Volume 24 | Number 7922 | 2 RiyalsFriday 14 June 2019 | 11 Shawwal 1440 www.thepeninsula.qa

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Qatar gear up for Copa debut as 2022 preparations begin

Lusail City stands as Qatar’s No 1 future market:

Expert

Importance of facilitating exam process for students highlightedQNA DOHA

Minister of Education and Higher Education H E Dr Mohammed bin Abdul Wahed Al Hammadi stressed yesterday the impor-tance of facilitating the exami-nation process for students in grades 10,11 and 12, whose examinations started on Wednesday and will conclude on June 23.

This came during his visits to Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al Mana secondary school for boys and Mohammed bin Abdul-wahab secondary school for boys to check on the progress of the secondary school exams and on the students’ performance.

This year’s secondary school exams registered 11,329 students, 5,788 boys and 5,541 girls, are taking the second semester exams for the 2018/2019 academic year

in 61 exam rooms inside and outside Doha, with 32 for boys and 29 for girls.

The ministry called on the stu-dents to adhere to the rules and regulations of the exam progress and to abide by the school guide-lines, which includes avoiding sleeping late and exhaustion before the tests, which affects their per-formance. The ministry said the exams will be held according to the schedules and timetables set.

Minister of Education and Higher Education H E Dr Mohammed bin Abdul Wahed Al Hammadi checks on the progress of the secondary school exams and on the students’ performance.

Qatar welcomes more visitors with new authorisation systemTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar is set to welcome even more visitors from around the world with the new electronic visitor authorisation system, launched recently by Ministry of Interior and Qatar National Tourism Council (QNTC).

The authorisation system enables residents to invite family and relatives from around the world to visit Qatar during the ‘Summer in Qatar’ programme and obtain a free visa upon arrival after applying through the online portal: http://www.qatarvisaservices.com.

Online authorisation system streamlines application process with a 24-hour turnaround time.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: “The new electronic visitor authorisation system helps solidify Qatar’s ranking as the most open country in the region in terms of visa facilitation. The implementation of this system is a significant achievement for Qatar, as it streamlines the appli-cation process, enabling visitors

of all nationalities to apply to enter our country and receive a free visa upon arrival. We are proud to offer a warm Qatari welcome to visitors from around the world, and look forward to offering them a taste of our genuine Arabian hospitality.”

“This important initiative developed by the Ministry of Interior of the State of Qatar and Qatar National Tourism Council will enable us to welcome even more visitors, from even more countries, to experience the many exciting attractions that await them during the ‘Summer in Qatar’ programme, Qatar continues to soar high in the sky where borders and boundaries do not exist, only

horizons. We are overjoyed to con-tinue bringing people together, one of our core values.”

The UN World Tourism Organization recently ranked Qatar as the ‘Most Open Desti-nation in the Middle East’ and the eighth most open destination worldwide in terms of visa facil-itation. The new facilitation during the ‘Summer in Qatar’ programme will further enhance Qatar’s openness, and enrich travellers ‘experiences.

Qatar Airways recently part-nered with QNTC to offer pas-sengers up to 25 percent dis-count on airfares for all flights to Doha as a final destination from more than 160 destinations worldwide on bookings up to 15 August, enabling customers to enjoy fun-filled ‘Summer in Qatar’ activities. In addition, passengers already booked on Qatar Airways flights can also take advantage of a unique stopover package designed to give travellers transiting through Qatar the opportunity to dis-cover Doha with amazing luxury hotel stays and complimentary transit visas. �P2

The new electronic visitor authorisation system, during the ‘Summer in Qatar’ programme, will further enhance Qatar’s openness, and enrich travellers ‘experiences.

Amir to chair delegation at CICA Summit in TajikistanQNA & THE PENINSULA DOHA

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani will chair the State of Qatar's dele-gation in the fifth summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confi-

dence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), which will take place in Dushanbe today and tomorrow, after receiving an invi-tation from the President of the Republic of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon. The CICA is an inter-governmental forum for enhancing cooperation towards

promoting peace, security and stability in Asia

The CICA has 27 member states that cover about 90 percent of the territory and population of Asia, another eight states and five international organisa-tions, including the United Nations, have

observer status. CICA is a powerful organisation capable of resolving all the emerging problems or frozen conflicts at once, it is, however, an effective platform for mediation and co-oper-ation. From the initiative of the creation of the Conference on Interaction and

Confidence-Building Measures in Asia , first announced in October 1992 at the 47th session of the UN General Assembly, and it is credited to the first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who announced the ini-tiative in 1992.

Qatar Visa Centers abroad to cover domestic workers soonSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

The newly-recruited domestic workers, including housemaids and drivers, will soon be able to avail the services offered by Qatar Visa Centers (QVC) opened by the Ministry of Interior at major workforce exporting countries, said a senior official.

“We will soon add newly recruited domestic helps and employees of public sector in the list of those eligible to com-plete their visa procedures at QVC,” said Director of the Visa Support Services Department at the Ministry of Interior, Major Abdullah Khalifa Al Mohannadi.

Speaking at a programme of Al Rayan TV recently, Al Mohannadi said that Qatar Visa Centers, in the phase 1, focused on workforce of private sector then after a while semi-gov-ernment sector was added.

“Currently, only work visas are being processed at QVS, but in the next phases visas for other purposes like family visits

will be added,” said Al Mohannadi.

He said that Qatar Visa Centers have processed over 30,000 visas since their establishments.

As per the plan, QVCs will cover eight countries through the establishment of 20 centres, in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, Tunisia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. So far, 13 Qatar Visa Centers have been opened in five countries.

These centres provide facil-ities for those who have initial approval for entry visas to the State of Qatar where they can complete the registration of their biometrics, medical exam-inations and the signing of con-tracts electronically through a unified channel, and thus saving time and effort.

A Visa Center was opened

in Kathmandu, Republic of Nepal, at the end of last month, as part of the ‘Qatar Visa Centers Program’, to facilitate and streamline procedures for bringing expatriates to the country.

Nepal is the fifth country where a Visa Center was open after Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India — which have proved to be a great success in providing premium, simplified and more advanced services.

One of the major benefits of QVC is that they provide oppor-tunity to workers to get detailed information about their work contracts in their own languages including salaries, vacations, incentives and allowances before they leave their countries to Doha.

The project is being imple-mented in cooperation between the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Dr Al Derham reappointed as President of QUTHE PENINSULA DOHA

The Board of Trustees of Qatar University (QU), which is chaired by Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani, has renewed its trust on Dr Hassan Rashid Al Derham (pictured) as President of Qatar University reap-pointing him for another four years.

On the occasion of extending his presidency of Qatar University, Dr Al Durham tweeted on Wednesday. Dr Al Derham was appointed President of Qatar Uni-versity on June 15, 2015. Prior to his appointment, he served as Vice-Pres-ident for Research since 2007, and during this period he was able to promote research at the university to reach its status as a leading aca-demic institution in the field of research excellence in the Gulf region.

I would like to thank His Highness the Deputy Amir and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of QU and members of the board for their trust in me and renewal of my presidency of the QU for a period of four years. I pray to Allah the best for the board and all the University’semployees.

Qatar Visa Centers have processed over 30,000 visas since their establishment.

Qatar condemns sabotage on two oil tankers in Gulf of OmanQNA DOHA

The State of Qatar has condemned the sabotage of two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, regardless of the identity of the perpetrator, warning against tampering with the security of the Gulf and the region as a whole and called for an urgent international investigation that would reveal the facts and put all involved parties before their legal responsi-bilities.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement yesterday that the State of Qatar stresses that this attack is a direct threat to the security of the region, warning of its serious reper-cussions on the security and safety of the international trade routes, and calling on all parties to exercise restraint and stop escalation.

02 FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019HOME

OFFICIAL NEWS FAJRSHOROOK

03. 14 AM04. 43 AM

11. 34 AM02. 57 PM

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ZUHRASR

MAGHRIBISHA

PRAYER TIMINGS

WEATHER TODAY

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum35oC 46oC

HIGH TIDE 01:02–15:44 LOW TIDE 8:57 – 21:56

Very hot daytime with slight dust at some

places.

Amir condoles with President of ChinaDOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim

bin Hamad Al Thani and Dep-

uty Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah

bin Hamad Al Thani sent yes-

terday cables of condolences

to the President of the People’s

Republic of China, Xi Jinping, in

which H H the Amir and H H the

Deputy Amir expressed con-

dolences on the victims of the

floods that hit several cities in

Guangxi province, wishing a

speedy recovery to the injured.

Prime Minister and Interior Min-

ister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin

Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani also

sent a cable of condolences

to the Premier of the People’s

Republic of China, Li Keqiang,

on the victims of the floods

that hit several cities in Guangxi

province, wishing a speedy

recovery to the injured. QNA

Amir condoles with President of CameroonDOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim

bin Hamad Al Thani and

Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdul-

lah bin Hamad Al Thani sent

yesterday cables of condolences

to the President of the Repub-

lic of Cameroon, Paul Biya, on

the victims of the armed attacks

on an island north of Cameroon,

wishing a speedy recovery to

the injured. Prime Minister and

Interior Minister H E Sheikh

Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khal-

ifa Al Thani also sent a cable of

condolences to the Prime Minis-

ter of the Republic of Cameroon,

Joseph Dion Ngute, on the vic-

tims of the armed attacks on an

island north of Cameroon, wish-

ing a speedy recovery to the

injured. QNA

Amir condoles with Burkina Faso PresidentDOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim

bin Hamad Al Thani and

Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdul-

lah bin Hamad Al Thani sent

yesterday cables of condolences

to the President of the Repub-

lic of Burkina Faso, Roch Marc

Christian Kabore, on the victims

of the armed attacks in Arbinda,

northern Burkina Faso, wishing

a speedy recovery to the injured.

Prime Minister and Interior Min-

ister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin

Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani also

sent a cable of condolences to

the Prime Minister of the Repub-

lic of Burkina Faso, Christophe

Dabire, on the victims of the

armed attacks in Arbinda, wish-

ing a speedy recovery to the

injured. QNA

Amir sends condolences to President of MaliDOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim

bin Hamad Al Thani and

Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdul-

lah bin Hamad Al Thani sent

yesterday cables of condo-

lences to the President of the

Republic of Mali, Ibrahim Bou-

bacar Keita, on the victims of

the armed attacks on a village

in Sanga in central Mali, wish-

ing a speedy recovery to the

injured. Prime Minister and

Interior Minister H E Sheikh

Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khal-

ifa Al Thani also sent a cable of

condolences to the Prime Min-

ister of the Republic of Mali,

Boubou Cisse, on the victims

of the armed attacks on a vil-

lage in Sanga, wishing a speedy

recovery to the injured. QNA

Amir condoles with President of NigeriaDOHA: Amir H H Sheikh

Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani,

Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdul-

lah bin Hamad Al Thani and

Prime Minister and Interior

Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah

bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani

sent cables of condolences to

the President of the Federal

Republic of Nigeria, Muham-

madu Buhari, on the victims

of armed attacks on villages

in the state of Zamfara north

of Nigeria, wishing a speedy

recovery to the injured. QNA

Qatar condemns attack on island in CameroonQNA/DOHA

The State of Qatar expressed its strong condemnation and denunciation of the armed attack on an island in Cameroon, which led to deaths, including soldiers stationed at military outposts.

In a statement issued yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated the State of Qatar’s firm stance on rejecting violence and terrorism, regardless of the motives and reasons.

The statement expressed the State of Qatar’s condolences to the families of victims as well as the government and people of Cameroon.

Jaidah Automotive, ACDelco honour customersTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Jaidah Automotive, together with ACDelco – Qatar’s premier auto-motive battery provider – recently hosted an appreciation event to honour customers, suppliers and partners in recog-nition of their support in helping develop and grow the ACDelco brand in Qatar. More than 150 customers attended the event which coincided with a major sales milestone as ACDelco has now sold nearly 1.8 million batteries in Qatar, further cementing its leading market share.

Hosted at The Crowne Plaza Hotel, the event included keynote speeches by senior executives from Jaidah Auto-motive, including KT Rao, Manager of Jaidah Automotive Parts; Bernhard Dolinek, Man-aging Director of Jaidah Auto-motive; as well as Rohan Fern-andes, Regional Manager of General Motors.

KT Rao thanked loyal cus-tomers, the experienced

professional sales teams and suppliers present for their con-tinuous support in establishing and growing ACDelco’s brand presence in the market and proudly emphasised that their efforts have helped achieve market leadership in the auto-motive battery industry and by successfully growing ACDelco Parts in Qatar for many years.

ACDelco is one of the world’s most reputable brands in terms of manufacturing vehicle spare parts and offers brakes, filters, wiper blades and various other items. It caters to a wide range of American, Korean and Jap-anese vehicles.

Bernhard Dolinek also gave special thanks to the same cus-tomers for providing quality

products help build consumer confidence and brand trust. Dolinek emphasised that such success wouldn’t have been pos-sible without the support of Jaidah Group’s professional sales and aftermarket teams and access to such high-quality products. As part of the event, Jaidah Automotive and ACDelco also hosted an awards ceremony

honouring the top five cus-tomers. The honoured customers were Marhaba International Trading & Transport Co, Ali International Trading Est., Doha Motors & Trading Est., Al Fajer Auto Spare Parts, and Khalid Saif Auto Spare Parts.

Also, at the event, Jaidah Automotive announced a special promotional offer to customers to further showcase the brand’s appreciation for their loyalty and support. In addition, Rohan Fernandes from General Motors together with his colleagues Nighat Fakhri and Bill Wu gave a product overview presentation covering the key features and benefits of the ACDelco brand.

Owned by General Motors, ACDelco is a renowned auto-motive parts brand specialising in Automotive Maintenance Free Batteries and has been active in the Spare Parts business globally for 102 years. The business has established an industry defining reputation for quality products and customer trust, in large part due to the strength of its after-market offering.

The officials and other guests at the function.

Qatar discusses transportation and communications cooperations with Sweden, Venezuela and ChinaHE Minister of Transport and Communications Jassim Saif Ahmed Al-Sulaiti held separate meet ings wi th Ambassadors Ewa Polano (pictured) of Sweden, Giuseppe Angelo Yoffreda Yorio of Venezuela and Li Chen of China. The three meetings discussed cooperation relations between Qatar and the three friendly countries in the fields of transportation and communications and means of further enhancing them.

FROM PAGE 1This year’s ‘Summer in

Qatar’ programme introduces a wide range of exciting indoor activities and outdoor experiences, fun for family and friends.

Entertainment pro-grammes feature regional and international artists, edutainment, sports camps and special promotions on

inbound travel, hospitality and shopping.

Nine malls are partici-pating in the festivities, offering retail savings of up to 70 percent, and a chance to win up to $2m in prizes, including the grand prize of a McLaren 570S.

Qatar Museums is offering authentic experi-ences, enabling visitors to

immerse themselves in Qatar’s rich heritage and cul-tural scene. Souq Waqif and Katara Cultural Village will bring vibrancy to the summer with family fun and enter-tainment shows during Eid Al-Adha.

‘Summer in Qatar’ also features international and Arab artists as well as a number of Bollywood singers

performing at the Bollywood Musical Festival as well as the glittering South Indian Inter-national Movie Awards (SIIMA). Comedy fans can anticipate the return of the Doha Comedy Festival, while the little ones will enjoy numerous stage shows including ‘Hello Kitty’, ‘Aladdin’, ‘The Little Mermaid’ and ‘The Smurfs’.

Qatar welcomes more visitors with new authorisation system

Agricultural quarantine offices inspected 7,070 shipments in MayQNA DOHA

The Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment’s agricultural quarantine offices have inspected 7,070 imported ship-ments, weighing more than 147,000 tonnes from different types of imported agricultural consignments, plant products and production inputs in May across the

different customs points.The agricultural quarantine offices

of the Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment destroyed 92 shipments weighing more than 72 tonnes for vio-lating the agricultural quarantine law and for certain damages.

The agricultural quarantine is a first line of defence for protection from agri-cultural infections.

The preventive procedure aims to protect the country’s agricultural wealth from foreign-originated pests.

It also requires that all plants, agri-cultural products and any other mate-rials shall be subject to phytosanitary reg-ulations for its procedures and to ensure that other agricultural production inputs are in conformity with the conditions and specifications.

Qatar, France review bilateral, economic and investment ties

Al Hammadi meets outgoing Chinese AmbassadorThe Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H E Dr Ahmed bin Hassan Al Hammadi, met yesterday with the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the State of Qatar, LI Chen, on the occasion of the end of his term in the country. The Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs thanked the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China for his efforts to promote and strengthen bilateral relations,and wished the Ambassador success in his future mission. The Director of Public Security Staff Major General, H E Saad bin Jassim Al Khulaifi, also met yesterday with Ambassador LI Chen on the occasion of ending his tenure in the country. During the meeting they reviewed a number of topics of interest to both countries.

QNA/PARIS

Minister of Finance H E Ali Shareef Al Emadi met yesterday in Paris with French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire.

They reviewed economic and investment ties, as well as bilateral coop-eration, in addition to the preparations related to the economic aspect of the Qatari-French strategic dialogue that is scheduled to take place in the final quarter of 2019.

03FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019 HOME

Thales to recycle 75% of wastes, to eliminate single use of plastic in officesTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Improving the environment is a key commitment of Thales. As part of the group HSE objectives for 2019-2023, Thales targets to recycle 75 percent of its wastes, as well as to eliminate the single use of plastic in the offices by the end of 2019.

In line with the group’s objectives and commitment, employees from all Thales projects in Qatar came together to perform a beach clean-up activity recently at Al Wakra Public Beach, under the patronage of the Ministry of

Municipality and Environment. This was planned in conjunction with Earth Day, one of the key themes this year being to educate people regarding the misuse and disposal of plastic and the impact it has on the marine environment.

Family members also partic-ipated to the event, thus bringing environment awareness to the children who are the future gen-eration and whom the plastic pollution may have the biggest impact on.

The Ministry, represented by Fowaaz Alsaada, provided the support of some workers to assist in the removal of the waste bags.

Approximately 85 bags of waste totalling over 200kg were col-lected and removed from the beach, predominately made of discarded plastics.

At the end of the activities, all attendees recorded a personal commitment on a banner about how they would contribute to improve the environment at a personal level.

Frederic Sallet, Country Director of Thales, who chaired the full event, said: “Environment is key for our future. This beach-clean up should be comple-mented by our daily actions to keep the planet safe for our children.” The participants at the beach clean-up activity recently at Al Wakra Public Beach.

HMC encourages public to differentiate between emergency and non-urgent conditionsFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has encouraged the public to differentiate between emergency and non-urgent conditions while the seeking services.

In a social media campaign HMC has said, “Every day the emergency departments and ambulance service of HMC provide care to thousands of people with emergency medical conditions. But our emergency departments and ambulance service are only for most severe injuries and conditions.” “Primary Health Centers are the best option for people with non-urgent conditions,” it added.

It has clarified that for con-ditions such as flu like symptoms, mild burns, toothache, skin irritation, earache, and backache public should seek treatment at health centres.

Emergency services should be required for conditions such as suspected stroke, severe allergic reaction, broken bones, difficulty in breathing, chest pain, severe burn or bleeding and seizures.

The campaign is part of edu-cating the public on a set of new healthcare guides launched recently to help people choose the right services. Three spec-ified manuals provide guidelines on what services to be sought by people according to the healthcare need of children, adult population and the elderly.

Qatar’s health sector has u n d e r g o n e e n o r m o u s expansion in recent years and provides a full range of high-quality healthcare services to the people. Nine new public hospitals, six new health and wellness centres in primary healthcare and numerous private sector facilities have opened over the past ten years.

“Qatar’s health system has much to offer including a wide range of world-class treatment services to help people recover from ill-health and a growing range of wellness services to help them stay healthy and free from disease. But under-standing how to access these services is the first step in real-izing the benefits of these services,” said Dr Salih Al Marri, Assistant to the Minister of Public Health said earlier during the launch of the guidelines.

The guides clearly explain that the first point of entry into the health system and highlight the role of primary healthcare.

It shows how to get the sec-ondary and emergency care at HMC. The specialised healthcare services provided to women, children and young adults in Qatar by Sidra Med-icine are also detailed in the healthcare guides.

The guides in Arabic and English are being translated into several languages including Urdu, Tagalog, Nepali, Hindi and Malayalam to make the information easier to understand.

CMU-Q researchers explore the mathematics of personalised medicineTHE PENINSULA DOHA

A research team from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q) has created a mathe-matical model to predict how human tissue responds to the physical stresses of pregnancy. Hasan Demirkoparan and Heiko Topol’s digital 3D model could lead to a new tool for doctors to measure the risk of miscarriage or pre-term delivery.

The model may be particu-larly useful in the area of per-sonalized medicine in prenatal care. If doctors apply the model using information from a patient’s scans, they may be able to forecast—and adjust treatment to accommodate—a woman’s risk for pre-term delivery or miscarriage.

At first glance, Demirko-paran and Topol seem unlikely candidates to research questions in prenatal health care: Demirkoparan is ,

“We have approached this question from a mathematical and mechanical engineering per-spective,” said Topol, a post-doc-toral researcher, “Biological modelling is not an obvious topic for a mathematician and a mechanical engineer, so we have read a lot about the different

factors and stresses on human tissue.”

Demirkoparan,who is an associate professor of mathe-matics at CMU-Q, began studying the mathematics of soft tissue swelling more than a decade ago, with research into how hypere-lastic materials respond to stress and swelling.

“Materials deform when they are stressed, and when the deformation is large, more sophisticated mathematical methods are required to describe the strain,” said Demirkoparan.

Hyperelastic materials, in par-ticular, stretch and strain in ways that are complicated to predict.

When Demirkoparan joined the faculty of CMU-Q as a teaching professor, he looked for ways to continue with his research. Two of his projects were accepted in Cycle 4 of Qatar National Research Fund’s National Priorities Research Program (NPRP).

The projects explored how Demirkoparan’s previous work with hyperelastic materials might apply to how biological

tissue behaves under stress. “The NPRP grant was crucial

to this research,” says Demirko-paran. “My primary focus is teaching at CMU-Q, but the grant has made it possible for me to hire a researcher so I can pursue this area of investigation.”

For the eighth NPRP cycle, Demirkoparan began a project that homed in on how the cer-vical soft tissue responds to the different physical stressors of pregnancy.

“There is a direct correlation between the length of the cervix during pregnancy and pre-term labor,” Demirkoparan noted. “If we can use mathematics to provide a tool for doctors to better predict, and perhaps mit-igate, pre-term births, that would be very gratifying.”

“Research like this is a cre-ative process,” said Topol. “We take a question and brainstorm different approaches and dif-ferent solutions.”

Both Topol and Demirko-paran can see many ways their research could lead to better diagnostic tools in medicine, including the way arteries and veins respond to stress. As they look ahead, they would like to bring in experts from other dis-ciplines to enhance the model and apply it to a medical setting.

Hasan Demirkoparan and Heiko Topol’s digital 3D model could lead to a new tool for doctors to measure the risk of miscarriage or pre-term delivery.

Qatar-India Year of Culture event shines spotlight on OdishaRAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

India’s Got Talent winner The Prince Dance Group and prom-inent classical dancer and chore-ographer Saswat Joshi were among the incredible talents from the Indian state of Odisha who wowed hundreds in the audience at a spectacular extravaganza held yesterday night as part of Qatar-India 2019 Year of Culture.

The show titled “Odisha - The Soul of Incredible India” held at Abdul Aziz Nasser Theater in Souq Waqif put the spotlight on the rich cultural heritage of the eastern Indian state through dance, music and art. “We are organizing this event as part of Qatar-India Year of Culture to celebrate the rich cultural heritage of our state. This is an extravaganza which includes dance, culture and art, which people will definitely enjoy,” Bidya Mohanty, Vice President of Utkalika Qatar, the community association organising the event whose members hail from Odisha, told The Peninsula yesterday.

Apart from showcasing important facets of their rich cul-tural heritage, Mohanty believed that the two-day event would

further promote the close rela-tionship between the two countries.

Welcoming the audience at the event, the Ambassador of India to Qatar, P. Kumaran lauded the efforts of Utkalika Qatar. “They really worked hard for several months to put this pro-gramme together and bring together dance unique from Odisha and also a few more ele-ments from other parts of India as part of the year-round cele-bration of Qatar-India 2019 Year

of Culture 2019,” said Kumaran.The Ambassador said the

show was “the 20th event as part of the various events organised as part of Qatar-India Year of Culture and we hope to bring you many more interesting perform-ances and events from other parts of India, too.”

Kicking off the show was Saswat Joshi and team from Lasyakala performing ‘A Tribute to the Motherland’, an inspiring patriotic classical dance. Starting in the field of dance at a tender

age of five, Saswat, who is an exponent of classical Odissi dance, has gained wide acclaim with many accolades throughout his career. The audience was treated with a visual feast when The Prince Dance troupe per-formed ‘Two Great Nations’, a colourful representation of the national colours of India and Qatar through a contemporary dance in a well thought of chore-ography. The troupe had per-formed during the inaugural cer-emony of Commonwealth Games,

Delhi and in 12 countries.Renowned flutist A P Pat-

tanaik rendered a special per-formance of the song “Only You”, which is a creative and soothing fusion composition which included flute and vocals. Pat-tanaik has represented India in many cultural meets and organised solo concerts and workshops on Indian Music in America and Europe.

Sand artist and India’s Got Talent finalist Manas Kumar Sahoo along with his wife

impressed the crowd with his performance “Sand Art - A Journey : Qatar and India” which depicted renowned landmarks and symbols in Qatar and India through sand animation.

‘Savour of the folk dances’ presented the folk dances of Odisha with the beat of drums, the lilting songs, the spectacular and graceful body stances which proved a visual delight to the audience.

The show will be restaged tonight at the same venue.

ABOVE: India’s Got Talent season 1 winner, The Prince Dance Group, performs at “Odisha – The Soul of Incredible India”, at the Abdul Aziz Nasser Theatre in Souq Waqif yesterday. LEFT: Renowned classical dancer Saswat Joshi and team from Lasyakala performing at the event. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

Qatar attends ILO conference in GenevaQNA GENEVA

The State of Qatar takes part in the 108th Session of the International Labor Conference, which is being held in the Swiss capital Geneva, with a delegation headed by

Minister of Administrative Devel-opment, Labour and Social Affairs, H E Yousef bin Mohamed Al Othman Fakhroo.

The Minister participated in the meeting of the GCC Labour Ministers to coordinate the topics on the agenda. He also met with

a number of ministers of other countries to enhance cooperation and joint relations.

The Qatari delegation also participated in the forum of soli-darity with the workers and people of Palestine. The con-ference, which will continue till

June 21, will include a number of committees to discuss interna-tional conventions and standards, in addition to discussing a draft convention against violence and harassment and the draft decla-ration of the 100 years celebration of the organisation.

04 FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Two tankers ablaze in suspected Gulf attacks AFP DUBAI

Suspected attacks left two tankers ablaze in the waters of the Gulf of Oman yesterday, sparking fears of a broader conflict and sending world oil prices soaring.

The mysterious incident came amid spiralling tensions between Iran and the US, which pointed the finger at the Islamic republic last month over similar attacks in the strategic sea lane.

The UN Security Council was to hold a closed-door meeting later yesterday at the request of the United States to discuss the suspected attacks.

The Norwegian Maritime Authority said three explosions were reported on board the Nor-wegian-owned tanker Front Altair after it was “attacked” along with the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous.

Iran said its navy rescued 44 crew members after the two vessels, which were carrying

highly inflammable material, caught fire.

Footage aired on television showed thick, black plumes of smoke and flames billowing from one of the tankers as it lay out to sea.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the timing of the “reported attacks” was “suspicious”, coming as Japan’s prime minister held talks in Iran.

The US Fifth Fleet, based in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, said its warships had received sep-arate distress calls from each vessel. The White House said US President Donald Trump was briefed on the suspected attacks and the government was assessing the situation.

State media in Iran said the incidents happened one hour apart in the early morning.

The Front Altair, a 111,000-tonne vessel carrying ethanol from Qatar to Taiwan, caught fire first off Bandar-e-Jask in southern Iran, the official IRNA news agency said.

“As the ship caught fire, 23 of the crew jumped into the water and were saved by a passing ship and handed over to the Iranian rescue unit,” it said.

Robert Hvide Macleo, chief

executive for the ship’s owner Frontline, said: “I can confirm that the vessel has NOT sunk” and the crew were “all safe”.

The Kokuka Courageous was headed to Singapore from Saudi Arabia with a cargo of methanol, IRNA said.

Singapore-based BSM Ship Management said it had “launched a full-scale emergency response following a security incident” involving the Kokuka.

“The 21 crew of the vessel abandoned ship after the incident on board which resulted in damage to the ship’s hull star-board side,” it said of the vessel owned by Japanese company Kokuka Sangyo Ltd.

“One crew man from the Kokuka Courageous was slightly injured... and is receiving first

aid.” In Tokyo, Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko said: “A tanker carrying Japan-related goods was attacked. There were no injuries among the crew members. They got off the tanker. There were no Japanese members.” Front Altair was reportedly still burning late Thursday, but the fire aboard the Kokuka Courageous was under control extinguished, said an Iranian official involved in the rescue operation.

The incident came as Jap-anese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was on an unprecedented visit to Iran, seeking to defuse ten-sions between Tokyo’s ally Washington and the Islamic republic.

The Gulf of Oman lies at the

other end of the strategic Strait of Hormuz from the Gulf, part of a vital chokepoint through which at least 15 million barrels of crude oil and hundreds of mil-lions of dollars of non-oil imports pass.

On May 12, four oil tankers — two Saudi, one Norwegian and one Emirati — were damaged in still unexplained attacks off the port of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates.

US national security adviser John Bolton said Iranian naval mines were almost certainly behind those attacks without providing any evidence.

The UAE said initial findings of a five-nation investigation delivered to the UN pointed to the likelihood a state was involved.

Fire and smoke billowing from a tanker said to have been attacked in the waters of the Gulf of Oman, yesterday. Two tankers came under suspected attacks yesterday.

UN chief: World cannot afford major confrontation in Gulf AFP UNITED NATIONS

The world cannot afford a major confrontation in the Gulf, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned yesterday, as the Security Council prepared to meet to discuss suspected attacks on two oil tankers in the strategic sea lane.

The latest incident, the second in the Gulf of Oman in a month, came amid spiralling tensions between Tehran and Washington, which has pointed the finger at Iran over earlier tanker attacks in May.

“I strongly condemn any attack against civilian vessels,” the UN secretary general told a Security Council meeting on UN cooperation with the Arab League. “Facts must be estab-lished and responsibilities

clarified,” he said. “If there is something the world cannot afford, it is a major confron-tation in the Gulf region.” At the request of the United States, the Security Council was to meet behind closed doors later yes-terday to discuss the situation in the Gulf. Arab League Sec-retary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit warned both the targeting of oil tankers and attacks were “dangerous developments.” Yemen’s Iran-aligned Huthi rebels said they had fired mis-siles on an airport in south-western Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. “Some parties in the region are trying to instigate fires in our region and we must be aware of that,” Gheit told the council. He urged the UN body to “act against those respon-sible to maintain security and stability in the region.”

At 50 dead in fighting in DR Congo: GovernorAFP KINSHASA

At least 50 people have been killed in violence in Ituri, a volatile province of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Governor Jean Bamanisa Saidi said yesterday.

“As of the day before yes-terday, we had a figure of some 50 (dead), but it’s true, we are aware that there are other cases,” he said. Other sources

said the toll could be 60 or more than 70. The fighting began last Friday and escalated on Monday, affecting the territory of Djugu north of the provincial capital of Bunia, and causing many people to flee their homes, the sources said. The cause of the flareup was not immediately clear, but it occurred in a region where tens of thousands died in clashes between the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups between 1999 and

2003. The deputy head of the UN peacekeeping force in the DRC, General Bernard Commins, told a press conference on Wednesday that the two com-munities had suffered fresh violence.

A Hema leader, Pilo Molondro, told AFP that 49 deaths had been recorded since the start of the week, and “all communities are in mourning.” A head of the Lendu community,

Joel Mande, said: “We have recorded 40 deaths since Monday, after a trader and his colleagues were killed. The toll could reach 60.” But an NGO source said that from Saturday to Tuesday alone, “more than 72 people were killed in around 10 localities in Djugu and Irumu.” Okapi, the radio station run by the UN’s MONUSCO, said 38 people had been stabbed to death just in the village of Tche.

Anti-Ebola campaign posters are seen at the barrier of Mpondwe border which separates Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Mpondwe, Uganda, yesterday.

Second patient dies of Ebola in Uganda: health officialAFP BWERA, UGANDA

A grandmother in Uganda has died from Ebola, health officials said yesterday, the second fatality in the country since a major outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo crossed the border.

Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng announced Wednesday that Uganda had recorded three cases of Ebola in the first known cross-border spread since an out-break began in eastern Congo last August.

The patients were from a family of six, including four children, that travelled to Congo to care for a relative and later attended his burial after he died of Ebola.

Upon returning to Uganda

two brothers — aged five and three — and the 50-year-old grandmother tested positive for the virus, and the family was quarantined in Bwera, a border town in the country’s west.

The older boy died Tuesday — the first Ebola fatality in Uganda since the start of the Congo outbreak that has seen more than 2,000 cases recorded, around two-thirds of which have been fatal.

A health ministry official said Thursday the grandmother had also died overnight.

“The deceased has been con-firmed as the grandmother of the five-year-old boy who died. Both victims had attended the burial of an Ebola patient in Congo, but returned to Uganda,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

Second Algeria ex-PM held in graft probe: state mediaAFP ALGIERS

Algeria’s former prime minister Abdelmalek Sellal was remanded in custody yesterday after appearing before a judge as part of an anti-corruption investigation, state media reported.

The supreme court decision against the ally of former Pres-ident Abdelaziz Bouteflika comes a day after another former premier, Ahmed Ouyahia, was also remanded in custody. The two politicians are among numerous high-profile figures to be drawn into graft probes since Bouteflika was forced to step down in April fol-lowing weeks of mass protests. Sellal served as Bouteflika’s campaign manager, overseeing the president’s past three suc-cessful re-election bids.

He was sacked in March amid mounting public oppo-sition to an attempt to place Bouteflika on the ballot again despite the veteran president’s ailing health.

Private channel El Bilad broadcast footage of crowds waiting for Sellal’s arrival outside El Harrach prison yes-terday, in an eastern suburb of the capital Algiers.

Turkey says ceasefire not yet secured in Syria’s IdlibAFP/ANKARA

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu yesterday said a ceasefire had not been fully secured in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, despite an announcement by Moscow.

“We are working hard with Russia to stop these attacks. It is not possible to say a complete ceasefire has been secured,” Cavusoglu told a press con-ference with his French coun-terpart Jean-Yves Le Drian in Ankara.

Moscow announced a ceasefire was brokered with Turkey in the Idlib de-esca-lation zone as of midnight on June 12, after weeks of esca-lating rocket fire and air strikes by the Syrian regime and Russian forces.

Cavusoglu said there were “serious and sincere efforts” with Moscow to stop the vio-lence, but said a full cessation had not been realised.

Iran said its navy rescued 44 crew members after the two vessels, which were carrying highly inflammable material, caught fire.

Iran rejects talks with Trump despite Japan PM’s missionAFP TEHRAN

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday categor-ically ruled out talks with US President Donald Trump, despite an unprecedented Japanese mission aimed at defusing tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Iran “has no trust in America and will not in any way repeat the bitter experience of the pre-vious negotiations with America,” Khamenei said in comments published by his

official website. They came after he met with Japan’s Prime Min-ister Shinzo Abe making an unprecedented visit to Iran — the first by a Japanese premier since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“We have no doubt in your good will and seriousness, but regarding what you said the US president told you, I don’t con-sider Trump as a person worthy of exchanging messages with,” Khamenei told Abe during their meeting.

The visit coincided with a suspected attack on two oil tankers in the Sea of Oman, off

the Iranian coast, with one of the ships owned by a Japanese company, which again sent ten-sions in the Gulf soaring.

Iran has been locked in a bitter standoff with the United States since Trump withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal in May last year.

Washington has since reim-posed crippling unilateral sanc-tions — which have forced Tokyo to halt its once-substantial pur-chases of Iranian oil — and launched a military buildup in the Gulf.

“President Trump has said he

does not wish to see an esca-lation of tensions,” Abe told reporters after his meeting.

“I shared candidly with Aya-tollah Khamenei my own views about what intention the pres-ident has in mind,” Abe said, emphasising he had “exchanged views with President Trump several times”.

Trump indicated last week in France that he could consider talking to Tehran, saying: “I understand they want to talk and if they want to talk that’s fine.” Abe said he believed his meeting with Khamenei was “a significant

step forward” for “securing peace and stability of this region.” During a news con-ference with Abe on Wednesday, President Hassan Rouhani said he expected a “very positive change” in the Middle East and the world if the United States stopped what he called its “eco-nomic war” on Iran through sanctions.

The reported attacks on the two tankers off the Iranian coast, just as Abe held talks in Tehran, was more than suspicious, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said.

05FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019 ISLAM

IRSHAD HUSSAIN

“And whoever turns himself away from the remem-brance (dhikr) of

Al Rahman (The Compassionate), We appoint for him a shaitan (a satan), so he becomes his close companion (and associate). And most surely they (the satan’s) turn them away from the path, though they (the people) persist-ently imagine that they are rightly guided....” (Quran 43:36-37)

This verse, highlights a repeatedly arising theme in the Quran — the importance of dhikr (remembrance of God) — but highlights it in a unique and powerfully crucial manner. It links the turning away from a steady and steadfast contempla-tion and remembrance of Allah in the aspect of His Mercy and com-passion with the entry of Shaitan (Satan) into one’s affairs. And as verse 43:37 indicates, this entry is an invisible, unperceived arrival so that the person remains una-ware that he has been turned and deflected away from a felicitous path but instead imagines that he “is rightly guided”. This theme of people turning away from God’s name of Mercy (Al Rah-man) and compassion recurs in several places in the Quran and is perhaps due to these people desiring a special recognition or concession for their group, their viewpoint, their tribe, or their social and political status.

“No remembrance comes to them from the All-Merciful newly arrived but they turn away from it.” (Quran 26:5) Instead they are faced with a general benefi-cence that does away with special pleading and levels all hierarchies except that of consciousness and awareness of God and beauty of conduct.

Rahman and Rahim are two denotations of mercy used throughout the Quran. The Rah-man is generally considered to be an all-embracing universal mercy and compassion (linked to God’s Majesty) which pervades exist-ence and from which everything in existence derives benefit, while Rahim is sometimes defined as a more specialised and focused mercy. Here (in verse 43:36) we are invoking, through dhikr of the name Al Rahman, the entry into our hearts of that generalised mercy through which all crea-tion obtains benefit — a benefit which is not restricted only to

particular groups, and which is not withheld from anything or any creature in existence. And the invocation is an invitation for that mercy to enter and set-tle into our hearts.

If there is an impediment to this process — to engaging in a remembrance with the heart - if we find it difficult to open this door it is, perhaps, because we ourselves are the door - and if the door is locked, it is locked through our forgetfulness, negli-gence, and through the careless habits acquired over a lifetime which hinder a true inward con-sciousness and awareness from arising within us. When we are in this state, then the dhikr is first a recognition of the door, then an approach to the door, then a knocking on the door, and finally an opening of the door of our heart.

When remembrance (dhikr) of Allah is connected with the aspect of His mercy and com-passion, that quality of mercy begins to manifest within one’s own character — it gains a real, living presence and the heart expands with it’s growth. One’s thinking, words, actions, and all one’s relationships within fam-ilies, communities, and in the wider world begins to display this mercy. This dhikr then becomes a shield against the countless invis-ible ways in which Shaitan injects himself into people’s lives, even into their religious lives so that, as the verse indicates, “...they (the people) persistently (and mis-takenly) imagine that they are rightly guided....” (Quran 43:37) though they are deflected from

correct guidance.This is why we find Kahl-

ifa Ali ibn Abi Talib provided a guideline for determining the character of a people. He said: “Be not mislead by their prayers and fasting...rather, try them when it comes to telling the truth and fulfilling trusts.” (Nahjul Balagha)

When weighing a person’s trustworthiness and their reli-gious ethos, Imam Ali said not to look at their prayer, fasting, and Haj but to look into their character and how this charac-ter displays itself in the workings of life. Then we can see where their attachments lie, what their desires lead to, and what princi-ples manifest in their behaviour and aspect.

This is because the prayer, fasting, etc. are a means. Although initially they may be an end in themselves, they are an extraordinary means of remem-brance through worship (and they always remain a necessary obligation since they never cease to be an ever expanding means). Remembrance is a means of awakening a slumbering con-sciousness, which is in turn a means of transformation, and this transformation leads to inner upliftment, and this upliftment makes it possible to draw near to the one to Whom we pray. Prayer is the means and each prayer is an opportunity to advance in this process. So the question

becomes: what has our prayer made of us?

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said that “whoever has no worldly life has no religious life”. By this he did not mean that we should plunge ourselves into worldly pursuits but that the one who separates his inner religious self from his life within the trials and distractions of the world has not grasped the full purport and meaning of religion. If we pray and fast, attend the masjid, per-form the rituals and consider this the entirety of religious life we are, in a sense, secularising our religion. Our inner religious self has never had its mettle tested in the world if it remains safely and comfortably within these con-fines. When it is tested, will the world get the better of us, or will our faith (our iman) guide and direct the quality of our behav-iour in the world?

We are to take the elevated character, the manners, the free-dom from lower attachments that sincere adherence to the pillars of the religion can unfold within us, out into the world. We are to apply this in our day to day affairs - both the easy and the difficult. Truthfulness, patience, fulfillment of trusts, good speech and manners, generosity, kind-ness, humility, charity, mercy, guarding the weak, involving ourselves in the best affairs of society, in the guardianship of

rights - and we are to do this in an ihsan (beautiful) manner — without crudeness, without being rough in action or speech. Like Prophet Yusuf (Joseph), may Allah be pleased with him, who, in a foreign country, living among a foreign people with a foreign religion, rose to the highest prominence through his reli-ance on God’s mercy and acted with the patience, truthfulness, and beauty of character which emerged from this unwaver-ing reliance. As Sura Yusuf says:

“...most surely (man’s) self (nafs) is wont to command (him to do) evil, except those who (are connected with) their Lord’s mercy....We reach with Our mercy whom We please, and We do not waste the reward of those who do good (who act in the most beautiful manner).” (Quran 12:53,56)

That society in which Yusuf rose to prominence did not look at his prayer and ritual practices (after all, these would have been foreign rituals to them) but they looked at his character, his truth-fulness, his patience, his elevated knowledge, his sincerity, his ful-fillment of trusts. Without these, which are among the fruits of efficacious prayer and fasting, can it be said that we have truly prayed and fasted. The people of Egypt reacted to how Yusuf comported himself within that society. He did not seek to blend

in, that was not his goal - but he became known through the excellence of his conduct. “For the righteous are only known by that which God causes to pass concerning them on the tongues of His servants. So let the dearest of your treasuries be the treas-ury of righteous action....Infuse your heart with mercy, love and kindness....” (Imam Ali’s letter to Malik Al Ashtar)

Unfurling this level of aware-ness and comportment within ourselves is a difficult matter. For, as the Quran states, humans have a tendency to be forgetful and heedless when they inter-act in the world. In our thoughts it is easy to imagine ourselves behaving magnanimously and with dignity when faced with dif-ficulty and hardship, when heavy pressures and dangers alight upon us. But when the reality surrounds us, our minds des-perately seek escape or seek to strike out against the perceived causes of our difficulty and our hearts twist and turn confused and without direction. In such situations we may grasp, in our distress, at any direction that provides a path of action.

When our hearts are per-turbed and made uneasy by events, the best direction to turn is towards the remembrance of God, for “...surely by Allah’s remem-brance are the hearts set at rest.” (Quran 13:28) And the dhikr, the remembrance, that encompasses God’s aspect of Mercy through His name Al Rahman, will stand as a protecting guard over error, arrogance, and an invisible, and deceptive enemy. Otherwise “...whoever turns himself away from the remembrance (dhikr) of Al Rahman, We appoint for him a Shaitan (a Satan)....” (Quran 43:36)

This safeguarding dhikr begins on the tongue, enters the mind with concentrated con-sciousness, settles into a heart softened and cleansed through remembrance of Al Rahman, and manifests in the myriad small actions a person engages in each day. It becomes a shield and a truly beautiful means of drawing near to the mercy of the Most-Merciful (Al Rahman) who has promised to be the companion of the one who engages in His dhikr.

“I am the close companion of the one who remembers Me.” (hadith Qudsi)

And for a people, a commu-nity, who live in a state of sincere remembrance, all things become possible. www.islamcity.org

Remembrance of Allah and the path of mercy

Virtue of fasting on six days of Shawwal

It was narrated on the authority of Abu Ayyoob Al-Ansaari that the Prophet said: “Whoever fasts

Ramadhaan and then fasts six days of Shawwaal, it is as if he fasts the whole year.” (Muslim)

The Prophet said: “Fasting Ram-adan equals fasting ten months, and fasting six days of Shawwaal equals fasting two months. So both equal fasting the whole year.” In another narration, he said: “Whoever fasts six days after breaking the fast of Ramadan, it will be as if he fasted the whole year.

Allah The Almighty Says: “Who-ever comes on the Day of Judgment with a good deed will have ten times the like thereof to his credit.” (Quran 6:160)

Benefits and rulings:First: The virtue of fasting six days

of the month of Shawwaal, and that whoever keeps fasts them regularly after the month of Ramadan will be as if he has observed fasting all his life. This is a huge merit and a great deed.

Second: The mercy of Allah the Almighty towards His slaves and His giving them huge rewards for their small deeds.

Third: It is recommended to fast the six days immediately in response to the command of competing in right-eous deeds and lest the Muslim misses them or something distracts himher from fasting them.

Fourth: It is permissible to fast

the six days at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of Shawwaal, con-secutively or interruptedly. All this is permissible, and whatever the Mus-lim chooses is permissible and worthy of reward should Allah accept it from him. (Mughni and Sharh An-Nawawi)

Fifth: The Muslim who missed some days in Ramadan should make up for these days first and then fast the six days of Shawwaal based on the apparent meaning of the Hadeeth. The Prophet said: “Whoever fasts Ramadan…” which means fasting the whole month, and this does not apply to the Muslim who missed some days of Ramadan until he makes up for them. Moreover, freeing oneself from obligation is given precedence to doing a recommended act.

Sixth: Allah the All-Wise made the obligatory acts of worship pre-ceded and followed by voluntary ones, such as the confirmed Sunnah prayer before and after obligatory prayers as well as the permissibility of fast-ing during Sha’aban and six days of Shawwaal while the obligatory fast-ing of Ramadan lies between them.

Seventh: Voluntary acts of wor-ship compensate for the imperfection taking place in the obligatory acts of worship. The Muslim who is compe-tent for religious assignment would definitely commit something which decreases the reward of his fast or blemishes it, such as unnecessary talk, uncontrolled looking, and the like.

www.islamonline.net

DR MOHAMMED RATEB NABULSI

Prophet Muhammad’s (peace be upon him) merciful heart was

always aware of the pain felt by others; he used to know other people’s aims and would try to help in their efforts to achieve them; he was always ready to take care of and sup-port them.

He sent messages to many kings of his time asking them to cast away their false arrogance; he listened kindly and patiently to a barefoot Bedouin who said (he was busy dividing the spoils equally among people): “O Muhammad! Be fair to me! This wealth is neither yours nor your father’s.”

He was a worshipper constantly turning to Allah. On one occasion, while leading a prayer as imam, he was reciting in a state of exultation a long surah from the Noble Quran which was more precious to him than all the gold of the earth, when he heard an infant whose mother was praying behind him in the mosque crying, so he sacrificed his feeling of profound delight and happiness and ended the salah hastily out of mercy for

the infant weeping for his mother.

Those who waged war against him brimming over with bitter hatred, to such an extent that they horribly mutilated the corpse of his uncle Hamzah, the martyr, and chewed his liver in a fit of fierce and brutal rancor, and who were eventually brought before the Prophet in total submission, were told in spite of the fact that they were at his mercy:

In their travels, he used to collect firewood for his companions in order to cook their food; he made sure that no distinctions should be drawn between him and them; he used to milk his sheep, to sew his clothes, and to mend his shoes. He used to be upset on seeing an overburdened draught-animal.

In spite of his holding the position of the highest authority, he stood forth before the people and said: He whose back I have ever whipped has here my back to whip in retaliation.

One of the remarkable examples of the Prophet’s (PBUH) mercy is that he said about himself: I am but a mercy granted by Allah the Almighty (Al Hakim, on the

authority of Abu Huraira).The Prophet (PBUH) has

transmitted to us from Allah the Almighty in a hadith qudsi: “If you want My Mercy, then be merciful to each other.” (Al Daylami, on the authority of Abu Bakr).

He has also made clear that Allah the Almighty will have mercy on those who are compassionate, and has instructed the believers to show mercy at all times. He said: Have mercy on those that are on the earth, and He Who is in Heavens, will have mercy on you

(Tirmidhi, on the authority of Abd-Allah bin Umar)

The Prophet (PBUH) clarified that being merciful is better than going too far in worship. Once in Ramadan, on his way to Makkah in the year of the Conquest he fasted on having reached the place called Kuraa Al Gamim, so people fasted as he did. He felt, however, that fasting was too hard for some on account of the difficulties of travelling, so he ordered a cup of water, raised it for everybody to see, and then drank it (he broke his fast in front of all the people for them to imitate him). Hearing that some were still fasting, he said: Those are

the disobedient (Muslim, on the authority of Jabir).

Mercy to parentsOnce a man came hastily

to the Prophet (PBUH) looking delighted at the prospect of pledging his allegiance to him and to the fight for the sake of Allah the Almighty. He said: “O Messenger of Allah! I have come to you to pledge myself to emigrate with you and to jihad, and I left my parents crying (for me). The Prophet (PBUH) said to him:

Go back to them, and make them laugh as you have made them cry (Al Nasai, on the authority of Abd-Allah bin Umar). The trace of a smile on the lips of a com-passionate father or of that spreading over the face of an anxious mother was invalua-ble in the sight of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. That’s why, when jihad for the Sake of Allah and to spread Islam to dis-tant places would have been at the expense of being merci-less to one’s parents, it would have implied being disobe-dient to them. Hence, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, empha-sized so much the necessity of being kindhearted. www.muhammad-pbuh.com

Rahman and Rahim are two denotations of mercy used throughout the Quran. The Rahman is generally considered to be an all-embracing universal mercy and compassion (linked to God’s Majesty) which pervades existence and from which everything in existence derives benefit, while Rahim is sometimes defined as a more specialised and focused mercy.

The human aspect in the life of the Prophet

06 FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019ASIA

No survivors in Indian military plane crashAFP/IANS NEW DELHI

India yesterday said there were no survivors from a military plane crash last week in a remote mountainous region close to China.

The Soviet-built AN-32 plane, carrying eight crew and five passengers, disappeared from radars on June 3 in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, prompting a week-long search by the Indian Air Force (IAF). “Eight members of the rescue team have reached the crash site today (Thursday) morning,” the IAF said on Twitter. “IAF is sad to inform that there are no survivors.”

Helicopters and planes scoured hundreds of square miles of the mountainous region before emergency workers Tuesday spotted the wreckage on a mountainside at an elevation of some 12,000 feet (3,650 meters).

A mountaineering team trekked to the crash spot after being air dropped at a nearby location after two failed attempts. Authorities had earlier urged locals to organise search in the rugged mountains and announced a cash reward of

550,000 rupees ($8,000) for any information. The twin-engine plane lost contact with ground control 35 minutes after taking off. In 2016, another AN-32 —flying from Chennai to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — went missing above the Bay of Bengal. It had 29 people aboard and was never found.

Meanwhile, the Congress yes-terday condoled the death of 13 Indian Air Force (IAF) officials who died in the crash.

Congress President Rahul

Gandhi took to twitter to condole the death of the 13 IAF personnel, saying that for 10 days India hoped and prayed for them.

“For over 10 days India has hoped and prayed that our 13 Air Warriors on the missing IAF AN-32 were safe. Sadly, it is now confirmed that all 13 have per-ished in a crash. My deepest con-dolences to the families of our 13 brave men in uniform. You are in my thoughts and prayers,” the Congress President tweeted.

The Congress leaders’ remarks came soon after the IAF announced that all the 13 people on board the AN-32 aircraft which crashed are dead.

The IAF identified the dead as Wing Commander GM Charles,

Squadron Leader H Vinod, Flight Lts R Thapa, A Tanwar, S Mohanty and MK Garg, Warrant Officer KK Mishra, Sergeant Anoop Kumar, Corporal Sherin, Leading Aircraft Man SK Singh and Pankaj, Non Combatant (Enrolled) Putali and Rajesh Kumar.

On Tuesday, the IAF spotted the missing plane’s wreckage 16 km north of Lipo, northeast of Tato, at about 12,000 feet above sea level, with the help of an Mi-17 helicopter after eight days of search operation involving armed forces and police. The plane was flying from Jorhat airbase in Assam to Mechuka Advanced Landing Ground in Arunachal Pradesh’s Shi-Yomi district bor-dering China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek, yesterday.

Modi to visit Russia in early SeptemberIANS/BISHKEK

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Russia in early September to be chief guest at the Eastern Economic Forum meeting and will also hold discussions with President Vladimir Putin as part of the India-Russia annual bilateral summit. Modi had a bilateral

meeting with Putin here yesterday on the sidelines of SCO summit and the two leaders noted that the old relationship based on trust needs to be strengthened further.

Briefing reporters, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said both leaders recognised the special significance of the partnership. “Both sides recognised that it is

an old relationship based on trust between the leadership and the people and this relationship needs to be sustained, developed and given further encour-agement,” he said. He said Pres-ident Putin has invited Prime Minister formally to be the main guest for the Eastern Economic Forum at Vladivostok in early September.

NIA questions 6 after raids on suspected IS supportersAFP NEW DELHI

Indian anti-terrorism police questioned six men yesterday, after conducting raids against alleged Islamic State group supporters in the country’s south.

India has been concerned about extremists on its soil for some time, and the Sri Lanka bombings in April left author-ities alarmed that the country might be at risk of an attack by militants.

The raids on Wednesday in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu state, came after the arrest in April of an Indian national who allegedly followed Zahran Hashim, the ringleader of the Sri Lanka Easter suicide attacks that killed 258 people.

India’s National Investi-gation Agency (NIA) said in a statement that the “prime accused” in the Coimbatore case, Mohammed Azarudeen, 32, “has been a Facebook friend” of Hashim.

“During initial questioning, Azarudeen told us that he had plans to carry out a big attack in Tamil Nadu and Kerala but first wanted to hire more youths who will be ready to take up jihad,” the Economic Times daily quoted an

unnamed official as saying. The NIA named five others aside from Azarudeen who, it alleged, were also spreading Islamic State propaganda on social media with the aim of attracting new recruits willing to carry out terrorist attacks in South India - “especially in Kerala and Tamil Nadu”.

The NIA said Azarudeen maintained a Facebook page through which he propagated IS ideology, while other members of his group “have also been sharing radical con-tents attributed to Hashim.” One of them has “been a close associate” of Riyas A, alias Riyas Aboobacker, 29, the alleged Hashim follower arrested by the NIA in April.

According to the NIA, Aboobacker admitted he wanted to carry out an attack in Kerala.

Officers seized a dagger, 300 air gun pellets, 14 mobile phones, 29 SIM cards, three laptops, data storage devices as well as a large number of “incriminating documents” and pamphlets, the NIA said.

The accused were being questioned in connection with that material, but in its announcement the NIA did not state any specific charges against them.

India planning own space station: ISROIANS NEW DELHI

India is planning to launch its own space station, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K Sivan said yesterday.

The ISRO is also planning to launch two other missions - to study the Sun and Venus, he said.

The space station, which is estimated to weigh around 20 tonnes, would be an extension of the Gaganyaan mission — India’s first manned mission into space.

“India will set up its sep-arate space station in the next 5-7 years after Gangayaan is successfully completely in 2022,” Sivan told reporters here.

The space station will most likely be used to conduct micro-gravity experiments, he added.

The ISRO chief said that the preliminary plan for the space station is to accommodate astronauts for up to 15-20 days in space, but specific details will emerge after the Gaganyaan, is complete.

There will be no collabo-ration with any other country for this project, he stressed.

The only countries that have had space stations so far are the US, Russia, China and a consortium of nations that own the International Space Station.

On the other space mis-sions, he said that the mission to the Sun, named Aditya-L1, would be launched in 2020 and the mission to Venus in mid-2023.

Govt calls all-party meet before Parliament sessionIANS NEW DELHI

The government has convened an all-party meeting on June 16, a day before the first session of the newly elected Lok Sabha, informed sources said yesterday.

The government will seek the support of the opposition parties in getting crucial bills passed in the session including one on triple talaq which among others were approved by the union cabinet on Wednesday, the sources said.

Parliamentary Affairs

Minister Pralhad Joshi and several Ministers have met oppo-sition leaders including Sonia Gandhi and Ghulam Nabi Azad (Congress) to seek their support for a smooth functioning of Par-liament. Although the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has a whopping 353 members in the 545-seat Lok Sabha, it only has 102 members in the 245-seat Rajya Sabha.

Also on June 16, the newly constituted BJP Parliamentary Party Executive Committee will meet under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi

to chalk out its strategy for the session which will conclude on July 26. Members of the NDA are likely to meet and finalize a strategy for the session.

Besides triple talaq, the bills likely to be introduced in the House are The Central Educa-tional Institutions (Reservation in Teachers Cadre) Bill, 2019 and Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill 2019.

The Muslim Women (Pro-tection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, which made instant triple talaq a penal offence, had faced objections from opposition

parties which claimed that jail term for a man for divorcing his wife was legally untenable.

The first session of the Lok Sabha has been convened from June 17 to 26. The Economic Survey will be presented on July 4 and the Budget on July 5.

The 40-day session will have 30 sittings. The first two days have been kept for oath-taking by the new members. The Lok Sabha Speaker will be elected on June 19. President Ram Nath Kovind will address the joint sitting of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on June 20.

Fishing boats are seen moored as a part of precautionary measures in face of Cyclone Vayu at Veraval Port, some 400km from Ahmedabad, India, yesterday.

Winds, rain batter western India as cyclone veers awayAFP AHMEDABAD

High winds and heavy rains pounded western India yesterday as a major cyclone expected to hit the coast veered away instead into the Arabian Sea.

Vayu, classified as a very severe cyclonic storm, moved north-northwestwards in the night over the Arabian Sea, and was around 110km from the coast of Gujarat state.

It was “very likely” to keep moving in the same direction, but still skirt the coast, packing winds of 135-145km per hour and gusts of 160km per hour, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

“The threat of surge in wind, dust storm and rainfall remains very much. The centre of the

storm — known as the eye — has slightly moved away from the Gujarat coast, but its diameter is well over 900km,” an IMD official told local media.

Heavy rains are likely to con-tinue until Saturday, Gujarat IMD chief Jayanta Sarkar told AFP.

On Wednesday, forecasters had been bracing for the system to hit Gujarat with full force winds equivalent to a category one or two hurricane.

Authorities in Gujarat evac-uated more than 285,000 people as a precaution. Schools have been closed, with officials fearing major damage to houses, crops, p o w e r l i n e s a n d communications.

Five people have been killed by lightning in Gujarat, mostly farmers and labourers working in fields, authorities said.

Storms, rain leave 17 dead in UPIANS LUCKNOW

Seventeen persons have died in separate incidents of dust storms, lightning and rain in various parts of Uttar Pradesh, reports said yesterday.

According to reports, four persons died in Sid-dharthanagar, three in Deoria, three in Basti, two in Ballia and one each in Azamgarh, Kushi-nagar, Maharajganj, Lakhimpur and Pilibhit. In Sid-dharthanagar, a tin-shed col-lapsed, killing a labourer Rahim and leaving two women injured. In Basti district, Bri-jbhan Yadav died when lightning struck. He was working in his fields despite heavy rains. Thirty-year-old Vishal died in Debrua village in Basti when a tree fell on him. He was returning from a med-icine shop. His eight-year-old nephew Golu, who had accom-panied him, has been admitted to the hospital in a critical condition.

43 children dead in Bihar AES outbreakIANS PATNA

Seven more children died of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome-like symptoms in Bihar in last 24 hours, taking the toll to 43 even as new cases are being reported, officials said yesterday.

With the toll feared to go up as dozens of kids were still being treated in various hos-pitals, the state and Central governments are scrambling to contain the spread of the disease. Regional Additional Director, Health, Ashok Kumar Singh, who is based in Muzaf-farpur that has been worst hit by the disease outbreak, con-firmed deaths of 43 children so far As many as 36 children died in the government-run Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH) and seven in the private Kejriwal hospital as of Wednesday evening, he said.

With dozens of children undergoing treatment, Singh did not rule out more deaths on Thursday even as some reports said that the toll had risen above 60.

Principal Secretary, Health, Sanjay Kumar admitted that many children with symptoms akin to AES are still undergoing treatment in Muzaffarpur and few new patients were also admitted in the hospitals in last 24 hours. Till date, 143 cases of AES have been reported from 11 districts.

An AN-32 plane of the Indian Air Force was carrying eight crew and five passengers when it disappeared from radars on June 3 over Arunachal Pradesh.

07FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019 ASIA

NA Speaker to order Zardari’s production in parliament today INTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

A senior leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was given assurance by the National Assembly speaker that the production order for party’s Co-Chairman and former Pres-ident Asif Ali Zardari would be issued by today.

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has already expressed his serious concerns over the delay in issuance of the productions order for the former President.

The anti-corruption watchdog arrested PPP co-chairperson on June 10 after the Islamabad High Court rejected his and his sister Faryal Talpur’s pre-arrest bail plea in the fake bank accounts case.

According to sources, Bilawal chaired a consultation meeting in Islamabad and directed the party delegation, led by former Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, to request National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser to implement the rules of the lower house of parliament and issue the production order for the party’s co-chairman, who is also a member of the parliament.

Following the top leader-ship’s directives, the delegation went to meet the NA Speaker and waited outside his residence but was unable to meet him,

Ashraf said. However, he added that the speaker had assured former opposition leader in the National Assembly, who was among the visiting group, on phone that the production order will be issued by Friday.

He expressed gratitude to the speaker for responding pos-itively. The PPP chairman had also directed the delegation to request the custodian of house to issue production orders for two tribal districts’ lawmakers Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir who are also members of the Pashtun Tahfuz Movement (PTM), the sources also said.

They were arrested after a clash between security officials and PTM protesters led by Dawar and Wazir in North Waziristan. Bilawal also advised PPP legislators to take active part in the budget debate and make their presence felt in par-liament, said the sources privy to the development. “The details of ‘anti-people’ budget should be made public,” they quoted the party Chairman as saying.

People shout slogans against the government during a protest in Lahore, yesterday. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government vowed to collect more taxes and make spending cuts in budget on Tuesday, weeks after reaching a deal with the IMF for a $6bn bailout.

Protest against rising inflation in Pakistan

Imran likely to meet Putin at SCO summitINTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that he is looking forward to meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit this week, local media reported.

Both leaders are expected to hold an informal meeting on the sidelines of the summit and it will be their first bilateral meeting.

Pakistan could not convince Russia for a bilateral meeting between Putin and PM Imran on the sidelines of the Belt and Road Forum held in Beijing earlier this year. “I hope to meet the Russian leadership in this conference in Bishkek, the SCO meeting this coming week. So I hope to meet President Putin. I think this will just be an informal meeting on the sides of the SCO conference.

“I already met him briefly during my visit to China, where

there was a conference by Chinese President Xi [Jinping]. So I met him, but this time I hope to have an informal chat with him,” PM Imran told Russia’s Sputnik.

PM Imran was scheduled to attend a meeting of the SCO in Kyrgyzstan taking place on June 13 and 14.

While both Islamabad and Moscow know little about the other’s business potential, there is a keenness in Russia to develop ties with Pakistan.

Sharif predicts Imran Khan’s downfall soonINTERNEWS LAHORE

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday said he is not a seer or a fortune teller, but he knows “Imran Khan’s downfall is imminent.”

Speaking to visitors at Kot Lakhpat prison in Lahore, Nawaz said there were concrete charges against Imran’s sister, Aleema Khan, and that they will be held accountable.

The former Prime Minister further said, “Imran Khan is a player who will soon be thrown out of the stadium by spec-tators. His Bani Gala residence is in the midst of corruption. Imran should be ashamed of himself.” Nawaz continued, “We came into power through the public’s mandate and they do not have that. I am not a seer or a fortune teller, but I know Imran Khan’s downfall is imminent. Imran Khan is incompetent and to hide his incompetence, Imran Khan is blaming the previous gov-ernment. His incompetence has brought the country to the edge of destruction.

“During our tenure, the Indian prime minister came to Pakistan. Now, the Indian prime minister did not even invite anyone for his oath-taking,” Nawaz lamented, adding, “When we made Pakistan an atomic power, the world realised Pakistan’s power ... The government without any foun-dation is putting politicians in jail,” Nawaz added.

Criticising the government, the leader of Pakistan Muslim League-N said, “We had said goodbye to the International Monetary Fund while the current government is bowing down in front of them. Our party had left full coffers, made motorways and countered ter-rorism and inflation. Imran Khan had said he would commit suicide if he ever went to IMF, he did not commit suicide but the nation is being forced to. “During our tenure, the dollar was in control and our exports were increasing. Imran Khan has disheartened the nation in just 10 months,” he added.

11 dead in IS-claimed Afghanistan suicide attack AFP JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN

A suicide bomber targeted a police checkpoint yesterday in the eastern Afghan city of Jala-labad, killing at least 11 people and wounding 13 others, an official said.

The Afghan arm of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, which was committed by an assailant on foot, said Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province.

There was at least one child among the fatalities, while three others were wounded.

The area around Jalalabad is home to fighters from both the Taliban and the IS group’s Afghan affiliate.

Last month, three blasts in rapid succession in the centre of Jalalabad left three people dead and 20 wounded.

Until then, this city near the border with Pakistan had largely been spared from attacks and fighting, mainly with IS, in far-flung parts of the surrounding

province. However, in March, at least 16 civilians were killed in a suicide bombing followed by gunfire targeting a construction company near the city’s airport. The Taliban said they were not behind that attack.

A wave of violence across Afghanistan in recent weeks has claimed the lives of dozens of civilians and security forces.

After 18 years of conflict, the Taliban are in negotiations with US peace envoy Zalmay Kha-lilzad for some sort of peace settlement.

A resolution still seems far off, with the two sides struggling to agree on several key points.

Khalilzad is in the country now meeting with political leaders and members of civil society in the hope of launching intra-Afghan talks with the Taliban.

The EU envoy for Afghan-istan, Roland Kobia, is also here to support the process.

In a gesture of goodwill, the government announced yes-terday it has released 490 Taliban prisoners who are ill or

have less than a year left to serve.They are among 887 pris-

oners that President Ashraf Ghani promised to free in early June as he marked the end of Ramadan.

Khalilzad is due to attend a new round of talks with the Taliban.

The goal of the negotiations is to set a timetable for the with-drawal of US troops in exchange for a Taliban pledge to keep the country from being used as a staging ground for terror attacks.

A Sri Lankan policeman with a sniffer dog walks outside a St. Anthony’s church during a mass in Colombo yesterday.

Sri Lanka law chief orders swift resolution of cold casesAFP COLOMBO

Sri Lanka’s attorney-general ordered police yesterday to speed up investiga-tions into several high-profile criminal cases, including the 2006 massacre of 17 French charity workers that remains unresolved.

Dappula de Livera singled out four cases, saying that the delays had caused public distress, and ordered acting police chief Chandana Wickramaratne to report on progress. The August 2006 killing of 17 workers of Action Against Hunger (ACF) in the eastern town of Muttur, the January 2009 assassination of newspaper editor Lasantha Wickre-matunge were the two top cases.

The other two relate to the killing of 11 young men by a navy intelligence unit between 2008 and 2009, and the slaying of rugby player Wasim Thajudeen in May 2012.

No-one has ever been prosecuted

for the execution-style killings of the ACF staff — among them four women.

Members of former President Mahinda Rajapakse’s family and close associates have been implicated in the three other cases, but no one has been indicted. Police sources said much of the investigations had been completed, and any delay was on the part of state in filing indictments.

Two navy admirals — including the current chief of defence staff, Ravindra Wijegunaratne — have been accused by police investigators of involvement in a cover-up of the killings of 11 young men who were abducted by a navy intelligence unit to extract ransoms from their families. They were mur-dered despite their families paying up.

President Maithripala Sirisena came to power in January 2015 promising justice for a number of politically moti-vated killings and extra-judicial murders during Rajapakse’s decade in power.

INTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Former Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry has written a letter to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) over the govern-ment’s reference against Supreme Court Justice Qazi Faez Isa, who is scheduled to be the future chief justice.

The SJC will hear the gov-ernment’s reference today with the Supreme Court Bar Associ-ation calling for a strike.

The government has filed references against two superior court judges in the SJC after complaints were received against three judges including Justice Isa of owning undeclared properties abroad.

Chaudhry in his letter stressed that sending the ref-erence to the SJC without fol-lowing procedures was in vio-lation of the constitution and law. The letter further reads that in the reference it has not been stated anywhere that Justice Isa violated Article of the Code of Conduct. It added that due to the reference, the judge and insti-tution of the judiciary as a whole had been scandalised. According to the former chief justice, the reference being against consti-tutional provisions, untrue, without substances and moti-vated, may not be entertained and be rejected without further proceedings. Chaudhry said the SJC should instead take action against the president and prime minister for violating their oath.

Captain of shipwrecked Rohingya boat charged with smugglingAFP BANGKOK

A Thai boat captain has been charged with smuggling 65 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, police said yesterday, after their vessel was ship-wrecked off Thailand’s southern coast.

The same area was the hub of multi-million-dollar trafficking route, which unravelled in 2015 after the discovery of mass graves of Rohingya and Bangladeshi

migrants along the border with Malaysia. Police said the boat, which was carrying the stateless Rohingya minority and was found on Tuesday on an island off the coast of Satun province, was cap-tained by Sangkhom Paphan, a Thai from nearby Ranong province. Police said he was hired to transport the Rohingya to Malaysia and has been “charged with smuggling in illegal immi-grants”, according to police general Suchart Theerasawat of the National Police Office. “He

was paid 100,000 baht (about $3,200) by a Myanmar man,” Suchart said, adding that author-ities were still interrogating him. Junta chief-turned-Prime Min-ister Prayut Chan-O-Cha has instructed agencies “to speed up” investigation on whether the Rohingya found were refugees or illegal labourers, said government s p o k e s m a n W e r a c h o n Sukhondhapatipak.

The 65 people, including women and children, are cur-rently being detained in a police

camp in Satun province.The persecuted Rohingya

minority are denied citizenship in Myanmar and face severe restrictions on movement as well as a lack of access to work, healthcare and schools.

It was not immediately clear if the 65 Rohingya discovered were coming from Myanmar or Bangladesh, where more than a million of the minority languish in refugee camps. More than 740,000 Rohingya fled to Bang-ladesh in 2017 after a brutal

military campaign by the Myanmar army. United Nations investigators have said the army’s violence amounts to “genocide”, and have called for the prose-cution of Myanmar’s top generals.

Within Myanmar tens of thousands of Rohingya are con-fined in squalid conditions since a previous bout of violence in 2012, driving some to leave by boat for Malaysia in desperation — making them easy prey for human traffickers.

Former President Asif Ali Zardari was arrested on June 10 after the Islamabad High Court rejected his pre-arrest bail plea in a fake bank accounts case.

Reference against SC judge without substance: Ex-CJ

Advanced nations and the world’s biggest companies have thrown billions of dollars behind AI — a set of computing practices, including machine learning that collate masses of our data, analyse it, and use it to predict what we would do.

FERDINANDO GIUGLIANO BLOOMBERG

08 FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019VIEWS

Artificial intelligence reinforces power and privilege

What do a Yemeni refugee in the queue for food aid, a checkout worker in a British supermarket and a

depressed university student have in common? They’re all being sifted by some form of artificial intelligence.

Advanced nations and the world’s big-gest companies have thrown billions of dollars behind AI — a set of computing practices, including machine learning that collate masses of our data, analyse it, and use it to predict what we would do.

Yet cycles of hype and despair are inseparable from the history of AI. Is that clunky robot really about to take my job? How do the non-geeks among us distin-guish AI’s promise from the hot air and decide where to focus concern?

Computer scientist Jaron Lanier ought to know. An inventor of virtual reality, Lanier worked with AI pioneer Marvin Minsky, one of the people who coined the term “artificial intelligence” in the 1950s. Lanier insists AI, then and now, is mostly a marketing term. In our interview, he recalled years of debate with Minsky about whether AI was real or a myth:

“At one point, [Minsky] said to me, ‘Look, whatever you think about this, just play along, because it gets us funding, this’ll be great.’ And it’s true, you know ... in those days, the military was the principal source of funding for computer science research. And if you went into the funders and you said, ‘We’re going to make these machines

smarter than people some day and who-ever isn’t on that ride is going to get left behind and big time. So we have to stay ahead on this, and boy! You got fund-ing like crazy.’”

But at worst, he says, AI can be more insidious: a ploy the pow-erful use to shirk respon-sibility for the decisions they make. If “com-

puter says, ‘no,’” as the old joke goes, to whom do you complain?

We’d all better find out quickly. Whether or not you agree with Lanier about the term AI, machine learning is getting more sophis-ticated, and it’s in use by everyone from the tech giants of Silicon Valley to cash-strapped local authorities. From credit to jobs to policing to healthcare, we’re ceding more and more power to algorithms, or rather - to the people behind them.

Many applications of AI are incredible:

we could it to improve wind farms or spot cancer sooner. But that isn’t the only, or even the main, AI trend. The worrying ones involve the assessment and predic-tion of people - and, in particular, grading for various kinds of risk.

As a human rights lawyer doing “war on terror” cases, I thought a lot about our attitudes to risk. Remember Vice President Dick Cheney’s “one percent doctrine”? He said that any risk - even one percent - of a terror attack would, in the post-9/11 world, to be treated like a certainty.

That was just a complex way of say-ing that the US would use force based on the barest suspicion about a person. This attitude survived the transition to a new administration - and the shift to a machine learning-driven process in national secu-rity, too. During President Barack Obama’s drone wars, suspicion didn’t even need to be personal - in a “signature strike”, it could be a nameless profile, generated by an algo-rithm, analysing where you went and who you talked to on your mobile phone. This was made clear in an unforgettable com-ment by ex-CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden: “We kill people based on meta-data,” he said.

Now a similar logic pervades the modern marketplace, the sense that total certainty and zero risk - that is, zero risk for the class of people Lanier describes as “closest to the biggest computer” - is achievable and desirable. This is what is crucial for us all to understand: AI isn’t just about Google and Facebook targeting you with advertisements. It’s about risk.

The police in Los Angeles believed it was possible to use machine learning to predict crime. London’s Metropolitan Police, and others, want to use it to see your face wherever you go. Credit agen-cies and insurers want to build a better profile to understand whether you might get heart disease, or drop out of work, or fall behind on payments.

It used to be common to talk about “the digital divide”. This originally meant that the skills and advantages of connected citizens in rich nations would massively outrun poorer citizens without computers and the Internet. The solution: get everyone

online and connected. This drove policies like One Laptop Per Child - and it drives newer ones, like Digital ID, the aim to give everyone on Earth a unique identity, in the name of economic participation. And connectivity has, at times, indeed opened people to new ideas and opportunities.

But it also comes at a cost. Today, a new digital divide is opening. One between the knowers and the known. The data miners and optimisers, who optimise, of course, according to their values, and the optimised. The surveillance capital-ists, who have the tools and the skills to know more about everyone, all the time, and the world’s citizens.

AI has ushered in a new pecking order, largely set by our proximity to this new com-putational power. This should be our real concern: how advanced computing could be used to preserve power and privilege.

This is not a dignified future. People are right to be suspicious of this use of AI, and to seek ways to democratise this tech-nology. I use an iPhone and enjoy, on this expensive device, considerably less per-sonalised tracking of me by default than a poorer user of an Android phone.

When I apply for a job in law or jour-nalism, a panel of humans interviews me; not an AI using “expression analysis” as I would experience applying for a job in a Tesco supermarket in the UK. We can do better than to split society into those who can afford privacy and personal human assessment - and everyone else, who gets number-crunched, tagged, and sorted.

Unless we head off what Shoshana Zuboff calls “the substitution of compu-tation for politics” - where decisions are taken outside of a democratic contest, in the grey zone of prediction, scoring, and automation - we risk losing control over our values.

The future of artificial intelligence belongs to us all. The values that get encoded into AI ought to be a matter for public debate and, yes, regulation. Just as we banned certain kinds of discrimina-tion, should certain inferences by AI be taken off the table? Should AI firms have a statutory duty to allow in auditors to test for bias and inequality?

CORI CRIDER AL JAZAEERA

QUOTE OF THE DAY

The failure of the US, Russia, China, Britain and France to make progress

on disarmament risks undermining the Nuclear

Nonproliferation Treaty, the world’s single

most important pact on nuclear arms.

Ban Ki-Moon Former UN

Secretary-General

Brexit & high wages are a poisonous mix for the BoE

Three years on from Britain’s vote to quit the European Union, its failure to come up

with a realistic plan for how to withdraw is pretty farcical. Officials at the Bank of England aren’t laughing, though. Mark Carney, the bank’s governor, has gone slowly on raising interest rates as he waits for the fog of Brexit to clear. It’s been a protracted and fruitless delay. The longer the unhappy process drags on, the harder it is to ignore what’s happening in the country’s economy.

This week, official statistics showed that annual growth in basic pay climbed to 3.4% in the three months to April. The labor market, which has stayed resil-ient since the 2016 referendum even as investment in the United Kingdom has fallen, shows no sign of weakening. Unemploy-ment stands at 3.8%, while the employment rate is 76.1% - the

highest level on record.As the labor market tightens,

workers demand higher wages. But Britain’s dismal productivity performance means there’s little room for this to happen without stoking inflation. (That’s because unless an employee starts pro-ducing more output per hour, any salary hike would have to be paid for by raising prices for customers). Under normal cir-cumstances, the BoE would be thinking seriously about raising interest rates from their existing level of 0.75% to counteract the effect of rising pay. Its mandate is to keep inflation at 2% over the medium term, and accelerating wages suggest an economy that might be overheating.

These are hardly normal times, however. The other EU member states have granted Britain an extension to the Brexit deadline as the U.K. parliament seeks to build a consensus around a withdrawal plan. All options - including crashing out of the EU without a deal - remain firmly on the table. It would be risky

to tighten monetary policy right now, given the uncertainty about the possible impact on the Brit-ish economy.

Yet the case for holding fire as Brexit is resolved is becom-ing flimsier by the day. Ideally, the UK government would set out a clear departure path for its citizens (and the BoE’s rate-setters), whether this meant an orderly exit with a negotiated transition or a sudden break. The bank would at least then be able to assess the economic outlook, weigh the different risks, and set monetary policy accordingly. But it’s impossible to read which way the politicians are headed, and it’s not getting any clearer. Maybe they’ll return to voters for a new referendum or general election. This would just prolong the wait for the policymakers.

Some members of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee are getting twitchy about the delay. “I want to stress that the MPC does not necessarily have to keep rates on hold until all Brexit uncer-tainties are resolved,” Michael

Saunders said on Monday, adding that interest rates may need to rise faster than the market expects. Ben Broadbent, deputy gover-nor, and Andy Haldane, the BoE’s chief economist, have also struck a hawkish note. They should tread carefully. There are signs that the recent wage spike may be down to one-off factors, especially in the public sector. Inflation stood at 2.1% in April, which is only just above the bank’s target.

The global outlook is gloomy because of the trade standoff between America and China. From the US Federal Reserve to the European Central Bank, some of the world’s leading monetary authorities are getting ready to inject more stimulus. That should make the BoE think hard about hiking rates.

Still, as the Brexit process drags on endlessly, it will become more and more difficult to sim-ply wait for its resolution. Central bankers can’t do the job of politi-cians. Nor can they wait forever while members of parliament make up their minds.

Total tourism spending in Qatar is expected to reach QR40bn, compared with QR17.3bn in 2016. This spending will achieve 4 percent as a direct contribution to the country’s GDP compared to 3.5 percent in 2016.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI

osman@pen.com.qa

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Climbing greater heights

Qatar has successfully weathered all storms, especially in the last two years after the unjust siege imposed on the nation by the neighbouring quartet, with its well-

planned and well-oiled policies and achieved greater heights. Qatar has entered third year of this unlawful blockade with more vigour and enthusiam and defeated all their unjust arm-twisting tactics with its passion and perseverance for long-term and meaningful goals under the able leadership of the country.

Qatar has attained self-sufficiency in several sectors. The economy is booming and its infrastructure sector has car-ried out all its works, in fact sped up, for the FIFA World Cup 2022 without any hindrance. The country entered into several trade pacts with major global players and made benefits out of these deals.

The recent report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the latest testimony of how Qatar’s plans are paying off and Qatar’s economy has proved to be resilient in the face of the unjust siege. “Economic performance im-proved in 2018. Qatar’s economy has successfully absorbed the shocks from the 2014-16 drop in hydrocarbon prices and the 2017 diplomatic rift,” the IMF said in a statement. “Real GDP growth is estimated at 2.2 percent, up from 1.6 percent in 2017,” it added.

The IMF has observed that the prudent fiscal policy, an appro-priate monetary anchor, sound financial regulation and super-vision frameworks and consid-erable buffers continue to underpin strong macroeconomic performance. The programmes in the infrastructure sectors announced by the Ministry of Municipalities and Environment such as adopting 15 mechanism of procedures and requirements for the approval of requests for the planning and eval-uation of infrastructure facilities and their implementation is in the right direction.

Other major boost to the economy is coming from the tourism sector with the “Summer in Qatar” programme launched

recently. It is an important step to develop the domestic tourism industry and is a catalyst for the coun-try’s economic growth. It will stimulate the economic sector with the participation of retail and hospitality sectors.

As defined by the National Tourism Sector Strategy 2018-2023, the summer festival is also a part of the country’s aspi-ration to further growth in the tourism industry. It is planned that different activities will attract 5.6 million visi-tors per year by 2023, compared with 2.9 million in 2016, more than 65 percent of whom visited Qatar for enter-tainment. Total tourism spending in Qatar is expected to reach QR40bn, compared with QR17.3bn in 2016. This will achieve 4 percent as a direct con-tribution to the country’s GDP compared to 3.5 percent in 2016. This is a huge contribution. The hotel occupancy rate recorded more than 70 percent compared to 65 percent in 2016. The pol-icies aimed at simplifying visa procedures, including visa-free entry to citizens of 80 countries and a free 96-hour transit visa, which has led to an increase of more than 40 percent of the number of travellers who decide to stop in Qatar give a fillip to the local economy.

The well-collaborated planning by authorities and efforts of partners in public and private sectors made this kind of com-mendable progress for the country.

A man looks at a demonstration of human motion analysis software during the Security China 2018 exhibition on public safety and security in Beijing.

Human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases of enforced disappearances. Political opponents disappear, perhaps reappearing days or weeks later in court to issue torture-induced confessions.

09FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019 OPINION

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China chip industry insidersvoice caution on catch-up efforts

Egypt’s phony war on terror is really about silencing dissent

JOSH HORWITZ & SIJIA JIANG REUTERS

ALAA AL ASWANY THE WASHINGTON POST

Since the US government put Huawei Technologies Co Ltd on a trade blacklist, effectively banning American firms from

doing business with it, China’s leaders have spoken boldly about achieving self-sufficiency in the critical semicon-ductor business.

But industry insiders are less opti-mistic that Chinese chip makers can quickly meet the challenge of supplying

all the needs of Huawei and other domestic technology firms.

The prospectuses of Chinese chip companies preparing to list on a new tech-focussed stock exchange are blunt, characterising the domestic industry as “relatively backward”, lacking in talent and requiring “a long time to catch up”.

Chinese chip engineers tell tales of local manufacturing that just is not up to snuff, while analysts point out the many areas where China remains reliant on technology from the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Europe, with some questioning whether government policies are in the right place.

“Compared to the constraints of equipment, materials, or talent, I think what China lacks more is under-standing of the industry,” says Gu Wenjun, chief analyst at Shanghai-based consultancy ICWise. He called some of the government subsidies for the industry “counter-productive”,

because too many well-funded ven-tures end up chasing the same talent.

Government appeals to patriotism also go only so far. A former top engineer the Chinese chip design firm Unisoc, a unit of Tsinghua Unigroup told Reuters the company was often encouraged to use a sister company’s memory chips. But that firm, called Guoxin, could not offer technology that was advanced enough.

“The internal speeches that were given were always ‘Please look at Guoxin because we do want to support the Chinese supply chain’,” said the engineer. “But we never got anything we could use.” The companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Chip industry officials outside China caution that the country is making good progress in some areas and should not be under-estimated. For a key type of memory chip known as NAND, for example, Chinese firms are closing the gap.

“Money is not an issue for the Chinese government,” says one exec-utive at a South Korean memory chip maker who declined to be named, acknowledging China’s progress in NAND, or flash chips, which provide long-term data storage. “We cannot stop the Chinese companies, it is a free competition, but we believe we have better technology and a better product.”

One of China’s biggest challenges, however, is in chip manufacturing, an exacting process that requires both highly specialised tools and many years of experience to master.

A May report from China’s Ever-bright Securities identified one aspect of the problem. “The manufacturing process relies on equipment, and US firms such as AMAT, LAM, KLA and

Teradyne have very high market share in many niche markets,” Everbright wrote. “There is no production line in China that uses only equipment made in China, so it is very difficult to make any chipsets without US equipment.”

Even when Chinese chip makers do have gear from the top chip equipment firms in the United States, Japan and Europe, they cannot always take full advantage.

One former engineer at Semicon-ductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), China’s leading chip pro-duction firm, said the equipment vendors often had non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with Taiwan Semi-conductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC), the world leader in chip-making.

The manufacturing process for advanced chips requires a lot of fine-tuning, and the NDAs covered the crucial tips and tricks on how to best use the machinery and achieve the nec-essary levels of “yield”, or the number of working chips in each batch.

“Equipment vendors are all under NDA with TSMC,” says the engineer. “If SMIC asks a vendor for instructions, the vendor will only disclose very basic information about the instructions, just to show good faith,” he says.

A TSMC spokeswoman said: “TSMC has always been diligent in protecting our trade secrets, including signing NDAs with our counterparts.”

Industry experts say SMIC is con-sistently about two generations behind TSMC, even with up-to-date equipment. While TSMC was launching chips with circuit widths of just 7 nanometers in 2018, SMIC is only now readying production of 14 nanometer chips - which was state-of-the-art in 2014.

Alaa Abd El Fattah was a skilled computer pro-grammer. Like millions of Egypt’s youth, he dreamed of

democracy in his country. In 2005 he created the blog Manalaa, whose title combines his name with the name of his wife, Manal. They urged an end to Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. Employed as a programmer in South Africa when revolution broke out in 2011, Abd El Fattah immediately returned to Egypt to contribute to the popular uprising.

Later, when President Mohamed Morsi, who rose from the Muslim Broth-erhood, declared his own decrees to be above Egyptian law, Abd El Fattah joined millions of Egyptians in demon-strations in June 2013 calling for early presidential elections.

He later condemned the August 2013 massacre of Islamists perpetrated by the regime of Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the defense minister who had grabbed power and become president. Finally, that November, Abd El Fattah joined a peaceful protest against civilians being tried in military courts.

That was the end of Abd El Fattah’s activism. Soon, officials arrested him, and the courts handed down a five-year jail sentence, with an additional five years on parole. That means, although he was released in March, he still spends every night, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., in a locked cell at a Cairo police station.

Ten years in the life of a young Egyp-tian have been squandered because he stood for minutes to express his opin-ion peacefully.

The bogus anti-protest law prom-ulgated by el-Sissi, under which Abd

El Fattah was imprisoned, makes him a political prisoner — one of 60,000 in Egypt, according to Human Rights Watch. The authorities in Egypt arrest anyone criticizing el-Sissi, whether in an arti-cle, in a work of art, at a meeting or on social media. Eighteen-year-old Mah-moud Mohamed Hussein was arrested and spent two years in prison without trial for wearing a T-shirt with the hope-ful slogan “A nation without torture.” I, too, am vulnerable for writing this piece, though I believe it is the duty of a writer to defend freedom.

The dissidents inside Egypt’s prisons almost constitute a nation all their own; I tried to capture this universe in my novel “The Yacoubian Building.” In it, one of the main characters is a young man, Taha el Shazli who dreams of becoming a police officer. He works diligently and receives outstanding grades, but he is rejected for admission by the police academy because of his poor social background as the son of a porter. Angry and frus-trated, Taha seeks refuge in a mosque and falls under the spell of a hard-line Islamist preacher.

The police arrest Taha on suspicion of terrorism and torture and sodomize him. Upon his release, he is recruited by Islamist militants, who persuade him to seek revenge against the regime that bru-talized him and the society that turned a blind eye to this abuse. Based on the true story of a young man I knew, Taha’s path to radicalization mirrors that of thousands of young Egyptians.

El-Sissi’s regime does not even make a pretense of respecting civil rights. Amnesty International’s 2017-2018 report on Egypt states, “The authori-ties used torture and other ill-treatment

and enforced disappearance against hundreds of people, and dozens were extrajudicially executed with impunity.” The Interior Ministry routinely publicizes “enemy” casualties in armed clashes between security forces and terror-ists, with images of their corpses posted alongside official statements. A Reuters investigation recently confirmed that many of the dead could not have been killed in gun battles but were instead extrajudicially executed.

According to the family of Khaled Emam, the 37-year-old weightlift-ing trainer was arrested in June 2017. Four months later, the Interior Minis-try announced that three men died in a shootout with police, mentioning the names of two of the men, both friends of Emam.

Security sources acknowledged that he was the third casualty; rela-tives located his body, bearing signs of torture, at the morgue. Mohamed Abu Amer, a 37-year-old gardener, was arrested in February 2018, his family says. Five months later, a photo of his body appeared with an Interior Minis-try statement alleging that he had died in a gun battle.

Human rights groups have docu-mented hundreds of cases of enforced disappearances. Political opponents disappear, perhaps reappearing days or weeks later in court to issue torture-induced confessions.

Sometimes, they simply vanish, as in the case of former parliamentarian Mostafa Alnagar, whose wife received an anonymous phone call last fall informing her that her husband had been arrested. She hasn’t heard anything since.

Freedom of expression has died in the el-Sissi era. The regime dominates newspapers, television channels, and film and television production compa-nies - all transformed into bullhorns that hail el-Sissi. Consider what happened to me. Once el-Sissi became president, I was banned from appearing on televi-sion or writing in Egypt’s newspapers. (A television presenter on whose pro-gram I was scheduled to appear informed me that I was no longer allowed on TV.) Then a weekly public cultural salon that I had organised for two decades was prohibited.

My latest novel, “The Republic As If,” came out in Lebanon, since pub-lishers in Egypt were afraid to publish it. In March, military prosecutors filed a case against me in a military court on account of my novel and my columns that appear on Deutsche Welle’s Ara-bic website.

El-Sissi says the crackdown is about fighting “the war against terrorism.” And it’s true that the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood from power in 2013, a harsh blow to Islamist currents around the world, led to terrorist attacks by Islam-ist extremists in Egypt that claimed

Chinese chip engin-eers tell tales of local manufacturing that just is not up to snuff, while analysts point out the many areas where China remains reliant on technology from the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Europe, with some questioning whether government policies are in the right place.

hundreds of victims - military per-sonnel, police officers and civilians.

Yet el-Sissi seems to think any power grab is justified by these attacks, and he uses them as the pretense for a machinery of oppression that tar-gets political opponents more than it does the terrorists.

Recently, he held a referendum amending the constitution to extend his rule until 2030, give him control of the judiciary and place the military above the political process. According to the “official” results, 89 percent of voters approved the changes. (Author-ities in Egypt have rigged elections since 1952, when the military first took power.)

The machinery of repression has for now quashed dissenting voices, but it hasn’t eliminated the politi-cal strains that seem to terrify the president. History teaches us that repression does not annihilate ter-rorism but swells its ferocity. What do we expect will happen to any per-son after being tortured, humiliated and dehumanized? Every victim of repression in his own country has the potential to become a domestic terrorist.

When opponents are tortured, imprisoned for years on end and sent to the executioner, thousands of des-perate youth will be convinced that violence is the only route for affecting change. Terrorism will not end with-out justice. Justice can be achieved only through the rule of law.

The rule of law can prevail only in a democratic state. And Egypt is no democracy.

Aswany, an Egyptian writer, is the author of several books and novels, including “The Yacoubian Building.” His works have been translated into three dozen languages. This essay was translated from the Arabic by Abdalla F Hassan.

A file photo showing Egyptian activists protest against military rule in which 47 people died, at Tahrir Square in Cairo.

10 FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019ASIA / EUROPE

Beijing says Hong Kong protests were ‘riots’AFP BEIJING

Beijing yesterday described the mass protests against Hong Kong’s extradition bill as “riots”, and said it supported the local government’s response.

Police used rubber bullets and tear gas to break up crowds Wednesday after demonstrators — angry over legislation they say would leave people vulnerable to China’s politicised justice system — blocked roads and brought the city to a standstill.

Videos of Hong Kong police beating unarmed protesters have also sparked accusations of brutality.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam and other city offi-cials “have already spoken on the latest state of affairs, pointing out that what happened in the Admi-ralty area was not a peaceful rally, but a riot organised by a group.” “I think that any act that undermines Hong Kong’s pros-perity and stability goes against Hong Kong mainstream public opinion,” Geng said at a regular press briefing.

“We support the Hong Kong government’s dealing with the situation in accordance with the law.” Wednesday’s violence left 79 people hurt, with two in serious condition, in the worst

political unrest since Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997.

Police insisted the force was necessary to fend off protesters throwing bricks and metal bars.

But critics said officers used localised violence by small groups of hardcore activists to launch an unprecedented oper-ation against the much larger mass of peaceful protesters who had taken over parts of the city on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the protest leaders have announced plans for another mass rally on Sunday.

The move sets up a fresh confrontation with the city’s leaders who have refused to withdraw the proposed law and have the staunch backing of Beijing. Sporadic demonstrations broke out again yesterday, with occasional scuffles with police, but crowds were much smaller and there was no repeat of the running battles of the day before.

The government has indefi-nitely postponed a parliamentary debate on the bill which had been scheduled for Wednesday and was the trigger for Wednes-day’s violence.

But demonstrators have vowed no let up in their cam-paign until the law is abandoned entirely, calling for a rally on Sunday and a city-wide strike on Monday. “(We) will fight until the

end with Hong Kong people,” said Jimmy Sham from the Civil Human Rights Front, the main protest group, adding that they had applied for permission to hold the weekend rally.

The CHRF organised a huge rally against the bill on Sunday which they said drew more than a million people.

But it has little control over groups of largely leaderless,

young crowds of more hardline demonstrators who have been at the vanguard of confrontations with police.

The police response has drawn criticism from a range of influential bodies including law-makers, journalists and legal groups, with calls for an inde-pendent inquiry into “excessive force” from a top legal body that helps elect the city’s leader.

Protesters display placards during a demonstration against a controversial extradition law proposal in Hong Kong, yesterday.

China blames Canada for deteriorating tiesAFP BEIJING

Canada should take the “entire responsibility” for a spiralling diplomatic row, China said yesterday, after Ottawa said Beijing had spurned a request for dialogue.

Relations between the two countries have deteriorated since December when police in Vancouver detained Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on a US arrest warrant.

Days later China arrested two Canadians — former dip-lomat Michael Kovrig and busi-nessman Michael Spavor — in

what is widely seen as a tit-for-tat move. Canadian Prime Min-ister Justin Trudeau’s office said Wednesday that China had ignored a request made in January for a call with Premier Li Keqiang to “personally advocate” for the immediate release of the two Canadians, and for clemency in the case of another citizen sentenced to death for drug trafficking.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said yesterday that he had not heard of the approach.

“But what I can tell you is that the current difficulties in China-Canada relations are

entirely caused by Canada herself, and entire responsibility for it lies with the Canadian side,” Geng said at a regular press briefing. China has said it suspects Spavor and Kovrig — who works for the International Crisis Group think-tank — of separately collecting and stealing state secrets. Trudeau has said the pair were detained “for political reasons.” Canadian foreign minister Crystia Freeland last month said she had also sought a meeting with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, to no avail. China has also blocked Canadian agricultural shipments worth billions of

dollars. Meng is living in a Van-couver mansion on bail awaiting an extradition hearing scheduled to start in early 2020, while Spavor and Kovrig are being held in undisclosed locations.

“We hope that Canada will sincerely take note of China’s serious concerns and immedi-ately release Ms. Meng Wanzhou... and take substantive measures to bring China-Canada relations back on track as soon as possible,” Geng said.

Canada’s foreign ministry said its China consular officials visited Kovrig on Wednesday, the eighth time they have seen him since his detention.

Hungary boat tragedy toll rises to 25AFP BUDAPEST

The death toll from a Budapest tourist boat sinking rose to 25 with a man’s body found about 100 kilometres from the accident site, police said yesterday.

The Mermaid capsized seconds after colliding with a bigger river cruise vessel on a busy stretch of the Danube in the heart of the Hungarian capital on May 29.

Thirty-five people, all of them South Koreans except for the Hungarian captain and

a crew member, were on the boat when it sank. Only seven South Koreans survived so far.

The 25th body was found Wednesday about 100 kilo-metres downriver from the accident scene, police said in a statement, adding that three South Koreans were still missing.

The search for the three continues and South Korea has insisted it wants all the victims accounted for.

Rescue workers on Tuesday lifted the sunken vessel out of the Danube.

Efforts to dive to the wreck had repeatedly been called off due to the heavy current of the river swollen by weeks of rain.

The captain of the larger vessel, the Viking Sigyn which collided with the Mermaid, has been charged after being detained on suspicion of “endangering waterborne traffic resulting in multiple deaths”.

The captain, a Ukrainian national identified only as Yuriy C., has been released on bail following a court order on Wednesday.

Accompanied by his lawyer Gabor M Toth (right), the captain of the Swiss Viking Sigyn cruise vessel Yuriy C (left) from Ukraine steps out from the building of Budapest jail, yesterday.

A file photo shows protesters during a national Day of Action against the planned coal mine project in north-east Australia, at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in Australia, on October 7, 2017.

Australia approves vast coal mine near Great Barrier ReefAFP SYDNEY

Australia approved yesterday the construction of a controversial coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef, paving the way for a dramatic and unfashionable increase in coal exports.

Queensland’s government said it had accepted a ground-water management plan for the Indian-owned Adani Carmichael mine — the last major legal hurdle before construction can begin. The project, fiercely debated for almost a decade, comes as investors and even energy companies are moving away from fossil fuels amid concern about the climate.

Opponents warn it will create a new generation of coal exports — which will be burned in India and China — contributing to

further degrade the planet.The vast open cut mine is

slated to produce up to 60 million tonnes of coal a year, boosting Australia’s already vast exports by around 20 percent.

Coupled with the con-struction of a railway link, it could open up a swathe of Queensland to further exploi-tation and new mining projects.

“If all the coal in the Galilee Basin is burnt it would produce 705 million tonnes of climate pollution each year, which is more than 1.3 times Australia’s annual pollution from all sources, including cars, industry, energy and agriculture,” said the Aus-t r a l i a n C o n s e r v a t i o n Foundation.

Its role as the world’s largest coal exporter gives Australia out-sized influence in the climate stakes.

Rights group says Belarus murder convict executed

AFP MINSK

Belarus, the only country in Europe still to use capital punishment, has executed at least one man on death row, local rights group Viasna said yesterday, citing relatives.

Alexander Zhilnikov, 45, has been executed after being convicted over a contract killing of two people in 2015 and one other murder, the group said.

Another man, 23-year-old Vyacheslav Sukharko, was also sentenced to death for taking part in the killings but Viasna could not confirm whether he had also been exe-cuted. “Experience shows that death sentences in such cases are carried out simultane-ously,” it said in a statement.

Belarus reportedly exe-cutes prisoners using a shot to the back of the head but the practice is highly secret and there are no official statistics. It executed at least three people last year.

Neighbouring Russia still has the death penalty but has not used it since 1996.

In 2016, the European Union lifted most of the sanc-tions it had imposed in recent years against Lukashenko and other Belarusians, in a move to encourage progress on human rights.

Nearly three quarters of the countries in the world have abolished or ceased to use the death penalty, according to Amnesty International.

AFP TAIPEI

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen is set to seek a second term after she successfully saw off a primary challenge yesterday from within her own party to stand as their candidate.

The island goes to the polls in January to elect a new pres-ident, in a contest set to be dominated by relations with China.

The Democratic Pro-gressive Party (DPP) — which Beijing loathes — announced that Tsai had comfortably beaten former premier William Lai in a primary decided by opinion polls.

“My most important responsibility now is to unite all forces... to protect Taiwan’s democracy, to defend the fruits of reforms and to solidify our national sovereignty,” Tsai told reporters.

Tsai was elected in 2016 as the island’s first female leader, defeating the China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) party which oversaw an unprecedented thaw in cross-strait ties but began to unnerve many voters with its perceived cosiness to the mainland

Vietnam jails 4 former officials for $1m graftREUTERS HANOI

Vietnam has jailed four former heads of state-owned ship-builder Vinashin for terms of up to 17 years over abuse of power and embezzlement, state media said yesterday, as the Southeast Asian nation cracks down on graft.

Vinashin’s former chief accountant, Tran Duc Chinh, was handed a 17-year jail sen-tence by the Hanoi People’s Court on Wednesday, the official Vietnam News Agency (VNA) said.

Former chairman Nguyen Ngoc Su received a 13-year term and a former director and a former deputy director of the company received sentences of seven and six years each, it added. All four former execu-tives were penalised for “abusing their positions and power to appropriate assets” at the company, the agency said.

Several of Vietnam’s high-ranking ministers and politi-cians, including one Politburo member and a string of police officers, have all received prison sentences in the crackdown on charges ranging from embezzlement to eco-nomic mismanagement.

The government has indefinitely postponed a parliamentary debate on the bill which had been scheduled for Wednesday and was the trigger for Wednesday’s violence.

Taiwan’s Tsai set for second term after defeating rival

Homage paid to Lorient hit-and-run victimsPeople gather at the place where two children were hit by a car on June 11, in Lorient, western France, before taking part in a silent march. One of the children died and a second one is hospitalised and seriously injured. The driver of the car is still wanted by the police while the passenger was arrested yesterday.

11FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019 EUROPE

Johnson tops first-round of vote for British PMAFP LONDON

Brexit hardliner Boris Johnson topped the ballot by a landslide yesterday in a first-round vote for a leader to replace British Prime Minister Theresa May as the deadline for leaving the EU looms.

In the ballot of Conservative MPs, former London mayor Johnson secured more than twice the number of votes won by his nearest challengers as three of the 10 candidates were eliminated from the race.

The outcome of the leadership battle could determine under what conditions Britain leaves the European Union. It is currently scheduled to leave on October 31.

Johnson has said he is open to leaving the EU on October 31 without a formal deal between London and Brussels but would prefer to secure one by the deadline. Opponents of “no-deal” say it would cause economic chaos as Britain breaks up with its top trading partners. Yesterday’s vote was Conservative MPs’ first secret ballot in the governing party’s leadership contest. Johnson secured 114 votes, way ahead of

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on 43 and Environment Secretary Michael Gove with 37.

Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab (27), interior min-ister Sajid Javid (23), Health Sec-retary Matt Hancock (20) and International Development Sec-retary Rory Stewart (19) also sur-vived the cut.

Like Johnson, Raab and Javid have said they would not rule out a “no-deal” Brexit.

The seven candidates go through to Tuesday’s second round, when contenders will need the votes of 33 of the 313 Conserv-ative MPs to stay in the contest.

Former House of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom (11), ex-immigration minister Mark Harper (10) and former pensions secretary Esther McVey (nine) failed to reach

the 17 votes required to get through to round two.

May remains prime minister until a successor is chosen as head of the Conservatives. She stepped down as the centre-right party’s leader on Friday, having failed to deliver her plan for taking Britain out of the European Union after nearly three years in the post.

The list of candidates reflects the divergence of views within the ruling party on Brexit. Hunt and Gove are against leaving on no-deal terms in October.

Hancock and Stewart are against leaving on no-deal terms in any eventuality. May refused to say who she had backed in yes-terday’s vote, telling reporters: “That’s none of your business!” Finance minister Philip Hammond also kept mum on his vote.

The contest so far has been dominated by revelations of Gove’s past drug-taking and bick-ering over the best way to resolve the Brexit impasse. But yesterday’s voting revealed each candidate’s current level of support. The two candidates most keen on taking Britain out of the EU without a deal were eliminated.

McVey was pursuing a no-deal

Brexit, arguing that the agreement May struck with Brussels keeps Britain too closely tied to the EU.

Leadsom — runner-up to May in the 2016 leadership contest fol-lowing the Brexit referendum — wanted a managed no-deal departure. Harper had argued that an extension would be needed beyond the current October 31 deadline to secure a deal.

The battle will now be on between the remaining seven can-didates to scoop up the trio’s 20 votes. Conservative MPs will keep

whittling down the contenders until a final two remain. Grassroots party members then pick the winner, who will go on to become prime minister. Assuming Johnson does not lose support, his tally is above the 105 votes required to secure a place in the last two.

The candidates face their first live television debate on Sunday in a 90-minute programme on Channel 4. Conservative MPs will vote in a second ballot on Tuesday, when the contender with the fewest votes will drop out if they

all reach the 33-vote target.After further rounds of voting

next week, the party hopes to be down to the last two by the end of June 20. After weeks of hustings around the country, the 160,000 Conservative party members then choose their favourite, with the result announced in the week beginning July 22.

May will then step down as prime minister and the new leader of the largest party in parliament will be appointed as PM by Queen Elizabeth II.

Putin sacks two police officers over reporter’s drugs arrestAFP MOSCOW

President Vladimir Putin yesterday sacked two senior police officers over the arrest of investigative reporter Ivan Golunov on trumped up drugs charges.

The journalist’s arrest last week was widely seen as pun-ishment for his investigative work and sparked an unprece-dented campaign of solidarity in Russian society.

On Tuesday, Interior Min-ister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said he had requested Putin dismiss the officers after lifting the charges against Golunov on the basis of a lack of evidence.

Yesterday, Putin signed a decree to dismiss the police chief for western Moscow, Major General Andrei Puchkov, and the head of the Moscow police department for narcotics control, Major General Yury Devyatkin.

Golunov is a reporter for Meduza news site, which is based in EU member Latvia. He walked free from a Moscow police building on Tuesday evening after his house arrest was lifted.

Moscow police had charged him with attempted drug dealing, saying that officers found him in possession of drugs including cocaine.

But as the details of the case attracted public outrage, they later admitted that they had posted photographs of drugs paraphernalia that were not taken in his flat.

Golunov’s supporters, including many influential jour-nalists, mounted a public cam-paign in his defence, holding protests outside Moscow police headquarters.

The case has prompted wide-reaching questions about how Russian police operate, with Golunov’s supporters and lawyers saying that police planted drugs on him.

Kolokoltsev said the police who worked on the case have been suspended pending an investigation.

On Wednesday, a few thousand protesters took to the streets of Moscow for an unsanc-tioned march calling for broad reform of the law enforcement and justice systems.

Police violently broke up the march and arrested more than 500 people, according to OVD INFO, a monitor that tracks detentions.

Conservative MP’s Cheryl Gillan (centre), Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (left), Charles Walker (second left) and Bob Blackman (right) read out the results of the first ballot in the Tory leadership ballot at the Houses of Parliament in London yesterday.

Johnson has said he is open to leaving the EU on October 31 without a formal deal between London and Brussels but would prefer to secure one by the deadline.

UK minister signs US bid to extradite AssangeAFP LONDON

Britain’s interior minister said yesterday he had certified the US request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on espi-onage grounds in a procedural move that opens the way for a court battle.

The US Justice Department confirmed on Tuesday that it had submitted a formal extradition request. British Home Secretary Sajid Javid said he signed it on Wednesday.

The final decision on whether Assange can be extradited will rest with the courts. The next hearing in the Australian former computer hacker’s case is on Friday.

The 47-year-old had been sheltering in Ecuador’s embassy in London for seven years until his arrest on April 11 when Quito finally withdrew his asylum.

He is now serving a 50-week sentence in jail for skipping bail when he entered the embassy in 2012.

“I’m very pleased that the police were finally able to

apprehend him and now he’s rightly behind bars because he broke UK law,” Javid told BBC radio.

“There’s an extradition request from the US that is before the courts tomorrow but yesterday I... certified it.

“I want to see justice done at all times and we’ve got a legitimate extradition request, so I’ve signed it, but the... decision is now with the courts.” If basic criteria are met, the home secretary must certify a valid extradition request from the United States before the

courts make a decision on whether the person can be extradited.

The secretary then decides whether to order an extradition.

Assange, who is being held in the top-security Belmarsh prison in southeast London, is not expected to attend Friday’s hearing in person but could take part via video-link, although it will be largely procedural.

The “first real confrontation of arguments” in court will not be for several weeks or months, according to WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson.

Washington has accused Assange of violating the US Espi-onage Act by publishing military and diplomatic files in 2010.

The 18 charges reject his claim he was simply a publisher receiving leaked material — which would be protected under press freedom legislation.

The case has upset some US and other world media, which argue that Assange’s activities differ very little from their own. They fear his case could set a prec-edent for limiting free speech and media rights.

German court allows slaughter of male chicks to continueAFP BERLIN

Germany’s top administrative court ruled yesterday that the slaughtering of male chicks may continue in the poultry industry until a method is found to determine the sex of an embryo in the egg. According to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture around 45 million male chicks are slaughtered in Germany each year.

The killings are highly con-troversial and opposed by Agri-culture Minister Julia Kloeckner in Angela Merkel’s government. “Chick killing is ethically unac-ceptable and must be stopped as soon as possible,” Kloeckner told daily Rheinische Post, adding that eight million euros ($9 million) had been allocated to help find alternatives.

Several methods for the

testing of a chick embryo’s sex — which would allow the targeted destruction of eggs before hatching — are being tested, but not yet ready for use on an indus-trial scale. Yesterday, Leipzig’s Federal Administrative court decided the killing of male chicks is in accordance with the first article of the Animal Protection Act, which stipulates “no one is entitled to inflict pain, suffering or damage on animals without reasonable cause”.

Judge Renate Philipp said there were “reasonable grounds” for the current practice to con-tinue “until methods to determine sex in the egg” are ready.

Young male hatchlings are usually condemned to a violent end simply because of their sex, as roosters are deemed largely useless in the world of livestock farming. In many cases, they are mechanically shredded, gassed

or crushed to death and used as animal feed. Just as in the two previous cases, the court in Leipzig ruled that the economic interests of the egg industry took precedent in the immediate future.

The dispute dates back to 2013 when the state of North Rhine-Westphalia outlawed the killing of male chicks under the Animal Protection Act. However, two hatcheries challenged the decision at district level, which took the matter up to federal

court.The German Animal Welfare

Association reacted with disap-pointment to yesterday’s decision.

“We would have wished for an immediate ban,” said pres-ident Thomas Schroeder, who criticised the court for not setting a deadline for when the killing should be banned. Consumer organisation Foodwatch said the basic problem remains “that the chickens are either bred for egg producing or fattening up on a massive scale”.

Activists of the animal protection organisation Peta throw toy chicks into a fake shredding machine in a symbolic action to protest in front of the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, yesterday.

Belgium to bring home six orphans of militants slain in SyriaREUTERS BRUSSELS

Belgium will bring six orphans home from Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria after the deaths of their militant parents, Finance Minister Alexander De Croo said yesterday. “These are children who were born in our country and who today no longer have parents,” the minister told VRT public radio after a cabinet decision.

Belgium is one of several European countries wres-tling with the dilemma of what to do about citizens trapped in Syria following the defeat of the Islamic State group.

Some are reticent to accept captured extremist fighters, but the cases of children and non-combatant wives have proved more complicated for Western authorities.

AFP /BRUSSELS

French President Emmanuel Macron’s champion in last month’s European elections yesterday abandoned her bid to seize the leadership of parlia-ment’s liberal group.

Nathalie Loiseau, France’s former minister for Europe, was chosen by Macron to lead his new centrist party in the European parliament and push his reform agenda.

But her performance in the campaign was judged lacklustre — Macron himself stepped in as figurehead — and her arrival in

Brussels was seen as a disaster. An off the record briefing with French reporters was leaked and widely reported, revealing Loiseau making indiscreet per-sonal attacks on rival centrists.

The French still make up the largest national contingent in the liberal caucus, formerly known as ALDE but now renamed “Renew Europe” for the new parliament.

But Loiseau’s office told that rather than pushing to head the group — the parliament’s third largest — she would seek to secure influential posts for her group.

Macron ally drops bid to lead EU liberal group

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Trump slammed for welcoming foreign help in US elections REUTERS WASHINGTON

Democratic lawmakers and a senior Republican yesterday condemned Donald Trump for saying he would accept a foreign government’s help in the 2020 US presidential race as the president dug in and said it would be “ridic-ulous” to report his foreign contacts to the FBI.

In a ABC television interview aired on Wednesday, Trump said he would listen if a foreign gov-ernment or person offered dam-aging information about political opponents as he seeks re-election.

“I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump said. “It’s not an interference. They have information, I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI - if I thought there was something wrong.” Trump’s comments came less than three months after Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted a report that found Russia waged a hacking and influence campaign to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s remarks to ABC drew outrage from Democratic law-makers and presidential candi-dates seeking to challenge Trump in 2020, as well as one of Trump’s leading Republican allies.

“What the president said last night shows clearly, once again, over and over again, that he does not know the difference between right and wrong,” said US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress. “There is no sense... any ethical sense that informs his comments and his thinking.” The remarks prompted some Democratic presidential candidates to renew their call to impeach the president. However, Pelosi said Trump’s comments did not change Democratic leaders’ plan to move forward with inves-tigating Trump and his

administration before any formal impeachment proceedings.

One of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, joined Demo-crats in criticizing the president’s remarks. “I think it’s a mistake,” said, Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

He also accused Democrats of having accepted damaging infor-mation from foreign nationals on political opponents and said any public official contacted by a foreign government with an offer of help to their campaign should reject the offer and inform the FBI.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told Fox News that media reports were not accurately reflecting the president’s remarks. He said Trump said he would “of course” go to the FBI if there was wrongdoing, although Trump said he would “maybe” go to the FBI.

Any foreign contribution of “money or other thing of value” violates US campaign finance law. Legal experts say knowingly solic-iting information from a foreign entity would also be illegal.

A FBI counterintelligence investigation of Russian election activities in the 2016 presidential

election sparked Mueller’s probe, which confirmed US intelligence agencies findings that Moscow waged an extensive hacking and propaganda campaign to help Trump win. Mueller, whose inves-tigation examined a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that Trump’s campaign had with Russians promising dirt on Clinton, did not charge Trump’s associates who attended the meeting. Trump defended his remarks in a flurry of tweets yesterday morning, saying he talks with foreign gov-ernments daily, not addressing the issue of accepting political dirt on his opponents. “Should I

immediately call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous!” Top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committee expressed alarm at Trump’s comments.

“The president has either learned nothing in the last two years or picked up exactly the wrong lesson - that he can accept gleefully foreign assistance again and escape the punishment of the law,” US Representative Adam Schiff said. “The President has given Russia the green light to interfere in the 2020 election,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner tweeted. Former Vice President

Joe Biden, who leads the Demo-cratic 2020 race so far, said on Twitter: “This isn’t about politics. It is a threat to our national security.” Democratic presidential candidates who renewed calls for Trump’s impeachment included US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand and US Repre-sentative Eric Swalwell.

“A foreign government attacked our 2016 elections to support Trump, Trump welcomed that help, and Trump obstructed the investigation. Now, he said he’d do it all over again. It’s time to impeach Donald Trump,” Warren wrote in a Twitter post.

Trump’s remarks to ABC drew outrage from Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates seeking to challenge Trump in 2020, as well as one of Trump’s leading Republican allies.

Mexico frees migrant-rights activists jailed amid Trump rowAFP MEXICO CITY

A Mexican court has freed two migrant-rights activists who were arrested on human-trafficking charges last week amid Mexico’s negotiations to try to avoid US President Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs over migration.

A judge in the southern state of Chiapas dismissed all charges against Irineo Mujica and Cristobal Sanchez, activists with the group People Without Borders (Pueblo Sin Fronteras), which has helped organize caravans of Central American migrants trekking toward the United States. “We remain very worried by the cam-paign to criminalise migrants and human-rights activists under political pressure from the United States government,” the group said in a statement.

After being freed, Sanchez said at a press conference that he and Mujica are “the first political prisoners of the ‘Fourth Transfor-mation,’” a phrase coined by leftist Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to refer to his plan to radically transform the government.

“The sector that has been hit the hardest by this transformation has been the migrants,” said the activist.

“Anyone who assumes a

leadership role within a migrant caravan passing through Mexico is singled out, persecuted, imprisoned and subsequently deported,” Sanchez added.

Mujica added: “If they con-tinue to invent crimes, if they con-tinue with this corruption, then we don’t really have a Fourth Transformation.” Mujica and Sanchez were arrested last Wednesday, just as a high-level Mexican government delegation was in Washington trying to con-vince the Trump administration that Mexico is in fact taking strong action to curb the surge of Central Americans crossing its territory to the US.

The neighbors reached a deal Friday in which Trump lifted his tariff threat in return for stronger Mexican measures to reduce the flow of migrants. Under the deal,

Mexico agreed to send 6,000 National Guardsmen to reinforce its southern border and expand its policy of taking back asylum-seekers as the United States proc-esses their claims.

Trump has warned tariffs will still be on the table if the United States deems Mexico’s progress insufficient after 45 days.

He is pushing Mexico to accept a so-called “safe third country” agreement, in which migrants entering Mexican territory must apply for asylum there rather than in the United States.

Lopez Obrador’s government faces huge pressure to help curb the exodus of migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America’s “Northern Triangle” — El Salvador, Guatemala and Hon-duras — and seeking asylum in the United States.

Court enlarges Canada’s biggest indigenous reserveAFP/OTTAWA

Canada’s largest indigenous reserve just got bigger, after a federal court ruled Wednesday that an 1877 treaty with the government had shortchanged the tribe.The Blood Tribe’s prairie lands in southern Alberta province are currently 547.5 square miles (1,418 square kilometers).

Justice Russel Zinn examined century-old government docu-ments and maps, as well as hand-written letters and indigenous elders’ oral history, before

deciding the land should have been 710 square miles (1,839 square kilometers). The judge, however, dismissed claims for an even bigger parcel that included the town of Cardston and part of Waterton Lakes National Park.

A summary of the ruling, which was translated into the indigenous Blackfoot language, describes how the original size of the settlement was calculated based on its population at the time — one square mile of land for every family of five.

But the population figure, the judge ruled, had been

underestimated at the time Treaty 7 was signed. “Absent evidence as to how Canada arrived at the pop-ulation figure it appears to have used, and given my finding that the actual population was 3,550, I conclude that Canada failed to fulfill its treaty obligation to provide a reserve equal to the TLE (Treaty Land Entitlement),” he said in the decision.

The Blood Tribe fought the court battle for 40 years.

The federal government has 30 days to appeal the decision, otherwise a separate hearing will be held to decide on a remedy.

Mexican army members patrol in Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico, yesterday.

Street clashes erupt in Memphis after marshals kill black manREUTERS NEW YORK

A crowd of protesters, some of them throwing rocks, squared off against police in riot gear in Memphis, Tennessee, overnight after officers from the US Marshals Service fatally shot a black man during an attempted arrest, offi-

cials said yesterday.At least two dozen police

officers and two journalists were injured during the confrontation, Mayor Jim Strickland said in a statement, adding that six officers were taken to the hospital. The injuries were mostly minor, the police department said, and the crowd eventually dispersed. It was

not clear how many civilians were hurt or whether anyone was arrested.

The tense scene raised the possibility of more disturbances in the predominantly black city, evoking memories of a string of sometimes violent protests against police brutality that broke out in other cities in recent years. Those

clashes, notably many days of pro-tests after an unarmed black man was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

In Memphis, agents with the US Marshals Service shot a man identified as Brandon Webber as they were trying to arrest him on multiple warrants at about 7pm

on Wednesday in the working-class neighborhood of Frayser, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which is probing the shooting.

Webber rammed his vehicle into vehicles driven by the mar-shals before getting out with an unspecified weapon, the bureau said in a statement. The Marshals

Service, an arm of the US Department of Justice, arrests fugi-tives, among other roles.

The state investigations bureau did not state the reason marshals wanted to arrest Webber. Webber was a 20-year-old father, and his Facebook page quickly filled with tributes from friends mourning his death.

US President Donald Trump hosts a working lunch with governors on workforce freedom and mobility in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, yesterday.

Overall, the City will offer homes to more than 200,000 residents and workspace to over 170,000 employees. It will also welcome 80,000 visitors, and expects its total estimated capacity to reach up to 450,000 people.

Trading volume increased by 434.12 percent to reach 118.35 million shares, as against 22.15 million shares, while the number of transactions rose by 174.76 percent, to reach 41,041 transactions as compared to 14,937 transactions.

BUSINESSPAGE | 14 PAGE | 15

Euro gains in global use, but dollar

still dominates

Broadcom results to provide clear insight into trade tension impact

13FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019

Lusail City stands as Qatar’s No 1 future market: ExpertLANI ROSE R DIZON THE PENINSULA DOHA

On the podium of businesses and property investors, Lusail city, which is currently one of the largest master developments in the GCC, stands as Qatar’s number one future market, Coreo Real Estate’s Senior Property Consultant Alexander Hartmann (pictured) has said.

In the Property Finder’s Qatar Real Estate Market Report, Hartmann said due to its well thought through master plan, Lusail will become a vibrant and bustling hot spot that again will result in increased capital growth. He added: “The suc-cessful delivery of Lusail city is an important milestone for the country to achieve its ambitious plans for the Qatar National Vision 2030. Lusail will enhance and support the local economy as well as celebrate the region’s

unique cultural and geographical heritage”.

Spread across an area of 38sq km and includes four exclusive islands and 19 multi-purpose residential, mixed use, entertainment and commercial

districts, Lusail is one of Qatar’s major green and sustainable city projects, with the other being Msheireb’s Downtown devel-opment in Doha.

Overall, the City will offer homes to more than 200,000 residents and workspace to over 170,000 employees. It will also welcome 80,000 visitors, and expects its total estimated capacity to reach up to 450,000 people.

Hartmann also said the 200,000 future residents of Lusail will live in approximately 40,000 apartments, 90 town-houses and about 3,000 villas spread over 15 districts. He added: “Many of the residential developments have already been completed, and more are set to come available within the next four years creating great investment opportunities for local and international investors. The quality in terms of design

and materials used of those new homes is generally higher than in the main areas of Doha. Due to the incomplete status of Lusail, rentals currently range below Doha’s average rates, and are forecasted to increase in the medium term”.

According to Hartmann, the second largest real estate stock will become available in Lusail’s office market. This segment is divided into business parks,

corporate offices, and standard offices, with total office space supply reaching approximately 2 million sqm available in the Lusail Marina district, which is now referred to as the number one office location for New Doha.

According to available market data, occupancy levels range between 30 and 40 percent while rents are in the range of QR80 to QR130 per sqm per month excluding the service charge. After Lusail Marina, Energy City will also play an important role in the Lusail office market, added Hartmann.

He also said retail is another key component in the new city, with master developer Qatari Diar, having dedicated 40 plots spread over 12 districts to retail developments offering great investment opportunities to local companies.

He added: “Not forgetting the prestigious Place Vendome

development, which after com-pletion will serve as an enter-tainment hub and shopping des-tination. With a massive built up area of approximately 1,000,000 sqm, this devel-opment will be home to two five-star luxury hotels, serviced apartments, a mall with up to 400 retail outlets, and an exclusive luxury wing dedicated to top designer labels. Place Vendome is scheduled to open in 2020”.

Further, the addition of Lusail Stadium, which will host the opening and final matches for the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar, is an integral part of the master plan for ‘New Doha’. Once the tournament is over, Lusail Stadium will be trans-formed into a community space consisting of schools, shops, cafes, sporting facilities, and health clinics making it a hub in the district, Hartmann also said.

Oil prices surge after suspected tanker attack in the Gulf of OmanREUTERS LONDON

Oil prices jumped more than 4 percent yesterday after a sus-pected attack on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman near Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil con-sumption passes.

The Marshall Islands-flagged Front Altair carrying naphtha and the Panama-flagged Kokuka Courageous carrying methanol have been evacuated and the crews are safe.

The charterer of the former said the vessel was “suspected of being hit by a torpedo”. Its owner said it was on fire. The manager of the latter said it had been damaged as a result of a “suspected attack” but that its cargo was intact.

The incident followed last month’s sabotage attacks on vessels off the Fujairah emirate, one of the world’s largest bun-kering hubs.

Brent crude futures were up $2.19, or 3.65 percent, at $62.16 a barrel by 1341 GMT, having risen as much as 4.45 percent to $62.64. US West Texas Intermediate crude

futures were up $1.79, or 3.5 percent, at $52.93 a barrel. WTI earlier rose as much as 4.5 percent to $53.45.

“This is a fairly small increase given the uncertainty and the potential knock-on effects of attacks such as these. This partially reflects the fact that the oil market has already priced in the supply and geo-political risks emanating from Iran,” said Cailin Birch, econ-omist at The Economist Intel-ligence Unit.

“However, it also reflects market concerns that the con-tinued US-China trade war will weigh on economic activity, and therefore oil demand growth, in the world’s two largest economies.”

Both crude benchmarks are set for their biggest daily rises since early January, but they are nevertheless headed for a weekly loss.

Oil prices had slumped in the previous session on an unexpected rise in US crude stockpiles and a dimming outlook for global oil demand.

The Bahrain-based US Navy Fifth Fleet said it was assisting the tankers after receiving distress calls

following “reported attacks”. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, part of the Royal Navy, said it was investigating.

Iranian search and rescue teams have picked up 44 sailors from two damaged tankers in the Gulf of Oman, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton said on May 29 that naval mines “almost certainly from Iran” were used to attack the tankers off the United Arab Emirates last month, and warned Tehran against conducting new operations.

Tensions in the Middle East have escalated since US Pres-ident Donald Trump withdrew from a 2015 multinational nuclear pact with Iran and reimposed sanctions, notably targeting Tehran’s oil exports.

Iran, which has distanced itself from the previous attacks, has said it would not be cowed by what it called psychological warfare.

Also supporting oil bulls were signs that Opec members were close to agreeing on con-tinued production cuts.

QSE gained 196.55 points last weekTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar Stock Exchange’s (QSE) benchmark index gained 196.55 points, or 1.90 percent, last week when the bourse closed yes-terday at 10,515.88 points.

Trading value during last week increased by 165.95 percent to reach QR1.69bn com-pared to QR637m at the end of the previous week’s closing.

Trading volume increased by 434.12 percent to reach 118.35 million shares, as against 22.15 million shares, while the number of transactions rose by 174.76 percent, to reach 41,041 trans-actions as compared to 14,937 transactions.

Market cap rose by 1.79 percent to reach QR577.82bn as compared to QR567.68bn at the end of previous week, reports QNA.

Banking and Financial Services sector led traded value last week with 45.12 percent of the total traded value. Industries sector accounted for 21.25 percent.

Consumer Goods and Services sector accounted for 15.28 percent and Real Estate sector accounted 10.97 percent.

Banking and Financial Services sector led traded volume last week with 63.55

percent of the total traded volume. Real Estate sector accounted for 16.31 percent. Industries sector accounted for 11.27 percent and Consumer Goods and Services sector accounted 4.42 percent.

Real Estate sector led traded number of transactions last week with 31.01 percent of the total number of transactions. Banking and Financial Services sector accounted for 25.97 percent.

Industries sector accounted 23.82 percent and Consumer Goods and Services sector accounted for 8.92 percent.

From the 46 listed companies 22 ended last week higher, while 21 fell and three remained unchanged.

QNB led trading value during last week accounted for 18.76 percent of the total traded value. Qatar Fuel accounted for 11.19 percent and Industries Qatar accounted for 8.22 percent.

When compared on daily basis the QSE index dropped 105.88 points, or 1.00 percent yesterday compared to Wednes-day’s closing.

The volume of shares traded decreased to 19.97 22.15 million from 26.08 22.15 million on Wednesday and the value of shares decreased to QR328.60m from QR335.16m on Wednesday.

From the 47 companies listed on QSE, shares of 47 saw trading yesterday.

From these, 18 companies gained, 26 closed lower, while three remaining company unchanged.

Indices of six sectors ended in red zone and one sector ended green zone today. QSE Total Return Index lost 1 percent to 19,350.11 points and QSE Al Rayan Islamic Index also decreased 0.78 percent to 4,088.19 points. QSE All Share Index dropped 1.44 percent to 3,098.67 points.

Uber tests food delivery by drone in San DiegoAP WASHINGTON

Uber is testing restaurant food deliveries by drone.

The company’s Uber Eats unit began the tests in San Diego with McDonald’s and plans to expand to other restaurants later this year.

Uber says the service should decrease food delivery times.

It works this way: Workers at a restaurant load the meal into a drone and it takes off, tracked and guided by a new aerospace man-agement system.

The drone then meets an Uber Eats driver at a drop-off location, and the driver will hand-deliver the meal to the customer.

In the future, the company wants to land drones atop parked

vehicles near delivery locations and secure them to the vehicle for the final mile of the delivery.

Last year Uber and the city of San Diego won a bid from the US Federal Aviation Administration to test food delivery by air.

“We’ve been working closely with the FAA to ensure that we’re meeting requirements and priori-tizing safety,” Luke Fischer, head of flight operations at Uber Elevate, said in a statement Wednesday.

The company said the knowledge it gains from the tests will help with Uber’s planned aerial ride-sharing network.

Also Wednesday, Uber announced that it would work with Volvo Cars to build a vehicle that comes off the assembly line capable of driving autonomously.

The ride-hailing company’s self-driving system will be installed in production versions of the Volvo XC90 SUV. The vehicle’s steering and braking systems are designed for computer rather than human control, including several backup systems for both steering and braking functions and battery backup power. If the primary systems fail, the backup system will immediately act to bring the car to a stop.

Various sensors will allow Uber’s self-driving system to safely operate and maneuver in urban areas, the company said.

Uber and Volvo Cars partnered in September 2016. This is the third car they’ve developed together.

Volvo says it plans to use a similar vehicle to introduce its own

self-driving cars in the early 2020s. Uber made the announcement at its third-annual Uber Elevate Summit.

The announcements came on a day with a flurry of activity in autonomous vehicle technology. Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle company partly owned by Ford, announced Wednesday that it would expand testing to Detroit. The company already is testing vehicles in Pittsburgh, Miami, Washington, DC, Dearborn, Michigan, and Palo Alto, California.

Argo also said it has deployed third-generation test vehicles based on the Ford Fusion gas-electric hybrid in all of the cities. They have better sensors and software including higher-resolution radar and cameras.

Uber Eats drone unit that began the tests in San Diego with McDonald’s food parcel.

THE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar Chamber’s Second Dep-uty-Chairman Rashid bin Hamad Al Athba held a meeting with the members of a trade delegation from Peru and discussed opportunities to boost cooperation in trade between the two countries. The delegation led by Victor Zavalos, represents sectors from agriculture, metals, tex-tiles, real estate and other eco-nomic sectors in Peru.

The aim of the visit was to explore Qatari market and investment opportunities, as well as to explore cooperation with their Qatari counterparts

in the various sectors repre-sented by the delegates.

The meeting also discussed the possibility of organizing a visit to a delegation of busi-nessmen from Peru, which includes more economic sectors to the State of Qatar during the current year, to meet with Qatari businessmen and explore the opportunities

available on both sides.The Chamber welcomed

the cooperation between Qatari companies and their counterparts from Peru and is ready to participate in an exchange of views between businessmen from the two countries in order to increase mutual cooperation from both sides.

14 FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019BUSINESS

The aim of the visit was to explore Qatari market and investment opportunities, as well as to explore cooperation with their Qatari counterparts in the various sectors represented by the delegates.

Blackwater founder Prince expands operations in CongoREUTERS DAKAR

A company run by private security firm Blackwater’s founder Erik Prince (pictured) has registered a subsidiary in Democratic Republic of Congo with a mandate to extract min-erals and timber and conduct financial operations, corporate filings show.

Prince, who renamed Black-water and sold it in 2010 after several of its employees were indicted on unlawful killing charges in connection with their work as US government con-tractors during the Iraq War, has run Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group (FSG) since 2014.

FSG has close ties to the s t a t e - o w n e d C h i n e s e investment company CITIC and provides security, aviation and logistics services to Chinese firms operating in Africa.

FSG has owned a small Con-golese trucking company called Cheetah Logistics in Congo since 2015, but the new subsidiary, Frontier Services Group Congo, has a more expansive mandate, according to a filing with Congo’s business registry.

Among its aims are “the exploration, exploitation and commercialisation of minerals”, forest logging, security, transport, construction and “all financial, investment and project financing operations, both public and private”.

The filing, shows Frontier Services Group Congo was reg-istered on August 20, 2018, and formally established on November 13, 2018.

FSG did not respond to a request for comment.

In its 2018 annual report, released in April, it listed Congo, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia as countries it had identified for investment, in connection with China’s Belt and Road global development strategy.

Besides his work for FSG, Prince has been pushing a plan to deploy a private army to help topple Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, sources with knowledge of the effort told Reuters in April.

He has also tried unsuccess-fully to convince the Trump administration to replace US. soldiers in Afghanistan with security contractors.

FSG owns aviation com-panies based in Kenya and Malta and provides security training to companies in China. It says it is also active in more than a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.

Prince told the Financial Times earlier this year he was aiming to raise up to half a billion dollars through a new fund to invest in mining metals like cobalt, copper and lithium that are needed for electric car batteries.

Congo accounts for roughly 60 percent of the world’s cobalt output and is Africa’s largest producer of copper.

Chinese companies have snapped up valuable conces-sions in recent years as Western firms reduce their footprint in Congo, which is mired by armed conflict and polit ical instability.

Blackwater, which Prince founded in 1997, was contracted by the US State Department to provide security during the Iraq War.

Shanghai launches Nasdaq-style STAR MarketFROM LEFT: Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) Yi Huiman, Chinese Vice- Premier Liu He, secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Li Qiang and Shanghai’s Mayor Ying Yong attend the launch ceremony of Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style tech board, STAR Market, in Shanghai, China, yesterday.

Telcos howl, markets hail German 5G spectrum auctionREUTERS FRANKFURT

Germany’s pricey 5G spectrum auction drew protests from existing mobile operators but cheered investors betting the entry of a new player will revive com-petition and help close a connec-tivity gap with the US and Japan.

For market leader Deutsche Telekom the auction, which ran for a record 12 weeks and raised $7.4bn, left a “bitter aftertaste”, while rival Vodafone called the result “catastrophic”.

Markus Haas, CEO of Tele-fonica Deutschland, said on Thursday he would press ahead with litigation already filed in protest at auction terms he called unfair.

“We must learn from our mis-takes, and from other top 5G nations that are a good nose-length ahead of us,” he told reporters. “We have blown this chance - the money is going to the finance ministry and not into building networks.”

Markets took a different view after 1&1 Drillisch, the mobile upstart run by billionaire Ralph Dommermuth, bagged the spectrum he needs to realise his dream of becoming Germany’s fourth network operator.

Shares in 1&1 Drillisch, hitherto a ‘virtual’ player that rented network access from others, rallied by up to 7 percent. They had lost half their value over the past year on concerns that

heavy network outlays would wreck its profitable asset-light model.

United Internet, which con-trols Drillisch and is also run by Dommermuth, gained 5 percent.

“We’re happy with the spectrum we got - and the price we paid for it,” Dommermuth’s spokesman said after Drillisch paid €1.07bn for 70 Megaherz of the 420 MHz allocated by the Federal Network Regulator (BNetzA). Drillisch eventually stepped back from contesting the last of the 41 spectrum blocks, bringing the auction to a close after a record 497th round.

One opponent, speaking on condition of anonymity, com-plained that Drillisch could have

achieved the same result as early as round 111. “Its continued bidding inflicted damage of €4bn on the entire industry,” the person said.

“Its continued bidding inflicted damage of 4 billion euros on the entire industry,” the person said.

A source close to Drillisch rejected that suggestion, saying there was still everything to play for at that stage.

Analysts say Dommermuth played a shrewd poker hand because, even after buying spectrum, he is not pre-committed to building his own network and can bargain from a position of greater strength on network access with the existing operators.

Drillisch had a strong man-agement team that was exploring options “to improve an existing, sustainable business”, said Jef-feries analyst Ulrich Rathe.

Europe’s largest economy scores poorly on measures of connectivity - in part the result of high spectrum costs that have over the years driven mobile industry consolidation, leaving just three networks operators standing.

That structure has encouraged complacency, leaving politicians fuming as voters complain about ‘Funkl-oecher’ - network holes - and leading the regulator to set tough coverage requirements in this auction round.

Euro gains in global use, but dollar still dominatesAP FRANKFURT

The euro has gained ground as a global currency used for gov-ernment reserves as US economic sanctions deter some countries’ use of the dollar, the European Central Bank said in a report yesterday.

The euro’s share of meas-urable foreign reserves held by central banks and governments around the world rose 1.2 per-centage points during 2018 to 20.7 percent, reversing a declining trend.

The dollar’s share dropped slightly to 61.7 percent. That is down more than 7 percentage points from its peak level before the global financial crisis of 2007-2009.

“It’s primarily diversification away from the dollar, which ben-efits the euro,” ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure (pictured) said.

The dollar, however, is still very much the dominant currency for international trade, borrowing and reserves, despite a slow diversification toward other cur-rencies over recent years, most recently toward the Chinese yuan.

Factors affecting the dollar’s use include countries selling dollars to support their own cur-rency, and US financial sanctions such as those against Russia, which has moved some holdings to other currencies to avoid US restrictions. Russia sold about $100bn worth of US dollar-denominated assets in the wake of new rounds of US sanctions, making the euro Moscow’s main currency holding with 39 percent of reserves. The US has imposed sanctions over a raft of issues, including the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, human rights abuses, support for the Syrian government, illicit trade with North Korea, election interference and cyberattacks.

China also slightly reduced its dollar holdings in the form of US Treasurys, by about $60bn, during a period of trade tension with the US, leaving its holdings at a still massive $1.1 trillion.

The Chinese currency, a new-comer in terms of being a global reserve currency, doubled its share to just under 2 percent. Other currencies used as reserves are the Japanese yen and the British pound, and to a lesser extent the Canadian dollar and the Australian dollar.

Airbus may make the next version of its top-selling jet a hybridBLOOMBERG LONDON

Airbus SE is considering bringing the world’s first hybrid-electric airliner to market as it weighs its strategy for replacing the bread-and-butter A320neo nar-rowbody in the next 15 years, a move that would mark a tech-nological leap for the aerospace industry.

The European planemaker has grown confident that the revolutionary propulsion system will be ready for roll-out on an all-new single-aisle jet around 2035, according to people with knowledge of its planning. While the company has been public about its interest in hybrid engines, Airbus is now willing to consider powering its most important aircraft with the tech-nology, said the people, who asked not to be named dis-cussing internal deliberations.

Timelines aren’t certain and will shift as different capabilities evolve, the people said, adding that Airbus would start with a smaller single-aisle and work its way up to a size comparable to the A321neo, which seats as many 240 people. Any decision to move forward would also take into account market dynamics and competition with global rival Boeing Co, they said.

Airbus is still pursuing a conventional replacement for its A320 family, which started service in the late 1980s to compete against Boeing’s then-market leading 737.

It is studying using rede-signed wings, more composite materials, and tweaks to current engine architectures with higher bypass ratios to get to the 20 percent boost to fuel efficiency needed to justify an all-new air-craft. It has been earmarked as viable for production from

2030. Though hybrid tech-nology probably won’t be available until a few years later, Airbus is confident that airlines would be prepared to wait for the step-change in efficiency that a hybrid would provide, according to the people. (Airbus has targeted reducing CO2 emissions by 75 percent by 2050.) The decision will in part come down to whether Boeing decides to accelerate its own clean-sheet narrowbody design in the wake of the 737 Max crisis that has seen that aircraft grounded since March, they said.

A spokesman for Airbus said its current narrow-body offering still has scope for further developments, while adding that Chief Executive Officer Guillaume Faury indi-cated last month that the plane-maker is exploring hybrid options for future aircraft.

QC & Peruvian delegation discuss ways to boost trade

Qatar Chamber’s Second Deputy-Chairman Rashid bin Hamad Al Athba (second right) met yesterday the members of a trade delegation from Peru, at the Chamber’s headquarters in Doha, yesterday. Both sides discussed and explored trade and investment opportunities between the two countries. And the Peruvian side also invited the Qatari business community to visit their country to further review the promising sectors of the South American economy.

Foreign direct investments into its manufacturing sector surged 1,360 percent to 8.47 billion ringgit ($2bn) in the first quarter from a year ago.

15FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019 BUSINESS

Trade war spurs 1,360% investment jump in Malaysian State: OfficialBLOOMBERG KUALA LUMPUR

The Malaysian state of Penang is winning from global investors’ search for safe havens amid the US-China trade tensions.

Foreign direct investments into its manufacturing sector surged 1,360 percent to 8.47 billion ringgit ($2bn) in the first quarter from a year ago, more than for the entire 2018. The state stands to gain from changes in the global supply chain as it’s well-connected with a strong talent pool and supportive public pol-icies, Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow said in a statement.

The state, already home to companies from Intel Corp to Dell Technologies Inc, makes up 42

percent of Malaysia’s manufac-turing FDI. Recent investments in Penang include US semiconductor company Micron Technology Inc.‘s new solid-state drive assembly and testing center, and Florida-based Jabil Circuit Inc‘s

purchase of 20 acres of land to expand its facility.

“Malaysia is reaping benefits from business relocation as well as trade and investment diver-sions caused by the trade war,’’ Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng (pictured) said in a statement yes-terday, adding that the rise in investments as well as industrial production signal ``healthy’’ eco-nomic growth in the second quarter.

Chow is wary of the near-term outlook and cautions that the investment surge may not be repeated in the second or third quarters.

While some companies benefit from the trade war, others are negatively affected as their cus-tomers take a wait-and-see

approach, he said. Penang’s investment outlook remains “on the right track” over the medium to long term, Chow said.

The state had moved quickly to court investors amid the trade war, signing a cooperation deal with China Chamber of Interna-tional Commerce, giving subsi-dized rental rates for small busi-nesses and setting up a seed fund for technology start ups.

Broadcom results to provide clear insight into trade tension impactBLOOMBERG SAN FRANCISCO

Wall Street was feeling pretty good about Broadcom Inc. in mid-March as its semiconductor business appeared to be turning the corner and Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan saw “meaningful growth” in the second half of the year.

A lot has changed since then.Trade relations between the US

and China have soured. One of Broadcom’s biggest customers was banned from buying American components. Spending on data centers has remained sluggish. So the big question on analysts’ minds heading into Thursday’s post-market earnings report is whether Tan’s prediction for the latter part of 2019 remains intact.

In the past four weeks, the average analyst estimate for third-quarter revenue fell by about $50 million to $6.1bn, while expecta-tions for adjusted profit fell by 5 cents to $5.71 a share, according to

data compiled by Bloomberg. With the stock down 13 percent from an April 17 record, some on Wall Street see potential for the stock to rally as expectations have fallen.

“We view AVGO shares as attractive ahead of earnings given what appears to be lower expec-tations and our belief that the com-pany’s longer-term growth and profitability prospects remain solid,” MKM Partners analyst Ruben Roy (pictured) wrote in a research note on Monday, referring to Broadcom by its ticker symbol.

The San Jose, California-based company’s products and global

customer base make its results a key indicator for how trade ten-sions are affecting the semicon-ductor industry. Almost half of Broadcom’s revenue last year was linked to China. Huawei Technol-ogies Co, which the US government is blacklisting, purchases Broadcom switch chips that are a key component of the Chinese company’s networking gear.

Broadcom is also a major sup-plier of chips to Apple Inc. and recently signed an agreement with the iPhone maker to extend that relationship. Analysts and investors use the chipmaker’s commentary on the wireless market to get a window into demand in the smart-phone market.

Bank of America analysts led by Vivek Arya reiterated their buy rating on Broadcom on Monday, saying the effects of the Huawei ban and macroeconomic risks are “well expected.”

“Key focus will be commentary on second half recovery, cloud

capex spending and smartphone unit trends,” they wrote in a research note.

The earnings release is due after the close of trading Thursday. Broadcom options prices imply a 7 percent move in the shares, com-pared with an average 4.5 percent over the past eight reports, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

2Q adjusted EPS from con-tinuing operations estimate $5.15 (range $4.73 to $5.46)2Q adjusted net revenue estimate $5.67bn (range $5.45bn to $5.91bn) 2Q adjusted gross margin estimate 70.6 percent 2Q semiconductor solutions revenue estimate $4.28 billion 2Q infrastructure software revenue estimate $1.36bn 3Q adjusted net revenue estimate $6.11bn (range $5.80bn to $6.30bn) 3Q adjusted gross margin estimate 69.6 percent FY adjusted net revenue estimate $24.31bn (range $23.68bn to $24.70bn); forecast $24.5bn.

Note: Programme is subject to change without prior notice.

CROSSWORD

At the cusp of India’s birth as an Independent nation, a family makes an arduous journey to freedom at a cost. A young boy Bharat, makes a promise to his Father that he will keep his family together no matter what.

BHARAT

Norm Of The North: Keys To The Kingdom (2D/Comedy) 2:00pm; My Great Grandfather (2D/Malayalam) 2:15pm; Pokemon Detective Pikachu (2D/Action) 2:30, 4:30 & 7:30pm; Aladdin (2D/Comedy) 5:00pm; Sab’e Al Boromba (2D/Arabic) 7:30pm; John Wick 3: Parabellum (2D/Action) 9:15pm; Game Over (2D/Tamil) 2:00, 6:30 & 11:30pm; Casablanca (2D/Arabic) 9:30pm; Bharat (2D/Hindi) 8:30 & 11:30pm; Brightburn: Evil Is Born (2D/Horror) 11:30pm; Chhota Bheem: Kung Fu Dhamaka – English Version (2D/Animation) 5:45pm.

Bharat (2D/Hindi) 2:15 & 11:15pm; Game Over (2D/Tamil) 2:00 & 9:45pm; Norm Of The North: Keys To The Kingdom (2D/Comedy) 2:15pm; Pokemon Detective Pikachu (2D/Action) 5:15, 7:15 & 9:15pm; Old Is Gold (2D/Mal) 2:15pm; The Secret Life of Pets (2D/Action) 4:00pm; Aladdin (2D/Comedy) 4:45 & 7:00pm; Godzilla II: King Of The Monsters (2D/Action) 9:15pm; Sab’e Al Boromba (2D/Arabic) 7:45pm; My Great Grandfather (2D/Malayalam) 11:30pm; Nenjamundu Nermaiyundu Odu Raja (2D/Tamil) 11:30pm

Aladdin (2D/Comedy) 10:10, 11:35, 12:45, 2:05, 3:20, 4:35, 5:55, 7:00, 8:30, 9:15 & 11:10pm; Brightburn: Evil Is Born (2D/Horror) 21:35pm & 0:15am; Dark Phoenix 10;25am, 12:45, 1:40, 3:05, 5:25, 8:45 & 11:00pm; Godzilla Ii: King Of The Monsters (2D/Action) 10:20am, 11:05am, 1:00, 3:35, 4:00, 6:10 & 10:25pm; John Wick 3: Parabellum (2D/Action) 5:00, 6:40, 7:30, 9:00, 11:35pm & 0:30am; Pokemon Detective Pikachu (2D/Action) 10:30am, 12:35, 1:50, 2:40, 3:55, 4:45, 6:00, 6:50, 8:05, 10:10 & 11:50pm; Polaroid (2D/Horror) 11:25; The Secret Life of Pets (2D/Action) 10:10am 11:30am, 12:00, 1:20 & 3:10pm

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Nenjamundu Nermaiyundu Odu Raja (2D/Tamil) 12:15, 5:30 & 10:45pm; Virus (2D/Malayalam) 12:00, 2:45, 5:30, 8:00, 8:15, 11:00pm, 1:15am & 1:45am; Bharat (2D/Hindi) 5:15, 6:00, 9:00, 11:00pm, 12:00am;The Game Over (2D/Tamil) 12:15, & 7:00pm; The Game Over (2D/Hindi) 5:00 & 11:45pm; My Great Grandfather (2D/Malayalam) 2:30, 8:00, 10:45pm & 1:30am; Old is Gold (2D/Malayalam) 9:00pm

ASIAN TOWN

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Aladdin (2D/Comedy) 6:00, 8:40, 9:20 & 11:30pmBharat (2D/Hindi) 11:15pmPokemon Detective Pikachu (2D/Action) 2:30, 6:45 & 9:00pmGodzilla Ii: King Of The Monsters (2D/Action) 12:30, 3:15, 8:45pm & 12:00amGame Over (2D/Hindi) 5:45, 12:30 & 11:00pmJohn Wick 3: Parabellum (2D/Action) 1:00, 3:30, 12:30, 3:10, 6:00 & 11:20pmMy Great Grandfather (2D/Malayalam) 2:45pm;The Secret Life of Pets (2D/Action) 12:30 & 4:45pmX-Men Dark Phoenix 6:10pm

Bharat (2D/Hindi) 11:30am, 5:30 & 11:30pmBrightburn: Evil Is Born (2D/Horror) 11:00, 3:15, 7:30 & 11:45pm; Poison Rose 12:00, 4:00, 8:00 & 12:00pm; Pokemon Detective Pikachu (2D/Action) 1:00, 5:15 & 9:30pm; Virus (2D/Malayalam) 2:30 & 8:30pmPolaroid (2D/Horror) 2:00, 6:00 & 10:00pm

Pokemon Detective Pikachu (2D/Action) 2:15, 4:15 & 6:15pm; My Great Grandfather (2D/Malayalam) 2:15pm; Chhota Bheem: Kung Fu Dhamaka – English Version (2D/Animation) 2:15pm; Detective Conan: The Fist Of Blue Sapphire – Arabic Version (2D/Animation) 4:15pm; Bharat (2D/Hindi) 8:15 & 11:15pm; Aladdin (2D/Comedy) 4:30 & 7:00pm; Game Over (2D/Tamil) 2:30 & 11:15pm; Polaroid (2D/Horror) 9:30pm; Brightburn: Evil Is Born (2D/Horror) 6:15pm; The Poison Rose (2D/Crime) 8:00pm; Sab’e Al Boromba (2D/Arabic) 9:45pm; Nenjamundu Nermaiyundu Odu Raja (2D/Tamil) 11:30pm

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REUTERS PEBBLE BEACH

If momentum counts for anything Rory McIlroy will be riding a wave when he hits the scenic beachside layout at the US Open, looking to end a nearly five year Major drought.

After closing rounds of 64 and 61 to cap a rampaging win at the Canadian Open on Sunday, McIlroy will be hoping his blazing finish translates into a hot start at the Pebble Beach Golf Links setting him up for a title challenge.

With two PGA Tour titles already in the bank this season, McIlroy’s game has been firing on all cylinders with the exception of the majors where he has sputtered, particularly

in the early rounds. At the Masters the Northern Irishman’s opening one-over 73 was his worst of the four rounds while it was a similar launch at the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black where he carded

a two-over 72 to leave him playing from behind right from the outset.

“My first rounds at Augusta and Bethpage this year just sort of put me a little bit behind the eight ball,” McIlroy told his pre-tour-nament media conference on Wednesday.

“And it’s hard to catch up. Espe-cially Major championships are played on the toughest courses, and you start to chase on those really tough courses, it’s hard to do that.

“The Majors that I’ve won, I’ve started every single one of them really well, runs in sort of the mid-60s, and I think that’s sort of what’s held me back a little bit.”

In his other win this season at the Players Championship, Mcllroy

underscored his f r o n t - r u n n e r status when he opened with rounds of 67 and 65 and took the pressure off slightly as he closed with 70s on Saturday and Sunday.

McIlroy’s 2011 US Open win also benefited from a quick start with rounds of 65 and 66 but never let his foot off the gas following up with a 68 and 69 for a 16-under 268 total that remains the lowest score for 72 holes at the tournament.

“Some people say it’s nice to be a couple back going into the final round. I’d rather be in front,” he said.

SPORT17FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019

When Pakistan play India it’s always a huge game, but their

meeting on Sunday is shaping up to be more

crucial than ever.

Pakistan fast-bowling great Waqar Younis

The Majors that I’ve won, I’ve started every single one of them really well, runs in sort of the mid-60s, and I think that’s sort of what’s held me back a little bit: McIlroy

England vs West IndiesMatch No: 19

12:30pm (Qatar time) At Rose Bowl in Southampton

Australia vs Sri Lanka Match No: 20, At the Oval in LondonAfghanistan vs South Africa Match No: 21, at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff

TODAY TOMORROW

Koepka chases history as US Open tees offAFP PEBBLE BEACH

Brooks Koepka launched his bid for an historic US Open treble yesterday at Pebble Beach, where Tiger Woods once separated himself from all rivals and now returning to chase a 16th Major.

Sam Saunders, grandson of Arnold Palmer, hit the first shot of the 119th edition of the championship, the sixth being held on the scenic course over-looking the Pacific.

Early first-round starters included Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson.

McIlroy, who was due to tee off at the 10th hole with Spain’s Jon Rahm and Aus-tralian Marc Leishman at 7:51 am, is seeking to add to his tally of four Majors for the first time since 2014.

The Northern Ireland star is riding high after a seven-shot victory at the Canadian Open on Sunday, his second win of the season after the Players Championship.

Johnson, who was leading at Pebble Beach in 2010 when he ballooned to a final-round 82, tees it up alongside that year’s winner Graeme McDowell and Mickelson - a five-time Major winner still seeking to complete the career Grand Slam with a first US Open title.

Johnson has won the US PGA Tour’s Pebble Beach National Pro-am twice and finished runner-up twice. Despite his dis-appointment in the 2010 US Open, he remains a fan of the course and a favorite to contend.

“What’s not to like. The golf course is fantastic from start to finish,” Johnson said of the course whose breathtaking views can distract from the challenge it presents - especially with the pinched fairways and deep rough of a US Open.

“The rough is definitely going to be a factor this week,” said Koepka, the world number one who won his fourth Major in less than two years when he hoisted the PGA Championship’s Wanamaker Trophy last month.

With his win at Shinnecock Hills last

year, Koepka became the first player since Curtis Strange in 1988-89 to win consec-utive US Opens.

Willie Anderson, from 1903-05, is the only player to have won three straight.

“I’m not thinking about it,” Koepka said of his treble chance. “I know the odds

are stacked up probably even more against me now. It’s hard to win the same event three times in a row.”

Woods won the first of his three US Opens in 2000 with a stunning 12-under par total and a crushing 15-stroke margin.

He is a vastly different player now at 43 and with spinal fusion surgery behind him, but he cemented his return to golf’s elite with his 15th Major win at the US Masters in April.

Woods said the 7,075-yard, par-71 course is playing similarly to the last time it hosted the US Open in 2010.

“We’re all going to be playing from virtually the same spots, and especially if it dries out,” Woods said.

Koepka was scheduled to tee of at 1:47 pm (2047 GMT) alongside British Open champion Francesco Molinari of Italy and US Amateur champion Viktor Hovland of Norway.

Woods teed off at 2:09 pm alongside former US Open winners Jordan Spieth and Justin Rose.

Alex Pietrangelo of the St Louis Blues celebrates

with the Stanley Cup after defeating the Boston Bruins

in Game Seven to win the title at TD Garden in Boston,

Massachusetts, on Wednesday.

Blues beat Bruins to clinch maiden Stanley Cup titleREUTERS BOSTON

The St Louis Blues won the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup for the first time with a 4-1 win over the Boston Bruins in the decisive seventh game of the championship series on Wednesday.

With the victory, the vis-iting Blues not only completed a remarkable turnaround con-sidering they were dead last in the NHL in early January but also ended the longest wait in NHL history - 51 seasons - for a team to win their first championship.

“I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” said Blues captain Alex Pietrangelo.

“But I am so proud of this group. It’s unbelievable.”

The Blues got all the scoring they would need in a late three-minute span of the

first period and then put on a defensive masterclass while Jordan Binnington made 32 stops, including the save of the game when he got a leg out to stop Joakim Nordstrom from in close midway through the third.

Blues forward Ryan O’Reilly, set a franchise record with the most points in one playoff year with 23, was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs.

“I stopped trying to worry

about the outcome and just give it everything I had,” said O’Reilly, who scored his team’s opening goal in each of the final four games of the Stanley Cup Final.

The Bruins, who had never before hosted a Game Seven of a Stanley Cup Final, made a solid start and created all sorts of pressure but it was the Blues who jumped out to an early 2-0 lead despite being outshot 12-4 in the opening frame.

Ryan O’Reilly opened the scoring with about three minutes left in the period when he cleverly re-directed a shot from the point by Jay Bouwmeester that went right through Boston goalie Tuukka Rask’s legs.

Blues defenseman Pie-trangelo added another with eight seconds left in the period when he skated in and

used a nifty backhand deke to beat Rask and silence the stunned home crowd.

St. Louis nearly added a third midway through the second period but Zdeno Chara managed to swat the puck away from the goal line after a shot from Brayden Schenn went off the crossbar and Rask’s shoulder before dropping in the crease.

Schenn did make it 3-0 when he took a centering pass from Vladimir Tarasenko and fired it off the post and past Rask with under nine minutes to play before Zach Sanford put the game out of reach with his first of the playoffs with under five minutes to play.

Boston broke Binning-ton’s shutout bid when Matt Grzelcyk found the net with just over two minutes to play.

St. Louis Blues claim

series 4-3 to end

the longest wait

in NHL history - 51

seasons - for a team

to win their first

championship.

Pebble Beach aims to keep harmful golf balls out of oceanREUTERS PEBBLE BEACH

Pebble Beach Golf Links, which hosts the US Open this week, hopes the world’s best golfers will keep their balls on the fairways and out of the sensitive coastal waters, which have been overwhelmed by decades of golf ball pollution.

The Pebble Beach Company has made reducing the number of balls that reach the ocean a priority, posting signs letting players of all levels know not to hit into the water and sending divers to help collect any errant balls.

The extent of the environmental problem was first identified three years ago by teenager Alex Weber after she came across something she had never seen before while diving in California -- a white sea floor.

“It was just blanketed in this mess of golf balls,” she said. “Seeing the vast scale of pollution from such an identifiable source made me wonder why no one was doing any-thing about it.”

So Weber took matters into her own hands, first by picking up the balls and then connecting with a researcher at Stanford University who suggested they collaborate on a scientific research paper.

In February the Pebble Beach Company agreed to conduct around 200 underwater clean ups every year for five years or until a “dra-matic shift” is seen in the under-water environment.

“We had no idea what it would become when this started,” said Weber, 19, who recently completed her second year at California’s Cabrillo College, where she studies environmental science.

Golf balls find their way into the marine environment fairly easily since the famed course sits directly on the Pacific Ocean.

No one is sure exactly how many balls are under the waves but Weber’s research estimated there are between two and five million in Pebble Beach’s Stillwater Cove area alone.

Each ball is the equivalent to the mass of seven plastic grocery bags or three plastic water bottles, she said.

The balls are bad for the envi-ronment because as they break down, some release a core that includes about 300 yards of stretched rubber, which is wound around a smaller ball at its core.

McIlroy looking to end Major drought

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rmer US Open winners Jordan Spieth and s

t

ds of 67 he pressure losed with 70s Sunday.US Open win also

a quick start with66 but never let his lowing up

9 for a al that owest

at the

le say it’sle back going intoI’d rather be in

stin Rose.

t

Koepka became the first player

since Curtis Strange in 1988-89 to

win consecutive US Opens.

Willie Anderson, from 1903-05, is

the only player to have won three

straight.

Four golfers have won the US Open

four times: Willie Anderson, Bob

Jones, Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus.

Tiger Woods is chasing his 16th

Major following his US Masters win

in April.

Brooks Koepka of the United States plays a shot during a practice round prior to the 2019 US Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California on Wednesday.

18 FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019SPORT

Umpires Marais Erasmus (right) and

Paul Reiffel after inspecting the pitch during a rain delay,

yesterday.

India, NZ split points after Trent Bridge washoutREUTERS NOTTINGHAM

Inclement English weather claimed yet another

World Cup match after India’s group game against

2015 finalists New Zealand was called off without

a ball being bowled at Trent Bridge yesterday.

A soggy outfield from overnight showers had

already delayed the start of the contest between

the tournament’s only two unbeaten side.

Umpires Marais Erasmus and Paul Reiffel carried

out almost hourly inspections in intermittent drizzle

before finally throwing in the towel in the afternoon.

This was the fourth match to be either called

off or abandoned in the rain-hit tournament with

many questioning the absence of reserve days for

group matches.

New Zealand top the table with seven points,

two ahead of India who have played one game

fewer.

Cricket chiefs deny World Cup TV ‘gagging’ orderAFP NOTTINGHAM

International cricket chiefs say they do not want to gag commentators after West Indies great Michael Holding hit out at “censorship” following on-air comments that were critical of the standard of umpiring at the World Cup.

The former pace bowler, a high-profile TV analyst, labelled the officiating in the match between West Indies and Australia at Trent Bridge on June 6, as “atrocious”.

Holding criticised umpires Ruchira Palliyaguruge and Chris Gaffaney in the group game in Nottingham for caving in to pressure created by constant appealing by the Aus-tralians, who won the match by 15 runs.

Chris Gayle was out to what should technically have been a free hit after Mitchell Starc overstepped the crease on the previous ball, which was not spotted by the umpire.

West Indies skipper Jason Holder was also at the receiving end of an umpiring blunder after being adjudged lbw off Adam Zampa but replays suggested the ball had pitched outside leg stump. The decision was overturned on review.

According to the Times of India, Huw Bevan, the pro-duction head for the International Cricket Council’s (ICC’s) rights partner Sunset and Vine, wrote an email to Holding on June 7.

“Inherently in live television, there are occasions when on-field decisions cause reason for discussion or debate, but as ICC TV host broadcasters, our (Sunset & Vine) duty is not to judge or highlight mistakes,” he said.

Bevan added: “It’s critical for us that we should never amplify umpires’ mistakes by giving airtime to those inci-dents nor show the umpires in bad light. We should also be very careful not to look to create controversy around an event or match at any time.”

But Holding wrote a strong reply to the ICC, the Times of India reported.

“Commentators are being more and more compro-mised by controlling organisations to the point of cen-sorship,” he said.

“If those umpires yesterday were FIFA officials, they would have been told to pack their bags and head home,” he added.

“They would not have been given another World Cup game to officiate. As a former cricketer, I think cricket should be held to a higher standard. Is the objective to protect the umpires even when they do a bad job?”

“I am sorry, but I am not going to be part of that.”“Please let me know if I should be heading back to my

home in Newmarket instead of heading to Cardiff because I don’t agree with what is being suggested here and happy not being part of it,” he said.

But an ICC spokesman said the matter was now closed.“We only want them (commentators) to be fair. We

have got the best experience on board to provide quality to the viewers. And we in no way want to gag anybody on their views,” an ICC source said.

“The matter with Holding has been settled and there are no hard feelings between the ICC and Mr Holding.”

West Indies can go all the way, says ‘Big Bird’ GarnerREUTERS NOTTINGHAM

Former West Indies fast bowler Joel Garner has said the current side stand a decent chance of winning the World Cup - 40 years since he helped them last lift the trophy with a record five-wicket haul in the final.

Jason Holder’s Windies side have had a mixed start to their campaign, crushing Pakistan in their opening match before losing to Australia and then seeing their game with South Africa abandoned.

They face hosts and pre-tournament favourites England in Southampton today.

“If we play the kind of cricket that we are expected to play, which is consistent cricket, we will get to the final,” the 6’8”-tall (2.03m) Garner, nicknamed Big Bird in his playing days, told Metro.co.uk.

“And then there’s nothing stopping us from winning the final. But you cannot depend on one or two players to get you there.

“I’m a West Indian, so of course I want to see them win. But it could be any of the top teams. When it gets to the semi-finals - that’s when the dog fight will really begin.”

“Jason Holder has worked hard and he’s turning out to be a good leader,” Garner added.

“I’d be delighted to see him lift the trophy because it’s been a long time since we won the World Cup.”

However, Garner was reluctant to give his forecast for today’s game against England.

“I’m not even going to predict that one. I just hope we get 100 overs in and see some good cricket,” he said.

Three World Cup matches have had to be scrapped so far due to rain. Garner’s five-for-38 in the 1979 World Cup final against England remains the best-ever bowling performance in the last game of the event.

West Indies’ Andre Russell bats in the nets during a training session at the Rose Bowl in Southampton, yesterday, ahead of their World Cup group stage match against England.

Captain Morgan backs Archer to shine in West Indies clashREUTERS LONDON

England captain Eoin Morgan is relieved to have fast bowler Jofra Archer (pictured) at his disposal for today’s World Cup clash against West Indies rather than having to face his pace.

The Barbados-born 24-year-old, whose father is English, was cleared to play for England under new eligibility rules which meant he needed three years residency, rather then seven.

He has grabbed his oppor-tunity with both hands, taking three wickets for 27 runs in Eng-land’s opening World Cup win over South Africa and then took another three-wicket haul against Bangladesh, having gone wicket-less in the loss to Pakistan.

Archer once played for West Indies under-19s so there is likely to be some extra edge when he

runs in against them at Southamp-ton’s Rose Bowl today.

“It is great that he’s in an England shirt at the moment,” Morgan told a news conference.

“Jofra’s been very consistent over a long period of time since he came to Sussex.”

Asked if it might be distracting

playing against some of his former West Indies colleagues, Morgan recalled his own experiences having switched allegiance to England from Ireland.

“He won’t know how it will feel until he plays the game tomorrow,” Morgan said.

“I think being in that position myself it does feel different the first time you play against a side that either you could have poten-tially played for or played for.

“But I’m sure he will handle it like he’s handled everything else so far. Every challenge he’s come up against so far he’s come out the other side really well. So let’s see how it goes.

“We are not expecting any-thing majorly different.”

With Mark Wood a doubt with a swollen ankle, Archer’s pace will be key for England.

“You need one, if not two (quick bowlers),” Morgan said.

Sarfaraz wants improved fielding against IndiaREUTERS MANCHESTER

Pakistan must improve their

fielding if they are to beat India

in their crunch World Cup match

on Sunday, captain Sarfaraz Khan

said after the team’s 41-run loss

to Australia in Taunton.

Pakistan conceded over-

throws against Australia and

were punished by Aaron Finch,

who was dropped by Asif Ali at

slip when he was on 33.

The Australian skipper went

on to score 82 and built a

146-run opening stand with cen-

turion David Warner to allow the

champions to post a competitive

total of 307.

“When two good teams play

each other, the fielding can make

a difference and we conceded

runs due to lapses in fielding,”

Sarfaraz told reporters.

“If you want to beat the big

teams we can’t make such

mistakes.

“Our fielding is not up to the

mark and we will work hard on

that before the India match.

India are a strong team and if

you continue to make the same

mistakes then you won’t get an

opportunity to win the match.”

At 136-2, Pakistan appeared

well set to chase down their

target midway through their

innings but soon lost Imam-ul-

Haq, Mohammad Hafeez and

Shoaib Malik in the span of three

overs to be reduced to 147-5.

“We made good starts but

didn’t build partnerships,” Sar-

faraz added.

“The first few wickets were

soft dismissals after the batsmen

got set... We lost three wickets

in 15 balls and that was the

turning point in the match.”

Pakistan play arch-rivals

India next at Old Trafford on

Sunday in a fixture where ten-

sions always run high.

Imam, who scored 53 against

Australia, said he was looking

forward to playing in front of

what is expected to be a capacity

crowd.

“Obviously to be part of that

kind of game, it’s great,” Imam

said.

“It’s in Manchester, lots of

Pakistani fans there, so I’m really

excited about it.

“It’s a huge pressure game.

Pakistan and India, there’s a lot

of mysteries behind that

but we want to just focus

on our cricket strengths

and how we can get

better.”

Pakistan’s captain Sarfaraz Ahmed reacts after taking a catch to dismiss Australia’s Nathan Coulter-Nile during

their World Cup match on Wednesday.

Rank/Team M W L N/R Pts NRR

1: New Zealand 4 3 0 1 7 2.163

2: Australia 4 3 1 0 6 0.57

3: India 3 2 0 1 5 0.539

4: England 3 2 1 0 4 1.307

5: Sri Lanka 4 1 1 2 4 -1.517

6: West Indies 3 1 1 1 3 2.054

7: Bangladesh 4 1 2 1 3 -0.714

8: Pakistan 4 1 2 1 3 -1.796

9: South Africa 4 0 3 1 1 -0.952

10: Afghanistan 3 0 3 0 0 -1.493

ICC WORLD CUP STANDINGS

19FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019 SPORT

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Messi back again for another shot at titleAP SAO PAULO

Lionel Messi (pictured) was fed up and hurting three years ago, on the losing side once again at the Copa America.

“For me, the national team is over. I’ve done all I can,” Messi said after Argen-tina’s penalty-shootout loss to Chile at the 2016 edition in the United States.

Three years later, the five-time world player of the year is back at South Amer-ica’s biggest tournament, the guy Argentina is relying on once again to end its trophy drought in international soccer.

Now 31, Messi is still among the best players in the world. He is coming off another prolific season for Barcelona - 51 goals in 50 matches in all competitions - where he led the Spanish team to a fourth league title in f i v e

years. Trophies at club level and personal awards just keep on coming for Messi. It’s on the international stage that he continues to fall short, meaning that for many - espe-cially in Argentina - he still cannot compare to other great player, Diego Maradona.

That was the year it won the South American champi-onship for the second straight edition and 14th time overall. Seven years before that, Argentina w o n t h e World Cup, m a i n l y thanks to Maradona.

A quarter of a c e n t u r y without a big title

is

too long for such a soccer-crazy nation and it is weighing heavily on its players. Hence Messi’s emo-tional reaction after the 2016 final, when Argentina slumped a second straight shootout loss to Chile in the final.

When the tournament begins today with Brazil playing Bolivia, the host nation will be the favorite but the absence of Neymar

because of an ankle injury should provide

Argentina with more optimism.

“We have the best player in the world, we will try to help him so he feels c o m f o r t a b l e , ” Argentina midfielder Rodrigo De Paul said

of Messi. “But we

are aware that Brazil i s t h e favourite.”

Led by i n t e r i m c o a c h L i o n e l Scaloni, Argentina has many

y o u n g

players in their first interna-tional tournament. With Sergio Aguero, Paulo Dybala and Angel di Maria among the other attackers, the con-cerns again lie in the defense, where Argentina has been weak for some time.

If Messi can lead an Argentina team in transition to the title - at the home of its greatest soccer rival - all that pain and anguish from previous misses at the Copa America and World Cup will likely disappear in an instant.

Even in a career as stellar as Messi’s, it will rank as one of the highlights.

he United States.Three years later, the

ve-time world player of theear is back at South Amer-a’s biggest tournament, theuy Argentina is relying onnce again to end its trophy rought in international occer.

Now 31, Messi is still mong the best players in theorld. He is coming off

nother prolific season forarcelona - 51 goals in 0 matches in all ompetitions -here he led the

panish team a fourth

e ag ue tle in i v e

Seven years before that, Argentina w o n t h e World Cup, m a i n l y thanks toMaradona.

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is

because of an ankle injuryshould provide

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of Messi. “But w

are awarethat Brazii s t h efavourite.”

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Argentina enter the

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at the senior level

since 1993.

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and personal awards

just keep on coming

for Messi. It’s on the

international stage

that he continues to

fall short.

Premier League: Man City to kick off season at West HamREUTERS LONDON

Champions Manchester City will kick off their 2019-20 Premier League season with an away trip to West Ham United while Liverpool get the ball rolling with a home clash against promoted Norwich City.

The fixtures, released at 0800 GMT yesterday, also included a meaty first-weekend clash with Manchester United hosting Chelsea, who finished third last season.

Tottenham Hotspur, who completed the top-four last season, are at home to Aston Villa, who returned to the top flight via the playoffs after a three-season absence.

Arsenal travel to Newcastle United while Sheffield United, the other promoted club, start at Bournemouth.

Leicester City host Wolver-hampton Wanderers, Burnley face Southampton, Crystal Palace host Everton and FA Cup runners-up Watford are at home to Brighton and Hove Albion.

The season starts on Friday, August 9.

The upcoming top flight season will be the first to include a brief mid-season break. A set of fixtures will be spread over a two-week period in February, meaning all clubs get a week off.

It will also feature the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system for the first time.

Pep Guardiola’s (pictured)Manchester City, who completed an unprecedented domestic treble last season, have a rela-tively comfortable start to the new campaign, although they do face Tottenham, who knocked them out of last season’s Cham-pions League in the quarter-finals, at home on the second weekend.

They then travel to Bourne-mouth, host Brighton, visit

Norwich and then take on Watford at the Etihad.

Premier League runners-up and European champions Liv-erpool’s first six games feature a home match against Arsenal and an away trip to Chelsea.

The first game between last season’s title rivals takes place at Anfield on November 9.

Tottenham and Arsenal fans will not have long to wait for the season’s first North London derby, with the sides meeting at the Emirates on August 31.

Other notable dates include Liverpool’s trip to Manchester United on Oct. 19 and the Man-chester derby at the Etihad Stadium on December 7.

The season will end on May 17 when City host Norwich, Liv-erpool are at Newcastle, Tot-tenham go to Crystal Palace and Chelsea host Wolverhampton Wanderers.

City are the bookmakers’ favourites to retain the title, fol-lowed by Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea.

Sheffield United, who have returned to the Premier League for the first time since 2007, are favourites for the drop.

kick off their 2019-20 Premier League season with an away trip to West Ham United while Liverpool get the ball rolling with a home clash against promotedNorwich City.

The fixtures, released at 0800 GMT yesterday, also included a meaty first-weekendclash with Manchester United hosting Chelsea, who finished third last season.

flight via the playoffs after a three-season absence.

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West Brom appoint Bilic as head coachREUTERS LONDON

West Bromwich Albion have appointed former Croatia and West Ham United boss Slaven Bilic as their new head coach on a two-year deal, the Cham-pionship side said yesterday.

Bilic, 50, returns to England after a five-month spell with Saudi Arabian side Al Ittihad, which followed his dismissal by Premier League side West Ham in November 2017.

The Croatian, who also played in England for West Ham and Everton, will look to guide West Brom back into the top flight after they missed out last season following a defeat in the playoff semi-finals by West Midlands rivals Aston Villa.

“We want to improve on the pitch and Albion have convinced me they want to return to the Premier League. Albion have a short-term project and a long project and they do not clash,” Bilic told the club’s website.

“They wanted me to lead them, to help improve them.

They made it clear they wanted me to be the one to lead them in this and I didn’t think twice once they had spoken to me.”

Bilic succeeds Darren Moore, who was sacked in March with Albion sitting fourth in the second tier. Caretaker boss Jimmy Shan guided them to a fourth-placed finish in the league and into the play-offs.

Meanwhile, Southampton have signed Mali international Moussa Djenepo on a four-year deal from Standard Liege, the Premier League club said yesterday.

The 20-year-old winger becomes manager Ralph Hasenhuttl’s first signing since arriving at the club last December. Djenepo joins Southampton on the back of an impressive season with Standard Liege, where he scored 11 times, across all com-petitions, to help them finish third in the Belgian top flight.

“We are very happy to welcome Moussa as the first new player to join our team ahead of the upcoming season,” Hasenhuttl said.

Organisers worried about slow ticket sales for 2 gamesAP SAO PAULO

Copa America organisers are worried about ticket sales for the two matches in Belo Horizonte and said that only 65 percent all tickets to the tournament have been sold, a figure that is below expectations.

Organisers said there have been slow sales for the match between Bolivia and Venezuela on June 22 and the match between Ecuador and Japan on June 24, both in Belo Horizonte.

Brazilian media say less than 3,000 tickets have been sold for the two matches at the Mineirao Stadium. Organisers did not confirm the figure.

However, organisers say tomorrow’s match between Argentina and Colombia in

Salvador is sold out. More than 1 million tickets have been put on sale, and the target is to sell 70 percent of them, said Agberto Guimaraes, the director of oper-ations for Copa America.

“If we look at the whole, we are moving toward successful sales. In every product you have items that are highly valued and some that do not draw the same interest,” Guimaraes told jour-nalists at the Morumbi stadium, where host Brazil will open Copa America against Bolivia today.

“We hope that from then onward, with the ball on the pitch, there is more interest for those two matches.”

To avoid empty seats, Gui-maraes said organisers are in contact with the local government about the possibility to have school children fill some of them.

Meanwhile, Chile coach

Reinaldo Rueda said forward Alexis Sanchez has recovered from an ankle problem and could start the team’s Copa America opener against Japan on Monday.

Sanchez is Chile’s top scorer with 41 goals and helped the team win the last two editions of the Copa America, but is coming off a disappointing and injury-plagued season with Manchester United when he was often rele-gated to the bench even when fit.

The 30-year-old Sanchez scored only once in 20 matches with the English club.

“He is coming off a tortuous season, it is hard for him,” Rueda said at a news conference, adding that Sanchez may not be fit for the full 90 minutes.

“He has the conditions to start, that is possible. Lasting the 90 minutes is what we will analyze,” Rueda said.

Fans of Peru cheer as they watch a training session of their national team in Porto Alegre, Brazil, yesterday, on the eve of the start of the Copa America.

THE PENINSULA RIO DE JANEIRO

Qatar squad yesterday reached Rio de Janeiro where they will play their first match at Copa America later this week.

Based in coastal town of Porta Belo for the last two weeks, Qatar have been training and practicing at full speed for their debut in the world’s oldest football tournament.

On Sunday, Qatar - coached by Felix Sanchez - face Paraguay in their opening match at the famous Maracana Stadium. Qatar then face Columbia on June 20 followed by a clash against former World Cup champions Argentina on June 23 in Porto Alegre. Star striker Lionel Messi is expected to lead Argentina.

Since arriving in Brazil more than two weeks ago, Qatar have played an international friendly against Brazil and another match against a club side to prepare for the three-week event.

Asian champions Qatar are one of the invited teams to feature in the tournament. Former Asian Cup champions Japan are also taking part in this year’s event. Japan have played in one previous Copa America edition, appearing at the 1999 tournament held in Paraguay.

Last week, coach Sanchez announced a 23-member squad that will be captained by Al Sadd star Hassan Al Haydos.

In an interview earlier this week, Sanchez underlined Qatar’s growing reputation, saying the youngsters have made things happen for the 2022 FIFA World Cup hosts.

“Aspire Academy has played a major role in the development of the young players. With the presence of international coaches, the Qatari clubs have got talented Aspire Academy graduates in recent times,” Sanchez said.

“Clearly the goal is to have a good national team in the World Cup 2022,” the Spaniard added. “The important thing is that the players will gain

experience at Copa America. They are accustomed to being strong and competitive. They are successful too, but our plan is to give the players the maximum opportunities to prepare for the World Cup in 2022,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez guided Qatar to Asian Cup glory in Jan-Feb this year with an unbeaten seven-match streak. Young striker Almoez Ali, an Aspire Academy graduate, produced nine goals in Qatar’s seven matches at the Asian Cup.

“It was a big challenge. In the Asian Cup, our goal was to compete well. We had expected from the start to play well and it was tough to be ahead of others. But thanks to the hard work of the players, we exceed expectations very quickly,” he said.

“I have supervised most of the young players from their early days. I know all the details about them especially the ones play in the Qatar Stars League. A majority of them are close to me and this is good for me,” Sanchez said. Ali has already racked up 19 goals in just 38 international appearances.

Sanchez said in the interview that he has seen con-sistent evolution of youth football in Qatar.

“There is a lot of progress since 2006 because of the culture of long-term planning,” Sanchez said.

“In addition to the Aspire Academy that accelerated this development of young football players, Qatar’s understanding of the value of how you train and adapt to new ideas to become a well organised team was crucial. The (positive) results are at the heart of everything and it deter-mines whether you are good or bad side.

“The players were com-mitted and believed they could win the Asian Cup. We played as we wanted, a steady style of play, and this makes you more proud of what you are doing,” he said.

Meanwhile, key player Abdulaziz Hatem has urged his team mates to exhibit a fighting show during the tournament.

Hatem said after yester-day’s training: “The Qatari team enters the tournament as the champions of Asia, and we hope that our team is the best repre-sentative of this despite the strength and difficulty of the group.”

On their way to Brazil, Qatar also had a training camp in Texas, the United States.

Qatar featured in an inter-national friendly against Brazil on June 5 followed by a 2-1 win over a club four days later.

Hatem said that the match played by Qatar against Brazil w a s g o o d l e a r n i n g experience.

“Our team presented a good fighting game in their friendly against a strong and top-class team in the world,” he noted.

“Without a doubt, the loss against Brazil does not diminish our hopes as we could have done better than the 2-0 score suggests,” he added.

Clearly the goal is to have a good national team in the World Cup 2022. The important thing is that the players will gain experience at Copa America. They are accustomed to being strong and competitive. They are successful too, but our plan is to give the players the maximum opportunities to prepare for the World Cup in 2022: Felix Sanchez

PAGE | 17 PAGE | 19Koepka chases

history as US Open tees off

at Pebble Beach

Messi back again for another shot at title as Copa America kicks off

20FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019

Qatar gear up for Copa debut as 2022 preparations begin

QFA makes changes to the Amir Cup tournament formatTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar Football Association (QFA) and Qatar Stars League (QSL) have introduced changes for the new season, including a new registration system, details showed yesterday.

Chairman of the Competitions Committee at QFA, Hamad Al Mannai said that they will introduce a new system for the Amir Cup from next year.

The Tournament begins in January with the qualifiers between the second division teams.

Four of them will compete with the teams from QSL, and the teams will be divided into two groups. There will also be a draw for both the quarter-finals and the semi-finals.

The matches will take place in March and April, with the semi-final and final taking place in May.

The QFA will release the fixtures for the new season in the coming days.

The amendments have been made to accommodate the FIFA Club World Cup in 2019 and 2020 which will be held in Qatar.

Al Mannai said he views the changes to the Amir Cup format will add more excitement to the competition.

QATAR SQUAD: GOALKEEPERS: Youssef Hassan,

Mohammed Al Bakri, Saad Al Sheeb

DEFENDERS: Boualem Khoukhi, Tareq Salman, Bassam Husham, Pedro Correira, Hamad Ismael, Tameem Al Muhaza, Abdullah

Abdul Salam, Al Mahdi Ali, Abdulkarim Hassan

MIDFIELDERS: Hassan Al Haydos, Assim Madibo, Karim Boudiaf,

Ahmad Moein, Abdulaziz Hatem, Salem Alhajri

STRIKERS: Ali Afif, Almoez Ali, Ahmed Al Alaeldin, Akram Afif

COACH: Felix Sanchez

COPA AMERICA GROUPSGroup A: Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru

Group B: Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, QatarGroup C: Urugay, Ecuador, Japan, Chile

Qatar beach handball team arrives in ChinaTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar beach handball team yesterday arrived in Weihai, China where they will be looking to defend their Asian crown at the 7th Asian Beach Handball Champi-onship. The biannual championship begins tomorrow.

Qatar who won the championships in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017 to become the most successful team in the tournament’s history, yesterday concluded their pre-tournament training camp in Thailand.

The event in which 12 of the best Asian teams vie for honours.

Qatar are pitted in Group A along with Vietnam, Chinese Taipei, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Philippines.

Group B includes Oman, Iran, Thailand, Pakistan, Japan and Saudi Arabia.

Qatar will start their campaign against the Philippines tomorrow and will move onto their second match against Indonesia on Sunday. Their third match will be against Afghanistan on June 17. Qatar will meet Chinese Taipei on June 19, before facing Vietnam in their final preliminary round fixture on June 20.

Qatar’s Abdelkarim Hassan trains with team-mates ahead of the

Copa America tournament in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, yesterday

Qatar coach Felix Sanchez gestures during a training session held in Rio de Janeiro, yesterday.

Qatar beach handball team players and officials pose for a photograph as they prepare to leave for Weihai, China to take part in the 7th Asian Beach Handball Championship which begins tomorrow.