SPORTS 8 @newsofbahrain OP-ED Djokovic powers · 2019. 6. 10. · Namboothiri was honoured at the event. BKS President P V Radhakrishna Pillai and General Secretary M P Raghu led

02Bahrain Indo beauty expo opens

03Bahrain-US efforts to protect maritime navigation stressed

04Net exports from Kingdom rises to BD187m in August

8

LuLu Hypermarket launches online shopping portal, app 2NEWS OF BAHRAIN

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Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia fail to ink Nile dam deal

Cairo

Irrigation ministers from three key Nile Basin coun-tries wrapped up a two-day

meeting Saturday in Sudan’s capital without resolving dif-ferences over Ethiopia’s soon-to-be-finished Blue Nile dam, with Egypt calling for interna-tional mediation to help reach a “fair and balanced” agreement.

Sudan Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas told reporters in Khartoum that progress was made but differences on filling the giant reservoir and operat-ing rules of the Grand Ethio-pian Renaissance Dam remain unsettled.

He said Ethiopia proposed a plan to fill the reservoir over

four to seven years, without elaborating.

He added that the three countries would continue con-sultations without giving a time frame.

Egypt’s Irrigation Ministry, meanwhile, said in a statement after the meeting that talks have stalemated, claiming Ethiopia rejected “all proposals that ... avoid causing substantial damage to Egypt.”

• The new clashes shattered a day of relative calm after authorities lifted a curfew.

• The unrest is the deadliest Iraq has seen since the declared defeat of Daesh in 2017 and has shaken Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s year-old government.

Baghdad

The United Nations urged yesterday an end to vio-lence in Iraq, after five days

of anti-government rallies marred by the killing of nearly 100 people, mainly protesters.

The demonstrations — which have evolved from initial demands for employment and better servic-es to the fall of the government — carried on into the night in var-ious neighbourhoods of Baghdad and southern Iraq, as authorities struggled to agree a response.

Security forces broke up a mass rally in the east of Baghdad, where protesters faced volleys of tear gas and live rounds fired in their direction, witnesses said.

“Five days of reported deaths and injuries: this must stop,” said the United Nations’ top official in Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.

She described the violence as a “senseless loss of life” and said those behind it must be held ac-countable.

The authorities accused uni-dentified snipers of shooting into the crowd and said they were searching residential neighbour-hoods for those responsible.

At least 99 people have died and nearly 4,000 wounded since protests began in the capital on Tuesday before spreading to the south of the country, according to the Iraqi parliament’s human rights commission.

The mainly young, male pro-testers have insisted their move-ment is not linked to any party or religious establishment and have scoffed at recent overtures by politicians.

On Saturday, demonstrators in the southern city of Nasiriyah set fire to the headquarters of six dif-ferent political parties.

Thousands also descended on the governorate in the southern city of Diwaniyah, where gunfire was unleashed into the air, AFP correspondents there said.

Parliament’s human rights com-mission said Saturday that most of those who have died in the last five days fell in Baghdad, while 250 other people were treated in the capital for sniper wounds.

The three countries would continue

consultations without giving a time frame.

MR ABBAS

Iraqi protesters evacuate a wounded comrade during clashes in Baghdad Saturday.

Al Arabiya’s Baghdad office attacked Baghdad

Masked gunmen yesterday attacked the Baghdad office

of Arabic news broadcaster Al Arabiya amid more violent pro-tests in Iraq.

A correspondent for the chan-nel said the men had stormed its offices, injuring some of the people working there.

Security forces failed to inter-vene to stop the attack, the cor-

respondent said.“Members of the federal police

declined assistance to us during

the attack,” he said. “Following the attack, we have

received assurances from the Prime Minister’s Office and from officials to investigate the attack.”

He added that Al Arabiya office had received threats in recent days. The attack came as pro-tests flared up again in Baghdad. Almost 100 people have been killed since the protests in the capital and other cities across the south started on Tuesday.

HH Shaikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa, First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports and President of Bahrain Olympic Committee attended BRAVE 27, which took place on Friday in Al Mubadala Gym at Zayed Sports City in Abu Dhabi. Twenty fighters representing 15 countries featured in the event, which saw many MMA enthusiasts crowding in the stands to cheer their beloved stars. HH Shaikh Khalid praised the long-lasting and historical brotherly links between Bahrain and the UAE that have evolved to new heights in the past years, thanks to both countries’ keenness to cement those ties.

BRAVE success

End violence call UN calls for Iraq violence to stop as death toll nears 100

We have received assurances from the

Prime Minister’s Office and from officials to

investigate the attack. AL ARABIYA STAFF

99 people have died and nearly 4,000 wounded since protests began in the capital on Tuesday.

New minister for EWA TDT | Manama

His Majesty King Ham-ad bin Isa Al Khali-

fa issued Royal Decree 84/2019, appointing Wael bin Nasser Al Mubarak as the Minister of Electricity and Water Affairs.

The Prime Minister shall implement the de-cree, which takes imme-diate effect and will be published in the Official Gazette.

Sailors held TDT | Manama

The Coast Guard Com-mander announced

yesterday the arrest of Asian sailors, including the captain for being involved in an accident between two boats in Dugaileeb marine area.

Three individuals were injured, while the one who caused the crash fled the scene, according to Interi-or Ministry.

After the case was re-ported to the Maritime Operations Centre, the Coast Guard patrols were deployed to the site and they pulled the damaged boat to the harbour.

The injured were pro-vided with first aid and referred to hospitals, but one of them succumbed to injuries.

The Commander said that the investigation led to identifying the suspect and finding the boat at a farm in Bilad Al Qadeem.

The owner of the boat was summoned. The boat crew were referred to the Public Prosecution to car-ry out legal proceedings.

02SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2019

Bahrain Indo beauty expo opens TDT | Manama

The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr Shaikha Rana

bint Isa bin Daij Al Khalifa, inaugurated the Bahrain Indo Beauty Expo yesterday at the Diplomat Radisson Blu Hotel.

The event was organised by the Bahrain Indonesia Business Friendship Society (BIBFS), in the presence of a number of eco-nomic and trade officials.

Dr Shaikha Rana expressed her pleasure to have attended the Bahrain Indo Beauty Expo, which further embodies the clear model of bilateral co-op-eration and co-ordination and an opportunity to exchange ex-periences and encourage invest-ment in the field of economic and trade diplomacy between the two friendly countries in various fields.

She also added that the ex-hibition is of great importance

for business owners and those interested in beauty products, fashion and others to learn about the culture, customs and traditions of the Republic of In-donesia.

The Undersecretary com-mended the enduring bilateral relations between the Kingdom of Bahrain and the friendly Republic of Indonesia, affirm-ing the Kingdom’s keenness to expand these relations for the benefit of both countries and

peoples, wishing the Republic of Indonesia further progress and prosperity.

Dr Shaikha Rana highlighted the relentless efforts and signif-icant role played by the Bahrain Indonesia Business Friendship Society in organising such pe-riodic events that contribute to the strengthening of coopera-tion with the friendly Republic of Indonesia, and expressed her happiness and appreciation for the Society. The expo was inaugurated by Dr Shaikha Rana in the presence of many dignitaries.

A seminar entitled “Peacekeeping Operations and Future Challenges” was held on October 2 at International Peace Institute (IPI) MENA on the joint initiative by the embassies of Indonesia, Korea, Turkey in the Kingdom to share experience and lessons learned through peacekeeping operations (PKOs). The seminar was attended by government officials, ambassadors, representatives of civil society, private sector and media. MIKTA is an acronym of its five member countries—Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and Australia. This diplomatic partnership was announced in 2017 with the objective of contributing to global governance. Following upon the previous seminar on sustainable development held in 2017, the second edition of MIKTA seminar invited panelists and the audience to highlight their countries’ contributions to United Nations PKOs and offer their views to further enhance future UN PKOs. The panelists included Lt Colonel Ratih Pusparini, Indonesia National Defence and Security Agency, Major General Imam Edy Mulyono, Former Force Commander of United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), Kemal Dermirciler, Turkish Ambassador to Bahrain, and Dr Dongsuk Kim, Assistant Professor of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy.

Hundreds relished the traditional Onam feast at Bahrain Keraleeya Samajam (BKS) in Segaya on Friday. More than 500 volunteers served 33 vegetarian dishes on banana leaf at the event. Kerala’s celebrity chef Pazhayidom Mohanan Namboothiri was honoured at the event. BKS President P V Radhakrishna Pillai and General Secretary M P Raghu led the celebrations.

TDT | Manama

With the launch of the LuLu Online Shop-ping Portal and app

on Thursday, the retail world just found a new and more con-venient expression.

Already a giant presence that dominates the retail space in Bah-rain, the much-admired LuLu Hypermarket has designed an easy to access and navigate app which puts over 20,000 products of its aisles at the fingertips of shoppers all over Bahrain.

The launch at Ramli Mall was inaugurated by Ali Abdul Hussain Makki, Assistant Undersecretary of Commercial Registration and Companies, Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, King-dom of Bahrain and Abdul Aziz Mohamed Al Ashraaf, Assistant undersecretary for Control and Services, Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism along with Maram Mukhtar Almah-meed, Director of Information Systems Ministry of Industry and Commerce and Tourism in the presence of Lulu Group Executive Director Ashraf Ali MA and Direc-tor Juzer Rupawala.

“The LuLu Online Shopping Experience carries the same brand promise of quality, affordability and customer service excellence as our iconic stores around the world – with the added value of convenience,” said Mr Ashraf Ali, who spearheaded the e-commerce presence of the retail giant.

“We are proud that we have not compromised on the human

interface with our customers – the LuLu online portal and app is serviced by a highly-skilled team of personal shoppers who have been trained to pick the right products and brands to match online orders and we have a fleet of vehicles that promise delivery in the most hygienic conditions. In fact, the Bahrain fleet is one of over 500 online delivery fleets present throughout the region.”

He added: “The MOIC in Bah-rain has laid the ground for e-commerce transactions and expansion with robust legisla-tion and ease of doing business

and I look forward to the rap-id growth of the Lulu online transactions because of their support, We are proud that the over 20,000 items in our hyper-markets will now be available to our customers in the comfort of their own space: Your home appliances, Your computer, Your Smartphone. You will still be able to take advantage of all our excellent deals, promotions and discounts, making this a seam-less shopping experience.”

The ceremony concluded with a brief demo of the app and the flagging off of the delivery fleet.

LuLu Hypermarket launches online shopping portal, app

20,000 products are now available on LuLu app

The delivery fleets being flagged off at the launching event.

Mr Ali Abdul Hussain Makki launches the online portal and app in the presence of Mr Ashraf Ali, Mr Rupawala, MOIC officials and dignitaries.


Bahrain-US efforts to protect maritime navigation stressed

Joint plan to combat terrorism, protect global economy stressed

• The United States is building a coalition with its allies to protect Gulf shipping lanes.

• HRH the Crown Prince’s meetings with US President and senior US administration’s officials were also focus of talks.

Manama

The efforts by the King-dom and the US to safe-g u a rd t h e s h i p p i n g

routes in the region were in fo-cus as the Speaker of the Coun-cil of Representatives, Fawzia Zainal, held talks with the US Ambassador to Bahrain, Justin Siberell, yesterday.

The two sides discussed ways

to enhance the distinguished relations and co-operation be-tween the two countries in var-ious fields, especially the parlia-mentary one and regarding the joint parliamentary friendship committees.

The speaker lauded the depth of the long-standing solid bi-lateral ties, in light of the good relations between His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and President Donald Trump.

She also praised the great re-sults of the recent visit of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Depu-ty Prime Minister, citing HRH the Crown Prince’s meetings with US President and senior US Administration’s officials to consolidate bilateral co-opera-tion in various fields and open up wider horizons for develop-ing investments, as well as the agreements signed between the

two countries on the sidelines of the visit.

She underlined the Kingdom’s

constant keenness to co-operate with friendly US on combating terrorism, ensuring the secu-rity and freedom of maritime navigation in the region, pro-tecting the global economy and reaffirming the International Community’s joint stance vis-à-vis all challenges posing a threat to the world.

The United States is build-

ing a coalition with its allies to protect Gulf shipping lanes by having “eyes on all shipping”, a senior US State Department official had said.

US President Donald Trump is suggesting the US should pro-tect ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the wake of at-tacks on oil tankers that Wash-ington blamed on Iran.

The official told reporters en route to the United Arab Emir-ates that a coalition of nations would provide both material and financial contributions to the initiative, but did not name the countries, according to Reu-ters.

“It’s about proactive deter-rence, because the Iranians just want to go out and do what they want to do and say hey we didn’t do it. We know what they’ve done,” he said, adding that the deterrents would in-clude cameras, binoculars and ships.

Ms Zainal receives Mr Siberell.

The Kingdom is keen on further boosting ties with

the US in many areas. MS ZAINAL

Govt Forum 2019 to be held today Manama

Under the patronage of His Royal Highness

the Prime Minister, Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khal-ifa, and following the initia-tive of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Com-mander, First Deputy Prime Minister, the 2019 Govern-ment Forum will take place today.

All government depart-ments will participate at the Forum, which provides a unique platform to discuss wide-ranging government policies and initiatives, in particular the Government Programme 2019-2022, enhancing the quality and delivery of government ser-vices, providing quality op-portunities for citizens, and ways to transform current challenges into future op-portunities.

The Government Fo-rum represents an oppor-tunity to further enhance government performance and co-ordination, in or-der to achieve the King-dom’s strategic goals, and to ensure quality public service delivery across gov-ernment departments and agencies.

Indian Ladies Association hosted a ‘Dandiya Night’ at Wyndham Grand (Bahrain Bay). Over 1,000 people attended the event, which was inaugurated by Indian Embassy Second Secretary Renu Yadav in the presence of Shirley Yateem, Lynne Al Wazzan and ILA’s Executive Committee members. Most of the audiences were in ‘Dandiya attire’.There were also many competitions for the audience. Dandiya is the socio-religious folk dance originating from Indian state of Gujarat and popularly performed in the festival of Navaratri.

Dandiya Night

Global partnership vital to implement SDGs: Premier Manama

His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa

has stressed that achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030, approved by the United Nations, requires serious international partnership in sup-porting communities to move on the right path towards progress, especially as the world is current-ly experiencing numerous polit-ical, security and environmental challenges that have negatively affected countries’ plans to im-prove their economic conditions.

In a message to the world marking the World Habitat Day, which will be observed world-wide on Monday, October 7, the

Prime Minister stressed the need for sustainable development pro-cesses in all societies to operate according to mechanisms and programmes that are efficient, flexible and able to anticipate the challenges and requirements of the future, and that these pro-grammes should be directly linked to the needs and priorities of the citizens, and contribute to improving their lives in a sus-tainable way to ensure quality life for them.

HRH Premier highlighted the important role played by the United Nations and its special-ised agencies in assisting coun-tries and communities to achieve SDGs by providing them with technical and research advice to enable them to shorten their time and embark on development on a firm basis that would suit their

immediate and future needs.Under the leadership of His

Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Bahrain has attached great attention to the issues of sustainable development and the preservation of the environment, out of its keenness to fulfil its international obligations in this field, and belief in the collective

responsibility to preserve the planet in the face of all dangers, the Premier said.

HRH the Prime Minister called on the International Commu-nity to focus on providing the elements that guarantee securi-ty, peace and stability, and this, he said, will only be achieved through the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations.

HRH Premier pointed out that this year’s World Habitat Day’s theme, “Frontier Technologies as an innovative tool to transform waste to wealth”, is of special importance because it focuses on a crucial issue, noting that addressing environmental chal-lenges, including waste, should be a priority in the next phase because it is linked to the present

and future of humanity.“The desire of some countries

to achieve high development rates should not be a direct or indirect cause of the destruction of nature and the imbalance of the environment,” the Premier warned.

The Prime Minister called on the industrialised and techno-logically advanced countries to increase their positive contri-butions in this regard, stressing that more joint co-ordination, studies and serious international cooperation are required to pre-serve the environment’s purity and sustainability, as there is no future for humanity without a safe, healthy and balanced envi-ronment, he said.

HRH Premier indicated that over the past years, the King-dom has paid attention to de-velopment issues through a set of ambitious programmes and strategies, and that it has suc-ceeded in achieving the majority of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 in accordance with a national vision in which all sec-tors have participated.

The desire of some countries to achieve

high development rates should not

be a direct or indirect cause of the destruction

of nature and the imbalance of the

environment. HRH THE PREMIER

HRH the Premier


Net exports from Kingdom rises to BD187m in August

Saudi Arabia emerged number one exporter of goods and services from the Kingdom

• The value of the exports of national origin increased by 2pc as it reached BD187m.

• Four-wheel drive cars emerged as the top product re-exported from Bahrain with BD10.9m.

Manama

The Information and eGov-ernment Authority (iGA) issued its foreign trade

report for August 2019 which encompasses data on the bal-ance of trade, imports, exports

(National Origin) and re-ex-ports.

The value of imports de-creased by 3 per cent as it reached BD391 million during August of 2019 compared to BD404m for the same month of the previous year.

The top 10 countries account-ed for 63pc of the imports value, with China ranking first with imports to Bahrain totalling BD45m; United Kingdom was second with BD29m whereas the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ranked third with BD28m.

Non- agglomerated iron ores and concentrates emerged as the top product imported into Bahrain with a total value of BD38m, while the turbo jets of a thrust were second with a value of BD29m and aluminium oxide

third with a value of BD20m dur-ing August 2019.

The value of the exports of national origin increased by 2pc as it reached BD187m during Au-gust 2019 compared to BD184m for the same month of the pre-vious year. The top 10 countries in terms of the value of exports of national origin accounted for

78pc of the total value.The Kingdom of Saudi Ara-

bia was ranked first for receiv-ing exports of national origin from Bahrain with BD36-mil-lion of exports, the United State of America was second with BD20m and China came in third place with BD19m.

Agglomerated iron ores and concentrates emerged as the top products exported in August of 2019 with BD37m; unwrought aluminium not alloyed were sec-ond with a value of BD29m while unwrought aluminium alloys stood in third place with BD14m.

With regards to the re-ex-ports, the total value of re-ex-ports increased by 67pc as it reached BD55m during August of 2019 compared to BD33m for the same month of the previous

year. The top 10 countries account-

ed for 89pc of the re-exported value. The United Arab Emirates was ranked first with BD22m, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was second with BD13m, and China as the third with BD5m.

Fo u r- w h e e l d r i v e c a r s emerged as the top product re-exported from Bahrain with BD10.9m, gold ingots came in second place with BD10.7m, and waste and scrap of platinum and concentrates came as the third product with BD3m.

The trade balance, difference between exports and imports, recorded a deficit totalling BD149m during August of 2019 compared to BD187m for the same month of the previous year, a decrease of 20pc.

‘Forum to shape future of welfare service delivery’ Manama

The Director-General of the OFDPM, Shaikh

Fahad bin Abdulrahman Al Khalifa, noted that the 2019 Government Forum, is an essential platform that charts a streamlined path for all government entities to work collaboratively towards accelerating the Kingdom’s comprehensive development and meet cit-izen’s aspirations, in line with HM the King’s vision.

The forum will be held today under the patron-age of His Royal Highness the Prime Minister, Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, following the initi-ative of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Com-mander and First Deputy Prime Minister.

The Director-General added that the forum re-inforces the government’s commitment to implement-ing wide-ranging develop-ment projects through the Government Programme 2019-2022, alongside the implementation of the Fis-cal Balance Programme, which aims at achieving a balance between govern-ment expenditures and rev-enues by 2022.

The Director-General concluded by adding that the forum serves as a plat-form that shapes the future of government service de-livery, and enhances gov-ernment efficiency and the quality of government ser-vice provided to citizens, in line with sustainable devel-opment goals.

HRH Premier to patronise ChemIndex 2019• The event is expected to attract more than 500 participants from Bahrain, GCC and other countries.

Manama

Under the patronage of His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa

bin Salman Al Khalifa, the King-dom will host the 11th Interna-tional Conference and Exhibi-

tion on Chemistry in Industry (ChemIndex 2019), at the Gulf Hotel’s Gulf Convention Centre from October 29 to 31.

Themed “Breakthrough Solu-tions through Innovative Mate-rials”, the key event will be or-ganised by the American Society of Chemistry (ASC), represented by ASC’s International Chemi-cal Sciences Chapter, the Saudi Arabian International Chemical Sciences Chapter (SAICSC), in co-ordination with the National Oil and Gas Authority (NOGA), and sponsored by Saudi Aramco, in addition to a number of local

and international companies.The mega international event

will be attended by a large num-ber of senior specialised officials, technicians, chemists and aca-demics who will discuss a num-ber of issues related to the chal-lenges facing the oil and chemical industry and energy products.

Oil Minister, Shaikh Moham-med bin Khalifa Al Khalifa ex-tended sincere thanks and grati-tude to HRH the Prime Minister for patronising the global event which has gained a prestigious reputation across the Middle East region.

The minister valued highly the dedicated efforts exerted by Bahraini creative youth compe-tencies who, he said, have con-

tributed to attaining numerous national achievements in the oil and gas sector, citing the Refin-ery Project Development, the launch of the Bahrain-Saudi AB-4 oil pipeline, the Third Gas Plant and the Bahrain’s liquefied nat-ural gas (LNG) terminal, among others.

The minister said that the con-ference will cover topics like in-novative materials, solutions in refining and chemicals, digital transformation, solutions in ex-ploration and production, circu-lar economy and sustainability.

The event is expected to at-

tract more than 500 partici-pants from Bahrain, GCC and the countries of the world, including researchers, officials, CEOs, en-gineers, chemists, specialists, businessmen and investors in the oil and gas sector.

T h e a c c o m p a n y i n g 956-square-metre exhibition is expected to attract more than 30 national and international oil, gas and refining companies, in-cluding Saudi Aramco, German Metals, SABIC, SASREF, Bahrain Oil Company (Bapco), GCI Group Halliburton and other companies specialising in this vital sector.

HRH the Premier

391million Bahraini dinars was the total value of

goods imported by the Kingdom in August

2019.

FNC President congratulated Manama

Shura Council Chairman, Ali Saleh Al Saleh, has

sent a cable of congratu-lations to UAE Federal Na-tional Council (FNC) Pres-ident, Dr Amal Abdulla Al Qubaisi, on the success of the historic journey to the International Space Station (ISS) by the first Emirati and Arab astronaut Hazza Al Mansouri.

Mr Al Saleh congratulat-ed the UAE on the historic achievement, describing it as a quantum leap and an advanced step towards its efforts to invest in the space sector.

Deal to develop Kingdom’s First Educational Park signed TDT | Manama

Bahrain Real Estate Invest-ment Company, the prop-erty arm of the Kingdom’s

sovereign wealth fund, recently signed a lease and development agreement with Mayasem Hold-ing to develop and operate an Educational Park in Isa Town’s education district.

Mayasem won the tender which was conducted under the supervision of the Bahrain Tender Board. The signing cer-emony took place at Edamah’s headquarters on Thursday and was attended by Chief Execu-tive Officer (CEO) of Edamah, Amin Alarrayed and CEO and Founder of Mayasem Holding, Dr Shaikha May bint Sulaiman Al Otaibi.

Realising there was an ab-sence of a project of this nature in the Kingdom of Bahrain, Ma-yasem envisioned a pioneering educational park to serve as a one-stop-shop facility that of-fers children, adults, entrepre-neurs with specialised educa-tional programmes and training in an eco-friendly and creative learning environment.

The Park aims to add value to the Kingdom’s education in-dustry by elevating the quality of education and supporting

creative Bahraini entrepreneurs in developing and unlocking their potential by equipping them with the required tools and training to enable them to establish their own business firms in the future.

Spread across 16,293 square meters, the Park is the first of its kind in the Kingdom, boasting a state-of-the-art design and of-fering a unique learning experi-ence to students. To avoid inter-fering with the students’ school or university curriculum, the Park will serve students after study hours and will promote a family-oriented program by involving the students’ parents in the learning process.

The Educational Park, which will be a gated facility designed with all the necessary security measures, will be fully equipped with state-of-the art educa-tion centres and halls which will be leased to schools and institutions enabling them to conduct lectures, workshops, hands on training programs, as well as theatre and art pro-duction classes. In addition to offering the core subjects, the Park seeks to collaborate with educational centres to offer spe-cialised courses; in diverse areas of study ranging from special needs education to liberal arts

and Robotics to name a few. “Our educational experi-

ence spans more than 30 years of leading the Bahrain Bayan School towards achieving its vision and mission. We have also succeeded in providing ful-ly equipped spaces and train-ing for entrepreneurs through Mayasem’s +973 Artisinat pro-ject located in Juffair, which identified the gap and demand for specialised qualified edu-cational support units, training centres, after school activities, all under one roof,” said CEO and Founder of Mayasem Holding,

Dr Shaikha May bint Sulaiman Al Otaibi.

“We look forward to working with Mayasem on this signifi-cant project which will emerge as a leading educational land-mark and provide surround-ing institutions and the public the opportunity to benefit from state-of-the-art facilities. This engagement comes as part of our strategy to form additional partnerships with the private sector that add value to key eco-nomic sectors of the economy of which education is key,” said the Chief Executive Officer of

Edamah, Amin Alarrayed. “We have conducted an in-

depth field study which was cir-culated to the private and public schools across Bahrain, taking into account the needs of the institutions from the perspec-tive of the students and families themselves. This has assisted in identifying the unique elements required for the development in order to fill the gaps in the existing market. This project therefore combines a blend of commercial and educational units, which will add signifi-cant value to the Kingdom of Bahrain and educational sector,” he added.

In addition to its specialised programmes, which holistically enhance the existing curricu-lum, the Park boasts a unique blend of commercial units and educational entities by featur-ing common community spaces for the entire family with com-plimentary retail and F and B units.

The Educational Park is ex-pected to emerge as a landmark development and add signifi-cant value to Bahrain’s educa-tional sector by creating a vi-brant atmosphere conductive to learning in an all-inclusive urban space for the community at large.

Dr Shaikha May signs the deal with Mr Alarrayed.

05

world

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2019

Vatican to shine light on Amazon’s indigenous communities

• Last year the world’s first Latin American pope visited Puerto Maldonado, a village in southeastern Peru surrounded by the Amazon jungle

• The run-up to the three-week synod, or assembly, saw some 260 events held in the Amazon region

Vatican City

Pope Francis will gather Catholic bishops at the Vatican Sunday to cham-

pion the isolated and pover-ty-struck indigenous communi-ties of the Amazon, whose way of life is under threat.

The eyes of the world have recently been on the world’s largest rainforest, which is vital for the planet but is suffering from its worst outbreak of fires in years, due in part to an accel-eration in deforestation.

The working document for the “synod”, which mainly brings together bishops from nine Pan-Amazonian countries, de-nounces in scathing terms social injustices and crimes, including murders, as well as suggesting a Church action plan.

The run-up to the three-week synod, or assembly, saw some 260 events held in the Am-azon region involving 80,000 people, in a bid to give the lo-cal populations a voice in the document.

It comes just as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a cli-mate-change sceptic, told to the United Nations that the world’s media were lying about the Am-azon, and attacked indigenous leaders as tools of foreign gov-ernments.

“Listen to the cry of ‘Mother Earth’, assaulted and serious-ly wounded by the economic model of predatory and ecocidal development... which kills and plunders, destroys and devas-tates, expels and discards,” the 80-page document says.

In his 2015 encyclical on ecol-ogy and climate change “Laud-ato Si”, Francis denounced the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest in the name of “enor-mous international economic interests”.

Last year the world’s first Latin American pope visited Puerto Maldonado, a village in southeastern Peru surround-ed by the Amazon jungle, to meet thousands of indige-nous Peruvians, Brazilians and Bolivians.

There he slammed in par-ticular “illegal mining” of gold and the “slave labour or sexual abuse” it created.

That trip was the first step towards this synod, which opens Sunday with a mass in St. Peter’s Square.

Married men as priests?

Francis champions what he terms “integral ecology” -- or the inextricable link between humans and nature.

“To the aboriginal communi-ties we owe their thousands of years of care and cultivation of the Amazon,” the working doc-ument reads.

It also reflects the pope’s de-sire to protect the world’s poor, vulnerable and downtrodden, and his criticism of a socio-eco-nomic model that discards them as “waste”.

His hopes of bringing the Catholic faith to far-flung pop-ulations will see the bishops gathered in Rome debate a high-ly controversial proposal -- al-lowing married men to become

priests.“We have a shortage of or-

dained priests to celebrate mass. Eighty percent of the commu-nities in Brazil have a very poor sacramental life,” said Brazil-ian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, president of the Pan-Amazon

Church Network (REPAM).The issue deeply upsets some

traditionalists, who argue that making an exception for the Am-azon would open the door to the end of celibacy for priests, which is not a Church law and only dates back to the 11th century.

The German Catholic Church in particular, which has an in-fluential progressive wing, has been hotly debating the subject.

The synod, which runs until October 27, will also reflect on making official roles for women, who already play a central part in the Amazonian Church.

“If women are excluded, half of the Church is excluded,” said Sister Laura, an Italian mis-sionary who has worked in the Pan-Amazon region for 10 years.

Of the 184 prelates at the syn-od, 113 hail from the Amazonian region, including 57 from Brazil.

Others taking part include 17 representatives of Amazonian indigenous peoples and ethnic groups, and 35 women -- who will not have the right to vote on the final document.

N.Korean, US officials gather for talks• The two were to meet at a heavily guarded venue on an island off Stockholm

• Pyongyang tested what it called a “super-large” rocket on Wednesday

AFP | Stockholm

North Korean and US of-ficials on Saturday gath-ered for new nuclear

talks in Stockholm after months of deadlock and Pyongyang’s defiant test of a sea-launched ballistic missile this week.

North Korea’s Kim Myong Gil and Stephen Biegun, the special envoy of US President Donald Trump, are part of the teams at the talks.

The two were to meet at a heavily guarded venue on an island off Stockholm, several hundred metres from the North Korean embassy, a correspond-ent said.

The first cars with tinted win-dows started arriving just after 9:00 am (0700 GMT).

“I am encouraged that US and (North Korean) working lev-el delegations are currently in

Sweden to hold talks,” Swed-ish Foreign Minister Ann Lindh tweeted.

“Dialogue needed to reach denuclearization and peaceful solution.”

Similar-level talks on North Korea’s nuclear disarmament were held in Stockholm in March 2018 and then in Janu-ary this year.

North Korea frequently cou-ples diplomatic overtures with military moves as a way of main-taining pressure on negotiating partners, analysts say, and many

believe this weapons system gives it added leverage.

Pyongyang tested what it called a “super-large” rocket on Wednesday just hours after it said it was willing to resume working-level talks with Wash-ington.

Kim Myong Gil said he was “optimistic” about the talks, speaking in Beijing on his way to the Swedish capital.

Washington has been eagerly awaiting a resumption of the dialogue, which has virtually stalled after a Hanoi meeting in

late February between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korea claimed to have entered a new phase in its defence capability with Wednesday’s test of a subma-rine-launched ballistic missile -- the most provocative since Pyongyang began a dialogue with Washington in 2018.

The Pentagon said Thurs-day the missile seems to have been launched from a “sea-based platform” and not a submarine.

Trump has said he sees no problem with a string of short-range rocket tests conducted previously by North Korea, while insisting his personal ties with the North’s leader remain good.The talks are to take place at a conference centre on an island off Stockholm

Cars arrive at venue where US-North Korea talks are expected to take place

Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes says there is a shortage of priests in the country. The Catholic synod will consider allowing married men to become priests

Pope Francis met representatives of indigenous communities of the Amazon basin from Peru, Brazil and Bolivia during his vist to Peru last year

Family bid final farewell to Chirac in home villageSainte-Fereole | France

Former French President Jacques Chirac’s family

bade him a final farewell Saturday at an intimate cer-emony in the southwestern village where he grew up.

“I can only say thank you in the name of my father and mother,” the states-man’s daughter Claude Chi-rac said in a tearful address at Sainte-Fereole, a small village in the Chirac fiefdom of the Correze region.

“In childhood and ado-lescence, Jacques Chirac was made here,” said mayor Henri Soulier.

Born in Paris, Chirac, who died aged 86 on September 26, moved as a young boy to Sainte-Fereole where he was elected a municipal councillor in 1965 before be-coming a Correze lawmaker two years later.

He continued to repre-sent the Correze depart-ment until becoming presi-dent in 1995, serving as head of state until 2007.

Chirac’s widow Berna-dette, 86, did not attend the gathering of some 200 people in a picturesque village square decked out in portraits of the former president showing key mo-ments of his life in public service.


KNOW WHAT

Violence paralyses Hong Kong • The ban on face masks, which took effect yesterday, was ordered under emergency laws

• Protesters had set fires at stations, as well as to an empty train

• No immediate reports of arrests over the masks

Reuters | Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s metro sys-tem stayed shut yester-day, paralysing trans-

port in the Asian financial hub after a night of chaos in which police shot a teenage boy and pro - democracy protesters torched businesses and metro stations.

Friday’s protests across the Chinese-ruled city erupted hours after its embattled lead-er, Carrie Lam, invoked colo-nial-era emergency powers for the first time in more than 50 years to ban the face masks demonstrators use to hide their identities. The night’s “extreme violence” justified the use of the emergency law, Beijing-backed Lam said in a television address on Saturday.

“The radical behaviour of ri-oters took Hong Kong through a very dark night, leaving society today half-paralyzed,” she said in pre-recorded remarks.

“The extreme violence clear-ly illustrated that Hong Kong’s public safety is widely endan-gered. That ’s the concrete reason that we had to invoke emergency law yesterday to in-troduce the anti-mask law.”

But undeterred by the ban and transport shutdown, several hundred protesters, many wear-ing masks, took to the streets on Saturday, marching through the bustling central district of Causeway Bay, with more pro-tests planned through the week-end. “We’re not sure what is going to happen later, but we felt we had to get out and show our basic right to wear a mask,” said

one protester, Sue, 22, who wore a black mask and dark glasses.

China’s Hong Kong and Ma-cao Affairs Office said on Friday the protests were evolving into a revolution backed by foreign forces and could not continue indefinitely.

MTR Corp said its network, which carries about 5 million passengers each day, would re-main suspended, while shop-ping malls and supermarkets also closed, in a new blow for retailers and restaurants in a city on the edge of recession.

Transport shutdown“As we are no longer in a po-

sition to provide safe and relia-ble service to passengers in the circumstances, the corporation had no choice but to make the decision to suspend the service of its entire network,” it said in a statement.

Protesters had set fires at stations, as well as to an empty train, and injured two staff, add-ed MTR, which is known for op-erating one of the world’s most efficient rail networks.

ll stations closed late on Fri-day, stranding passengers and forcing many to walk home, a situation set to worsen during a holiday weekend in the city.

The airport express, one of the most popular routes to the air-port, re-opened with restricted service on Saturday, MTR said.

More than a dozen shop-ping malls, supermarkets, and branches of Bank of China (Hong Kong), Bank of East Asia, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which have been targeted by protesters, said they would not open on Saturday.

The 7-Eleven chain of conven-ience stores said outlets would close at 5 p.m.

The ban on face masks, which took effect on Saturday, was or-dered under emergency laws allowing authorities to “make any regulations whatsoever” in what they deem to be the public interest.

But the move enraged protest-

ers, who took to the streets to vent their anger, many wearing masks in defiance of the ban.

There were no immediate re-ports of arrests over the masks.

Demonstrators set fires, hurled petrol bombs at police and burned the Chinese nation-al flag, in a direct challenge to authorities in Beijing.

Police said an officer in Yuen Long, a district in the outlying New Territories that saw fierce clashes in July, had fired a shot in self-defence after a protester threw a petrol bomb at him, set-ting him on fire.

Media said a 14-year-old boy was shot and the city’s Hospital Authority said his condition was now stable. Hospital authori-ties said 31 people were hurt in Friday’s protests, two of them seriously.

Anti-government protesters wearing masks attend a protest in central Hong Kong, China

The new law makes it illegal to wear a mask at a sanctioned or unsanctioned rally, with up to a year in prison for transgressors

Riot police march past bars in Wan Chai district

The unrest has plunged Hong Kong into its big-

gest political crisis since its handover from Brit-ain to China in 1997 un-der a “one country, two systems” formula that

granted it autonomy and broad freedoms

Trump told China he would keep quiet on Hong Kong protests, report says

The Independent

Donald Trump report-edly told China’s presi-

dent he would remain quiet on protests in Hong Kong as trade talks between Wash-ington and Beijing pro-gressed.

The US president pledged not speak out over the months-long unrest in the Chinese territory during a phone call with Xi Jinping in which he also discussed his political rivals Joe Bid-en and Elizabeth Warren, according to US broadcast-er CNN.

The report comes af-ter Mr Trump openly urged China to investigate Mr Biden, a Democratic 2020 election frontrunner, and his son Hunter.

“China should start an in-vestigation into the Bidens,” said Mr Trump, unprompt-ed, as he spoke to reporters outside the White House.

T h e d e m a n d c a m e j u s t d a y s a f t e r c o n -gress launched an im-peachment inquiry over al-legations the president had pressured Ukraine to probe unsubstantiated corruption claims about the Democrat.

Mr Trump insisted he had not previously asked China to investigate Barack Obama’s vice-president, al-though he said it was “cer-tainly something we could start thinking about”.

But CNN, citing two un-named sources, reported that Mr Trump previously brought up Mr Biden during an 18 June phone call with Mr Xi.

Trump, Xi Jinping (file)

Spanish police arrest drug traffickers who saved their lives in high speed chaseThe Telegraph

Spanish police arrested four drug traffickers who stopped

to save their lives after the of-ficers were thrown overboard during a high speed boat chase off the coast of Malaga on Fri-day.

The three police officers fell into the sea following a collision with the trafficking boat during the chase, a Guardia Civil state-ment said.

A police helicopter hovering overhead appealed to the speed-boat via megaphone to stop and help the officers after their boat “span out of control”, and the traffickers did so, pulling the agents to safety unharmed.

However, when police found three tonnes of hashish in the waters nearby, the rescue did not appear to work in the traf-fickers’ favour. The four on board were arrested regardless.

“They were arrested for drug

trafficking,” a police statement said, indicating that more than 80 bundles of hash had been recovered from the sea.

In a video posted by the Guardia Civil, the boats can be seen zooming across the open ocean before the semi-inflatable trafficking boat turns into the path of the police vessel, forcing

it to turn sharply, throwing the three officers overboard.

The video taken from the po-lice helicopter then shows the officers bobbing around in the water below, before a wide shot shows the drug bundles floating nearby.

Morocco, just across the wa-ter, is the world’s largest export-

er of cannabis resin or hashish, according to the United Nations.

A dramatic chase at the end of last year saw police ram a suspected drug boat in the open water, before officers from the chasing helicopter managed to intercept the fleeing suspects on land.

The Spanish government has even moved to ban the high-speed semi-inflatable boats, known as RIBs, that are com-monly used by traffickers to bring both drugs and more re-cently migrants from North Af-rica to Spain.

High speed chases are not unusual off the coast of Malaga

and the Costa del Sol, a known drug

smuggling route from Africa to Europe

This Spanish police picture shows a speedboat surrounded by bundles of drugs packages, after a police high-speed chase with smugglers off Malaga

Trump orders ‘substantial’ cut in National Security CouncilReuters

US President Donald Trump has asked for a substantial

cut in the National Security Council staff, Bloomberg re-ported late on Friday, citing five people familiar with the plans.

The step was described by some sources cited in the re-port as part of an effort from the White House to make its foreign policy arm leaner.

The request to do so was

conveyed to officials in the agency by current White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and National Se-curity Adviser Robert O’Brien earlier this week, according to Bloomberg.

The reductions at the agen-cy, in which currently 310 peo-ple work, will be carried out through attrition, Bloomberg reported. The report did not mention the exact number by which Trump is looking to cut the agency’s staff.

Seven Philippine ex-rebels killed by gunmenManila

Seven former rebels have been killed in the southern

Philippines, military and po-lice authorities said yesterday, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

They said the dead were all members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), for-

merly the country’s largest guerrilla group but which be-gan decommissioning weap-ons last month under the terms of a 2014 peace treaty.

A pro-IS armed group called Dawlah Islamiyah attacked an MILF camp near the town of Shariff Saydona on Friday, sparking fighting lasting sev-eral hours.


(This) is the first semi-invasive wireless brain-computer system designed... to activate all

four limbs ALIM-LOUIS BENABID

A NEUROSURGEON AND PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GRENOBLE, FRANCE, WHO CO-LED THE TRIAL

Paralysed man walks again with brain-controlled exoskeleton• The exoskeleton is purely an experimental prototype

Reuters | London

A man paralysed from the shoulders down has been

able to walk using a pioneering four-limb robotic system, or ex-oskeleton, that is commanded and controlled by signals from his brain.

With a ceiling-mounted har-ness for balance, the 28-year-old tetraplegic patient used a system of sensors implanted near his brain to send messages to move all four of his paralyzed limbs after a two-year-long trial of the whole-body exoskeleton.

The results, published in The Lancet Neurology journal on Thursday, bring doctors a step closer to one day being able to help paralysed patients drive computers using brain signals alone, according to researchers who led the work.

But for now the exoskeleton is purely an experimental pro-totype and is “far from clinical

application”, they added.“(This) is the first semi-inva-

sive wireless brain-computer system designed... to activate all four limbs,” said Alim-Louis Benabid, a neurosurgeon and professor at the University of Grenoble, France, who co-led the trial.

He said previous brain-com-puter technologies have used invasive sensors implanted in the brain, where they can be more dangerous and often stop working. Previous versions have also been connected to wires, he said, or have been limited to cre-ating movement in just one limb.

In this trial, two recording devices were implanted, one ei-ther side of the patient’s head between the brain and the skin, spanning the sensorimotor cortex region of the brain that controls sensation and motor function.

Each recorder contained 64 electrodes which collected brain signals and transmitted them to a decoding algorithm. The sys-tem translated the brain signals into the movements the patient thought about, and sent his com-mands to the exoskeleton.

Over 24 months, the patient carried out various mental tasks to train the algorithm to understand his thoughts and to progressively increase the number of movements he could make.

Commenting on the results, Tom Shakespeare, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was “a welcome and exciting advance” but added: “Proof of concept is a long way from usa-ble clinical possibility.”

“A danger of hype always ex-ists in this field. Even if ever workable, cost constraints mean that high-tech options are nev

A patient with tetraplegia walks using an exoskeleton in Grenoble, France in this still image taken from a video handout

At Fukushima plant, a million-tonne headacheFukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant | Japan

In the grounds of the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant sits a million-tonne

headache for the plant’s oper-ators and Japan’s government: tank after tank of water con-taminated with radioactive el-ements.

What to do with the enormous amount of water, which grows by around 150 tonnes a day, is a thorny question, with contro-versy surrounding a long-stand-ing proposal to discharge it into the sea, after extensive decon-tamination.

The water comes from several different sources: some is used for cooling at the plant, which suffered a meltdown after it was hit by a tsunami triggered by a massive earthquake in March 2011.

Groundwater that seeps into the plant daily, along with rain-water, add to the problem.

A thousand, towering tanks have now replaced many of the cherry trees that once dotted the plant’s ground.

Each can hold 1,200 tonnes, and most of them are already full.

“We will build more on the site until the end of 2020, and we think all the tanks will be full by around the summer of 2022,” said Junichi M a t -sumoto, an official w i t h the unit of

plant operator TEPCO in charge of dismantling the site.

TEPCO has been struggling with the problem for years, tak-ing various measures to limit the amount of groundwater entering the site.

There is also an extensive pumping and filtration system, that each day brings up tonnes of newly contaminated water and filters out as many of the radioactive elements as possible.

Highly radioactiveThe hangar where the decon-

tamination system runs is desig-nated “Zone Y” -- a danger zone requiring special protections.

All those entering must wear elaborate protection: a full body suit, three layers of socks, three layers of gloves, a double cap topped by a helmet, a vest with a pocket carrying a dosimeter, a full-face respirator mask and special shoes.

Most of the outfit has to burned after use.

“The machinery filters con-tain radionuclides, so you have to be very protected here, just like with the buildings where the reactors are,” explained TEP-CO risk communicator Katsu-toshi Oyama.

TEPCO has been filtering newly contaminated water for years, but much of it needs to go through the process again be-cause early

versions of the filtration pro-cess did not fully remove some dangerous radioactive elements, including strontium 90.

The current process is more effective, removing or reducing around 60 radionuclides to lev-els accepted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for water being discharged.

But there is one that remains, which cannot be removed with the current technology: tritium.

Tritium is naturally present in the environment, and has also been discharged in its artificial form into the environment by the nuclear industry around the world.

There is little evidence that it causes harm to humans except in very high concentrations and the IAEA argues that properly fil-tered Fukushima water could be diluted with seawater and then safely released into the ocean without causing environmental problems.

‘Absolutely against it’But those assurances are of

little comfort to many in the re-gion, particularly Fukushima’s fishing industry which, like lo-cal farmers, has suffered from the outside perception that food from the region is unsafe.

Kyoichi Kamiyama, director of the radioactivity research de-

partment at the regional gov-ernment’s Fisheries and Marine Science Research Centre, points out that local fishermen are still struggling eight years after the disaster.

“Discharging into the ocean? I’m absolutely against it,” he said.

At the national government level, the view is more sanguine.

“We want to study how to minimise the damage (from a potential discharge) to the re-gion’s reputation and Fukushi-ma products,” an Industry Min-istry official said.

The government is sensi-tive to fears that people inside Japan and further afield will view any discharge as send-ing radioactive waste into the sea.

No decisions are likely in the near-term, with the country sensitive to the international spotlight that will fall on Japan as it hosts the Olympic Games next year.

Environmentalists are also resolutely opposed to any dis-charge into the sea, and Green-peace argues that TEPCO cannot trusted to properly decontami-nate the water.

The solution, said Greenpeace senior nuclear specialist Shaun Burnie, “ultimately can only be long-term storage and process-ing.”

Tanks of water contaminated with radioactive elements are a million-tonne headache for the operators of the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and for Japan’s government

Tritium remains in filtered contaminated water at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Okuma, Japan

Staff measure radiation levels around the storage tanks of radiation-contaminated water at the tsunami-crippled Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan


Hon. Chairman Najeb Yacob Alhamer | Editor-in-Chief Mahmood AI Mahmood | Chairman & Managing Director P Unnikrishnan | Advertisement: Update Media W.L.L | Tel: 38444692, Email: [email protected] | Newsroom: Tel: 38444680, Email: [email protected] & circulation: Tel: 38444698/17579877 | Email:[email protected] | Website: www.newsofbahrain.com | Printed and published by Al Ayam Publishing

RAGHIDA DERGHAM

Heads of governments around the world will be watching closely as Don-

ald Trump prepares for what could be the toughest domestic chal-lenge of his presidency. Such is the influence of his office, there is a strong possibility that the im-peachment investigation under way against the US leader will be forcing friends and foes abroad to recalibrate their approaches on dealing with his administration.

The US House of Representa-tives has launched a probe against Mr Trump after evidence mount-ed in recent days that he illicitly used his office to enlist the help of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in order to damage Joe Biden, a Democratic Party presi-dential aspirant, in exchange for military aid. As a result, questions abound with regard to the fate of Mr Trump’s presidency, including whether he will get reelected in 2020 even if he manages to evade impeachment.

There is every chance, of course, that Mr Trump will overcome this tide – as he has other tides dur-ing the past nearly three years in power. And while there may be concerns over how he conducts foreign policy during the next few weeks and months, it is likely that adversaries and enemies of the United States will have sensed a golden opportunity to extract concessions from a president cur-rently under severe duress. For in-stance, the trade war between the

US and China continues unabated and, even as Mr Trump has proved effective in getting the Asian su-perpower to the table, the question is whether Xi Jinping’s adminis-tration can apply pressure on the American trade negotiation team while its president is distracted by the impeachment proceedings.

Ironically, though, the timing of the inquiry could prove fortuitous in bringing peace to the Middle East.

How to solve a problem like Iran has been, perhaps, the foremost question on the minds of foreign policy experts over the past four decades – but especially since Mr Trump cancelled the nuclear deal his predecessor Barack Obama had signed with Tehran in 2015. Un-der Mr Trump’s leadership, the US has taken a more hardline stance against Iran, stating that the nu-clear deal was not comprehensive enough and that it did little to curb Tehran’s ambitions to grow its in-fluence in the region with the help of its proxies. Sanctions applied by the Trump administration have also crippled Iran’s economy. But rather than returning to the nego-tiating table, Iran has gone on the offensive in the Strait of Hormuz by seizing tankers while Irani-an-backed Houthi forces in Yemen claimed launching drone attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia.

Given the position world leaders find Mr Trump in at the moment, however, some of those vested in the idea of a rapprochement between the two countries have stepped into the breach, seeing an

opportunity to continue down the path of dialogue and diplomacy. President Emmanuel Macron of France, backed by Russia’s Presi-dent Vladimir Putin, is said to be pushing for a new agreement to be drafted between Iran on one side and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, on the other. Details of the deal remain under wraps but

in principle, it is likely to be based on mutual concessions by the US and Iran. The latter would agree to negotiating a new deal in return for the US agreeing to a financial mechanism that would allow Iran to sell its oil and legally circumvent some US sanctions, which would not be lifted entirely. Iran would also be urged to take another look at its controversial ballistic mis-

IT’S AMAZING THAT THE AMOUNT OF NEWS THAT HAPPENS IN THE WORLD EVERY DAY ALWAYS JUST EXACTLY FITS THE NEWSPAPER.JERRY SEINFELD

QUOTE OF THE DAY

US and Iranian regime

are both in positions of

weaknessFaced with domestic challenges

at home, both parties may be forced to accept a series of small

but meaningful deals

The risk has come full

circle, with a proliferation

of the devices in the hands of non-state

actors

JAMES ROGERS

In the post-9/11 era, the rise of armed military drones of-fered former president Ba-

rack Obama the opportunity to fulfil a promise he had made to the American people, one which helped him get elected. By the time Mr Obama came to power in January 2009, the US had lost at least 625 soldiers in Afghani-stan and 4,221 personnel in Iraq. The electorate was tired of the mounting body count and the lack of certainty of a victory. As such, Mr Obama’s promise was simple. He pledged to remove America’s best and brightest from harm’s way in the “bad war” in Iraq and to prove that the US could win the “good fight” in Afghanistan. It was there, during this sombre period in American history, that drones were harnessed, allowing the US military and the CIA to combat national security threats around the world while reducing the cost to life.

Drones, of course, were nothing new in 2009. Since the first days of George W Bush’s “war on ter-ror” in 2001, they had been used to hunt and kill Taliban militants and Al Qaeda terrorists. In total, Mr Bush utilised this killer tech-nology in more than 50 strikes, allowing the US military and the CIA to reach further and strike deeper into enemy-held territory. Yet, as it turned out, the peak of American drone use was still to come. It would be under Mr Oba-ma that the strike rate would ex-

ponentially increase. Now known as “the drone president”, Mr Oba-ma deployed the lethal capacity of the drone more than 500 times between 2009 and 2017, a tenfold increase in drone use from his predecessor. These strikes were controversial, with human rights groups concerned about the ease at which the US was using force and the stark number of report-ed civilian casualties. Neverthe-less, the use of drones continued and even increased. In so doing, Mr Obama set an example to the world: that force could be de-ployed with so-called “pinpoint precision” on one’s enemies, yet there need not be substantial risk to the perpetrator.

The demand for drones from both allied and antagonistic na-tions soon began to grow off the back of this promise of cost-free precision wars. While the US – the world’s most overt and obvious actor to use drones – was selective about where it supplied its latest armed drone technologies, new-er drone nations capitalised on the growing drone market. China created its own lucrative industry, supplying armed drones to states ranging from Iraq and Pakistan to Nigeria and, most recently, Serbia. Other states such as Turkey, Israel and Iran also joined the exclusive club of drone manufacturers and exporters.

By 2017, about 24 different na-tion states were said to have ob-tained armed drone capabilities and it was within this context that the use of the drone began to

evolve. Once the signature weapon in the American arsenal, the drone had become the power piece of a number of nations. Supplied by a handful of state manufacturers, many of these drones looked the same or had similar capabilities, including range, yield and lethal capacity. These systems even be-gan to be supplied to non-state actors. It was here, in this altered drone environment, that a certain drone deniability began to form, meaning that drones could be used to deploy force by one actor over great distances, but refuted, rebutted or passed off as another actor when necessary.

The recent attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities provided a clear illustration of this, if illus-tration were needed. Iran, it is alleged, has long been supplying Yemen’s Houthi rebels with drone technologies. Armed drones, like the Iranian Ababil-II, were report-edly supplied to the Houthis and renamed the Qasef I. These were used in the assassination of six high-ranking Yemeni military of-ficials during a parade at Al Anad military base in the south-west of Yemen in January. They have also been used to attack Saudi oil pipelines. Much more technolog-ically advanced systems with a

larger range, such as the Saamad 3 (named the UAV X by a United Nations investigation) have since been supplied to the Houthis.

These are similar in look and capabilities to longer-range Irani-an drones and are said to be able to strike from a distance of about 1,500 kilometres. These drones were reportedly used to interfere with, and attack, airports as far away as Saudi Arabia last year. Importantly, these incidents high-lighted that the Houthis had the ability and ambition to deploy weapons with pinpoint precision over incredibly long distances.

It was for this reason that when

Drones are now among the greatest threats



RAGHIDA DERGHAM

Heads of governments around the world will be watching closely as Don-

ald Trump prepares for what could be the toughest domestic chal-lenge of his presidency. Such is the influence of his office, there is a strong possibility that the im-peachment investigation under way against the US leader will be forcing friends and foes abroad to recalibrate their approaches on dealing with his administration.

The US House of Representa-tives has launched a probe against Mr Trump after evidence mount-ed in recent days that he illicitly used his office to enlist the help of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in order to damage Joe Biden, a Democratic Party presi-dential aspirant, in exchange for military aid. As a result, questions abound with regard to the fate of Mr Trump’s presidency, including whether he will get reelected in 2020 even if he manages to evade impeachment.

There is every chance, of course, that Mr Trump will overcome this tide – as he has other tides dur-ing the past nearly three years in power. And while there may be concerns over how he conducts foreign policy during the next few weeks and months, it is likely that adversaries and enemies of the United States will have sensed a golden opportunity to extract concessions from a president cur-rently under severe duress. For in-stance, the trade war between the

US and China continues unabated and, even as Mr Trump has proved effective in getting the Asian su-perpower to the table, the question is whether Xi Jinping’s adminis-tration can apply pressure on the American trade negotiation team while its president is distracted by the impeachment proceedings.

Ironically, though, the timing of the inquiry could prove fortuitous in bringing peace to the Middle East.

How to solve a problem like Iran has been, perhaps, the foremost question on the minds of foreign policy experts over the past four decades – but especially since Mr Trump cancelled the nuclear deal his predecessor Barack Obama had signed with Tehran in 2015. Un-der Mr Trump’s leadership, the US has taken a more hardline stance against Iran, stating that the nu-clear deal was not comprehensive enough and that it did little to curb Tehran’s ambitions to grow its in-fluence in the region with the help of its proxies. Sanctions applied by the Trump administration have also crippled Iran’s economy. But rather than returning to the nego-tiating table, Iran has gone on the offensive in the Strait of Hormuz by seizing tankers while Irani-an-backed Houthi forces in Yemen claimed launching drone attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia.

Given the position world leaders find Mr Trump in at the moment, however, some of those vested in the idea of a rapprochement between the two countries have stepped into the breach, seeing an

opportunity to continue down the path of dialogue and diplomacy. President Emmanuel Macron of France, backed by Russia’s Presi-dent Vladimir Putin, is said to be pushing for a new agreement to be drafted between Iran on one side and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, on the other. Details of the deal remain under wraps but


IT’S AMAZING THAT THE AMOUNT OF NEWS THAT HAPPENS IN THE WORLD EVERY DAY ALWAYS JUST EXACTLY FITS THE NEWSPAPER.JERRY SEINFELD

QUOTE OF THE DAY

US and Iranian regime

are both in positions of

weaknessFaced with domestic challenges

at home, both parties may be forced to accept a series of small

but meaningful deals

The risk has come full

circle, with a proliferation

of the devices in the hands of non-state

actors

JAMES ROGERS

In the post-9/11 era, the rise of armed military drones of-fered former president Ba-

rack Obama the opportunity to fulfil a promise he had made to the American people, one which helped him get elected. By the time Mr Obama came to power in January 2009, the US had lost at least 625 soldiers in Afghani-stan and 4,221 personnel in Iraq. The electorate was tired of the mounting body count and the lack of certainty of a victory. As such, Mr Obama’s promise was simple. He pledged to remove America’s best and brightest from harm’s way in the “bad war” in Iraq and to prove that the US could win the “good fight” in Afghanistan. It was there, during this sombre period in American history, that drones were harnessed, allowing the US military and the CIA to combat national security threats around the world while reducing the cost to life.

Drones, of course, were nothing new in 2009. Since the first days of George W Bush’s “war on ter-ror” in 2001, they had been used to hunt and kill Taliban militants and Al Qaeda terrorists. In total, Mr Bush utilised this killer tech-nology in more than 50 strikes, allowing the US military and the CIA to reach further and strike deeper into enemy-held territory. Yet, as it turned out, the peak of American drone use was still to come. It would be under Mr Oba-ma that the strike rate would ex-

ponentially increase. Now known as “the drone president”, Mr Oba-ma deployed the lethal capacity of the drone more than 500 times between 2009 and 2017, a tenfold increase in drone use from his predecessor. These strikes were controversial, with human rights groups concerned about the ease at which the US was using force and the stark number of report-ed civilian casualties. Neverthe-less, the use of drones continued and even increased. In so doing, Mr Obama set an example to the world: that force could be de-ployed with so-called “pinpoint precision” on one’s enemies, yet there need not be substantial risk to the perpetrator.

The demand for drones from both allied and antagonistic na-tions soon began to grow off the back of this promise of cost-free precision wars. While the US – the world’s most overt and obvious actor to use drones – was selective about where it supplied its latest armed drone technologies, new-er drone nations capitalised on the growing drone market. China created its own lucrative industry, supplying armed drones to states ranging from Iraq and Pakistan to Nigeria and, most recently, Serbia. Other states such as Turkey, Israel and Iran also joined the exclusive club of drone manufacturers and exporters.

By 2017, about 24 different na-tion states were said to have ob-tained armed drone capabilities and it was within this context that the use of the drone began to

evolve. Once the signature weapon in the American arsenal, the drone had become the power piece of a number of nations. Supplied by a handful of state manufacturers, many of these drones looked the same or had similar capabilities, including range, yield and lethal capacity. These systems even be-gan to be supplied to non-state actors. It was here, in this altered drone environment, that a certain drone deniability began to form, meaning that drones could be used to deploy force by one actor over great distances, but refuted, rebutted or passed off as another actor when necessary.

The recent attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities provided a clear illustration of this, if illus-tration were needed. Iran, it is alleged, has long been supplying Yemen’s Houthi rebels with drone technologies. Armed drones, like the Iranian Ababil-II, were report-edly supplied to the Houthis and renamed the Qasef I. These were used in the assassination of six high-ranking Yemeni military of-ficials during a parade at Al Anad military base in the south-west of Yemen in January. They have also been used to attack Saudi oil pipelines. Much more technolog-ically advanced systems with a




Drones are now among the greatest threats


TOP

4TWEETS

02

01

Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and

tell him that my conver-sation with the Ukrainian President was a congen-ial and very appropriate one, and my statement on China pertained to corruption, not politics. If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won. Sadly, he choked!

@realDonaldTrump

03

Had an excellent meeting with PM

Sheikh Hasina. We re-viewed the full range of bilateral ties between In-dia and Bangladesh.

@narendramodi

04

Gr e a t r e p o r t i n g : “Nearly two dozen

officials told TIME that in recent days Pompeo has become increasingly loud and bullying, and appears frequently distracted and impatient during State Department policy meet-ings.”

@Philip_Elliott

Kolkata Metro Creates History: Metro rail-

way records highest ever passenger count of 9.28 lakh commuters on Ma-hapanchami in Kolkata.The quality of services has enabled the passengers to opt for metro for visiting different pandals during Durga Puja in the city.

@PiyushGoyal

Disclaimer: (Views expressed by columnists are personal and need not necessarily reflect our

editorial stances)


sile programme while curbing its incursions in the region.

There were setbacks in this re-gard in recent times, either due to what was perceived as US intran-sigence or Iranian recklessness in the Middle East. Attack on Saudi oil installations, allegedly with the use of Iran-made drones, forced European powers to distance themselves from Tehran while

the US imposed more sanctions – including on the Central Bank of Iran. However, Mr Putin has reportedly asked Mr Macron to step up his efforts, while the Rus-sian leader urged Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani to avoid further escalations in the neighbourhood. According to sources, Mr Putin gave Mr Rouhani a guarantee to increase bilateral trade as well as Iran’s possible inclusion into the Eurasian Economic Union in re-turn for peace. Meanwhile, there have also been suggestions that the US would gauge the situation in Yemen, where there is a bloody war under way, as a litmus test with which to judge Iranian behav-iour in the region – in return for facilitating Mr Macron’s initiative. According to sources, Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi trav-elled to Saudi Arabia last month to explore the prospect of a Sau-di-Iranian rapprochement in the

Arabian peninsula.What we may be witnessing,

as a result of the initiatives taken by Mr Macron and Mr Putin, is a period of relative calm in the re-gion – at least for the time being – with sources close to the Iranian leadership suggesting that the Is-lamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would relent until late November before resuming its attempts to escalate tensions in the neighbour-hood. The domestic scene in Iran is reaching a boiling point and the regime fears that this could turn into an uprising unless it rescues its economy. The IRGC’s assessment is that the regime has two months for sanctions to be lifted, at least par-tially, before the economy collapses – which might force Tehran into a military confrontation abroad in order to garner public support.

The relative calm among Iran’s leaders suggests that a break-through, being brokered by the European powers, could be made with regard to facilitating Iranian oil exports as part of a deal with the Trump administration. And while there is little chance that the US will lift all its sanctions on Iran, the possibility of smaller deals being made shows that the power of diplomacy is very much alive even when one or both parties con-cerned are in a position of weak-ness. Remember, just as Mr Trump has his challenges at home, so does the regime in Tehran – given the state of the economy. Whether this will indeed translate to peace and stability in the Middle East, we will have to wait and see.

2003Mahmoud Abbas resigns from his position of Palestinian Prime Minister.

2007Israel executes the air strike Operation Orchard to destroy a nuclear reactor in Syria.

2009The ro-ro ferry SuperFerry 9 sinks off the Zamboanga Peninsula in the Philippines with 971 persons aboard; all but ten are rescued.

2012Sixty-one people die after a fishing boat capsizes off the İzmir Province coast of Turkey, near the Greek Aegean islands.

TODAY DAY IN

HISTORY

Preparing for a ‘knowledgeable’

future

The talk of cryptocurrency, AI, blockchain and robotics may all seem like science fiction to us

but in reality, they are business ideas that are actually shaping the future of Bahrain right now.

In the race to become the fintech hub of the region, Bahrain is ticking all the right boxes – the presence of IT giant Amazon Web Servies and the fintech hub in Bahrain Bay has given the Kingdom the advantage of low costs and the availability of an eager pool of tech-savvy potential employ-ees and entrepreneurs as well.

Add to these advantages the robust and sharp legal framework that the CBB provides in supervising crypto-currency management and growth and one has an overall environment for future growth.

Already in July this year, Bahrain became the first MENA country to introduce the first fully-regulated, onshore cryptocurrency exchange and close a $2.5 million round.

It is estimated that a fintech start-up in Bahrain would cost investors about $200,000 to establish as opposed to over three times that amount in London. For a start-up this is a big saving, espe-cially in a global econo-my where fintech com-panies will be connected to counterparts around the world.

The biggest currency that Bahrain deals in is that of trust - Bahrain offers credibility to the entrepreneur working in the field and helps to build vital business bridges between coun-tries.

Now we need to tap our imaginative youth with the right study programmes to prepare them for a future in this burgeoning field. While

we have the schools and university to back us up, the Ministry of Education would do well to invest in a completely different approach which will take the knowledge to the new generation through methods that they are famil-iar with instead of just the classrooms.

Catch them young – after all, even the average six year old already seems to have been born equipped with more tech knowledge than you and I in our fifties!

Our education system needs to be retooled to enable Bahrainis to think out of the box and unconventionally. Such training is best begun early and planned so that it is implemented every step of the way. Let us trans-form our first-mover advantage in the knowledge sector into a winning formula for our Kingdom in the run-up to our next assessment milestone in 2030.

(Captain Mahmood Al Mahmood is the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Tribune and the President of the Arab-African Unity

Organisation for Relief, Human Rights and Counterterrorism)

CAPT. MAHMOOD AL MAHMOOD

Our education system needs to be retooled to enable Bahrainis to think out of the box and unconventionally.

Such training is best begun

early and planned so that

it is implemented every step of the

way.

There were setbacks in this regard in recent

times, either due to what was perceived as US

intransigence or Iranian recklessness in the Middle

East.




reports came in of 18 drones and seven missiles striking the Aramco sites in Abqaiq and Khurais, the confusion in attribution began. The Houthis immediately claimed the attacks as a victory and with known capabilities and previous attacks to support their assertion, the culprits seemed indisputable. Yet, as the specifics of the attacks became apparent – from the anal-ysis of flight paths and debris – Iran, or perhaps Iranian agents in Iraq, seemed to be responsible.

The delay and confusion in at-tribution has led to an under-standable delay in response by both Saudi Arabia and its Amer-ican allies. A wider air of uncer-tainty has also been generated, with a level of plausible deniabil-ity, giving the Iranians’ breathing room and space to refute claims that they were responsible for shutting down about 6 per cent of the world’s oil production.

This deniability, mixed with ev-er-greater drone range and drone proliferation, is a worrying trend.

Put simply, the Aramco attack will not be the last of its kind. Numerous non-state actors have now acquired and use drone tech-nologies to aid them in deadly attacks. In time, more sophisti-cated military-grade systems, as in the case of the Houthis, will fall into the hands of even more non-state groups with malevolent in-tent. The availability of high-tech commercial systems will aid this proliferation. Insurgent groups such as the Houthis and terrorist groups such as ISIS have already shown how readily available ther-mal imaging cameras, long-range transmitters and more powerful motors make attacks more deadly. ISIS was able to obtain these ad-vanced drone “add-ons” from Eu-ropean commercial suppliers and smuggle them through Turkey.

This allowed them to construct hundreds of drones and use them in the fight against the US-led coalition. As general Raymond Thomas, head of US Special Op-eration Command, stated in 2017 when describing the battle for Mosul, “there was a day when the Iraqi effort nearly came to a screeching halt, where literal-ly over 24 hours there were 70 drones in the air”. The threat does not stop there, however.

During my recent fieldwork in Niger, I was told stories of ISIS-af-filiated operatives fleeing North Africa and moving through the porous borders of the Sahel, tak-

ing hi-tech weapons know-how with them. It is no surprise, there-fore, that the Nigerian military has claimed that Boko Haram – which is fighting on the southern bor-der of Niger – now has tactically sophisticated drone capabilities. As the New York Times reported last month, Boko Haram fighters “now have more sophisticated drones than the military and are well-armed after successful raids on military brigades”.

There is a separate yet related point to make here. While attacks such as those supposedly com-mitted by the Houthis will be at-tributed (wrongly or rightly) to a nation state due to their range and precision, terrorist groups using drones that are similar in design and capability will be able to benefit from their own form of distance, deniability and confu-sion, making it hard to attribute killings and atrocities to a single entity and bring those responsible to justice.

In an ironic twist of fate, there-fore, armed drones have now come full circle, posing a threat to the security of the nation state. This might seem fantastical but with the latest statistics by the Centre for the Study of the Drone highlighting that there are now at least 95 countries with military drone programmes and 21,000 military drones in operation around the globe, it is clear to see conflicts in the future will be fought with drones, in wars where all actors have drone tech-nologies.

Drones are now among the greatest threatsThe demand for drones

from both allied and antagonistic nations soon began to grow off the back of this promise of cost-free

precision wars.

10

business


TRA launches new-look website

TDT | Manama

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority

(TRA) of Bahrain yesterday announced launching its new-look website to keep pace with latest technologies.

The website, TRA said, acts as a communication por-tal, whereby visitors can ef-fectively interact with TRA, and a reliable source for all matters related to TRA on the Internet, such as news,

events, activities and various services.

“The website has many tech-nical features that offer simple and fast navigation to its vari-ous components and divisions and many interactive services to improve the level of infor-mation provided to different beneficiaries,” said Director of Media & Consumer Affairs, Sh. Abdulla Bin Humood Al Khalifa.

To view the new website, visit www.tra.org.bh

GPIC Labour Union elects new board members TDT | Manama

The Gulf Petrochemical In-dustries Company (GPIC)

elected a new seven-member board following polls con-ducted with 19 candidates in the fray.

The following were declared the winners: Tarek Ahmed Al Mazlouk (229 votes), Abdulla-tif Mohammed Shweiter (179 votes), Yacoub Youssef (156 votes), Elham Janahi (155 votes), Ghassan Abdullah Al-Rayes (153 votes), Yousef Mohammed Al-Bastaki (149 votes), Ham-ad Mubarak Al-Mubarak (144 votes).

Jamal Abdul Hamid Al-Koo-heji (136 votes) and Adel Ad-nan Al-Mirbati (120 votes) we r e e l e c t e d a s r e s e r v e members.

Representatives of the Bah-rain Free Trade Union Federa-tion, its Vice President and As-

sistant Secretary General Basim Siyadi, were present.

In a statement, Gulf Petro-chemical Industries Company

President Dr Abdulrahman Jawahery congratulated the

winners and applauded the suc-cess of the voting process.

Officials and board members following the election

US importers stockpile as tariffs on EU cheeses loom• The Trump administration on Wednesday slapped 25pc tariffs on cheese and other European Union product

• Importers began ordering millions of dollars of extra wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano and other harder cheeses

Reuters | Washington, West Caldwell, New Jersey

Ambriola Co Inc’s mam-moth warehouse in West Caldwell, New Jersey,

is crammed full of boxes and wheels of harder cheeses such as Parmigiano Reggiano, Pecori-no Romano and Grana Padano - and more is coming, lots more.

Phil Marfuggi, president and chief executive officer of Amb-riola, a unit of Auricchio SpA, one of Italy’s largest cheese pro-ducers, is among the many im-porters and shop owners across the country who are scrambling to stockpile European cheeses before new US tariffs kick in on Oct. 18 in efforts to shield con-sumers from price hikes.

The Trump administration on Wednesday slapped 25% tariffs on cheese and other European Union products ranging from whisky to woolens, in retalia-tion for EU subsidies on large aircraft. Both sides say they are open to negotiations, but trade experts see little chance of averting the duties - at least in the short run.

Importers began ordering millions of dollars of extra

wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano and other harder cheeses after the U.S. Trade Representative’s office in July added cheese to its list of EU products potentially facing tariffs due to the dispute over aircraft subsidies.

“When that list came out, that’s when I ... started bring-ing in many more containers of cheese of Reggiano, Provolone,” said Marfuggi, who has another 21 shipping containers full of cheese en route to be added to the stockpile in the company’s warehouse in Caldwell, which sits about 15 miles west of Man-hattan.

Marfuggi said he ordered an extra $15 million of cheeses that could be stored for over a year to ensure adequate supplies for existing customers and protect pricing through the end of the year.

“I’ve been building up inven-tory ... because we have a target on our backs,” he said.

The new duties could slash US imports of EU cheeses valued at $1.5 billion a year by 30pc

and jack up prices across the country, said Marfuggi, who also serves as president of the Cheese Importers Association of America.

Some higher-priced items will simply disappear from stores, he predicted, like Moliterno al Tar-

tufo, an aged Italian cheese with an intense truffle flavor. Even Parmigiano Reggiano could be

at risk if prices rose to $30 a pound, he said.

“There are going to be some items ... that the supermarkets are just not going to handle an-ymore. It’ll be price prohibitive for that,” he said.

The tariffs will hit consum-er prices and eventually jobs across the United States, said Ralph Hoffman, executive vice president of Schuman Cheese, one of the largest importers of hard Italian cheeses.

Over 20,000 U.S. retail stores ranging from Costco Wholesale Corp to Wegmans Food Markets sell EU cheeses. These chees-es generate some $3.5 billion of revenue for U.S. companies, supporting some 20,000 jobs, including buyers, deli clerks, truck drivers and warehouse workers, Hoffman said. He not-ed that the new tariffs come on top of existing duties of around 15%.

Specialty grocer The Fresh Market expects the tariffs to affect about 35pc of the 200 cheeses it carries at its 160 stores.

Max Becker works with imported European cheeses stored at the Bowers Fancy Diary Products shop in Washington’s Eastern Market. - Reuters

Imported European cheese are seen stored at the Bowers Fancy Dairy Products shop in Washington’s Eastern Market several weeks before the Trump administration’s tariffs on EU cheeses

Sales at Taiwan’s Apple supplier Hon Hai flat in Sept

• Taipei-based Foxconn, manufactures the bulk of Apple’s iPhones in China

Reuters | Taipei

Sales at Hon Hai Precision Industry, known by its

trade name Foxconn and as a key supplier of Apple Inc’s products, rose by 0.5 per cent rise in September.

The world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer re-ported revenues of T$587.79 billion (15.4bn pounds) in Sep-tember, up from T$584.93bn from a year earlier, it said in a filing to the Taiwan stock ex-change. Although only a slight yearly increase, the monthly

revenue figure was the com-pany’s highest for September.

Taipei-based Foxconn, which manufactures the bulk of Apple’s iPhones in China for sale in the United States, faces challenging quarters ahead as Washington plans to impose additional tariffs on Chinese imports, including smartphones.

The sales update came after Apple launched its three new iPhone models in September and cut the starting price.

In the second quarter, Fox-conn posted a 2.5pc profit drop, a slightly smaller fall than analysts expected.

Foxconn is already battling weak global demand for other electronics devices, which has forced it to consider selling its $8.8bn display panel factory in China.

Trump suspends entry of immigrants who cannot pay for healthcareReuters | Washington

US President Donald Trump on Friday signed

a proclamation suspending entry of immigrants who will not be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering the United States or do not have the means to pay for their healthcare costs themselves.

The proclamation, issued by the White House, said it would not affect any indi-vidual’s eligibility for asy-lum or refugee status. The measure will take effect on Nov. 3, it said.

The Trump administra-tion said last month that it planned to allow only 18,000 refugees to resettle in the United States.


It requires a certain boldness and

fortitude to take on an endeavor as

ambitious as Libra -- a generational

opportunity to get things right and

improve financial inclusionDANTE DISPARTE

ASSOCIATION HEAD OF POLICY

This is a dynamic region, with lots going on, lots of change taking

place and we are very confident that

together, we can work to ensure that

Greece can be a pillar for stability in this

regionPOMPEO

I really think that a currency should

stay in the hands of countries. I’m not comfortable with

the idea of a private group setting up a

competing currencyCOOK REPORTEDLY TOLD LES ECHOS, A

FRENCH FINANCIAL NEWSPAPER

Representative picture

US reviews whether 2,000 Teslas should have been recalled• A lawsuit alleges Tesla placed a software-induced limitation on battery charging and other changes that make batteries charge more slowly

Reuters | Washington

US regulators said on Friday they were reviewing wheth-

er Tesla Inc should have recalled 2,000 of its electric cars in May instead of issuing a software up-grade to fix a potential defect that could have resulted in bat-tery fires.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it opened a review to evaluate claims made in a pe-tition about Tesla’s handling of the software upgrade in Model S and Model

X vehicles from the 2012-2019 model years. The agency said the petition’s claims cover about 2,000 Tesla vehicles.

Tesla, headed by billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, has also been sued over updates to its battery-charging software, and this week faced complaints involving vehicles that crashed in parking lots while using a self-driving feature.

The 2,000 vehicles covered by the petition to the NHTSA received a battery management software upgrade in May in re-sponse to a potential flaw that could trigger non-crash-related fires. The petition was filed Sept. 17 by the offices of California lawyer E d w a r d C . Chen on b e h a l f of Tesla owners.

It said

the software update was be-lieved to have reduced the driv-ing range of the affected vehicles by 25 miles or more per charge.

Chen said Friday that he strongly believes “and various reliable sources have indicated that this number is much larger than 2,000.”

The company did not imme-diately respond to requests for comment.

In August, a proposed class-ac-tion lawsuit filed in California on behalf of a Tesla owner by Chen claimed that Tesla knew some vehicle batteries were de-fective

and “pushed out software up-dates despite knowing that the

class vehicles would suffer from loss in range

and perfor-

mance.”The suit alleges Tesla’s aim

was “to avoid providing war-ranty battery replacements to rightful customers.”

Tesla said in August that “a very small percentage of own-ers of older Model S and Model X vehicles may have noticed a small reduction in range when charging to a maximum state of charge following a software up-date designed to improve battery longevity.”

The lawsuit alleges Tesla placed a software-induced lim-itation on battery charging and other changes that make batter-ies charge more slowly. It also cites more than a dozen reports of Tesla’s vehicles catching fire

over the past six years.

T e s l a has not

yet responded to the lawsuit in court.

After a Model S caught fire in Hong Kong, Tesla said it was revising charge and thermal management settings on Model S and X vehicles via an over-the-air software update out of an “overabundance” of caution. The goal was “to help further protect the battery and improve battery longevity,” it said.

Tesla later said it planned to improve the software update after some owners complained.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the NHTSA are investigating several battery fires in Tesla vehicles. The NHT-SA has previously investigated other battery and charging sys-tem issues with Tesla vehicles.

PayPal abandons Libra group• Facebook unveiled plans in June for Libra

• Mastercard, Visa and other financial partners enlisted to oversee Libra are reportedly having second thoughts

• Other Libra backers include ride-hailing apps Lyft and Uber

• The non-profit Libra Association, based in Geneva, will oversee the blockchain-based coin.

San Francisco

Pioneering digital pay-ments firm PayPal on Friday said it is aban-

doning an alliance intended to oversee the Facebook-backed Libra cryptocurrency, which has come under attack by reg-ulators.

“PayPal has made the deci-sion to forgo further participa-tion in the Libra Association at this time,” the Califor-nia-based company said.

“We remain sup-portive of Libra’s aspirations and look forward to continued dialogue on ways to work to-gether in the future.”

International out-cry is mounting over Libra - -

with central banks and gov-ernments railing against Face-book’s upstart cryptocurren-cy and questions over how it would be regulated.

“It requires a certain bold-ness and fortitude to take on an endeavor as ambitious as Libra -- a generational opportunity to get things right and improve financial inclusion,” association head of policy Dante Disparte said in response to an inquiry.

“The journey will be long and challenging. We’re better off knowing about this lack of com-mitment now, rather than later.”

Facebook unveiled plans in June for Libra --

which will roll out in 2020 -- to be backed by a basket of currency assets to avoid the wild swings of Bitcoin and

other virtual units.The non-profit Libra

Association, based in Geneva, will oversee the

blockchain-based coin.Facebook envisions Li-

bra as a new global cryptocurrency,

pledging to de-liver a stable virtual money that lives on smartphones a n d c o u l d bring over a billion “un-b a n k e d ”

people into the financial system.“The type of change that will

reconfigure the financial system to be tilted towards people, not the institutions serving them, will be hard,” Disparte said.

“Commitment to that mission is more important to us than anything else.”

Mastercard, Visa and other financial partners enlisted to oversee Libra are reportedly having second thoughts as regu-lators unleash ire on the project and dig for information from members of the association.

Other Libra backers include ride-hailing apps Lyft and Uber.

The head of the association said last week that the project’s leaders aimed to “reassure” regulators worried about the virtual money.

In leaked comments from a meeting of Facebook employ-ees in July, Facebook chief ex-ecutive Mark Zuckerberg said he remained optimistic about Libra despite harsh comments from public officials in several countries.

“The public things, I think, tend to be a little more dramat-ic,” he said.

“But a bigger part of it is private engagement with reg-ulators around the world, and those, I think, often, are more substantive and less dramatic... That’s where a lot of the discus-sions and details get hashed out on things.”

Cook’s view

In an interview published Fri-day in French newspaper Les Echos, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said he was uncom-fortable with the idea of a com-pany taking over roles typically reserved for governments.

Without specifically naming Facebook, Cook said issuing currency, like national defence, is best left to states.

Facebook and some two doz-en partners released a proto-type of Libra as an open source code for developers interested in weaving it into apps, services or businesses.

Mark Zuckerberg

Greece can be ‘pillar’ for regional stability: Pompeo

Athens

Sh r u g g i n g o f f a n t i - U S demonstrations on a visit

Saturday to Athens, US Sec-retary of State Mike Pompeo said Greece can be a pillar of stability in a troubled region.

Pompeo is in Greece to un-derline support for a NATO ally and reinforce cooperation, signing an amendment to a mutual defence cooperation agreement, sources for both governments said.

“This is a dynamic region, with lots going on, lots of change taking place and we are very confident that to-gether, we can work to ensure that Greece can be a pillar for stability in this region,” said Pompeo, hailing a relation-ship that “has truly never been stronger.”

Thousands of demonstrators outside the Greek parliament begged to differ, some bran-dishing a huge banner reading “Pompeo go home.”

His visit comes amid Greek concerns to which Prime Min-ister Kyriakos Mitsotakis al-luded -- Turkish drilling off EU member Cyprus.

The discovery of huge gas reserves in the eastern Medi-terranean has triggered a race to tap the region’s resources and sparked a dispute between Turkey and Cyprus.

“The United States has a special interest in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Cyprus only asks for the obvious, the

implementation of interna-tional law.

“I expect the positive con-tribution of the United States, which will eventually lead to the creation of a more con-structive and productive envi-ronment in the region,” Mitso-takis added.

Turkey has had troops sta-tioned in Cyprus since 1974 when it invaded and occupied its northern third after a coup sponsored by the military jun-ta then ruling Greece.

As well as holding talks with Mitsotakis, who took office in July, Pompeo was also meet-ing Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias and Defence Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos.

Pompeo refused to address questions from reporters on al-legations that President Don-ald Trump pressured Ukraine for political favours, a claim which has launched an im-peachment investigation.

Pompeo shrugged off a demonstration in Athens as well as all talk of Ukraine as he met with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to wind up a four-nation tour of Europe

The 2,000 vehicles covered by the petition to the NHTSA received a battery management

software upgrade in May in response to a potential flaw that could trigger

non-crash-related fires


EU presses UK to resubmit Brexit plan• Time is running short for the two sides to close the gap

• An October 17-18 EU summit is to determine whether Britain is headed for a Brexit deal

• The main sticking point is a “backstop” for Northern Ireland

Brussels

EU and UK officials are to resume talks Monday on Britain’s plans for a man-

aged Brexit after a weekend hiatus during which London was under pressure to revise its proposals.

The European Commission is adamant that, as they stand, “the UK proposals do not pro-vide a basis for concluding an agreement”.

That grates with Britain’s government, which considers the proposals it submitted on Wednesday to be “a fair and rea-sonable compromise”.

After hours-long talks in Brus-sels on Friday failed to move the dial, a UK spokesman said: “We want a deal and talks continue on Monday on the basis of our offer.”

Time is running short for the two sides to close the gap.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is determined to take his country out of the the Eu-ropean Union at the end of this month.

An October 17-18 EU summit is to determine whether Britain is headed for a Brexit deal, no-deal, or an extension.

A week’s window

But European diplomats em-phasise that London needs to offer revised, viable proposals within days and certainly before the end of next week, so any hag-gling and legalistic work is done before the summit.

“Everything must move very quickly and any negotiation has to start at the beginning of next week,” one diplomat said. “We will evaluate next Friday wheth-er it’s been possible to bring the positions closer.”

Although Johnson has called his Brexit proposals a broad “landing zone” the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and his team are unsure how far Brit-ain will budge.

The EU refuses to characterise the talks held so far as negotia-tions, underlining a preference to stick with a Brexit withdrawal agreement that was struck with Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May but rejected three times by British MPs.

‘Backstop’ headacheThe main sticking point is a

“backstop” for Northern Ireland.That is meant to guarantee no

border springs up between the British territory and EU member Ireland, threatening a hard-won peace accord, while also main-taining the integrity of the EU’s single market.

Britain’s current idea for an alternative to the backstop -- which would see all the UK, or at least Northern Ireland, remain-ing in the EU’s customs union -- is for untried technology to remove the need for most but not all border checks, and for EU standards on goods to continue to apply in Northern Ireland to facilitate trade.

The border plan is not accept-able for the EU. It sees the po-

tential for rampant smuggling, especially as Johnson intends for the rest of the UK to diverge from EU labour, environmental and tax norms to aim for a regu-lation-lite economy on Europe’s doorstep.

Nor does the EU agree with a proposal that Northern Ireland’s assembly be given a right to ef-fectively veto the post-Brexit customs arrangement.

If either of those two propos-als are red lines for Johnson, it is hard to see the EU mov-ing talks into the negotiation phase.

Yet if he bends on them, he risks losing tenuous support in the UK parliament to maybe pass a Brexit deal, reliant on 10 Democratic Unionist MPs from Northern Ireland and hard-core Brexit MPs in his Conservative Party.

Extension optionIf thwarted, Johnson’s best

bet may lie with early elections.There he also faces a chal-

lenge, with the UK parliament having passed a law requiring him to seek a Brexit extension from the EU by October 19 if he has not reached a deal by then.

British media speculated that Johnson might seek to sab-otage any extension request he is forced to make against his will.

One path included his minis-ters asking an EU member state to block the unanimous approval needed for an extension, with Hungary cited as a likely ally to break EU ranks.

But Budapest denied Britain had approached it with such a request, and a Hungarian foreign ministry source told AFP: “To date there is no re-quest for a delay, hence there is no point in speculating about anything.”

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson vows he will take his country out of the EU at the end of this month

The EU does not regard the UK’s tech-reliant proposal for Northern Ireland’s border to be viable

Chile’s drought killing thousands of farm animalsPetorca | Chile

For Erick Hurtado, the worst thing about the drought that has devas-

tated his family farm in Chile is the dead animals.

“Going out and seeing the an-imals dead on the ground is so horrible,” Hurtado says as he gazes across the dusty paddocks of his farm in Petorca, near the coastal city of Valparaiso.

Farmers are counting the cost of one of the driest austral win-ters in six decades, which has destroyed crops and left tens of thousands of farm animals dead in the fields of central Chile.

Hurtado’s farm, owned by his grandfather, has lost half its 60 head of cattle.

So far, 106,000 animals have died due to lack of water and fodder, mostly goats, cattle and sheep, according to the agricul-ture ministry.

President Sebastian Pinera, who last month announced a $5 billion plan to improve water distribution, this week set up a crisis group of government agencies to tackle the water cri-sis, which he said had become “more extensive and more in-tense.”

In Colina, north of the cap-ital Santiago, the drought has been hard on small farmers. Scrawny cattle pick at sprigs of strawy grass on pastures that have turned to dust. Cows, goats

and horses roam hungry on hills have turned to a dry muddy brown.

“The drought has been disas-trous for us,” said Sandra Agu-ilar. Her family owned about a hundred head of cattle. To-day, only half survive thanks to a trickle of water provided by a neighbor who still has some

reserves.“The situation is complicat-

ed,” said Javier Maldonado, gov-ernor of the province of Chaca-buco, where several agricultural areas have been hit particularly hard by the drought.

“We have to be realistic, cli-mate change is here to stay,” he said.

Water shortages

Dominga Mondaca points out the deep fissures that run through the garden behind her house in the village of La Li-gua near Valparaiso. The garden used to be full of strawberries and citrus trees; now it’s cracked earth.

“We have had many years with little water. But the last year, it didn’t rain at all,” said the 73-year-old, one of more than 600,000 people the government is supplying by tanker trucks as part of emergency measures.

She says she has had to give up raising chickens, in order to keep what little water she and her husband receive for their own consumption, washing and cleaning. Whatever is left, she uses to sprinkle on herbs in a small kitchen garden.

The agriculture ministry says 37,000 family farms need assis-tance in the central Chile.

Thirsty avocados?In Petorca, some rivers have

run dry, and the landscape has been left parched, but lush avo-cado and citrus plantations are nevertheless thriving.

Locals in Petorca say the real, long-term problem is the mis-management of water resources.

“There is an excess of mon-oculture plantations that con-sume all the water,” said Diego Soto of the Movement for the

Defense of Access to Water, Land and Environmental Pro-tection (MODATIMA) said.

Avocados need a lot of water to grow, said Soto.

“An avocado tree needs 600 liters of water per week, where-as humans consume 50 liters a day, or 350 liters a week,” he said.

Producers refute these figures and say the real problem is a lack of infrastructure to store water, both above and below ground.

“The avocado is not a crop that needs more water,” insisted Francisco Contardo, chairman of the local producers’ committee.

Avocados are a key export for Chile, mostly to the US and China, but drought has reduced exports by 25 percent.

Less snowFor many though, the chang-

es being wrought by climate

change are overwhelmingly ob-vious. Snow in the highlands of central Chile was relatively scarce this year.

Scientists predict an average decrease of between five and 10 percent snowfall every 10 years in almost the entire Andes mountains, one of the country’s main sources of water.

“The central zone of Chile is highly dependent on the sum-mer melt season, its snow and glaciers, which means that if the snow cover is reduced, there is also a reduction in the availa-bility of water resources,” said Paul Cordero, climate change expert at the University of Santiago.

Weak snowfall forced the country’s main ski resorts to use artificial snow machines much earlier and more often this sea-son than in previous years.

Tourists visit Farellones ski station near Santiago on August 9, which was shut down due to lack of snow

Cows seen on farmland left arid by a lack of rainwater in Colina, north of Santiago, Chile

Aerial view of the dried-out bed of the La Ligua river in Petorca province

War: Hrithik Roshan starrer is flashy but familiarBoth Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff fully commit to the action, bringing swag to the big stylish sequences and a visceral

energy to the one-on-one punch-ups in the movie

War is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language ac-tion thriller film di-

rected by Siddharth Anand. It is produced by Aditya Chopra under his banner Yash Raj Films, and stars Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff. The film follows an Indian soldier assigned to elimi-nate his former mentor, who has gone rogue.

War received generally pos-itive reviews from critics; on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 75% based on eight reviews, with an average rating of 5/10.

Among positive reviews, a writer for Bollywood Hungama gave the film four stars out of five, and said “War is an action entertainer which has style as well as enough twists and turns to keep the viewers engrossed. At the box office, the extend-ed weekend, dazzling action, stunning international locales and stylish execution will ensure mammoth footfalls for the film.”

Republic World gave the film

four and a half stars out of five, writing, “Epic action specta-cle, rides on watertight script,

world-class action, fast paced and thrilling screenplay. Hrithik Roshan’s performance is icon-

ic, Tiger Shroff delivers career best act. Siddhart’s vision and direction is superlative.” Taran

Adarsh gave it four stars out of five and called the film “escapist cinema at its best.”

Komal Nahta of Film Infor-mation opined, “The film could prove to be the starting of a new franchise for the Yash Raj Films banner”. Writing for India TV, Sonal gave the film three and a half stars out of five, writing, “Hrithik Roshan, Tiger Shroff of Abbas Mustan kinda twists, turns, characters, situations, log-ic, gravity, physics, chemistry, and some Ekta Kapoor-esque tricks all tossed together to make a visually spectacular concoc-tion.”

Among the reviewers who granted the film mixed to nega-tive reviews, The Times of India rated it three stars out of five and felt the film had “lot of style, stunts and show, but lacking a solid storyline.”

India Today rated it two and a half stars out of five and wrote, “War is a crowd-puller, but it isn’t meant to further the cause of cinema”. Daily News and Analysis gave three stars out of five and wrote, “War seems more like a Hrithik Roshan and YRF come back than anything else.”

JOKER (15+)(THRILLER/CRIME/DRAMA) OASIS JUFFAIR :11.15 AM + 1.45 + 4.15 + 6.45 + 9.15 + 11.45 PM OASIS JUFFAIR (VIP): 10.30 AM + 1.00 + 3.30 + 6.00 + 8.30 + 11.00 PMCITY CENTRE (1.00 AM THURS/FRI)CITY CENTRE :(ATOMS) 10.30 AM + 1.00 + 3.45 + 6.30 + 9.15 PM + 12.00 MNCITY CENTRE (IMAX 2D) : 12.00 + 2.45 + 5.30 + 8.15 + 11.00 PMOASIS JUFFAIR (VIP I): 12.45 + 3.30 + 6.15 + 9.00 + 11.45 PMCITY CENTRE VIP (II):12.15 + 3.00 + 5.45 + 8.30 + 11.15 PMSEEF (II): 10.45 AM + 11.15 AM + 12.00 + 1.15 + 1.45 + 2.30 + 3.45 + 4.15 + 5.00 + 6.15 + 6.45 + 7.30 + 8.45 + 9.15 + 10.00 + 11.15 PM + 11.45 PM + (12.30 MN THURS/FRI)WADI AL SAIL: 11.00 AM + 1.30 + 4.00 + 6.30 + 9.00 + 11.30 PMSAAR: 11.00 AM + 1.30 + 4.00 + 6.30 + 8.00 + 9.00 + (10.30 PM + 11.30 PM THURS./FRI)

JOAQUIN PHOENIX, ZAZIE BEETZ, ROBERT DE NIRO

WAR (PG-15)(HINDI/ACTION/THRILLER/CRIMEOASIS JUFFAIR : 11.15 AM + 11.45 AM + 2.15 + 2.45 + 5.15 + 5.45 + 8.15 + 8.45 + 11.15 PM + 11.45 PMCITY CENTRE: 11.30 AM + 12.30 + 2.30 + 3.30 + 5.30 + 6.30 + 8.30 + 9.30 + 11.30 PM. + (12.30 MN. THURS./FRI.)SEEF (I): 11.15 AM + 11.45 AM + 2.15 + 2.45 + 5.15 + 5.45 + 8.15 + 8.45 + 11.15 PM + 11.45 PMWADI AL SAIL:11.30 AM + 2.30 + 5.30 + 8.30 + 11.30 PMSAAR: 11.00 AM + 2.00 + 5.00 + 8.00 PM + (11.00 PM THURS./FRI)

HRITHIK ROSHAN, TIGER SHROFF, VAANI KAPOOR

THE AVENGEMENT (18+)(ACTION/CRIMECITY CENTRE :7.00 + 9.00 + 11.00 PMSEEF (II): 11.30 AM + 1.30 + 3.30 + 5.30 + 7.30 + 9.30 + 11.30 PMWADI AL SAIL:8.00 + 10.00 + 12.00 MNSCOTT ADKINS, CRAIG FAIRBRASS, THOMAS TURGOOSEA SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE: FARMAGEDDON (G)(ANIMATIONل

OASIS JUFFAIR (KIDS CINEMA) :10.30 AM + 2.45 + 7.00 PMCITY CENTRE 11.00 AM + 1.00 + 3.00 + 5.00 PMSEEF (II): 11.00 AM + 3.30 + 8.00 PMWADI AL SAIL: 10.45 AM + 12.45 + 2.45 + 4.45 PMSAAR: 12.00 + 2.00 + 4.00 + 6.00 PM

JUSTIN FLETCHER, JOHN SPARKES, KATE HARBOUR

SYE RAA NARASIMHA REDDY (PG-15)(ACTIONOASIS JUFFAIR (TELUGU):10.30 AM + 1.45 + 5.00 + 8.15 + 11.30 PMOASIS JUFFAIR (HINDI): 3.15 PMOASIS JUFFAIR (TAMIL): 11.00 PMCITY CENTRE (HINDI): 10.30 AM + 1.45 + 5.00 + 8.15 + 11.30 PMSEEF (I): (TELUGU)10.30 AM + 1.45 + 5.00 + 8.15 + 11.30 PMSEEF (I):(TAMIL): 2.15 + 8.45 PMSEEF (I): (HINDI):11.00 AM + 5.30 + 12.00 MNWADI AL SAIL:(TELUGU): 2.30 + 8.30 PMAL HAMRA: (TELUGU): 12.00 + 3.00 + 6.00 PM

CHIRANJEEVI, AMITABH BACHCHAN, VIJAY SETHUPATHI

UNBEATABLE FIGHTER (PG-13) MARATISEEF (II): 2.15 + 6.45 PMADEL AL HALLAWI, CHRISTINA ANDREA BLUNSUM, MOHAMED YEHIARAMBO: LAST BLOOD (15+)(ACTION/CRIME/DRAMA) CITY CENTRE : 12.15 + 2.30 + 4.45 + 7.00 + 9.15 + 11.30 PM + (1.00 AM THURS/FRI)SEEF (II): 10.30 AM + 12.45 + 3.00 + 5.15 + 7.30 + 9.45 PM + 12.00 MN WADI AL SAIL:6.45 + 9.00 + 11.15 PM

SYLVESTER STALLONE, PAZ VEGA, SERGIO PERIS-MENCHETA

BORN A KING (PG)(DRAMA/HISTORY/BIOGRAPHY) ووو OASIS JUFFAIR : 10.45 AM + 1.00 + 6.30 + 8.45 PMCITY CENTRE :10.30 AM + 12.45 + 3.00 + 5.15 + 7.30 + 9.45 + 12.00 MNSEEF (II): 11.45 AM + 2.00 + 4.15 + 6.30 + 8.45 + 11.00 PMWADI AL SAIL:12.00 + 2.15 + 4.30 + 6.45 + 9.00 + 11.15 PMSAAR: 2.15 + 6.45 + (11.15 PM THURS./FRI.)

ABDULLAH ALI, RAWKAN BINBELLA, ED SKREIN

ABOMINABLE (PG)(ANIMATION/ADVENTURE/COMEDY) ووو OASIS JUFFAIR (KIDS CINEMA) :12.30 + 4.45 + 9.00 + 11.15 PMCITY CENTRE 1.45 + 6.15 + 10.45 PMSEEF (II): 11.30 AM + 4.30 + 9.30 PMWADI AL SAIL: 11.00 AM + 1.15 + 3.30 + 5.45 PMSAAR: 12.00 + 4.30 + 9.00 PM

CHLOE BENNET, TENZING NORGAY TRAINOR, ALBERT TSAI

ANGEL HAS FALLEN (PG-15)(ACTION/THRILLER/DRAMA) وو CITY CENTRE :11.15 AM + 1.45 + 4.15 + 6.45 + 9.15 + 11.45 PM SEEF (II): 1.45 + 6.45 + 11.45 PM

GERARD BUTLER, MORGAN FREEMAN, JADA PINKETT SMITH

THE INFORMER (15+)(CRIME/DRAMA) وووووو CITY CENTRE :2.00 + 6.45 + 11.30 PMSEEF (II): 11.15 AM + 4.15 + 9.15 PM

JOEL KINNAMAN, ROSAMUND PIKE, CLIVE OWEN

FAST & FURIOUS: HOBBS & SHAW (PG-15)(ACTIONوو ووو وو CITY CENTRE: 12.30 + 3.15 + 6.00 + 8.45 + 11.30 PMSEEF (II): 1.45 + 6.45 + 11.45 PM

DWAYNE JOHNSON, JASON STATHAM, IDRIS ELBA

KHAYAL MAATA (PG)(COMEDY/DRAMA) وووو وووو CITY CENTRE :2.00 + 7.00 + 12.00 MNSEEF (II): 11.45 AM + 4.15 + 8.45 + 11.15 PM

AHMAD HELMY, MINNA SHALABI, HASSAN HOSNEY

AD ASTRA (PG-13)(DRAMA/THRILLER/SCI-FICTION) CITY CENTRE : 10.45 AM + 5.00 + 11.15 PM

BRAD PITT, TOMMY LEE JONES, RUTH NEGGA

DORA AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD (PG)(ADVENTURE CITY CENTRE: 11.45 AM + 4.30 + 9.15 PM

ISABELA MONER, Q’ORIANKA KILCHER, BENICIO DEL TORO

THE LION KING (PG)(ADVENTURE/DRAMA/FAMILY) وووووCITY CENTRE: 11.30 AM + 4.30 + 9.30 PMSEEF (II): 1.00 + 5.30 + 10.00 PM

DONALD GLOVER, SETH ROGEN, CHIWETEL EJIOFOR

IT CHAPTER TWO (15+)(HORROR/DRAMA) وووووو ووووو CITY CENTRE :1.30 + 7.45 PM

JAMES MCAVOY, JESSICA CHASTAIN, BILL HADER

47 METERS DOWN : UNCAGED (15+)(THRILLER CITY CENTRE: 12.00 + 4.00 + 8.00 + 12.00 MN

SOPHIE NÉLISSE, CORINNE FOX, BRIANNE TJU

READY OR NOT (18+)(THRILLER/ HORROR) وو وو ووووو CITY CENTRE: 2.00 + 6.00 + 10.00 PM

SAMARA WEAVING, ADAM BRODY, MARK O’BRIEN (IX)

TOY STORY 4 (G)(ANIMATION/ADVENTURE/COMEDY) ووCITY CENTRE:11.30 AM + 4.00 + 8.30 PM

TOM HANKS, TIM ALLEN, JOAN CUSACK

DREAM GIRL (PG-15)(HINDI/COMEDY/ROMANTIC/DRAMA) وOASIS JUFFAIR : 12.15 + 5.45 + 11.15 PM

AYUSHMANN KHURRANA, NUSHRAT BHARUCHA, ABHISHEK BANERJEE

CHHICHHORE (PG-15)(HINDI/DRAMA/COMEDY) ووووووووOASIS JUFFAIR :3.00 + 8.30 PM

SUSHANT SINGH RAJPUT, SHRADDHA KAPOOR, VARUN SHARMA

NAMMA VEETTU PILLAI (PG)(TAMIL) OASIS JUFFAIR :11.00 AM + 2.00 + 5.00 + 8.00 + 11.00 PM

SIVAKARTHIKEYAN, AISWARYA RAJESH, ANU EMMANUEL

ASURAN (PG-15) (TAMIL) (NEW) STARTING FROM FRIDAY 04 OCT ONWARDSOASIS JUFFAIR : 12.15 + 3.00 + 5.45 + 8.30 + 11.15 PMSEEF (I): 12.30 + 3.15 + 6.00 + 8.45 + 11.30 PMSEEF (II): (12.30 MN FRI.)WADI AL SAIL: 11.45 AM + 5.45 + 11.45 PMAL HAMRA: 9.00 + (12.00 MN FRI.)

DHANUSH, MANJU WARRIER, BALAJI SAKTHIVEL

13 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2019

M O V I E R E V I E W

Tiger Shroff and Hrithik Roshan

make the perfect pair --almost Batman and

Robin-like-- with Shroff’s earnest-ness and admi-

ration a good foil to Roshan’s wiser

ways

A scene from ‘War’

KNOW WHAT

14 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2019

Athiya Shetty, KL Rahul get papped together at dinner

Mumbai

Is Athiya Shetty dating crick-eter KL Rahul? The whis-pers are doing the rounds

ever since Suniel Shetty’s daughter was spotted stepping out for dinner with the Indian batsman on Friday night.

A lot of pictures have been doing the rounds on the Inter-net, in which the two young-sters can be seen heading out for dinner. Of course, they were not alone. Athiya and Rahul dined in the company of friends.

Athiya was dressed in a black outfit while KL Rahul can be seen dressed in a white tee with a den-im jacket and jeans. They were accompanied by Sooraj Pancholi, Athiya’s co-star of her debut film “Hero”. Actress-model Akansha Ranjan was also spot-ted in the group.

Hrithik, Tiger’s “War’’ crosses Rs 100 crore-markMumbai

It’s been o n l y

three days since “War” was released and the film has entered the Rs 100-crore club.

Film trade analyst Taran Adarsh on Saturday tweet-ed: ““War’’ Hindi: Wednes-day Rs 51.60 cr, Thursday Rs 23.10 crore, Friday Rs 21.30 crore. Total: Rs 96 crore...Tamil + Telugu: Wednes-day Rs 1.75 cr, Thursday Rs 1.25 crore, Friday Rs 1.15 crore. Total: Rs 4.15 crore...Total: Rs 100.15 cr...India business.”

John Cena: My body can’t handle WWE schedule anymoreLos Angeles

Pr o f e s s i o n a l wrestler and actor John

Cena, who has not seen in the wrestling ring for a long time, says his body can’t handle the WWE schedule anymore.

In a teaser for his up-coming interview with Sunday TODAY, Cena said he’ll “never walk away” from the WWE but his future in the sport will certainly change, reports eo-nline.com.

He said: “That’s the great

thing about WWE, you can perform in any capacity. And, as long as I’ve made

a promise in the in-ring aspect of things, as long as I can keep up with the current product, I can perform. The opportunities that I’ve been

awarded keep me from being in the ring and I actually think that’s good because it makes any time that I’m invited back to WWE super,

super special. And that’s the way it should be.”

Cena also shared how he is learning to maintain a balance between film career and wres-tling career.

“Andhadhun’’ shaped me as an actor, says AyushmannMumbai

Ayush-m a n n

K h u r r a -na’s National Award-win-ning film “And-hadhun” has clocked a year on Saturday since its release, and the actor is super nostalgic.

Reminiscing the film’s journey, Ayushmann shared how Sriram Raghavan’s sus-pense thriller “Andhadhun” taught him to challenge his inhibitions.

He said: “As an artist, I’’m a constant learner of the craft of acting. I’’m always look-ing out for films that make me better, that challenge my thinking, my beliefs and opens me up to absorb new things. Andhadhun has truly been one such film that has shaped me as an actor today.

Bhumi wins Face of Asia Award at BIFFSeoul

Actress B h u -

mi Ped-nekar has won the Face of Asia Award at the 24th edition of Busan Internation-al Film Festival (BIFF), and she is very “proud of it”.

Bhumi, who is in South Korea for the screening of her film “Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare”, said: “I am humbled and very touched that my work has resonated with audiences and critics in Busan.“It’s my first international

win so I am very proud of it. I have aspired to act in films that have something impor-tant to say and have worked sincerely to deliver convinc-ing performances. I hope to be part of brilliant cinema that will be liked and re-membered fondly in future.”

Kim Kardashian shares

adorable video of baby Psalm West

Los Angeles

Reality TV star Kim Kardashian never shy away

from sharing pic-tures and videos of her adorable kids. This time she shared a sweet video of Psalm West gazing sweetly up at her while lounging on his back.

“My baby Psalm is getting so big,” she captioned the video on Twitter. “He start-ed off looking like Chicago but now looks like saints

twin!”We can’t agree

more! The little bundle

of joy undoubtedly looks like a spitting image of his older brother Saint West.

It appears Psalm might be in a rush to catch up to

his older brother. Kim joked that Psalm is already trying his best to say some words. “You want to talk so badly!” she teased the four-month-

old baby.The brother duo is inseparable

since Psalm was born and previ-ously Kim shared a sweet photo of the two napping together. “Saint said he’s gonna pretend to sleep with his brother,” Kim wrote. “He always wants a pic to cap-ture every mo-ment.

Travis Scott shoots down ‘false stories’ of him ‘cheating’ on Kylie JennerLos Angeles

Rapper Travis Scott wants to set the record straight for once and for all. The star recently ad-

dressed rumours that he cheated on makeup mogul Kylie Jenner in the wake of their split.

Days after news broke that he and Jenner were taking a break from their relationship, the 28-year-old rapper released his first statement regarding the matter on Instagram.

“It’s really affecting when u see false things said

about u once again these false stories about me cheating are just simply not

true,” Scott wrote on his Instagram Story.

“Focusing on life, music, and family at

this moment is what’s real,” he add-ed. After news of their split broke earlier this week, an allegation began circulating that the rapper had been involved with a woman named Rojean Kar, who goes by YungSweetRo on Instagram, re-ported E! News.

YungSweetRo also set the re-cord straight on Thursday.

“None of these rumors are true, it’s just the internet creating a false narrative. Please stop spreading lies & leave him, her & I alone because it’s affecting real lives. Thank you,” she wrote on her In-stagram Story.

Robert Pattinson works hard to get into character for ‘The Lighthouse’Los Angeles

Robert Pattinson who is known to ace every role

he takes up, is leaving no stone unturned to get into character for his upcoming film ‘The Lighthouse’.

The ‘Twilight ’ actor who will star opposite Os-car-nominee Willem DaFoe went to extreme lengths to perform a scene in the film.

The 33-year-old star opened up in a recent inter-view with Es-quire about the strange things he did to tru-ly get into the role of Ephraim, re-ported Peo-ple.

“It means you can sort of be mad the whole time. Well, not the whole time, but for like an hour before the scene,” he explained.

For Pattinson, being “mad” meant “you can lit-erally just be sitting on the floor growling and licking up puddles of mud.”

The ‘Harry Potter’ alum said that he was “basical-ly unconscious the whole time” while filming scenes in which his character is drunk off of kerosene.

Demi Moore’s ‘Inside Out’ enters best sellers listLos Angeles

Demi Moore can’t keep calm as her latest mem-oir ‘Inside Out’ has be-

come a best seller.The actor took to her Insta-

gram to announce the happy news that ‘Inside Out’ is at the top of The New York Times Best Sellers List.

“Got my cover all dressed up to tell you the big news... #InsideOutBook just hit #1 on @nytimes best-seller list!” wrote Moore. “This is all so much more than I could have e x p e c t e d and I am so over-whelmed b y t h e

support and love you’ve giv-en it. Thank you guys for reading and allowing it to resonate with you xx.”

The 56-year-old actor’s memoir brief about her troubled childhood, in-cluding being molesta-tion at the age of 15 and about her marriages to ex-husbands Freddy Moore, Bruce Willis, and Ashton Kutcher.

A c t o r D e m i Moore’s daugh-ter Rumer Willis expressed being

proud of her mother for opening up about

her “vulnerabili-ty” in her new

book, during an appear-a n c e o n ‘The Talk’.

Bhumi Pednekar

Hrithik Roshan

Ayushmann Khurrana

Robert Pattinson

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds welcome their third child

Los Angeles

Actress Blake Lively wel-comed her baby num-ber three with husband

Ryan Reynolds.According to multiple re-

ports, the actress recently gave birth to a baby. The couple has not revealed the sex or the name of the baby but they are overjoyed by the arrival of their third child, reported E! News.

The little bundle of joy will join siblings 4-year-old James Reynolds and 2-year-old Inez Reynolds.

The 31-year-old actress an-nounced her third pregnancy earlier this year.

In May, she surprised fans with her baby bump at the New York City premiere of ‘Pokemon

Detective Pikachu’.As the couple is known for

being notoriously private about their kids, they kept details about their third child under wraps.

However, back in 2015, the 42-year-old actor gave E! News a glimpse into his life as a new father.

“There have been times where I woke up, literally had no idea I had been walk-ing for five minutes,” he said at the time. “But you love it. You wake up in the middle of the night, you got a big stupid smile on your face. I was telling someone else that. Anything else that woke you up every 45 minutes, you’d kill it. But when it’s a baby, it’s the best thing that ever happened to you.”

Travis Scott

Kylie Jenner

Psalm West

KL Rahul and Athiya Shetty

Demi Moore

Kim Kardashian

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds

Al-Selawe dominates at Brave 27 TDT | Manama

Abu Dhabi is a special place for Jarrah Al-Se-lawe. It was there that

“The Jordanian Lion” first be-came a BRAVE Combat Federa-tion champion, and this Friday, he returned to the Mubadala Arena to reclaim the Welter-weight world title in emphatic fashion by stopping Abdoul Ab-douraguimov in the main event of BRAVE CF 27.

The two had a boiling rivalry coming into the rematch. Af-ter Abdoul won the title from Al-Selawe at BRAVE CF 23 in a disputed split decision, both men started to trade barbs and it all came to a boiling point during the ceremonial weigh-ins, when they started a brawl that ended up involving BRAVE

CF president Mohammed Sha-hid and cage announcer Carlos Kremer. Inside the cage, it was a dominant performance by the two-time BRAVE CF champion,

who was able to stuff almost all of Abdouraguimov’s takedown attempts and keep the fight standing, where he showed why he’s one of the most dangerous

fighters on the planet.With a vast repertoire of leg

kicks, body shots, and jabs, Al-Selawe began to wear Ab-doul down, and the champ sim-ply didn’t have any answers as he was repeatedly frustrated by Jarrah’s world-class take-down defense. “The Jordanian Lion”.

After the third round, with a cut on his face, Abdouragui-mov quit and Jarrah became the first-ever BRAVE CF two-time world champion.

15

sports


BRAVE CF 27 Results

Welterweight: Jarrah Al-Selawe def. Abdoul Abdouraguimov by TKO (Retirement) Lightweight: Alex Martinez def. Anas Siraj Mounir by KO – Round 2Welterweight: Khamzat Chimaev def. Mzwandile Hlongwa by technical submission Middleweight: Rustam Chsiev def. Tarek Suleiman by unanimous decisionMiddleweight: Mohammad Fakhreddine def. Christofer Silva by TKO (leg-kicks) – Round 1

Featherweight: Abdulatip Magomedov def. Sulaiman Al-Moddhyan by TKO Bantamweight: Tariq Ismail def. Jalal Al-Daaja by unanimous decisionSuper Lightweight: Dwight Brooks def. Alex Nacfur by TKO – Round 2Super Lightweight: Flavio Serafin def. Mohammed Al-KhatibBantamweight: Zia Mashwani def. John Cris Corton by unanimous decision

Main card

Preliminary card

Shaikh Khalid hails Bahrain-UAE relationsTDT | Manama

HH Shaikh Khalid bin Ham-ad Al Khalifa has witnessed

BRAVE 27 which took place on Friday in Al Mubadala Gym at Zayed Sports City in Abu Dhabi. Twenty fighters repre-senting 15 countries featured in the event which saw many MMA enthusiasts crowding in the stands to cheer their be-loved stars.

On this occasion, the Dep-uty President of the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports and President of Bahrain Olympic Committee praised the long-lasting and historical brotherly links among Bahrain and UAE that have evolved to new heights in the past years

thanks to both countries’ keen-ness to cement those ties.

“Manama and Abu Dhabi are the headline of close histori-cal ties and fraternity, love and cooperation, which has been translated by the close relation-ship between HM King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the King of the Kingdom of Bahrain and HH Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of UAE, HH Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and HH Shai-kh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces,” HH Shaikh Khalid said.

“Abu Dhabi has become a

special place for supporting the successes achieved by BRAVE which is striving for more pro-liferation after it was launched in Manama and toured many cities, affirming Bahrain’s de-velopment in the area of sport,” he further added, praising the displays showcased in BRAVE 27 before congratulating the winners and Brave Organisa-tion under the leadership of Mohammed Shahid.

It’s worth noting that HH Shaikh Khalid witnessed the 10 bouts which took place during BRAVE 27, headlined by the fight between Jarrah Al Selawe and Abdoul Abdouraguimov. The event was aired live by various Arabic and foreign channels, including Abu Dhabi Sports TV.

HH Shaikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa crowns the winnerHH Shaikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa with winners

Milner sends Liverpool eight points clear, Spurs rocked at BrightonAFP | London

James Milner scored a stop-page-time winner as Liver-

pool moved eight points clear at the top of the Premier League with a thrilling 2-1 victory over Leicester, while Mauricio Pochet-tino’s problems mount-ed after Tottenham’s 3-0 loss at Brighton yesterday.

Liverpool won for the 17th consecutive league game thanks to Milner’s dramat-ic contribu-tion to a thrilling clash at Anfield. Jurgen Klopp’s side ruined Leicester manager Brendan Rodgers’ first return to Liverpool since being replaced by the German in 2015.

By extending their remarka-ble winning streak, Liverpool have piled pressure on second placed Manchester City ahead of their home game against Wolves on Sunday.

Liverpool took the lead in the 40th minute when Mil-ner’s long ball was misjudged by Leices-ter defender Jonny Evans and Sadio Mane clini-cally slotted in his eighth goal of the season.

Mane has scored exactly 50 goals in 100 Premier League

games for Liverpool, making the Senegal winger the 10th player to reach that milestone for the Reds.

James Maddison snatched third-placed Leicester’s equal-iser in the 80th minute when he col-lected Ayoze Perez’s pass and drove his shot un-der Adrian’s weak attempted save.

Tottenham keeper Lloris dropped the ball on the goal line and hurt himself in the process in only the third min-ute, allowing Neal Maupay to open the scoring. It only got worse after that as Aaron Con-nolly’s double gave the impres-sive Seagulls a de-served three

points.It ranked as one of the worst

performances of Pochettino’s reign and, following on from Tuesday ’s 7-2 Champions League humiliation to Bayern Munich, the dark clouds are mount-ing over the club.

Pochettino was forced to emphasise his commitment to Tottenham this week amid specula-tion he has grown dis-tant from a squad distracted by several players who have been linked with moves.

“We have to keep going. I have to say thank you for the fans. I feel sorry for them, it is mas-sive effort to come and support us,” Pochettino said.

Liverpool’s English midfielder James Milner (C) kicks a penalty and scores his team’s second goal

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Sharma ton helps India set South Africa 395 to winAFP | Visakhapatnam

Rohit Sharma on Saturday struck a second hundred

in his debut as Test opener to help India set South Africa a daunting 395 to win the open-ing match of their series.

The hosts declared their sec-ond innings on 323 for four in the final session of day four in Visakhapatnam.

South Africa were 11 for one at stumps with Aiden Markram, on three, and Theunis de Bruyn, on five, at the crease.

The visitors need another 384 runs and India nine wickets on the final day to get ahead in the three-match series.

“We picked up a crucial wick-et, so as a team we are happy with the way things went to-day and hope to start off well (tomorrow),” Indian batsman Cheteshwar Pujara, who made 81 in India’s second innings, told reporters.

“It will not be easy to bat on this pitch on day five, with a little more assistance for the spinners. And with variable bounce, even the fast bowlers will come into play.”

Ravindra Jadeja struck early after trapping first-innings cen-turion Dean Elgar for two in the fourth over of the innings.

The left-handed Elgar, who

made 160 in the first innings, was given not out by the on-field umpire only for India to get the decision overturned with a TV review.

Markram and de Bruyn then played out the remaining overs from spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Jadeja until bad light forced the extended play -- to make up for lost time due to thunderstorm on day one -- to be called off.

Sharma, who made 176 in In-dia’s first innings of 502 for sev-en declared, is the first batsman to hit two tons in his first match as a Test opener.

He also hit 13 sixes, the most in a Test match, breaking

Wasim Akram’s record of 12.Sharma put on 169 with Pu-

jara to frustrate South Africa after the loss of opener Mayank Agarwal for seven.

“The way Rohit was playing allowed me to settle down. Only he can play such shots on this track,” said Pujara.

“Our partnership between lunch and tea was crucial. Our communication was good as we have batted together a lot in Un-der-19 cricket. It was enjoyable to watch his batting from the non-striker’s end.”

Pujara was trapped lbw by Vernon Philander after he com-pleted his 21st Test half-cen-tury.


Djokovic powers into Tokyo final• Novak Djokovic overcomes David Goffin to reach Japan Open final

• Novak Djokovic will face unseeded John Millman, who reached his first ATP 500 final

AFP | Tokyo

World number one No-vak Djokovic on Sat-urday cruised into

the Japan Open final, thrashing David Goffin 6-3, 6-4.

In the final, Djokovic will face Australian qualifier John Millman, who squeezed past American opponent Reilly Opelka 6-3, 7-6 (7/4).

The Serbian star dominated his semi-final, starting strong by winning the first three games, picking up an early break while fending off fierce attempts by the Belgian to fight back.

Djokovic again picked up an early break in the second set, and survived all the four break points through the match.

“I think we both served ex-

tremely well and precise, not too much chance for returners,” he said in a press conference. “Even though it was a two-set win, the quality of tennis was quite high.”

Djokovic won points on 87 percent of his successful first serves and never committed a double fault in the roughly 90-minute contest.

Goffin fought bravely, but Djokovic kept up the pressure with deep shots and quick foot-work to fend off any threat.

“I trained with ninjas before this tournament,” Djokovic quipped, when asked about his apparent omnipresence on the court, during a post-match interview in front of cheering

Japanese fans.“This has been a wonderful

week for me on and off the court,” he said. “Hopefully I will be able to crown this week with a trophy tomorrow.”

In the final, he will face the 80th-ranked Millman, who is making his first career appear-ance in the final of an ATP 500 event.

Millman predicted “a lot of baseline exchanges” with “one of the greatest players” of all time.

“It will be a physical battle. I will probably be the underdog, coming through qualifying. I know back home in Austral-ia, we all like underdogs,” he said.

Novak Djokovic hits a return against David Goffin

Osaka sweeps into China Open final on just two hours’ sleepAFP | Beijing

Naomi Osaka said that she had just two hours’ sleep

before crushing title-holder Caroline Wozniacki to sweep into the China Open final.

The 21-year-old Japanese will play world number one Ashleigh Barty of Australia in Sunday’s championship match

in Beijing -- and will hope to have had a bit more rest.

The Australian Open cham-pion said that she was so hyped up after defeating Bianca An-dreescu in three thrilling sets on Friday night that she barely slept.

“I went to sleep at 4:00am, I woke up at 6:00am, so solid two hours, I can’t really sleep after

my matches,” said Osaka.“I just feel like my adren-

aline’s up more during the tougher matches so it makes it harder to sleep.”

“It’s definitely been a bit cra-zy time-wise,” she added, hav-ing returned to the court to face Wozniacki less than 24 hours after defeating Andreescu.

But if the two-time Grand Slam champion was exhaust-ed, it did not show in a 6-4, 6-2 victory in 84 minutes against the Dane.

Osaka held off all seven break points she faced against Wozni-acki.

The world number four showed flashes of irritation as she let Wozniacki off the hook at 3-3 in the first set, tossing her racquet on the floor.

But in the ninth game, the pressure on the 19th-ranked Wozniacki told, Osaka grabbing the break of service with an arrowing forehand.Naomi Osaka of Japan returns a shot against Caroline Wozniacki of Demark

Rohit Sharma plays a shot

Hazard off mark but Real make make hard work of GranadaAFP | Madrid

Eden Hazard ended the wait for his first Real Madrid

goal but his team had to resist a spirited second-half comeback from Granada to seal a thrilling 4-2 victory in La Liga yesterday.

Karim Benzema put Real ahead in the second minute at the Santiago Bernabeu before Hazard opened his account with a delightful lifted finish towards the end of the first half.

Luka Modric’s bending long-

range effort on the hour looked to have confirmed the win but Granada scored twice in quick succession through Darwin Machis and Domingos Duarte, the first from the penalty spot, to set up a tense last 12 minutes.

James Rodriguez, on as a sub-stitute, ended the rally by scor-ing his first goal since May 2017 in injury-time to wrap up an unexpectedly dramatic contest between the league’s top

two.Granada stay second, for now,

after suffering only their sec-ond defeat of the season.

Madrid had been in complete control, their fluency and tem-po contributing to arguably the best hour of football they have played this season.

Yet a hectic 20-minute period in the second half took some of the gloss off a performance that at least gets Zinedine Zidane’s side back to winning ways fol-lowing their 2-2 draw at home to Club Brugge in the Champi-ons League on Tuesday.

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SPORTS 8 @newsofbahrain OP-ED Djokovic powers · 2019. 6. 10. · Namboothiri was honoured at the event. BKS President P V Radhakrishna Pillai and General Secretary M P Raghu led