Al Attiyah wins Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge

BUSINESS | 14 SPORT | 23

ECB insists latest policy measures

are working

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

GCC Secretary-General Dr Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani with GCC foreign ministers and US Secretary of State John Kerry before GCC ministerial meetings in Bahraini capital Manama yesterday. → See also page 3

Kerry with GCC foreign ministers in Manama

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (centre) walking by police officers as he arrives for a ceremony marking the 171st anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish National Police at the Presidential Complex in Ankara yesterday.

171st Turkish National Police anniversary

FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016 • 1 Rajab 1437 • Volume 21 • Number 6760 thepeninsulaqatar @peninsulaqatar @peninsula_qatar

QNA

PARIS: Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent a mes-sage to French President Francois Hollande on relations between the two countries, means of bolstering them and latest regional and inter-national developments.

The verbal message was con-veyed by Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrah-man Al Thani when Hollande met him at the Elysee Palace yesterday.

The Foreign Minister also conveyed the Emir’s greetings to Hollande and his wishes of more progress and development for the French people.

Hollande asked the Foreign Minister to convey his greetings and to the Emir, his wishes of good health and happiness to him and more progress and prosperity for the Qatari people.

Qatar to chair Arab

Labour ConferenceDOHA: Qatar will chair the 43rd session of the Arab Labour Confer-ence in Cairo on Sunday, attended by Arab ministers of labour, busi-nessmen and representatives of Arab labour organisations.

Minister of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs H E Dr Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi will represent Qatar. The forum will issues related to the employment sector in the region.

Driving licencecan be renewed on Metrash 2

The Peninsula

DOHA: Driving licence can be renewed through Metrash 2, the mobile application of the Ministry of Interior (MoI).

The renewal fee of QR250 can be paid online. The applicant can have the licence delivered at his doorstep by Q-Post by paying an additional fee of QR20, the ministry said on its Twitter account.

Motorists can also apply for a new licence to replace the damaged one through Metrash 2 using the same pro-cedures, which have been explained by the MoI on the popular social media platform. The ministry has added three important visa-related serv-ices to its online platform, allowing residents to avail of them without vis-iting a services centre of the ministry.

Expatriates seeking a ‘return visa’ for people under personal sponsorship who have stayed out of the country for more than six months can also apply through Metrash 2 or the min-istry’s website.

Passport details of a foreigner can be modified online if the person holds a valid entry visa to Qatar and his passport has been lost or damaged.

In case of expatriates holding two visas — one existing and another new— it is possible to close one and open the other online using Metrash 2 or the ministry’s e-services, after paying service charges.

The Traffic Department at the ministry, meanwhile, extended its offer of 50 percent cut in traffic-related fines for another three months, sources said. The offer ends on July 7 instead of April 7. The department had ear-lier announced that those paying the fines within three months starting from January 7 will get a 50 percent reduction. The offer is valid for all violations committed before Decem-ber 31 last year, to encourage people to pay the fines and comply with the traffic law. Motorists can enjoy the privilege even in case of certain vio-lations committed this year if they pay up the fines within one month after the date of violation, as per the amended traffic law.

→ Continued on page 2

AFP

PANAMA CITY: Argentine President Mauricio Macri became the latest world leader caught in the storm of the so-called Panama Papers yes-terday as prosecutors opened an investigation into his offshore financial dealings.

Macri joins Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping in the tempest unleashed by the leak of millions of offshore financial documents

from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.Investigators around the world, including in

Australia, the Netherlands, El Salvador, Costa Rica announced probes following the leak, Spain opened a money-laundering investigation into the law firm and Swiss police raided European football body UEFA’s headquarters.

Putin and Xi are only connected to the rev-elations via their inner circles, but Macri is on the board of directors of two offshore firms — one registered in the Bahamas and the other in Panama.

Argentine federal prosecutor Federico Del-gado asked a judge to request information from the national tax authority and anti-corruption office to determine if Macri “omitted, with mali-cious intent, to complete his sworn declaration” of assets, a requirement for Argentine public officials. Macri did not list either company in his financial declarations when he became Buenos Aires mayor in 2007 or President last December.

Marci denies wrongdoing and says the firms were legitimate operations set up by his father, a wealthy business magnate.

Putin ridiculed the international media probe behind the revelations, deriding it as US-orches-trated and boasting that a year-long investigation had failed to find any mention of his name.

The leaks have put a host of world leaders, celebrities and sports stars in the hot seat and left Panama fighting to salvage its reputation. They have toppled Iceland’s prime minister.

Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela also fended off accusations that his country has allowed the rich to hide their funds from global tax authorities and the law.

By Raynald C Rivera

The Peninsula

DOHA: Five hundred more lemon yellow-roofed taxis will hit Doha streets by October, Cars Taxi, one of the four taxi operators in the coun-try, announced yesterday.

Cars Taxi yesterday started the roll-out with 25 taxis and the number will gradually increase to reach the additional target, to add to the 500 currently operated by the company.

The announcement to double the

Cars Taxi fleet will bring the total number of taxis in Qatar to 4,500 by the end of the third quarter.

“Since the launch of Cars Taxi in September 2014, we have commis-sioned 500 taxis in record time and hope to commission another 500 in record time in the next four to five months,” P Balasubramaniam, Group Director, Profit Group, said at the launch at Sharq Village & Spa.

The company also plans to intro-duce environment-friendly hybrid taxis and special taxis for women, families and people with disabilities.

One of the region’s largest taxi

franchise operators, Cars Taxi oper-ates in the country in partnership with Qatar-based Profit Group.

“This large addition to the existing fleet reflects Cars Taxi’s commitment to find balance between the increas-ing needs of taxi riders and availability of service providers in Qatar.

“Since launching operations two years ago, Cars Taxi has established itself as a preferred choice of com-muters throughout the country,” said Abdulla Sultan Al Sabbagh, Group CEO, Cars Taxi Group.

→ Continued on page 2

Emir sends

message to

French President

AFP

GENEVA: UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said yesterday that the next round of peace talks will begin on April 13 after he completes a diplomatic tour, including stops in Damascus and Tehran.

The United Nations had previously said that the negotiations in Geneva would resume on April 11 after the last round ended on March 24.

De Mistura told journalists that meetings with key regional players and Syria’s government were crucial before the next round begins and that he expected to return to Geneva on April 12 or 13.

“I need to verify the international and regional stakeholders’ position” in order to have “concrete results in

the next round of talks”, he said.The main obstacle is the future

of President Bashar Al Assad. The opposition High Negotiations

Committee has said Assad must go before a transitional government is agreed, while the regime insists that his fate be excluded from the talks.

De Mistura met key regime ally Russia in Moscow and will head to Tehran for talks with another cru-cial government supporter.

He also plans to meet Turkish offi-cials in Europe by the middle of next week. Ankara has emerged as one of Assad’s main foes.

De Mistura said he had not requested a face-to-face meeting with Assad in Damascus, but expected to hold talks with Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.

→ See also page 3

AFP

BEIT JALA: Israel began construc-tion on a controversial part of its separation barrier in the occupied West Bank yesterday, near a Pal-estinian Christian town.

Cranes began lifting eight-metre-high blocks into place near Beit Jala, south of Jerusalem and close to Bethlehem. This part of the wall could cut Palestinians from their olive groves.

Nicola Khamis, Mayor, Beit Jala, condemned what he saw as a land grab.

“This land is for our families, our children,” he said by phone from the bridge next to the con-struction site.

The Israeli army referred ques-tions to the defence ministry, which did not immediately respond.

Residents of Beit Jala fear the construction of the wall may lead to the expansion of the nearby Israeli settlements of Gilo and Har Gilo.

Khamis said they hoped to battle the wall’s construction, with emer-gency strategy meetings planned, but he conceded they had no fur-ther appeals within the Israeli legal system.

After a nine-year legal battle, Israel’s high court ruled in July 2015 the wall was legitimate, making only small adjustments.

“Without this land all the Chris-tians will leave this country,” Khamis said. “It is impossible to build in Beit Jala. We want to widen Beit Jala,” he added.

500 more taxis by October

Syria peace talks pushed

back to April 13: UN envoy

Israel starts work

on disputed part

of West Bank wall

Motorists can also apply for a new licence to replace the damaged one through MoI’s mobile app.

Panama Papers: Argentina president in storm as global probes begin

E s

ge

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud yesterday met former Romanian ambassador Aurel Turbaceanu and incumbent Cristian Tudor. Talks dealt with relations between both countries and ways of enhancing them in various fields.

Deputy PM meets Romanian envoys

HOME02 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

The Peninsula

DOHA: The Diplomatic Club has announced the opening of the third edition of Ecuadorian Food Festival in Doha.

It was opened with a welcome speech by Ecuado-rian Ambassador Kabalan Abi Saab, who expressed delight and said the Ecuadorian cuisine could be celebrated and could bring global cultures to cel-ebrate Ecuador.

He said: “The people around the world have many ways to express their culture and cuisine is one of the best ways to do it.

“Our culture is marked by its diversity of language, dress, music, art, literature, poetry and gastronomy.

“Biodiversity, fertile land, endemic species, a singular geographical configuration, a multi-cul-tural society and ancestral customs, are some of the factors that come together to make Ecuador a land with unique culinary wealth.

“The Ecuadorian table can become a multi-col-oured, multi-flavoured and multi-cultural mosaic; it all depends on what kind of culinary voyage you wish to take.”

For eight days, the club and the Ecuadorian embassy is holding the festival to celebrate the country’s fabulously diverse range of food, irre-spective of whether you’re an Ecuadorian food lover or a culinary adventurist.

This year, the festival will take place on the beautiful and serene beach of the club. It will be

a time for the family and friends to roll up sleeves and enjoy live cooking demonstrations, buffet sta-tions and mocktails.

There is also a chance to mingle with the staff of the club to know more about Ecuadorian cuisine.

General Manager Aysha Al Marzouqi said: “We organise the festival to introduce you to the beautiful country of Ecuador through food, and its stand-out glory.

“Achievement of this food triumph has come

through constant trial and error of the chefs at the club who have trained with Chef Dayana for the past few weeks. Collaboration between the embassy and the club is a fruitful story to enlighten.”

The culinary route of Ecuador could take you from shrimp soup, spinach salad with raspberry, gorgonzola cheese and walnuts, quinoa with vege-tables, fish in coconut sauce and that’s just starters!

The festival is open from April 6 to 9 and April 13 to 16 from 7pm onwards.

Officials and visitors at the third edition of the Ecuadorian Food Festival at the Diplomatic Club. Pic: Baher / The Peninsula

The Peninsula

DOHA: The World Innovation Sum-mit for Health (WISH) will host an Accountable Care Forum during its 2016 conference to discuss the possi-bilities of implementing an accountable healthcare plan, including the identi-fication of a suitable cohort in Qatar

for a pilot study. The forum will outline the bene-

fits of using an integrated accountable care system to assist patients suffer-ing from chronic diseases, such as diabetes, and who require rigorous, all-encompassing treatment plans.

The study will involve a pool of people aged 18 and above diagnosed with type-2 diabetes or pre-diabetes and those at high risk of developing the disease.

WISH 2016 will be held on Novem-ber 29 and 30.

Professor Mark McClellan of Duke University, who will chair the forum, said, “In Qatar, local leaders have come together in an account-able care model to prevent diabetes and its complications.

“This year’s forum will look at how policymakers can promote health innovation in their commu-nities through accountable care.”

Conference participants will receive detailed action plans and rec-ommendations, including the process of identifying the cohort; the singling out of individuals within the group suffering from diabetes; a screening

plan for the remaining subjects; the development of a care pathway; the establishment of a multidisciplinary team to manage patient care; and indi-vidualised healthcare plans and project monitoring.

Six months after the study has com-menced, a formal stocktake will be announced. This will be followed by a discussion of potentially extending the pilot study to additional popu-lations and areas, depending on the success of the research.

The Brookings Institution and Qatar Diabetes Association will have representatives at the forum to pro-vide their analysis and advice on this critical topic.

Participants will also debate the objectives of the pilot, discussing the formation of a localised inte-grated strategy that will use available resources to ensure an efficient long-term healthcare plan for patients.

For example, at-risk individuals will be screened and identified via data analysis and will receive indi-vidualised healthcare plans outlining a wellness strategy for a pre-diabe-tes phase.

Third Ecuadorian Food Festival opens

WISH 2016 to organise Accountable Care Forum The forum will discuss the possibilities of implementing an accountable healthcare plan, including the identification of a suitable cohort in Qatar for a pilot study.

Scattered clouds seen over Al Hilal yesterday. The Meteorology Department has forecast strong winds and cloudy weather today, with chances of scattered, thundery rains in some places. Temperature in Doha is expected to vary between 22 and 29 degrees Celsius. Pic: Qassim / The Peninsula

Cloudy weather

Continued from page 1“Today we take a major step for-

ward in our efforts to expand our network,”

“As part of our commitment to environmental conservation and sustainable development, Cars Taxi is looking to introduce hybrid taxis

in Qatar — bringing an initiative that has been successfully implemented in the UAE. There are also plans to intro-duce taxis for families and women and special-needs vehicles to cater to people with disabilities,” Balasub-ramaniam added.

He said the company is giving

21-day intensive training to drivers and has equipped taxis with advanced mobile data terminals (MDTs), inclu-sive of meters, navigation systems, taxi tracking and dispatch systems and a speed monitoring system allowing a maximum speed limit of 100kmph within city limits.

Continued from page 1

The law which came into force this January 1 has reduced the fines for certain violations that are on the conciliation list by 50 percent if paid within 30 days.

After that, the fines should be paid in full.

The rule, however, does not apply to overtaking from the right side and parking on slots reserved for per-sons with special needs, in addition to overweight trucks.

Officials at the launch of new 25 taxis of Cars Taxi Qatar at Sharq Village and Spa yesterday. Pic: Baher / The Peninsula

Plan to introduce hybrid taxis in Qatar

The Peninsula

DOHA: The Quranic Botanic Garden (QBG) has launched ‘Fun and Learn’, an educational programme to teach pri-mary school students about plant life and the environment through inter-active activities.

The initiative aims at primary schoolchildren aged 6-11 and will be delivered at 20 Unesco-associated schools working under the supervi-sion of the Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science.

Fatima Saleh Al Khulaifi, Project Manager, QBG, said: “We look for-ward to delivering the programme at primary schools. The curriculum will be delivered in Arabic, promoting

the language while enabling students to learn more about plant life and the environment.”

Al Wafa Model Independent School for Boys was selected as the first school to participate in the programme, with students taking part in interactive activities such as tree planting, which aimed to increase their awareness about tree conservation.

An educational booklet was cre-ated for the initiative to offer students detailed information about plant life and the environment.

QBG, a member of Qatar Foun-dation, aims to encourage student engagement and strengthen agri-cultural awareness in Qatar, supporting QF’s dedication to sustain-able development and environmental responsibility.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Charity (QC) has urged people in the country to support an ongoing mobile bakery project for displaced Syrian people.

QC’s mobile bakery in Syria has benefit 2,400 displaced families since March in the western coun-tryside of Aleppo, by distributing bread through specialised vehicles.

A few days ago QC operated another mobile bakery for displaced people in interior areas and aims to continue the project to help the needy in their daily lives. Four tonnes of flour is needed at the bakery daily to make 38,400 loaves for distribu-tion to displaced families.

Mohammed Al Ka’bi, Direc-tor, Relief Management, QC, said, “Through this bakery, we intend to alleviate the suffering of the Syri-ans displaced and affected by the ongoing conflict. We are trying to distribute loaves for free to the largest number of families to save them the trouble of moving to other places and endanger their lives. Our campaigns will continue to help our brothers and sisters in and outside Syria.”

Through the project, QC was able to reduce the burden on other bakeries. The mobile bakery project was initiated as part of the existing initiative ‘Competitors’, launched and adopted by QC to involve Qatari youth in charitable work. It aims to make use of their fame and mar-keting abilities in highlighting QC projects for the affected Syrians. As a result, more donations are expected. The bakery and kitchen are operated by the Syrians because QC wants to create job opportunities for Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Full fine if not paid within 30 days

QC seeks support

for mobile bakery

project in Syria

Schoolchildren taking part in one of the activities.

Quranic Botanic Garden begins ‘Fun and Learn’ initiative for school kids

GULF / MIDDLE EAST 03FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

AFP

CAIRO: The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia yesterday started a five-day visit to Cairo in a show of support for Egyptian Pres-ident Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, with the leaders due to sign a raft of invest-ment deals.

Saudi Arabia has been the key backer of Sisi since the then-army chief in 2013 overthrew his Islam-ist predecessor Mohamed Mursi, whose Muslim Brotherhood move-ment was viewed with suspicion by Riyadh. It has pumped billions of dollars in aid and investment into Egypt’s battered economy, and the two heads of state are expected to ink more investment agreements today amounting to about $1.7bn.

Live footage on state television showed Sisi greeting the 80-year-old Salman at Cairo airport, before heading off in a convoy to the Pres-idential Palace. The two met after Salman’s arrival and were due to meet again today, when they will sign 14 agreements that include a $1.5bn deal to invest in the Sinai Peninsula, the presidency and an Egyptian government official said.

AFP

DAMASCUS: The Islamic State (IS)group was accused yesterday of kid-napping more than 300 employees of a cement factory in Syria, in the lat-est mass abduction by the militants.

IS attacked the town of Dmeir, east of Damascus, after suffering a series of territorial losses at the hands of regime troops in recent weeks, includ-ing in the ancient city of Palmyra.

In another setback for the mili-tants, anti-government rebels were reported to have seized their main supply route to Turkey.

Syria’s official news agency Sana said the 300 people seized by IS were employees of Al Badia cement factory.

“The company has informed the industry ministry that it hasn’t been able to make contact with the kid-napped individuals,” Sana said.

The extremist group, which con-trols swathes of Syria and Iraq, has a history of mass abductions and killings.

Residents of Dmeir, around 50km from Damascus, earlier reported that

at least 250 workers at the plant had been missing since Monday. The town is divided between IS control in the east and rebel control in the west, but several key positions around it, includ-ing a military airport and a power plant, are still in government hands.

The fresh fighting came ahead of a new round of peace talks due next week in Geneva, following a ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels that has allowed Syrian forces to focus on fighting IS.

The talks are now due to begin on April 13, the same day as the regime is holding legislative elections, UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said, delaying them by two days.

“I will be very much insisting and pushing for... a serious discussion on political transition” at the upcoming round, de Mistura told reporters in Geneva. He said that before then he would complete a diplomatic tour, including stops in Damascus and Tehran, to “verify the international

and regional stakeholders’ position” in order to have “concrete results in the next round of talks”.

The key stumbling block in the peace talks in Geneva is the fate of President Bashar Al Assad.

Syria’s opposition has clung to its years-long demand that he leave power immediately, but the govern-ment has refused.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based mon-itor, said the fighting in and around Dmeir was heavy but the jihadists had not managed to gain significant ground.

“The most violent clashes are near the airport and the power plant, but IS has not entered either yet,” Observa-tory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

He said 20 members of regime forces and 35 IS fighters had been killed in the clashes. A Dmeir resident said she could hear heavy shelling around the city and that residents were not daring to leave their homes.

AFP

MANAMA: US Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday urged Iran to help end the wars rag-ing in Yemen and Syria, criticising the Islamic republic’s “destabilising actions” in the Mid-dle East.

On the first visit by a US chief diplomat to Bahrain since 2010, Kerry also told authorities in Manama accused of discriminating against the country’s Shia majority that respect for human rights was “essential”.

Kerry was also met his other Gulf Arab coun-terparts, two weeks before President Barack Obama is scheduled to attend a summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council in Riyadh when Washington’s Middle East policy is likely to come under the microscope.

Speaking during a joint news conference with Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Kha-lid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Kerry condemned “the destabilising actions of Iran, which the United States takes very seriously”.

Kerry said Tehran should “help us end the war in Yemen... help us end the war in Syria,

not intensify, and help us to be able to change the dynamics of this region”.

Tehran and the Gulf states back opposi-tion sides in Syria and Yemen. Last year Iran struck a landmark deal with world powers scaling back its nuclear programme, which has led to the lifting of international sanctions on the Islamic republic.

Sheikh Khalid, whose government accuses Iran of stoking persistent protests among the kingdom’s Shiites demanding an end to Sunni minority rule, echoed Ker-ry’s call.

Iran’s “interventions through proxies in several parts of our region (are) con-tinuing unabated,” the Bahraini foreign minister said.

“We want to see them help” in trying to “reach a political solution” in war-ravaged countries but “yes, we do want to see Iran change its foreign policy,” he said, speaking alongside Kerry.

Tehran argues that it is Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies that are sowing instability in the region with their air strikes in Yemen and sup-port to the opposition in Syria.

All the Gulf Arab states, apart from Oman, are taking part in a Saudi-led coa-lition that has been battling Iran-backed

rebels in Yemen since March last year, in a war which the United Nations says has killed around 6,300 people.

Human Rights Watch said yesterday that bombs supplied by the United States were used in coalition air strikes on a market in Yemen that killed at least 97 civilians including chil-dren last month.

Asked to comment on the report, Kerry said he did not have “solid information” on weapons used in Yemen.

The United States has been exerting efforts to “try to secure a full ceasefire in Yemen”, he added.

Yemen’s warring parties have agreed to observe a UN-brokered ceasefire from mid-night Sunday which will be followed by peace negotiations in Kuwait on April 18.

The Gulf Arab states have also been staunch backers of Syrian rebel groups fighting to over-throw President Bashar Al Assad’s regime since 2011.

Iran, with Russia, has been among the regime’s main supporters in the conflict that has killed more than 270,000 people and pushed nearly five million into exile.

Kerry will also discuss the situation in Iraq,

Lebanon, and elsewhere in the region during his meeting with Gulf foreign ministers, a US official said. The GCC comprises Saudi Ara-bia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE have carried out air strikes against the Islamic State group in Syria as part of a US-led mili-tary coalition.

“We’re satisfied, I think, with the overall level of support that we’re getting from the Gulf states in the coalition,” the US official said.

On Bahrain, Kerry urged authorities to adopt an “inclusive political system”.

“Here, as in all nations, we believe that respect for human rights and an inclusive polit-ical system are essential,” Kerry said.

He said he and Sheikh Khalid “had the chance to discuss the ongoing effort to address and to reduce sectarian divisions here in Bah-rain and elsewhere”.

“I appreciate the seriousness with which he considers this issue,” Kerry said.

“We all welcome steps by sides to cre-ate conditions to provide for greater political involvement for the citizens of this great coun-try,” he added.

Salman is expected to address the Egyptian parliament on Sunday, state media reported. Egyptian media gave full coverage of the visit, with state television welcoming Salman to his “second country” and playing cele-bratory music as his plane touched down in Cairo.

“This is the first official visit by King Salman, whose valuable and

honourable positions in support of Egypt and its people will never be forgotten,” the presidency said in a statement before Salman’s arrival.

The visit follows months of reports in both Saudi and Egyptian news-papers of strained ties over Cairo’s unwillingness to participate fully in the Saudi-led war against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.

IS accused of kidnapping 300 Syrian factory workers

Saudi King starts Egypt visit

US Secretary of State John Kerry speaking at the GCC Ministerial meetings iin Manama, yesterday

Iraqi forces enter centre of IS-held western townAP

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces say they have entered the centre of a strategically important western Islamic State-held town.

Government forces reached the centre of Hit on Wednesday. The oper-ation to retake the small Euphrates river town — initially launched last month — was stalled by politics, heavy IS resistance and tens of thou-sands of trapped civilians.

Iraqi troops first entered Hit on Monday under cover of heavy air-strikes. Since the operation was relaunched last week the US- led coalition launched more than 18 strikes on the town.

Hit sits along an IS supply line that links territory controlled by the extremist group in Iraq and in Syria. Through the line, IS ferries fighters and supplies from Syria into Iraq.

Kerry urges Iran to help end wars in Yemen and Syria

AFP

BEIRUT: Lebanese authorities yesterday detained an Austral-ian woman for allegedly abducting her two children and an Austral-ian television crew as well as two Britons accused of involvement.

The crew were filming an oper-ation by a child recovery agency involving two young children from Australia who were in Beirut with their Lebanese father.

The two children disappeared on Wednesday while waiting for their school bus. Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces said in a statement that they had detained the Aus-tralian mother who was with her two children in Beirut.

“The woman and her two children are in ISF custody after being located in a home in Beirut 24 hours after their kidnapping,”

a source from Lebanon’s interior ministry said. The ISF had detained the four-member television crew from Channel Nine’s “60 Minutes”

programme earlier yesterday for questioning. The two children, meanwhile, were “handed to their father, based to a judicial order,”

the ISF later tweeted. It also said in a separate tweet that “five Austral-ians among them the mother, two British and two Lebanese citizens, were arrested in the kidnapping”.

The mother of the children, identified by Australian media as Sally Faulkner, has said their Lebanese father, from whom she is divorced, took them for a holi-day and then allegedly refused to return them to Australia.

“The woman made an agreement with the 60 Minutes programme from Channel Nine to come help her recover her children from Lebanon,” a security source said. The source said the children had been taken while with their grandmother and there was a plan for them to be removed from Leb-anon by boat.

Australian media said the two children are a six-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy. A grainy video of the incident released by

Lebanon’s Al Jadeed television showed the children walking with an older figure, reportedly their grandmother.

Several figures jump out of a nearby car and carry the children into the vehicle, which then speeds off. Channel Nine said that the crew had been unreachable for 15 hours but were later tracked down to a Beirut police station and put in contact with Australian con-sular officials.

“It is a relief to know that Aus-tralian officials are about to speak to them,” a network spokesman told the channel’s evening news bulletin. “The crew knew that this was a risk, going to do this story.”

Australian media named two of those held as reporter Tara Brown and producer Steven Rice.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement that the pair have been “offered all appropri-ate consular assistance”.

Lebanon detains Australian mother and TV crew1,000 Jewish settlers storm West Bank shrineRAMALLAH: Hundreds of Israeli settlers stormed a local shrine in the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday, triggering clashes with Palestinian youths.

“At least 1,150 Israeli settlers forced their way into the Joseph’s Tomb shrine under the protection of the Israeli army and performed Talmudic rituals,” Ahmed Shamekh, a senior official at the nearby Balata refu-gee camp, told Anadolu Agency. Shamekh said scores of Palestinian youths gathered to protest the storming, but Israeli soldiers responded with rubber bullets and tear gas, leaving at least three protesters injured.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces early yesterday detained four Palestinians from a number of West Bank districts, said security sources and Palestine Prisoner’s Society.

Israeli police detained Dalal Al Hashlamun, 47, after breaking into and ransacking her family house at Aqa-bat Al Khalidiya quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Al Hashlamun’s son, Tareq, told Wafa news agency that police also detained ‘Ayda Al Saydawi after storming and searching her family house in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Al-Hashlamun and al-Saydawi had been barred entry into Al-Aqsa Mosque compound for several months.

To the south of Jerusalem, in Hebron district, forces detained a Palestinian during a predawn raid into Surif town, west of Hebron city.

The detainee was identified as Talab Abu-Fara, 35.

AFP

KHARTOUM: A Sudanese court sen-tenced 22 South Sudanese to death and jailed three for life on terrorism charges for fighting with rebels in the western Darfur region, their lawyer said.

“The Khartoum North court headed

by judge Abidin Dahi sentenced 22 men to death, all of whom are citizens of South Sudan,” the head of the defence team Mahjoub Abdullah said.

All 25 had been members of a fac-tion of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement led by Bakhit Abdelkarim Dabajo, who signed a peace deal with the Sudanese government in April 2013.

His troops were disarmed and

taken to camps to be demobilised and pardoned by the government, which is where the 25 were discovered by inspectors and arrested last February because of their nationality.

The 22 sentenced to be hanged were convicted of a range of offences including waging war against the state, undermining the constitutional order and on terrorism charges.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi welcoming the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia upon his arrival at Cairo’s international airport, yesterday.

The grandmother of the kidnapped Elamine family children carries a picture of one of her grandchildren in the family home in Beirut, Lebanon, yesterday.

22 South Sudanese sentenced to death

IS attacked the town of Dmeir, east of Damascus, after suffering a series of territorial losses at the hands of regime troops in recent weeks, including in the ancient city of Palmyra.

“There is a sign for them in the lifeless earth: We give it life and We produce grain from it for them to eat; We have put gardens of date palms and grapes in the earth, and We have made springs of water gush out of it so that they could eat its fruit. It was not their own hands that made all this. How can they not give thanks? ” (Quran 36:33-36)

By Sayyid Abul A’la Mawdudi

In these brief sentences the vegetable and plant life of the earth has been presented as an argu-ment. Man is consuming the products of the earth day and night and regards this as very

ordinary. But if he considers it seriously, he will see that the growth of rich crops and lush green gar-dens from the dry earth and the flowing in it of the springs and rivers is not a simple thing, which might be happening of itself, but there is a great wisdom and power and providence which is working behind it. Consider the reality of the earth. The substances of which it is composed do not possess any power of their own for growth. All these substances indi-vidually as well as after every sort of combination, remain inorganic, and thus do not possess any sign of life. The question is: How did it become possi-ble for plant life to emerge from the lifeless earth? If one looks into it one will see that there are some important factors without whose provision before-hand life here could not have come into existence.

First, in particular regions of the earth, on its outer surface, a layer was arranged of many such substances, which could serve as food for vegeta-tion. This layer was kept soft so that the roots of the vegetation could spread in it and suck food.

Secondly, a system of irrigation was arranged on the earth in different ways so that the food ele-ments could get dissolved in water and absorbed by the roots.

Thirdly, the atmosphere was arranged around the earth which protects it against the calamities of

the sky, becomes a means of the rainfall, and pos-sesses gases which are necessary for the life and growth of the vegetation.

Fourthly, a relationship was established between the sun and the earth so as to provide proper tem-perature and suitable seasons for the vegetation.

With the provision of these main factors (which in themselves are combinations of countless other factors), the coming to life of the vegetation becomes possible. After arranging the suitable conditions the seed of each species of the vegetation was so con-stituted that as soon as it received favourable soil, water, air and season, vegetable life should begin stirring within it. Besides, inside the same seed a system was so arranged that from the seed of every species a plant precisely of the same species should grow with all the characteristics of its own species and heredity. Then, in addition to this, another won-derful thing was done. Vegetation was not created in twenty, or fifty, or a hundred kinds but in count-less species, and they were so made that they should

fulfil the requirements of food, medicine and cloth-ing and innumerable other needs of the countless kinds of animals and man, who were to be brought into being after the vegetation on the earth.

Anyone who ponders over this wonderful arrangement, if he is not stubborn and preju-diced, will himself testify that all this could not have come about by itself. There is certainly a wise plan underlying it, according to which harmonies and relationships of the soil, water, air and season with respect to the vegetation, and harmonies and relationships of the vegetation with respect to the needs and requirements of animals and human beings have been determined, keeping in view the finest detail.

No sensible person can imagine that these uni-versal, all-embracing relationships could be a mere accident. This same subtle arrangement points to the fact that this cannot be the work of many gods. This is, and can only be, the work of One God, Who is the Creator and Lord of the earth, water, air, sun, vegetation, animals and mankind. If each of these had a separate god, it cannot be imagined that such a comprehensive and universal plan with such deep and wise relationship and harmony could be pro-duced, and should have continued to work with such regularity for millions upon millions of years.

After giving these arguments for Tawhid (confirm-ing the Oneness of God the creator of the universe), Allah says: “Do they not then give thanks?” That is: “Are these people so thankless and ungrateful that they do not render thanks to that God Who has pro-vided all this for their survival, but thank others for the blessings and favours done by Him? Are they so wretched that instead of bowing before Him they bow before the false gods, who have not created even a blade of grass for them.

Sayyid Abul A’la Mawdudi (September 25, 1903 – September 22, 1979), was a Pakistani journalist, revivalist leader, political philos-opher, a major 20th century Islamic thinker and the founder of Jamaate-Islami.

Narrated By Abu Huraira : While the Prophet (peace be upon him) was saying something in a gathering, a Bedouin came and asked him, “When would the Hour (Doomsday) take place?” Allah’s Apostle continued his talk, so some people said that Allah’s Apostle had heard the question, but did not like what that Bedouin had asked. Some of them said that Alllah’s Apostle had not heard it. When the Prophet finished his speech, he said, “Where is the questioner, who enquired about the Hour (Doomsday)?” The Bedouin said, “I am here, O Allah’s Apostle.” Then the Prophet (PBUH) said, “When honesty is lost, then wait for the Hour (Doomsday).” The Bedouin said, “How will that be lost?” The Prophet said, “When the power or authority comes in the hands of unfit persons, then wait for the Hour (Doomsday.)”

(Bukhari)

The Authority Of Al Numan bin Basheer: I heared the messenger of Allah (PBUH) saying: “That which is lawful is plain and that which is unlawful is plain and between the two of them are doubtful matters about which not many people know. Thus he who avoids doubtful matters clears himself in regard to his religion and his honour, but he who falls into doubtful matters falls into that which is unlawful, like the shepherd who pastures around a sanctuary, all but grazing therein. Truly every king has a sanctuary, and truly Allah’s sanctuary is His prohibitions. Truly in the body there is a morsel of flesh which, if it be whole, all the body is whole and which, if it be diseased, all of it is diseased. Truly it is the heart.”

(Bukhari & Muslim)

Narrated By Imran ibn Husain : The Prophet (PBUH) said: If anyone swears a false oath in confinement, he should make his seat in Hell on account of his act.

(Abudawud)

By Aslam Abdullah

In the intricate path of life, when difficulties and hardships con-front a person, it is patience that acts as a light for Muslims, that

keeps them safe from wandering, and saves them from the muddy mire of disappointment, desperation, and frus-tration. Patience is such a basic quality that Muslims require it to shape their life in this world.

Only when armed with patience should they attend to work. They should make it a torchlight for guiding their way, else they will suffer defeat in the field of life. They should prepare themselves to tolerate hardships and difficulties, and should not complain unduly. They should not sit idly. They should not run away from responsibil-ities, whatever they may be. No doubts and misgivings, no hardship or trouble should prompt their intellect to indulge in violence. They should have plenty of self-confidence. They should not be frightened by the dark clouds appearing on the horizon of life; nay, they should be fully sure that these clouds of adver-sities and hardships will disappear, and the clear and bright atmosphere of success and glory will appear again. Therefore, the demand of wisdom and farsightedness is that its coming should be awaited with patience, peace, and conviction.

Almighty God stresses the point sufficiently that people cannot escape tests and trials, so that they may remain alert and ready at the time when these hardships and difficulties descend on them. They should not be frightened by these tribulations, and need not be disappointed and disheartened:

“And verily We shall try you till We know those of you who strive hard (in the cause of Allah) and the stead-fast, and till We test your record.”

(Quran 47: 31)An Arab poet has echoed the same

idea in these words: “We had antici-pated the hardships of the night before their coming. So when they descended, there was no addition to our knowledge.” Undoubtedly, if people face accidents and debacles with clear sight and full preparation, they will stabilise their con-ditions and consolidate their positions.

Patience relies on two important realities. The first reality is concerned with the nature of this worldly life. Its details are: Allah has not made this world a house of peace and satisfaction

or of rewards and recompense, but He has made it a house of trials. The time that people spend in this world is really a time for unending experience. They come out of one trial in order to undergo another which is harder; that is, people are tested once by one thing and again by its opposite, as iron is first heated in the fire and then plunged into water. Similarly, people are tested by favourable as well as opposing means.

When Allah blessed Prophet Sulaiman ( peace and blessings of God be upon him) with a grand and mag-nificent empire, he knew about these natural laws of the world. He said :

“This is of the bounty of my Lord, that He may try me whether I give thanks or am ungrateful. Whoever gives thanks, he only gives thanks for (the good of) his own soul; and whoever is ungrateful (is ungrateful if only to his own soul’s hurt). For surely, my Lord is absolute in inde-pendence, bountiful.” (Quran 16:40)

The causes of trial through sadness and hardship are vague and unfixed. However, we can understand them

properly by the example of the sol-diers fighting in the battlefield. In the battlefield some groups are made to fight till they have to lose their val-uable lives, so that the lives of other groups may be saved. The security of others is dependent on the remaining groups being made to fight in new bat-tles. This strategy is followed for the wider interest of the society and for greater advantages, by the great lead-ership of the army.

In this fighting the individual life of one person has no importance, because the problem is much wider. So it is with luck or fate. People may be put to different kinds of trials, till they fall down defeated, as there is no other way for them, except that they should greet the hardship that has arrived with patience and submission. Since this life is a testing ground, we should strive hard for success in it.

What is the trial or examination of life ? It consists of the hardships and difficulties that confront people, and which open before them the paths of

fright, terror, and frustration. Exami-nation comes in the name of plaguing defects that prompt people to be jeal-ous and to nourish rancour against their sincere friend. Examination is the name of the tyranny in which sometimes a nation occupies the place of God and people offer their blood as sacrifice for retrieving their usurped rights. The his-tory of life on this earth from the first day till today is very sorrowful. The right thing is that people should make their own way in this life, though they can be sure that the way to their destination is full of thorns and murk.

The second reality is concerned with the nature and temperament of faith. Faith is the name of the relation-ship between human beings and their Lord. As in the relationship of people, true friendship and sincerity can only be judged when it is confronted with unfavourable and bitter conditions, when they have to deal with the hard-ships brought about by the vagaries of time, and when they are surrounded by various problems. At such a time a

person’s real worth and sincerity are known. Exactly, similar is the case of faith. To find out the truth and sincerity about faith, it is necessary that Muslims be tried. They should be put in the cru-cible of fire to see whether they come out glowing like gold or whether they will be burnt away with impurities.

“Do people imagine that they will be left (at ease), because they say We believe and will not be tested with afflic-tion? Verily, We tested those who were before you. Thus, Allah knows those who are sincere and knows those who feign.” (Quran 29:2-3)

Undoubtedly, Allah’s knowledge covers all manifest and concealed mat-ters, and from this examination there will be no addition to His knowledge, because He knows all the conditions from the beginning till the end. Divine knowledge cannot be made a basis for human beings’ reckoning. Their reckoning will be on the basis of their own personal deeds. If some criminals deny their crimes, then on the day of judgment sufficient proof can only be

brought against them by God’s tribu-nal in which peoples’ own body may give evidence against them.

About such people the Quran has this to say: “And on the day We gather them together, We shall say to those who ascribed partners (to Allah), ‘Where are (now) those partners of your make believe?’Then they will have no conten-tion except that they will say “By Allah, our Lord, we never were idolaters.” See how they lie against themselves, and (how) the thing which they devised has failed them.” (Quran 6:22-24)

How can the reckoning of such criminals be taken in the light of divine knowledge? Their justifiable retribu-tion will be proper only when all their misdeeds are placed before them. Their efforts and striving to create corruption and mischief among others and all their misdeeds will be reviewed before them. On these two bases the foundation of patience has been set. And for this rea-son religion demands it, but those who shut their eyes from reality by force of their nature are dumfounded when they have to face hardships, and their hands and feet become inactive when they have to fight difficulties. Their rashness dislike waiting and patience, and they are unable to tolerate them. Therefore, when anything untoward happens, or they have to suffer some kind of failure, or when they meet with an accident, the earth with all its great vastness becomes narrow for them, and the conditions become exasper-ating. They want to come out of these conditions in the twinkling of an eye, but it is obvious that in this effort they will not be successful, for it is against the temperament of the world and reli-gion. It is proper for a Muslim to learn to be patient, to wait, and to wait long. “Man is made of haste. I shall show you my signs, but ask Me not to has-ten.” (Quran 21:37)

(Excerpted from the book “Morals and Manners: An Islamic Perspec-tive” by Aslam Abdullah)

www.islamicity.org

The demand of patience

Are we grateful to God?No sensible person can

imagine that these universal,

all-embracing relationships

could be a mere accident.

This same subtle arrangement

points to the fact that this

cannot be the work of many

gods. This is, and can only

be, the work of One God,

Who is the Creator and Lord

of the earth, water, air, sun,

vegetation, animals and

mankind.

Sayings of the Prophet

It is patience that acts as a light for believers, that keeps them safe from wandering, and saves them from the muddy mire of disappointment, desperation and frustration. Patience is such a basic quality that Muslims require it to shape their lives in this world.

ISLAM04 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

Two students’

throats cut for

real in play WELLINGTON: Two pupils at an exclusive New Zealand school were hospitalised with neck wounds when a produc-tion of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” became all too real, officials said yesterday.

The 16-year-old boys were taking part in the musical about a murder-ous barber who slits his victims’ throats when they were hurt on Wednesday night, Saint Kentigern’s College said.

College head Steve Cole said the boys necks were cut when a prop malfunctioned.

Missing jet of

Japan Air

Force found TOKYO: Search and res-cue teams believe they’ve found the wreckage of an Air Self-Defence Force jet that went missing in southwestern Japan.

Japan’s Defence Min-istry said that debris was spotted in a mountain val-ley. Six people were found nearby showing no vital signs, according to Japan’s (NHK WORLD) radio.

The plane with six crewmembers disap-peared from radar shortly after it took off from a base in Kagoshima Pre-fecture on Wednesday.

Activist killed in

BangladeshDHAKA: A Bangladeshi law student who posted against Islamism on his Facebook page has been murdered, police said yesterday, the latest in a series of killings of secular activists and bloggers in the country.

Nazimuddin Samad, a 26-year-old atheist who had taken part in protests against Islam-ist leaders, was attacked late on Wednesday near his university in Dhaka by unknown assailants carry-ing machetes.

Imran Sarker, who leads Bangladesh’s larg-est online secular activist group, said Samad had joined nationwide pro-tests in 2013 against top Islamist leaders accused of committing war crimes.

At least four athe-ist bloggers and a secular publisher were hacked to death last year.

Anatolia

PHILIPPINES: An army official has confirmed the return of over 9,000 Muslim families to villages in five towns where government troops fought an almost month-long bat-tle against Daesh-aligned rebels in the strife-torn southern Philippines province of Maguindanao.

Army spokesperson Capt. Jo-ann Petinglay said yesterday that around 9,104 families had returned to vil-lages where firefights raged for weeks after Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) tried to stop a private construction company February 5 from working on a P58 million flood control project.

BIFF is a breakaway group of the Philippines’ one-time largest rebel group -- the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) -- which is currently involved in a longstanding peace proc-ess with the Philippines government.

The month-long fighting left two

soldiers and several rebels dead. In a text message, Petinglay said

that BIFF gunmen opened fire on gov-ernment forces gathered Wednesday at the village of Tee -- situated in Maguindanao, a bastion of the MILF -- to raise the Philippine flag.

Petinglay added that security forces and local officials had escorted the displaced families to their villages after the flag was hoisted at a former stronghold of BIFF captured by troops during the month-long hostilities.

The state-run Philippines News Agency (PNA) reported Wednesday that as the government caravan arrived in the village, rebels from across a river opened fire, sparking a 30-minute firefight.

Only after the Army shelled them with artillery did the BIFF forces -- which have claimed allegiance to Daesh -- withdraw.

Maj. Gen. Edmundo Pangilinan told local residents that the govern-ment will protect them and the flood project aimed at saving farming vil-lages from floods during the rainy season.

“Once it is completed, our soldiers will leave the area,” Pangilinan said.

He said government soldiers had offered their lives and limbs in pro-tecting the community from bandits, even suffering death and injuries.

“We are working with the pro-vincial government to make this community free from lawlessness, we will help rebuild schools because your children will benefit from it and they need it,” he said.

The BIFF broke away from MILF in 2011 due to differences with the MILF leadership in handling the peace negotiations with the government, which are aimed at bringing an end to a separatist conflict that has killed around 150,000 people.

9100 families back home in Maguindanao Security forces and local officials had escorted the displaced families to their villages after the flag was hoisted at a former stronghold of BIFF captured by troops during the month-long hostilities.

American soldiers interact with students during “My teacher, my soldier” programme wherein Filipino and American soldiers teach and distribute books to students as part of 2016 Balikatan exercise held at (WESCOM) Western Command School in Palawan, yesterday.

My teacher, my soldier

AFP

DHAKA: Bangladesh police probing an audacious $81m heist from a central bank account have found suspicious malware in the bank’s computer sys-tems that was sending information to Egypt, an officer said yesterday.

Hackers stole the money from the Bangladesh Bank’s account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on February 5 and managed to trans-fer it electronically to accounts in the Philippines.

Investigator Shah Alam said the malware just discovered in the Bangladesh Bank’s main servers had allowed information to be sent to an email address in Egypt for more than

seven hours at the time of the theft.“We sought help from our Egyp-

tian counterparts to find out the real person who was using that IP address during that period,” Alam said.

Alam gave no further details, but an investigator said on condition of ano-nymity that they were seeking clarity on whether the computer in Egypt was being hacked from a third country.

Bangladesh Bank spokesman Sub-hankar Saha said he was not aware of the presence of any Egyptian-linked malware.

The finding has complicated the probe into the heist.

It has sent shockwaves through the banking world and seen Bang-ladesh investigators seek help from at least three countries.

The central bank governor and

his two deputies lost their jobs fol-lowing the theft which has hugely embarrassed the government and raised alarm over the security of the country’s foreign exchange reserves of over $27bn.

The unidentified hackers man-aged to shift $81m from the account to a nondescript bank in Manila and then on to Philippine casinos before the trail went cold.

They attempted to steal a further $850m by bombarding the New York bank with dozens of transfer requests, but the bank’s security systems and typing errors in some requests pre-vented the full theft.

The FBI and Interpol are assisting with the Bangladesh investigation, and some Bangladesh officers are now in the Philippines as part of the probe.

Bangladesh finds Egypt-linked

malware after bank heist

Reuters

BANGKOK: Politicians must love their people or risk the extinction of democ-racy, Thailand’s fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told a gathering of supporters yesterday, warning that Thais face tough times because of a weak economy.

In recent months, Thaksin, who was ousted by the army in 2006, has been increasingly vocal in his criti-cism of the ruling military government.

“Those in politics must love people. If they don’t love people, democracy will die,” Thaksin said in a Skype tel-ephone address to the gathering to mark the Thai New Year that starts next week. He did not elaborate on his remarks, however.

The meeting of more than 100 former politicians was a rare event in a country where political gatherings of

five or more people have been banned by the military, which seized power in a coup in May 2014.

No troops were present at the gath-ering. Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy is slowly recovering from the events of 2014, when months of street protests and the coup brought the economy to a standstill.

“Right now our people are in a dif-ficult position because the economy is weak,” Thaksin added in his speech.

Junta spokesman Colonel Winthai Suvaree declined to comment on Thak-sin’s speech, saying he had not yet heard, or read, the remarks.

Thursday’s gathering was seen by critics as a continuation of a publicity drive by Thaksin and his sister Yingluck, which has included the distribution of books, a cooking display and inter-views with foreign media.

Last week Thaksin said the gov-ernment should focus on dealing with the country’s problems after soldiers

seized thousands of red plastic bowls he and Yingluck sent supporters as a New Year gift.

Thailand has been politically fractured for more than a decade, split roughly along north-south lines between supporters of Thaksin and Yingluck and the military-backed royalist elite. The generals and their establishment allies largely despise Thaksin and accuse him of vote-buying and harbouring republican sympa-thies, among other accusations, all of which he denies.

The Songkran holiday, Thailand’s traditional New Year, is typically a time when many people leave the city to spend time with family.

In previous years the festival has been marred by often violent political protests, including anti-government protests in April and May 2010 that ended with a military crackdown in which 91 people were killed, mostly Thaksin supporters.

Former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra takes part in a Songkran festival celebration with opposition Puea Thai party members at the party headquarters in Bangkok, yesterday.

Ex- Thai PM Thaksin warns over democracy and economy

AFP

YANGON: Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday vowed to press for the release of political prisoners and student activists, hinting that a mass amnesty may be imminent as her government seeks to stamp its mark on power in the former junta-run nation.

Suu Kyi’s administration, stacked full of democracy activists who spent years incarcerated by the military, took power last week ending nearly half a century of repressive army domination.

In her first statement since assum-ing a new broadly-defined role as state counsellor, Suu Kyi said: “I am going to try... for the immediate release of polit-ical prisoners, political activists and students facing trial related to politics”.

The routine jailing of dissidents was one of the most egregious acts of

the former junta, stirring international outcry and support for Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy movement.

Suu Kyi herself spent some 15 years under house arrest, while many cur-rent National League for Democracy lawmakers served time in the coun-try’s notorious prisons.

While the quasi-civilian govern-ment that replaced the junta in 2011 freed hundreds of political detainees, it also oversaw the detention of scores more, particularly those involved in land and education protests.

According to the Assistance Associa-tion for Political Prisoners, 90 political prisoners were in jail and more than 400 activists were facing trial as of Feb-ruary. The vast majority were arrested before last November’s landmark elec-tions, which Suu Kyi’s NLD won in a landslide.

Among them are some 40 stu-dents facing a mix of charges including

unlawful assembly and rioting over education reform protests in March 2015 that were violently broken up by baton-wielding police in the central town of Letpadan.

Another 30 or so students are on bail but facing similar charges.

Suu Kyi is barred from the pres-idency by the junta-era constitution and has anointed her school friend and close aide Htin Kyaw to act as her effective proxy.

That means she does not have the direct power to order an amnesty.

But the role of state counsellor, which she was officially given to her by Pres-ident Htin Kyaw on Wednesday, allows her to liaise between the executive and legislative branches.

The position was specially crafted for the leader by MPs from her party and is expected to help Suu Kyi live up to a pre-election vow to rule “above” Myanmar’s president.

Suu Kyi to press for political prisoners’ release

Kyrgyz servicemen take part in a commemoration at the ‘Ata-Beyit’ memorial complex for the victims of the 2010 violent revolt, some 20km outside of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, yesterday.

Tribute to victims

ASIA / PHILIPPINES 05FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

Fiji spared as

Tropical Cyclone

Zena weakensSUVA: Fiji lifted emer-gency restrictions yesterday after the Pacific nation avoided a direct hit from Tropical Cyclone Zena and the storm weakened as it moved offshore.

Authorities had imposed a nationwide curfew as Zena bore down on the main island Viti Levu overnight Wednes-day, fearing a repeat of super cyclone Winston. But meteorologists said Zena weakened.

5 charged over

Taiwan building

collapseTAIPEI: Five people were charged yesterday over the deadly collapse of an apartment block in Taiwan during an earthquake, including the building’s owner, with prosecutors saying “corners were cut” which made the complex dangerous.

The collapse of the Wei-kuan building dur-ing the 6.4 magnitude quake in the southern city of Tainan in February left 115 dead. It was the only high-rise to crumble com-pletely, with questions raised over shoddy build-ing methods.

Reuters

HANOI: Vietnam demanded China to move a controversial oil rig yes-terday and abandon plans to start drilling in waters where jurisdiction is unclear, the latest sign of festering unease among the two communist neighbours.

The $1bn rig, which was at the

centre of a fierce diplomatic stand-off between the countries in 2014, had moved into an area of the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea about which Vietnam said the two coun-tries were still “executing delineation discussions”.

China calls the rig Haiyang Shi-you 981. Vietnam refers to it as Hai Duong 981.

“Vietnam resolutely opposes and demands China cancel its plan to drill and immediately remove the Hai Duong 981 oil rig out of this area,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said in a statement on the gov-ernment’s news website.

China claims most of the resource-rich South China Sea amid rival claims by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

China, Binh said, should take “no further unilateral actions that further complicate the situation, and make practical contributions to peace and stability”.

Two years ago, China parked the rig for 10 weeks in waters Vietnam considers its exclusive economic

zone, triggering their worst row in decades and an outcry among Viet-namese nationalists.

Many experts call the move a mis-calculation by Beijing that played into the hands of the United States. Since the row, Vietnam has become closer to Washington than ever before.

Vietnam closely tracks the move-ment of the oil rig which has operated as far away as the Bay of Bengal and has been close to disputed waters sev-eral times since 2014.

It was the second occasion this year that Vietnam has protested against the rig’s activity, both times coincid-ing with leadership changes in Hanoi.

Vietnam swore in a new prime minister on Thursday and a new pres-ident last week. Its previous complaint about the rig was in January, two-days before the start of its Communist Par-ty’s five-yearly congress.

Binh also criticised China’s deci-sion to start operating a lighthouse on one of its artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago, which he said violated Vietnam’s sovereignty and was “illegal and worthless”.

Indonesian marine police unload sea turtles from a boat which they seized from illegal poachers, in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, yesterday. Forty-five sea turtles have reportedly been seized from the illegal poachers by the naval police.

Sea turtles seized from poachers

China must shift its rig in disputed sea: Vietnam The $1bn rig had moved into an area of the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea about which Vietnam said the two countries were still executing delineation discussions.

Chinese oil rig Haiyang Shi You-981 is seen in the South China Sea off the shore of Vietnam.

AFP

HANOI:Vietnam’s parliament approved Nguyen Xuan Phuc as the communist country’s new prime min-ister yesterday, handing him a five-year term and a range of tough challenges from domestic economic reforms to a simmering maritime dispute with China.

Phuc, a former deputy prime minis-ter, was the only candidate nominated for the position by party officials ear-lier this year and won 90.26 percent of the votes in the rubber stamp par-liament, according to state-run VTV.

“I will do my best to serve the coun-try and people,” said the 61-year-old, whose election marks the completion of a five-yearly reshuffle of the Com-munist Party’s top brass.

Phuc takes over from former prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung, a char-ismatic leader who championed a reformist pro-business agenda and talked tough to Beijing over a terri-torial dispute in the contested South China Sea.

Dung lost out in internal party elections in January, which analysts called a move back towards more

consensus-based rule by the party’s conservative wing.

“Dung was an individualist work-ing within a conservative system of collective leadership. His demise is evi-dence that Vietnam is not yet ready for a modern, world savvy, prime minister,” Vietnam expert Carl Thayer told AFP.

Authoritarian Vietnam is run by the Communist Party and officially led by a triumvirate of the party sec-retary general, president, and prime minister, with key decisions being made by the 19-member politburo.

Top communist leader Nguyen Phu Trong was reelected in January as party secretary general in a vic-tory for the party’s old guard.

On Saturday, the National Assem-bly approved a top police general, Tran Dai Quang, as president -- a key if largely ceremonial role.

New Prime Minister Phuc is “a competent technocrat” and will stick to the party line, Thayer said. “Phuc does not have the charisma of Dung. He will be a team player,” he added.

Even senior party members greeted Phuc’s election Thursday with a luke-warm reaction. Communist Party veteran Tran Tuan Hung, 76, expressed concern over the financial troubles the new premier has inherited.

“How can he resolve public debt, budget deficits and corruption? I don’t rely or expect much from him,” he said.

Army General Nguyen Trong Vinh also told AFP the new leader was “noth-ing special” and that he did not expect much change under his watch.

In the past, the leadership hando-ver was decided at the party congress in January but took up to six months to be confirmed by the National Assembly.

Analysts say the process has moved more quickly this year, partly because several top leaders are retiring from politics, and also because of an upcom-ing visit by US President Barack Obama in May. “The new leadership is anx-ious to dismantle (former PM) Dung’s network and gain prestige in the eyes of ordinary Vietnamese by meeting and greeting world leaders,” Thayer told AFP, adding that rising tensions with China has added to the urgency.

Well-known dissident Nguyen Thanh Giang, who spent time in jail for his criticism of the party in the 1990s, called Phuc’s appointment a “step backwards” from Dung.

“Phuc is not comparable in terms of competence, experience, interna-tional image. He has no international reputation and will need a lot of time to develop one,” he said.

Nguyen Xuan Phuc takes the oath of office after being elected new Prime Minister by Vietnam’s Parliament, in Hanoi, Vietnam, yesterday.

Xuan sworn in as Vietnam PM

AFP

JOHANNESBURG: With South African President Jacob Zuma facing growing calls to resign over a series of corrup-tion scandals, attention is turning to one potential contender to succeed him -- his former wife.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, 67 (pictured), is a long-standing heav-yweight in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, holding several ministerial positions since the end of white-minority rule in 1994.

Confirmation last week that Dlamini-Zuma will not run for re-election as head of the African Union

(AU) Commission fuelled rumours that she may position herself for a shot at the top job back home.

Her high-profile term running the executive branch of the AU, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethio-pia, comes to an end in July after four years in the international spotlight.

“There is no doubt that some behind-doors lobbying on her behalf is already underway,” Mcebisi Ndle-tyana, associate professor of political science at the University of Johannes-burg, said. After failing in their bid to impeach him this week, Zuma’s oppo-nents now hope to prosecute him on graft charges after he leaves office, and the advantages of having his ex-wife -- with whom he remains on good

terms -- succeeding him are clear.“It may provide a bit of comfort,

because I don’t think that she would like to see the father of her children jailed,” Ndletyana said. But Dlamini-Zuma’s name recognition also presents a dilemma to the ANC.

Zuma’s ex-wife touted as possible

South African presidentAFP

KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian par-liamentary report released yesterday said a state-owned fund linked to Prime Minister Najib Razak made more than $3bn in unexplained over-seas payments and called for the fund’s former CEO to be investigated.

The report presented to parlia-ment by its Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which has examined the affair, marked the first time an official Malaysian probe has clearly sug-gested misconduct and recommended action in a scandal that has deeply tainted Najib.

Najib, who founded 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) in 2009, has for months battled allegations that billions were looted from the invest-ment vehicle in a vast campaign of fraud and embezzlement stretching from the Middle East to the Caymans.

The PAC said more than $3bn in unapproved overseas payments were made from 1MDB funds.

It chastised the now debt-stricken company for “weaknesses” in man-agement under the 2009-2013 tenure of former CEO Shahrol Azral Ibra-him Halmi.

“As such, enforcement agencies are asked to investigate Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi and anyone else related,” the 106-page report said.

It made no further specific rec-ommendations on investigations and did not mention Najib, who still chairs 1MDB’s advisory board.

Najib, 62, and 1MDB have con-sistently denied wrongdoing. In a statement, Najib vowed to “act on the report’s recommendations”.

“We must ensure that lessons are learned, and action will be taken if any evidence of wrongdoing is found,” he said. He did not address the ques-tionable payments.

The report comes as the Pan-ama Papers, a vast trove of leaked documents related to a Panama law firm allegedly helping the rich hide assets offshore, has dramatically put financial probity under the spotlight, although Najib has not been impli-cated in the scandal.

1MDB’s board of directors -- which does not include Najib -- released a statement repeating its assertion that all 1MDB funds “have been fully accounted for” but adding that the entire board would resign, which the committee recommended. The report did not go nearly as far as many who have alleged blatant graft, but 1MDB opponents nonetheless seized on it.

Tony Pua, an opposition PAC mem-ber, released a statement saying 1MDB critics have been “vindicated”.

It remains unclear whether the committee’s recommendations will hurt Najib.

The premier has faced a cascade of corruption allegations stemming from 1MDB’s troubles and his own admitted acceptance of a mysteri-ous $681m overseas payment into his own bank accounts.

But since the twin scandals erupted last year, he has weathered them by curbing scrutiny by author-ities, purging officials demanding accountability, and stifling media reporting.

The parliamentary committee cited a range of questionable money movements, particularly more than $3bn it said went to Aabar Invest-ments PJS Ltd.

A Wall Street Journal expose last year said Aabar was likely a shell com-pany created to resemble an Abu Dhabi wealth fund with a similar name.

Authorities in Switzerland, the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong and elsewhere are investigating globe-spanning money transfers linked to 1MDB, with the Swiss saying $4bn may have been stolen.

Inquiry finds billions in murky

payments by Malaysian fund

ASIA / AFRICA06 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

Afghan soldiers take positions at a check-post in Babaji area of restive Helmand province, Afghanistan, yesterday. Over the past six months the Taliban forces have gradually taken control of all but three districts in the Helmand province.

Afghan soldiers in Helmand

Afghan spy

captured in

PakistanQUETTA: Pakistani secu-rity forces yesterday claimed to have arrested an alleged agent of Afghanistan’s top spy-ing agency in Chaman and seized a huge quantity of arms and ammuni-tion found at two places in town.

According to official sources, personnel of the Frontier Corps and intel-ligence agencies raided a house in Boghara area of the border town and arrested the man said to be an agent of Afghani-stan’s espionage agency, National Directorate of Security.

Free WiFi

for public in

Lahore soonLAHORE: Punjab Infor-mation Technology Board (PITB) Chairman Umar Saif said yesterday a free WiFi access for the pub-lic was on the cards. Saif made the announcement through his social media page.

He said the service would be extended to Multan and Rawalpindi as well. An official of the PITB said arrangements for the free WiFi had been completed. “The free WiFi service will be availa-ble at 115 public places in the city,” he said. “These include 12 parks, 17 mar-kets, metro bus stations and 20 colleges and uni-versities, the City railway station and the airport.”

Reuters

PARIS: Pakistan wants to upgrade its ageing fleet of fighter jets in antici-pation of a prolonged battle against Islamist militants, although the pur-chase of fifth-generation planes would only be a last resort, a senior air force official said.

US ally Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 180 million people, is fighting a Taliban insurgency in its northwest, a separatist insurgency along its Ira-nian border in the west, and has a heavily militarised and disputed bor-der with arch rival India in the east.

In 2014, the military launched a crackdown in the northwestern areas of North and South Waziristan and has managed to push back militants into a few pockets. But its air force, which will need to retire dozens of jets over the coming years, lacks the lat-est technology and relies heavily on a

fleet of about 70 US-made Lockheed Martin F-16s, which are solely capable of carrying out precision targeting.

“Our concern is that we don’t know how long these anti-terrorist oper-ations will continue,” Pakistan Air Force second-in-command Muham-mad Ashfaque Arain said. “We have weakened them (militants) to a great extent, but I don’t see an end in the very near future, so all the burden is being shared by the F-16s and its pilots.”

Sceptics suspect that Pakistan’s military is seeking an improved arse-nal to counter the growing military might of India, its eastern neighbour. The two countries have fought three wars since their violent separation in 1947 at the end of British colonial rule.

Pakistan’s fleet also includes hundreds of Dassault Aviation French-made Mirage jets that are over 40 years old and F7 Chinese warplanes that are over 25 years old, both of which the air force plans to retire over the next few years. To fill the void, Islam-abad has decided to bet on the JF-17 fighter, jointly developed by China and Pakistan, rather than spending billions on fifth-generation multi-role aircraft like Dassault’s Rafale, which rival India is buying, or the Russian Su-35.

That option, Arain said, had almost been ruled out for being too expensive and because Pakistan did not want to mix technologies and resources. It would only be reconsidered if “it was pushed against a wall”.

Instead, 16 JF-17s will be produced this year with a further 20 in 2017, but Arain acknowledged that the jets’ usefulness in current operations was limited because it lacks precision tar-geting. Previous negotiations in 2010 for a deal worth $1.6bn worth of elec-tronics and missiles collapsed under pressure from India.

Internews

ISLAMABAD: A special parliamentary committee of Pakistan made a signif-icant breakthrough yesterday when the government and the opposition agreed on a draft of the controversial bill seeking to convert the Pakistan International Airline (PIA) into a lim-ited company.

The opposition parties linked their vote for the bill during a joint sitting of parliament on April 11 to the with-drawal of termination notices issued to at least 12 PIA employees for bring-ing the airline’s operations to a halt

during the protest in February against the proposed law.

The accord on the PIAC (Conver-sion) Bill 2016 was reached within a few minutes of the arrival of Finance Min-ister Ishaq Dar, who had been specially called for the meeting. The opposi-tion members were of the opinion that the language was not in line with the assurance given by the finance min-ister at the committee’s last meeting on March 29.

Dar not only agreed to include major amendments suggested jointly by the PPP and PTI that the proposed law would not be used as a tool in future to privatise the national carrier, but he also proposed that the draft should

restrict the government from divest-ing more than 49 per cent shares of the airline.

The committee agreed to approve the bill with a major amendment stat-ing that the management control of PIA would remain with the federal government. However, after a lengthy discussion the two sides agreed on the wording of the amendment with an explanation as suggested by Dar.

The agreed amendment says that “the management control of the air-line and its subsidiaries will remain with the Board of Directors which shall have representation in proportion to the shareholdings” and that no more than 49pc shares will be divested.

AFP

ISLAMABAD: Six endangered new-born Pakistani Urials stolen from their mother have been recovered, officials said yesterday, in a case that has left a pair of local policemen accused of kid-napping them feeling rather sheepish.

The three male and three female lambs were illegally picked up from the Jhelum district of central Punjab province, where around 2,500 are thought to roam in the wild.

The Punjab Urial, known for their curved horns which keep growing throughout their lives, are listed as “endangered” according to the World

Wildlife Fund for Nature in Pakistan, and are mainly threatened by deg-radation of their habitats as well as poaching.

Pakistanis are forbidden from hunting them, though sixteen per-mits are issued each year to foreigners, who must pay $16,500 for the privilege.

Rana Shahbaz, a senior local wild-life official, told AFP the lambs had been taken from the Salt Range by two local policemen who are believed to have been hired by a well-to-do cli-ent -- described as a judge by local daily Dawn.

“The lambs are very sensitive, and when they are taken from their moth-ers they often die,” he said.

“But when we recovered them we

kept them at our check post, they were fed properly and later they were pro-duced before a court, which ordered them to be sent to the Lahore Zoo.”

They were later pictured frolick-ing at the zoo. Mujahid Akbar Khan, the local police chief, confirmed the case adding that the two policemen had been suspended. “An investiga-tion is underway,” he added.

Pakistan is home to stunning range of wildlife including snow leopards, shaheen falcons and Indus dolphins.

But an exploding population cur-rently around 200 million, and a lack of awareness around conservation has led to the destruction of habitats and forests and endangerment of numer-ous species.

Internews

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has assailed the double standards practiced by some states which preach nuclear disarma-ment but fail to take necessary steps themselves.

Speaking in a session of the UN Dis-armament Commission a subsidiary of the General Assembly Ambassador MaleehaLodhi said that a handful of nuclear weapon states advocate absti-nence for others but are unwilling to give up their large inventories of nuclear weapons or their modernization.

This doublespeak has only aggra-vated the sense of insecurity among other states, she told the 35-member commission.

Instead of fulfilling their legal dis-armament obligations these States have almost exclusively pursued

non-proliferation with messianic zeal, the Pakistani envoy said and added that this gap between legality and real-ity has eroded the global faith in the mutually reinforcing nature of these processes.

Ambassador Lodhi said that some nuclear weapon states have also concluded discriminatory nuclear cooperation agreements and helped grant waivers in an unfortunate depar-ture from long held non-proliferation principles.

She said progress towards nuclear disarmament is being delayed and hin-dered by some who wish to divert the Conference on Disarmament’s focus to partial non-proliferation measures such as a Fissile Materials Cut Off Treaty (FMCT). Reiterating Pakistan’s posi-tion on the FMCT, she said a treaty that is discriminatory in nature and does not address the existing stock-piles of fissile material would impinge

on the security of some states while being cost-free for those with the larg-est amounts of fissile stocks.

She pointed out that claims by some that an FMCT would put a quantitative cap on nuclear weapons were false.

The reasons she said were self-evident because the vast stockpiles of fissile material coupled with the con-tinued unsafeguarded production for civilian and non-explosive military purposes provide a ready reserve of fissile material that could be weap-onized at will.

Ambassador Lodhi said that there was no provision in the treaty favoured by some states that would constrain a quantitative or qualitative increase in nuclear weapons.Pakistan there-fore cannot support an unequal treaty that has direct implications for our national security, she added.

Ambassador Lodhi also explained that as a responsible nuclear state

Pakistan’s nuclear policy is shaped by the evolving security dynamics in South Asia. Our nuclear capability is geared towards assuring our security and self-defense based on credible minimum deterrence, she added.

She quoted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s address to the General Assem-bly last year in which he said Pakistan neither wants to nor is engaged in an arms race in South Asia.

Ambassador Lodhi stressed that double standards were not only evi-dent on nuclear issues but also in the area of conventional arms. The Paki-stani envoy said it was a grim irony that weapons which propel and sustain conflicts come from areas or regions that enjoy peace.

Only four countries account for two thirds of global arms exports while major importers are developing coun-tries mainly in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Pakistan keen to upgrade its Air Force Its Air Force, which will need to retire dozens of jets over the coming years, lacks the latest technology and relies heavily on a fleet of about 70 US-made Lockheed Martin F-16s, which are solely capable of carrying out precision targeting.

Government and opposition agree

on international airline bill

Newborn urials, recovered after been stolen, are seen in an enclosure at a zoo in Lahore, yesterday.

Six endangered newborn sheep recovered: Official

Pakistan criticises double standards on N-disarmament

An Afghan horseman watches as a horse rolls in the dust as others are prepared to take part in a buzkashi match to mark celebrations for the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, in Mazar-i-Sharif, yesterday.

Buzkashi match

PAKISTAN 07FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

Congress President Sonia Gandhi walks with the Special Protection Group personnel (SPG) as she arrives to address an election rally in Morigaon district of Assam, yesterday. Thousands of voters will elect legislators for the second phase of Assam state polls on Monday.

Assam elections

IANS

NEW DELHI: Pakistan yesterday said the dialogue process with India had been suspended and there was no question of allowing an NIA team to visit Islamabad to probe the Pathankot terror attack.

Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit also said that the arrest of an alleged Indian spy, Kulbushan Jadhav, proved Islamabad’s allega-tions that New Delhi was causing unrest in Balochistan.

Asked at the Foreign Correspond-ents Club about a meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two coun-tries, Basit said: “There is no meeting scheduled for now. I think at present the peace process is suspended.

“India is not ready as yet,” Basit said, but quickly added that “we can only resolve issues through dialogue”.

This is the first official word from Pakistan about the latest breakdown in the now-on-now-off peace proc-ess with India.

After a team of Pakistani offi-cials visited Pathankot to probe Indian charges that Pakistani ter-rorists were to blame for the January 2 attack, New Delhi had expected Islamabad to allow a National Investi-gation Agency (NIA) team to visit that country to take the investigation for-ward. Basit ruled out the possibility.

“The investigation (into the Pathankot attack) is not about reci-procity,” he said. Earlier, reading out a prepared statement, Basit referred to the arrest of alleged Indian spy Jad-hav in Balochistan last month and said that it “irrefutably corroborates what Pakistan has been saying all along”.

“We are aware of all those who seek to create unrest in Pakistan and destabilise the country. They are bound to fail.”

He said Pakistan had arrested scores of terror operatives with “for-eign linkages” over the past month. “The presence of such elements is quite disturbing, to say the least.”

He also spoke on Jammu and Kashmir, saying it was “the root cause of mutual distrust and other bilat-eral issues”. “And attempts to put it on backburner will be counter-pro-ductive,” he added. “The resolution of (the) Jammu and Kashmir (dispute) should be fair and just.”

AP

NEW DELHI: India’s censor board is requiring parents to accompany children under 12 at screenings of Disney’s The Jungle Book because the special effects made its ani-mals too scary.

The movie opens in Indian theaters today. It’s a computer-gen-erated remake of the 1967 animated film that was based on Rudyard Kipling’s book.

Censor board chief Pahlaj Niha-lini justified the restriction by saying the 3D effects were scary as the animals seem to jump right at the audience.

“It’s up to parents to decide how much of these effects are suited for their children,” Nihalani told report-ers late on Wednesday.

The decision hasn’t gone well with many. Bollywood producer Mukesh Bhatt said it was a shame on the country if a film like The Jungle Book was given the “U/A” certificate.

The film will be released in the United States with a PG rat-ing, meaning parental guidance is suggested because of some scary scenes.

Yesterday, Bollywood actor Ayushmann Khurrana also found the movie’s certification “unbeliev-able” and challenged the criteria behind it.

“Maybe it is because of the 3D images of Bhageera and Sherkhan bouncing off the screen. These days kids are used to reading story books and watching Captain America, and after all these are animated films,” the Press Trust of India quoted him as saying.

Compared to Hollywood, movie norms in India are extremely strict. Censorship authorities often order filmmak-ers — both Indian and foreign — to chop scenes deemed offen-sive. Films with graphic content can be barred completely.

Last year, India’s film censor authorities ordered that kissing scenes in the James Bond movie, “Spectre,” be shortened before it was released in the country.

The Jungle Book too scary for kids to see alone

IANS

SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kash-mir government yesterday ordered a magisterial probe into the unrest in the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Srinagar, where non-local stu-dents are boycotting classes in protest.

“The magisterial probe will be carried out by additional district devel-opment commissioner Srinagar who will submit his report to the govern-ment within 15 days,” Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh, who arrived here last morning from Jammu, told reporters.

Earlier, Director General of Police (DGP) K. Rajendra Kumar visited the NIT campus and spoke to the non-local students about their grievances.

A police officer said the DGP assured full security to the non-local students and advised them to resume their normal academic engagements.

Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) troopers have been deployed inside the cam-pus while police are stationed at the campus gates.

NIT Srinagar has around 1,500 non-local students, who have been boycotting classes after clashes took place between a group of non-local students and police on Tuesday.

While the non-local students have accused the police of excesses against them, police said the protesting stu-dents pelted stones at the deployed police personnel and also roughed up a deputy superintendent-level officer when they were asked not to take to the roads outside the campus.

Police on Thursday released video footage of NIT students indulging in violence.

Police said two FIRs have been registered at the Nigeen police sta-tion in Srinagar into the NIT unrest.

“The FIRs pertain to damaging pub-lic property, attacking a police officer

on duty and obstructing a public serv-ant from discharging duty,” a police officer said.

Srinagar Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Amit Kumar has been staying in the campus to instill confi-dence among the students and ensure quick return of normalcy.

A three-member team of the union human resource development (HRD) ministry, headed by Sanjeev Sharma, director of NITs, is also camping in Srinagar.

The team arrived on Wednesday

and met the non-local students who have been staying away from classes in protest since the clash between local and non-local students on March 31 after the India-West Indies semi-final of the World T20 cricket championship.

On Monday evening, around 500 non-local students raised the slogan ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and carried the tri-colour, when police prevented them from moving out of the campus and stage a protest on the road.

The protesting students are demanding that the NIT be shifted

out of the Kashmir Valley, and action against some faculty members who allegedly stoked communal and anti-national passions among the students.

The local students on Thursday attended classes at the NIT, but the non-locals continued their boycott.

Meanwhile, the management issued notice asking non-local stu-dents who want to visit their homes to provide the mobile numbers of their parents so that permission is obtained from them to allow the students to go home.

AFP

NEW DELHI: A group of Indian banks rejected yesterday embattled busi-nessman Vijay Mallya’s (pictured), offer to repay $600m in unpaid loans, less than half of what his defunct air-line owes them.

The banks told the Supreme Court in New Delhi that they wanted the 60-year-old flamboyant entrepre-neur to return to India so they could negotiate with him personally over the total $1.3bn owed.

The founder of Kingfisher Airlines, who is being chased by the group of mostly state-run banks over the unpaid debts, left India last month and his exact whereabouts are unknown.

In a case that has gripped the coun-try, Mallya’s lawyers last week told the court that he was willing to pay 40bn rupees ($600m) by September 30.

But lawyers for the banks said Thursday that the offer was rejected after due consideration. The court, meanwhile, asked the liquor baron to disclose his total assets, along with those of his wife and children. The request came after the banks said they wanted him to deposit a substantial amount of money with the court to prove his bona fide.

His lawyers have until April 21 to file a response. The businessman was known as the “King of Good Times” before the 2012 collapse of his air-line, which left thousands of workers unemployed and millions of dol-lars in unpaid bills. Mallya, who has not been charged with any crime, stepped down in February as chair-man of United Spirits, the Indian arm of Britain’s Diageo, following allega-tions of financial lapses. His surprise departure the following month proved an embarrassment for the govern-ment, which was forced to admit he had left the country even as it sought permission to impound his passport. Opposition politicians have demanded to know why Mallya was not arrested before he flew out on March 2.

The businessman, who is also a member of India’s parliament, has denied absconding and has criticised the media for what he has called a “witch hunt”.

IANS

NEW DELHI: A court here yes-terday granted bail to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and five other Aam Aadmi Party leaders in a criminal defamation case filed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley against them in the wake of the DDCA controversy.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sumit Dass granted bail to Kejriwal as well as AAP leaders Kumar Vish-was, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh, Raghav Chadha and Deepak Bajpayee after they appeared in the court follow-ing last month’s summons.

“The offence being bailable, all accused persons are admitted to bail,” the court said.

The court asked each of them to furnish a personal bond of Rs.20,000 and a surety of the like amount.

While the chief minister’s adviser Gopal Mohan stood surety for him, Delhi Food and Supplies Minister Imran Hussain furnished surety for Ashutosh.

Uttam Nagar legislator Naresh Balyan stood surety for Sanjay Singh, Laxmi Nagar legislator Nitin Tyagi for Vishwas, Burari lawmaker Sanjeev Jha for Chadha, and Mehrauli MLA Naresh Yadav stood surety for Baj-payee. Jaitley, who filed the complaint against Kejriwal and the others, also was present in the court.

After Kejriwal’s counsel R.K. Wad-hwa and C.L. Gupta told court that they have not been supplied with copies of the documents pertaining to the complaint, the court directed Jait-ley to do so. It then fixed May 19 for next hearing.

Security at the Patiala House courts was beefed up since Thurs-day morning in view of the hearing in the case.

Kejriwal and AAP leaders get bail in defamation case

Banks reject indebted tycoon’s $600m repayment offer

Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit said that the arrest of an alleged Indian spy, Kulbushan Jadhav, proved Islamabad’s allegations that New Delhi was causing unrest in Balochistan.

Pakistan says no to NIA and suspends talks

Magisterial inquiry ordered into NIT unrest

Medical college students hold placards and shout slogans against the police action on outstation students at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar, during a protest in Jammu, the winter capital of Kashmir, yesterday.

IANS

HYDERABAD: At least 111 people have died due to sunstroke in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh during last few days as the two states are experienc-ing intense heat wave conditions, officials said. As many as 66 people died in Telangana while 45 succumbed in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Most of the deaths were reported during last one week.

According to Telangana’s disaster management department, Mahabub-nagar district accounted for highest number of deaths at 28, while 11 people died in Medak district. Heat wave conditions claimed seven lives in Nizam-abad, five each in in Khammam and Karimnagar, four each in Adilabad and Warangal and two in Nalgonda.

No deaths have been reported from Hyderabad and neighbouring Ranga Reddy district.

According to the met department, there ws appreciable rise in maximum temperatures at one or two places in Telangana on Thursday. The highest maximum temperature of 41 degree Celsius was recorded in Nalgonda, Han-amakonda, Khammam, Mahabubnagar and Ramagundam.

In Andhra Pradesh, 45 people died of sunstroke during last one week. Deputy Chief Minister N. Chinna Rajappa told reporters in Vijayawada that 16 of the deaths were reported from YSR Kadapa district while Prakasam accounted for 11 deaths.

Four died in Anantapur, three each in Vijayanagaram, Chittoor and Kur-nool, two each in Srikakulam and Krishna districts and one in West Godavari district. He said the government would extend all possible help the fami-lies of the heat wave victims.

Heat wave claims 111 lives in Telangana and Andhra

INDIA08 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

Britain’s Prince Harry, left, with Command Sergeant Major Glenn Haughton and Garrison Sergeant Major Vern Stokes at the Lord Mayor’s Big Curry Lunch in aid of the ABF The Soldiers Charity, in London, yesterday.

Food for thought

EUROPE / UK 09FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

British teen

selfie killers

jailed for life

AFP

LONDON: Two teenage girls who took selfies as they beat a vulner-able British woman to death before phoning police to ask for a lift home were yesterday jailed for life.

The pair, aged 13 and 14 at the time of the murder, battered frail Angela Wrightson over five hours in her own home with household items including a shovel, a coffee table and a television set, eventu-ally leaving her for dead.

The rare case — and the young age of the killers — has sparked comparisons with the 1993 mur-der of toddler Jamie Bulger by two 10-year-old boys.

Almost 400 children under the age of 18 have reportedly been con-victed of murder in Britain over the past two decades.

Sentencing the girls, judge Henry Globe called the crime a “cowardly attack” that involved “gratuitous degradation”.

Wrightson, 39, was found with more than 100 injuries in her blood-spattered living room in the industrial town of Hartlepool in northeastern England.

“This was a sustained attack over a long period of time carried out with weapons in many differ-ent ways,” the judge told the girls, both now 15.

Pathology evidence revealed “an absolute minimum” of 70 sepa-rate slash injuries, 54 separate blunt force injuries and wounds to the vic-tim’s hands, wrists and arms as she tried to deflect the blows.

The seven-week trial heard that the girls, who came from troubled backgrounds, were frequent visitors to Wrightson’s house and that she would often buy them cigarettes.

On the day of the attack, the pair let themselves into her home before restraining and torturing her.

EU may end visa waiver for Americans and CanadiansReuters

BRUSSELS: The European Union executive is considering whether to make US and Canadian citizens apply for visas before travelling to the bloc, a move that could raise tensions as Brussels negotiates a trade pact with Washington.

Only Britain and Ireland have opt-outs from the 28-nation EU’s common visa policy and the European Commis-sion must decide by April 12 whether

to demand visas from countries who have similar requirements in place for one or more EU state.

Washington and Ottawa both demand entry visas from Romanians and Bulgarians, whose states joined the EU in 2007. The United States also excludes Croatians, Cypriots and Poles from a visa waiver scheme offered to other EU citizens.

“A political debate and decision is obviously needed on such an impor-tant issue. But there is a real risk that the EU would move towards visas for

the two (Americans and Canadians),” an EU source said.

Whether such a step would be prac-tical, however, is in question given that it would seriously undermine the EU’s vast and lucrative tourist industry.

The US mission to Brussels high-lighted that any proposal by the European Commission to introduce such visas could later be overruled by the European Parliament or the European Council — which brings together the 28 EU leaders — on the grounds of foreign policy, among other

considerations. Canada had no imme-diate comment.

The discussion, prompted by US and Canadian refusals to waive their visa requirements for holders of some EU member states’ passports, will take place on Tuesday, just over a week before US President Barack Obama arrives in Europe on a visit that will include trade talks.

Trade negotiations between Brus-sels and Washington are at a crucial point since both sides believe their transatlantic agreement, known as

TTIP, stands a better chance of pass-ing before Obama leaves the White House in January.

Obama is due to visit Britain before meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a trade fair in Hanover on April 24.

“There are major question marks over TTIP, no one could now say exactly how it’ll go in the end. We’ll see if we can get Obama in Hanover to com-mit to more of what we want,” said one European Parliament member tracking TTIP.

Putin says US behind Panama leak

AFP

PANAMA CITY: Russian President Vladimir Putin denied any “element of corruption” yesterday after a massive leak of confidential papers linked a close friend to a hidden $2bn offshore empire, and he blamed the United States for orchestrating the scandal.

Putin boasted that a year-long international media probe into the leak of 11.5 million offshore financial documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca — the Pan-ama Papers — had failed to find any mention of his name.

“They combed through these offshore accounts. Your humble serv-ant is not there. What is there to talk about?” Putin said, referring to him-self, at a televised forum for regional media held in Saint Petersburg.

Instead, the investigating jour-nalists found “some friend of the Russian president” and suggested his activities have “an element of corruption,” Putin said. “What ele-ment of corruption? There is none at all,” he insisted.

The probe into financial deal-ings by world leaders, celebrities and sports stars found that Putin’s associ-ates, notably his cellist friend Sergei Roldugin, “secretly shuffled as much

as $2bn through banks and shadow companies,” according to the Inter-national Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The ICIJ coordinated the inves-tigation with more than 100 media groups around the world after the mass of leaked data was obtained from an anonymous source by Ger-man daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

But “WikiLeaks has shown us now the fact that officials and offi-cial organs of the United States stand behind this,” Putin said, after the whistleblowing group wrote on Twitter that “US govt funded #Pan-amaPapers attack story on Putin via USAID.”

Putin warmly defended his friend as a “brilliant musician” and philanthropist.

Belgium seeks airport bombing suspect in hatAP

BRUSSELS: Belgian prosecutors launched a public appeal yesterday seeking any information on the “man in hat” suspect in the Brussels Airport suicide bombings that killed 16 people.

Belgian Federal Prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said authorities were espe-cially interested in any people who might have filmed or photographed the man.

He was seen at the airport with two suicide bombers before they died in the March 22 attacks. A subsequent explosion at Brussels’ Maelbeek subway

station killed another 16 people the same morning.

Photos released by prosecutors showed the “man in hat” leaving the airport on foot, walking to the nearby town of Zaventem and then into Brus-sels, where all traces of him were reportedly lost.

The suspect also wore a white jacket but discarded it at some point, prosecutors said.

The appeal for public assistance more than two weeks after the suicide bombings indicated that investigators have hit a standstill. Three bombers, two at the airport and one in the sub-way, also died in the attacks, which were claimed by Islamic State.

According to a video reconstitu-tion of the suspect’s itinerary presented to reporters, the man left the Brussels Airport terminal at 7.58am before two other men he was with in the building exploded suitcases laden with explo-sives. He passed by a Sheraton hotel, walked through the town of Zaven-tem, discarded his jacket, and was seen on video footage at Meiser square in northeastern Brussels at 9.42am.

Eight minutes later, his trail vanishes.

Belgian authorities are hoping that they or someone finds the discarded light-coloured jacket, saying it could yield precious clues. Federal Prosecu-tor Thierry Werts also said there had

been many people around the hotel when the suspect walked by who may now be overseas, and asked for their assistance as well.

Prosecutors asked “people who might have filmed or taken a photo-graph of the suspect or think they can provide extra information” to call a special telephone number or to email authorities.

Earlier yesterday, the lawyer for Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam said it will take some weeks before his client can be extradited from Bel-gium to France.

Sven Mary spoke after a legal hear-ing on the Belgian-born French citizen’s continuing detention in Belgium.

Brexit supporters

cry foul over govt

campaign leaflets

AFP

LONDON: British Prime Minis-ter David Cameron was accused yesterday of using state funds for propaganda after his government sent leaflets out to millions of vot-ers urging them to vote to stay in the EU at the upcoming referendum.

Cameron said he made “no apol-ogies” for throwing the weight of the government behind the “Remain” camp, but campaigners for Brit-ain to leave the European Union on June 23 responded with outrage.

“It is wrong that at a time of aus-terity, £9m of taxpayers’ money is being spent on a one-sided piece of propaganda,” said Justice Secretary Michael Gove, one of four cabinet ministers backing a so-called Brexit. The glossy 15-page booklet is being sent to more than 27 million homes and will be accompanied by a new website, produced at a total cost of £9.3m ($13.1m).

Cameron insisted the gov-ernment was not neutral in the referendum.

AFP

ROME: Egyptian investigators yes-terday spent more than four hours briefing Italian counterparts on their so-far inconclusive probe into the torture and murder of an Italian stu-dent in Cairo that threatens to derail close ties between the two countries.

A team of five Egyptian prose-cutors and police has come to Rome with a 2,000-page file on the probe into the murder of Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old PhD student at Cam-bridge University.

Their work, which Egyptian media described as ongoing, was presented to Rome prosecutor Giuseppe Pigna-tone and senior security officials in a closed-doors meeting at a police training college.

Italian officials are not convinced everything is being done to bring Rege-ni’s killer or killers to justice and have warned of consequences if the Egyp-tians do not present a credible account of everything they know about his gruesome fate.

The talks will continue today. To date there has been no attempt by the Egyptian team to contact Regeni’s

family, their lawyer said.The case is a testing one for Ital-

ian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who has fostered a close relationship with Egypt’s military-backed president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, but is under pres-sure to respond to public anger over the case. “The relationship is a huge deal for Italy but Egypt has burnt most of its credit in the last two months in a not very smart way,” said Mattia Toaldo, of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in London.

Regeni disappeared in central Cairo on January 25.

His body was found on the out-skirts of the city on February 3 bearing the signs of torture which, an autopsy concluded, had been inflicted over several days. Media coverage of the case has focused international atten-tion on other disappearances and rights abuses in Sisi’s Egypt.

Regeni’s family have threatened to release pictures of his mutilated body to keep the pressure on over his death. Their stance was praised yesterday by the mother of Khaled Said, whose 2010 killing by Egyp-tian police contributed to the wave of anger that led to the Arab spring uprising of 2011.

Egypt seeks to calm Italy

over murdered student

Russian President defends close friend and cellist after outcry.

Cameron admits

stake in dad’s

offshore fundAFP

LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted yester-day he had a £30,000 stake in an offshore fund set up by his father, after days of pressure following publication of the so-called Pan-ama Papers.

“We owned 5,000 units in Blair-more Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like £30,000 ($42,000),” Cameron told ITV television.

Vote Leave campaign staff work at their office in London yesterday.

VIEWS10 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

The wall seems to be rising on Donald Trump. The most controversial US presidential candidate and renegade Republican is trying to shore up support amid flagging popularity, which is hard to make out despite the Wisconsin battering. He has started talking about

walls again — though apparently not sure if he will be able to make one. The billionaire has spawned an industry from masks to mugs to jokes amid the hotting up US election scene in which Hillary looks to be surging ahead despite Bernie Sanders’ finger-jabbing recriminations.

After the Wisconsin defeat, Trump seems apparently unfazed, though actually he is not. His campaign team has started fulminating ahead of the forthcoming primaries that would decide if the contest in which the gloves have come off would turn bloodier. The billionaire and reality TV star whose campaign demeanour has cast a shadow on US election history and the efficacy of one of the largest democratic exercises in the world, is likely to rile more people as the campaign goes down to the wire.

Fresh from two recent spikes in the Trump controversy curve, the real estate tycoon who traces his origins to placid Scotland has not at all been graceful in defeat.

First he got into a tangle with the amiable Ted Cruz, passing unsavoury remarks about his family life and dragging his wife

into the controversy. Cruz was not one to be cowered, and Trump got back what he deserved.

Next came his campaign manager who was accused of tugging at the arm of a journalist who tried to approach the maverick businessman-turned-politician. The bruised arm of the journalist had the international media erupt in a fireball. Trump’s haughty disposition has not only shown him in a poor light, but undermines the quality of US democracy and the election system that had been envisioned by the founding fathers as a model for the world to follow.

Trump’s shooting-from-the-hip-disposition renders him unfit for

holding the office of the US president who not only commands the most powerful military in the world but takes decisions which geopolitically and geostrategically affect many regions.

The real estate tycoon has left a trail of controversies behind him. The person who occupies the White House needs to have sagacity, poise and grace. He should not be seen to be power-hungry. Such has been the potential of Trump’s controversies that the White House has started to welcome press queries on the maverick figure’s wayward ways.

The Trump bubble is likely to burst soon. The larger the bubble the messier the aftermath. Trump knows it best— he may have been used to real estate bubbles.

Election chaos reigns

After the latest clobbering, the US electorate is likely to see a fretting, fuming and fulminating Trump.

Quote of the day

It is all about rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

Hillary ClintonUS Democrat frontrunner

E S TA B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 6

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORHUSSAIN AHMAD

hussain@pen.com.qa

The European Union’s long-running problem with voters just got a lit-tle worse after the Dutch

rejected an agreement on closer EU ties with Ukraine, highlighting the difficulties of further Euro-pean integration.

Coming less than three months before a British referen-dum on whether to stay in the EU or leave after 43 years of semi-detached membership, the Dutch vote rang alarm bells in London and Brussels. Less than a third of the electorate turned out for the consultative Dutch referendum, forced by a grassroots petition launched by eurosceptics. But it was enough to make the ballot valid and oblige Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government to take account of the result.

Jubilant eurosceptic Dutch populist leader Geert Wilders called it “the beginning of the end of the EU”. His British coun-terpart, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, said: “Their ‘No’ to the EU was a tremendous victory for democracy.” The EU’s usual way of handling such set-backs — pressing ahead while giving some side-assurances to the country that voted “No” — only fuels anger among critics who see it as an elitist technoc-racy that ignores the popular will.

“It will probably lead to a cos-metic solution, a little legal fix, which in future will give more rea-sons to vote ‘No’,” said Luuk Van Middelaar, a Dutch historian and an aide to former European Coun-cil President Herman Van Rompuy.

The Dutch “No” extended a dismal run of EU defeats since 2000 in plebiscites in Denmark and Sweden on joining the euro, and in Ireland, France and the Netherlands on approving new treaties giving greater powers to

Brussels. Most recently the Danish government lost a referendum on opting back in to more EU judicial and police cooperation.

Almost every time a European government has asked voters any question about “more Europe”, the answer has been “No”. The few exceptions included two in Ire-land, where voters approved EU treaties at the second attempt after Dublin secured extra assurances from its EU partners following ref-erendum “No” votes.

“This confirms a 21st cen-tury trend that all referendums with the EU on the ballot paper result in ‘No’ to Europe,” former British Europe Minister Denis MacShane told. “A low turnout helps the anti-EU/Brexit vote. If in UK the referendum has the same turnout as the European Parlia-ment elections (35 percent in 2014) then Brexit wins,” said MacShane, a pro-European who has forecast a Brexit vote since last year.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the risky UK vote in response to rising euroscep-ticism that was tearing apart his Conservative party, is acutely aware that he needs to mobilise the elec-torate to avoid an historic debacle.

Cameron made a big pitch yes-terday to young people, who polls show are more pro-European than their elders but less likely to vote, to register and cast ballots on June 23. Asked about the Dutch vote, he said: “I don’t think it has any effect on us because we’ve got a bigger question: do we stay in this organ-isation or do we leave?

“But I think it is important that the European institutions and the Dutch government ... listen carefully to what people have said, and try to understand that and try to work with that rather than saying this is something they can’t deal with.”

Edouard Lecerf, global direc-tor of Political and Opinion at pollster TNS-Sofres, said the main lesson from the Netherlands for Britain was that the ability of the rival camps to get their supporters to go out and vote will be crucial.

“The European question has a way of crystallising a whole series of discontents about institutions, policies and elites, with a high electoral payoff,” he said.

Early polling in Britain sug-gested barely more than half the electorate may take part in the referendum, Lecerf said, even though the economic and strategic

Dutch vote highlights EU’s woes with voters, UK beware

By Paul Taylor

Reuters

E D I T O R I A L

All thoughts and views expressed in these columns are those of the writers, not of the newspaper. All correspondence regarding Opinion page should be mailed to the Editor-in-Chief.

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A migrant tries to open a border fence after migrants and refugees tried to open it at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, Greece, yesterday.

stakes are far higher than in the Dutch vote on an arcane issue that stirred few passions. Some of the Dutch electors who both-ered to turn out took the chance to vent discontent over the econ-omy, immigration, globalisation or the Rutte government’s policies rather than EU ties with Ukraine.

The same could easily hap-pen in Britain, where Cameron has been weakened by divisions in his party, a crisis in the steel industry, questions about his late father’s use of a Panama-based offshore company and anger over welfare spending cuts.

European unity was driven after World War Two by political leaders in France and Germany, but also Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, who had national electoral mandates and parliamen-tary support, but most did not put the issue directly to their elector-ates until the 1990s. When they did, they got a nasty surprise. French voters only approved by a whisker the Maastricht Treaty on economic and monetary union that created the euro single currency, after the Danes had initially rejected it in a 1993 referendum.

French President Francois Hol-lande, traumatised by the 2005 referendum defeat of the EU’s Constitutional Treaty which split his Socialist party, has done eve-rything to avoid treaty change for deeper eurozone integration to avert another plebiscite. The EU has advanced beyond the single market integration that could be sliced into a technocratic process and entered far more politically sensitive areas of control over national budgets,

borders and foreign policy.In the Dutch case, the main-

stream centre-right and centre-left parties which all supported the Ukraine deal were in a bind. As democrats, they could not publicly urge supporters to abstain in the country’s first grassroots-driven referendum, but many quietly hoped that “tactical abstention” would keep turnout below the threshold for the vote to be valid. Some senior EU officials say ref-erendums are inimical to the European project because they allow voters in a single country to block or delay agreements approved by other national parliaments, caus-ing deadlock. All 27 other EU states have ratified the Ukraine pact.

“Plebiscitary democracy is the enemy of European integra-tion but it is the rising trend. I don’t see how we avoid it and I don’t see how we can advance with it,” said one senior official. The EU’s most ardent federalists see the answer to the conundrum as lying in more pan-European democracy and greater powers for the directly elected European Parliament, even though many voters see their national parliament as the centre of democratic life and most did not cast an EU ballot last time.

Former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, a federalist who leads the centrist liberal group in the EU legislature, said he was not surprised by the Dutch outcome. “Europe is not capable of deal-ing with the big crises we face,” he said. “We can only solve this by working more closely together and reform Europe. It is time for another way for Europe.”

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte shakes hands with schoolchildren after casting his vote in The Hague.

OPINION 11FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

Food galore, but a lot of it goes to wasteBy Chelsea Harvey

The Washington Post

The more scientists study the issue of food waste — and its worrying implications for both the envi-ronment and global food security

— the clearer it becomes how much of a problem it is. Now, new research is giving us a few more reasons to clean our plates.

A study just out in the journal Envi-ronmental Science and Technology concludes that we’re already producing way more food than the world actually needs — but a lot of it is being wasted, instead of used to feed people who need it. That’s a big problem for global food security as well as for the climate, given the huge amounts of greenhouse gases that go into producing the extra food — and the study suggests that the problem will only get worse in the future.

Scientists are already aware of how bad food waste is for the environment. Just last week, we reported on the stag-gering carbon footprint associated with wasted food — the UN’s Food and Agri-culture Organization reported that, in 2007, the emissions required to produce all the food that went to waste in the world amounted to at least 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, more than most countries emitted. This esti-mate included all the emissions required to produce the uneaten food, including emissions from soil, livestock and the energy required to run a farm.

The new research, which was con-ducted by researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, suggests that in the future, food waste will grow — and the asso-ciated emissions will grow even faster.

“When we’re talking about the future food requirements — what can we do to meet the future food demand — we found that to investigate food waste is a quite crucial aspect,” said the paper’s lead author Prajal Pradhan, a postdoc-toral researcher at Potsdam.

The researchers used UN data to calculate the difference between the amount of food available in each coun-try and the amount its citizens require in order to be healthy. For each coun-try, there was either more food available than was needed to supply the nation’s requirements -- a food surplus -- or

not enough. The researchers consid-ered food surplus to be equivalent to food waste, as it represents food that was not needed but produced anyway. Presumably, the majority of a food sur-plus is wasted, although the researchers noted in the paper that some of it is likely used for animal feed or is con-sumed by humans through overeating.

In order to estimate the greenhouse gases associated with food waste, the researchers turned to data from the FAO on the emissions associated with agri-culture. It’s important to note that they did not include emissions associated with the energy required to operate farms, such as the electricity needed to run farm equipment -- they only included emissions produced by soil and livestock, mostly nitrous oxide and methane. This means that the emissions reported by the new study are signifi-cantly underestimated.

The study found that the global food surplus increased overall between 1965 and 2010 from 310 extra kilocalories per person per day to 510 extra kilocal-ories, with the greatest surplus growth rates generally observed in developed nations.

As of 2010, 20 percent more food was being produced worldwide than was actually needed to feed the world’s population, and overall the research-ers estimated that the global surplus could be used to feed an extra 1.4 bil-lion people. The UN estimates that about 800 million people worldwide suf-fer from undernourishment, meaning there’s currently enough wasted food in the world to solve the world’s hun-ger problem nearly twice over —it just isn’t reaching the people who need it.

The researchers also found that the agricultural emissions associated with all the extra food more than quadrupled between 1965 and 2010, from 130 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to 530 million tons. Again, these estimates don’t include the carbon emissions associated with energy use, so the reality is that the food waste’s carbon footprint was even higher — more like 3 billion tonnes, going by the FAO’s previous research.

Moreover, all of these problems are expected to grow worse in the coming decades. The researchers also conducted a series of projections based on differ-ent hypothetical scenarios involving the future world’s energy requirements and population growth and demographics.

They found that the food surplus will continue to grow in most countries, and the global surplus could grow as high as 850 kilocalories per person per day. Future waste-related emissions also increased in every scenario and grew at an even greater rate than the global food surplus -- the result of predicted changes in the global diet. In the future, meat is expected to become an even greater component of diets around the world, Pradhan explained — and meat is par-ticularly energy intensive to produce. Altogether, food waste-related emissions could span anywhere from 1.9 to 2.5 bil-lion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent

per year —again, excluding emissions from the energy sector.

The study highlights several impor-tant problems in the current global food system. First, the finding that there’s more food than necessary in the world, while undernourishment still remains a global problem, implies that there are serious failings in the distribution of food worldwide.

“So much of poverty and famine aren’t about a lack of resources overall -- they’re just distributional [problems],” said Emily Broad Leib, an assistant clin-ical professor of law and director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. “It’s not surprising to see that, and both across countries and within countries this challenge of the food markets really being attainable for certain segments of the population and not for others.”

Addressing this problem, which likely stems in large part from income inequalities in countries where both sur-plus and hunger exist simultaneously, will be critical to addressing future food security.

And, of course, the study also reit-erates the idea that food waste remains tied up with the issue of climate change. While research on the related carbon emissions, themselves, has turned up different values depending on the meth-ods used to calculate them, it’s clear that

wasted food is equivalent to the need-less release of greenhouse gases, and the problem will only continue to grow unless concrete action is taken to stop it.

Such action will require steps to pre-vent food loss on the production side, which experts have suggested could be minimized with infrastructural improvements along the supply chain, as well as action to minimize food waste on the consumer end.

The latter may prove to be less straightforward, but experts have pro-posed a number of steps, including consumer education campaigns and more accurate expiration date label-ling on packaged food.

“One of the best outcomes would be getting consumers to make better decisions and have less waste at the household level and have supply chains adjust to that and redistribute that food earlier in the chain,” said Broad Leib.

Such action will likely also be important in helping the international community meet a broader set of sus-tainability goals outlined by the UN, which include the goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030, Pradhan said.

“This study can provide a nice basis to show how much food is wasted now, and this information can be used also to achieve this sustainable development goal,” he said.

New reasons to question health of Europe’s banks

By Mark Gilbert

Bloomberg

European banks have lost their mojo. A toxic combination of negative interest rates, comatose

economies and a regulatory backdrop that might euphemistically be described as challenging is wreaking havoc with bank business models. Their collec-tive market value has dropped by a quarter so far this year.

The smoke signals emanating from the European Central Bank in recent weeks suggest regulators aren’t blind to this. Daniele Nouy,

who chairs the ECB’s bank super-visory board, said earlier this week that the central bank “is aware that the low-interest-rate environment is putting pressure on the profitability of European banks.” Regulators may respond by going easier when draft-ing new rules.

Bank-failure rules to prescribe how banks design their balance sheets to absorb potential losses may be eased, according to a Euro-pean Commission discussion paper prepared last month. Meanwhile, a global panel of regulators will hold a meeting in London this month to let banks give additional feedback on proposed rules about how much cap-ital they must set aside to back their trading activities.

This comes none too soon. The drop in industry capitalisation, which reflects investor unease about future profitability, is rearranging the pecking order in European finance. Deutsche Bank, for example, was the most active manager of Euro-pean bond sales in 2014 with a market share approaching 6.5 percent; last

year it slipped to third, and so far this year it ranks fourth. At the end of 2015 the German lender was Europe’s 14 th biggest bank; now it’s 20th.

Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Officer John Cryan said last month that, burdened by restructuring and legal costs, he doesn’t expect his firm to be profitable this year.. It’s far from the only struggler; on Tuesday, Bar-clays warned that its first-quarter investment banking income will be worse than it was last year. In Italy, officials are scrambling to create a state-backed fund to prop up an industry burdened by more than ¤200bn ($228bn) of the 1.2 trillion euros of bad loans hampering the euro zone’s recovery.

No wonder ECB President Mario Draghi spent much of his press con-ference a month ago answering questions about the damage negative interest rates are doing to banks. They have to pay for the privilege of holding cash on deposit at the central bank, but can’t pass those costs onto their own depositors.

The current structure of the banking system is “unfeasible,” and 90 percent of the world’s banks will have disappeared in the next 20 years,

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA Chairman Francisco Gonzalez said in an interview published by El Pais newspaper last week. Banks that can’t cover their cost of capital aren’t via-ble, making industry consolidation inevitable, he said.

The conundrum facing Europe is that regulators want to solve the too-big-to-fail problem -- and take revenge for the financial crisis -- by shrinking the banks. At the same time, they need the banks to be more active than ever to help resuscitate the economy.

A drop in market capitalization inhibits banking’s efficacy in serv-ing the wishes of central banks. In a speech Thursday to an ECB con-ference, Hyun Song Shin, head of research at the Bank for Interna-tional Settlements, said that while the function of the financial indus-try in macroeconomics is not well

understood, it’s clear that the sector does play an important role:

Having soundly capitalized banks turns out to be vital for the transmis-sion of monetary policy, also. In this sense, bank capitalisation ought to be a key concern for central banks in ful-filling their monetary policy mandate, as well as for their financial stabil-ity mandate.

The growing regulator concern is sensible, if late. There’s no ques-tion that the financial crisis exposed the need for tighter regulations and higher capital standards, and that some trading activities come with unreasonable risks and are of no ben-efit to the wider economy.

But unconventional monetary policies and a phalanx of new rules risk destroying the ability of banks to perform their basic role of taking deposits and funding commercial activity. As finance chiefs ponder what a healthy bank should look like, now is a good time for regula-tors to pause and ponder what kind of industry they want and need in the future.

All thoughts and views expressed in these columns are those of the writers, not of the newspaper.All correspondence regarding Views and Opinion pages should be mailed to the Editor-in-Chief.

The new research, which was conducted by researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, suggests that in the future, food waste will grow — and the associated emissions will grow even faster.

The study highlights several important problems in the current global food system. First, the finding that there’s more food than necessary in the world, while undernourishment still remains a global problem, implies that there are serious failings in the distribution of food worldwide.

A global panel of regulators will hold a meeting in London this month to let banks give additional feedback on proposed rules about how much capital they must set aside to back their trading activities.

Copies of the Nefertiti bust wearing sunglasses by German artist Isa Genzken are on display at an exhibition preview at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, Germany, yesterday. The exhibition ‘Isa Genzken: Make Yourself Pretty!’ runs from April 9 to June 26.

Make Yourself Pretty!

EUROPE12 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

AFP

PARIS: Anger over labour reforms has spawned a protest movement dubbed “Up All Night” that is taking over French city squares, with young people gath-ering until dawn demanding social change.

Spreading from Paris to the west-ern cities of Nantes and Rennes as well as Toulouse in the southwest, the pro-testers have been occupying central squares overnight until police disperse them at daybreak.

In Paris, hundreds of people have been gathering every night since March 31 at the vast Place de la Republique.

The labour reforms — which have sparked angry protests across France — are a unifying theme of the gath-erings, but the movement embraces a range of anti-establishment grievances.

An organiser said the aim was to “build a strong social movement that

brings together all those in precari-ous situations against the oligarchy”, describing the goal as “very ambitious”.

Students have been at the forefront of weeks of sometimes violent protests over the Socialist government’s labour reforms, which will make it easier for struggling companies to fire people.

The reforms, which have already been diluted once in a bid to placate crit-ics, are considered unlikely to achieve their stated goal of reining in unem-ployment, which stands at 25 percent among young people.

The “Nuit Debout” (Up All Night) movement has even spread across the border to Belgium, where a couple of hundred people turned out onto the streets of Brussels for the first protest there on Wednesday night.

Up All Night protesters say they are drawing inspiration from the Spanish protesters known as the Indignados, who gave rise to the far-left Podemos party.

Tens of thousands of Indignados occupied Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square in 2011, furious over growing inequal-ity, spending cuts and corruption.

Podemos MEP Miguel Urban Crespo was among around 1,000 people who turned out for Tuesday night’s protest in Paris. “One has to understand that if we don’t do politics ourselves, (pol-iticians) will do it for us, against our interests,” Urban Crespo said.

On Wednesday, French government spokesman Stephane Le Foll played down the importance of the protest movement while saying it deserved “respect”. “There’s no need for con-cern,” he told reporters. “I don’t dispute the fact that... people need to ask ques-tions and that should be respected.”

But he said that the protesters

‘Up All Night’ protests spread through France

Around 200 high school students block the access to their school in Montpellier yesterday to protest against the government’s planned labour reform.

Students have been at the forefront of weeks of sometimes violent protests over the Socialist government’s labour reforms, which will make it easier for struggling companies to fire people.

“cannot think they have a monopoly on the truth.” Le Foll admitted there was a parallel with the Indignados, but stressed the “contingencies of reality”, pointing to the Venezuelan revolution “shattered by falling oil prices” and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s humiliating concessions to interna-tional creditors.

Hundreds of young people in Nantes and Rennes began their pro-tests Tuesday after clashing with riot

police during protests against the labour law last week.

“I’m not a member of a union or a political party,” one woman said as she joined the demo in Nantes. “We are not in control of our future, we have no way of acting on the issues that concern us.”

The movement kicked off Tuesday as well in Toulouse, gathering some 300 people vowing to “bring strug-gles together”.

“No one knows what this will lead to (but) don’t forget what was achieved” in Spain by the Indignados, said Hegoa Garay, a worker’s rights activist.

“The labour law was a catalyst,” said a 21-year-old philosophy stu-dent who gave his name as Loick. “I think it was a big mistake by the government, but we thank them,” he smiled. Fresh daytime protests against the labour law are planned across France for Saturday.

AFP

PRISTINA: Kosovo’s powerful former premier Hashim Thaci was sworn in as president yesterday in a session boycotted by opposition parties which dispute his election to the top job.

Thaci’s inauguration followed his election to the post by MPs in February, in a tense vote marred by opposition tear gas protests in par-liament and clashes on the streets of the capital Pristina.

“I swear that I will dedicate all my powers to preserving the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Repub-lic of Kosovo,” Thaci said as he took oath before MPs from the ruling coalition and diplomats.

Later addressing parliament, he said his goals were Kosovo’s inte-gration into Nato and the EU and continuing “the process of normal-ising relations with Serbia”. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 under Thaci’s leadership, but Belgrade refuses to recognise its sovereignty.

Opposition members refused to attend Thaci’s swearing in because they insist his election was unlaw-ful, claiming irregularities in the vote, but Kosovo’s constitutional court dismissed their complaint.

Thaci, 47, rose to prominence during the 1998-1999 war with Serbia as political leader of the pro-independence ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and he has since served two terms as prime minister.

But his reputation has been sul-lied by a 2011 Council of Europe report which accused him of head-ing a mafia-style network involved in assassinations, unlawful deten-tions and even trafficking captives’ organs during and after the war — charges he strongly denies.

Thaci, who served as foreign minister before his election as pres-ident, has taken a lead role in the talks to improve relations between Kosovo and Serbia, which are a key requirement for both sides to become EU members. Thaci won support from 71 deputies in the 120-seat parliament in the third and final round of February’s vote.

AFP

PARIS: Reform-minded French Econ-omy Minister Emmanuel Macron has set up his own political movement saying he wants to find “new ideas” for France in a move that will fuel speculation over the former bank-er’s presidential ambitions.

Macron, 38, announced the cre-ation of “En Marche” (“On the Move”) in a carefully choreographed appear-ance Wednesday in front of 1,500 people in his home town of Amiens in northern France. “I’ve taken my time, I’ve thought about it, I’ve consulted and I’ve decided that we are going to create a new political movement, one that will be neither on the right or the left,” said Macron, often dubbed the “rock star” of French politics.

He insisted the 2017 presiden-tial election — just 13 months away — was “not my priority today”, but he pointedly did not throw his support behind Socialist President Francois Hollande, who is aiming for re-elec-tion despite abysmal approval ratings.

“Whoever it is in 2017, if we do not clearly set out a vision for the country, if there is not an open debate, then he or she will not succeed,” he said.

Macron portrayed the new move-ment as a think-tank that would listen to ideas from other parties of the right and left—providing they held “republi-can” ideals, a label often used to exclude the far-right National Front (FN).

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a former centre-right prime minister, said this week he could even imagine Macron as premier under a centre-right president such as Alain Juppe, who is leading opinion polls ahead of the 2017 election.

“The best prime minister for a pres-ident from the moderate right would be Emmanuel Macron,” Raffarin said. Macron’s initiative got a cooler response from the first secretary of the Social-ist party, Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, with whom he has often clashed.

“If he helps to widen the majority (for the Socialists), then his contribu-tion is positive,” he said Thursday. But if he wanted to move the Socialists more to the right, “then he is on the wrong track,” he said. Macron has cut against the grain of French politics since Hollande appointed his former economic advisor a minister in 2014 when he was a virtual unknown.

In a country famously adverse to change, the former Rothschild banker and graduate of the elite ENA school has forced through pro-busi-ness reforms, for example increasing the number of Sundays on which shops can open. He attributes France’s 10-percent unemployment rate to “a lack of competitiveness” and the lack of “mobility” in society.

The fresh-faced economy minis-ter’s private life also fascinates many French people. His wife Brigitte is nearly 20 years his senior and they met at his high school where she taught. She attends some of his meetings.

AFP

COPENHAGEN: Copenhagen police said yesterday that they had detained four people on suspicion of joining the Islamic State group in Syria and seized weapons and ammunition in a search linked to the arrests.

All four were suspected of break-ing Denmark’s terrorism law while in Syria, and were arrested in the Copen-hagen area, police said in a statement without giving any further informa-tion on their identities.

“The suspects have been identified through investigations carried out in close cooperation between the Dan-ish Security and Intelligence Service

and Copenhagen police,” the state-ment said. Under Danish terrorism law, “letting oneself be recruited to commit acts of (terrorism)” is punish-able with up to six years in jail.

“At one of the addresses we (searched) today we found some weap-ons and ammunition,” police inspector Poul Kjeldsen told reporters. A per-son living at the address had links to one of Copenhagen’s criminal gangs, police later said on Twitter.

“The arrests took place as part of the effort against people letting them-selves be recruited to terror groups in the war-torn areas in Syria and north-ern Iraq,” police said.

A preliminary hearing was sched-uled to be held today. Europe is on edge after the Paris attacks in November

and last month’s bombings in Brussels, both blamed on homegrown militants radicalised and trained by IS.

Around 4,000 Europeans have trav-elled to Syria and Iraq to join extremist groups as foreign fighters, according to a study from the Hague-based Inter-national Centre for Counter-Terrorism released last week.

Data from Denmark showed that 125 people had left the country to fight in Syria or Iraq, and that 62 of those were believed to have returned to the Scandinavian country.

The Danish city of Aarhus has drawn international attention for its “soft-hands” approach to battling the radicalisation of young Muslims with social techniques used in gang exit strategies.

AFP

THE HAGUE: The Dutch “No” to an EU pact with Ukraine dealt a fresh blow to European unity yesterday, handing eurosceptics a symbolic victory ahead of Britain’s in-out referendum in June.

European leaders were lick-ing their wounds after preliminary results showed that over 61 percent of those who voted were opposed to the Brussels-Kiev agreement in what was seen as a wider barometer of anti-EU feeling.

“The ‘No’ camp clearly won,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte — whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency — said late on Wednesday.

Ukraine itself vowed the results would not be an obstacle to its push for closer ties with the 28-member European Union away from the orbit of former Soviet master Russia.

But European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, who had warned ahead of the referendum a “No” could open the doors to “a “continental cri-sis”, was said to be saddened by the outcome.

The bloc is already battling deep divisions over its handling of the con-tinent’s biggest migration crisis since World War II and financial meltdowns in several member countries including Greece. British Prime Minister David Cameron nevertheless voiced hope the vote would not boost the cam-paign for Britain to leave the bloc in the June 23 referendum.

“It is important that the European institutions and the Dutch govern-ment listen carefully to what people are saying, to try and understand that and to try and work with that,” Cam-eron said. But he added: “I don’t think it has any effect on us because we have a bigger question.”

However, Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP), hailed it as a “tremendous victory for democracy”. “Time and again, voters are choosing to reject Brussels when-ever they are consulted about the EU,” added Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, another pro-Brexit group.

The Dutch referendum, organised by eurosceptic groups, was seen as an embarrassment for Rutte’s coalition government, which backed a “Yes” vote, and leaves it with a dilemma of

what to do next. Dutch news agency ANP projected that while only 32 per-cent of the electorate had cast their ballot, it was enough to ensure the non-binding referendum is valid and must be considered by the government.

“We are now going to look at the process step-by-step,” Rutte said, adding a final decision on what to do “may still take weeks.” Facing a fresh headache on the bloc’s legitimacy, EU President Donald Tusk said he would be in contact with Rutte.

“I need to hear what conclusions he and his government will draw from the referendum and what his inten-tions will be,” Tusk said.

Rutte “is in a tricky situation,” said political analyst Claes de Vreese. “He will now quickly have to figure out what the biggest gripes are of those who voted no and see if he can do something about it” in Brussels, De Vreese said.

“Eurosceptics will of course use this as an example of growing dis-cord over the European Union,” De Vreese added. But he and other ana-lysts warned that given the low turnout, the “No” vote was not representative of all 12.5 million eligible voters.

Eurosceptics hail victory after Dutch ‘No’ vote on EU-Kiev deal

Danish police arrest four alleged IS fighters

French minister sets up own political party

SKOPJE: Macedonia’s main oppo-sition party said it will boycott a “sham” election in June, as parlia-ment dissolved ahead of the vote which is supposed to end a polit-ical crisis. The June 5 election is part of a European Union-backed deal reached last year between the government and the opposition to end months of turmoil.

But Zoran Zaev, leader of the opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), said late that his party would boycott the election, alleging a lack of reforms required for a fair vote. “The SDSM is not going to participate in the sham election on June 5,” Zaev said before parlia-ment dissolved at midnight.

The vote in the former Yugoslav republic of about 2.1 million peo-ple had initially been scheduled for April 24, but the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party agreed to postpone it after US and EU ambassadors said preparations for “credible” polls were insufficient.

Kosovo’s former premier Hashim Thaci sworn in as president

Macedonia oppn to boycott polls

AMERICAS 13 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

AFP

NEW YORK: Hillary Clinton and leftist challenger Bernie Sanders turned up the heat yesterday in the Democratic race for the White House, locking horns over trade and the “Panama Papers” scandal ahead of the New York primary.

Clinton, the frontrunner and former secretary of state, holds a six-point lead over Sanders in the RealClear-Politics national poll average but lost seven of the last eight voting contests to the Vermont senator.

The New York primary on April 19 has turned into a battle ground, where Clinton needs a commanding win in her adopted home state, which elected her twice to the Senate in 2000 and 2004.

Sanders, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, must capitalise on his recent momentum by winning in New York and in Pennsylvania on April 26 to keep alive his hopes of snatching the Democratic nomination from party favourite Clinton.

The 74-year-old senator sought to capitalize on the leaked “Panama

Papers,” which lay bare how ter-ror groups, drug cartels and pariah countries can hide money in banking havens, by conflating it with Clinton’s support for a 2012 Panama free trade agreement.

“I don’t think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement, something I very strongly opposed, which has made it easier for wealthy people and corporations all over the world to avoid paying taxes owed to their countries,” he told a rally in Philadelphia on Wednesday.

Sanders contended at the time that the free trade agreement would make it harder for the United States to crack down on offshore tax havens in Panama.

Clinton, who said on a campaign stop on Wednesday that she would shut down “outrageous tax havens and loop-holes” if elected president, helped push through the trade deal through Con-gress when she was secretary of state.

The former first lady has repeat-edly questioned whether Sanders is a qualified commander-in-chief when the 74-year-old Senator has served his entire career in the small state of Vermont, first as mayor then as rep-resentative in Congress.

“It is all about rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. Don’t make prom-ises you can’t keep,” she told reporters Thursday while campaigning in the Bronx, where she rode the subway joined by a local Democrat politician. “Know what you want to achieve and then bring everybody together to get the results and that is what I’m going to do.”

New York, America’s largest city and one of its most diverse, has demograph-ics that play well to Clinton’s support base among the wealthy and minori-ties, but observers warn there may be tougher terrain outside the city.

Communities in the more econom-ically hard-hit western and northern

Clinton and Sanders get tough

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton campaigns with Bronx borough President Ruben Diaz Jr in New York City yesterday. The former US secretary of state first spoke outside of Yankee Stadium before riding the subway from the 161st Street station to the 170th Street station.

The New York primary on April 19 has turned into a battle ground, where Clinton needs a commanding win in her adopted home state, which elected her twice to the Senate in 2000 and 2004.

part of the state voted Clinton into the Senate, but critics say they have not seen the job growth they were expecting.

Sanders has resonated strongly among voters, particularly independ-ents, for his steadfast opposition the trans-Pacific trade deal signed by Pres-ident Barack Obama that Clinton has only opposed more recently.

“If the Clinton campaign wants to engage in a more bare-knuckled kind of approach, we’re happy to do that as well,” Sanders’s campaign direc-tor Jeff Weaver told MSNBC yesterday.

“Secretary Clinton is funded by Wall Street interests and other special

interests. You know, she’s really made a deal with the devil, and the devil always wants his due. So that time will come,” he said.

In Philadelphia on Wednesday, Clinton criticised Sanders, saying “in a number of important areas, he doesn’t have a plan at all.”

This week she also ripped into her opponent for saying in a newspaper interview that he did not agree with efforts by parents of children killed in a shooting at a Connecticut elemen-tary school to sue gun manufacturers.

“That he would place gun manu-facturers’ rights and immunity from

liability against the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook is just unimaginable to me,” she told MSNBC on Wednesday.

Clinton and Sanders also sparred for days about holding a debate ahead of the New York primary—now scheduled for April 14 in Brooklyn, the borough where Sanders was born and which Clinton made her national campaign headquarters.

Clinton leads Sanders 54-42 per-cent among likely Democratic voters in New York and 50-44 percent in Penn-sylvania, according to Quinnipiac University polls.

AFP

CARACAS: Venezuelan workers will get Fridays off for the next two months as part of an emergency plan to save electricity, the pres-ident said.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves but its economy is a mess, with rampant inflation, shortages of goods as basic as soap and toilet paper and con-stant blackouts.

Now, because of a severe drought that has left levels at hydroelectric dams at extremely low levels, in order save on electricity the gov-ernment is effectively shutting the labor force down for a three-day weekend, starting this Friday and lasting until June 6.

The decision was announced by President Nicolas Maduro in a speech on state TV. He said the country is in dire straits because of low water level in Venezuela’s 18 hydroelectric dams. As an example, he cited the Guri dam in southeast Bolivia state. It supplies 70 percent of the country’s electricity. Maduro said its water level is just three cen-timeters (roughly one inch) above what is considered the critical level.

Maduro also ordered state-run industries to cut their electricity con-sumption by 20 percent, just as he has ordered the government to do. But he stopped short of ordering electric-ity rationing in the residential sector, which is the largest consumer of elec-tricity in Venezuela, or mandating utility rate hikes.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (fourth left) during the ‘Women in Defence of Democracy’ event at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia yesterday.

AFP

BRASÍLIA: Embattled Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, fighting impeachment, called yesterday for a “grand pact” to unify the country and change the way politics is done.

“Brazil needs a grand pact. Bra-zil has already overcome difficult moments by making pacts,” she said, saying that she should not be forced from office. “No agreement will work without the premise of respect for legality and democracy. The first premise must be the defense of the popular will demonstrated at elec-tions,” she said.

Rousseff said she would agree to working for “absolutely necessary political reforms” if she could stay in power. “That is the pact I’m look-ing for,” she said in the capital Brasilia.

Rousseff did not give any detail about what she was proposing.

A parliamentary commission yes-terday found that her impeachment

case should go ahead. Jovair Arantes, rapporteur for a special impeach-ment commission in the lower house of Congress, said he had concluded the “legal admissibility” of the case against the leftist president.

“The magnitude and scope of the violations made by the pres-ident of the republic constitute a serious abuse,” he said.

The decision was given in a lengthy report that Arantes read aloud, live on national television, to the 65-member impeachment commission, sometimes interrupted by deputies shouting and arguing. Although Arantes’ decision was non-binding and mostly sym-bolic, it meant the opposition drew first blood just as an increasingly bitter battle to remove Brazil’s first woman president from office gathers pace.

On Monday, the full commission will vote its recommendation. Then on April 18, the lower house of Con-gress meets to hold a decisive vote on whether impeachment will go ahead.

“Today’s vote was expected,” said Mendonca Filho, a deputy from

the conservative, pro-impeachment Democratas party. “Now we have to find out the position of the whole com-mission ... and then we move on to the main battle in the full chamber.”

Rousseff is accused of presiding over large-scale fiddling of govern-ment accounts to mask the depth of budgetary shortfalls during her ree-lection in 2014.

The president — highly unpopular because of a severe recession and a giant corruption scandal — says she has committed no impeachment-wor-thy crime and claims she is the victim of a coup attempt. Ze Geraldo, from Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, shrugged off the setback.

The lower chamber’s mood swings almost daily, with Rousseff sometimes appearing to have run out of allies before winning an unexpected boost. Rousseff’s ruling coalition took a huge hit last week when the PMDB party, headed by Vice President Michel Temer, went into opposition. Her Workers’ Party is now scrambling to build a new alliance.

AFP

WASHINGTON: Honda has confirmed another death involving a Takata air-bag, bringing the global total to 11 fatalities in a scandal that has set off the biggest auto recall in US history.

The latest death came last week when a 17-year-old Texas teenager died from injuries sustained after her 2002 Honda Civic collided with another car, activating the defective airbag. Honda’s US unit on Wednes-day confirmed the death, which is the 10th reported in the United States while another person was killed after an accident in Malaysia.

The Japanese carmaker said it had sent multiple letters advising that the car should be brought in for repairs, but it was never fixed. “Dur-ing an inspection...American Honda confirmed that the Takata driver’s airbag inflator ruptured in the crash of a 2002 Honda Civic on March 31, 2016...resulting in the tragic death of the driver,” Honda said in a statement.

Tokyo-based auto parts giant Takata is struggling to deal with a defect that can cause the airbag to deploy with explosive force, sending metal and plastic shrapnel from the inflator canister hurtling toward driv-ers and passengers — in some cases killing them or causing grisly injuries.

Takata has been hit by lawsuits

and regulatory probes over claims it covered up the defect for years.

Bloomberg News said the firm’s airbag-recall costs could reach an eye-watering 2.7 trillion yen ($24bn).

Takata and its carmaker clients, including top client Honda, are still hashing out how the costs would be shared, Bloomberg said, citing an unnamed source.

Some 50 million Takata airbags have been recalled globally, includ-ing about 28 million in the United States with tens of millions more recalls expected.

Investigators increasingly sus-pect that the chemical used to inflate Takata airbags can be unstable, especially under constant heat and humidity conditions, and cause the inflator canister to rupture.

AFP

OTTAWA: Researchers said yesterday that they have found a way to fash-ion a cheap mosquito trap out of old tyres that can collect thousands of eggs that may carry the Zika virus.

The contraption is called an “ovil-lanta”, and consists of cutout tyres and a liquid solution that lures Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which can trans-mit chikungunya, dengue and Zika.

The females lay their eggs on a wooden or paper strip inside the tyre

trap. The strip can be removed weekly and the eggs destroyed by using fire or ethanol. Health experts are hope-ful that the trap could help people in remote areas where screens and air conditioning are rare, to reduce people’s contact with the kind of mos-quitoes that spread Zika.

“We decided to use recycled tyres — partly because tyres already repre-sent up to 29 percent of the breeding sites chosen by the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, partly because tires are a universally affordable instrument in low-resource settings, and partly because giving old tires a new use

creates an opportunity to clean up the local environment,” said researcher Gerardo Ulibarri of Laurentian Uni-versity in Ontario.

Researchers tested the traps in the Guatemalan town of Sayaxche over the course of 10 months. They “collected and destroyed over 18,100 Aedes eggs per month using 84 ovillantas in seven neighborhoods,” said the study.

The tyre traps were also far cheaper, costing only 20 percent what it would to target adult insects with pesticides, researchers said. The project was funded by the Canadian government.

Rousseff calls for ‘grand pact’ to save Brazil from crisis

Venezuelans get

Fridays off for

two months to

save energy

Reuters

WASHINGTON: The US Senate voted yesterday to bolster travel security in the wake of the Brus-sels attacks with measures that include doubling the number of transportation security teams with bomb-sniffing dogs at domestic air-ports and other transit hubs.

Lawmakers voted overwhelm-ingly to add security measures to a separate bill that calls for renewing the programs of the Federal Aviation Administration through September 2017. The FAA bill is expected to come up for a final vote later this month.

After Republicans and Dem-ocrats reached a deal on security measures earlier in the day, law-makers voted to raise the number of Visible Intermodal Preven-tion Response, or VIPER, teams within the Transportation Secu-rity Administration from 31 to 60. VIPER teams, which are intended as a visible deterrent to attacks, can be deployed at airports and train or bus stations.

Other measures would bolster the vetting of airport employees, add security to vulnerable check-in and baggage claim areas and authorize the TSA to donate security equipment to foreign airports with direct flights to the United States.

The approved provisions would also order a new US assessment of foreign cargo security programs and provide grant money to train state, local and foreign authorities in how to respond to mass-casu-alty and “active shooter” incidents.

US senators vote

to bolster travel

security in FAA bill

Tyre innovation could boost Zika control

US teen latest victim in Takata airbag deaths

Investigators suspect that the chemical used to inflate Takata airbags can be unstable, especially under constant heat and humidity conditions, and cause the inflator canister to rupture.

Kenyans read a public notice placed on a closed door at a Chase Bank branch in Nairobi, Kenya, yesterday. Kenya’s central bank has placed Chase Bank in receivership for 12 months after it misreported its loans and suffered a mass panic withdrawals.

Kenya’s Chase Bank put under receivership

Liberty’s Gupta has resources to back UK steel ambitions

PAGE | 15 PAGE | 16

Greece hopes for draft deal soon

despite EU-IMF rift

QE 10,164.76 +133.74 PTS

DOW 17,489.95 -226.10 PTS

FTSE100 6,136.89 -24.74 PTS

BRENT $37.27 -$0.480

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016 • 1 Rajab 1437 @peninsulaqatar @peninsula_qatarthepeninsulaqatar

The Peninsula

DOHA: The recent instructions issued by the Qatar Central Bank (QCB) for insurers operating in Qatar are credit positive. These instructions are credit positive as they will strengthen sev-eral credit characteristics, including capital, asset quality and reserve ade-quacy, said Moody’s Investors Service in a note yesterday.

On March 30, QCB Governor H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Saud Al Thani

issued operating instructions and governance principals for insurers operating in Qatar. These instruc-tions were related to licensing, regulations and controls, risk man-agement, accounting and actuaries reports. The instructions include pru-dential requirements and took effect this month.

“The QCB’s instructions aim to ensure the stability and sustaina-bility of the insurance industry by improving the solvency of the 31 insurance companies operating in Qatar (17 of which operate in the

offshore-domiciled Qatar Finan-cial Centre),” said Moody’s note.

“Qatar is the third-largest and one of the fastest growing insurance mar-kets in the Gulf Cooperation Council, expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 21 percent over the past 10 years, and we estimate that the insurance market grew at 25 per-cent in 2015, with the top six insurers achieving growth of 28 percent in 2015 in their Qatari operations,” it added.

Insurers that will benefit from the new law include the largest Qatari insurance groups: Damaan Islamic

Insurance Company, Qatar Insurance Company, Qatar General Insurance & Reinsurance Company, Doha Insurance Company, Al Khaleej Takaful Group and Qatar Islamic Insurance Company.

The new law stipulates that listed insurance companies must have capital greater than QR100m or their risk-based capital (RBC) requirement, while unlisted insurance companies must have capital higher than the figure set by the QCB or their RBC require-ment. The RBC is the company-specific minimum capital and solvency cap-ital requirement that incorporates

an economic view of the risks borne by insurers, including underwriting, market, liquidity, credit and opera-tional risk.

The instructions also set out spe-cific requirements on investments, changes that we expect will improve insurers’ asset quality. They include new limits on risky asset classes and concentration risk.

“We consider asset quality to be the key credit weakness for many Gulf Cooperation Council insurers and these steps are a positive development. We also expect that a requirement for

actuarial-led reserve-setting, monitor-ing and reporting will enhance reserve adequacy and improve underwriting profitability by encouraging insurers to set premiums in line with under-writing risks and become increasingly selective about the risks they under-write,” said the note.

“These enhanced regulations and implied additional costs of monitor-ing, managing and reporting may also encourage consolidation among some smaller insurers, potentially reducing competitive pressures and aiding mar-ket stability,” it added.

Qatar’s new insurance instructions credit positive: Moody’s

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Exchange’s (QE) benchmark index gained 133.74 points, or 1.33 percent yesterday when the bourse closed trading at 10,164.76 points.

The daily turnover yesterday increased to QR379.39m with a vol-ume of 9,278,837 shares from 5,553 deals compared to QR349.57m with a volume of 7,843,947 shares from 5,222 deals on Wednesday.

From the 43 companies listed on QE, shares of 40 saw trading yester-day. From these 31 gained, eight closed lower and one remained unchanged.

Barring transport index which declined by 0.13 percent, indices of all other sectors gained.

QE Total Return Index gained 1.33 percent to 16,380.42 points. QE Al Rayan Islamic Index gained 0.84 percent to 3,966.25 points and QSE

All Share Index gained 1.13 percent to 2,827.84 points, reports QNA.

However, when compared on weekly basis, the QE index lost 211.44 points, or 2.04 percent, during last week compared to the previous week. Trading value during the week decreased by 7.95 percent to reach QR1.7bn compared to about QR1.85bn during the previous week.

Trading volume decreased by 12.41 percent to reach 42,386,514 shares, as against 48,392,413 shares, while the number of transactions rose by 3.52 percent, to reach 26,719 transactions as compared to 25,810 transactions.

Market cap fell by 1.87 percent during the week to reach QR543.65bn as compared to QR 554.03bn at the end of previous week.

Banking and Financial Services sector led traded value this week with 28.03 percent of the total traded value. Industries sector accounted for 27.54 percent. Consumer Goods and Services sector accounted for 15.82 percent and Transportation sector accounted for 12.15 percent.

Banking and Financial Services sec-tor led traded volume during the week with 29.89 percent of the total traded volume. Industries sector accounted for 20.86 percent. Real Estate sector accounted for 16.66 percent and the share of Consumer Goods and Services sector stood at 13.95 percent.

Banking and Financial Serv-ices sector led traded number of transactions this week with 25.2 percent of the total number of trans-actions. Industries sector accounted for 25.07 percent. Consumer Goods and Services sector accounted for 15.29 percent and Real Estate sector accounted for 11.54 percent. From the 43 listed companies nine com-

panies ended this week higher, while 33 fell and one unchanged.

The Qatari Investors Group led trading value last week and accounted for 17.23 percent of the total traded value. Gulf Warehousing accounted for 10.25 percent and Mas-raf Al Rayan accounted for 9.55 percent.

QE index gains 133.74 pointsThe Qatari Investors Group led trading value last week and accounted for 17.23 percent of the total traded value. Gulf Warehousing accounted for 10.25 percent and Masraf Al Rayan accounted for 9.55 percent.

AFP

FRANKFURT: The raft of recent pol-icy measures by the European Central Bank are working and should help push eurozone inflation back up to levels compatible with healthy economic growth, both its president and chief economist said yesterday.

“The measures we announced on March 10 will further contribute to achieving our aim of price stability,” ECB chief Mario Draghi (pictured) said in a speech in Lisbon.

Addressing the Portugese coun-cil of state, Draghi acknowledged that “of course, it will take time for these latest measures to start working their way through the economy and deliv-ering their full benefits.”

Nevertheless, they constituted a “substantial package which gives priority to loans for households and businesses, thus further supporting economic activity in the euro area,” the president argued.

“They underline our determina-tion to fulfil the mandate entrusted to us, namely to bring inflation back to below, but close to, two percent.. These measures also show we have no short-age of tools available,” Draghi said.

At a meeting on March 9 and 10, the ECB’s governing council fired off a new volley of shots in its ongoing battle to avert deflation in the euro area and jumpstart economic recov-ery in the region.

The ECB slashed already record-low interest rates, said it would pump massive new sums into the banking system and, for the first time, would start buying corporate bonds.

In a separate speech in Frank-furt, the ECB’s chief economist Peter Praet said that consumer prices in the euro area would have declined last year and economic growth would be weaker than it is if it had not been for the measures.

“In the absence of our policy pack-age inflation would have been negative in 2015,” Praet said, countering growing criticism that the ECB’s policy measures

are proving ineffective. “In 2016, it would have been at least half a per-centage point lower than we forecast currently and around half a percent-age point lower in 2017,” Praet said.

The ECB is currently pencilling in an annual inflation rate of just 0.1 per-cent for this year and 1.3 percent next year. Turning to economic growth, “the impact of the policy measures on euro area GDP (gross domestic product) is also sizeable,” Praet said.

“According to the staff assessment, our policy is contributing to raise euro area GDP by around 1.5 percent in the period 2015-18.” Praet stressed that the

ECB’s policy moves measures coincided with new economic shocks, such as the plunge in oil prices.

“The monetary policy package the ECB has adopted since June 2014 has been effective,” Praet insisted.

But the ECB should not be seen as the sole solution to the eurozone’s economic woes and other policy areas must also act, he said.

“We have consistently maintained since summer 2014 that a strong and sustainable recovery the crisis requires a comprehensive response that involves all economic policies. A return to higher structural growth and employment cannot depend on monetary policy,” Praet said.

Draghi sent the same message. “The ECB cannot single-handedly cre-ate the conditions for a sustainable recovery in growth,” he said in Lisbon. “Our policies can support a cyclical recovery, but they cannot by them-selves remove structural impediments to growth. This requires a concerted effort in terms of economic and fis-cal policies,” the president insisted.

ECB insists latest policy measures are working

GENEVA: The World Trade Organ-isation yesterday revised its 2016 global trade forecast downward by more than one percentage point, warning that a slowdown in China and broad market volatility contin-ued to threaten growth.

In September, the WTO esti-mated that global trade would rise by 3.9 percent this year, but low-ered that projection to 2.8 percent, in an updated forecast. “Trade is still registering positive growth, albeit at a disappointing rate,” WTO Director-General Robert Azevedo said.

The WTO listed “a sharper-than-expected slowing in China (and) worsening financial market volatility” as factors that could fur-ther suppress global trade this year.

The organisation predicted that global trade would tick upwards by 3.6 percent in 2017, on the back of increased demand for imported goods in Asia.

WTO cuts 2016

global trade

forecast to 2.8%

The new logo of the car ferry “Jean Nicoli” operated by the Corsica Linea company is seen in the port of Marseille, France, yesterday.

New car ferry logo

BUSINESS 15FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

Reuters

DUBAI: Two issues in the Gulf’s inter-national bond market this week show a panic over low oil prices has faded and foreign investors are once again willing to buy into the region’s debt — but they remain extremely sensi-tive to pricing.

The market froze up in the final quarter of last year as oil prices plunged below $30 a barrel, raising fears about the viability of Gulf economies in an era of cheap crude.

Since then, oil has rebounded to around $40 and the six Gulf Coop-eration Council governments have

introduced austerity steps to curb their budget deficits. Most GCC currencies have rebounded in the forwards mar-kets, showing investors no longer think devaluations may be imminent.

Improved sentiment was seen in the response to a $500m, five-year debut bond this week by Qatar’s Ahli Bank , which attracted a sizeable order book of around $1.2bn — the kind of total seen before mid-2015, when low oil prices began to shake confidence in the Gulf.

A benchmark five-year sukuk sale by the Jeddah-based Islamic Corpora-tion for the Development of the Private Sector, which opened on Tuesday, took an additional day to close, however, and was trimmed to $300m from the $500m originally envisaged.

The contrast suggests that while demand has returned to the Gulf bond market, attitudes to pricing are very different than they were before mid-2015. “Demand for Gulf bonds has improved following stabilised oil prices, general improvement in the outlook for emerging market credits, better regional government finances, and dividend distribution increas-ing liquidity in the hands of regional investors,” said Chirag Doshi, sen-ior vice-president for investments at Qatar Insurance Co.

“But investors are increasingly price-sensitive because there is still much uncertainty around oil prices.”

In mid-January, the emirate of Sharjah reopened the Gulf market after a three-month lull by raising $500m in Islamic bonds. A handful

of issuers followed, including Bahrain’s government, Kuwait Projects Co and the Jeddah-based Islamic Develop-ment Bank, but deal flow was sporadic and order books were small.

The Ahli Bank bond, with a guar-antor rating of A+ by Fitch and A2 by Moody’s, suggests demand has returned to healthy levels, which could encourage a series of new issues in the region. Yesterday, Kuwait Food Co said it would seek shareholder assent to issue bonds in currencies includ-ing Kuwaiti dinars.

The Ahli deal saw strong interna-tional demand with around 20 percent of investors coming from Asia, 50 per-cent from the Middle East and the rest from Europe and elsewhere, said a banker involved in the transaction. The bond traded at 100.50 points in the secondary market on Thursday, up from a reoffer price of 99.394.

But ICD, which set its initial pric-ing guidance at 125 to 130 basis points over mid-swaps, printed at the wider end of that guidance after attracting orders of less than $500m, mainly from lead managers, a source famil-iar with the matter said.

ICD’s aggressive initial pricing might have been accepted early last year, when low yields in emerging markets made investors desperate for Gulf debt at almost any price, but that is no longer the case.

An October 2020 sukuk from Saudi Arabia-based Arab Petroleum Invest-ments Corp, which like ICD is rated Aa3 by Moody’s, was trading at 155 bps over its Z-spread yesterday.

Gulf’s bond market thaws as panic over oil fadesImproved sentiment was seen in the response to a $500m, five-year debut bond this week by Qatar’s Ahli Bank, which attracted a sizeable order book of around $1.2bn — the kind of total seen before mid-2015.

Reuters

ATHENS: Greece hopes to agree this week with its foreign creditors the pack-age of measures it needs to legislate to conclude a crucial bailout review, but differences among EU and IMF institutions remain, sources close to the talks said yesterday.

The review has dragged on for months mainly due to a rift among the lenders over Greece’s fiscal short-fall by 2018 - initially seen at 3 percent by the EU, 1 percent by Athens and 4.5 percent by the IMF.

Athens and its lenders - the Com-mission, the European Central Bank, European Stability Mechanism and the International Monetary Fund - have agreed to use 3 percent as the baseline scenario in the Athens-based talks.

But the EU and the IMF are still at

odds on whether Athens could achieve a 3.5 percent primary surplus — budget balance before debt service payments — in 2018, an official participating in

the talks told Reuters.The IMF, which will decide whether

to co-finance Greece’s third bailout after the review and in light of how much debt relief Greece receives, believes Athens will miss its 2018 surplus target, even if it implements measures worth 3 percent of GDP, the official said.

EU institutions believed the target was feasible. Faced with a huge refugee crisis - which has catapulted Greece to the forefront of a massive refugee influx into Europe in the past year, the EU is keen to resolve the financ-ing logjam swiftly.

Underlying differences among the lenders on the extent of fiscal consol-idation Greece needs to pursue would be reflected in assessment documents compiled by the IMF, and the EU insti-tutions possibly by Sunday, government officials and sources close to the talks said.

“There will be a document from the side of the three European institutions - basically the ESM - and another doc-ument, drawn up with the IMF. These documents will look alike but won’t be the same,” Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said after meeting the four inspectors on Wednesday.

“We hope to finish on Sunday by teatime,” the British-educated economist said. If concluded, the review will pave the way for talks on debt relief with the EU and poten-tially unlock an estimated €5bn in bailout funds.

Athens needs the money to repay €3.5bn to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank in July, as well as unpaid domestic bills.

Holding a fragile parliamentary majority, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (pictured) hopes a debt restructuring will convince Greeks that their sacri-fices are paying off after six years of

belt-tightening. But the delays have cast a shadow on his plans.

Some of the measures discussed - the management of bad loans, pension cuts and tax hikes - were politically dif-ficult for Tsipras’ left-wing government, which was re-elected in September on promises to mitigate the impact of austerity.

To achieve its targets, Athens aims to save one percentage point from cutting pension spending, another point from raising income tax and 1 percent of GDP from tax measures, which have not yet been agreed. It is also considering raising fuel tax and value-added tax on cigarettes, among other measures.

Tsipras hopes for a compromise before April 22, when eurozone finance ministers assess its progress. Some euro zone ministers will attend the spring meetings of the IMF in Wash-ington on April 15-17.

Greece hopes for draft deal soon despite EU-IMF rift

Reuters

BAGHDAD: Iraq plans to lower the oil price forecast in its 2016 budget to about $32 a barrel from $45, wid-ening its fiscal deficit by several billion dollars, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a senior government official said.

The new price estimate is based on the continued low level of glo-bal oil prices in recent months, said Marwa Al Nasaa, Amman-based IMF resident representative for Iraq.

“We’re setting it closer to $30 based on the climate of international futures prices since November,” she said yesterday.

The adjustment is expected to add about $6bn to the Opec produc-er’s budget deficit unless offsetting measures are taken, said the Iraqi official, who requested anonymity to speak about ongoing government deliberations.

Iraq’s current budget, which projects oil exports of 3.6 million barrels per day, predicts a deficit of 24 trillion Iraqi dinars ($20.56 bn).

FINANCES HITThe drop in oil prices over the

past two years has battered Bagh-dad’s finances as it wages a battle against Islamic State militants in the north and west and confronts a political crisis that threatens to bring down the government.

Iraq, which relies on oil for more than 90 percent of its rev-enue and sells at a discount to global benchmark crudes, earned an average of $24 a barrel in the first two months of the year and $28 in March, the Iraqi official said late on Wednesday. “We have to rebuild the budget taking this into consideration.”

The revised budget, which has not been finalised, is part of Iraq’s negotiations for a standby agreement (SBA) with the IMF, the official added. The SBA financ-ing could be approved as early as June, unlocking $15bn in inter-national assistance over the next three years.

“If an SBA is reached, part of that financing gap will be met by IMF and other donor financing, but it will not close the entire gap,” Nasaa said.

“A number of measures are going to have to come from the govern-ment itself to increase revenues and bring expenditure in line with the new revenue reality. It has to be a combination of both.”

The Iraqi official declined to specify what measures Baghdad would take to reduce the deficit, but said: “It is a must, otherwise we will have to borrow more and more.”

Reuters

BRUSSELS: European Union states will have more powers to set sales tax rates, the European Commission said yesterday, presenting a broad reform of Value Added Tax rules which also aims to curb widespread fraud involving VAT.

The plan follows repeated pressure from EU states to scrap the existing system based on a centralised EU-wide rate-setting mechanism, which limits countries’ powers to decide reduced levies for specific products, ranging from ebooks to sanitary products.

Two options remain under dis-cussion, the bolder of which would give states the freedom to set rates as they prefer “so long as it does not generate tax distortions”, the Com-mission said in its plan. EU Economics Commissioner Pierre Moscovici told reporters that he favoured the more ambitious option. A definitive deci-sion will be made by next year.

In either case Britain will retain its right to apply zero rates of VAT, a legacy entitlement that it shares with other older member states but which London is unusual in using so widely, notably on foods and medicines.

The Commission will also make a proposal by the end of the year to increase the number of products and services exempt from VAT. “This would solve the tampon tax issue,” an official said, explaining that this measure would allow Britain to charge no VAT on female hygiene products, which are currently taxed at a reduced 5 percent rate.

This follows a commitment made at the EU leaders’ summit in March to end the tampon tax row that had become a political football for Brit-ons campaigning to leave the EU in a June referendum.

The Commission will also pro-pose this year a cut in VAT on ebooks and online news publications to align prices with their paper versions. The Commission’s action plan on VAT also proposes to changing the way the tax is collected on trade between EU states.

At the moment the tax is col-lected by the state where the goods or services are sold and exporters are exempt. The system is prone to fraud and causes revenue losses of ¤50bn ($57bn) a year in the EU, Com-mission data shows.

The new VAT regime under con-sideration would make exporting countries responsible for collecting the tax at the rate applied by the states where the final sale occurs.

Samsung Electronics set for Q1 profit jump

Iraq to lower oil

price forecast to

$32 a barrel in

2016 budget

Reuters

SEOUL: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd flagged a 10 percent jump in quarterly profit yesterday — a sign of robust early sales for its new Galaxy S7 smartphones although doubts abound whether momentum can be maintained in the face of new rival offerings.

The South Korean tech giant’s estimate for first-quarter operating profit handily beat market forecasts and has boosted hopes that its strug-gling mobile business will post its first annual profit gain in three years, also benefiting from an improved perform-ance for mid-to-low tier devices and cost-cutting efforts.

Samsung said January-March operating profit was likely 6.6 tril-lion won ($5.7bn), well above the 5.6 trillion won profit tipped by a Thom-son Reuters StarMine SmartEstimate derived from a survey of 23 analysts.

The firm will not disclose a full breakdown of its results until late April, and gave no comment on the perform-ance of its business divisions.

More than a dozen brokerages had lifted forecasts for Samsung earnings since late March encouraged by reports of better-than-expected sales of its Galaxy S7 models, which boast an improved camera, waterproofing and microSD storage support. Samsung’s

mobile business was probably the top earner for the first time in seven quar-ters, analysts say.

A decline in the value of the South Korean won is also expected to help lift the firm’s first-quarter bottom line.

But even so, competition from new products such as Apple Inc’s recently launched iPhone SE and Huawei Tech-nologies Co Ltd’s upcoming flagship P9 phone are tempering investor enthusiasm.

“First quarter earnings will be the peak this year,” said HMC Investment analyst Greg Roh, adding that mar-keting costs for the mobile business will rise in the next quarter, pushing profits lower.

Investor caution stems from last year’s launch of Galaxy S6 phones, which boasted major design changes and features and were widely praised. Initially expected to be Samsung’s best-selling phones ever, sales fizzled

following the launch.“S7 sales popped in the beginning

but could very well fade as rivals launch new models,” said Alpha Asset Man-agement fund manager C.J. Heo. “We have learned from the past.”

Other analysts said Samsung’s decision to launch the Galaxy S7 models a month earlier than their predeces-sors may have simply have brought forward sales that would have been made in later quarters.

EU to give states more

powers on VAT rates

An employee at a Samsung Electronics exhibit hall prepares for the start of the business day in Seoul yesterday.

FROM LEFT: Siemens AG CEO Joe Kaeser, Bavarian State Minister for Economic Affairs Ilse Aigner, Airbus CEO Thomas Enders and other officials pose during the groundbreaking for a new research building in Taufkirchen, Germany, yesterday. Airbus and Siemens signed a cooperation agreement to develop electric aircraft technology.

Siemens and Airbus sign pact

BUSINESS16 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

Reuters

WASHINGTON: The Federal Reserve appears unlikely to raise interest rates before June amid widespread concern at the US cen-tral bank over its limited ability to counter the blow of a global eco-nomic slowdown, minutes from the Fed’s March 15-16 policy meeting suggest.

The minutes released late on Wednesday showed policymakers debated whether they might hike rates in April but “a number” of them argued headwinds to growth would probably persist, with many arguing they should be cautious about rais-ing rates. “Participants generally saw global economic and financial devel-opments as continuing to pose risks,” according to the minutes.

Policymakers had signaled at the close of the March meeting that they expected to raise rates twice in 2016 but the timing of the hikes still appears up in the air. According to the min-utes, many Fed members said they were concerned that the central bank had limited firepower to respond to shocks from abroad because interest

rates are already so close to zero. “Many participants indicated that the heightened global risks and the asymmetric ability of monetary pol-icy to respond to them warranted caution,” the minutes stated.

Investors have held doubts the Fed would raise rates at all this year and the minutes did little to shift bets on the path of policy.

Prices for fed futures contracts suggested investors still saw the chance of a rate hike in December as just better than even, and they saw virtually no chance of an increase at the April 26-27 policy meeting, according to the CME group.

According to the minutes, several of the central bankers said elevated risks faced by the U.S. economy meant that raising rates in April “would signal a sense of urgency they did not think appropriate.” A small minority indi-cated a rate hike might be warranted when the Fed meets at the end of April. After that meeting, policymakers next convene June 14-15.

Policymakers had signaled in December that four rate increases were likely in 2016, and the minutes of the March meeting highlighted the consensus within the Fed around a cautious outlook for the economy.

Fed chief Janet Yellen said on March 29 that the US central bank should “proceed cautiously” in rais-ing rates, a view Fed Governor Lael Brainard pushed late last year which has been recently embraced by pol-icymakers including St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, who had previously warned the Fed might hike too slowly.

Bullard said that economic data has been mixed since the March meeting, which could make it dif-ficult for the Fed to raise rates this month. The Fed left its target interest rate for overnight lending between banks at between 0.25 percent and 0.5 percent in March and in January after December’s hike which ended seven years of near-zero rates.

Fed signals caution on rate hikes

Reuters

WASHINGTON: The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, suggesting the labour market continued to strengthen despite tepid economic growth.

Initial claims for state unem-ployment benefits declined 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 267,000 for the week ended April 2, the Labour Department said yesterday. “The per-sistently low level of claims should provide some reassurance that the economy is growing, even if that growth appears more sluggish that most would have hoped a few months ago,” said Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Economists had forecast claims slipping to 270,000 in the latest week. Jobless claims have now been below 300,000, a threshold associated with healthy labour market conditions, for

57 weeks, the longest stretch since 1973. The labour market buoyancy is at odds with slowing economic growth. Recent data on consumer spending, business investment and international trade suggest growth slowed to below a 1 percent annu-alized rate in the first quarter after expanding at an anemic 1.4 percent pace in the fourth quarter.

With the strengthening labor mar-ket drawing in discouraged and new job seekers, which is likely to keep wage growth moderate, it is unlikely the Federal Reserve will shift from its policy of gradually raising inter-est rates. Government data last week showed about 2.4 million people entered or re-entered the job mar-ket between September and March, the second-largest increase in the labor force over a six-month period on record. Fed Chair Janet Yellen has argued that hidden labour market slack was restraining wage growth.

Fed officials last month down-graded their economic growth expectations and forecast only two

more rate rises this year. The US central bank raised its benchmark overnight interest rate in December for the first time in nearly a decade.

Last week, the four-week moving average of claims, considered a bet-ter measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week vola-tility, rose 3,500 to 266,750.

Employers added 215,000 jobs in March, on top of the 245,000 positions created in February, the government reported last week. An increase in the labor force lifted the unemployment rate one-tenth of a percentage point to 5 percent. A report on Tuesday showed hiring by US employers surged in February to the highest level since November 2006. Nearly three million people voluntarily quit their jobs in February.

“The fears of world economic growth (slowing) are not causing a concern for business owners here in the U.S. with all the help wanted signs up in the windows,” said Chris Rup-key, chief economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York.

AFP

FRANKFURT: Top executives at Volkswagen are refusing to forego their bonuses this year, despite prescribing belt-tightening for the carmaker’s workforce in the wake of the massive emissions-cheating scandal, the weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported yesterday.

Without naming its sources, the magazine said that shortly before a supervisory board deci-sion that executive board members had made it clear they were willing to “accept a cut in their bonuses, but not forego them entirely”, even though they have repeat-edly told the workforce that the crisis threatens the group’s very existence.

VW’s former chief executive Martin Winterkorn received a bonus of more than ¤3m ($3.4m) a year ago. A company spokesman said that the board pay would be pub-lished in VW’s annual report on April 28. “The management board is determined to set an example when it comes to the adjustment in the bonuses,” he said, dismissing the Spiegel article as “pure speculation.”

Winterkorn’s successor Mat-thias Mueller was parachuted in last year to steer the carmaker out of its deepest-ever crisis which erupted when VW was exposed as having installed emissions-cheat-ing software into 11 million diesel engines worldwide.

At the time, Mueller told the workforce that there would have to be “belt-tightening at all levels” from management down to the workers. But according to Der Spiegel, the former finance chief Hans-Dieter Poetsch, who was appointed to the head of the supervisory board in October, pocketed nearly ¤10m as “compensation” for the lower pay he would receive as a result.

Unions are concerned that the belt-tightening needed to cope with the fallout from the engine-rigging scandal could lead to job cuts.

“We have the impression that the diesel engine scandal could be used as a backdoor for job cuts that weren’t up for discussion until a couple of months ago,” the works council wrote in a letter to the management of VW’s own brand and published on the website of the powerful IG Metall labour union.

DOHA: LG Electronics trained its mobile sales staff across Qatar on the capabilities of the upcoming LG G5.

The training was provided at a leading cinema hall in Doha where the sales staff had a unique experi-ence of receiving training from LG trainers on a cinema widescreen.

The training content shown over the wide screen with surround sound provided an immersive learning experience. The sales staff were later treated to lunch at a leading Asian res-taurant followed by a special screening of the movie Batman v Superman.

C V Rappai, Director & CEO of Video Home & Electronic Centre, said: “The LG G5 is a pioneer phone in modular design as such it was

only befitting that we trained our sales staff in a unique way to help them better understand the unique features that the G5 has to offer. Having the training in a cinema as

against a mundane training room was also part of the LG G5 campaign theme of Let’s Play More.” LG G5 is a showcase of cutting-edge technol-ogies and rich features thoughtfully designed to deliver a more play-ful user experience.

The G5 has so far won a record 33 awards including Best New Smart-phone at MWC 2016 from the GSMA’s Glomo Awards, the mobile industry’s longest established awards plat-form for innovation, excellence and achievement. “Since MWC, LG G5 and Friends have captured the imagina-tion of consumers everywhere with its engaging take on mobile technol-ogy,” said C V Rappai. “Modularity has been talked about for years but

no one was able to consumerize it until now and we’re happy that LG was able take on the mantle.”

LG G5 is a brand new design with a sleek, metal uni-body featuring a Slide-out Battery and a Modu-lar Type design that gives a greater smartphone experience. Complete with LG Friends, a collection of com-panion devices that include Cam plus, LG Hi-Fi Plus with B&O PLAY, 360 VR, 360 Cam, Rolling Bot, Tone Platinum, H3 by B&O Play. With these the G5 can be transformed into a digital camera, Hi-Fi player and more.

The LG G5 will be available by the 3rd week of April in Qatar across Jumbo Electronics showrooms and leading hypermarkets.

Reuters

MUMBAI: Sanjeev Gupta (pictured), the boss of metals trader Liberty House Group who wants to buy Tata Steel Ltd’s loss-making British operations, says he has the financial resources to match his ambitions.

Hitting back at critics who have questioned his capacity to take on a business dragged down by heavy debt and weak sales, the 44-year-old Cambridge graduate said he was serious about making an offer and had the backing of a group with $7 billion of revenues.

“If you look at our financials, we are probably the least leveraged company in our sector,” Gupta told Reuters in a phone interview.

“We like to punch above our weight, we like to take on challenges, but we know how to stay in business so we never over-stretch ourselves.”

Asked how profitable Liberty House’s businesses were, a spokes-man for the company said it could not provide details at short notice.

Tata, the biggest steel producer in Britain, has been forced to try to sell its British businesses due to high costs, weak demand and a flood of cheap supplies from top producer China. The formal sale process for the assets, which the Indian com-pany bought in 2007, is expected to start by Monday.

Liberty’s financial advis-ers will start due diligence on the assets within a week from that date, said Indian-born Gupta, who founded Liberty House in 1992 and is known among friends and former colleagues as a risk-taker with a

According to the minutes, many Fed members said they were concerned that the central bank had limited firepower to respond to shocks from abroad because interest rates are already so close to zero.

US weekly jobless claims fall by 9,000

VW managers refuse to forego bonuses: Report

Gupta says has resources

to back UK steel ambitions

strong network among British and US financiers.

Tata, which entered the Euro-pean steel market with a $12bn acquisition of Anglo-Dutch Corus in 2007, will only produce steel in Europe in the Netherlands once it sells its UK business with production capacity of 7 million tonnes per year.

The British business employs about 15,000 people, and Gupta plans to retain them if a deal goes through. But he wants the govern-ment to ensure “competitive power prices” so that he can change the raw material for the steel plants to locally available scrap from imported iron ore.

The British government, under fire for the way it has responded to the crisis, opened talks with potential buyers for Tata Steel’s UK operations, including Gupta’s Liberty House, earlier this week.

“It’s a loss-making business and a loss-making business is not worth a lot in itself to buy,” said Gupta.

“It’s more of a question of what are the resources required in turning it around.” He declined to estimate the money needed for a revival of the Tata plants.

LG Electronics’ mobile sales staff pose for a group picture.

LG prepares sales staff to sell G5 smartphone

The LG G5 will be available by the 3rd week of April in Qatar across Jumbo Electronics showrooms and leading hypermarkets.

QE Index 10,164.76 1.33 %

QE Total Return Index 16,380.42 1.33 %

QE Al Rayan Islamic Index 3,966.25 0.84 %

QE All Share Index 2,827.84 1.13 %

QE All Share Banks & Financial Services 2,738.22 1.33 %

QE All Share Industrials 3,121.21 0.61 %

QE All Share Transportation 2,543.75 0.13 %

QE All Share Real Estate 2,470.21 1.72 %

QE All Share Insurance 4,508.68 1.12 %

QE All Share Telecoms 1,169.83 0.71 %

QE All Share Consumer Goods & Services 6,557.87 1.88 %

QE INDICES SUMMARY QATAR STOCK EXCHANGE

QE MARKET SUMMARY COMPARISON

GOLD AND SILVER

WORLD STOCK INDICES

07-04-2016 Today 06-04-2016 Previous dayIndex 10,164.76 10,031.02

Change 133.74 22.25

% 1.33 0.22

YTD% 2.54 3.82

Volume 9,278,837 7,843,947

Value (QAR) 379,395,379.94 349,579,667.94

Trades 5,553 5,222

Up 31 | Down 08 | Unchanged 01

GOLD QR145.1022 per grammeSILVER QR1.7851 per gramme

Index Day’s Close Pt Chg % Chg Year High Year LowAll Ordinaries 5204.312 -26.473 -0.51 5379.6 4762.1

Cac 40 Index/D 4451.66 19.69 0.44 4586.11 3892.46

Dj Indu Average 17582.57 -41.3 -0.23 18351.4 15370.3

Hang Seng Inde/D 20615.23 -51.52 -0.25 21794.84 18278.8

Iseq Overall/D 6206.86 27.91 0.45 6791.68 5611.89

Karachi 100 In/D 32928.3 -94.57 -0.29 33304.4 29785

Nikkei 225 Index 17000.98 -47.57 -0.28 18951.12 14865.77

S&P 500 Index/D 0 0 0 2134.72 1810.1

EXCHANGE RATECurrency Buying Selling

US$ QR 3.6305 QR 3.6500

UK QR 5.0962 QR 5.1677

Euro QR 4.1152 QR 4.1728

CA$ QR 2.7522 QR 2.8066

Swiss Fr QR 3.7799 QR 3.8357

Yen QR 0.0333 QR 0.0340

Aus$ QR 2.7194 QR 2.7740

Ind Re QR 0.0542 QR 0.0552

Pak Re QR 0.0345 QR 0.0352

Peso QR 0.0780 QR 0.0796

SL Re QR 0.0249 QR 0.0255

Taka QR 0.0460 QR 0.0470

Nep Re QR 0.0341 QR 0.0348

SA Rand QR 0.2370 QR 0.2418

INTERNATIONAL MARKETS - A LIST OF SHARES FROM THE WORLD

A C C-A/D 1417.1 -10.65 7650

Aban Offs-A/D 176.85 2.7 353806

Ador Welding-B/D 280 -4.7 4492

Aegis Logis-B/D 103.2 6.1 198993

Alembic-B/D 35.7 -0.15 26850

Alok Indus-A/D 4.85 0.01 2273838

Apollo Tyre-A/D 168.85 -3.8 163461

Asahi I Glass-/D 155.3 -1.7 4929

Ashok Leyland-/D 107 -0.75 670382

Ballarpur In-B/D 14.96 -0.28 237268

Bata India-A/D 523.3 8.75 67829

Beml Ltd-A/D 917.6 -24.2 50380

Bh Electronic-/D 1156.25 -18.65 30554

Bhansali Eng-T/D 18.55 -0.85 32831

Bharat Bijle-B/D 940.75 -7.25 13821

Bharatgears-B/D 69 1 1062

Bhartiya Int-B/D 456.6 5.9 10023

Bhel-A/D 119.3 5.3 4774271

Bom.Burmah-B/D 378.7 -4.05 7654

Bombay Dyeing-/D 47.7 -0.95 106533

Camph.& All-B/D 558.1 -29.7 6166

Canfin Homes-B/D 1154.55 -19 2605

Caprihans-Xc/D 81.65 -1.15 2599

Castrol India-/D 375.1 -1.35 13160

Century Enka-B/D 187 0 31687

Century Text-A/D 568.15 -11.95 243835

Chambal Fert-B/D 57.3 0.5 86914

Chola Invest-A/D 744.8 19.75 16965

Chowgule St-T/D 15.8 0.48 1775

Cimmco-B/D 72.95 1.3 2930

Cipla-A/D 507.6 1.6 164191

City Union Bk-/D 94.95 -1.45 14235

Colgate-A/D 821.9 -7.3 35227

Container Cor-/D 1271.5 4 4677

Dai-Tichi Kar-/D 405 -3.5 7094

Dcm Shram Ind-/D 136.5 -6.2 8919

Dhampur Sugar-/D 95.55 -2.15 291353

Dr. Reddy-A/D 3031.4 31.45 41228

E I H-B/D 106.25 1.05 8876

E.I.D Parry-A/D 216.7 -5.85 165211

Eicher Motor-A/D 18869.65 -303.55 1711

Electrosteel-B/D 18.45 -0.45 124199

Emco-B/D 26 -0.65 18071

Escorts Fin-B/D 4.1 -0.08 57182

Escorts-A/D 148.55 -2.1 278993

Eveready Indu-/D 236 3.45 13992

F D C-B/D 183 0.2 2093

Federal Bank-A/D 42.95 -1 338523

Ferro Alloys-B/D 4.6 -0.2 12985

Fgp Ltd-Xd/D 2.5 0.01 2250

Finolex-A/D 365.8 2.2 2336

Gail-A/D 341.2 0.05 64919

Galada Power-B/D 14.2 -0.64 2798

Gammon India-T/D 12.75 -0.15 397833

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Idbi-A/D 67.75 0.3 591377

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India Glycol-B/D 88.95 2.35 109016

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Indo-Tcount-T/D 978.45 -33.85 3414

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Mastek-B/D 147.9 0.5 108820

Max Financial-/D 347.7 2.6 145246

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Marks & Sp./D 436.5 16.1 7000567

Next/D 5431.0688 20 281294

Pearson/D 827 -41 1820272

Prudential/D 1293.5 -17 1954823

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Whitbread/D 3797 -12 157542

DUBAI: Gulf stock markets rose yesterday after Brent crude oil jumped more than 5 percent to about $40 a barrel, while hopes for economic benefits from a visit by Saudi Arabia’s king supported that market.

The Saudi index gained 0.7 percent, led higher by petrochemical firms that were lifted by the oil price rise. Saudi Basic Industries rose 1 percent and Saudi Kayan climbed by the same amount after announcing the start of commercial operations at a new butanol plant.

Telecoms company Mobily gained 2.9 percent to SR31.60. Yanbu Cement edged up by 0.2 percent.

Dubai’s index was up by 1 percent as all ten of the most heavily traded stocks gained. Builder Drake & Scull was the most heavily traded and jumped by 11.1 percent. Telecoms company du, however, slid by 3.1 percent as it went ex-dividend.

Abu Dhabi added 1.2 percent as Abu Dhabi Com-mercial Bank bounced from technical support on its March lows of 6.32-6.35 dirhams, climbing 2.5 percent to 6.48 dirhams.

Egypt’s index recovered from early losses to edge into positive territory by the close, up 0.3 percent. Com-mercial International Bank rose 1.1 percent, but fallers narrowly outnumbered gainers by 78 to 74.

AFP

LONDON: European banking shares took a pounding yesterday after Brit-ish regulators ordered lenders to come clean on any links to the Panama Papers scandal and the ECB appeared com-fortable with negative interest rates.

Overall the the major European share indices fell. In London, the FTSE 100 was down 0.4 percent at 6.136,89 points; in Frankfurt, the DAX 30 was

down 1.0 percent at 9,530.62 points; in Paris, the CAC 40 was down 0.9 percent at 4,245.91 points, while the EURO STOXX 50 was down 1.6 per-cent at 2,863.48 points.

“UK banks were in the red, match-ing declines across Europe after ECB minutes reignited fears over negative rates, whilst an FCA deadline for report-ing links to Panama and acquisitions in the insurance space by Lloyds were not being well received,” CMC Markets analyst Jasper Lawler told AFP.

While ECB leaders were divided

about stepping up asset purchases at their monetary policy meeting last month, the minutes of the meeting released yester-day showed there was broad support for pushing interest rates further if neces-sary. The ECB’s deposit rate was pushed down to -0.4 percent, meaning com-mercial lenders have to pay the central bank on unused funds at the end of the day they transfer to the ECB.

Negative interest rates are a grow-ing headache for banks as they usually haven’t been able to pass them along to customers. Deutsche Bank shares fell

3.0 percent, while Societe Generale dropped 3.5 percent and BNP Paribas slumped 3.8 percent.

Meanwhile Britain’s finance watch-dog said that it has given banks and financial firms until next week to reveal whether they have any links to the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers leak. A spokesman for the Financial Conduct Authority said it had written to about 20 companies asking to explain their relationship with Panama-based Mossack Fonseca by April 15.

The French regulator also asked

the country’s banks to provide infor-mation about their exposure to tax havens. French newspaper Le Monde has reported that 365 banks across the world had used the services of Mossack Fonseca, including Britain’s HSBC which created 2,300 offshore companies.

Shares in HSBC shed 0.9 percent, RBS dropped 1.0 percent, Barclays fell 1.6 percent and Lloyds tumbled 4.8 per-cent. Shares in Lloyds were also hit by a report by Bloomberg that the bank is considering acquisitions to help expand its insurance business. Shares in rival

insurers Prudential dropped 2.3 per-cent, Old Mutual gave up 2.9 percent and Aviva slumped 4.5 percent.

Wall Street also pushed lower. The Dow was down 0.9 percent at 17,565.32 points, the S&P 500 was down 1.0 per-cent at 2,045.39 points while, the Nasdaq was down 1.1 percent at 4,866.63 points.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 was up 0.2 percent at 15,749.84 points; in Shanghai, the Composite was down 1.4 percent at 3,008.42 points, while in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng was up 0.3 percent at 20,266.05 points.

Gulf bourses rise

Panama Papers and ECB pound European banking shares

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LONDON: Ben Stokes can recover to become one of England’s best ever players after his World Twenty20 night-mare when he was hit for four sixes in the last over of the final, team-mate Stuart Broad said on Wednesday.

England looked on course for victory in Sun-day’s showpiece against the West Indies before Carlos Brathwaite sent the ball soaring over the boundary rope four times in a row to clinch a dramatic win in Kolk-ata’s Eden Gardens.

Stokes was left crest-fallen on the pitch as the West Indians celebrated wildly. He could, however, emerge a better player for the chastening experi-ence, according to Broad.

“This will play a big part in making him a very strong character,” Broad, the world’s top-ranked test bowler, told the BBC.

“You always learn more from making errors

than from the good days...“He’s got every

attribute to be one of the best cricketers Eng-land’s ever had. I’m sure he will become that in the future.”

Broad suffered a simi-larly embarrassing over at the 2007 World T20 when he was hit for six sixes by India’s Yuvraj Singh.

His advice to Stokes was to analyse what went wrong and then forget about it for the rest of his career.

“What he needs to do while he’s sitting at home is he will have to remem-ber in his own mind how he was feeling, what would he do differently if he is in that situation again, was he rushed and did he take advice from the wrong people,” Broad added in The Telegraph.

“Then he’s got to decide all of that in his own mind, find the answers and put it to bed.”

“Then you park it. You don’t watch it again and you never talk about it again until you finish play-ing. You just focus on what you can do to improve.”

AFP

LAS VEGAS: Manny Pacquiao believes his 11-month absence from boxing following last year’s defeat to Floyd Mayweather has left him hungrier than ever as he prepares for his farewell fight against Tim Bradley tomorrow.

The 37-year-old Filipino insists he will retire from boxing after the third instalment of his rivalry with Bradley, vowing to focus on a political career in his homeland where he is seeking election to the Senate.

While Pacquiao has carefully kept a door ajar to extending his career, he told reporters at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Wednesday that he views tomorrow’s bout as an opportunity to sign off in style.

“It’s really important for me to win

this fight, to win convincingly,” Pac-quiao said. “It’s part of my legacy.”

Asked if he still retained the killer instinct which helped him win an unprecedented eight world titles at eight different weight classes, Pacquiao said his long absence had served to renew his enthusiasm for the ring.

“I still have that (killer instinct),” Pacquiao said. “I rested almost one year and when I started training for this fight I felt fresh and hungry again, like I did when I first started boxing. It’s been good for me. It’s good that I had a long layoff.

“I still have that desire. I love box-ing. Boxing is my passion. I grew up on boxing. I started when I was 12 years old, non-stop, until now.”

Pacquiao’s long-time trainer Fred-die Roach said he had questioned whether retirement talk could prove a distraction.

“I thought it might be, but training camp was great, it was just like every other training camp. Manny maybe worked a little harder and said ‘Let’s go out with a bang’ and that’s what we intend on doing,” Roach said.

Pacquiao (57-6-2) has joked that a knockout against Bradley -- who has twice gone the distance with the Filipino, winning one, losing one -- would boost his appeal at the ballot box when he stands in Filipino elec-tions in May.

Pacquiao however has not scored a knockout since 2009, when he demol-ished Britain’s Ricky Hatton in two rounds before beating Miguel Cotto six months later with a 12th round TKO.

Bradley said he expects Pacquiao to adopt an aggressive game plan.

“I’m expecting him to be more aggressive, he’s going to come out like a bat out of hell and try to take my head off,” Bradley said, shortly before going face-to-face with Pacquiao at a pre-fight press conference here.

The 32-year-old from the Cali-fornian desert city of Palm Springs believes, however, that a combative approach from his opponent may play into his hands.

“If he’s more aggressive, then it’s probably going to give me more oppor-tunities I would think,” said Bradley. “He’s shown over and over again that he’s for the people, he’s by the peo-ple, and that he’s a man of his word. And he’s always shown that charac-ter, integrity,” he added.

SPORT20 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

WBO WELTERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP

Pacquiao vows to sign off in style

Wada gives Kenya May 2 deadlineReuters

NAIROBI: Kenya has been given a one-month extension to comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency code and thereby avoid future sanctions, WADA said yesterday.

The African nation, famed for its distance runners but tarnished by around 40 doping cases in recent years, missed a February deadline to establish a legal framework for its Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya (ADAK).

WADA’s Compliance Review Com-mittee met again this week to discuss Kenya’s progress but again found that a parliamentary anti-doping bill had still not been formally adopted.

“Unless the bill, policy and ADAK rules are formally adopted by May 2, 2016, the Compliance Review Com-mittee’s recommendation to the WADA Foundation Board will be to declare the ADAK non-compliant,” WADA said in a statement.

While non-compliance could, in the worst case scenario, stop Ken-yan athletes competing at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August, an ADAK source told Reuters the situ-ation would be resolved.

“We are proceeding to Mombasa to consult with the Parliamentary Committee on Labour and Sports so that when the bill comes for a sec-ond reading ... we will be on the same

page,” said the source who declined to be identified.

Kenya was given a deadline to enact the law or be declared non-com-pliant, which brings WADA sanctions, but parliament went into recess ear-lier this month and the bill could not become law before time ran out on April 5.

The governing International Asso-ciation of Athletics Federations (IAAF) said last month it was highly unlikely Kenya would be suspended from the Olympics.

WADA is due to issue its decision on Kenya’s case at a board meeting on May 12.

Kenya President Uhuru Keny-atta said on Tuesday that the bill could not be fast-tracked to beat the deadline but he was certain his nation’s athletes would compete at the Olympics.

“The country is committed and what we are telling them (WADA) is ... let our processes go through,” Ken-yatta told France 24 in an interview.

The country’s Sports Cabinet Secretary Dr Hassan Wario told the BBC the Parliamentary Committee on Labour and Sports would meet in Mombasa today to pour over the bill before it went for its second and third readings.

Ethiopia plans mass testsReuters

ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia, one of five countries the IAAF governing body says is in “critical care” over its drug-testing systems, is to carry out doping tests on up to 200 athletes.

The east African nation, which alongside neighbour Kenya has for many years dominated distance run-ning on the track and roads, became the latest country to have its credibil-ity questioned when six of its athletes came under investigation in Febru-ary for doping.

Last month the World Anti-Doping Agency gave Addis Ababa a 10-point guideline, that included raising its drug-testing capacity to WADA stand-ards, to be implemented by November.

Ethiopian officials said failure to do so would lead to suspension.

The bid to take urine and blood

samples on 150 to 200 athletes from before the end of April will cost the country between 2.5 million birr ($117,359) to 3 million, he said.

Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Ukraine and Belarus have been identified by IAAF president Sebastian Coe as coun-tries in need of “critical care” because of weaknesses in their drug-testing systems.

Russia is currently banned from all athletics following the discovery of a state-sponsored doping regime and revelations of corruption.

Kenya, having missed a WADA deadline, has until May 12 to show it has adequate systems in place after a series of high-profile positive tests by athletes and the suspension of sev-eral leading officials.

Ethiopian Athletics Federation president Alebachew Nigussie told reporters that Coe and WADA director Rob Koehler are set to visit their coun-try in early June to review progress.

Tim Bradley (right) of the USA and Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines hold up the WBO Welterweight World Championship Belt during their press conference at the David Copperfield Theater in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA on Wednesday. Pacquiao and Bradley will face off in their bout tomorrow at the MGM Grand Arena in the Welterweight Championship.

Home

advantage for

Joshua against

MartinAP

LONDON: Home advantage was supposed to give Anthony Joshua an edge in his world heavyweight title fight against IBF champion Charles Martin tomorrow.

Yet the British challenger said Thursday he may struggle to handle the emotions of fighting in front of 20,000 fans at the atmospheric O2 Arena in his home city of London.

Asked in the fighters’ head-to-head news conference if he is confident of handling the occasion, the 26-year-old Joshua said: “Prob-ably not. I’ll probably go out there and try to take his head off ... I’m not going to go out there and dance around and try to evade punches.”

Joshua won an Olympic gold medal at the O2 Arena in 2012 and has won four professional fights at the venue, helping him to a 15-0 record since turning pro. All his victories have come by knockout.

Martin, however, said fighting in what could be a hostile crowd will bring the best out of him.

“I’m comfortable everywhere I go. That isn’t anything new,” said Martin, who wore a smart gray over-coat and scarf. “When I first fought at Madison Square Garden, I went in there and performed as such. Same when I fought at the Barclays Center (in beating Vyacheslav Glazkov for the IBF belt in January).

“They are going to be scream-ing for their guy. That translates to love for me.”

The mutual respect that has existed between the fighters con-tinued Thursday. There was no trash talk or finger pointing. Joshua spoke about “wanting to see blood” and “going to war,” but it was mostly pleasantries by two men facing the biggest tests of their careers.

Martin has a reputation for being a big puncher, but Joshua might be even bigger. Not that it concerns the champion.

“Him being physically strong and powerful wasn’t even an issue,” Martin said. “When I first started boxing in the heavyweight school I was in, those guys were 250 pounds, big punchers, big heavy guys and I was 208 pounds, but I knew how to be evasive and get out of the way. That’s never left me.

Joshua accepted that he was tak-ing a risk by fighting for a world title so early in his professional career.

It will be the first world heavy-weight title fight in London in 16 years.

Filipino star ‘hungry’ for win after a 11-month absence from boxing ring

DOPING SCANDALS IN SPORTS

Aussies to play pink-ball Tests against South Africaand PakistanAFP

SYDNEY: Australia will play two day-night Tests against South Africa and Pakistan next southern summer in a revamp of home international scheduling, a report said yesterday.

Following the success of the inaugu-ral pink-ball Test against New Zealand in Adelaide last year, Cricket Australia will stage two more day-night Tests against touring nations South Africa and Paki-stan, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Australia will face the South Africans under lights in Adelaide and Pakistan at Brisbane’s Gabba ground, the news-paper said.

Cricket Australia is expected to finalise its international and domestic

schedules for the 2016-17 season later this month.

Under scheduling changes, the Herald said the Gabba would forfeit its custom-ary hosting rights to the first Test of the season and instead host the opening match of the Australia-Pakistan series in December.

The newspaper said the season would kick off with a Test at Perth’s WACA Ground between Australia and South Africa in November.

The series against the Proteas will then head to Hobart, which has been retained as a Test venue amid compe-tition from Canberra, before wrapping up under lights at Adelaide Oval.

Australia will then meet Pakistan in the day-night Test in Brisbane and com-plete the series with matches in Melbourne and Sydney over Christmas-New Year.

Following the success of the inaugural pink-ball Test against New Zealand in Adelaide last year, Cricket Australia will stage two more day-night Tests against touring nations South Africa and Pakistan.

Stokes can recover to be among England’s best ever, says Broad

England’s Ben Stokes (left) is consoled by team captain Eoin Morgan after losing the World T20 cricket tournament final match to West Indies at the Eden Gardens Cricket Stadium in Kolkata on April 3, 2016.

SPORT 21 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

Spieth sets early pace at Masters

Agencies

AUGUSTA, United States: Jordan Spieth was the early pace-setter at the 80th Masters yesterday as the 22-year-old American set off to defend the crown he won in record-matching fashion last year.

Seeking to become just the fourth player -- after Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods -- to win back-to-back titles at Augusta National, the 22-year-old Texan birdied the third, sixth and eighth to get to three-under approaching the turn.

Spieth is part of a trio of new gen-eration favourites alongside Jason Day and Rory McIlroy who were under threat from a bunch of hardened former champions.

At two-under as the early start-ers headed down the back nine was American Daniel Berger, who was cel-ebrating his 23th birthday, and Spieth’s playing partner, Paul Casey of England.

Bernd Wiesberger of Austria, Lee Westwood of England, Thai veteran Thonchai Jaidee, 2010 British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen and 2007 Masters champion Zach Johnson were

all at one under. Playing conditions were ideal after heavy overnight rain had softened the fairways and greens, although the breeze was expected to stiffen for the late starters.

Spieth set out in the company of Casey and rising young US amateur Bryson DeChambeau.

The American won by four strokes last year with a record-matching 18-under par total and two months later he added the US Open crown.

World number one Day, looking to win back-to-back majors after his PGA Championship triumph in August, has an afternoon tee-time playing with Matt Kuchar and South African vet-eran Ernie Els.

McIlroy, making his second bid at becoming just the sixth player to win all four majors, is the last man out with Ryder Cup teammate Martin Kaymer and Bill Haas.

Not an ideal spot to be, in but the Northern Irishman said he will take it in his stride.

“I think it’s the third year in a row I’ve been off last either Thursday or Friday here. I was sort of expecting it,” he said with a shrug.

Golf legend Tom Watson, play-ing in his 43rd and final Masters at the age of 66, was one under through six holes before dropping a shot at the tough seventh.

Three-time former winner Phil Mickelson bogeyed his opening hole as did 2013 winner Adam Scott and Henrik Stenson.

The big Swede though bounced back with birdies and the second and fourth to get into red figures. England’s Justin Rose was also one under after three holes.

Meanwhile, twice champion

Bernhard Langer believes that up to 40 players are genuine contenders for this week’s Masters, with another 30 quite capable of winning the year’s opening major championship.

An elite field of 89 has assembled at Augusta National for the tournament’s 80th edition, which started yester-day, and Germany’s Langer loves the fact that virtually all of the world’s top 10 have displayed excellent form in recent months.

“Most of the top 10 guys in the world rankings have won lately, or at least have shown some very good form,” Langer, 58, said while sitting in a plush armchair inside the iconic clubhouse at Augusta National.

“You want the best players play-ing great coming in here and we’ve got that. The guys in form are Jason Day and Adam Scott. Bubba Watson is also very good around here and there’s (defending champion) Jordan Spieth

and (Henrik) Stenson. “You would have to name 30 or 40 guys who are favourites this week, and then there’s another 30 who could win the tour-nament as well.”

Former world number one Langer, who this week will be competing in his 33rd Masters, has set himself the target of making the cut at Augusta National for a third time in the last four years and vying for the title.

“It’s a tough challenge for me

because the golf course is very long but my expectations are always high,” said Langer, referring to the heavily contoured layout that measures 7,435 yards off the back tees.

“I would like to be in contention, I would like to be on the leaderboard,” added the German, who tied for eighth at the Masters just two years ago. “But length is very important on this golf course nowadays.”

Langer, who won the coveted Green Jacket in 1985 and 1993, vividly recalls how stunned he was when he first saw the lightning-fast, severely sloping greens at Augusta National.

“I’d never seen greens like this before,” said Langer, who played his first Masters in 1982 and is now a golf brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz, a global partner of the Masters.

“They were more undulating, they were faster, they were firmer. They were just quite different from what we used to play on the tour.”

Asked to explain the biggest chal-lenge at Augusta for benefit of golf fans who had never visited the course, Langer replied: “First of all, there are a lot of side-hill, downhill and uphill lies which you don’t really see on television.

“Secondly, the greens are large but it’s not good just being on the green, you need to be in small pockets on the green where the pin is and then within that small pocket.

“You want to have an uphill putt, and not a downhill or side-hill putt.

“So the large green becomes a very, very small target, and hitting that small target with often longer irons makes it that much harder. And if you don’t hit it, then you have extremely diffi-cult putts or chips or bunker shots.”

F1 teams want return to 2015 qualifyingReuters

LONDON: Formula One is set to retain its unpopular qualifying format at next week’s Chinese Grand Prix after teams rejected a compromise backed by the governing FIA and called for a return to last year’s version.

Sources said the teams expressed their united position in a letter to com-mercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone and International Automobile Federation (FIA) head Jean Todt who both ruled out going back at a 90-minute meet-ing in Bahrain last weekend.

One team source said the letter expressed a willingness to experiment

with new formats once the champi-onship was decided.

The impasse is likely to mean the new live elimination format introduced this season, condemned by fans and teams as a failure, will remain in place for at least a third race.

Any change to the 2016 regulations requires the unanimous approval of the FIA’s F1 commission which groups the teams, commercial rights holder and governing body as well as other stakeholders.

Teams agreed at the Bahrain Grand Prix to vote by Thursday on the com-promise solution which would see each driver do at least two laps in each of the three phases of qualifying with the times aggregated.

“If we don’t agree to a compro-mise we are stuck with what we’ve got and I think everyone agrees what we’ve got isn’t r ight,” Red Bull principal Christian Horner had said.

Williams deputy-principal Claire Williams said on Sunday Todt and Ecclestone believed “going back to 2015 will create more confusion than is necessary”.

The argument is about more than finding the best way to line up 22 cars on the starting grid, however.

In a sport that can crunch vast amounts of data in milliseconds, it comes down to power and who really calls the shots, the teams or the FIA and Ecclestone.

World champions Mercedes and Ferrari supply eight of the 11 teams, giving them more muscle in decision-making.

“The FIA should write the reg-ulations and say ‘these are the regulations. If you want to enter the championship you enter. If you don’t, don’t,” Ecclestone told report-ers in Bahrain.

He said the change to the quali-fying format came at the request of promoters, keen for more action dur-ing the early phases of the Saturday session, and a desire to shake up the starting grid.

Dominant Mercedes have won 34 of the last 40 grands prix and eight in a row.

Rugby: Williams leads Olympic sevens stampede in Hong KongAFP

HONG KONG: All Blacks superstar Sonny Bill Wil-liams (pictured) will stake his claim for an Olympic sevens spot when the informal dress rehearsal for Rio takes place this week in Hong Kong.

The code-swapping, two-time Rugby World Cup-winner leads an unusually high-profile field at the famous Hong Kong sevens as a number of top names make their bid for Rio.

Williams has missed the last two sevens world series tournaments with a knee problem and he will be keen to prove his worth just four months out from the Olympics.

Fellow All Black Liam Messam is also with New Zealand while colourful Wallabies winger Nick “Honey Badger” Cummins is hoping to nail down a spot with Australia.

French Six Nations star Virimi Vakatawa is in Hong Kong and New England Patriots Super Bowl-winner Nate Ebner is training with the USA squad with his eye on Rio.

The heavyweight line-up has ramped up antici-pation for Hong Kong, the seventh of 10 world series tournaments and the highlight of the annual sev-ens calendar.

Hong Kong’s format and sold-out, 40,000-capac-ity stadium are the closest the sevens series comes to conditions in Rio, making it a vital part of teams’ preparations.

The championship standings could also hardly be tighter with just one point each between leaders

Fiji, South Africa and New Zealand. Although an injury now could ruin a player’s Olympic chances, coaches insisted games would be as intense as ever in the three-day tournament starting on Friday.

“I’ve got 24 players that are wanting to go to Rio

to be Olympians so they’re not holding back,” said New Zealand coach Gordon Tietjens.

“They’re fighting for positions to go to Rio so it really makes it very competitive amongst the squad that I have.”

Exuberant Fiji are perennial favourites in Hong Kong but they remain under a cloud after the dev-astation of super cyclone Winston, which killed 44 people in February.

“(Players) lost houses, families lost livelihoods and five percent of the population is without a roof over their heads at the moment, and there’s a food shortage,” said coach Ben Ryan.

“It’s not been a lucky time for Fiji and the boys have obviously been affected on a personal level from that.

“But saying that, Fijians are incredibly resilient and the boys... they’ve not moaned about it, they haven’t complained about it and we certainly won’t use that as an excuse for any lack of preparation.

“We’re as well prepared as any of the other sides. And the boys will have perhaps a little bit more motivation.”

South Africa’s Bryan Habana and Australia’s Quade Cooper are skipping Hong Kong for club duties with Toulon, while Wallaby Henry Speight is out with an eye injury.

Olympic hosts Brazil will take part in a 12-team qualifying competition to earn a spot at next year’s tournament, along with newcomers the Cayman Islands.

Rugby will make its return to the Olympics in August after a gap of 92 years since it was last included on the schedule at the 1924 Games in Paris.

I almost quit because of

wrist injuries, says Del Potro

Reuters

LONDON: Former US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro (pictured) said he almost quit tennis after a succes-sion of wrist injuries but still hopes he can regain his former powers.

Argentinian Del Potro, 27, returned to the tour in February nearly 11 months after undergoing wrist sur-gery for the third time, reaching the semi-finals at the 250 Series Delray Beach Open.

Results since have been a little disappointing but after plumbing the depths the past two years at least he is able to play relatively pain free.

“I was close to quitting tennis. I got frustrated at home and I didn’t watch tennis on TV because it was sad for me,” Del Potro, who stunned Roger Federer to win the 2009 US Open, told the website of the ATP World Tour (www.atpworldtour.com)

“It was close. But now, I have many good things to take from the tour. I would like to play tennis and that’s it.”

Del Potro reached number four in the world in 2009 and was expected to follow up his US Open triumph with more grand slam titles only for his injuries to strike.

Despite being a right-hander, Del Potro’s left wrist has been the source of his discomfort, preventing him striking his trademark double-fisted backhand drive.

It first troubled him in 2010 when he endured a nine-month break from

the game after surgery. He recovered to return to the world’s top five by 2013 when he played an epic Wimbledon semi-final against Novak Djokovic.

However, since the start of 2014 he has completed only 22 matches with two more bouts of surgery required to his tendon.

Despite pulling out of the Miami Open, which finished on Sunday, after feeling some discomfort in the wrist, del Potro remains upbeat.

“Hopefully after my third surgery, the problem is almost fixed and I am here, playing tennis again,” he said.

“I’m still confident in my game and still looking forward to playing with the top guys in the same con-dition, not like (Indian Wells), when I couldn’t hit my backhand at 100 per cent. Maybe in the future I will get that chance.”

Anna Karolina Schmiedlova of Slovakia returns the ball to Pauline Parmentier of France during their second round match at the WTA Katowice Open tournament in Katowice, Poland, on Wednesday.

Up to 40 players are favourites to win this year’s opening major championship, says Langer

US golfer Jordan Spieth waits to play his shot on the 10th green during Round 1 of the 80th Masters Golf Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club, in Augusta, Georgia, yesterday.

SPORT22 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

Man City fight back to draw 2-2 against PSG

AFP

PARIS: Away goals by Kevin De Bruyne and Fernandinho handed Manchester City a 2-2 first-leg draw at Paris Saint-Germain on Wednes-day to give the English side the edge in their Champions League quarter-final tie.

On a night that will be remem-bered for some comical defending and a Zlatan Ibrahimovic penalty that was saved by City goalkeeper Joe Hart, the Premier League side twice punished mistakes by their hosts.

De Bruyne put City ahead on 38 minutes, only for Ibrahimovic to level after an embarrassing mix-up in the visitors’ defence soon after.

Adrien Rabiot then put PSG ahead just before the hour, but Fernandinho made it 2-2 on 72 minutes and ensured the French giants will be chasing the tie in next Tuesday’s second leg.

“It was a crazy game and we played our part in a great game of football,” Hart told BT Sport.

“It’s up to us to make the away goals count. We are making history for the club and we don’t want it to end.”

Meanwhile, PSG coach Laurent Blanc admitted his side will have to improve if they are to progress now.

“Two mistakes allowed Man City to score goals that are, as you know, very important away from home. That’s our biggest regret,” he said.

“I think we conceded goals from the only two chances they had but we could have scored three or four ourselves.”

City were appearing at this stage for the first time and were handi-capped by the absences of injured captain Vincent Kompany, Yaya Toure and Raheem Sterling.

However, Hart had recovered from injury in time to play and De Bruyne started after making his own comeback from two months on the sidelines at the weekend, giving the English side’s attack a fearsome look.

PSG, conquerors of Chelsea in the

last 16, feared Sergio Aguero the most, though, and the Argentinian striker coaxed a yellow card out of David Luiz inside 20 seconds after getting in behind the Brazilian.

The home support were furious soon after when Serbian referee Milorad Mazic refused to give Paris a penalty after Blaise Matuidi went down in the box under pressure from Eliaquim Mangala, but PSG did win a spot-kick in the 13th minute for a foul by Bacary Sagna on Luiz.

Ibrahimovic stepped up, but was thwarted by Hart, who dived low to his right to make the save.

Perhaps the 34-year-old Swede was feeling the pressure in what could be his last chance to win the Cham-pions League, because he passed up another huge opportunity midway through the first half, blazing over after a Thiago Motta pass split the away defence.

City made Ibrahimovic pay as they opened the scoring seven minutes before half-time, capitalising on loose play in the Paris midfield.

Fernandinho intercepted a Matuidi pass intended for Rabiot and advanced towards the edge of the box before teeing up De Bruyne, who took a touch and fired past Kevin Trapp.

However, City inexplicably gifted the French champions an equaliser only three minutes later.

It was a horror moment for Hart and Fernando, with the goalkeeper choosing to play a goal-kick short to the Brazilian-born midfielder on the edge of the area despite Ibrahimovic lurking in close proximity.

Fernando tried to release the ball, but Ibrahimovic stuck out a leg and diverted it into the net for his 39th goal of the season.

PSG came out in the second half with the momentum after that and they took the lead on 59 min-utes thanks to one-time City youth player Rabiot.

Edinson Cavani turned a corner towards goal and Hart saved, but the ball fell kindly for Rabiot to tap in.

PSG sensed a chance to increase their advantage and a Di Maria cross from the right was headed against the woodwork by Ibrahimovic.

Instead City pounced on some more comical defending to grab a sec-ond away goal, Fernandinho gleefully prodding into the net after neither Serge Aurier nor Thiago Silva were able to clear a low ball into the box from the away right.

Those away goals, and the fact PSG will be without the suspended Luiz and Matuidi for the return, could prove crucial.

Away goals by De Bruyne and Fernandinho gives the English side the edge in their Champions League quarter-final tie

Manchester City’s English goalkeeper Joe Hart dives to stop a penalty shot from Ibrahimovic during the UEFA Champions League quarter final football match at Parc des Princes Stadium in Paris on Wednesday night.

Zidane fuming as Real crash at WolfsburgAFP

WOLFSBURG, Germany: Zinedine Zidane admitted Real Madrid suffered an El Clasico hangover as they crashed to a 2-0 Champions League quarter-final, first-leg, defeat at Wolfsburg on Wednesday.

Just five days after ending Barce-lona’s 39-game unbeaten run with a 2-1 away win, Real were humbled as Wolfsburg ignored their struggling mid-table form in Germany’s top flight.

Real never recovered as first-half goals from Swiss defender Ricardo Rodriguez and Maximilian Arnold put the hosts 2-0 up at the Volkswagen Arena with 25 minutes gone.

Wolfsburg now have the upper hand ahead of Tuesday’s return leg at the Bernabeu.

“I’m not happy, above all with the first-half. This can happen if you don’t play with intensity from the start,” said coach Zidane, who made just one change from the team which beat Barca.

“We wanted to play here just like we did on Saturday, it was an inten-sive game for us (in Barcelona) and we were flat in the first-half here.

“Now we have a chance in the return leg and it’s good we’ve got a game in three days (at home to Eibar) to get over this defeat.

“We had our problems, not just in the intensity, but also in our movement.

“We didn’t expect the 2-0 defeat and we need to analyse where we went wrong and make corrections.”

Zidane even said he was proud of his players and took full responsibil-ity for the result.

“I have to find the reasons for the defeat and the solutions,” he added.

Real’s six-game winning streak was ended as Wolfsburg picked up their first win in four games since beating Gent in the last 16 of the tournament.

It was a poor performance from Real’s star forwards as Gareth Bale was kept quiet and Cristiano Ronaldo rarely shook of his markers.

France forward Karim Benzema went off on 41 minutes after a knock.

Bale was left frustrated at not being

awarded a first-half penalty after a heavy challenge in the area from Luiz Gustavo.

“I felt I got to the ball first and he hit me, so it is obviously frustrating, but we have another game,” said the Welshman.

“We just have to make sure now that

in the return we win by three goals.”Wolfsburg coach Dieter Hecking

gambled by starting inexperienced Brazilian Bruno Henrique on the right wing, who set up Arnold’s goal.

Centre-back Naldo played his first game since dislocating his shoulder in February and helped subdue the Real attack.

There was little hint of the drama to come when Real’s Cristiano Ron-aldo put the ball in the Wolfsburg net after just 74 seconds, but the offside flag went up.

The hosts took a shock lead on 18 minutes when Real midfielder Casem-iro put in a clumsy foul on Wolfsburg striker Andre Schuerrle and Rodriguez nailed the spot kick.

Arnold then slotted home on 25 minutes as Wolfsburg capitalised on some woeful Real defending.

“When Madrid leave the door open, you have to take the chance to go through it,” said Hecking.

“There was contact (on Schuerrle) and it was a clear penalty.

“In Henrique, we had a weapon which Real hadn’t bargained for.

Argentina knock

Belgium from top

of FIFA rankings

AFP

PARIS: Argentina reclaimed top spot from Belgium in Thursday’s FIFA world rankings, while Copa America champions Chile soared to an all-time high of third place.

Three straight wins in 2018 World Cup qualifiers helped Argentina return to the summit, five months after they were sup-planted by Belgium.

Chile moved up two places from fifth, with Colombia climbing from eighth to fourth and Uruguay mov-ing back into the top 10 as a reward for their strong start to South Amer-ican qualifying.

Two-time defending European champions Spain drop three places to sixth, with world champions Ger-many, Brazil, Portugal and England also sliding down one spot.

Wounded Barcelona seek

response to Clasico defeatAgencies

BARCELONA: Barcelona must over-come a dismal record at Real Sociedad on Saturday to reinforce the club’s title credentials after their 39-game unbeaten run in all competitions ended with defeat by Real Madrid last week.

La Liga leaders Barca were lifted by a 2-1 victory over Spanish rivals Atletico Madrid in a Champions League quarter-final first leg on Tuesday but they have failed to win at Sociedad since the Basque side returned to the top flight in 2011.

Four of the Catalan team’s last five visits there have ended in defeat.

“We have beaten Barcelona a lot in the last few years and on Saturday we can beat them again,” Sociedad midfielder Asier Illarramendi told reporters.

Barca are without suspended top scorer Luis Suarez, who scored both goals in the comeback win over Atletico, while Aleix Vidal, Jer-emy Mathieu and Sandro Ramirez are injured.

Their last victory in San Sebas-tian came under former coach Frank Rijkaard in May 2007 and neither Pep Guardiola, Gerardo Martino, Tito Vilanova nor Luis Enrique have managed to win at Sociedad.

Barca lost 1-0 there last season after Luis Enrique started the game without Lionel Messi and Brazilian

Neymar.The result had significant con-

sequences as they sacked sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta the next day while media speculation grew that Luis Enrique’s job was in danger.

Barca have 76 points, six clear of nearest challengers Atletico and seven ahead of third-placed Real Madrid with seven games remaining.

Sociedad are 10th on 38 points and entertain Barca after a confidence-boosting 2-1 triumph at Sevilla that ended the opposition’s run of 14 league victories at home.

Real Madrid host ninth-placed Eibar on Saturday hoping to capi-talise on their win at the Nou Camp last week.

Zinedine Zidane’s men will also look to put added pressure on the teams above them and bounce back from their shock Champions League defeat at VfL Wolfsburg in midweek.

Real could be without Karim Ben-zema after the France striker went off in the first half of the 2-0 reverse at Wolfsburg due to a suspected knee injury.

Captain Sergio Ramos is suspended after being sent off for two bookings against Barcelona.

Atletico travel to Espanyol, where they have not won since September 2012, on Saturday knowing that a vic-tory and another slip by Barca would leave them three points off the top.

Meanwhile, When Leicester City faced Sunderland on the opening day

of the season, even their most opti-mistic fans were expecting another testing struggle to avoid relegation.

As they prepare to visit Sam Allardyce’s side in the return fixture on Sunday, some of those supporters are now pre-emptively buying scarves emblazoned with the words ‘Premier League Champions’.

While many are no doubt steering clear to avoid tempting fate, four vic-tories from the remaining six games of the season will hand Leicester a maiden top flight title and complete one of the most remarkable fairytales in English soccer history.

Leicester lead second place Totten-ham Hotspur by seven points heading into Sunday’s game and need 12 more to put themselves out of sight.

For the Leicester side that plunged to the foot of the table last season, four wins in six games might have seemed like a daunting task.

Yet such has been the collective sense of calm that seems to encircle Claudio Ranieri’s side this year that few are now expecting a collapse in the home straight.

The slip-ups and the wobbles have been reserved for the so-called bigger teams, who have all fallen off the pace while Leicester have sailed smoothly through the supposed choppy waters of the title run-in. Four successive 1-0 victories have propelled Leicester to the verge of success and been testa-ment to the organisational abilities of their Italian coach.

Paris Saint-Germain forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic reacts after missing a penalty during the UEFA Champions League quarter final match against Manchester City at the Parc des Princes Stadium in Paris on Wednesday.

Champions League Results

At Paris

Paris Saint-Germain (FRA) 2 (Ibrahi-

movic 41, Rabiot 59) Manchester City

(ENG) 2 (De Bruyne 38,

Fernandinho 72)

At Wolfsburg, Germany

VfL Wolfsburg (GER) 2 (Rodriguez

18-pen, Arnold 25)

Real Madrid (ESP) 0

Played on Tuesday

At Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona 2 (Suarez 63, 74) Atletico

Madrid 1 (Torres 25)

At Munich, Germany

Bayern Munich 1 (Vidal 2) Benfica 0

Second legs: April 12 and 13

FIFA Rankings1. Argentina (+1)

2. Belgium (-1)

3. Chile (+2)

4. Colombia (+4)

5. Germany (-1)

6. Spain (-3)

7. Brazil (-1)

8. Portugal (-1)

9. Uruguay (+2)

10. England (-1)

Action from the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Qatar Open at the Qatar Beach Volleyball Academy courts at Al Gharafa Sports Club yesterday. The $75,000 event will conclude today. Pictures by: Mohamed Faraj

FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Qatar Open

Man City fight back to draw 2-2 against PSG

PAGE | 20 PAGE | 22

Pacquiao vows to sign off

in style

FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016 • 1 Rajab 1437

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

@peninsulaqatar @peninsula_qatarthepeninsulaqatar

The Peninsula

ABU DHABI: Qatar’s Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah confirmed a comfortable second victory in the gruelling Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge and moved into the early lead in the 2016 FIA Cross-Country Rally World Cup with a resounding success in the United Arab Emirates yesterday.

The Qatari speedstar recorded his first win in UAE since 2008 and also made history for Overdrive Racing and his navigator Matthieu Baumel. The win was the first ever for a Toyota Hilux and a maiden success across the deserts of the Abu Dhabi’s Empty Quarter for Baumel and Overdrive Racing.

Al Attiyah said: “I am delighted with this result and the performance of the Toyota. It was not easy, but we controlled our pace from the front of the field from the start and I am happy to be leading the champion-ship and to take another win in Abu Dhabi. The dunes were tricky, but the car was strong and reliable.”

The Polish duo of Marek Dab-rowski and Jacek Czachor crewed a second Overdrive Racing Toyota Hilux in Orlen Team colours and reached the finish in eighth overall. They lost a potential top five finish on the third of five punishing desert selec-tive sections, held on varied weather conditions in the western deserts of the Al Gharbia region of the emirate of Abu Dhabi.

“This is a special result for our team and I think that a winning margin of over 30 minutes proves that Nasser has been the best driver,” said Over-drive Racing’s CEO Jean-Marc Fortin.

Dabrowski and Al Attiyah made cautious starts through the opening

super special stage at the Al Forsan International Sports Resort and carded the fourth and seventh fastest times. This gave them both favourable start-ing positions for the first of the desert sections of 278.04km out of Razeen.

Al Attiyah was in super form through the opening stage and a time of 3hr 28min 07sec was suffi-cient for the Qatari to card the fastest time and edge into an overall lead of 2min 18sec over former Overdrive Toyota driver Yazeed Al Rajhi. Dab-rowski was fifth in the Orlen Team Toyota and held a similar position in the overall standings.

Al Attiyah was the first driver to finish the second loop section of 278.90km through the western deserts in a time of 3hr 54min 14sec and that was sufficient for the Qatari to extend his outright lead over Al-Rajhi to 10min 21sec.

Dabrowski capped another superb day for Overdrive Racing: the Pole was the fourth driver to complete the stage and retained fifth overall.

The Qatari was fastest on the third stage of 280.06km as well and extended his overall advantage over Vladimir Vasilyev to 15min 19sec. “I got into my rhythm early on,” said the Qatari. “The navigation was perfect.”

Dabrowski was delayed with a minor battery issue and the time loss was expensive: it cost the Pole around 80 minutes and dropped the Orlen Toyota from fifth to ninth overall.

Al Attiyah ceded the win on the fourth section of 257.87km to Fin-land’s Mikko Hirvonen, but the Toyota driver maintained an outright lead of 28min 08sec over Yazeed Al Rajhi to take into the final selective section. “It wasn’t easy at all,” admitted Nasser. “We did some of the stage the pre-vious day, but most was completely new. The thing now is not to make any mistakes.”

Dabrowski enjoyed a useful stage performance to finish eighth and hold a similar position in the rankings.

Al Attiyah stormed through the final stage in a time of 2hr 38min 17sec to secure his second victory at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge by the margin of 32min 13sec. Dab-rowski also drove a solid final stage to snatch the sixth quickest time and finish in eighth place.

Al Attiyah wins gruelling Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge

The Qatari speedstar, driving a Toyota Hilux, takes early lead in the 2016 FIA Cross-Country Rally World Cup

2016 ABU DHABI DESERT CHALLENGE

Final standings:1. Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah (QAT)/Matthieu Baumel (FRA) Overdrive Toyota Hilux: 17hr 14min 49sec

2. Yazeed Al Rajhi (SAU)/Timo Gottschalk (DEU) Mini All4 Racing: 17hr 47min 02sec

3. Mikko Hirvonen (FIN)/Michel Périn (FRA) Mini All4 Racing: 17hr 53min 02sec

4. Bryce Menzies (USA)/Andreas Schulz (DEU) Mini All4 Racing: 17hr 59min 04sec

5. Jakub Przygonski (POL)/Tom Colsoul (BEL) Mini All4 Racing: 18hr 06min 33sec

6. Matthieu Serradori (FRA)/Didier Haquette (FRA) SRT Buggy: 18hr 39min 00sec

7. Khalid Al Qassimi (ARE)/Khaled Al Kendi (ARE) Mini All4 Racing: 18hr 56min01sec

8. Marek Dabrowski (POL)/Jacek Czachor (POL) Overdrive Toyota Hilux: 19hr 52min 40sec

Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge cars champions Nasser Al Attiyah (top right) and co-driver Mathieu Baumel (top left) and their Overdrive Racing team-mates on the podium after receiving the winner’s trophy from Mohammed Ben Sulayem, ATCUAE President and Abdul Rahman bin Abdul Latif Al Mannai, President of the Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation.

Qatar’s Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah and his Overdrive Racing team-mate and navigator Matthieu Baumel driving their Toyota Hilux during the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.

Qatar’s Adel Hussein

secures win in UAEThe Peninsula

ABU DHABI: Qatar’s Adel Hussein Abdullah claimed a memorable vic-tory in the T2 category at the 2016 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge in his Nissan Patrol yesterday.

The Qatari hit the front of the five-day second round of the FIA Cross-Country Rally World Cup with two days to go and drove in a cau-tious manner over the final kilometres yesterday to record a winning mar-gin of 5min 48sec over Saudi Arabia’s Yasir Saeidan.

It was the regular MERC navigator and quad rider’s biggest career win to date and a superb result for the Japa-nese manufacturer and title sponsor of the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.

“It was difficult for me to be ahead of Saeiden,” said Adel Hus-sein Abdullah.

“He was pushing to the maxi-mum, but I tried to be in one pace

and make no mistakes and, in the end, I tried to drive fast and clean in the stage today.”

“Winning the stage today was not important. The car was perfect. It was new for me and the first time I drove a Nissan in cross-country. We worked hard to get everything right and it worked out with this result.”

Running with support from Nissan Middle East and Al-Masaood Auto-mobiles, Emil Khneisser, the Abu Dhabi-based Lebanese Nissan Patrol Y62 driver, and his Russian naviga-tor Alexei Kuzmich could not rectify the problems that plagued progress on Wednesday. Rather than damage the car, the crew decided not to com-plete the final section of the event on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia’s Khalid Al Feraihi and his Omani navigator Abdulhal-eem Al Busaidi achieved a superb 11th place in their T1 Nissan Patrol and Emirati Matar Al Mansoori finished the rally in 16th overall in a privately run T1 Nissan Patrol.

Adel Hussein Abdullah driving his Nissan Patrol during the T2 category event at the 2016 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge in Abu Dhabi yesterday.

Pa back

2016 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge FIA T2 positions after SS5 Results

1. Adel Hussein Abdullah (QAT)/Hakam Mohamed Rabeia (EGY)

Nissan Patrol: 24hr 38min 14secs

2. Yasir Saeidan (SAU)/Sebastien Delaunay (FRA)

Toyota Land Cruiser: 24hr 44min 02secs

Minimum: 22o C Maximum: 29o C

HIGH TIDE 05:15 - 18:00LOW TIDE 01:30 - 00:00

Partly cloudy to cloudy with chance of scattered

rain maybe thundery at places at times.

WEATHER

MORNING BREAK24 FRIDAY 8 APRIL 2016

ONLINE CHART BUST

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The night show "La Forge aux Etoiles", an aquaferie created by "Le Cirque du Soleil" at the Futuroscope theme park in Chasseneuil-du-Poitou, France.

Aquaferie show

Reuters

LONDON: The number of adults with dia-betes has quadrupled worldwide in under four decades to 422 million, and the con-dition is fast becoming a major problem in poorer countries, a World Health Organi-zation study showed on Wednesday.

In one of the largest studies to date of diabetes trends, the researchers said ageing populations and rising levels of obesity across the world mean diabetes is becoming “a defining issue for global public health”.

“Obesity is the most important risk factor for type 2 diabetes and our attempts to control rising rates of obesity have so far not proved successful,” said Majid Ezzati, a professor at Imperial College London who led the WHO research.

It found that between 1980 and 2014, diabetes has become more common among men than women.

Rates of diabetes rose significantly in many low and middle income countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Paki-stan, Egypt and Mexico.

The study found that northwestern Europe has the lowest rates of dia-betes among women and men, with age-adjusted prevalence lower than 4 percent among women and at around 5 to 6 percent among men in Switzer-land, Austria, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands.

No country saw any meaningful decrease in diabetes prevalence, it found.

The largest increases in diabetes rates were in Pacific island nations, followed by the Middle East and North Africa, in countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The data also showed that half of adults with diabetes in 2014 lived in five countries - China, India, the United States Brazil and Indonesia.

Rates more than doubled for men in India and China between 1980 and 2014

Diabetes cases

reach 422 million

Reuters

SCOTLAND: A nearly 400-year-old copy of a first edition of William Shakespeare’s collected plays has been found in a vast aris-tocratic house on the Isle of Bute, off the western coast of Scotland.

Published in 1623, the First Folio contains Shakespeare’s 36 plays, including several that had never been published before and might have been lost without it, such as “Macbeth”, “The Tempest” and “As You Like It”. The discovery at Mount Stuart, grand neo-Gothic home of the Marquesses of Bute, brings the total of known surviv-ing copies of the First Folio in the world to 234. Most others are in libraries and accessible only to scholars.

It is usually a single volume that would have to be read sitting

Rare Shakespeare First Folio found

at a desk, but the Bute copy was split in the past for ease of reading into three leather-bound volumes, one each for comedies, histories and tragedies. “This is something that you could take to the fireside and enjoy,” Emma Smith, a professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford Uni-versity who authenticated the Bute Folio, told the BBC.

“It’s a book we most likely now see ... in a glass case, and one of the things that this copy ... shows us is a time when people just really used this book, they enjoyed it, they scribbled on it, they spilt their wine on it, their pet cats jumped on it.”

Worth an estimated 2 to 2.5 mil-lion pounds the Folio is not up for sale and will be on public display at Mount Stuart until October. It was found in the home’s library, which

houses a collection of artworks and artefacts acquired by the Stu-art family over the centuries.

“The collection’s managers were in touch to say they thought they had a Shakespeare First Folio, and I must say I thought right, yeah, sure you do. But on much closer inspec-tion they turned out to be right,” said Smith.

Inside the first page is an inscription from an 18th century editor of Shakespeare called Isaac Reed, describing how he acquired the book in 1786. The Folio also includes annotations by Reed that suggest he used it as a working document.

Britain has been holding com-memorations this year to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death on April 23, 1616.

Daffodils are in bloom at Mount Stuart where a Shakespeare First Folio has been discovered nearly 400 years after his death on the Isle of Bute in Scotland, yesterday.

The Shakespeare First Folio is displayed at Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, in Scotland, yesterday.

QNA

CALIFORNIA: University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley, astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole that is equal to 17bn suns put together.

They say the huge black hole dis-covered in a sparse area of the local universe indicates that these mon-ster objects may be more common than once thought.

Until now, the biggest supermas-sive black holes - those with masses around 10 billion times that of our sun - have been found at the cores of

very large galaxies in regions loaded with other large galaxies.

The current record holder, dis-covered in the Coma Cluster by the UC Berkeley team in 2011, tips the scale at 21 billion solar masses and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The newly discovered black hole is in a galaxy, NGC 1600, in the oppo-site part of the sky from the Coma Cluster in a relative desert, said the leader of the discovery team, Chung-Pei Ma, a UC Berkeley professor of astronomy and head of the MASSIVE Survey, a study of the most massive galaxies and black holes in the local

universe with the goal of under-standing how they form and grow supermassive.

"Rich groups of galaxies like the Coma Cluster are very, very rare, but there are quite a few galaxies the size of NGC 1600 that reside in average-size galaxy groups," Ma said.

"So the question now is, 'Is this the tip of an iceberg?' Maybe there are a lot more monster black holes out there that don't live in a sky-scraper in Manhattan, but in a tall building somewhere in the Midwest-ern plains." The 17-billion-solar-mass estimate for the central black hole in NGC 1600 is much more precise.

Huge black hole equal to 17bn suns found

US hands over fossil remains

of dinosaur to Mongolia

AFP

NEW YORK: The United States on Tuesday handed back to Mongolia fossil remains of six species of dino-saur smuggled out of the country and impounded by agents in New York and Utah.

The largest item was the skull of an Alioramus, an exceptionally rare dinosaur believed to have roamed the Gobi Desert 66 to 70 million years ago. A relative of the more widely known Tyrannosaurus, only two specimens are reported in sci-entific literature, both of them from Mongolia. US authorities described the fossil as the most complete Alio-ramus skull yet discovered.

The skull was confiscated by customs after being shipped from France with false papers claiming it was a cheap replica, US authori-ties said. The shipper later submitted forged Mongolian export documents,

officials added. Mongolia determined that fossils are national property in 1924, and their export is strictly for-bidden. Tuesday's ceremony, hosted by the US attorney for Brooklyn, is the latest in a series of returns of fossils to Mongolia in recent years, including a Tarbosaurus bataar dat-ing back 70 million years.

"We are proud of our role in restoring this rich paleontological heritage to the Mongolian people and taking these cultural treasures from the hands of looters and smugglers," said Robert Capers, US attorney for Brooklyn. Before Tuesday, 23 dino-saur fossils had been repatriated to Mongolia from the United States in the last three years, said Mongolia's ambassador to the United States, Altangerel Bulgaa.

Mongol ia pa leontologist Bolortsetseg Minjin described the Alioramus as an extremely rare dinosaur and said only two spec-imens reported in the scientific literature, and both from Mongolia.

Robert L Capers, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, speaks during the Repatriation ceremony to transfer custody of Mongolian fossils to the Government of Mongolia in New York.