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HMC announces working hours at hospitals

→Page 6

Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani presenting the Al Wajbah Medal to outgoing US Ambassador Dana Shell Smith, yesterday.

Shoppers out to grab Ramadan offers at a hypermarket in Doha, yesterday. Pic: Qassim Rahmatullah/ The Peninsula

Ramadan shopping rush

Qatar to probe hacking of QNA website QNA

Qatar has announced that it will investigate and prosecute those responsible for the hacking of Qatar

News Agency (QNA)’s website.

An official source at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that QNA’s website was hacked at 12:14am yesterday, with hackers publishing false state-ments attributed to Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

He added that they were able to regain control of QNA’s website four hours after the hacking, and that they continue to counter ongoing hacking attempts of QNA’s social media accounts.

The official added that it is clear this shameful cybercrime was instigated and perpetrated with malicious intent.

He also said that Qatar is surprised by the stance of some

media outlets and TV channels which continued to publish and comment on the false state-ments, despite denials by Sheikh Saif bin Ahmed Al Thani, Director of the Government Communications Office in a statement yesterday. The state-ment explained that QNA’s website was hacked and false statements were attributed to the Emir.

The official source also said that a team was formed to investigate the hacking, adding that several brotherly and friendly countries expressed their willingness to participate in the investiga-tion, as part of the framework of international collaboration in cybercrimes.

The source stressed that Qatar will take all necessary legal measures and initiate pro-cedures to prosecute the hackers of QNA’s website, and that it will publish the findings of the investigation as soon as it is complete. Fewer bookings for Umrah by expats this year

Irfan Bukhari The Peninsula

Contrary to a set tradition practised every year dur-ing Ramadan, travel

agents this year are getting fewer bookings for Umrah for the holy month from expatriate families due to upcoming school exams, among other factors.

“This year, Umrah bookings by expats are fewer than last year. The major factor behind this

decline in trend is the exams scheduled during Ramadan,” said an official of Dana Travels. He said that another factor behind low bookings was the QR2,000 fee on performing Umrah sec-ond time in the same year.

He said that Qataris, who do not need a visa, would spend Ramadan particularly the last days of the holy month in Makkah and Madinah. “As expats cannot perform Umrah in Ramadan due to their kids

taking exams, they are set to perform the pilgrimage during school summer vacations,” he added.

Not only are there fewer bookings this year by expatri-ates for Umrah during Ramadan but they also have to shell out more. Different Umrah packages are being offered by travel agents with prices between QR1,500 and QR9,000.

Travel agents say that prices for Umrah packages usually

increase during the last ten days of Ramadan. “This year, the cost of Umrah package that involves travel by bus ranges between QR1,800 and QR2,000 for the beginning of the holy month. Last year, it was in the range of QR1,400 to QR1,800. Similarly, the cost for travelling by air is between QR5,500 and QR9,000 this year as against QR3,000 to QR7,000 last year," said a travel agent.

→ Continued on page 4

RAF to raise QR128m for repaying bad loansThe Peninsula

Sheikh Thani bin Abdullah Founda-tion for Humanitarian Services (RAF) in collaboration with the Min-

istry of Interior has launched a campaign to collect donations of QR128m to repay loans of 124 defaulting citizens includ-ing 13 women.

The campaign “Naffis Kurbathum w Lam Shamlahum” (solve their problems and help them reunite) aims to set free citizens serving jail sentence, and to res-cue those who have received court verdict to repay the loans or go to prison, RAF officials said at a press conference yesterday.

“The campaign supervising com-mittee does not accept direct requests from loan defaulters, it is being referred by the authorities concerned, said Dr Mohamad bin Rashid Al Marri, Head of the Community Service Department at RAF.

“All 124 loan defaulting cases have been referred by the departments con-cerned at the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs, Ministry of Interior and other authori-

ties concerned”, said Al Marri.Speaking to The Peninsula, Al Marri

said, “This is a special campaign only for Qatari citizens, expatriates can submit their requests seeking help for repaying loan or any other financial support to the Community Service Department at a branch of RAF in Al Duhail.

“Under the campaign, a series of lec-tures and seminars will be organised to create awareness about dire conse-quences of loans. Some income generation projects will also be imple-mented for the beneficiaries to help them return to normal life.”

“RAF gives priority to Qatari citizens in its programmes because charity begins at home, said Al Marri.

“The Ministry of Interior supports RAF campaign for loan defaulters and gives priority to the prisoners and their families, said Lieutenant Colonel Jabir Ali Al Baridi, representative from the Ministry and Head of the Supervising Committee for Campaign. The Ministry encouraged all social initiatives because it is needed for social stability, said Al Baridi.

→ Continued on page 4

Outlets urged to keep prices stableThe Peninsula

Officials of the Ministry of Economy and Com-merce held a meeting

with representatives of shop-ping malls and large retail outlets across Qatar to discuss preparations for the Holy Month of Ramadan, maintain price stability and ensure that basic consumer goods (food and non-food items) are sold at the same price throughout the month.

Emir meets outgoing US Ambassador

QNA

H E Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari, Cultural Adviser

at the Emiri Diwan and Qatar's candidate for the post of Direc-tor-General of Unesco, has stressed the important role of culture in the fight against

terrorism that strikes everyone and everywhere. He called for building on the spirit of the UN organisation and its enlighten-ment message for which it was founded in order to counter ter-rorism by spreading the right culture and education. → See also page 5

Al Kawari reaffirms role of culture

Emir holds phone talks with Kuwait EmirQNA

Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held a telephone con-

versation last evening with the Emir of Kuwait H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah. They reviewed the consolidated fraternal ties between the two brotherly countries, and ways to boost them.

02 THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017HOME

03THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017 HOME

The Peninsula

Father Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani attended the graduation of his daughter H E Sheikha

Mariam from the Qatar Acad-emy, during the graduation ceremony of 2017 batch, held last evening at the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC).

The ceremony was attended by a number of Their Excellen-cies sons of the Father Emir, parents, as well as members of the administrative and teaching staff of the Academy.

The event was also attended by a number of VIP guests, pub-lic figures, Qatar Foundation leadership – including President of Pre-University Education (PUE) – QAD Chairperson, par-ents, faculty, and school administrators. The ceremony celebrated the graduation of 85 students, including 44 Qatari nationals. These students now join more than 750 graduates of Qatar Academy Doha since its establishment in 1996.

Don MacIntyre, QAD Direc-tor, addressed the graduates in the welcoming note, saying: “We come together on this special night to recognise, appreciate, and celebrate the individual and col-lective achievements of our students.”

He called upon students to make the most of this moment: “It is often easy to overlook the transition phases of our lives and focus only on the next stages. However, what if it is during these periods of transition that we are presented with the most profound and enlightening experiences.”

QA alumna Lulwa Al Dar-wish, who graduated in 2012, returned as this year’s guest speaker and reflected on her journey. “I grew up in this school, and the desire to give back to my society grew in me. I graduated in 2012, and, because of my teachers and Qatar Acad-emy’s inspiring efforts through education – one’s most power-ful weapon – I chose to become a special needs educator.

Specifically, for individuals with autism, so thank you.”

This year’s valedictorian, Ghada Khalifa Al Thani, gave an emotional speech: “One individ-ual cannot make a permanent change or development,” she said. “It requires the whole com-munity to work together to achieve this. It is useless to believe that one person can do everything on their own; it requires the effort of the entire

community. I am proud of all those present with me tonight, and I am sure that you are all proud too.”

Commenting on Qatar Acad-emy Doha’s 17th Graduation Ceremony, Buthaina Ali Al Nuaimi, President of PUE, QF, said: “Since it was founded in 1996 by H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Father Emir, and H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, Qatar Academy Doha has provided comprehen-sive and internationally recognized academic programs. The school aims to create grad-uates who are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to serve the local community.”

Father Emir attends graduation of daughter from Qatar Academy QNA

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cab-inet Affairs H E Ahmed

bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mah-moud chaired the cabinet's regular weekly meeting at its Emiri Diwan premises.

After the meeting, the Dep-uty Prime Minister said the cabinet reviewed topics on the agenda as follows:

First: Taking the necessary measures to pass a draft law on the National Address, after reviewing the Advisory Coun-cil's recommendation. The draft law defines the National Address as a data taken by the assigner, through which his transactions with governmen-tal and non-governmental entities are made. The assigner is a natural or legal person, whether he is a citizen or an expatriate, or who legally rep-resents him.

He shall submit to the com-petent administrative unit of the Ministry of Interior his national address, according to the man-ner and during the period specified by MOI. Judicial dec-larations and official notifications made at the national address shall be con-sidered valid and productive for all its legal effects.

Second: Approving of a draft law regulating higher edu-cation. The Ministry of Education and Higher Educa-tion prepared a draft law aimed at regulating the work of higher education institutions and determining the mechanism for obtaining the necessary licenses to carry out their work.

Under the terms of the project, a council called the Higher Education Policy Coun-cil, headed by the Minister of Education and Higher Education,

will be established in the Minis-try. It will include a vice president, nine members with experience and high academic status in higher education affairs, Representatives of the ministry, heads of state and private higher education institutions.

The Council shall have a number of functions, including the adoption of policies and strategies of higher education, proposals for the establishment of governmental institutions and programs in accordance with the policy of higher edu-cation of the state and its needs, the standards and procedures for licensing private institutions as well as granting and revoca-tion of licenses of private institutions and their programmes.

Third: Approving A draft Cabinet's decision to establish a committee for the policies of financing state projects. Under the project, a committee called the "Committee on Policies for Financing State Projects" shall be formed, headed by the Minister of Finance, a representative of Qatar Central Bank and the membership of a representative of Qatar Investment Authority and Qatar Petroleum. The com-mittee shall be responsible for examining financing strategies and plans for securing the loans required by a number of enti-ties, including ministries, government agencies and pub-lic bodies and institutions. It aims to avoid the negative effects of competition on the available liquidity to borrow from domestic and interna-tional finance markets as well as monitoring existing borrow-ings and following up on their repayment. In order to do so, the Committee shall undertake all necessary work to carry out its functions.

The ceremony celebrated the graduation of 85 students, including 44 Qatari nationals. These students now join more than 750 graduates of Qatar Academy Doha since its establishment in 1996.

Qatar Academy Doha's graduation ceremony of Class of 2017 at the Qatar National Convention Center (QNCC), yesterday.

Cabinet nod for draft law on regulating higher education

04 THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017HOME

Minister of Transport and Communications, H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti, received a written message from French Minister of Transport, Élisabeth Borne. The message was delivered by the Ambassador of the Republic of France, Eric Chevallier, during his meeting with the Minister. The meeting discussed bilateral relations in the field of transport, and means of enhancing them.

Al Sulaiti receives message from French Minister

Continued fom page 1The campaign launched ahead of

the Holy month of Ramadan because most Muslims prefer to give zakat (alms) in this moth. The idea behind the campaign is to approach the donors asking them to allocate a portion of their zakat for loan defaulters to save them and their social life.

Sheikh Ahmad bin Mohamad Al Buaynain, official spokesperson of the campaign urged companies and

individuals to give part of their alms and general donations to rescue the loan defaulters. “Zakat could be used to repay the loans of defaulters as they came under one of the eight categories that are allowed to take alms, said Al Buaynain. The campaign aims at sup-porting to the most deserving people at their tough time. I hope the collec-tion will exceed the target and more people suffering from bad loan could benefit, said Shikh Al Buaynain.

FROM LEFT: Lt Col Jabor Ali Al Buraidi, Dr Mohammad bin Rashid Al Marri, Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Buainain, and Abdullah Halimi, at the press conference of the Sheikh Thani Bin Abdullah Foundation For Humanitarian Services (RAF), held at its headquarters, yesterday.Pic: Kammutty V P / The Peninsula

Continued from page 1Another travel agent The Peninsula

talked to noted that bookings from expats were lesser than the last year. “Perform-ing Umrah in Ramadan is preferred by pilgrims but it is the compulsion of upcoming exams in schools that is com-pelling people to stay at homes. I think there will be a surge during summer vaca-tions of schools,” he added.

The cost of Umrah depends on numerous factors like the mode of travel (by road or by air), dates of travel, type of hotel, distance between the hotel and the Haram Sharif in Makkah etc.

Apart from final-term examinations slated to be held during Ramadan, some travel agents believe that additional visa fee of QR2,000 for performing a repeat Umrah in the same year was another factor barring people from availing Umrah packages.

This means a pilgrim from Qatar going for Umrah for the first time in a year has to pay only the normal charges QR300 while a second trip in the same year will be considered a “repeat Umrah” and the pilgrim will have to pay the QR2,000.

Abu Sara, a resident told The Penin-sula that he had postponed his plan of performing Umrah in Ramadan due to exams of his kids. "Though my kids' exams will conclude by the end of sec-ond week of June but my wife being a school teacher will have to do his duty in the whole month," he added.

Donors urged to set aside part of Zakat

The Peninsula

The General Directorate of Civil Defence yesterday released some safety tips related with fire safety, espe-cially during the summer.

This initiative aims at spreading and raising awareness among the general public for preventing fire accidents that may occur during the summer.

When leaving the house for a long time, ensure to close the cooking gas cylinder, turn off all electrical appliances and close the windows and doors tightly. Please close the faucets and open some sources of ventilation to protect the walls of the house from cracking, especially during the summer.

Make continuous maintenance of important equipment and devices at home, especially in the kitchen, including gas cylinders, electrical wires, air conditioners and other devices in order to avoid fire breakout.

Misuse of gas cylinders may risk your life and the lives of the dearest people to you, so please keep the gas cylinder in a safe place and away from the sun and from the reach of the children and please don’t allow them to enter the kitchen without supervision and don’t allow them to approach the sources of danger inside or outside the house with lighters, insecticides and toxic detergents.

When you smell gas odor, immediately open all doors and windows to reduce concentration of leaked gas and never use a burning matchstick near a gas cylinder to locate the place of leakage. In addition to this, please avoid switching on the exhaust fan for ventilation and don’t switch on lights as they may serve as points of ignition to the highly inflammable gas.

When a fire breaks out in the oil pan, please avoid pouring water into the pan as it ignites the fire and cover the burning pan by placing the nearest thick lid on the pan or cover it with fire blanket. When a fire breaks out in the trash bin, please cover the burning trash bin immediately with a damp cloth in order to prevent oxygen from igniting the fire.

Don’t put on flowing dresses or nylon mixed wears in the kitchen. Please maintain the cleanness of the exhaust fans. Providing a fire extinguisher and fire blanket in the kitchen will help us to prevent minor fire breakout from the beginning.

Place the gas cylinder in a safe place away from burners. Don’t store inflammable items in the kitchen as it will be ignited quickly with heat. Store various items in a safe place perfectly in order to prevent its falling on you or others.

Make sure to provide necessary safety and firefighting equipment and devices in commercial and industrial establishments and be keen to conduct evacuation exercises in institutions.

Make sure that there are no obstructions in the corridors and emergency exits that impede the movement of workers and endanger their lives when a fire breaks out. Be sure to follow proper storage rules and do maintenance of equipment, devices and operating units on a regular basis and please keep on removing the waste from the beginning.

Provide enough natural or mechanical ventilation for the exits. Carry out periodical maintenance for the establishment.

Please check your vehicle on a daily basis before starting the ride and avoid all reasons that help to ignite the fire in the vehicle, especially during the

summer and place a usable fire extinguisher in the vehicle in the reach of your hand.

Don’t overload the vehicle more than its capacity and stop frequently if you drive the vehicle for long distance. Before riding the vehicle, please make sure that there is enough coolant in the radiator .

Carry out periodical checkup for your vehicle by a specialized technician before you start a long trip. When you fuel the vehicle, please switch of the engine and mobile and avoid smoking.

Keep always with you your address including building no., street no. and zone no. as this will help the emergency service to reach you quickly to save your life.

When a fire breaks out, keep away from the source of heat and fire and evacuate the place immediately and call the emergency number "999".

Provide fire extinguisher, fire blanket and first aid kit, etc. Make sure to teach everyone who works or lives with you how to use each of them properly.

Connect with early warning and automatic fire extinguisher systems for the buildings, namely smoke, heat and gas detectors. Please don’t overload the electricity by using many devices on a single electric transformer and avoid the use of low quality electrical tools, whether in electrical connections or transformers.

Civil Defence cautions on fire accidents

The Peninsula

MINISTRY OF ECONOMY and Com-merce announces recall of Honda Odyssey models of 2011-2016 over malfunction in second row seat walk-in feature. The Ministry of Economy and Commerce, in collaboration with Doha Marketing Services Company (DOMASCO), dealer of Honda vehicles in Qatar, has announced the recall of Honda Odyssey models of 2011-2016

over malfunction in second row seat walk-in feature. The ministry said the recall campaign comes within the framework of its ongoing efforts to pro-tect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicles' defects and repair them.

The Ministry said that it will coordi-nate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works and will communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out.

Honda Odyssey 2011-2016 models recalled

Additional visa fee for repeating Umrah

President of Somalia, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, is being received at the Hamad International Airport by the Minister of Development Planning and Statistics, H E Dr Saleh bin Mohammed Al Nabit, and other officials, yesterday.

Somalian President arrives

The initiative aims at spreading and raising awareness among general public for preventing fire accidents that may occur during the summer.

05THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017 HOME

Cultural Adviser at the Emiri Diwan and Qatar’s candidate for the post of Director-General at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), H E Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari, with senior diplomats at a ceremony organised by the Diplomatic Service in Paris, during the release of his book " The World Council" in French language.

Al Kawari's book in French launched in Paris

Raynald C Rivera The Peninsula

Some of the world’s finest and most spectacular opals formed 100 million years

ago are featured at the first-ever exhibition hosted by the Austral-ian embassy which opened to the public yesterday.

Nearly 70 pieces from the collection of the South Austral-ian Museum have travelled outside Australia for the first time to offer gem enthusiasts and Doha residents a new side of the country.

“We are really proud to host the exhibition here because the embassy’s job is to acquaint the people in Qatar with what Australia can offer. Many Qataris know Australia as a tourist destination and a place for education as well as

for its meat and vegetables in the market, but this exhibition shows another side of Aus-tralia that Qataris may not be aware of,” Australian Ambas-sador to Qatar Axel Wabenhorst told The Peninsula.

“Opal is our national gem-stone-a symbol of Australia where most opals of the world come from. This exhibition provides a fantastic opportu-nity for us to show the natural beauty of Australia,” added Ambassador Wabenhorst.

“Ninety-five percent of the world’s precious opals come from Australia, however over 80 percent of the world’s pre-cious opals come from the state of South Australia, so opal is a uniquely South Aus-tralian story and the South Australian Museum is proud that it has come to Qatar to tell that story as the inaugural exhibition at the first resident embassy in Doha,” said Brian Oldman, Director of South Australian Museum.

Many of the pieces on dis-play are the remains of sea life that existed 100 million years ago which became opalised due to the unique chemistry of South Australia, explained Oldman. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the Virgin Rainbow opal which is regarded the finest opal in the

world. It is the opalised remains of a belemnite, a squid-like sea creature that lived around 100 million years ago. The A$1m Virgin Rainbow looks like a fire burning as it is viewed from different angles with its yellow, green, blue and red colours. Also on show is the Fire of Australia, the finest rough cut opal in the world weighing 988 grammes. Old-man described the pieces as an “unmatched spectacle of ever-changing colours.”

The beauty of opals is derived from the colours pro-duced through the refraction of light as it passes through them. As the angle of light changes so the colours within an opal change, so as the viewer moves in different angles, he sees a magnificent rainbow of colours material-

ising in front of his eyes.Other notable pieces on

show are the bones of an opal-ised plesiosaur, which was an aquatic hunting dinosaur, opalised shells and boulders among others. There are also special loans on display including an opal donated by Andrew Thomas, Australia’s first astronaut.

“Astronauts were allowed to take personal items up on space with them and Andrew Thomas took his mother’s opal ring up in space with him so this is the most travelled opal in the world,” said Oldman.

The exhibition is free of charge and is open until June 15 during the embassy’s open-ing hours from 9am to 3pm during on weekdays and on Saturday mornings, said the Ambassador.

Exhibition showcases Australia's unique opals

Brian Oldman (left), Diretor of South Australian Museum, at the Opals Exhibition at Australian Embassy yesterday. Pic: Baher Amin / The Peninsula

Ankara QNA

QATAR'S Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs H E Dr Ghaith bin Mubarak Al-Kuwari met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Minister of Religious Affairs Mohammad Gormaz, on the sidelines of his participation in the cer-emony of honouring the winners of the International Award for memorisation and recitation the Holy Quran, in Ankara.

During the meeting, they exchanged views on issues of common concern.

In a press statement after the meeting, the Minister said that the visit aimed at completing the joint cooper-ation between the two

countries, in addition to participating in the ceremony honoring the winners of the Holy Quran competition.

Minister of Awqaf meets Erdogan

Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, H E Dr Ghaith bin Mubarak Al Kuwari, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Ankara.

The exhibition is free of charge and is open until June 15 during the embassy’s opening hours from 9am to 3pm.

06 THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017HOME

Minister of Municipality and Environment, H E Mohammed bin Abdullah bin Metab Al Rumaihi (right) and Minister of Youth and Sports, H E Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser Al Ali (second left), cutting the cake to mark Ethiopia's National Day celebrations at the Sheraton Hotel, yesterday. Ibrahim Fakhroo, Director of Protocol (left) and Ethiopia's Ambassador, Mesganu Arga Moach, are also seen. Pic: Baher Amin / The Peninsula

Ethiopia's National Day celebrated

The Peninsula

In observance of the Holy Month of Ramadan, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has announced its operat-ing hours. All emergency

services across HMC’s network of hospitals will continue to oper-ate as usual 24/7.

Hamad General Hospital Outpatient clinics will run

from 8am to 1pm and evening clinics from 8.30pm to 11.30pm, Sunday to Thursday. The main Outpatient Department (OPD) pharmacy located on the ground floor will open from 8am to 10.30am and from 8.30pm to 12am (midnight), Sunday to Thursday.

Women’s HospitalThe OPD will open from

8am to 1pm and in the evening from 7.30pm to 10.30pm, Sun-day to Thursday. The OPD pharmacy will operate on the same timings.

Al Wakra HospitalThe OPD will open from

8am to 4pm, Sunday to Thurs-day and the Dental Clinic will open from 8am to 1pm and from 8pm to 11pm, Sunday to Thurs-day. The Obstetrics/Gynecology Clinic will operate from 8am to 4pm, Sunday to Thursday. The main pharmacy will open from 8am to 4pm, Sunday to Thursday.

Communicable Disease Center

OPD clinics will open from 8am to 5pm, Sunday to Wednesday. On Thursdays, services will be available from 8am to 1pm. All supporting services including pharmacy, radiology and laboratory

(phlebotomy) will be available during OPD operating times.

Qatar Rehabilitation Institute

The OPD clinics will oper-ate from 8am to 1pm, Sunday to Thursday. Pharmacy hours are from 8am to 1pm, Sunday to Thursday.

The Cuban Hospital There will be no change to

OPD clinic and pharmacy tim-ings and both will be open to patients from 7.15am to 3pm, Sunday to Thursday. The OPD dental services will operate as per booked appointments.

Heart Hospital The OPD clinics will be open

from 8am to 1pm, Sunday to Thursday and there will be no evening clinics throughout Ram-adan. The OPD pharmacy will operate from 8am to 1pm, Sun-day to Thursday and from 11am to 4pm on weekends.

Al Khor HospitalThe OPD clinics will open

from 8am to 1pm, Sunday to Thursday and there will be no evening clinics. The pharmacy will be open from 7am to 3pm in the main OPD and from 7am to 11pm at the Pediatric Emer-gency Center.

Rumailah HospitalThe OPD clinics will be

open from 8am to 1pm, Sun-day to Thursday. Pharmacy hours are from 8am to 3pm,

Sunday to Thursday. Hamad Dental Center Orthodontics and Pediatric

Dentistry Clinics will open from 8am to 4pm and endodontics, periodontics, prosthodontics and dental, diagnostic and DDSS services will operate from 8am to 1pm, Sunday to Thursday. Evening clinics will be sched-uled from 8.30pm to 11.30pm, Sunday to Thursday.

National Center for Cancer Care and Research

OPD clinics will open from 8am to 1pm, Sunday to Thurs-day and evening clinics on Mondays between 8.30pm to 11.30pm. The pharmacy will open from 8am to 3pm, Sunday to Thursday.

Mental Health Services The OPD and the pharmacy

will open from 8am to 1pm and evening clinics will run from 8.30pm to 11.30pm at Hamad General Hospital on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.

The Referral and Booking Management System (RBMS) will operate from 7am to 10pm, Sunday to Thursday. Referrals for specialist services will be collected as usual from centers throughout Doha.

Nesma’ak Customer Care will operate from 7am to 10pm, Sunday to Thursday and from 10am to 4pm on Friday and Sat-urday. Patients requiring any information can call 16060 dur-ing these times to inquire about or change their appointment.

Nesma’ak will continue to make appointment reminder phone calls to patients and will also continue to send mobile text message reminders to patients during Ramadan.

HMC announces working hours at hospitals

The Peninsula

Ooredoo yesterday announced that all Net-gear My-Fi (AirCard

810s) device users with the lat-est model, will get a free system upgrade. The upgrade aims to update all the Netgear 810s devices to the latest CAT 11 tech-nology giving users a faster connection of up to 600 Mbps on the Supernet.

Netgear My-Fi (AirCard 810s) device users simply need

to follow the pop-up instruc-tions on their device screen to start the system update and enjoy a truly superior Supernet connection.

By upgrading customers’ devices, Ooredoo aims to enhance the Mobile Broadband experience for Qatar’s commu-nities, allowing households to download, stream and share more than ever before with the boosted speed.

The Netgear My-Fi (AirCard 810s) device offers a host of

features including the ability to connect up to 15 Wi-Fi devices simultaneously, a battery life of up to 11 hours, Jump Boost fea-ture to charge smartphones and more.

To purchase an internet device, new or existing custom-ers can visit any Ooredoo Shop or go to www.ooredoo.qa/eshp.

The company has said mov-ing forward, all new Netgear 810s device owners will be noti-fied of the upgrade as soon as they activate the device.

Ooredoo to upgrade My-Fi device for free

With a diverse schedule of programmes and exhibitions taking place

during the holy month of Ram-adan, Qatar Museums (QM) has announced its Ramadan hours for its museums, galleries and institutions.

Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art will be open from 9am to 4pm while the Museum of Islamic Art and Al Riwaq Gal-lery will be open from 8pm to 12am every day except Fridays.

QM Gallery in Katara will

remain open every day except Sundays from 8pm to 12am until May 31.

Those who wish to visit the Fire Station Garage Gallery, it will be open to the public from 8am to 1.30pm and from 8.30pm to 11.30pm from Saturday to Thursday . On Fridays, operat-ing hours will be from 8.30pm to 11.30pm.

Timing at Cass Art, the art supplies shop located at Fire

Station, will be from 9am to 2pm and from 8pm to 1am from Sat-urday to Thursday while on Fridays from 8pm to 1am.

For the first two weeks of Ramadan business hours at Q-Store in Gate Mall will be from 10am to 3pm and from 7.30pm to 12am every day.

The last two weeks of Ram-adan will see Q-Store in Gate Mall open every day from 10am to 4pm and 7.30pm to 1am.

The Peninsula

THE PUBLIC WORKS AUTHORITY 'Ashghal' announces a partial closure of the right shoulder lane on Onaiza Street leading to AI Corniche Street, for a dis-tance of 400m, starting on the 27th of May 2017 and for a period of 90 days. Traffic coming from the Civil Defense Intersection towards Al Markhiya Intersection then to AI Corniche, can turn right just after the 400 m diver-sion, about 10 m before Al Markhiya Intersection.

The left lane will also be closed on the other direction of Onaiza Street, heading towards Civil Defense Intersection.

The closed lane will be compensated with a tempo-rary lane, to maintain the three lanes carriage way. Traffic in all other directions will remain open, as shown in the attached map.

This partial closure is required to enable the works of pipe laying as part of the Flooding Prevention Scheme at Several Main Intersections in Doha.

One lane closure on Onaiza Street leading to Al Corniche Street

Qatar Museums operational timing

Restrictions on movement of trucks during RamadanIN ORDER TO avoid traffic congestion at peak times, and for the safety of road users including pedestrians and drivers dur-ing the holy month of Ramadan, the General Directorate of Traffic announced restrictions on the movement of trucks during the days of Ramadan.

Trucks will not be allowed in the peak hours from 8am –9.30 am in the morning, and 1.30 pm -3pm evening and from 5.30 pm to 12.00am midnight.

The Traffic Department urges truck drivers to abide by this regulation to ensure safety and regulate traffic flow dur-ing the holy month of Ramadan.

07THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017 HOME

Maserati Qatar honours Ramadan spirit with rewarding offersThe Peninsula

This Ramadan, Alfardan Sports Motors — the official dealer of Maserati in Qatar — is offer-ing clients a remarkable deal on its complete

range of luxury sports cars to celebrate the sea-son’s spirit of giving.

Reaffirming its commitment to service excel-lence, the dealership is focused on providing a rewarding experience to new customers upon the purchase of a brand new Maserati during this holy month.

As part of the offer, every client is entitled to a one-year full comprehensive insurance scheme and warranty and service packages that protect the vehicle for 5 years. The offer also includes other services such as glass tinting, paint and leather protection, in addition to gift vouchers worth QR5,000 of Maserati’s stylish merchan-dise. Alternatively, customers can avail a choice of receiving a cashback of QR50,000 when they purchase a new car.

“Ramadan is an inspiring month of happiness, harmony and community spirit. We believe it’s the perfect time to connect with our clients and gift them the peace of mind when owning a Maser-ati of their choice including added value benefits and services,” said Charly Dagher (pictured),

General Manager of Maserati Qatar, Alfardan Sports Motors.

The exclusive offer is valid until the end of Ramadan and includes the stylish coupe Gran-Turismo models, the sports executive sedan – Ghibli, the latest generation of Maserati’s flag-ship sedan – Quattroporte and its first-ever SUV, the Levante.

Maserati models on display.

QC's Code of Values programme a big successThe Peninsula

Qatar Charity has concluded the fifth version of "the National Program to Rein-

force a Code of Values" yesterday at a ceremony in the Cultural Vil-lage Foundation, Katara. Many sections were presented by the students during the ceremony demonstrating their extraordinary and creative capacities.

Dr Ali Ateeq Al Abdullah, QC's Executive Director of Local Devel-opment said, "QC aims at activating value-based education in the community” through the program, which will mainly tar-get schools through “integrated and engaging educational and cul-tural content and by using creative and motivating methods for stu-dents” to enable them to constructively interact with their teachers and peers and to foster the value of respect of teachers, which is the main objective of the fifth version. 81 schools from var-ious Qatari regions participated in the programme and the number of participants amounted to 140 participants.

Al Abdullah extended his thanks to the sponsors including the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Regulatory Authority for Charitable Activities (RACA), Qur’an Kareem Radio and Tarbeya Centre for Future Lead-ers as well as teachers, supervisors and parents for the great efforts made to achieve the programme's desired goal.

The winning schools in the various contests were announced. Three schools won the theatre award, respectively: Saud bin Abdul-Rahman Model School for Boys, which won the first place award, followed by Al Shahanyea Model Boys School, and the West Gulf Model School for Boys. The drawing awards went to Al-Zaa'een Independent Primary

School for Girls, Moza Bint Mohammed Girls Elementary School and Nusseibah Bint Ka'b Primary School for Girls.

In the field of drawing, Al Sha-hanyea Model Boys School won the first place award, followed by Al Ikhlas Independant Model School for Boys and Al Shorouq Model Independent School for Boys. Regarding schools for girls, Al-Khansa Model Independent School for Girls won the first place award followed by Maimoona Pri-mary Independent School for Girls and Al Shifa bint Abdul Rahman Independent School for Girls.

Short story awards went to Aljazeera Academy for Boys, fol-lowed by Abdul Rahman bin Jassim Preparatory School for Boys and Al Andalus Preparatory School for Boys. The Modern Eng-lish School for girls won the first place award, followed by Al Wajba Preparatory Independent School for Girls and Al Maha Academy.

In the field of YouTube mov-ies, Ibn Khaldoun Preparatory School for Boys won the first place

award, followed by Al Andalus School. In addition, Al-Zaa'een Preparatory School for Girls won the first place award, followed by Moza Bint Mohammed Prepara-tory School for Girls and Amna Bint Wahab Preparatory School for Girls. The winning schools were: respectively, Aljazeera Academy for Boys and Al Maha Academy. Regarding schools for girls, Al-Shamal Independent Sec-ondary School for Girls won the first place award, followed by Al Maha Academy and Al-Shaimaa Secondary School for Girls.

In the field of modern tech-nology, Musab bin Omair Independent Secondary School for Boys won the first place award, followed by Aljazeera Academy and Al Wakra Independent Sec-ondary School for Boys. Competing with male students for Instagram videos award, Al-Karana Secondary School for Girls won the first place award, fol-lowed by Arwa Bint Abdul Muttalib Secondary School for Girls and Alshamal Secondary

School for Girls. Five schools com-peted for the "Behavior Modification" awards. Al Thakhia Primary School for Girls won the first place award, followed by Al Maha Academy, Amna Bint Wahab Preparatory School for Girls, Arabian Gulf Model School for Boys and Al Shaimaa Second-ary School for Girls. The value-reinforcement school awards went to Ibn Khaldoun Pre-paratory School for Boys, Al-Khansaa Primary School for Girls, Abu Hanifa Model School for Boys, Ruqaya Preparatory School for Girls, Al-Maha Academy for Girls, and Imam Shafi'i Prepara-tory School for Boys.

Al-Maha Academy won the first place award for the value-based initiative, followed by Arwa Secondary School for Girls, Aljazeera Academy and Al-Kon International Academy. Ibn Kha-ldoun Preparatory School for Boys won the first place award for Value Reinforcement Student Councils, followed by the Imam Shafi'i Pre-paratory School for Boys.

QCDC opens career camp registrationThe Peninsula

Qatar Career Develop-ment Center (QCDC) has opened registra-tion for its Summer Career Camp 2017.

The camp offers high school students a stimulating experi-ence that will assist them in making informed academic and career decisions.

The camp will take place over the course of two weeks, from July 9 - 20, at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) Student Center, between 8am and 2pm. The camp is open to both boys and girls, with sepa-rate classes held for each group.

The QCDC camp will fea-ture a variety of activities and educational programmes, as well as stimulating workshops, designed to provide students with practical skillsets and knowledge that will inspire them when planning their aca-demic and career paths.

The camp offers opportu-nities for site visits and job shadowing programmes at leading organisations in Qatar, providing participants with first-hand knowledge of work-place environments, and insights into career and profes-sional life, which will help them match their abilities and skills with various career choices.

The camp will also famil-iarise students with Qatar’s labour market dynamics and

the future needs of the nation. It will feature a variety of

recreational, sports, and edu-cational activities. Participants will attend a series of handicraft workshops that aim to equip students with a wide range of personal and life skills as well as to bolster their self-confi-dence, communication skills, and teamwork among other skills that will come in use when entering the professional world. Students will then have the opportunity to showcase and sell the work created dur-ing the handicraft sessions at a special exhibition before the end of the Summer Career Camp. Registration fees are reduced if applicants register before June 15 or more than one sibling student applies.

Students with the officials at the function.

The camp offers opportunities for site visits and job shadowing programmes at leading organisations in Qatar, providing participants with first-hand knowledge of workplace environments, and insights into career and professional life.

08 THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017HOME

QIC Insured shares road safety tips for RamadanThe Peninsula

QIC Insured, QIC’s personal insurance division collab-orated with RoadSafetyUAE

to analyse last year’s reported accidents and claims data to cre-ate awareness and promote a culture of safe driving during the holy month of Ramadan.

There are unique traffic chal-lenges as the festive period sets expectations for all traffic partic-ipants to be with family and friends especially before sunset which often leads to traffic, road rage and high frequency of acci-dents. The pre-Iftar rush hour is very critical for all traffic partic-ipants to be extra vigilant.

Fasting can result in dehydra-tion and low blood sugar, which in turn can limit our attentive-ness, concentration, vision and reaction while driving.

In addition to fasting, the unusual eating and sleeping pat-terns can also cause fatigue, exhaustion, impatience and distraction.

Accidents by time of the day: As many of us start working late, we see the majority of claims / accidents happening in the late-morning office rush hours.

Accidents during Ramadan weeks and week days: The claims / accidents are very evenly spread over the four weeks of Ramadan, with values of 23-24% for each

week. The most dangerous week-days are Wednesdays and least dangerous are Sundays.

Socio demographic data: Older traffic participants (40+) are over-proportionally more involved in traffic accidents than younger motorists. Males are

significantly more accident prone than females.

Salem Al Mannai (pictured), Deputy Group President & CEO of QIC Mena region states: “Based on our survey, we want to high-light three main findings: 1) older motorists (40+) must take extra caution while driving; 2) all traf-fic participants must mind the morning rush-hours and plan their trip much ahead in time; 3) male motorists need to pay extra attention towards their driving attitude.”

He further adds: “As a respon-sible corporate citizen, QIC Insured strives to create aware-ness and promote a culture of safe driving especially during

Ramadan” and continues… “We encourage all traffic participants to follow five easy Tips & Tricks to ensure that they drive cautious and reach home safe and sound.”

Five vital ‘Tips & Tricks’ for safe driving during Ramadan:

1. Be aware of your own limitations!

2. Watch out for other traffic participants potentially under the same limitations.

3. Expect the unexpected – we all MUST drive cautiously!

4. Plan your schedule prop-erly and leave early to avoid the need of rushing and speeding.

5. Always wear your seat belt –The holy month of Ramadan is a good time to start this habit!”

Alfardan Automobiles brings MINI City to QatarThe Peninsula

Alfardan Automobiles, the official MINI importer in Qatar, unveiled the interac-tive MINI City

experience at Villaggio Mall in Doha, giving thousands of MINI fans and car enthusiasts access to some of the brand’s most pop-ular models.

The MINI City display is open till May 27 and offers great value-additions to customers looking to purchase the all-new MINI Countryman launched in Qatar in March 2017, as well as the MINI 3-Door and MINI Convert-ible. Customers will have the opportunity to purchase a new MINI John Cooper Works Hatch or Convertible with special offers which includes a five-year MINI Service Inclusive or 60,000km, and a three years or unlimited mileage warranty, whichever comes first.

Customers can also get a chance to get their hands on a phenomenal package for any

MINI model, which includes a two-year warranty, unlimited mileage, and a MINI Service Inclusive for three years or 40,000km (whichever comes first).

Visitors are invited to ven-ture into the MINI City, an all encapsulating space inspired by the individualistic spirit of the MINI Hatch and the adventur-ous spirit of the MINI Countryman. The interactive dis-play invites one and all to come and discover their MINI person-ality through five different districts; MINI District, MINI

Connected, MINI Art; MINI Beach and MINI Customize.

The MINI fun starts at the MINI registration zone, where basic information about the stand, zones and associated engagement activities will be shared with guests. MINI District, inspired by the age-old Monop-oly game, fans can blast to tunes at a first ever car karaoke expe-rience, by choosing a song from the playlist on the iPad, pick up the Bluetooth microphone, play the song and sing their hearts out. At MINI beach zone, custom-ers are encouraged to put their balance to the test and show off their tricks using the Nintendo WII Surf & Skate game. At the MINI Countryman zone, custom-ers will have the opportunity to test their patience and resilience with a sailor’s knot tying activity.

Ihab Allam, General Manager of Alfardan Automobiles: “The MINI City, a unique stand that portrays the different character-istics of MINI, is another great activation that we have brought

to Qatar which further reinforces our position as the undisputed MINI specialists in the region. Such activations give the public and car enthusiasts the oppor-tunity to take a closer look at some of the exceptional models from MINI, including the iconic MINI 3 Door Hatch and MINI Convertible, and the all new MINI Countryman.”

The MINI Convertible comes in three engine variants of MINI TwinPower Turbo Technology where there is a 3-cylinder

petrol engine with 100 kW/136 hp for the MINI Cooper Convert-ible and a 4-cylinder petrol engine with 141 kW/192 hp for the MINI Cooper S Convertible, JCW 172kW/231 hp alongside with options of 6-speed Step-tronic transmission or 6-speed Steptronic sports transmission.

The new MINI Countryman (combined fuel consumption: 7.0 – 2.1 l/100 km; combined CO2 emissions: 159 – 49 g/km) achieves its unique standing among direct competitors due to

its powerfully expressive design, efficiently shaped bodywork and in particular its unmatched driv-ing agility. The latest version of the all-wheel drive system ALL4 ensures driving fun beyond paved roads, too. What is more, the new MINI Countryman is the first model of the brand to be available with a plug-in hybrid drive. In the form of the MINI Cooper S E Countryman ALL4 it has a range of up to 40 kilome-tres running on electrical power alone.

Models on display

Interactive MINI City event immerses guests into the world of MINI to experience the personalities of its most popular models.

Attractive MINI offers available during the event.

The MINI models on display at Villaggio Mall.

HBKU Press novel wins International Book AwardsThe Peninsula

Hamad Bin Khalifa Uni-versity Press (HBKU Press) announced that

the critically-acclaimed novel, Bitter Almonds written by Lilas Taha, has been announced Winner in the “Fiction: Multi-cultural” category of the 2017 International Book Awards (IBA). There were over 1,500 entries this year in the various categories of the award, which is in its 8th annual year.

The IBA, which is sponsored by the American Book Fest, highlights a wide variety of out-standing literary fiction and non-fiction works that are the best in their categories.

“I'm honoured and thank-ful for this prestigious award,” said Lilas Taha. “The trials of the Palestinian diaspora pro-vided motivation for my story, Bitter Almonds. I wrote the novel hoping to touch readers' hearts and convey a message of respect. With this interna-tional recognition, it gives me great pleasure to learn that I helped shine a needed light on the struggles of innocent refu-gees, and bring a measure of attention to the plight of Palestinians.”

“Lilas Taha is an extremely talented author, whose work we

are proud to publish at HBKU Press,” said Rodolphe A Boughaba, Acting Executive Director of HBKU Press. “This book has successfully brought a contemporary crisis to the fore-front of the literary world, in a way that humanizes the refugee crisis and makes it tangible to anyone around the world. Taha’s gift in developing characters with compassion and very real emotions appeals to both young and adult readers.”

Set in Damascus, Syria, in the tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s, Bitter Almonds follows the coming-of-age of two young refugees as they encounter political tur-moil and personal sacrifice.

The winners of Traffic Safety Ambassadors Program with officials.

QTTSC announces winners of Traffic Safety Ambassadors ProgramThe Peninsula

The Qatar Transportation and Traffic Safety Center (QTTSC) at Qatar Univer-

sity College of Engineering (QU-CENG) announced the win-ners of the Traffic Safety Ambassadors Program, which was recently held in coordina-tion with the Ministry of Interior and the National Committee for Traffic Safety.

Hasan bin Thabet Second-ary School for Boys was placed first, while Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al Mana Secondary School for Boys and Ali bin Jas-sim bin Mohammed Al Thani

Secondary School for Boys were placed second and third respectively.

Attending the event were CENG Dean and QTTSC Direc-tor Dr Khalifa Al Khalifa, representatives of the General Directorate of Traffic, and CENG faculty and staff, as well as stu-dents and their mentors.

The Traffic Safety Ambas-sadors Program attracted 10 teams from 10 independent schools in Doha. It aimed at rais-ing school students and community awareness on the importance of traffic safety, and to spread safe driving behaviors. Through several workshops, QU

and General Directorate of Traf-fic staff members guided the ambassadors on road safety and awareness campaigns.

Commenting on the event, Dr Khalifa Al Khalifa said: “QTTSC is proud to honor the program winners today. Through this initiative, QTTSC team strives to involve secondary school students and to motivate them to play a vital role in spreading traffic safety culture within the community, while contributing to creating aware-ness programs for individuals and the public, and to providing solutions to tackle traffic safety challenges in Qatar.”

Vodafone to hold Ramadan fund raising campaignThe Peninsula

Vodafone is holding the third edition of its fund raising campaign #Giv-

ingChallenge that will see three Qatari social media influenc-ers using their social media followership to raise funds for their chosen charity during the holy month of Ramadan.

Aqeel Al Janahi, Ahmad Abdallah and Ahmad Khalil will use their social media channels to encourage their followers to vote for their cho-sen charities via Vodafone’s Giving Challenge website: Vodafone.qa/givingchallenge. For each vote, Vodafone will donate QR10 to each charity by the end of the campaign on 14 June 2017.

“I’m confident the charity ambassadors participating this year will raise significant funds for their chosen charities while also raising awareness about the honourable work that these charities do,” said Dana Haidan, Vodafone Qatar’s Head of CSR.

Last year’s edition of Voda-fone’s hugely successful #GivingChallenge raised a total of QR1,008,500 for charities in Qatar and reached over 5 million people via social media.

Aqeel Al Janahi is a media personality and an ambassa-dor for a number of charities. He is one of the first and lead-ing media personalities in Qatar for over 30 years and is a social activist who’s passion-ate about doing charitable work having received several awards for his contribution to humanitarian initiatives.

Ahmed Abdullaa is a Qatari actor and writer who started his career in theatre using it as a platform to address key social issues and was one of the founders of Qatari theatre arts.

Ahmed Khalil Al Khaldi is the former goal keeper of the Qatar National Team and one of Qatar’s football legends who has played a key role in the success of several Qatari foot-ball teams. After retiring from football, he moved to TV as a sports anchor in BeIN Sports. Away from sports and TV, he is a great role model for youth as he actively supports chari-table projects.

09THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

EU must decide on Turkey membership: ErdoganAnkara AFP

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday said ahead of crunch talks with the EU's leadership it was up to

Brussels to decide if it wanted Turkey as a member of the bloc.

Speaking to reporters before leaving Ankara airport for the trip to Brussels which will also see him attend a Nato summit, Erdogan said Turkey was not prepared to behave like a "beg-gar" to gain membership.

Tensions between Ankara and Brussels spiralled in the run-up to the April 16 referendum on expanding Erdogan's powers, raising questions about the future of the Turkish member-ship bid.

Erdogan will today meet EU President Donald Tusk and com-mission chief Jean-Claude Juncker in what has been billed as a major chance to salvage the over half-century membership bid. "The EU has no right to see Turkey as a beggar. We are going

to tell them this. What are you still waiting for after 54 years?" he said, repeating Ankara's frus-tration with the length of the membership process.

"I know that they are wait-ing for us to withdraw (the membership bid). But we say it's for you to decide. And if you decide we won't complicate your job," he added.

In the run-up to the referen-dum, Erdogan had mooted reimposing the death penalty in Turkey, a move that would auto-matically end its EU bid.

But in a keynote speech on Sunday to his ruling party, Erdogan made no mention of the death penalty and reaffirmed Ankara's ambition to join the EU.

Most EU states — led by Ger-many — oppose freezing accession talks with Turkey but Austria has strongly backed halt-ing the membership process.

This prompted Turkey to veto all Nato cooperation with neutral Austria, although the cri-sis was partially resolved with a deal on Tuesday.

"To keep it short, if you block, you get blocked (in return). It's really that simple," said Erdogan.

Meanwhile Nato ally Ger-many has warned it could relocate military personnel sta-tioned at the Incirlik airbase close to Syria to another loca-tion, likely Jordan, due to the tensions. But Erdogan said Ber-lin had given no indication that it was pulling out its forces. "Whether this happens or not is not actually important. If they go then we will wave them good-bye," he said.

Erdogan said the Manches-ter attack had underlined that global cooperation was needed

in the fight against terror which was "not the problem of a single country".

"It is essential that the Nato allies show full solidarity and cooperation," he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Manchester attack had underlined that global cooperation was needed in the fight against terror which was "not the problem of a single country".

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech during the International Quran Recital Competition in Ankara, yesterday.

Iraq probes human rights violations Baghdad AP

Iraq's Interior Ministry said it launched an investigation into allegations of human

rights violations perpetrated by its forces fighting the Islamic State group in Mosul.

The allegations were first reported by Germany's Der Spiegel magazine last weekend. The report, authored by an Iraqi photographer reportedly embedded with the police unit, claims he witnessed killing, tor-ture and rape of IS suspects.

The Ministry's spokesman, Brig. Gen Saad Maan, said on Tuesday that the newspaper report identifies the Emergency Response Division — an elite unit that answers to the Interior Min-istry and has been closely backed by the US-led coalition in the Mosul fight — as the per-petrator of the abuses. Maan did not give a time frame for the investigating but said "legal measures will be applied ...

against wrongdoers."In other developments,

Amnesty International released a report yesterday saying the US Army in Iraq and Kuwait failed to keep track of more a $1bn worth of arms and other mili-tary equipment provided to

forces in the fight against IS, according to a 2016 Department of Defence audit obtained by the rights group.

The report "makes for espe-cially sobering reading, given the long history of leakage of US arms to multiple armed groups

committing atrocities in Iraq, including the armed group call-ing itself the Islamic State," said Patrick Wilcken, a researcher with Amnesty. Iraq's ERD forces have been closely backed by air-strikes from the US-led coalition in the fight to retake Mosul. Coa-lition forces also shared surveillance and intelligence information with the forces to aid in their advances on the city's eastern and western sides.

Following the Interior Min-istry statement, Brett McGurk, US envoy for the global coalition against IS, said Iraqi security forces have "bravely placed civilian protection as top prior-ity" throughout the Mosul campaign but that "individuals or units failing to uphold that standard ... must be investigated and held accountable."

US-backed Iraqi forces are closing in on the last IS held neighbourhoods in western Mosul nearly three years after the extremists overran almost a third of Iraq in 2014.

A member of the Iraqi forces plays with children on the outskirts of the old city of Mosul, yesterday, after the area was retaken by Iraqi forces during the ongoing offensive to clear it from Islamic State group fighters.

Algeria replaces PM in wake of pollsAlgiers AFP

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika appointed a new Prime

Minister yesterday, replacing his ally Abdelmalek Sellal in the wake of parliamentary elections.

The president's office, quoted by national news agency APS, said Sellal and his govern-ment had resigned and the premier would be replaced by housing minister Abdelmadjid Tebboune. Sellal had been expected to keep the post of premier after Bouteflika's National Liberation Front (FLN) and its coalition ally won a clear majority in the May 4 poll.

The election was marred by low turnout amid voter disillu-sionment over what many see as broken government prom-ises and a political system

tainted by corruption.Despite being charged with

forming a new government, Sellal was apparently unable to convince the main Islamist bloc, which came third, to join a coa-lition amid accusations of fraud.

The Islamist coalition said the FLN and its coalition ally the Rally for National Democracy (RND) had stuffed ballot boxes and committed violence against its supporters.

Abderrazak Makri, who heads the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Movement for the Society of Peace (MSP), said his party and its ally the Front for Change would have won if there had not been any fraud.

Tebboune is seen to be close to the ailing 80-year-old president, who named him cul-ture minister in his first government in 1999.

The 71-year-old had been housing minister since 2012.

16 civilians dead in strikes near RaqaBEIRUT: At least 16 civilians were killed in bombing raids early yesterday by the US-led coalition near the Islamic State group's Syrian bastion Raqa, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll included a woman and her five children, as well as three couples. "The coalition strikes hit Al Baruda, a village about 15km west of Raqa city," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. "Most of those killed had fled eastern parts of the province of Homs," he added.

The US-led coalition is providing air cover for a major offensive to capture Raqa city, the heart of IS ter-ritory in Syria.

As of yesterday, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were only 3km from Raqa at their closest point to the east.

The strikes on Al Baruda come after the Observatory reported the highest monthly civilian death toll for the coa-lition since it began bombing Syria on September 23, 2014.

Between April 23 and May 23 of this year, coalition strikes killed a total of 225 civilians in Syria, the Britain-based Observatory said.

Yemeni university students attend a graduation ceremony in the capital Sanaa, yesterday. According to the Unicef, 3.5 million Yemeni children are out of school. The fighting has halted the education of nearly two million children on top of the 1.6 million already out of school before the conflict, it said.

Graduation ceremony in YemenEight Kenyan cops dead in bombingsNairobi AFP

Eight police officers were killed yesterday when their vehicles hit roadside

bombs in two separate inci-dents in Kenya's restive northeast close to the Somali border. The first explosion claimed three lives yesterday morning while the second killed five later in the afternoon.

The afternoon blast struck the convoy of Mandera county Governor Ali Roba who was travelling with a security escort between the towns of Arabia and Fino near the Somali bor-der when one of the vehicles hit an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). "Unfortunately, I lost five

of my security officers includ-ing my personal bodyguard at an attack on my convoy," Roba wrote on his Facebook page, saying that he was not injured in the blast.

Earlier in the day, a vehicle carrying three police officers was driving towards the regional town of Garissa fur-ther south when it struck a similar device close to the Liboi border post. "They all died on the spot after their vehicle hit an Improvised Explosive Device," said a regional police officer, on condition of anonymity.

Police spokesman George Kinoti confirmed that incident, saying: "There was an attack this morning and we lost officers."

5 dead as IS claims first suicide attack in SomaliaMogadishu AFP

The Islamic State group has claimed its first suicide attack in Somalia that left at

least five people dead as it steps up activities in a region dominated by the Al Qaeda-linked Shabaab.

The group's self-styled news agency Amaq claimed the "mar-tyrdom-seeking operation with an explosive vest" in a statement carried by the SITE Intelligence Group which noted it was the first such attack by the jihadists in Somalia.

The suicide bomber, named

and pictured in the statement, det-onated his explosives vest late Tuesday at a checkpoint in the northeastern port city of Bosaso in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland. "Security forces stopped the suspect when he approached but he detonated himself leaving five people dead.

One of the security officers and four civilians were killed in the blast," said local police official Mohamed Dahir Adan.

The IS statement said seven people were killed and 10 wounded. The blast occurred near a hotel often used as a meeting place for local officials, witnesses

said. Puntland set up its own gov-ernment in 1998, but unlike neighbouring Somaliland, it has not declared full independence. The region has often come under attack by Shabaab militants and is also home to a breakaway group of fighters who have declared alle-giance to IS.

The Chinese student who has been trolled in Chinese social media for decrying the condition of the air in her country and praising freedom in the US is a victim of the divergent stances on freedom and

nationalism that the western and eastern hemispheres stand for. Yang Shupin, who later apologised online for her controversial graduation speech at the University of Maryland, became a hot trending topic on Chinese social media on which she was severely reprimanded for ‘betraying the nation’.

Yang began her speech by stating the reason for her joining the US university. “Fresh air”, she said, had made her come to the institution. Recalling life in her city, she rued having to use a face mask outdoors. But once she got off the plane at Dallas airport, she took off the mask and felt the breath of fresh air, Yang said.

The student who majored in psychology and theatre was probably stating what she had gone through in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming. But many slammed her for being hyperbolic as Kunming apparently has clean air and is not as polluted as Beijing or other east China cities. Moreover, the Chinese student was being discreet as she probably used the words symbolically. Later in her speech, she praised the US for “providing freedom of expression which was an alien concept

till she came to the University of Maryland.”

The student was, in fact, criticising the lack of freedom in China for which she rode on the back of air quality. It is familiar to hear and meet Chinese who are happy with their country but for the freedom, which is lacking.

While the university is right in standing by its student to uphold her right of free speech, the criticism from Chinese citizens should also be taken in the same spirit.

Going by the ethos of free speech, if Yang has the right to condemn what she sees wanting in her country, her compatriots are not wrong in criticising what they see as a “betrayal of one’s nation.” Moreover, Yang could be wrong when she says the quality of air in Kunming is poor. All Chinese cities are not polluted.

The freedom of expression has been enshrined in the First Amendment to the US constitution. It has been judged as a broad right and includes freedom of the press. While the US is a liberal democracy and allows for criticism of its leaders and government, China is ruled by the Communist Party and is based on a system of government not given to transparency.

It is not prudent to paint all polities with the same brush. Cultural relativism says no culture is superior or inferior, they are relative. The upshot about the incident is that it has triggered a healthy intercontinental debate on free speech.

10 THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017VIEWS

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

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

Unmasking reality

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Terrorism is not the problem of a single country but it isa global issue. Global problems can only be solved through global cooperation.

Recep Tayyip ErdoganTurkish President

A Chinese student’s graduation speech at a US university triggers debate on free speech.

When President Donald Trump followed through on his cam-paign promise to pull the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the

global foreign policy establishment was appalled. Pundits accused the president of abandoning Asia, and many predicted that China would quickly fill the gap left by a retreating America.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turn-bull went so far as to publicly invite China to take America’s place in the agreement. China did not respond. And Japan declined to go ahead with any agreement that did not include the US. Japan’s President Shinzo Abe said that a TPP without the United States would be “meaningless”.

So much for Asia being “pulled into Bei-jing’s orbit” as a result of Trump’s policies.

Four months later, political pundits have shifted from arguing that Trump’s hostility toward China could lead to a full-scale Pacific war to worrying that Trump is too close to China. They fret that Trump’s Asia policies are sowing “anxiety and confusion” in the region, undermining American credi-bility and calling into question long-standing commitments.

Is Trump abandoning US allies or court-ing World War III? As with everything Trump, the truth can be hard to find behind all the smoke and mirrors. Only this time the confu-sion isn’t coming from the president’s Twitter account. It’s coming from Trump’s critics. They don’t seem to be able to accept the pos-sibility that Trump’s Asia policy may be working after all.

Better TogetherThe US-China relationship is the single

most important international relationship in the world. Together the US and China make up 36 percent of the world’s economy, and American supply chains are deeply embedded in China. In a real economic sense, China isn’t in the far east at all. It’s in the far west of an integrated Pacific world.

Though many Asians have concerns about China’s aggressive geopolitical maneou-vringin the South China Sea, no one in Asia wants conflict between China and the US. After all, when elephants fight, it’s the grass that gets trampled. And that holds for eco-nomic conflict every bit as much as for a shooting war.

Thus Asia breathed a sign of relief on May 11 when the Trump administration announced a wide-ranging deal to unclog many of the sticking points in the US-China economic relationship. At first glance the deal appears underwhelming: it covers a seemingly ran-dom set of issues ranging from chicken and beef to credit cards and rating agencies to genetically modified seeds.

In return the US at long last has accepted China’s “One Belt, One Road” Asian infra-structure initiative. Dig down into the details,

Is Donald Trump’s Asia policy working?Salvatore BabonesAl Jazeera

and it becomes clear that the deal focuses on practical bread-and-butter issues that matter to US companies. It is nothing like the TPP, a mammoth trade and investment treaty that was designed to set the terms for the 21st-century Pacific economy. Trump’s China deal sticks to expanding opportunities for big American companies to make money in China.

That may disappoint human rights activists, who want the United States to apply pressure on China to improve its abysmal human rights record, but it is likely to please America’s Asian part-ners, who prize stability above all else. There is little appetite in the region for tension between the United States and

China.China’s ambassa-

dor to the United States, Cui Tiankai, traces all of this to Trump’s meeting with

Xi at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in April. He’s probably right. In just two months, Trump and Xi have settled a host of long-festering trade issues, swept aside tensions over One Belt, One Road, and come to terms on North Korea. So much for World War III.

Just before the Mar-a-Lago summit, Trump famously warned that “if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will”. He went on to explain that “trade is the incentive. It is all about trade.” Two months later we have a quiescent North Korea and a US-China trade deal. It seems Trump was playing it straight all along.

China continually urges restraint in responding to North Korea’s provoca-tions, and it now seems clear that China is working behind the scenes to ensure that the North Korea issue does not spi-ral out of control.

China’s levers of influence over North Korea are opaque but very real. If there was a deal between Trump and Xi to keep North Korea quiet, Xi certainly seems to be holding up his end of the bargain.

When Xi traveled to Mar-a-Lago in April, he was playing a high-stakes game in Trump’s house, and as any casino owner knows, the house always wins. Against all expectations, Trump’s Asia policy is working. It’s time for the pun-dits to admit it.

The writer is a comparative sociologist at

the University of Sydney. He is a specialist in

global economic structure.

When Xi travelled to Mar-a-Lago in April, he was playing a high-stakes game in Trump’s house, and as any casino owner knows, the house always wins. Against all expectations, Trump’s Asia policy is working. It’s time for the pundits to admit it.

E D I T O R I A L

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands at Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

11THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017 OPINION

Michael Porter, a leading voice in areas of com-petition and strategy, suggests that competitiveness depends on the productivity with which a nation uses its human, capital and natural resources. According to him, a nation’s productivity is the prime determinant of its long-run standard of living since the productivity of the labour determines its wages and the productivity of capital determines the return it earns for its holders. Thus, enhancing productivity caters to the twin goals of ensuring growth sustainability and higher standard of living for everyone.

The importance of productivity growth is aptly summarised in noted economist Paul Krugman’s words: “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.” Porter concurs when he suggests that a policy focus on interest rates, labour costs, exchange rates and economies of scale has only short-term appeal and will never lead to any competitive advantage for nations.

The recent ongoing distress pangs in the Indian IT sector vindicate Porter’s claims. The sector was highly dependent on providing low-cost talent to foreign firms. With higher automation and anti-immigration policies abroad, India has begun to lose the short-lived competitive advantage it had. Cost arbitrage can never be a long-term industry growth strategy. On the other hand, productivity growth requires continual industrial upgradation. To improve productivity, companies must raise prod-uct quality, improve product technology, or boost production efficiency. All of these factors require consistent innovation, which has been lacking in Indian IT companies.

Views are also divided on the role of govern-ment in boosting the competitiveness of nations. Many believe that government has an essential role to play in framing policies that directly support industries and boost their competitive performance. Others support a laissez-faire approach where the invisible hand guides market operations.

However, both views have their flaws. The former runs the risk of creating high dependency on government support for subsidies and incentives that hurts industry in the long-run. The latter view ignores the crucial role the government plays in providing vital institutional support to companies that can nudge them towards becoming more competitive.

The government’s actual role needs to be that of

Africa is not poor, we are stealing its wealth

Africa is poor, but we can try to help its people.

It’s a simple statement, repeated through a thousand images, newspaper stories and charity appeals each year, so

that it takes on the weight of truth. When we read it, we reinforce assumptions and stories about Africa that we’ve heard throughout our lives. We reconfirm our image of Africa.

Try something different. Africa is rich, but we steal its wealth.

That’s the essence of a report from several campaign groups released today. Based on a set of new figures, it finds that sub-Saharan Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world to the tune of more than $41bn. Sure, there’s money going in: around $161bn a year in the form of loans, remit-tances (those working outside Africa and sending money back home), and aid.

But there’s also $203bn leaving the continent. Some of this is direct, such as $68bn in mainly dodged taxes. Essentially multinational corpora-tions “steal” much of this — legally — by pretending they are really generating their wealth in tax havens. These so-called “illicit financial flows” amount to around 6.1 per cent of the conti-nent’s entire gross domestic product (GDP) - or three times what Africa receives in aid.

Then there’s the $30bn that these corporations “repatriate” — profits they make in Africa but send back to their home country, or elsewhere, to enjoy their wealth. The City of London is awash with profits extracted from the land and labour of Africa.

There are also more indirect means by which we pull wealth out of Africa. Today’s report

estimates that $29bn a year is being stolen from Africa in illegal logging, fishing and trade in wild-life. $36bn is owed to Africa as a result of the damage that climate changewill cause to their societies and economies as they are unable to use fossil fuels to develop in the way that Europe did. Our climate crisis was not caused by Africa, but Africans will feel the effect more than most others. Needless to say, the funds are not currently forthcoming.

In fact, even this assessment is enormously generous, because it assumes that all of the wealth flowing into Africa is benefitting the people of that continent. But loans to governments and the pri-vate sector (at more than $50bn) can turn into unpayable and odious debt.

Ghana is losing 30 per cent of its government revenue to debt repayments, paying loans which were often made speculatively, based on high commodity prices, and carrying whopping rates of interest.

One particularly odious aluminium smelter in Mozambique, built with loans and aid money, is currently costing the country £21 for every £1 that the Mozambique government received. British aid,

which is used to set up private schools and health centres, can undermine the creation of decent public services, which is why such private schools are being closed down in Uganda and Kenya. Of course, some Africans have benefitted from this economy. There are now around 165,000 very rich Africans, with combined holdings of $860bn.

But, given the way the economy works, where do these people mainly keep their wealth? In tax havens. A 2014 estimate suggests that rich Africans were holding a massive $500bn in tax havens. Africa’s people are effectively robbed of wealth by an economy that enables a tiny minority of Afri-cans to get rich by allowing wealth to flow out of Africa.

So what is the answer? Western governments would like to be seen as generous beneficiaries, doing what they can to “help those unable to help themselves”. But the first task is to stop perpetuat-ing the harm they are doing. Governments need to stop forcing African governments to open up their economy to privatisation, and their markets to unfair competition.

If African countries are to benefit from foreign investment, they must be allowed to - even helped

India has become the fastest-growing economy in the world. The next logi-cal steps are to make this trend sustainable and to ensure that the benefits of this growth percolate

down to the lowest rungs of the income hierarchy.

The success of these two goals will highly depend on the improvement in the country’s national competitiveness. This is because, to maintain high growth in the global arena, India needs to retain its com-petitive advantage in the industries it excels in, and to ensure universal prosper-ity it needs to enhance competitiveness of its factors of production, especially labour.

Considering the importance that the idea of competitiveness holds for India’s future, there is a need to understand what drives it. Is competitiveness a macro-eco-nomic phenomenon that is dependent on variables such as interest rates, exchange rates and government deficits? Or is it a function of cheap and abundant labour and natural resources? Can it be said to be dependent on the quality of a country’s institutions or government policy?

Empirical evidence seems to offer no clear answers. For instance, Japan and South Korea have witnessed rising living standards with widening budget deficits; Germany and Sweden have prospered despite high wages and labour shortages; and Italy experienced a boom even though governance was highly ineffective.

Such global experiences fly in the face of the traditional approach in policymak-ing towards boosting national competitiveness that give undue impor-tance to factors like interest rates and labour costs. India needs a focussed approach towards a singular goal that boosts its competitiveness to the fullest potential.

India needs to improve competitiveness of its states

A file photo of a collaborated Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) project by ICEIDA and UNICEF in Zambézia which is one of Mozambique’s poorest provinces.

a catalyst, which provides companies with a conducive environment that helps them move towards higher levels of competitive performance. Successful government poli-cies are ones that create an environment that helps companies gain competitive advantage rather than ones that directly involve the government in the process.

The Modi government, in the last three years, has attempted to undertake policy initiatives along similar lines. The consistent efforts to improve ease-of-doing-business across the country is a case in point. The parameters of doing business include regulatory and infra-structural indicators that create a conducive environment for business activities and reduce bureaucratic interference.

Moving forward, the government needs to consolidate on the gains it has made until now on improving competi-tiveness and act upon areas on which it has missed out. The problem of NPAs, thus, needs to be the first item on the agenda, which seems to be the case considering the free hand RBI was recently given to resolve the issue. The issue of bad loans has severely impacted lending operations to businesses, thus impacting the overall competitiveness of the economy.

Further, invigorating the nation’s competitiveness in the long run calls for some bold moves on the part of the government. In the Indian scenario where regional dispar-ities are widespread, policy on competitiveness cannot be decided at the national level. The government’s role in enhancing Bihar’s competitiveness, for instance, will be in stark contrast to the policy interventions needed in Mahar-ashtra. Therefore, an apex body (as part of NITI Aayog) devoted to enhancing the overall competitiveness of each state is necessary to stimulate productivity and competi-tiveness across India. It would work as a principal planning body of competitiveness in India and would be responsible for the socio-economic development of each state operat-ing in consonance with other state departments as well as the central government.

Such a body can understand the nuances of the state and be a facilitator in nudging industries towards achiev-ing competitive advantage in areas where the state’s strengths lie.

Competitive regions will beget a competitive economy. The more competitive the economy, the longer it can sus-tain its booming growth and bring about universal prosperity.

The writer is chair, Institute for Competitiveness, India. The

views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at amit.

kapoor@competitiveness.in and tweets @kautiliya.

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to - legally regulate that invest-ment and the corporations that often bring it. And they might want to think about not putting their faith in the extractives sec-tor. With few exceptions, countries with abundant mineral wealth experience poorer democ-racy, weaker economic growth, and worse development.

To prevent tax dodging, gov-ernments must stop prevaricating on action to address tax havens. No country should tolerate com-panies with subsidiaries based in tax havens operating in their country.

Aid is tiny, and the very least it can do, if spent well, is to return some of Africa’s looted wealth. We should see it both as a form of reparations and redistribution, just as the tax system allows us to redistribute wealth from the rich-est to the poorest within individual societies. The same should be expected from the glo-bal “society”.

To even begin to embark on such an ambitious programme, we must change the way we talk and think about Africa. It’s not about making people feel guilty, but correctly diagnosing a prob-lem in order to provide a solution. We are not, currently, “helping” Africa. Africa is rich. Let’s stop making it poorer.

The writer is the director of UK cam-

paigning organisation Global Justice

Now. He was previously the director

of Jubilee Debt Campaign.

Nick DeardenAl Jazeera

If African countries are to benefit from foreign investment, they must be allowed to — even helped to — legally regulate that investment and the corporations that often bring it.

Amit KapoorIANS

12 THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017ASIA

New Delhi AFP

India's cabinet yesterday approved a long-awaited policy to boost local man-ufacturing of high-tech defence equipment and cut

down reliance on expensive imports.

Under the new Strategic Partnership model, the govern-ment will pick Indian companies to tie up with foreign organisa-tions to manufacture fighter jets, armoured vehicles, helicopters and submarines locally.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has raised the limit on foreign investment in the defence sector and encouraged tie-ups between for-eign and local companies under the "Make in India" manufactur-ing campaign.

"The new policy will give a substantial boost to domestic manufacturing and service pro-vision, thereby creating employment," a government statement said.

"Preference in government procurement will be given to local suppliers," the statement added.

India has been investing tens of billions in updating its Soviet-era military hardware to counter long-standing tensions with regional rivals China and Pakistan.

But Modi has said he wants to end India's status as the world's number one defence

importer and to have 70 percent of hardware manufactured domestically by the turn of the decade.

Last year, British defence giant BAE Systems said it had chosen India's Mahindra group to build a plant for assembling howitzer artillery guns in the country.

The cabinet also yesterday scrapped the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, a government panel perceived as being bogged down by stifling bureaucracy.

Foreign investments requir-ing government approval would in future be cleared by individ-ual ministries, the government said. "Foreign investors will find India more attractive destination and this will result in more inflow of FDI (foreign direct investment)," it said in a statement.

Meanwhile, In a major deci-sion aimed at further easing

doing business in India, the Union Cabinet yesterday abol-ished the 25-year-old Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), obviating the need for prior clearance for Foreign Direct Investment in more than 90 per cent cases.

Industry lauded the move as a "bold" step that would add to the healthy inflow of foreign investment.

Announcing the decision, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told

reporters here that after yester-day's move, only 11 sectors would require prior approval for For-eign Direct Investments (FDI).

"The cabinet yesterday took the important decision of abol-ishing the FIPB," Jaitley told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

He said this was done to fur-ther ease doing of business in the country. Explaining the ration-ale behind the decision, the Minister said that after the

liberalisation of FDI rules, 91-95 per cent of FDI was coming in anyway through the "automatic" route, without needing FIPB clearance.

The Union Budget 2017-18 presented in February had announced the proposal for abo-lition of FIPB.

He also said that in the case of the 11 sectors that need prior approval for FDI, these would now be given by the ministries concerned.

NEWS BYTES

Rs700m snake venom seized

Kerala CM rebukes opposition

Former MLA gets life sentence

Cabinet approves AIIMS in Assam

A visitor speaking on his mobile phone in front of Tata Motors' Kestrel, an armoured personnel carrier, at a defence exhibition in New Delhi.

New Delhi IANS

Tensions escalated yester-day with Pakistan Air Force Chief Suhail Aman

activating all forward bases in response to purported India "threats" and fighter jets flying over the Siachen glacier violat-ing the Indian air space, a claim New Delhi has dismissed.

The fresh Pakistani provo-cation came a day after the Indian Army said it had "proac-tively" dominated the Line of Control (LoC) with "punitive fire

assaults" against military posts and terror launch pads.

According to media reports in Islamabad, Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman along with senior PAF officers visited the Qadri Airbase in Skardu - part of Paki-stan-administered Kashmir - where war exercises by fighter jet squadrons are being held at present.

The air chief also took part in the exercises, flying a Paki-stan Air Force Mirage fighter jet and reviewed the exercises and operational preparedness of the PAF. In an apparent response to

India's aggressive LoC posture and recent reports of Indian Air Force Chief B S Dhanoa's mis-sive to the force to be "prepared" for action at short notice, Air Chief Marshal Aman told report-ers at the Skardu base that Pakistan would give a "befitting response to any misadventure by the enemy".

"Pakistan has and must have zero concern over the state-ments of the enemy. Our response to any aggression by the enemy will be such that their future generations will also remember it," he said according

to a Radio Pakistan report.The reports said he also

ordered the "operation activa-tion" of the forward posts on the nearly 780-km LoC -- the de facto border that divides Jammu and Kashmir between the two countries.

Aman's visit to the Skardu base coincided with other reports in the Pakistani media that the PAF yesterday flew fighter jets near the Siachen Gla-cier - the world's highest battleground in the northern part of Kashmir where the LoC ends.

Mangalore IANS

Aquaculture, generally associated with coastal areas, will soon head

inland in a move that is expected to significantly boost India's fish exports, according to an official.

The focus on what is called inland aquaculture, especially in landlocked areas, is part of a concerted effort to diversify the country's fish production and to get more people involved in fish-farming, said A. Jayathilak, Chairman, Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA). "There is a mental block that aquaculture is lim-ited only to saline aquaculture. Perhaps that's because, tradi-tionally, most of the success stories have emerged from the saline aquaculture segment," Jayathilak said in an interview.

"But aquaculture per se doesn't distinguish between saline and freshwater. Wherever there is water available, one can do fish-farming," he said.

While Indian fish and sea-food exports have been growing significantly over the past five years with figures of $5.5 billion in 2014-15, there has been min-imal contribution from the land-locked states.

Jayathilak said that MPEDA was planning to hold next year's Aqua Aquaria -- a global

summit on aquaculture — in a landlocked state like Haryana to promote fish-farming in such areas.

"In terms of production, one could have any number of fresh-water fish in landlocked areas. Tilapia is one such promising fish which involves minimal investment and high return. There is a ready market for it as well," Jayathilak said.

He added that breeding of freshwater ornamental fish was also a viable option with returns often at 10 times the investment.

"Secondly, there are many areas even in landlocked states like Haryana where water bod-ies have become saline for various reasons," the MPEDA chairman said.

However, he added, MPE-DA's focus was not only on landlocked states but also on landlocked areas within mari-time states.

"If you look at a state like Maharashtra, less than one-fourth or one-fifth of the total number of districts lie on the coast while the rest are all inland," he said.

Lucknow IANS

Twenty-five persons were arrested and four top officials suspended over

the violence in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur, a day after clashes between Dalits-Rajputs left one dead.

According to sources, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is reported to have taken a grim view of the return of caste clashes between Dalits and Rajputs and ordered the suspension of District Magis-trate N P Singh, Senior Superintendent of Police Sub-hash Chandra Dubey as well as a Sub-Divisional Magistrate and a Circle Officer of the police.

The move came after a team of senior officials, rushed to the violence hit villages by Chief Minister Adityanath, found the district officials guilty of dereliction of duty and carelessness in respond-ing to the initial violence.

Shabbirpur village has witnessed caste conflict thrice since April. Home Secretary Mani Prasad Mishra, who was part of the team sent by the Chief Minister to Shabbirpur, where over 20 people were also injured in sword attacks.

New Delhi IANS

The Union Cabinet yester-day cleared the 29.77km Noida-Greater Noida

Metro rail corridor, which is nearing completion and is expected to spur people to move to these satellite cities and decongest Delhi.

"The cabinet granted approval to the Noida-Greater Noida Metro rail corridor. It had been pending for a long time," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told media yesterday. The corridor will be entirely elevated and will cost Rs 5,503 crore, he said.

The corridor, which is being built as Noida Metro Rail Project, is near comple-tion, and trial runs will start by the end of the year, said a Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) official.

The DMRC had earlier entered into an agreement with the Noida transporter to assist it in construction and maintenance of its Metro line, on which construction started in 2013. The project is sched-uled to be completed by April 2018 as per the Detailed Project Report (DPR).

About 70 per cent progress of civil work and 40 per cent of the overall finan-cial progress of the project have been achieved.

25 arrested over clashes in Saharanpur

Noida Metro rail project gets approval

Tensions escalate as Pakistan flexes its muscles

Fish-farming to head inland

SILIGURI: Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and Customs person-nel apprehended two persons with two jars of snake venom, with approximate market value of Rs700m, in West Bengal's Darjeeling district yesterday, an official said. "On the basis of specific information provided by a source, the 41st battal-ion of SSB and Customs officials of Siliguri launched a joint operation and apprehended two persons in an area between Batasi and Panitanki," said SSB's 41st Bn Commandant Rajiv Rana. Interrogation of the apprehended persons was under-way, said Rana, who led the joint operation.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan yesterday lost his cool on the floor of the assembly and spoke sharply at senior Congress legislator V.D. Satee-shan, who raised the issue of bickering between senior state bureaucrats. The immediate provocation for Vijayan to lose his cool was when Sateeshan referred to his economic advi-sor Gita Gopinath's father who runs a farm from which the state-run Horticrop was procuring vegetables and was paying promptly, while he alleged, poor vegetable farmers in Idukki district were not getting paid on time. Sateeshan sought leave for an adjournment motion to discuss the serious difference of opinion that have surfaced in the open among top bureau-crats and police officials.

VIJAYAWADA: A court in Andhra Pradesh yesterday sen-tenced a former legislator and 15 others to life imprisonment in a murder case. Ankapalle Sessions Court in Visakhapatnam district handed down the sentence in a case relating to mur-der of a fisherman in 2007. Chengala Venkat Rao, the former legislator from Payakaraopet in Visakhapatnam district and others were convicted for the killing of Poosala Konda in the clashes between two rival groups in Bangarammapet village. The court also awarded two years imprisonment to five women in the case. The clash was over setting up of Beach Minerals Company (BMC) plant. Venkat Rao, who was then a member of state assembly from Payakaraopet constituency, had held a meeting with group opposing the plant. During the meet-ing a clash broke out between the two groups.

NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet yesterday approved setting up of a new All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Kamrup district of Assam at a cost of Rs 1,123 crore. The announcement was made by Finance Minister Arun Jait-ley after the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "The new hospital will be built at a cost of Rs 1,123 crore and it will be set up under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY)," Jaitley said. The new AIIMS with a capacity of 750 beds will be completed in 48 months from the zero date i.e. is the date of the approval of Central government. The hospital will also have 22 special-ity or super-speciality departments, including 16 operation theaters.

A fisherman paddles a wooden boat through a harbour in Chennai yesterday. Authorities in the state of Tamil Nadu have imposed a 61 day ban on fishing to protect marine life in the Bay of Bengal.

India approves new defence policyMake in India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has raised the limit on foreign investment in the defence sector and encouraged tie-ups between foreign and local companies under the "Make in India" manufacturing campaign.

13THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017 ASIA

Manila Reuters

US President Donald Trump praised Philip-pine President Rodrigo

Duterte in a phone call last month for doing an “unbeliev-able job on the drug problem,” according to a leaked Philip-pine transcript, despite human rights condemnation of Duterte’s drug crackdown.

Trump commended Duterte’s actions in the same call in which the USpresident invited him to Washington, according to a transcript of their conversation published by the Washington Post and the investigative news site The Intercept. The document included a “confidential” cover sheet from the Americas divi-sion of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs.

A senior USofficial said the Trump administration did not dispute the accuracy of the transcript and declined further comment. Duterte is accused by international human rights groups of supporting a cam-paign of extrajudicial killings of drug suspects in the Philip-pines, which his government denies.

Almost 9,000 people, many small-time drug users and dealers, have been killed in the Philippines since Duterte took office on June 30. Police say about one-third of the vic-tims were shot by officers in self-defense during legitimate operations. Human rights groups say official accounts are implausible.

“I just wanted to congrat-ulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem,” Trump told Duterte, according to the transcript.

“Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” Duterte thanked Trump and said “this is the scourge of my nation now and I have to do some-thing to preserve the Filipino nation.”

“I think we had a previous president who did not under-stand that,” Trump replied.

Duterte was infuriated by the Obama administration’s expressions of concern about extrajudicial killings after he took office and threatened to sever the long-standing US defense alliance.

Trump praises Duterte's crackdown on drugs

Duterte threatens to declare martial law nationwide

ManilaAFP

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened yesterday to impose martial law nationwide to combat

the rising threat of terrorism, after Islamist militants beheaded a policeman and took Catholic hostages while rampaging through a southern city.

Duterte declared martial law on Tuesday for the southern region of Mindanao — which makes up roughly one third of the country and is home to 20 million people — in an immedi-ate response to the attacks by the gunmen who have pledged alle-giance to the Islamic State group.

The roughly 100 militants roamed through Marawi city, taking a priest and an unspeci-fied number of other people

hostage from a church, setting fire to buildings and flying black IS flags, according to Duterte and his aides.

Duterte said they also beheaded a local police chief after capturing him at a road checkpoint they had set up, as he expressed outrage at what he said was the growing threat from mil-itants in Mindanao allied to IS.

"I will not hesitate to do any-thing and everything to protect and preserve the Filipino nation," the president said.

"I might declare martial law throughout the country to pro-tect the people."

Duterte, who has waged a controversial war on drugs that

has claimed thousands of lives, warned martial law would be "harsh" and similar to military rule imposed by dictator Ferdi-nand Marcos a generation ago.

Marcos's two-decade rule ended in 1986 when millions of people took to the streets in a "People Power" revolution. Thousands of critics were jailed, tortured or killed during the dic-tatorship, according to historians and rights groups.

"Martial law of Mr Marcos was very good," Duterte said, as he railed against human rights campaigners and other critics of his drug war. Duterte said his own version of martial law meant security forces could

conduct searches and arrest people without warrants.

He also said there would be curfews for some provinces in Mindanao, and that martial law would remain until the terror-ism threat had ended.

The fighting in Marawi erupted on Tuesday after secu-rity forces raided a house where they believed Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of the infamous Abu Sayyaf kidnap-for-ransom gang and Philippine head of IS, was hiding.

The United States regards Hapilon as one of the world's most dangerous terrorists, offer-ing a bounty of $5 million for his capture.

An armoured personnel carrier of government troops driving along a main highway of Pantar town, as it travels to reinforce Marawi city, yesterday

The roughly 100 militants roamed through Marawi city, taking a priest and an unspecified number of other people hostage from a church, setting fire to buildings and flying black IS flags, they also beheaded a local police chief according to Duterte and his aides.

Two Chinese nationals kidnapped in PakistanQuetta AFP

Two Chinese nationals working in Pakistan were kidnapped yesterday, local

police and China's state media said, in an attack which could raise safety concerns for Beijing's multi-billion dollar investment in the country.

The abductions happened in Quetta, the capital of southwest-ern Balochistan province, which is at the heart of the $50 billion China Pakistan Economic Cor-ridor (CPEC), and which is wracked by separatist and Islamist insurgencies.

"A Chinese couple was kid-napped from the neighbourhood of Jinnah town in Quetta yester-day, the couple were running a Chinese language centre," sen-ior local police official Aitzaz Goraya said.

"When they left the language centre for lunch, they were dragged into a vehicle without number plates by three unknown

men," he said. The men then began firing weapons in the air to scare off onlookers.

One Chinese woman

managed to escape and ran back to the centre, while a passer-by received a gunshot wound.

The incident was confirmed

by Ahsan Mehboob, the provin-cial police chief.

Passer-by Muhammad Zahir told AFP: "I was walking on the

road when I saw three men forc-ing a Chinese woman in a white car and she was refusing and crying, I stopped to observe the situation but they had forced the woman in the car by then and were pushing the man.

"So I rushed to them and asked what they were doing. One of them said we are from the crime branch of the police and we are taking them for investigation and I told them that they should not misbehave with people, then the driver came out and shot me in my foot," the 35-year-old said.

Chinese state media con-firmed the kidnappings, while deputy chief of mission in Islam-abad Lijian Zhao said the embassy was working toward their release. China is ramping up investment in its South Asian neighbour as part of a plan unveiled in 2015 that will link its far-western Xinjiang region to Pakistan's Gwadar port in Balo-chistan with a series of infrastructure, power and trans-port upgrades.

Karachi bans sea swimming for six monthsKarachi AFP

Pakistanis in the port megacity of Karachi have been banned from

swimming in the sea for six months, authorities said yes-terday, after a recent spate of drownings as residents sought relief from the scorch-ing heat.

Rescue workers and media have reported some 15 cases of drowning at beaches along the city's Arabian Sea coast over the past week, including eight on Tuesday alone, alarming authorities as summer intensifies.

"The six month ban has been imposed on swimming, wading or diving in the sea to ensure the safety of public," a government statement said.

Karachi's beaches are popular with its population of roughly 25 million people, many of whom suffer from power outages and water shortages in the sweltering summers. The city is a sprawl-ing metropolis with few green areas and, while it often enjoys cooling sea breezes, has scant facilities for coping with intensely hot weather.

In 2015, more than 1,200 people died as June temper-atures reached 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit).

But safety standards on the beaches are low, with the few lifeguards on duty often unable to exert any author-ity. "In absence of any effective guards at the beach, it is in the interest of the peo-ple to stay away from the beaches to prevent any unto-ward incident," said Anwer Kazmi, a spokesman for the Edhi Foundation, the ambu-lance service which takes responsibility for the bodies of drowning victims.

Dozens of people drowned off the Karachi's shore in 2014 after defying a ban on swimming during the monsoon season.

Pakistan draws 'red lines' for social media Woman throws acid on husband over 2nd marriageIslamabad

Internews

As the controversy over the crackdown against online anti-army campaigners

heats up, the government yes-terday revealed its plan to draw red lines for the social media service providers for operating in Pakistan.

“There will be no restrictions on social media. But, yes, there will be red lines in accordance with the law and Constitution of the country,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told a press conference, after a meet-ing with a representative delegation of the All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS), the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) and the Pakistan Broadcasters Association (PBA).

However, he said nothing illegal was being done and advised critics of the crackdown

not to create hurdles or hurl threats. He said the country’s social, moral and cultural values and law and dignity of people, not social media, were under attack. “Those attacking our values will be brought to book,” he warned.

Referring to the posts on social media following the with-drawal of an ISPR tweet rejecting the prime minister’s directive for implementation of recommen-dations of an inquiry committee formed to probe a media report, he said such posts were unac-ceptable, particularly at a time when a “war against terror is being waged” to secure the country’s future.

He said action should be taken against individuals belonging to any political party or group, including the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N, if they were found to be behind the malignant campaign. The min-ister said 27 identifications and

eight individuals had been iden-tified and six of them interrogated so far. He said no arrest had been made yet and nobody had been harassed. The individuals were even allowed to bring their counsel with them.

He said a forensic analysis of computers and mobile phones of those suspected of being behind the campaign would be carried out following which they would be formally charged and arrested. Replying to a question, Nisar said he would ask the National Assembly speaker to convene a meeting of political parties to seek their views on the proposed standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the social media service providers.

He said systems of different countries were being examined to follow the best practices with respect to the code of conduct and SOPs for the service providers.

The interior minister said the service providers would be asked to open their offices in Pakistan, which would be facil-itated by the government, and help develop some rules of the game with consensus.

He said those using fake identities for unleashing mali-cious propaganda had no point in claiming that it was freedom of expression. He said the gov-ernment supported the freedom of expression but it was not at all applicable to those attacking values, decency and the law.

He said one of the proposals discussed during the meeting was linking social media accounts with mobile phone numbers of the users. He said the meeting agreed to the need for framing a code of conduct for the media on national security and the media representative organisations decided to set up a committee for this purpose.

Islamabad Internews

A woman allegedly threw acid on her husband for contracting second mar-

riage yesterday at Banglow Fazal Wah in Luddan police precincts, some 25km from here. Reports said 35-year-old Imran, a labourer, contracted second marriage with Asma of Gujranwala a few days back without getting permission from his first wife Yasmeen (30).

Yesterday, when he vis-ited Yasmeen at Luddan, she threw acid on Imran after an exchange of argument. Imran received critical burns and was admitted for treatment. Vehari Saddar DSP Imran Rasheed said that Imran received 40 percent burns.

A soldier standing guard near the site where two Chinese language teachers were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen, in Quetta, yesterday.

14 THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017ASIA

Kyrgyzstan-UAE meeting

Kidnapped Australian freed in YemenSydneyAFP

An Australian man held captive for seven months has been freed

by his kidnappers in Yemen and has been taken to neigh-bouring Oman, Australia's foreign minister said yesterday.

The unnamed man was captured in October by unnamed assailants. Oman's foreign ministry said the man had been located after medi-ation with local tribes and that he was due to return home. It gave no further details.

"I confirm that an Austral-ian kidnapped in Yemen in October last year has been released and is safe and well," Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement.

"I particularly thank His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, the Sultan of Oman, for Oman's work to locate and receive the Aus-tralian national into Oman."

She said she would give no further details on the case in order to protect other Aus-tralians who remain captive overseas or who face the risk of kidnapping.

Oman has used its rela-tionship with Yemen's dominant Houthi group sev-eral times to help free foreign nationals who have gone miss-ing or been detained in Yemen. In last October, it helped in the release of a French-Tunisian Red Cross worker.

Nepal's prime minister announces resignationKathmandu AP

Nepal's Maoist prime minister resigned yesterday as part of a planned handover to a former political

foe who will be the impoverished nation's tenth leader since the end of the civil war in 2006.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a former guerrilla chief who led the decade-long Maoist insur-gency before entering politics, is stepping aside after less than 10 months in office.

He is expected to be suc-ceeded by three-time former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who heads the largest party in the current coalition government.

"I announce my resignation from the post of prime minister

today, right now, with a pledge to continue being active for the upliftment of the country and the people as a politician, parliamen-tarian and a citizen," Dahal said in a televised speech in which he catalogued his government's achievements.

Dahal, who still goes by his nom de guerre Prachanda, or "fierce one", had promised to step down after holding local

elections as part of the agree-ment that brought him to power last August.

Local elections were held in three of the country's seven provinces 10 days ago.

Deuba's appointment is expected to be confirmed in a parliamentary vote within the next 10 days.

Dahal, 62, came to power after withdrawing support from the then-government and rea-ligning his Maoist party with Deuba's centre-right Nepali Congress.

It was an uncomfortable alli-ance -- at the height of the civil war Deuba, then prime minister, had announced a five million rupee ($50,000) bounty for Dahal's capture, dead or alive.As part of the agreement that brough Dahal to power, the Mao-ist leader promised to hold

long-delayed local elections before handing the premiership to Deuba.

But Dahal split the local polls — the first in 20 years — into two

phases because of the threat of violence from ethnic minority groups in the southern plains bordering India.

Dahal had come to power

promising to address the griev-ances of the Madhesi minority, who say the current political sys-tem leaves them marginalised, by amending the constitution.

Three dead as suicide bombing rocks JakartaJakarta AFP

A suicide bombing attack outside a busy bus termi-nal in the Indonesian

capital Jakarta yesterday killed three police officers, the latest assault to hit the Muslim-major-ity country as it struggles with a surge of terror plots.

Several other police officers and civilians were injured when two bombers launched the attack in a street next to the sta-tion, which sent panicked people

running for their lives and clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky. Human body parts and shat-tered glass were strewn across the road following the attack, which happened at about 9:00pm as police were helping to secure a parade by a local group outside the terminal in the working-class district.

It was not clear who was behind the attack but Indonesia, the world's most populous Mus-lim-majority country, has been on high alert after a string of plots and attacks in recent times

by militants inspired by the Islamic State (IS) group.

The Kampung Melayu termi-nal in east Jakarta -- which is frequented by locals and is not popular with foreign visitors -- had been busy when the attack happened, and witnesses described scenes of panic as two blasts rang out minutes apart.

Dicky Wahyudin, 37, said he had been drinking a coffee across the road when the attack happened, prompting people to flee.

"Suddenly I heard two

explosions, which were big — I immediately ran away," he said.

A local shopkeeper, Rosmala — who like many Indonesians goes by one name — added: "At first I saw smoke and shattered glass, the earth was shaking, I was shocked. After a few min-utes there was another blast."

National police spokesman Setyo Wasisto told reporters that two suicide bombers had been involved in the attack and three police officers had died. He had earlier said he believed only one attacker was involved.

"I have to convey my deep-est condolences because three police officers died," he said.

Five other police officers and five civilians were injured, Wasisto said. Both suicide bomb-ers, who were men, died during the attack, he added.

The terminal is a local hub served by minibuses and buses. Indonesia has long struggled with Islamic militancy and has suffered a series of attacks in the past 15 years, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

Naypyidaw AFP

Hundreds of representa-tives from Myanmar's ethnic insurgent groups

gathered in the capital yester-day for talks aimed at reviving Aung San Suu Kyi's stuttering peace process after months of heavy fighting.

The discussions are her sec-ond attempt to end conflict in the country's troubled frontier regions, where various ethnic groups have been waging war against the state for almost seven decades. But more than a year after the Nobel laureate became the head of Myanmar's first freely elected government in genera-tions, little progress has been made on her flagship policy.

"The most important thing in the current situation is to be

able to hold a meaningful con-ference," said ethnic affairs

analyst Mg Mg Soe."We cannot say it is a suc-

cessful meeting if we do not get any agreement."

Many armed groups have complained that Suu Kyi has not listened to their concerns and is working too closely with the mil-itary, which ran the country with an iron fist for almost half a cen-tury and widely loathed by rebel groups. None of them are expected to sign up to the National Ceasefire Agreement she is pushing, a controversial deal first touted by the previous military-backed government.

But they are due to discuss for the first time whether states will be able to draft their own constitutions, something observ-ers say is an important and symbolic step forward.

Myanmar to start stalled peace processRights groups blames Sri Lanka police over anti-Muslim attacksColombo AFP

Rights groups accused Sri Lankan police yesterday of failing to stop a wave

of hate crimes against Muslim businesses and mosques in the Buddhist-majority country. Police are yet to make any arrests in connection with more than a dozen arson attacks against Muslims shops, mosques and a burial ground in the past month.

Prominent rights activist Victor Ivan said the inaction risked a repeat of anti-Muslim riots in 2014 that left four dead.

"Police are responsible for allowing this situation to

continue by not taking action against the perpetrators," Ivan told reporters in Colombo, add-ing that an extremist Buddhist group was believed to be behind the violence. Only prop-erty has been damaged so far in the latest spate of attacks.

The government said yes-terday the violence had been addressed in a cabinet meeting and police and security forces had been instructed to main-tain law and order.

"The president directed the Inspector General of Police to instruct all officers in charge of police stations to be responsi-ble for preventing such incidents," the government said in a statement.

Seoul Army says balloons prompted warning shotsSeoul AFP

Flying objects that prompted South Korean forces to fire warning

shots this week appeared to be balloons carrying propaganda leaflets from the North, Seoul's military said yesterday.

On Tuesday the defence ministry said troops had opened fire when an unidentified fly-ing object entered the country's airspace across the tense bor-der with North Korea, with a military official saying it appeared to be a drone.

Defence ministry spokes-man Moon Sang-Gyun yesterday told journalists that detailed examinations pointed to "bal-loon-like objects", 10 of which were observed flying with the winds in the border area. Some of them travelled into the

South's territory, he said. Both Koreas -- plus anti-Pyongyang activists based in the South -- send leaflets across the border, tied to gas-filled balloons. But Moon ruled out the possibility of the balloons coming from the South, saying that both Seoul and the southern-based activ-ists use cylindrical balloons, rather than spherical.

Lee Min-Bok, a North Korean defector-turned-activ-ist, told AFP that cylindrical balloons made of plastic cost much less than round rubber ones. "If the suspected balloons were spherical, then I suspect they were from North Korea", he said. Tensions are high in the region over the nuclear-armed North's weapons ambitions.

South Korea has repeatedly accused the North of flying sus-pected spy drones across the tense border.

Stepping aside

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a former guerrilla chief who led the decade-long Maoist insurgency before entering politics, is stepping aside after less than 10 months in office.

Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, gestures after announcing his resignation during an address to the nation in Kathmandu, yesterday.

Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Htin Kyaw after the opening ceremony of the 21st Century Panglong Conference in Naypyitaw, yesterday.

Kyrgyzstan Foreign Minister Erlan Abdyldaev meeting with United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bishkek, yesterday.

15THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017 EUROPE

Up in arms

Britain raises terror alert levelManchester AFP

Britain deployed sol-diers to key sites yesterday and raised its terror alert to the maximum after the

Manchester suicide bombing by a local man of Libyan origin who may have been radicalised in Syria.

Security services believe the suspected bomber, Salman Abedi, was likely to have had help from others in staging the attack that killed 22 people including a girl aged just eight.

Interior minister Amber Rudd said the 22-year-old had been on the radar of the intelli-gence community before the massacre late Monday at a con-cert by US pop star Ariana Grande.

Investigators were trying to piece together the last move-ments of Abedi.

In light of the Manchester attack, Nato chief Jens Stolten-berg said the military alliance

had to "step up and agree to do more in the fight against terror-ism" at summit talks set for today.

The summit is to be joined by US President Donald Trump, who has lambasted Nato for not doing more against Islamist extremism and who called those

responsible for the Manchester bombing "evil losers".

Rudd declined to give any further information about Abedi but said: "It was more sophisti-cated than some of the attacks we've seen before, and it seems likely -- possible -- that he wasn't doing this on his own."

The minister said she was "not surprised at all" that Islamic State jihadists had claimed the attack but said there was no information yet to confirm the extremist organisation's active direction.

It was the latest in a series of

deadly incidents across Europe claimed by IS jihadists that have coincided with an offensive on the group's redoubts in Syria and Iraq carried out by US, British and other Western forces.

British Prime Minister Theresa May placed the country on its highest level of terror alert -- "critical" -- for the first time since June 2007, when it was sparked by an attack on Glasgow airport.

Around 1,000 troops were fanning out at sites such as Buck-ingham Palace, Westminster and foreign embassies in London to free up armed police for anti-ter-

ror duties. May said a new attack "may

be imminent" and stressed that the soldiers would remain under police command.

The Changing of the Guard, a military ceremony in front of Buckingham Palace popular with tourists, was cancelled on Wednesday and the Houses of Parliament suspended all pub-lic events.

The attack was the deadliest in Britain since July 7, 2005 when four suicide bombers inspired by Al Qaeda attacked London's transport system during rush hour, killing 52 people.

Firefighter dead after weekend accident on jobMontezuma AP

A firefighter in Georgia has died after suffering a traumatic brain injury from an accident on the job.

The Telegraph reports 29-year-old Macon County firefighter Darrell Plank died on Tuesday. He suffered a skull fracture on Saturday, after being hit in the head by a metal coupling as a fire hose snagged on a truck at a house fire in Montezuma, about 80km southwest of Macon.

According to a release from the US Fire Administra-tion, Plank was in the process of donning his protective equipment when he was struck.

He was taken to a hospi-tal, and a CT scan conducted Monday showed he had suf-fered a stroke on the left side of his brain.

Plank leaves behind a wife and five children.

"He lived his life wide open," Macon County Fire Chief Micah Kauffman said.

"He was very passionate about everything he did."

Plank, a carpenter, volun-teered with fire departments in Macon and Montezuma counties and was a sports coach.

"He's giving of himself in an unselfish manner, know-ing the risks and knowing there is no benefit other than helping a fellow human," said Kauffman.

Three men arrested over Manchester attackManchester AFP

British police yesterday made three more arrests over the Manchester

concert attack that left 22 peo-ple dead, bringing the number

of men in custody to four."Three men have been

arrested after police executed warrants in South Manchester, in connection with the ongo-ing investigation into Monday night's horrific attack at the Manchester arena," a state-ment said.

Putin hopes for end to Macedonia political crisisMoscow AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow hopes for a democratic settle-

ment of Macedonia's political situation.

Putin made the statement yesterday at the start of his talks with Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, voicing hope that Ivanov's experience would help "Macedonia's domestic sit-uation develop in accordance with the constitution in a dem-ocratic way."

Since year 2015, the Bal-kans nation has been roiled by

a political crisis that threat-ened to ignite inter-ethnic conflict between ethnic Mac-edonians and Albanians, who make up a quarter of the population.

The turmoil culminated last month in angry protest-ers storming parliament, leaving more than 100 people injured.

Last week, Ivanov moved to end the crisis by handing the mandate to form a government to left-wing opposition leader Zoran Zaev, whose Social-Democrat Alliance party finished second in December's election

Nine detained in Germany over drug dealingBerlin AP

POLICE in Berlin have raided six sites across the German capital and detained nine people, some with links to extremism.

In a statement yesterday, police said the men were wanted on suspicion of organised drug dealing.

Police said arrest war-rants existed for three of those detained and a fourth person was due to appear before a judge yesterday.

Authorities consider the four to be "part of the Islam-ist spectrum willing to use violence."

The other five men are still under investigation.

Police also seized elec-tronic equipment, narcotics and weapons during the raids.

Berlin police were criti-cized for failing to arrest a known drug dealer, Anis Amri, who subsequently drove a truck into a Christ-mas market killing 12 people.

Bosnia genocide suspect returned to SerbiaMiami AP

A man wanted in connec-tion with a 1995 genocide that took place

during Bosnia's civil war has been returned to his native Ser-bia to face charges.

US Immigration and Cus-toms Enforcement officials said Tuesday in a news release that 44-year-old Srdjan Bilic was flown to Belgrade, Serbia, from Miami International Airport. ICE agents turned him over to Serbian authorities.

ICE says Bilic was a

member of a Bosnian Serb army brigade implicated in genocide that took place in Srebrenica, Bosnia, in July 1995.

About 8,000 men and boys were executed, and 30,000 women and children were expelled from the area.

20 migrants drown off Libyan coastRome AFP

At least 20 migrants including young children drowned yesterday

when they fell off an over-loaded vessel in the Mediterranean, the Italian coastguard and a humanitar-ian worker said.

"There's a critical situation today. About 200 people fell into the water and for the moment we have 20 bodies," a coastguard spokesman said.

The migrants were on a wooden boat carrying between

500 and 700 people and were just 20 nautical miles off the Libyan coast when the accident happened.

The crew of the Phoenix aid boat, chartered by the Maltese NGO Moas, had begun the res-cue and were distributing lifejackets when many of those on deck fell into the water, per-haps knocked off balance by a wave.

"It's not a scene from a hor-ror movie, it's a real-life tragedy that is taking place today at the gates of Europe," said Chris Cat-rambone, Moas co-founder, who was aboard the Phoenix.

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said the military alliance had to "step up and agree to do more in the fight against terrorism".

Around 1,000 troops were fanning out at sites such as Buckingham Palace, Westminster and foreign embassies in London to free up armed police for anti-terror duties.

Troops fan out

British Army soldiers patrol along Whitehall near Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament, in central London, yesterday.

Basescu's daughter to stand trial on briberyBucharest AP

The daughter of former Romanian President Tra-ian Basescu and his

closest aide are among those who will stand trial on bribery and other corruption-related charges connected to his pres-i d e n t i a l c a m p a i g n , anti-corruption prosecutors said yesterday.

Basescu's daughter, daughter Ioana Basescu, ex-Tourism Minister Elena Udrea and journalist Dan Andronic were notified they would be sent to trial over the 2009 campaign. Basescu defeated former Foreign Minister Mir-cea Geoana in the election.

Traian Basescu, who was president from 2004 to 2014, declined to comment.

Udrea was charged with instigating bribery and money laundering in connection with the campaign. She denies wrongdoing.

Prosecutors said Udrea was the unofficial chief of Basescu's campaign, which they allege was financed with money obtained through embezzlement and money laundering.

Ioana Basescu, a public notary, was charged with instigating embezzlement and i n s t i g a t i n g m o n e y laundering.

Prosecutors said she asked the manager of a state-owned company to illicitly pay for some of her father's campaign costs through a fic-titious contract.

Andronic, who acted as a political consultant, was charged with making false statements.

Neither Ioana nor Basescu commented on the charges.

Three former government officials also were charged w i t h b r i b e r y a n d embezzlement.

No date has been set for the trial.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (right) with his Macedonian counterpart Gjorge Ivanov at the Kremlin in Moscow, yesterday.

United Nations and other agencies staff demonstrate against a planned 7.5 percent salary cut at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, yesterday.

16 THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017EUROPE

Religious activity

France & Germany agree to Nato role against ISBrussels Reuters

France and Germany will agree to a US plan for Nato to take a bigger role in the fight against militants at a meeting

with President Donald Trump, but insist the move is purely sym-bolic, four senior European diplomats said.

The decision to allow the North Atlantic Treaty Organisa-tion to join the coalition against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq fol-lows weeks of pressure on the two allies, who are wary of Nato confronting Russia in Syria and of alienating Arab countries who see Nato as pushing a pro-West-ern agenda.

"Nato as an institution will join the coalition," said one sen-ior diplomat involved in the discussions. "The question is whether this just a symbolic ges-ture to the United States. France and Germany believe it is."

Flying to the Nato meeting in Brussels, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said yesterday it would be an important step for the Organisation to join the US-led, 68-nation coalition.

"I think they're going to sup-port Nato joining and becoming a formal member," he said, refer-ring to "a couple of countries that are still thinking it over" but not giving details.

A senior French diplomat said Paris was ready to accept Nato joining, but that its role would be limited to training and intelli-gence, things allies were already

involved in."We want to ensure that

momentum (in the US-led coali-tion) is not disturbed," the diplomat said.

US and other European offi-cials want to show Trump, who called Nato "obsolete" because he said it was not doing enough against terrorism, that the alli-ance is responding.

While IS is on the verge of defeat in its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul and bracing for an assault against its de facto capital in Raqqa, Syria, US officials are con-cerned fleeing militants could leave a vacuum that could prompt Arab tribal fighters to turn on each other to gain control.

All 28 Nato allies are mem-bers of the coalition, but the alliance as a formal member could become more involved,

contributing equipment, training and the expertise it gained lead-ing nations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has also made the case for a non-combat role for the alliance in Syria and Iraq.

"Nato joining the coalition will also provide a better platform for coordinating the activities of Nato allies ... in the fight against terrorism," Stoltenberg said.

"It sends a strong and clear message of unity in the fight against terrorism and especially in light of the terrorist attacks in Manchester," he said recently.

Some allies including Britain were keen for Nato to do even more, for example using its AWACS surveillance planes over Syria and running command-and-control operations.

German and French opposi-tion means that for the moment, only one plane will watch over Syria from Nato-ally Turkey's air-space to provide air traffic information to improve safety for planes.

French government spokes-man Christophe Castaner said that President Emmanuel Macron would speak to Trump at their lunch in Brussels today and that he understood Trump's call for a greater Nato role in Syria and Iraq.

"The president will say that he is attentive to this (Trump's call), but to make clear that it is not about transforming Nato into the sole strike force against Islamic State," Castaner said recently.

German lawmakers cancel Turkey visit amid tensionsBerlin AFP

A German parliamentary delegation has called off a Turkey trip, saying that

Ankara had made clear they were not welcome amid a fes-tering bilateral row.

A foreign ministry spokes-man said Berlin "regrets and laments" the fact the trip wouldn't go ahead, calling it "another missed opportunity" for dialogue.

The lawmakers had been told a visit would "not be opportune", that they would not be invited to official talks or the Turkish parliament and have no security detail, said the Greens Party's parliamentary vice president Claudia Roth recently.

She charged that Turkey effectively blocking the planned

four-day trip from Thursday was a "new escalation" in bilat-eral tensions and "a de facto cancellation of political dia-logue," in comments to national news agency DPA.

The four-member group had planned to visit Ankara, Istanbul and the Kurdish-majority eastern province of Diyarbakir.

Ties between the Nato allies have been strained especially since a failed coup in Turkey last year, and have worsened over multiple issues.

Relations plunged further after Turkey imprisoned Deniz Yucel, a German-Turkish jour-nalist with Die Welt, on terror charges earlier this year while Germany granted political asylum to some Turkish mil-itary officers accused of involvement in the attempted putsch.

Finland acquits Iraqi twins over massacreHelsinki AFP

A Finnish court yesterday acquitted twin Iraqi broth-ers accused of war crimes over their alleged role in a 2014 massacre of up to 1,700 unarmed recruits by the Islamic State group in Iraq.

The court in Tampere, in southwestern Finland, said there was not enough conclu-sive evidence for a conviction.

The two men, born in 1992, came to Finland as asy-lum seekers in September 2015 and were arrested three months later.

US rejects talks with Orban over education lawBudapest Reuters

The United States has no intention of negotiating with Hungary about its

new higher education law, which could force a top univer-sity founded by US financier George Soros out of the country, the US State Department said.

The Central European Uni-versity (CEU) found itself in the eye of a political storm after Hungary's parliament passed a law last month setting tougher conditions for the awarding of licences to foreign-based universities.

The law has triggered a series of street protests - the most recent on Sunday - against Prime Minister Viktor Orban's right-wing government less than

a year before a parliamentary election.

Orban had proposed talks with the US about the law, say-ing the reforms were meant to level the playing field for all uni-versities in Hungary. But the response dashed any prospect of a compromise through talks with Washington.

"The Government of

Hungary should engage directly with affected institutions to find a resolution that allows them to continue to function freely and provide greater educational opportunity for the citizens of Hungary and the region," the State Department said.

"The US Government has no authority or intention to enter into negotiations on the opera-tion of Central European University or other universities in Hungary," it said.

Orban's government said it had a clear interest in reaching an agreement "but unfortunately no support for this process has been forthcoming from the US federal government."

Washington again urged Hungary to suspend implemen-tation of the law, but Budapest rejected accusations the reforms

were discriminatory or that they threatened academic freedom.

The European Commission has started legal action against Hungary over the new law, while the European Parliament has condemned Budapest for what it called a "serious deterioration" in the rule of law and fundamen-tal rights.

Orban has eliminated checks on his power by taking control of the public media, curbing the powers of the constitutional court, and placing loyalists in top positions at public institutions.

He has rejected accusations that Budapest was threatening the Central European University and dismissed Soros, whose Open Society Foundations has been active in Hungary for three decades, as a "financial speculator".

Nato joining the coalition will also provide a better platform for coordinating the activities of Nato allies ... in the fight against terrorism: Stoltenberg.

France and Germany will agree to a US plan for Nato to take a bigger role in the fight against militants but insist the move is purely symbolic: Diplomats.

War on terrorism

"The US Government has no authority or intention to enter into negotiations on the operation of Central European University or other universities in Hungary".

University row

Drugmaker to face trial over weight-loss pillParis Reuters

The Paris prosecu-tor's office said yesterday that

drugmaker Servier Lab-oratories as well as the French drug regulator should face trial over weight-loss pill Mediator, believed to have caused at least 500 deaths in one of France's worst health scandals.

Once licenced as a diabetes treatment, the drug was widely pre-scribed as an appetite suppressant to help peo-ple lose weight.

Mediator, whose active chemical substance is known as Benfluorex, was withdrawn from the French market in the year 2009, around a decade after being pulled in Spain, Italy and the United States.

The prosecutor's indictment covers charges of misleading claims as well as man-slaughter and targets 14 people as well as 11 insti-tutions including Servier and the French drug reg-ulator ANSM.

The spokesperson with Servier Laboratories had no comment at this time.

According to the health ministry yesterday, at least 500 people died of heart valve trouble in France because of expo-sure to Mediator's active ingredient.

Other estimates based on extrapolations have put the death toll closer to 2,000.

A performance takes place during the opening service of the German protestant church congress Kirchentag in front of the Reichstag building, the seat of the lower house of parliament in Berlin, yesterday.

Trump arrives in Brussels for Nato talksBrussels AFP

US President Donald Trump arrived in Brussels yesterday ahead of his first talks with

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) and European Union leaders, a journalist said.

After a brief arrival ceremony at the Brussels airport, the president headed for a photo opportunity with the King and Queen of Belgium and a bilateral meeting with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel that included a discussion of counterter-rorism in the wake of Monday's bombing at a concert in Manchester, England, for which the Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

People carry effigies of US President Donald Trump and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel during a demonstration.

FROM LEFT: Queen Mathilde of Belgium, US President Donald Trump, King Philippe of Belgium and US First Lady Melania Trump during a reception at the Royal Palace, in Brussels, yesterday.

17THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017 EUROPE

British political parties resume vote campaignLondon AFP

Britain's governing Con-servative Party and the main opposition Labour

said they would resume local campaigning today for the June 8 general election, after sus-pending efforts due to Monday's terror attack.

"Both the Conservatives and Labour will then resume national campaigning with Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Cor-byn on Friday," officials said.

"The British people are united in their resolve that ter-ror will not prevail. It will not prevent us going about our daily lives or derail our demo-cratic process," Corbyn said in

a statement."Resuming democratic

debate and campaigning is an essential mark of the country's determination to defend our democracy and the unity that the terrorist have sought to attack," he said.

A Conservative Party spokesman said yesterday: "We will resume local campaigning tomorrow... and national cam-paigning on Friday".

May and Corbyn spoke early on Tuesday -- hours after the attack in Manchester in which 22 people were killed and dozens more injured, to agree to halt all national cam-paigning out of respect for the victims.

They were joined by the other major parties.

EU urges Balkan nations to uniteBrussels Reuters

The European Union's top diplomat Federica Mogherini urged six Western Balkan lead-ers yesterday to

overcome differences and work better together as they move towards joining the bloc.

Mogherini hosts the leaders of Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Kosovo over a dinner in Brussels, as part of the EU's recently revived efforts to work more closely with the region.

The EU has been alarmed by growing tensions in Western

Balkans and believes Russia has played a destabilising role in the region, still scarred by the wars that tore Yugoslavia apart in 1990s along ethnic and religious lines.

Moscow denies meddling in the region.

"I invited ... the six Western Balkan partners to share with them the state of play on the sit-uation in the region, the way ahead, how the EU can strengthen opportunities and perspectives for good neigh-bourly relations in the region," Mogherini said yesterday.

"(To) increase cooperation among them and between each one of them and the EU," she said, adding that the six must also focus on political and eco-nomic reforms.

Mogherini was speaking days after a months-long political stalemate was broken

in Macedonia, where Social Democrats won a mandate to form a government with ethnic Albanians, and in Albania itself, where opposition ministers joined the government to pre-pare elections.

The EU has lobbied hard for both these moves, which fol-lowed months of worrying developments that also included heated exchanges between Ser-bia and Kosovo, and Montenegro blaming Russia for plotting to stall its accession to Nato.

Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic told reporters: "EU membership is a common goal for all six countries."

"The most important thing is

that we maintain peace and sta-bility in the region. This evening at dinner we are going to discuss a series of regional projects, especial ly in energy infrastructure."

While EU officials privately admit the bloc - increasingly engulfed with its own problems - has been focusing less on the Western Balkans, they say the six countries also still have plenty of homework to complete if they are ever to join.

"They always come and say 'The Russians are coming'. Yes, that puts them back on the radar but it is not enough to make them member states," said one EU official.

UN seeks date for Cyprus peace talksNicosia AFP

A new Cyprus peace con-ference in Geneva to push forward stalled reunification talks could be agreed by the end of this week, a UN offi-cial said yesterday.

"It is both possible and also my ambition to get an agreement on this issue at the end of this week," UN envoy Espen Barth Eide said yesterday.

Eide is involved in shut-tle diplomacy between Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anasta-siades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci to bro-ker agreement on a Geneva summit.

The envoy said there was a "desire to go the final mile and go to Geneva" but "there are real differences we still have to work on."

"I think both sides are in agreement that there is no purpose in going to Geneva just for going to Geneva, just to spend some weeks in Geneva, it doesn't have any meaning in itself," he said after a meeting with Anastasiades.

UN-facilitated peace talks aim to reunite Cyprus under a federal roof.

Anastasiades and Akinci are still far apart on core issues such as power sharing, territorial adjustments, secu-rity arrangements and property rights.

The Greek Cypriot leader wants Geneva to focus on post-solution security arrangements while Akinci wants issues of power shar-ing at the fore.

Wannacry virus hits Russian postal serviceMoscow Reuters

RUSSIA'S postal service was hit by Wannacry ransomware last week and some of its com-puters are still down, three employees in Moscow said, the latest sign of weaknesses that have made the country a major victim of the global extortion campaign.

Wannacry compromised the post office's automated queue management system, infecting touch-screen termi-nals which run on the outdated Windows XP oper-ating system, one of the workers said. Terminals were still blank in some parts of Moscow this week but it was not clear exactly how many branches had been affected.

A spokesman for Russian Post, a state-owned monop-oly, said no computers were infected, but some terminals were temporarily switched off as a precaution.

"The virus attack did not touch Russian Post, all sys-tems are working and stable," he said.

Guterres seeks $40.5m fund for cholera victims

Mogherini hosts the leaders of Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Kosovo over a dinner in Brussels, as part of EU's recently revived efforts to work more closely with the region.

Neighbour relations

Macron's party likely to win electionsParis Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron's party is set to win as much as a third of the

vote in legislative elections next month, giving it a solid majority, two polls showed yesterday.

Macron's Republic On The Move (LREM) would win 33 per-cent of the vote in the first round of voting on June 11, an Elabe poll for BFM TV found.

A separate Ifop Fiducial poll for Paris Match magazine,

CNews TV and Sud Radio found 31 percent of those surveyed planned on voting for LREM.

That was up from up from 22 percent the last time the poll was conducted on May 4-5, before Macron was elected pres-ident in a runoff vote against far right leader Marine Le Pen on May 7.

In the Elabe poll 20 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for the conservative Republicans party, which was seen winning 19 percent of the vote in the Ifop poll.

That would be just barely ahead of Le Pen's National Front, which was at 19 percent in the Elabe poll and 18 percent in the Ifop poll.

The far left France Unbowed party was seen winning 15 per-cent in the Ifop poll and 12 percent in the Elabe poll.

In both cases that was well ahead of the Socialists at about seven percent, far behind the 29.5 percent they won in the last legislative election in 2012, giv-ing them a majority with their allies.

United Nations AP

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is asking UN member states to transfer

$40.5m in unspent funds from Haiti's peacekeeping mission to help communities and vic-tims of a cholera outbreak that has afflicted over 800,000 peo-ple, according to a report released Tuesday.

Guterres said in the report to the Security Council that the money is desperately needed for a trust fund that the UN had hoped would raise $400m to provide aid to the families of victims and afflicted commu-nities, and to help eradicate the disease.

So far, the report said only $2.67m has been contributed to the fund from Chile, France, India, Liechtenstein, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Britain. Canada and Japan have sepa-rately contributed $8.5m to assist Haiti.

The Security Council voted unanimously last month to end the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti in mid-October after 13 years.

The peacekeepers helped normalise a country in chaos after political upheaval in 2004, but UN troops from Nepal were widely blamed for introducing cholera to Haiti after a devas-tating earthquake in 2010.

The death toll as of April was over 9,500.

For years the UN had denied or been silent on the longstanding allegations that it was responsible for the out-break, while responding to lawsuits in US courts by claim-ing diplomatic immunity.

Last August, a US appeals court upheld the United Nations' immunity from a law-suit filed on behalf of 5,000 Haitian cholera victims who blame the UN for the epidemic.

After the ruling, then sec-retary-general Ban Ki-moon said he deeply regretted the suffering that cholera has caused and the UN had a moral responsibility to the victims.

He later apologised for the UN not doing enough to con-tain the spread of cholera and announced a new UN approach to eliminate the disease which sought to raise $400m.

Activists protest Poland logging projectWarsaw AFP

Activists chained them-selves to logging equipment in Poland's

ancient Bialowieza forest yes-terday, accusing authorities of felling trees in protected areas of Unesco World Heritage site.

The move comes after a "final warning" by the European

Commission sent to Warsaw in April saying it could take legal action to halt large-scale logging in Europe's last primeval woodland.

Dawid Kazmierczak, an activist with Wild Poland said that their patrols "proved that logging had started in the old-est and most valuable parts of the forest" that are protected.

"Stop the logging in the

Bialowieza Forest" read a ban-ner protesters strung up between two trees over heavy logging equipment standing idle, photographs issued by the activ-ists yesterday showed.

"We're in the forest to stop its destruction caused by the scandalous decisions of (Envi-ronment) Minister Jan Szyszko," Greenpeace Polska activist Rob-ert Cyglicki said in a statement.

French President Emmanuel Macron (centre) with Secretary General of the Elysee Palace, Alexis Kohler (left), and Admiral Bernard Rogel during a weekly Defence Council at the Elysee Palace in Paris, yesterday.

Activists chain themselves during an action in the defence of one of the last primeval forests in Europe, called Bialowieza forest, yesterday.

Ukraine database maker accused of fraudKiev Reuters

The head of a Ukrainian software firm tasked with building a landmark

anti-corruption computer pro-gramme is suspected of stealing Western funds from the project and funnelling the cash overseas, General Prose-cutor Yuriy Lutsenko said yesterday.

The boss of the software company, Yuriy Novikov, strongly denied the accusation and a leading anti-graft non-governmental organisation also expressed doubts about the case.

The database of lawmak-ers' and officials' asset declarations was meant to be a cornerstone of the govern-ment's Western-backed reform drive.

But the scheme has been mired in scandal, and activists say vested interests have tried to sabotage it.

Novikov's company Miranda won the tender to cre-ate the database, but prosecutors say he subcon-tracted a university teacher and his students to build the software and stole the project's funding that had been given by the Danish government.

18 THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017AMERICAS

Venezuela crisis

Maduro signed a document formally establishing the terms for electing members of a “constituent assembly” that will be tasked with drafting a new constitution.

Elections to the new assembly will take place at the end of July, the National Electoral Council president Tibisay Lucena said.

NEWS BYTES

US decision on expanded laptop ban not imminent WASHINGTON: The US Homeland Security Department said yesterday that that no specific timeline had been set for a decision on whether to expand a ban on larger electron-ics as carry-on luggage for air travel. DHS spokesman David Lapan told reporters that there was “nothing imminent” that would require an immediate decision to expand the ban on laptops, which currently applies to 10 mostly Middle East-ern airports. He also said there has been no discussion on expanding the ban to domestic US flights or flights leaving the United States. Lapan reiterated that DHS still believed it was “likely” the US ban will be expanded. He said talks with Europe were not a “negotiation” over whether to expand the airports covered because Homeland Security director John Kelly would make any decision based strictly on an anal-ysis of threats. DHS and European officials held a working group level meeting on Tuesday but no new talks are cur-rently scheduled, Lapan said. Lapan said the United States would give airports at least the same four-day notice it gave Middle Eastern and other airlines in March before the restric-tions took effect, but said it could be longer.

Massive rockslide buries stretch of iconic California highwayLOS ANGELES: A massive rockslide has buried a stretch of California’s iconic seaside Highway 1 which had already been hit by a number of road closures caused by severe win-ter storms, state transportation officials said. The slide on one of America’s most picturesque highways took place on Satur-day morning in a remote and largely uninhabited area known as Mud Creek. The road in that section of the highway had already been shut down before a million tonnes of earth came tumbling down from a hillside, burying a 1,500-foot section of the highway, said Jim Shivers, a spokesman for the state’s transportation agency. “We’re looking at a road closure of several months,” he said. “This is a very, very big event... and it’s something that we really haven’t seen before. We have a lot of work to do.” He said the scale of the slide was such that the wall of rock and dirt that cascaded down the slope con-tinued down to the ocean floor 250 feet off the shoreline.

Airport reopens after engine fire prompts plane evacuationWASHINGTON: Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey has reopened after temporarily shutting down late on Tuesday, following an engine fire that prompted the evacua-tion of an aeroplane, officials said. There were reports of five minor injuries, according to a statement posted on the air-port’s official Twitter account, with delays expected to persist through the night. The airport is a major international hub near New York City. “Newark Airport is temporarily closed due to deployment of emergency chutes on a plane with an apparent engine fire,” an earlier post on the airport’s offi-cial Twitter account had said. A passenger posted video of the plane on the tarmac surrounded by vehicles with flash-ing lights. “Just had to evacuate my @united flight using the slide,” the user tweeted using the handle @lo_toney. United Airlines Flight 1579 bound for San Francisco halted its take-off as it was taxiing on the runway, local media reported.

Panel to subpoena Michael FlynnWASHINGTON: The US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee will subpoena former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its probe into alleged Russian meddling in the presiden-tial election after he declined to appear before the panel, its top Democrat said. “We will be following up with subpoenas, and those subpoenas will be designed to maximise our chance of get-ting the information that we need,” Representative Adam Schiff said. The leaders of the US Senate Intelligence Committee said on Tuesday they would subpoena two of Flynn’s businesses after he declined to hand over documents in its separate Russia probe.

Dallas AP

Without the shocking video, it’s unlikely that the world would have

learned or cared about the vio-lent manhandling of a 69-year-old man on a plane last month.

The outrage on social media, the mea culpa by an airline CEO, the promise to treat customers better — none of it would have happened. The passengers who shot those videos on a United Express plane in Chicago violated United’s policy on photography. By the letter of the airline’s law, they too could have been ordered off the plane. Under United’s pol-icy, customers can take pictures or videos with small cameras or cellphones “provided that the purpose is capturing personal events.” Filming or photograph-ing other customers or airline

employees without their consent is prohibited. American, Delta and Southwest have similar policies.

Passengers are accustomed to using their cellphones to take photos and videos that they can upload to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Airline rules on pho-tography are sporadically enforced, but passengers should read them in the in-flight mag-azines because there can be consequences.

This month, a United ticket agent ordered a passenger’s res-ervation canceled as he filmed her while disputing a $300 bag-gage fee in the New Orleans airport. After Navang Oza posted his video online, United apolo-gized, saying that the video “does not reflect the positive customer experience we strive to offer.”

In April, a JetBlue Airways crew called airport police to meet a man who they said

continued to record a selfie video during a security-sensitive time in flight, while the cockpit door was opened. Michael Nissensohn insists that he wasn’t recording the procedure.

“I told them there is no rule against talking a selfie on a plane,” Nissensohn says. He says he was ordered off the plane and held up at LaGuardia airport in New York for more than an hour before being let go without charges. JetBlue declined to com-ment on the incident. A spokesman says the airline doesn’t publish its photography policy for security reasons.

With airline customer serv-ice in decline, videotaping is the only way that passengers can make sure they are treated fairly, says Gary Leff, a travel blogger who has criticized the airlines over the issue. “The TSA allows more photography at the check-point than the airlines allow on

board their planes,” he says.The Transportation Security

Administration says that photog-raphy at checkpoints is fine if people don’t take images of monitors or interfere with screeners. Travel bloggers say, however, that people have had run-ins with TSA officers, and you should expect to be ques-tioned if you snap more than a casual photo of a companion.

Lawyers who specialize in First Amendment or travel law say airlines generally cannot limit photography or video recording in an airport because it is a public space. But airlines have more power on planes because as pri-vate parties they are not bound by the First Amendment. “They are within their rights to establish these rules, they are within their rights to throw you off the aircraft if you continue filming,” says Joseph Larsen, a media-law attorney in Houston.

However, there is no law against taking photos or video on an airplane, and it is unlikely that anyone would face legal jeopardy for taking pictures of an altercation on a plane or their own peaceful dispute with an airline employee, Larsen says.

“If you see something going on that is a matter of legitimate public interest,” he says, go ahead and capture it even if you don’t have express permission to film another passenger. The man who was roughed up by air-port officers on the United Express plane, David Dao, “has already got his settlement with United,” Larsen says. After a video of a confrontation over a stroller between an American Airlines flight attendant and a mother with two young children, the airline grounded the employee. The person who shot the video violated American’s policy, which prohibits

“unauthorized photography or video recording” of employees or other passengers.

Privately, airline officials say it is unlikely they would take action in such cases. American is reviewing its policy because of the difficulty of enforcing it.

Even if the law is on the side of the passenger with a camera, there are practical considera-tions. “Unless it’s a legitimate safety issue like annoying other people, I don’t see a problem with taking photos on a plane. But that’s a call of the captain, and in the first instance the cap-tain is right,” says Thomas Dickerson, a retired New York state judge and author of “Travel Law.”

Passengers can challenge the captain’s judgment in court, and might win, Dickerson says, “but the problem for consum-ers is, do you really want to get thrown off the plane?”

Caracas AFP

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro for-mally launched moves to rewrite the constitution, defying

opponents who accuse him of clinging to power in a political cri-sis that has prompted deadly unrest. At an open air rally before thousands of supporters wearing red t-shirts, Maduro signed a document formally establishing the terms for electing members of a “constituent assembly” that will be tasked with drafting a new constitution.

His backers waved red, yel-low and blue national flags in defiance of angry opposition protests after the death toll from weeks of clashes reached 53.

Elections to the new assem-bly will take place at the end of July, the National Electoral Council president Tibisay Lucena said in a televised statement.

Airlines have rules about taking photos & video on planes

Maduro in bid to rewrite charter

He also said gubernatorial elections pending since last December would take place on December 10 this year. The opposition-controlled National Assembly promptly rejected Maduro’s plan. “The Venezuelan people do not want a fraudulent Madurist constitution and we will not accept it,” opposition leader Henrique Capriles tweeted.

Violence has appeared to intensify in recent days with daily opposition marches calling for early elections. Crowds doused a man in fuel and set him alight at a demonstration on Sunday. Another three people died from gunshot wounds late Monday in riots in the western state of Bar-inas. The government and opposition accuse each other of sending armed groups to sow vio-lence during demonstrations.

Maduro has accused the

opposition of “terrorism,” resist-ing its calls for a vote on removing him from power. The opposition blames him for an economic crisis that has caused major shortages of food, medi-cine and other basic goods amid soaring inflation. It says he plans to pack the “constituent assem-bly” with his supporters.

Maduro said 176 of the assembly’s members will be drawn from certain civil groups, which the opposition say are tra-ditionally loyal to him and his late predecessor Hugo Chavez. In a move set to further inflame the opposition, Maduro said the constitutional body would sit in the chamber of the National Assembly legislature — the only state institution nominally con-trolled by his opponents.

“What Nicolas Maduro has announced is nothing but a

continuation of a coup against the constitution,” said the oppo-sition speaker of the legislature, Julio Borges. “This National Assembly calls on Venezuelans to continue peaceful protests morning, noon and night in all corners of Venezuela until the constitution is respected.”

Electoral specialist Eugenio Martinez said on Twitter that the constitutional assembly looked likely to be set up via “a made-to-measure election, a process designed to make the Chavista vote worth more than the oppo-sition one.” A total of 53 people have died during demonstrations, many of them shot, public pros-ecutors said on Tuesday. Looting has broken out in various cities.

The man set alight on Sun-day had been accused of thieving. Maduro said he was targeted for being a government supporter.

New York AFP

Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos is giving $1m to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the largest-ever

gift to the media rights watchdog. The gift from Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post newspaper, was announced at the organ-isation’s awards dinner late on Tuesday.

“This generous gift will help us continue to grow, to offer our legal and educational support to many more news organizations, and to expand our services to independent journalists, nonprofit newsrooms and doc-umentary filmmakers,” Reporters Committee chairman David Boardman said.

“We’ll also be better positioned to help local newsrooms, the places hit hardest by the disruption in the news industry and whose survival is every bit as crucial to American democracy as those entities head-quartered in Washington and New York.”

The Reporters Committee also announced it will play a role in administer-ing the First Look Media Press Freedom Defence Fund of up to $6m.

First Look, a news organization estab-lished by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, announced separately that it will increase its funding for its press freedom fund to $2m and offer an additional $2m in matching funds.

Both Bezos and Omidyar in recent months have cited a need for efforts to sup-port an independent press. Bezos said last year during President Donald Trump’s cam-paign that the candidate was “working to freeze or chill the media that are examining him”. The Omidyar Network, a philanthropy established by the eBay founder, last month pledged $100m to support independent and investigative journalism worldwide.

Omidyar said in a tweet about the ini-tiative last month: “The fight against misinformation, authoritarian lies, and online abuse is a fight we can win.”

Protesters mass in Brasilia against TemerBrasília AFP

At least 25,000 people massed in Bra-silia yesterday to demand new elections and an end to austerity

reforms in a protest fueled by anger over a corruption scandal swirling around Pres-ident Michel Temer.

Organised by leftist groups and trade unions, the protesters poured into the center of Brazil’s capital. Brazil’s left is sniffing an opportunity for revenge just over a year since Temer took over from Workers’ Party president Dilma Rousseff after she was impeached for illegally manipulating government accounts.

Temer, from the center-right PMDB party, is reeling from a probe into his alleged corruption. “It’s the end of this putchist gov-ernment. That’s why the people have taken to the streets,” said Francisca Gomes, 59, who came from Sao Paulo for the protest and car-ried a funeral ribbon carrying the image of the president and the words: “RIP Temer.”

Amazon’s Bezos gives $1m to press freedom watchdog

Demonstrators clash with riot police while rallying against President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, yesterday.

19THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017 AMERICAS

Washington AFP

The US State Depart-ment laid out plans to put “America first” and to slash Washing-ton’s budget for

diplomacy and foreign aid by more than 30 percent.

Secretary of State Rex Tiller-son said President Donald Trump’s dramatic plan, which will be reviewed by Congress, would make government “leaner and more accountable”.

If the proposed cuts are approved by US lawmakers, the State Department and USAID budget for 2018 will be $37.6bn, down from an estimated final 2017 spend of $54.9bn.

“This budget request reflects the president’s ‘America First’ agenda,” Tillerson said, in a statement released in Washing-ton while he and Trump flew to Rome from Jerusalem.

Tillerson promised that this agenda “prioritises the well-being of Americans, bolsters US national security, secures our borders, and advances US eco-nomic interests”.

Nevertheless, confirmation of the planned cuts would dis-may many diplomats and policy experts, who see US soft power waning at the expense of bal-looning military spending. The deepest cuts will hit foreign assistance programs and Amer-ica’s contributions to international organizations like the United Nations and its glo-bal peacekeeping budget.

Despite the huge topline budget cut, the plan does not foresee a major cut in the State Department’s quota of US-hired

staff, which will drop only 200 to 27,950 posts worldwide.

Counterterrorism and the battle against international organized crime fare much bet-ter, and the budget requests $5.6bon for the fight against the Islamic State group.

American lawmakers, who have the final say on the federal budget, are unlikely to approve it in full, fearing that it will dam-age US leadership across many key areas. Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking opposition Demo-crat on the Foreign Relations Committee, warned that the budget was already “dead on arrival” on Capitol Hill. Repub-l ican L insey Graham highlighted planned cuts to embassy security measures and warned it could lead to a repeat of the deadly 2012 attack on a US compound in Libya.

But, whether or not the most draconian cuts are approved,

Tillerson’s proposal does show the direction Trump plans to take US foreign policy in the months to come. The budget proposal shows Trump is seri-ous about forcing US allies to pay more for their shared defence. And it envisages dra-matic cuts to US support for United Nations peacekeeping, even as US Ambassador Nikki Haley presses UN members to review ongoing missions.

“The financial year 2018 request includes reductions in anticipation that allied nations will provide a more equitable cost-share,” the budget docu-ment says of Nato. “It will eliminate or reduce payments to ineffective or inefficient organizations,” it warns.

Haley has said that she would like to see the proportion of the cost of UN peacekeeping borne by American fall from 28 to 25 percent, and for some operations to be halted. The budget line for “contributions to international peacekeeping activities” would fall from $665m to $268m— a drop of almost 60 percent.

The budget document con-firms that this will fall short of the amount UN members have assessed as Washington’s share, suggesting a UN General Assem-bly budget showdown to come. And it warns that Washington will only back “UN peacekeeping operations that have proven their overall effectiveness in advanc-ing our national interests.”

But Haley, who will have to defend the cuts at the UN, declared her support for Trump’s measures, vowing that the US will remain a leading donor of humanitarian aid.

New York Reuters

A federal appeals court yes-terday rejected a bid by Jonathan Pollard, a

former US Navy intelligence officer convicted of spying for Israel, to relax his parole condi-tions. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the US Parole Commission acted within its discretion in requir-ing Pollard to wear an electronic tracking device, obey a 7pm to 7am curfew, and allow his com-puters to be monitored.

Pollard, 62, was paroled in November 2015 after serving 30 years of a life sentence for espi-onage. He had said the parole conditions were too severe because he was neither a flight

risk, nor a threat to disseminate or even remember classified information he learned decades ago. Pollard also said the con-ditions have prevented him from getting a job. But the court said parole officials could consider both Pollard’s alleged “propen-sity to dissemble,” as well as the assessment by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that documents com-promised by Pollard remained classified.

Pollard’s parole conditions “minimized the risk of harm he continued to pose for United States intelligence,” the three-judge appeals court panel said.

Eliot Lauer, a lawyer for Pol-lard, said in an email he was disappointed in the outcome, and that the court declined to

“confront the Commission on the manifest injustice of these onerous and unnecessary restrictions.” US authorities accused Pollard of having in 1984 and 1985 provided Israeli contacts with suitcases full of classified documents in exchange for thou-sands of dollars of payments.

Pollard pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in 1986 and was sentenced to life in prison the next year. Prior to being paroled, he had been held in custody since his 1985 arrest.

Now living in New York City, Pollard must remain in the United States for five years, and cannot move to Israel to join his wife, who lives there. Israel has long sought his release, and in a gesture of solidarity granted Pollard citizenship in 1995.

US plans deep cuts to diplomacy and aid

Convicted spy Pollard loses bidto relax US parole conditions

America First

If the proposed cuts are approved by US lawmakers, the State Department and USAID budget for 2018 will be $37.6bn, down from an estimated final 2017 spend of $54.9bn.

The plan does not foresee a major cut in the State Department’s quota of US-hired staff, which will drop only 200 to 27,950 posts worldwide.

Demonstrators hold portraits of murdered Mexican journalists beside a Mexican flag during a protest in front of Argentina's Foreign Ministry Office in Buenos Aires yesterday.

Journalists protest

20 THURSDAY 25 MAY 2017HOME

FAJRSHOROOK

03.18 am

04.45 am

ZUHRASR

11.31 am

02.56 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

06.18 pm

07.48 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 03:30 - 17:15 LOW TIDE 10:30 - 23:45

Expected strong wind at most plac-

es and poor visibility. Hot daytime

with slight dust to blowing dust at

places at times.

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

30oC 39oC

The Pearl-Qatar done up in special lighting for the upcoming Holy Month of Ramadan.

Lighting brings out Ramadan essence at The Pearl-QatarThe Peninsula

To welcome the Holy month of Ramadan and create a joyful ambience for the Island’s resi-

dents and visitors, United Development Company (UDC), master developer of The Pearl-Qatar, has festooned the Island with special lighting and struc-tures that are strongly underpinned with an authentic essence of the Holy Month.

As tradition goes at UDC, the

Company has decorated roads, palm trees and lampposts and lit up The Pearl-Qatar’s main entrance gate and the main driveways leading to Qanat Quartier, Medina Centrale and Piazza Arabia — the facade of Porto Arabia — in addition to all main roundabouts.

Also throughout Ramadan, visitors and residents of the Island will enjoy the variety of Iftar and Suhoor special menus served at restaurants across The Pearl-Qatar in a unique atmosphere that combines modern and luxurious

living with the Holy month’s traditions.

Visitors can equally shop for Ara-bic incense, fine dates, oriental perfumes, groceries, gift baskets, and sweet hampers resonant with the Ramadan spirit, around Qanat Quartier, Porto Arabia, and Medina Centrale’s retail outlets.

The Pearl-Qatar’s shopping out-lets will be open in the morning from 10:00 am till 02:00 pm and from 8:00 pm until midnight with the exception

of restaurants that host Iftars.Three mosques at The Pearl-Qatar

have prepared to welcome the influx of worshippers during Ramadan, including the Grand Mosque at the Island’s entrance.

The mosque which has been under-going renovation, will be well ready before the beginning of the Holy month, reflecting UDC’s keenness to offer res-idents and visitors of the Island the possibility to perform their religious duties in total comfort.

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

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