfying the goals” of the Flores Set-tlement, DHS said.

Migrant and human rights groups said they would challenge the abro-gation of Flores and accused the gov-ernment of mistreating migrants.

Brazil President blames Amazon fires on NGOsAFP SALVADOR

Wildfires in the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil have ignited a firestorm on social media, with President Jair Bolsonaro yesterday suggesting green groups had started the blazes.

Images of fires purportedly devouring sections of the world’s largest rainforest have gone viral on Twitter. #PrayforAmazonas is the top trending hashtag in the world yesterday, with 249,000 tweets.

“No matter how successful we are, if our Earth dies, we all die,” posted one Twitter user.

The virtual anguish over the destruction comes as official figures show nearly 73,000 forest fires were recorded in Brazil in the first eight months of the year — the highest number for any year since 2013. Most of them were in the Amazon.

That compares with 39,759 in all of 2018, according to the embattled National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which has been in Bolsonaro’s

cross-hairs since it released data showing a surge in deforestation in recent months.

The head of INPE, the agency tasked with monitoring forest clearing, was sacked over the figures.

While it was not possible to measure the size of the area affected by fires, thick smoke in recent days has reportedly blan-keted several cities, including Sao Paulo, and even caused a commercial flight to be diverted.

The WWF has blamed this year’s sharp increase on accel-erating deforestation in the Amazon, which is seen as crucial to keeping climate change in check.

Bolsonaro hit back, saying “criminal action by those NGOs, to call attention against me, against the Brazilian gov-ernment” may be the reason for the forest fires.

“This is the war that we are facing,” Bolsonaro said. “The fires were lit in strategic places. All the indications suggest they went there to film and start fires. That’s what I feel.”

Trump slams Danish PM over rejection of Greenland dealAFP WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump snapped back yesterday at the Danish Prime Minister’s “nasty” dismissal of his attempts to purchase Greenland, height-ening a row which had already prompted the US president to scrap a state visit.

Hours after announcing he would not visit Copenhagen next month as planned, Trump accused Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of insulting the United States as a whole by rejecting talk of buying Greenland as “absurd.”

With Frederiksen voicing her annoyance at Trump’s can-cellation, the war of words marks another spat between the US and one of its traditional allies since Trump came to power two years ago on an avowedly “America First” foreign policy platform.

Trump — who made his name as a New York property

mogul — has characterised his idea of buying Greenland as essentially “a large real estate” deal, arguing it is a burden on Denmark as the autonomous territory’s economy depends heavily on subsidies from Copenhagen.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said he was not the first US president to have raised the idea of buying the vast Arctic island which has housed an American air base since even before it became formally a part of Denmark.

“The prime minister (Fred-eriksen) used a terrible word when talking about something we’ve been talking about for years,” he said.

“It was not a nice statement the way she blew me off. We’ve done a lot for Denmark ... She said absurd. That’s not the right word to use.

“It was not a nice way of doing it. She could have just said no, we’d rather not do it.

“She’s not talking to me,

she’s talking to the United States of America.”

The idea of the US buying Greenland was initially dis-missed as a joke by some, but its strategic location has grown at a time when both Russia and China are flexing their muscles.

Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953, when it became part of the Danish Realm, and it gained “auton-omous territory” status in 1979.

The government of Greenland has insisted that the island is “not for sale” and Fre-deriksen told reporters on Wednesday that she fully endorsed that view.

“I am both annoyed and sur-prised that the US president has cancelled a state visit,” said the prime minister who had been preparing to host Trump early next month.

But, she added, “Denmark and the US are not in crisis, the US is one of our closest allies” and the invitation to visit was still open.

Trump: Other countries must shoulder fight against ISREUTERS WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump said yesterday that other countries will need to take up the fight against IS militants, citing Russia, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran as examples.

Earlier this year, US-backed forces reclaimed the last remaining territory once held by IS militants in Syria.

Since then, however, there has been concern about the mil-itant group gaining new strength in Iraq and Syria.

“At a certain point Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, they’re going to have to fight their battles,” Trump told reporters at the White House, later saying India should also get involved.

“All of these other countries where ISIS is around ... all of these are going to have to fight,” he said, adding that the United States did not want to spend “another 19 years” fighting the Afghan war.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged on Tuesday IS militants were

gaining strength in some areas but said the militant group’s capacity to conduct attacks has been greatly diminished.

The State Department, also on Tuesday, offered a reward of up to $5m each for information leading to the location of ISIS leaders it identified as Muhammad Abdal Rahman Al Mawla, Sami Jasim Muhammad Al Jaburi, and Mutaz Numan Abd Nayif Najm Al Jaburi.

In Afghanistan, a deal between the Taliban and the United States for US forces to withdraw could drive some die-hard Taliban fighters into the arms of IS, Afghan officials and militants say.

It was reported on August 16 that Western intermediaries have been trying to persuade Iran and the United States to cooperate on bolstering security in Afghanistan, one area where the arch rivals could agree, as Trump seeks an exit from Amer-ica’s longest war.

The United States and Iran share an interest in ensuring that a departure of the more than 20,000 US-led foreign troops does not plunge Afghanistan into a civil war that restores the Tal-iban’s harsh version of rule, and does not allow Al Qaeda or other extremist groups to expand there.

The Afghan affiliate of IS group, known as Islamist State Khorasan (ISIS-K), after an old name for the region, first appeared in eastern Afghanistan in 2014, and has since made inroads into other areas, partic-ularly the north.

Trump also told reporters at the White House that if Europe does not take IS fighters held as prisoners, he will have to release them into the countries from which they came, such as Germany and France.

“We’re holding thousands of ISIS fighters right now, and Europe has to take them. If Europe doesn’t take them, I’ll have no choice but to release them into the countries from which they came, which is Germany and France and other places,” Trump said.

“The United States is not going to put them in Guan-tanamo and pay for that,” the president added.

Thousands of people, including men, women and children from more than 50 countries, are lingering in d e t e n t i o n c a m p s i n

northeastern Syria, held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

The group includes at least 2,000 suspected foreign fighters, many from Western countries, whose fates remain unresolved against a backdrop of protracted diplomacy.

A tract of Amazon jungle is seen burning as it is being cleared by loggers in Iranduba, Amazonas state, in Brazil, yesterday.

Two rescued after small aircraft ditches into oceanAP/HALF MOON BAY

An aerial photo shoot off the Northern California coast turned into a rescue drama when one of two small aircraft flying together malfunctioned and the pilot ditched it into the ocean.

The single-engine Beech-craft Bonanza propeller plane went down on Tuesday evening in Half moon Bay, south of San Francisco.

The pilot of the second plane quickly reported the crash to the Coast Guard and circled overhead.

A rescue helicopter hoisted the downed plane’s uninjured pilot and passenger out of the water.

Pilot David Lesh said the flight was aimed at making images of his newly purchased plane over the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay.

Instead, the plane lost power and Lesh had to set it down and he and his friend ended up in the water.

Four students shot at block party in AtlantaAP ATLANTA

Four college students were wounded when a gunman opened fire into a crowd of 200 people outside a library near Clark Atlanta University and then escaped in the chaos, authorities said.

All four injured women were in stable condition after the gunfire, which happened shortly after 10:30pm on Tuesday. None of their injuries were life-threat-ening, Atlanta police said.

The shooter had not yet been apprehended yesterday.

The four students were shot outside a library that serves Clark Atlanta and other nearby historically black colleges.

The block party was cele-brating the end of orientation for new students.

Yesterday, the first day of classes, there was a heavy security presence on campus and in front of the library. A couple of Atlanta police officers stood on a corner across the street.

On Tuesday night, an

argument broke out between two parties and someone opened fire, investigators said. Video aired by WXIA-TV shows dozens of students running frantically after the gunshots were heard.

“It appears there were two separate groups that were tar-geting each other, and these people were just caught in the crossfire,” Atlanta police Capt. William Ricker said.

Two of the victims are 17-year-old and 18-year-old Spelman College students. Inves-tigators believe the other two

women are 18-year-old and 19-year-old Clark Atlanta stu-dents, police said.

“Evil will not have its way on our campus,” the Clark Atlanta University’s Office of Religious Life said on social media as it announced details of a prayer vigil planned today.

Some students yesterday morning discussed the shooting among themselves as they walked past the library. Security guards did not permit interviews with the students in front of the library, which is private property.

Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan

US President Donald Trump addressing reporters as he departs for travel to the AMVETS convention in Kentucky from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, yesterday.

All of these other countries where ISIS is around ... all of these are going to have to fight. The United States did not want to spend “another 19 years” fighting the Afghan war: US President